Tubbius

A refund is good, yes. I can understand the need, and I can certainly use the money, even if it's only, roughly, a hundred bucks.

I, too, wish and pray that the game is picked up by another company able to continue where it's leaving off, characters and accounts intact. That would, of course, be ideal, similar in some ways to NECA's acquisition of the HeroClix game system from Topps when WizKids was having to change hands over a year's hiatus.

Someone was quoting Killer Instinct and Altered Beast earlier.

Allow me to add another Altered Beast quote here, this one aimed at City of Heroes itself across the generations of gamers.

"Riiiiiise from your graaaaaave!"

Still working on this. I have the first two missions ready to go, pretty much. I just need to get the last two knocked out.

I can try to make it. Can't make any promises yet.

For me, it goes back to the extremely wonderful amount of customization, which lets people have the freedom to make the heroes and villains they want instead of feeling shoehorned into someone else's. That leads to a generally easier going populace with a degree of pride in its creations--and, thus, a desire to share those with others in casual, fun ways.

It's been a long time since I really, seriously, openly posted on these forums for more than a note to help someone through a problem in the MA or a brief "thank you" of gratitude to other players who've enjoyed my arcs.

Those who've known me on here for some time have probably figured out a couple of things already.

1: I'm a fan of the Mission Architect and aspiring arc writer.
2: My arguably best loved Mission Architect character, for numerous reasons, is Waddle the Penguin, of my so-called PENGUIN trilogy (arcs 29205, 302196, and 402239).

Personally, while I have always found PENGUIN and PENGUIN Part 2: Waddle's Revenge to be some of my favorite arc writing, I wasn't ever really, truly pleased with having PENGUIN Part 3: Waddle to the Big Top be the final arc for the funny little penguin hero. Yes, it's well-written, with Waddle's role as the contact being amusing and fun. However, wall-to-wall Carnies isn't exactly a great send-off for what is otherwise a light-hearted, easygoing romp against Crey and the Winter Horde.

In the wake of the announcement regarding the game's current state from August 31, 2012, I've looked at my Mission Architect arcs and thought, "Well, they're good enough, I guess. Good luck getting folks to play them now and getting any of them out of Four Star Land."

However, on the morning of the 1st or 2nd, while I was about to get in the shower, the idea--the plot hook--for PENGUIN Part 4 hit me.

Like so much good writing, it started with a title.

PENGUIN Part 4: Waddle Away.

The original concept was going to be Waddle leaving Paragon City in search of another place to call home--possibly due to a permanent separation from his dear "Poppa," the guy who created the PENGUIN Program, Dr. Grant Simons. Waddle's leaving the city would give me, in its own sad way, a sort of closure just in case the game wouldn't go on past November 30: I'd be finished, in my own way, with an ongoing storyline that many seem to have enjoyed.

Then I got to thinking more. I didn't want to go out on a downer.

Waddle is a level 50 incarnate, ice control/empath. As one of my four main characters, Waddle's bio information reads, "An average (though plump) penguin, experimented on at Crey Biotech, Waddle found himself gifted with odd powers and childlike human intelligence. He escaped Crey's labs, trying to find more of his like."

And there, my friends and fans, is my hook, in that final sentence. All along, Waddle has shouted out what he hates. Waddle despises seeing the word "Penguin" in print, remembering too well his early battles with Winter Horde in murderously minded testing facilities. "Waddle hate snowmans!" and "Waddle hate Metalfaces!" and "Waddle hate car-ni-vuh-al! Waddle hate clowns!" However, we know that Waddle dearly loves his Poppa, having formed an attachment to the old scientist despite his machinations for the childish penguin.

The question must still be answered: does Waddle love or hate. . . penguins?

Stay tuned to this page for the upcoming arc, the next in the PENGUIN series. . . .

PENGUIN Part 4: Waddle On

That would have certainly been nice. What particular talk was this mentioned in--what date? Where's it accessible?

I honestly don't know. Atlas Park, City Hall?

This was the one MMO that I always said I'd give a shot if I could ever get a good computer and a connection better than dial up. When those two things happened, I started playing September 21, 2008, which was apparently a Sunday.

It's looking like, unless something changes, I'll stop November 30, 2012, which will be a Friday.

I've been on Justice the whole time, enjoying the game and the people. This truly is a shame.

We have about three months, folks. We should enjoy it while we can.

November 30 is a Friday this year.

I'll be on.

Thanks, MrCaptainMan. You were one of the first reviewers to take my stuff seriously and happily, and your words let me know I was cut out for this AE stuff.

Take care, and best wishes on the future.

Thanks for the kind words, buddy. Let's wait and see what the future holds. Either way, best wishes on wherever life puts you.

I'd be down with seeing this happen, personally. Losing access to characters and records of the Mission Architect stuff I've written all this time is really not going to be fun at all.

I'm a Justice player, as is everyone else in my supergroup.

Yes! Thank you! I enjoy seeing these little pieces that show people still pay the AE attention.

Defrag is something I don't do nearly often enough. Now, what's this /unloadgfx do?

I've read on various threads on here about how having a level-shifted Incarnate leading a team can lead to the game lagging hard and/or freezing whenever there's a serious lag spike.

