Thunderforce
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:I've just checked this and it does not seem to be accurate. For one thing, no store buys crafted IOs. Perhaps you were selling recipes? All stores have the same price for those.Originally Posted by Fusion_7
I had some level 31 Invention Set Enhancements and a few 30 Damage and Accuracy Enhancements that I wanted to sell for my level 20 Mutant Controller. I went to the Mutant Store in Steel and got a price for my enhancements and then I went into Atlas to the vendor by Miss Liberty and wanted to see what price I could get. It was exactly the same. All enhancements, all Salvages everything sold at the same price.
What is the case is the various origin-based price differences on TO/DO/SO. Those remain as the Wiki details, as far as I can make out.
ETA; I visited Atlas, Steel (Mutant/Tech/Training), Croatoa (one contact), Faultline (one contact), Ouro (Roebuck), RWZ to check.
Frankly this is all a bit silly - having to wander round to get the best price seems like a "feature" from the i3 days when there was a lot of pointless walking to contacts who were coy about their phone numbers and no way to get a travel power early - and dumping them all in a storage rack and taking them out in sets of ten gets around it anyway - and it's not like much of your influence comes from enhancement sales now. -
Quote:Well, that's more or less the basis on which it's done, but I don't think any absolutely rigid rule works - the level ranges for many things are more like suggestions than hard limits. In particular the minimum level of many hazard zones is encoded in it in spite of that restriction vanishing with i16.Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
Assume no sidekicking and use a break based on the initial level available or the level of the zone.
In theory it would be nice to distinguish hard and soft limits but in practice the only thing that really matters there is the dire warning about safeguard/mayhem badges.
But that's not the problem with splitting it up; the problem is simply that many activities would span any possible division and don't fit neatly. For example, "select second prerequisite for Stamina" can be done at level 8, so it goes in 5-10? But in practice you're going to do it in 15-20 or maybe 10-15. The respec trials starting at x4 levels is also suitably awkward.
I've had a first crack at it, rearranging a few items. I've also added a Day Job checklist sorted roughly by difficulty. I've only made these changes blueside for now. -
Quote:I did consider that. The difficulty is that - unlike the Ouroborous guides - the activities are not really split neatly across the level ranges. Of course a lot of it is in 5-10 11-15 and so forth, but a lot of it is not.Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
As a player who could use such a resource, what would be helpful to me is to break it into chunks based on level.
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Quote:Yes, but I'm not quite sure what would actually improve readability rather than representing pointless chrome. Any suggestions? The redside contacts are a bit of a mess given that the format was intended originally for blueside contacts where only a few of them have arcs to offer.Originally Posted by Zombie Man
Just a suggestion: the lists of things to do could use a little more formatting for readability.
I can already easily update them and the links should never change (I've had an account on chiark.greenend.org.uk for over a decade now and I would be amazed if I don't when City of X is sadly forgotten. Indeed, given that search engines don't last forever, I expect to still be using the same account when Google too has gone the way of Alta Vista), so I don't see this as an issue.Quote:You might want to think about making them into Google Docs so that you can easily format them and update them and the links to them never change.
I did. :-)Quote:You might also want to check out similar guides listed in this post under Guideposts to look for / Long range planning.
"Thresholds CoH" is badly out of date, but strikes me as attempting to do something similar, but listing only the most important things rather than a mad completist's guide.
"Checklist of things to do each level" seems to me to have two things wrong with it. First of all, it's got a lot of stuff about where to grind XP, and even if you like grinding XP, that advice is probably long obsolete.
More seriously, however, each thing is tied to the _first_ level you can do it at (often wrongly given the lifting of the level restriction on Hazard Zones), not a sensible level - hence the listing of Positron at level 10, Transcendence at 12, Banisher at 15, Archmage at level 5, and so forth. To be fair, it often recommends doing them later.
The way I see it, those various defeat badges can be tied to the Accolade they are associated with. Why tell people to do Gearsmasher (for Freedom Phalanx Reserve) in central Perez at level 7? Unless some highbie brings you along for the ride, you won't be offing Fake Nemesis until 40th or above, and if by some miracle you have avoided getting Gearsmasher up until that point you can go and flatten Clockwork anywhere you like. -
A while back I wrote a guide for City of Heroes of things to do at each security level. I've updated it for i16 and had a first bash at a similar guide for villains. Since I have never taken a villain past about threat level 20, I expect there are some errors in it.
