TheNetAvenger

Ok everyone, thanks for the info...

Ok, so I dug out my SR, and this has sparked some strange data that maybe others here can help with.

The soft cap theory is that NPCs have a 50% chance to hit, and if you raise your defense to 45% or 50%, then they only have the hard 5% cap chance to hit you.

Here is the problem...

If you take the math on it, it seems like defense is applied first, so that if you have 50% defense and they have a 50% chance to hit, they still end up having a 25% chance to hit you, and this is what my limited testing seems to support.

So if you soft cap with 50% defense, they are whacking you 25% of the time.

So if this is true, It would take 90% defense to reach the 5% hard cap. And again my limited testing shows this by using Elude to shove Defense to over 90%, they are hitting about 5% of the time.

So is the formula mis-understood, or is there additional accuracy or to-hit on NPCs that is factoring in this?

I did testing with a few various NPC groups, but couldn't didn't find any accuracy or to-hit consistency that skewed the numbers with the exception of NPCs that DeBuff Defense that got through. (Regular Street or Mission NPCs, not MA)

Can anyone confirm what I am seeing or why 25% of the attacks are getting through on a level 50 Hero that is 'soft capped'?

Also how does Level difference factor in on the chance to hit you?

Interested to see more data on this or what others can find or show. I did go through the forums, but the data and 'accepted' truths about the soft cap don't seem to show in the game.

Also could this be a SR only issue in how defense is calculated?

I know on my Defender that if Shove To-Hit DeBuff to 45%, they only can hit about 5% of the time, but the reverse doesn't seem to work with regard to a SR scrapper and getting hit.

I would love to be proven crazy or have missed something.

However, right now, hitting Elude to shove defense to over 90% is the only way I am seeing the 5% hit rate.

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actually Zolth, I installed XP instead of Vista on this machine and didn't crash in over 8 months. Now to me that sounds like a fix. No blue screen, no error with driver... nothing. The problem is with how Vista times itself with the drivers ( if I understood correctly) and since XP doesn't have the same architecture than Vista and doesn't talk to the driver the same way, it doesn't have the same problem.

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Well just because ignorance produced a positive result doesn't mean embrassing ignorance is the answer.

I know people that fix their cars by pounding a hammer on the hub cap when it won't start and swear it fixes the car, but in REALITY, it probably has LITTLE to do with with problems with the car.

As for your 'knowledge' of the Vista Driver 'timing' differences between XP and Vista, you really have no idea what you are talking about. And this is why I ask, why do you even respond to a thread like this, when you are not going to help the user and instead just go on your os-political agenda against Vista.

The Video driver model in Vista is far richer and even though there have been driver issues because it required NVidia and ATI to write NEW DRIVERS FROM SCRATCH, it doesn't mean that the XP driver model is better.

I really get tired of the non-legitimate Vista bashing from people that don't have a freaking clue about OS techonlogy, what issues people are facing and why they might be having problems.

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As for the OP of this thread. The 9600 NVidia card has had problems with the last few set of drivers from NVidia that affects many games, and that is where you should start looking for your problem.

Go to www.laptopvideo2go.com (yes they have desktop drivers too), it is the best archive of Video drivers for NVidia based Cards.

With the 9600 Geforce, try going back to really old drivers, like the 178 series that first supported the 9600 or try the new generation of drivers in the 185.xx range.

You can also try the 182.50 drivers, as I have heard good things about them and fixing 9600 issues with games, and many users are also happy with the 185.68 drivers.

Be sure to uninstall the 'old' Nvidia drivers via the Control Panel before installing a new version, just in case a bad/old file has been left of the system.

If that doesn't address your issue, you may have to look beyond your Video card, and run the Vista RAM diagnostic tool and also look for hardware errors in your computer's configuration.

If this is a custom built computer, the person that assembled it could have the CPU voltage off, PCI clock set wrong, DRAM Freq. Voltage wrong, etc etc...

Vista is not your 'specific' problem, as 99.9% of Vista users have NO issues what so ever with City of Heroes or 99.9% of any other games out there. Statistics also show Vista to run faster than XP with 1-2GB of RAM, and is far more stable than XP, so don't buy into the myth that giving up Vista will fix your issues, especially if your hardware could be causing the problems and you need to get that addressed.

Some of the Vista myth crap reminds me of people when they were moving from Win3.1 to Win95 or Win9x to XP. They all complained that the new OS was junk, when they didn't realize how the new OS worked differently, and used aspects of their hardware the previous OS didn't that would make existing problems surface. For example things like a modem sharing an IRQ would work fine in Win3.1 or
Win95, but was architecturally forbidden in Win2k or XP, so when their modem wouldn't work, they blamed XP, instead of the fool that installed their modem card improperly in the first place...

The same is true of XP to Vista, Vista is using aspects of your computer XP never did, from low level ACPI and mainboard chipset features to even advanced features on your devices from DVD burners to sound cards. If there are errors or problems with the hardware or conflicts, Vista will complain, where XP doesn't even realize the hardware is there to complain about.

