Tyranny_NA

Certain people shouldn't join one either lol (Not trying to insult anyone)

Seems like not too long ago I spent most of my time joining farm missions in PI or Grandville. I avoided TFs like the plague. When I did join one it was still the same, perfectly content to join someone elses TF and do whatever he/she asked of me and my toon. Then I started running my own on redside. We would do Barracuda probably 3-4 times a week lol. Sprinkle in ITF and LGTF and then on the weekends perhaps a Recluse.

Then blueside with the same as mentioned but Kahn and Statesman in there too plus all the other signature hero TFs. At first it was fun but after a while....meh. Statesman and Recluse are like a slap in the face. You usually ALWAYS have to have an exact complimentary cast of toons to complete them. Most of the other TFs can be completed with any PUG fairly easy. They're intended to be hard, but not at the expense of groups not being able to enjoy themselves or people not being able to play whatever toon it was they wanted to play. This is a game after all.

What has started to bother me is the fact that after a while of successfully running certain TFs to completion in short time frames you basically have your own system of how you want things done. Generally these methods are fairly common amongst other players in how to achieve TF completion. Here as of late I've been getting a lot of people, especially on ITFs, who think I'm running a burger king and they "want it their way". I know people are perfectly capable of playing their toons (well...most of them) but jeebus...either half the time I got people running off and trying to solo the damn things or they keep wanting to put their two cents in on how they usually (or the teams they've been on) have usually done things.

I'm all for suggestions...but wait until a certain method fails. Our success rate is high. Our TF times are fairly low. Mostly because it's not just me, I've got two other people I start my teams with that play with me regularly (my family). This is a common fact of life for all of us that play on every team we ever join I know. Think it's just magnified by the fact that we used to run them so much it's started to stand out more and wear me down. It also bothers me to see teammates lying about on the ground dead especially when it could have easily been prevented. Just a couple stupid mistakes or improper teamwork and *squish* the whole thing can fall apart.

Guess what I'm trying to say is...listen to the team leader. Hopefully, but not always the case, they're not just leading a TF for the hell of it and may actually know wtf he or she is talking about and/or doing. =D

You know what is sad? Why is it we get a confirmation email saying that someone tried to login to our master account but could not prove their identity "If this was not you please contact NCsoft" blah blah blah....buuuuut how about giving us a IF THIS WAS YOU OPTION also so our ip address could then be unblocked and we could try again. Oh....WAAAAY too logical?

How the hell are we supposed to remember all the serial codes and access keys (other then retail) when that information was stored.....IN THE FREAKING MASTER ACCOUNT!

Can you tell I'm frustrated....

Thats just it. I don't even remember entering a security question!!! lol atleast not the one it asked me! *sigh*

Well, went to login to my NCsoft Master account now so I could get the new security update measures out of the way and now have managed to lock myself out of my account on my own computer. Did I miss something? They asked a security question of which I've never entered an answer for yet. Asked Date of Birth, that seemed pretty straight forward then of course the keyword security feature of which half the stuff you can't even read (just my opinion). Cycled it and got one that was easiest to read and entered it in exactly as shown.

Again....what did I miss?

The truth of the matter is a greater % of people are not having any problems whatsoever. In our household there are 3 computers which we play CoH on and of the three only one had any problems with the launcher. As it turned out it was an easy fix but it took us about 2 hours to find out what the problem was. Compared to some of you that is a short amount of time I realize this. (2 Windows Vista, 1 Windows XP)

The devs are not TRYING to break your game. They're just as concerned that some of you can't play as you are not being able to play the game. There are certain contingencies that nobody can predict no matter how well the planning is. For some of us the problem was on OUR end. Didn't have anything to do with the Launcher.

If you're having trouble with the Launcher then I'd recommend you follow These Steps (NCsoft Technical Center) in regards to the NCsoft Launcher.

If you're still having issues after you've followed all the steps listed then you've exhausted every resource on your end and it's up to the Devs to fix the problem (If they can). One way or another you'll be able to play again. It is a hassle and none of us should have to go through it but things change. Things break and things are fixed again. This is nothing new as far as the online gaming community goes. Even some of the best of things has it's ups and downs when it's initially started.

Also I'd like to add a little tidbit. If anyone is having problems where the NCsoft Launcher will not connect to the update server which in effect makes it impossible to play the game. Make sure you have your firewall allow NCsoft Launcher.exe and NCAccess.exe and make sure that you have Port 80 open and unrestricted.

If you connect to the internet through a proxy make sure that Internet Explorer has the proper proxy settings. If not make sure that under the LAN settings in Internet Explorer's "Tools/Internet Settings" Connections tab is set to "Auto Detect"

For some reason the Launcher uses whatever IE has as it's settings to connect to the internet. We were having a hell of a time troubleshooting this issue as we use firefox and not IE and on one of the computers IE was set to use a proxy and the Launcher would not connect to it's update server.