What's it meant to do? It's a sort of badger / content completist guide. The idea is that you can look up your security level in the guide and get an idea of what there is out there to do.
What's it not meant to do? Tell you where to grind XP. There's other guides for that and I tend to feel XP comes along whether you were looking for it or not. Also, yes, I know about Red Tomax and the Wiki. Thing is, the Wiki is very good at answering questions like "What is the level range on the Synapse Task Force?". It's not so good at answering questions like "I am level 20. Are there any task forces I can do?"
Guide for heroes:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~d...ingsshort.text
Guide for villains:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~d...ingsshort.text
Why links? So I can update them even when I can't edit this post. -
Quote:Zloth and I figured this out. It's an internationalisation problem. (Temporarily) set Windows to American English (dunno about W7, but on XP it's Start->Settings->Control Panel->Regional and Language Options) and rerun CohHelper. Presto - correct dates!Originally Posted by Beber
PS: I don't know what is wrong mith my "driver date", but as I said, I re-installed my graphic drivers an hour ago.
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Quote:Yes, but the oddity is, I've _got_ a complete set of US-style COH registry entries, which I set up in TweakCoH, but CoH Helper still complains it can't read them. (Since running -demoplay runs with the US entries by default, I can fiddle with settings to measure the FPS effect without messing up the settings I'm playing the game with).Originally Posted by Zloth
Well, there's one problem right there. I guess Europe has a different registry entry for whatever reason? Jeez, that will mess up Demo Launcher, too.
Is there maybe some service that needs to be turned on? I turn pretty much all of them off. I can reproduce the exact message if that would help?
That would explain why the 01/01/2001 thing happens to European users (and perhaps why it happens only sometimes, because if a driver date happens to be between the 1st and the 12th, it doesn't notice?)Quote:The date thing could be caused by different date formats. I would trust what your driver itself reports as its version over CoH. (CoH Helper just runs the DXDiag program with XML output then picks the dates out of that.)
I've just tested this, and whether Windows is set to English (UK) or English (American), dxdiag.xml has dates as mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss.
Oho, but, if I set it to American English, CoH Helper gets the dates right! Maybe there's some "helpful" internationalisation in a library that CoH Helper uses, and it doesn't expect dxdiag's output to use American-style dates on a British English system?
I fear change.Quote:P.S. Why would you just go to SP2 when SP3 has been out for something like a year now!? -
Quote:Yes, OK. I suppose this is karma; I've said, often enough, "just humour me and update the d--- thing to prove that isn't your problem".Originally Posted by Texas Justice
Even without the security updates, there are a huge number of other updates included in the Service Packs, and any number of those could be having an impact on the game.
So I've bumped the machine to SP2, completely removed all versions of the .NET Framework and reinstalled same, installed every update Windows Update feels the need to press on me, removed the old drivers, rebooted in Safe Mode, run Driver Sweeper, installed fresh drivers (albeit the same version of the sound drivers, them not changing very often)...
... and I'm exactly back where I started, down to the same complaint about the Registry from CoH Helper and 1/1/2001 driver dates, and the same performance issue (whichever of the three sound output devices I use).
I think there is a semantic issue here. I was saying that the output from CoH Helper was incorrect, not trying to ascribe any particular cause to that.Quote:I suspect it isn't so much that the data from CoH Helper is bogus as you claim, but that the lack of updates is causing erroneous readings.
Googling "Coh Helper" "01/01/2001" shows me that this oddity keeps cropping up - mostly folks from the DE and UK boards? I have PMed Zloth to see if they can shed any light on the cause; I think the assumption that it is a corrupt driver is unwise, especially when dxdiag itself shows a normal date for the driver. -
22050 Hz, minimum quality; 47 average FPS, 12.5 minimum (average over all runs etc). Sounds fairly normal, given that combat is mostly buzzes and thumps anyway. Wonder if I can live with that...
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Quote:That's not quite as big a problem as you might think; the system's behind a real computer, only exposed to the outside world in specific ways.Originally Posted by Texas Justice
Upgrade to at least Service Pack 2, preferably to Service Pack 3. You have some gaping security holes by not being patched up.
dxdiag shows normal dates. A bunch of the information from CohHelper is bogus (as I said, check out the page file information).Quote:Also, it looks as if your video driver and audio driver installations are corrupted, which is the reason that the dates are funky.