ACPI is one area that is very inconsistent on hardware, and was left in disarray because XP didn't use all the ACPI features, where Vista does and even expects them to work properly for Standby and Hibernate by invoking the hardware Sx states per specification.

Another direct Vista example is in CPU threading issues that Vista manages that XP didn't, and come to find out there are a few core problems in AMD and Intel CPU threading schedulers that Vista has to 'compensate' for because they don't work like they should and Intel and AMD didn't find these errors because of XP and other OSes ignorance to these advanced threading state features.

This is why Intel and AMD have RevA, B, C of their processors, as new devices and OSes find flaws in how they are working.

It is also why you find Vista 'patches' for specific hardware to 'work around' the errors, when it isn't MS responsibility, but they would rather address the issue for their customers than tell them the Intel xxx chip has a flaw, go yell at Intel. (And anyone that remembers the Pentium or Pentium II calcualtion bugs, will understand this, as the OS, again Windows at the time had to issue patches to specifically compensate for the ALU error on the CPU.)

Truly good luck to you, but look beyond Vista, starting with the drivers for your Video card checking your BIOS settings if it is a custom computer and then checking your hardware for failures.

PS Also don't be scared of moving to or using Windows7 when it comes out. There will be people complaining about ti too, even though most reviews right now are favorable.

It is the nature of the industry, as there is always someone's cousin's uncle delivery boy that swears that Vista blew up their house and that they can fix their car by pounding on the hubcap with a hammer...

And yes, I am an OS Engineer and Theorist professionally, not just a gamer that heard stories from a cousin's uncle.

Good Luck...

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Well, it is really nice layout. Too bad it doesn't recognize that I have a video card and hence cant update drivers for it. Manually or with Windows Update. Device manager doesn't even show any video in there.

The error message that I get everytime is something like "Could not find a device to match these drivers" or some such.

What I've tried: Win7 64 and 32 bit (couple times), flashed bio's, updated chipset drivers, newest nvidia drivers, older nvidia drivers, changed compatibility mode where appropriate, removed vid card and reset cmos.


Posting this from my main comp, so don't have a cohhelper log right now. But basic spec's:

AMD Athalon 3500+
1gig ram
XFX 6800XT
ASUS Barebone V2 AE-1


I had seen a few pages back that someone had it running on slightly less specs. Guess mine is just gimp or something....

Anyway, if someone has a nifty little trick for this, that would be cool. But if not, I'll just send in my report and reload XP....

[/ QUOTE ]Its possible they drop support for your card. I know that happened to me when vista first came out. I had to find haxed drivers for my video card and motherboard. They worked for a while then I started getting heat problems on th card so I upgraded.

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Why in the world would they drop support for a card that exceeds the requirements for running the OS? I had no problems finding drivers for my 6600GT.

[/ QUOTE ]They (Nvidia) done it with the geforce 5 series cards when they are perfectly capable of running aero and vista quite nicely. My guess is that they want folks to spend more cash to upgrade again.

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Ya NVidia doesn't realize how many notebook users are out there that when forced to upgrade because of their FX drop in drivers, will pick ATI next time.

In NVidia's defense, they changed the Vista driver code base to optimize around features only in the 6xxx and newer cards, which was good, but also stupid for them to stop development on the FX series.

I know MS is working to get NVidia to shove FX drivers for Win7, even if they are just updated drivers from the Vista FX drivers.

(PS anyone that needs drivers for Win7 and a 5xxx series card can just grab the Vista drivers from the NVidia site, or goto www.laptopvideo2go.com and grab any of the 96.xx to 99.xx drivers, and they will work fine on Win7.

My Spouses older laptop has a Geforce5600 Go and the Vista drivers from the NVidia site work great under Win7, and is getting 10-15fps more in CoX over Vista and XP, so there is hope even for the older stuff.)

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Was gaming tonight on vista7 and was stable although low FPS. However after several hours, I threw a "wglmakecurrent failed" error and crashed. The only reason this is note-worthy is that is an OpenGL error according to everything I can find on it. I hope that doesnt bode badly for things to come. (Yeah yeah, I know its beta.. lol)

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If your running NVidia, grab the 185.xx drivers that are running around, they work better with Win7 on most cards.

ATI drivers are still a bit back and forth, since the ATI cards adhere to more of the DX10.1 and WDDM 1.1 hardware specifications, so for Win7 there are newer features that tap the ATI cards that are non-present on the NVidia cards.

Good luck...

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Just thought I'd post a solution/workaround for the flickering/tearing screen in CoH that worked for me. I tried turning on Triple Buffering and forcing Vertical Sync on at the driver and it didn't work *until* I also turned 2x Antialiasing at the driver (and no, I don't have a clue why it worked). Now all seems well, even though it doesn't actually turn Antialiasing on in the game until I change the in-game settings.

This is on a Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop with an NVidia 7900GS card in it and Win7 64 bit 1.0 drivers. Actually found the fix when I downgraded to Vista 169.09 64 bit drivers.

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This is a good tip for anyone running Vista or Windows7.

Do Not use the in game AA settings, and instead use the ones in the driver control panel.