Hope this helps

I won the last code handed out by Avatea on Freedom during the contest in Pocket D with one of my lowbie Toons. A werewolf toon to be specific. I was highly impressed with the amount of work that went into the detail of the animal heads but that's where most of the effort seems to have gone.

While the detail is breathtaking for a game thats nearing it's 7 Year Anniversary it was a little disappointing to see that we didn't get anything like unique gloves and boots that had fur/hair sticking out away from the character a bit. Something to give them a little depth. Even the Council and 5th Column wolves have hair that sticks away from their bodies. Same can be said for feathers and a feather texture and I was hoping that there might be another unique set of wings for the new birds. Nope.

Not being able to scale the heads...yeah they do look a little pinheadish on some body types. I do wish you could scale them just like you can standard heads. We weren't able to scale monsterous heads and now you can't with these either.

The emotes are fun, the costume change animations are excellent. Though the savage emote looks like it's intended for a primate that doesn't yet exist in the game. I love beastrun even though the jumping forward and backwards animation is pretty standard. Doesn't have any flair like Ninja Run does. Would have been nice if they looked like they were pouncing or something.

The pack is good and I would have bought it regardless. It opens the door for them to add new pieces to improve the animals they've introduced into the game. City of is always constantly evolving. So what we don't have now is a beacon to what we can look forward too in the future. Game designers know they can't make everyone happy even though they make the best attempts at doing so. I'm pretty hopeful there will be more to come.

Now...can we get some kick *** new Medieval gear?!?! new ornate helms and armors stuff with chainmail and armors that go into the chest piece classification and the like?!? PLEASE!!!! hehehe ok yeah really please? =P

Anywho keep up the good work =)

I am well aware that if there is something in the game not worth doing then nobody is obligated to do it. Also "If you don't like the game, then quit!" attitudes do not belong here. Too much of that gets tossed out. Easy response I guess. Not a chance of me quitting over something like this either.

This is a discussion, am I not entitled to my opinions? Not able to post a suggestion or ask a question as to why certain things are done? I'm not expecting answers from Devs or GMs. I'm expressing my opinion on the matter and the intent is to see what other people think. Isn't that not one of the core functions of a forum? to discuss a topic?

Maybe I went about it wrong and assumed too much. I probably should have posed a different question like..."What do you all think of the new Weekly Strike Target being a 25-30 Level range TF / SF". Instead of "I can't be the only one who feels this way?" or whatever it was. If that was the case then I take full blame, not that big of a deal. Easy mistake to make.

I'd like to make one thing very clear. I am not nor have I ever been and elitist. I'm never going to sit here and say that the lowbies can go to hell and that the game is only about level 50 characters now. That would be absolute crap.

I have two servers with almost a full roster and only 13 50s to my credit. The rest are here and there and everywhere just like anyone else. I have 10s and 20s, 30s and 40s and everything inbetween. So lets keep this a civil discussion and not try to bash someones personal character without even getting to know the person first.

I'm not doing this for the shards either. That's GREAT that you get bonus XP for doing this weeks strike target. It's absolutely awesome. The whole issue that I'm raising is that there is a place for everything and everything in it's place. There is a reason the contents are labeled with a level requirement *sigh* Anywho, thats thrown right out the window now. Talking about promoting level 50s and lowbies playing together on TFs and all this stuff....its been going on LONG before the WTF. My family and I and our friends regularly gather groups of people regardless of level/AT whatever and run missions or TFs together.

Up until now the Weekly Strike Targets have been pretty good. I enjoyed having to run Statesman or Recluse for the first Notice of the Well drops. Then Reichsman and Lady Grey were excellent. Now we come to week four of the WTF and by the good graces we've been given *cue old Mario Bros. death sound fx* Sister Psyche and Silver Mantis? Ok...now it's really a WTF hehe.

The weekly strike targets primary purpose is to bestow the Notice of the Well for those players who have incarnate unlocked. The level 45 - 50 Strike / Task Forces all give you a chance for shard drops (incarnate worthy). They also drop Notice of the Well (incarnate worthy). Then they also give a double merit bonus (Level 50 worthy) and a chance at Purple Recipe drops (Level 50 Worthy).

Now we have two level 25-30 Task / Strike Forces that give you an XP bonus (Lowbie Worthy) a Double Merit Reward (Level 50 Worthy) and Notice of the Well (incarnate worthy). One thing though....they're lowbie TFs! You get no shard drops. A Level 50 toon loses every power they took from level 32-49. Unless they have purple sets they also lose their set bonuses. Thats really nothing new but Oh...and Incarnate Alphas....don't persist when exemplared or malefactored either.