Why would I not want the drivers for the other audio devices present?Quote:Run DriverSweeper and select the ATI Display Drivers and the Realtek Audio drivers. If it gives an option to get rid of those other sound drivers, do so.
ETA: I've got a full dxdiag.txt, which might be easier than pondering CohHelper's output. Any use? -
CoH Helper tells me "Unable to read your City of Heroes Registry information". Once again its page file information is rather implausible. My registry settings for COH and EUCOH have not changed appreciably from those above, though.
Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.2
Scan saved at 04:13:54, on 05/10/2009
Platform: Windows XP SP1 (WinNT 5.01.2600)
MSIE: Internet Explorer v6.00 SP1 (6.00.2800.1106)
Boot mode: Normal
Running processes:
H:\WINDOWS\System32\smss.exe
H:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon.exe
H:\WINDOWS\system32\services.exe
H:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe
H:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
H:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe
E:\apps\adaware\aawservice.exe
e:\apps\avast\aswUpdSv.exe
e:\apps\avast\ashServ.exe
H:\apps\PCI Latency Tool 3\LtcyCfgSvc.exe
H:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe
H:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
E:\apps\avast\ashDisp.exe
H:\Program Files\Ray Adams\ATI Tray Tools\atitray.exe
H:\WINDOWS\System32\ctfmon.exe
I:\games\CoX\CityOfHeroes.exe
E:\apps\web\browsers\phoenix\firefox.exe
H:\Program Files\Trend Micro\HijackThis\HijackThis.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [avast!] e:\apps\avast\ashDisp.exe
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [AtiTrayTools] "H:\Program Files\Ray Adams\ATI Tray Tools\atitray.exe"
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [ctfmon.exe] H:\WINDOWS\System32\ctfmon.exe
O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\..\{10DDCE90-05D2-4D42-B058-8FF3ECD88FF8}: NameServer = 192.168.93.1
O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\..\{3EFB5005-2DCD-4751-A551-E94D90BC779F}: Domain = elided.example.com
O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\..\{3EFB5005-2DCD-4751-A551-E94D90BC779F}: NameServer = 192.168.93.1
O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\..\{6C204825-91B2-4D1A-A9D7-68DF7E5EB082}: NameServer = 192.168.93.1
O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\..\{744C5361-EBE3-4CC6-8639-4A04579F85FC}: NameServer = 192.168.93.1
O17 - HKLM\System\CS1\Services\Tcpip\..\{10DDCE90-05D2-4D42-B058-8FF3ECD88FF8}: NameServer = 192.168.93.1
O18 - Protocol: skype4com - {FFC8B962-9B40-4DFF-9458-1830C7DD7F5D} - H:\PROGRA~1\COMMON~1\Skype\SKYPE4~1.DLL
O20 - AppInit_DLLs: H:\WINDOWS\System32\wmfhotfix.dll
O23 - Service: 3ZU9CA - CPUID - E:\apps\pcwiz2009\Data\pcwizntl.exe
O23 - Service: Ad-Aware 2007 Service (aawservice) - Lavasoft - E:\apps\adaware\aawservice.exe
O23 - Service: avast! iAVS4 Control Service (aswUpdSv) - ALWIL Software - e:\apps\avast\aswUpdSv.exe
O23 - Service: Ati HotKey Poller - ATI Technologies Inc. - H:\WINDOWS\System32\Ati2evxx.exe
O23 - Service: ATI Smart - Unknown owner - H:\WINDOWS\system32\ati2sgag.exe
O23 - Service: avast! Antivirus - ALWIL Software - e:\apps\avast\ashServ.exe
O23 - Service: Imapi Helper - Alex Feinman - E:\apps\isorecorder\ImapiHelper.exe
O23 - Service: PCI Latency Tool Service (LtcyCfgSvc) - Unknown owner - H:\apps\PCI Latency Tool 3\LtcyCfgSvc.exe
--
End of file - 2604 bytes
---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.1.1.8---
DxDiag gathered at October 5, 2009 04:10 (+01:00)
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 1 (2600.xpsp1.020828-1920)
System Manufacturer: NVIDIA
System Model: AWRDACPI
BIOS: )Phoenix - Award WorkstationBIOS v6.00PG
Central Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+, ~1.8GHz
Memory: 2560MB
.Net Memory Report: 691MB out of 2559MB available
Page File: 846MB (1560MB currently in use)
C Drive: (QUANTUM FIREBALLP AS20.5) 5395MB out of 6993MB (77%) free
D Drive: () 2296MB out of 13935MB (16%) free
E Drive: () 1164MB out of 8706MB (13%) free
F Drive: () 2967MB out of 17014MB (17%) free
G Drive: (QUANTUM FIREBALLP AS20.5) 4784MB out of 5918MB (80%) free
H Drive: (QUANTUM FIREBALLP AS20.5) 1480MB out of 6675MB (22%) free
I Drive: () 2289MB out of 17491MB (13%) free
K Drive: () 4094MB out of 17466MB (23%) free
Windows directory location: H:\WINDOWS
DirectX: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DirectX Diag version: 5.03.0001.0904 (32-bit version)
Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.