This makes a huge difference in performance and also fixes issues like the screen tearing, etc.

As for AF, use the in game setting, or you will get 'lines' where the textures meet and reduced performance.

This is true of both Vista and Win7.

(There are a few tricks to Vista's different way of handling games and drivers, and if you know them you will get better performance than XP. - This is one of them.)

My Personal old school system: 7950Go 1920x1200

CoX - Very High Everything, 4xAA (Driver), 16xAF (Game), Triple Buffering on (Driver)

XP: FPS Avg 30-45
Vista: FPS Avg 35-50
Win7: FPS Avg 45-60

But if you set the AA in game, your FPS in Vista and Win7 will be below XP because the in game mechanic that enables AA shifts to FSAA in Vista/Win7 which is slower.

Shields and why they still suck...

Been playing and playing shields, hoping there was just something I am missing, but sadly they need work.

1) Defense is not enough, it is barely above SR passives, and they have scaling damage resists.

2) Damage resist sucks - First why no psionic protection? You have a shield that could have tinfoil on it right? 20% damage resist is lower than Blaster epic Damage resists, that is really sad and scary.

3) Toggles are on SR level with even the PB style recharge, and you eat blue like gargamel's cat.

4) Aura/Dam Bonus - This was a joke right? A damage bonus that is useless on brutes, and so tiny on tanks it is only good for an area taunt. Popping one small red is several times the bonus, wow, that is insane. (Even add a bit more damage and some tohit bonus to make it worth something)

5) Locked recharge on better damage resists (that still cap horribly). Why lock the recharge on a much needed power. On Willpower the lock makes sense, on shields when the power is actually needed to survive is somewhat crazy.

6) Team bonuses - nice, but when all your teammates know you are going to die quick, why would they want to stand close to you? Especially for a few % of defense. You need a higher defense number on this without team members around, so it is better than 4% on brutes when they are alone and makes combat jumping look like a uber defense power.


If you notice builds, people are adding in tough and weave just to survive - again more toggles, and powers that were designed for non-defensive builds. There is no reason a brute or tank should have to get tough and weave just to survive 3 or 4 NPCs when solo, let alone trying to manage a room of aggro and dying rather quickly...


I hope you are still looking at Shields, as the concept was great and the charge damage is nice, but it needs a bit of adjusting to keep players alive and some more thought into using the shield to help defend other teammates - like more defense and a larger radius.

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Besides, when running a Mac client, we do not worry about IE 7 and it's vulnerabilities because Mac does respect your browser choice, unlike the "other" side.


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OK, fanboi...

1) IE7 has had less vulnerabilities than Safari (go look it up).

2) Windows also 'respects' the browser choice, it is NCSoft that has hard coded the launcher to use IE for the load page. This is an issue you need to take up with NCSoft instead of bashing Windows over.

Geesh...

First there are several variants of the Intel 945 Video. Some of the lower end ones do not provide hardly any gaming features. They will do Vista Glass fine but for gaming they are problematic because many of the 'features' are emulated through software via the Intel Drivers.

So a couple things could be happening here...
#1 You have a lower end Intel 945 GPU than your friend does.

#2 The Vista Intel drivers may not yet contain any OpenGL support, therefore Vista is running the game with no ICD for OpenGL and everything is software emulated.

Also your friend running under XP, the XP drivers may have the OpenGL and more support 3D functions in the driver. You can try installing the XP Driver on Vista, it should work, but you will lose the Glass interface of Vista, but it may get your CoX game working for now.

Also keep researching and bugging Intel for updated drivers that support OpenGL properly. It may be that Intel just hasn't provided this yet, and may be planning on doing so. Even ATI and NVidia were late in providing proper OpenGL support in their drivers, so cross your fingers than Intel just hasn't gotten the drivers to this point yet and plan on doing so.

Unfortunately the Intel selling points on the 945 chipset is very misleading, as they provide PS 2.0 in hardware so that they look great with Vista Glass, but don't provide ANY hardware Vertex Shaders, etc, making the CPU take the blunt of the performance hit to do the same things true 3D GPU chipset do in hardware.

Good Luck, and at very least give the XP drivers a try until Intel releases new Vista drivers if CoH is important. It might also help you determine if the 945 variation in your laptop will handling gaming.

For anyone else buying a laptop, PAY ATTENTION to the Graphics in the Laptop, most of the low/mid range laptops have no upgrade mechanism for Video, so research the chipset offered on the notebook specifically as this is the most important aspect for anyone wanting to do even casual gaming. Chipsets that are low end but acceptable include ATI 200m/NVidia Go 5600 etc, don't go any lower if you have a choice. Even some of the NVidia 6100xx mobile series are not good for gaming, check the specific one with a look on the MFR site, or a good Google search on the chipset.

Take Care...

The biggest missing element for heroes is there is no non-character items to attack as there is on the villian missions.

Why not add liter, chemicals, drug boxes, fires, explosives, and other items scattered all around the area for the Hero to destroy and clean up the city as well as save it.

This will give the Heroes the same feel as getting to destroy non-character items for XP like Villians, as well as saving and cleaning up the city at the same time.