The whole point of a lowbie TF is to play that TF when you're in that level range to begin with. The XP bonus and the merits are nice but the merits will probably only be stock piled until level 50 anyways. Their designed to help level the toons that are close to jumping into the next level range. Hence the 5 level variable for the TF requirements. That is when they are at their most fun. Most people these days just want to blow through all of it and get them done as quick as possible but they're meant to be enjoyed at the level they were designed for.

When I mentioned this stuff in a channel someone mentioned the fact that after issue20 you will get shards for doing the lower task/strike forces. Unless hes some kind of insider or I missed something (very possible) I'm taking that with a grain of salt. It raises the question however that if that were the case, why make these the strike targets before issue20? We still haven't gotten ITF or Tin Mage or Apex. (Tin Mage or Apex possibly because they're too short? *shrug*) who knows, one could speculate until they're blue in the face.

Basically my whole point is this. This is all just another precursor to the league system and all the other MASSIVE level 50 incarnate related content that is coming our way. The Weekly Strike Targets in spirit is mostly for level 50 toons. Players should be rewarded as such. I'm all for promoting the lower content but there is a reason why its lower content in the first place. I can't be the only one who feels this way.

Had the same issue Last night while running Kahn TF. Got the sound loop bug, it crashed my game eventually. So, I go to log back in and access the toon I was playing (Level 50+1 Kin/Elec Tank) and It says I cannot access These features without having the Going Rogue Expansion. Then it asks me if i would like to purchase it or later. So I hit later, I exit out of the login screen then logged back in and everything was back to normal.

Freaked me out at first but knew it was some kind of weird server bug/lag/failed check or something. Would have been really concerned if it kept me out completely every time I tried logging back in lol.

Still, this is a recent bug that seems to have been introduced with the Weekly Strike Target feature. It is possible that all the activity and red servers are causing a strain on their systems. *shrug*

I've solo'd this arc about 3 or 4 times now. Pulling Trapdoor away from the room has worked but getting him into the lava has been the best so far. Certain ATs are going to have a lot more trouble with him then others.

I don't know what all they patched but the fact that some people are posting that things need to be changed to make it easier to solo is just crap. This game isn't about soloing. Never has been and never will be. They've made HUGE strides in improving the game. Some of that has allowed certain toons to be able to solo better. Still, if you're having trouble beating something, take the time to recruit a few people who are trying to do the arc too and beat it that way.

I think some ppl just want to be able to do things with as little effort as possible...kinda sad IMO.

Been playing my Fire/Dark corr for quite a bit now and hadn't noticed this but I think you're right as there doesn't seem to be any graphical effect when Darkest Night is applied.

Also, another suggestion. I really wish they would speed up the animation/casting times just a bit for Dark Miasma. With the pacing of some of the other ATs powersets you get stuck in bad animation/casting situations sometimes (biggest culprit is Darkest Night and Tar Patch).

Yep. As of now Virtue Server is down AGAIN!!!!

What the hell is going on? I'm pretty tolerant about the rampant lag right now. Even while trying to do a LRSF last night with people constantly getting mapserved but even my patience is starting to reach it's limits.

Was playing with some friends last night and commented on how bad Virtue has been. Seemingly random server crashes. BIG ping spikes out of nowhere, stuttering...not sure exactly whats going on. Freedom isn't nearly as bad as Virtue has been but at times the same issues start to crop up.

Again, not exactly sure what is causing all this.

Just blew up again as of now...

Only speculation, but this might be preemptive for the incarnate system....

Depends a lot on your ISP I believe. It may all be circumstantial but in other locations that I've lived CoX ran smoother because the ports were forwarded and therefor the data stream was open for it to send and receive information more accurately.

I was experimenting between Live and Test last night after comparing the netgraphs between the two and noticed I was getting abnormal amounts of red and yellow spikes on Live, but on Test this wasn't the case. Now keep in mind Live has a larger strain put on it due to server loads. What interested me was the fact that while I had port forwarding enabled and set for Live. The possibility was there that Test uses different ports (Only a theory).

When I disabled the ports recommended for Live the netgraphs started matching. No abnormal spikes and my gameplay was much smoother (Was actually able to increase my graphics settings with Ultra Mode too, which runs fine on Test). This seemed to have corrected the weird stuttering I was getting from data trying to be received or sent like I had been previously getting.

Was just a suggestion since it was a connection issue. Thought that perhaps it would also explain why you might be getting your problems. But since you don't have any port forwarding setup, it doesn't apply here. Sorry I couldn't help you.

At this point in time it wouldn't be that bad of an idea to raise the aggro cap for tanks and brutes. Often I've wanted to be able to grab the attention of a second or third mob just because teammates may not be paying attention or something just happened where we got overwhelmed. You're not always going to have more then one tank or brute on a team to handle it so said primary tanks or brutes should be able to aggro as much as it can handle...to some degree.