No problems found.
No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.
Monitor: Iiyama A201HT VisionMaster Pro 510
Monitor's Max Resolution: 2048,1536
Video Device Name: Radeon X1950 Pro
Manufacturer / Chip: ATI Technologies Inc. / ATI Radeon Graphics Processor AGP (0x7280)
Video Memory: 512.0 MB
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6879
Driver Date: 01/01/0001 00:00:00
Driver Language: English
Sound Device Description: Realtek AC97 Audio
Driver File: ALCXWDM.SYS
Driver Version: 5.10.0000.6300
Driver Date: 01/01/0001 00:00:00
Sound Device Description: Aureon 7.1 PCI
Driver File: cmuda3.sys
Driver Version: 5.12.0001.0047
Driver Date: 01/01/0001 00:00:00
Sound Device Description: Logitech USB Headset
Driver File: usbaudio.sys
Driver Version: 5.01.2600.1106
Driver Date: 01/01/0001 00:00:00
WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer:
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: nForce
Motherboard Version:
BIOS Manufacturer: Phoenix Technologies, LTD
BIOS Name: )Phoenix - Award WorkstationBIOS v6.00PG
BIOS Version: Nvidia - 42302e31
BIOS Release: 20060607******.******+*** -
Quote:Don't complain, they're the best bit. :-)Originally Posted by Heraclea
Ran into a level 40 Paragon Protector Elite in the Manticore TF that exemps you to 35 again earlier this evening.
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Before i16 I was doing these in threes not fours. AT only and foes buffed; no enhancements and no travel; no temp powers or inspirations, player debuffed.
With the introduction of -1 difficulty, of course, all but the weakest soloists can now use those groupings, and a scrapper can rush through them in no time.
ETA: but that's no good in the 40+ region because you have to sort out "No Epics" (I don't _have_ any epics, you'd think I could just be given the badge, aha) as well and that means four runs no matter what. I am inclined to use my standard three groupings and do "No Epics" alone - since this makes no difference at all to my toon, I can get a bit of variety in by doing a short arc with EBs in.
ETA again: this is not such a good plan because of the way it couples no travel power with no Run Speed enhancements. No enhancements, no temps; AT only, foes buffed; no travel, no insps, player debuffed? Only couple no enhancements with no Epics in 40-50. -
Quote:"Credence", since you like spelling flames.Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
Funny, I can't hear an accent over the Internet. I didn't even know you were European. This lends zero force to the creedence of your argument, true enough, but still.
Conspiracy theorist line #2: "Everyone disagrees with me! What can be wrong with them?"Quote:With that said, speaking in general I will point out that dogpiling has never one single time changed my mind on these forums.
There is a slightly simpler explanation for why this happens.
Misuse of "literally".Quote:In fact I rather enjoy my status as forum lightning-rod: all I have to do is start typing and people go literally berserk with fury.
I notice you have quietly stopped defending the idea that a change that would be noticed almost immediately was made without documentation in the hope that no-one would notice it. That is probably best. -
Quote:The classic cry of the conspiracy theorist when presented with the idea that, say, if you are driven through an underpass in Paris at warp factor eight by a drunk then that is sufficient to explain your subsequent death in a car crash.Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
Perhaps, we'll never know one way or the other.
"Oh, but it _could_ have been a hit by MI5. We'll never really know!"
This is a blindingly obvious straw man.Quote:But otherwise, speaking in general the gullibility expressed by many people in these forums amazes me. I honestly wonder if a lot of people here believe every last thing the media tells them; because no one ever, ever fudges the truth, obscures facts, lies, or puts a spin on things, right....? This mindset seems incredibly fatuous to me.