I dismissed it until it's been happening to me. I basically can't play my main character at the moment for fear that the game will hang up for about a minute with the end result being the graphics going heavily gibberished/garbled up like a bad Nintendo cartridge that needs blowing out.

What gives? I'm using the latest video drivers, and my comp has had NO problems running this game before the last couple weeks or so.

It's nothing I can predict, either. I led a team on a Mako/Lusca league today for about an hour and a half with the character in question, with NO problems. But in the last three or four days, in one game by myself and one game with me and my girlfriend on team, I've had this happen. Just NOW, I was running up a flight of stairs in an Incarnate mission (Praetor Duncan task force, mission 2 or 3?), and WHAM. Netgraph shows a big, big, BIG lag spike of a green rectangle, and this. . . .

Is there anything at all that I can do to fix this? Do the developers have any knowledge of this error or of what's causing it? Will this be seeing a fix in, hopefully, Issue 24?

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.

If you're using an Escort to Object setup, eliminate the Escort. Set the follower to attack, follow, or whatever you like, but chain the next objective (a glowie) on once you rescue him/her. The player will be looking for it by nature, especially as it's a glowie. You can have the follower then betray on completion of the glowie objective.

I do this in mission 4 of "Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City," arc 351727. Check it out.

The way it works in there is like this.

Objective 1: Rescue Manuel Pistola from the Council.
On rescue, he says something like, "I think I know where they're holding the guns we're looking for!" and the Objective lists updates.
Objective 2: Find the Confiscated Weapons.
On completion of Objective 2, Pistola betrays AND it sets up Objective 3: Find more information, which is a whiteboard glowie that ends the mission.

If Pistola is KOed before the player completes Objective 2, then it will automatically skip the betrayal and go from Objective 2 to Objective 3. You have to write the story text (intro/outro text from contact) in a way that doesn't directly reference one possibility or the other, but it works.

Hope this helps.

Got it to work after a lot of pondering. It took putting the files in the right directory, telling the game that the files were there as if I were installing in a different directory, and doing a hard Task Manager shutdown on the Launcher program. When I brought it back up, I was able to successfully verify and repair files. My friend is now on CoH.

My copy at home is Windows XP; this is Windows 7, 32 bits.... Don't know about the bits on my system at home. This machine is about 1-2 years old. Suggestions? And yes, I did the "start then change" trick.

Back to it. Trying to do this same process for a friend's laptop. However, the game will not allow me to repair for a consistency check. I'm following the above steps precisely, but the game refuses to do anything but to force me to install the software. Any advice would be appreciated ASAP. Thanks.

Oddly enough, the points went through today, which is nowhere near my billing date.

Also, in changing out my credit card information to my new card instead of the deactivated old one, I nearly messed up. I hit remove card instead of change card. It's all straightened out now, after I went through and told it to reactivate VIP (that and the Extend VIP went to the same link, where I was able to re-enter credit card info), but for a moment there, I was wondering if I was out of luck.

So if you ever need to update your credit card info, don't hit remove card first. Lesson learned!

So. . . it seems I've been at 467 points on the store in-game for some time now. What specific date(s) are we supposed to get our monthly points for purchases? Is it based off our monthly renewal date, or something else?

Thanks in advance!

Hmmmm!

I sincerely suggest either one of the following, by me, @Tubbius.

PENGUIN: #29205. Follow the origin of an up and coming mutant creature turned hero, wherein Crey's machinations backfire! Starring the single cutest NPC you'll ever meet. Thus begins the PENGUIN Trilogy!

Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City: #351727. Rescue the captured heroes American Hammer and New York Sickle, all while stopping the threat of chemical warfare between the Council and the 5th Column!

Final update: I helped my girlfriend to her first level 50 tonight (and my fourth, given the two characters are level pacted).

Thanks everyone for your help.

Wahoooooooo!

It works!

We're going to be trying this in a couple of hours or so.

Let me see if I have the steps down absolutely 100% correct.

1. Run the NCSoft Launcher to begin the staged download of COH.

2. Let it begin downloading. Once it creates the COH folder in Windows, stop the download.

3. Close the NCSoft Launcher.

4. Navigate to the COH folder and empty it out by deleting all files. Leave the folder structure intact.

5. Copy all of the game files from my flash drive to the COH folder on her computer.

TOTAL SIZE: 4.43 GB.

6. Delete the Checksum file(s).

HOW MANY CHECKSUM FILES ARE THERE?

7. Start the NCSoft Launcher.

8. Regardless of any pop-ups or dialog boxes, attempt to right-click the words "City of Heroes" in the menu on the left of the Launcher, telling it to "Repair (Consistency Check)".

9. Let it run, and hope it realizes everything is properly there.

IF NOT, THEN WHAT?

10. Start COH and test run the game.

11. Post back here whether it works or not.

= = = = =

By the way, our average download speed at my house is 110-150 kb/sec. This has been downloading anywhere from about 65-80 kb/sec on the low end to 200-250 kb/sec on the high end. That's assuming the router doesn't drop out with some regularity. Total download time, from the beginning to starting into Stage 4 the other day, was from roughly 2 p.m. to after midnight--and, yes, it still wasn't finished. The real problem is the Stage 4 download, which is another unexpected 2.3 gb. Why can they not just patch the core files and be able to bypass that final download?