In other news... curiously, I got a respec recipe drop today. In the reactor room on the respec trial! I dunno who's buying these things for 100 million - I use a respec whenever I want one, and between free, veteran, and earned respecs I can't think I have a toon with less than three in reserve. -
Quote:Yes, fair point; but I've been having this problem for several issues. In fact, I may have had it all along and simply had it masked by the fact that my old machine was generally slow in big teams... but I'm not sure I believe that, because surely something that makes my current machine hiccup would have given outright slideshow-o-vision on the machine I first played CoX on?Originally Posted by Master-Blade
The sounds HAVE actually gone through some changes as well.. even as recently as i15... but I think that was more of a sound replacement
But yes, I was wrong to say sound hasn't changed at all. -
Reencode at 44100Hz but minimum quality (which reduces the bitrate to about 1/3 normal) - sounds normal, 45FPS, minimum 5.5FPS. So... still getting the lag spikes. Boo.
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Quote:Yes, yes, I know it's been about half a year. I'm both persistent and lazy.Originally Posted by Thunderforce
The next step, I think, is to bisect the set of sound files repeatedly in the hope of identifying one effect or a small subset of the effects which get played very often; but it's twenty to five, so maybe not tonight.
I wrote a quick Perl script to replace chunks of the ingame sound FX with a short ogg of silence (or a long one for the -loop FX); do the first 2048, see if the FPS improve, do the second 2048 (there's actually about 4300), start splitting it up by blocks of 1024... and chopped my demo up to get just the problematic section, so I could use -demoloop 4 -demoframestats 1 to measure the FPS rather than just eyeballing the laggy bits.
That's http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~d...horter.cohdemo - if anyone's interested (particularly someone with a system similar to mine - 1.8Ghz Athlon 64, 2 gigs of memory, Radeon X1950 Pro - I'd be fascinated to know what framerate you get.)
Sound off, I get 55FPS average, minimum 16 (not counting the minimum from the first run, as -demoframestats doesn't, when the game hiccups wildly at startup). Sound on, 30 FPS, minimum about 5.
Replace all sounds with silence, 45 FPS, minimum still about 5. Start taking out chunks of sounds - it's no good. The FPS hovers around 35, and more importantly the minimum (which corresponds to the annoying lag hiccups) stays around 5.
I'd hoped, you see, that there'd be one particular chunk of FX that gets used for every lousy particle, and if I replaced that with the shortest possible sound, I'd be able to improve FPS without doing much to how the game sounds. But I guess there isn't, and I guess furthermore - although this really is speculation - the way that the average FPS is higher but the minimum is no better when all sounds are short-silence means the low-FPS spikes are caused by a lot of sounds all going off at once. If they didn't go off together, the shortening would let some of them finish before others started.
So... can it really be not simultaneous audio channels beyond what my soundcard likes, but the CPU work of OGG decoding? The next idea was to test that theory by reencoding all the game audio as 11025 Hz, downsample stereo to mono, use oggenc's lowest quality setting.
What do you know? 55FPS average, minimum frame rate 15 FPS. Of course there is the slight downside that the game sounds like you're at the bottom of a well, but on the other hand, right now I do taskforces in complete silence, and perhaps some less aggressively awful encoding still won't kill the framerate?
On the other hand, I'm not sure I believe this theory. Sure, my CPU isn't all that fast today, but it was plenty fast when CoX was released - almost as fast a CPU as you could buy (and much faster than the 750MHz Athlon I was actually using); and while the game's graphics have changed a lot it sounds much the same as it always did. -
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This just happens to have been on the list of spelling mistakes to fix at that time. We try and fix those regularly as we catch them or as they are reported to us.
[/ QUOTE ]Let me be blunt here; no, you don't. You generally completely ignore them as they are reported to you.
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I guess I'm up for one more tilt at this particular windmill.
Let me be clear. I would love a way to report typos in such a way that there is some prospect of them being fixed. However, /bug isn't it, a forum post isn't it, and a Web page with typos I have spotted isn't it. So, what do you recommend I do? -
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Well they made pvp a moot point when they [censored] it up for 90% of the people that did it.
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Who were a small core of purple grinders. That's exactly the problem I'm talking about. PVP can't be got right _because_ there is no level playing field.
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As for being the weakest link, i cant ever remember anyone being dug out in a team for not having so and so set.
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I did not suggest that that was the case.
That doesn't mean I don't enjoy being an effective and useful part of a TF team (and that means I end up five-Frankenslotting and generally spending more time in WW/BM). I also enjoy a stiff challenge from a TF - something I now get very rarely. -
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If nothing else IO's gave people something to do post 50 (and pre 50 as it happens) but either way i think they gave the game a bit of longevity for a lot of people.
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Traditionally post-50 one went back to Outbreak. But, let me be clear here, I've already said the decision to add them makes commercial sense; a lot of the MMO market clearly does want to press the lever for the food pellet all day.
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Overall i think they were a very good addition to the game, because they are completely optional
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As mentioned, I don't really think that's the case, especially in PVP, but whenever you end up interacting with players with different levels of grindyness. No-one likes to be the weak link on the TF team, for example. -
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I also get a special kind of joy from playing my dark/fire there's just something about delivering a shadow punch / smite combo that's charged with fury and the 2 build ups and then having the joy of the procs all firing at once i just love it special when its against a boss.
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But throwing away the IO system need not mean throwing away some of the funky effects. I've outlined a system where you just slot powers and then select the proportion of each enhancement effect you desire. Obviously many procs just fit nicely into that system.
Slots could also be spent "outside" powers to open up opportunities for various global [1] effects like knockback protection.
[1] I am not using the term in the technical sense that describes certain classes of IO. -
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The good ones (I like to think myself one ^^) can do it whilst bored, and without complaining.
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So you've turned the game into something you personally find boring, and you're wondering _why_ I don't share your enthusiasm for the current state of the enhancement system?
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I DO enjoy hard pve.
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Where do you _get_ hard PVE? You've reduced the potentially hard content to a handful of high-end task forces.
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After one thing becomes easy because my character is uber, I look for the next milestone to improve myself to.
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This sounds very jolly, like an athletics shoe advert. Unfortunately, all it means is going round the same little circuit in order to play the same game with bigger numbers. I recognise some people find that very satisfying, but it doesn't really involve any improvement in playing skill [1]. Use set bonuses to improve your HP, Defence, Resistance, and Damage - then use the difficulty slider to +1 all the mobs. You're just back where you started!
[1] I'm not saying your playing skill might not improve at the same time. -
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Well you're not going to get a level playing field in pvp. People who have grinded and farmed for their purps will own you in pvp because they put more work in.
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That is yet another fact I am well aware of, as should be completely obvious from my previous post.
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This 'level playing field' you speak of is simply where you can be even with other people despite little or no work.
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Well, yes. If I wanted work, I'd go to _work_. I get paid for it and everything (and being a UNIX sysadmin is actually less boring than grinding purples, to boot).
No-one considers it remarkable when you play a fighting game or an online FPS that there is no "work" you can do beforehand to improve your chances. You just have to be good at the game you are actually playing. Why should MMO PVP be any different?
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There's a reason people who have been playing for years, farming constantly are better than you and I.
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If you mean they enjoy a game-mechanical advantage, that's also obvious.
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And As for the PVE issue, that's different. I as a grinder don't want an easy play. You seem to assume grinders want PVE to be easy.
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No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Grinders prefer grinding to being challenged in ordinary PVE. They might _like_ hard PVE, but they don't like it _as much_ as they like grinding. I expect vehement denials, but the simple fact is that if you grind a lot most PVE content becomes very easy, and if you minded that consequence enough you'd have to stop grinding. -
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Games don't take skill, let alone MMOs.
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As someone who's played NetHack for the last decade and a half, I may have to disagree with you there.
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MMOs ARE about time, because they are designed to keep us interested forever so we'll sub until we die!
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Thanks. Perhaps you could also inform me about the Pope's religious beliefs?
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(And no before anyone interjects, FPS games do not take skill, just basic motor skills to move your thumb and aim)
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That is obvious nonsense (indeed the sheer absurdity of "FPS games don't take skill, just ... skills" is very pleasing.)
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Oh and in response to your phrase "people don't buy infamy' I say, open your eyes my friend.
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This is an obvious distraction. The original context was "when we go to buy them". Neither of us buys influence with cash money. That was not the kind of buying you were talking about.
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And after that, everyone's happy!
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No, because we exist in the same game. It's most telling in PVP, where the people who actually would like a level playing field for PVP are in direct conflict with the people who want the amount of grinding you have done to be a significant factor, but even in PVE, as soon as I'm not soloing, there's a conflict between my desire for a challenging game and the grinders' desire to grind away and d--- the effects on gameplay.