Do I think they should be able to herd entire maps like in the golden age of tankers? No. But the limit REALLY needs to be turned up a notch.

As far as mobs scattering...that isn't something that just started because of I17. It's been around for several issues now and there were threads where people complained about it back then too. Honestly I'm one of those who enjoys the realism. It's generally initiated by a lot of AoE going off. Mobs try to scatter so they don't get all wiped out in a single wave of AoE. Not only that, but sometimes when they mingle with the other mobs, it can sometimes draw more aggro.

Kinda like "Hey, we're being attacked over here! Need some help!".

Ask yourself. If a group of super powered beings came up and started blasting away at you and your friends with a single attack and you just happened to be one of the ones who didn't get one shotted, would you just stand there and take whatever they threw at you next? or would you run your *** off to either A: Get away or B: Call for Back Up.

You can argue that it's a game and it ruins your fun all you want. If the couple seconds it takes you to chase a guy down and finish him off in one of the fastest paced MMOs takes up too much of your time then....*shrug* Guess you're playing the wrong game =P

Half the time the guys are dumb enough to run back to get slaughtered anyways.

Are you using any kind of port forwarding on a router to play the game?

If you're not having any issues with the new changes then there really isn't any real reason for you to update your graphics drivers. However, bugs aside, newer drivers generally yield increased performance in most cases.

Your card is better then mine and I had horrible issues with the 197.45 drivers (8800 GTS Card). So you might get a greater benefit from them then I did. It never hurts to experiment. Currently I'm using the 196.21 drivers without much issue. Ultra mode has brought with it a fair share of hiccups. Performance with UM settings off are much worse then prior. Sound looping bugs and memory leaks. I've got it running on settings that I'm sort of happy with at the moment.

These are all things as they're brought to light a bit more will be ironed out I'm sure. So it wouldn't hurt to give some newer drivers a shot.

Again if you don't feel comfortable with doing that, then don't. If the game runs how you want it to there is nothing forcing you to change anything.

It occurred to me that in the interest of helping others work out their growing pains with I17, I'd post what happened to me and see if the same has been happening to other Nvidia users.

Pre-I17 I was using the 196.21 release with minor graphics lag. When testing I17 in OB there were little to no problems with Ultra Mode settings almost maxed. Little lag, but nothing tweaking the sliders a bit when it hit live wouldn't fix. When this system was built in 08 the game flew, course it's expected that overtime things might slow down. I maintain regular maintenance (Spyware, Virii checks, defrags, file cleanup, keeping drivers up-to-date) almost weekly or every other week (or longer in the case of driver updates). My current setup consists of...

ASUS Crosshair II Formula Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Processor (3.0Ghz a Core).
Windows XP Home SP3
3GB DDR2 Corsair RAM
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS 512 PCIe

Anywho, when I had noticed Nvidia released the 197.45 drivers on their website I went ahead and picked those up to give them a shot. My driver install procedures are fairly common. Uninstall old drivers/Boot into safemode/Driver Sweeper the old drivers/reboot & install new drivers.

So, upon installing the latest drivers and running CoX I noticed immediately there were problems. The game would freeze randomly. My system would BSOD when I did manage to get to play anything and the framerate was HORRID! In combat where my FPS are usually pretty solid they had to have been dropping into single digits. The stuttering was unplayable. Then of course I'd crash. When that happened, not being happy with the last two driver releases I went back and installed the 195.62 set and continued to play problem free with fast steady frames and no crashes.

Enter Issue17...upon creating my Demon Summoner and entering the Tutorial zone I had my first taste of the new update. Clicked on "Caze" and BAM blue screen. Against my better judgment I decided to give the 197.45 drivers another shot thinking "Hey, its Issue17 it has some new stuff, maybe they'll handle it better". Wrong. The only thing different this time around was the FPS issue had stopped. No stuttering because of particle effects while in combat (This I was happy about). However the crashing, freezing and BSOD problem continued despite tweaking the Ultra Mode settings to keep it running fairly stable (Ambient Occlusion is sweet, but intensive for something so seemingly simple).

After trying two different drivers with similar results it became clear to me to give the one in the middle another try and re-install the 196.21s I had been running before all this. So far the crashing/freezing has stopped. I can run UM settings a little higher then I could with the other two but unlike on Test, I can't run Ambient Occlusion at all. Might have more to do with the server load, who knows.

Right now I've got it to the point where it looks nice, runs decent enough in the open world. Excellent in missions (as always). Enjoying my DS/Pain MM right now and things look good. I'm hoping that Nvidia does some more tweaking with their drivers and/or Paragon Studios continues to do some more optimization of Ultra Mode to iron things out. Perhaps it might be time to bite the bullet and just buy a new card and not worry about it.

How have some of the rest of you Nvidia users faired during the launch of I17? Good? Bad? Ugly? In my adventure I've found the latest drivers DO NOT like City of Heroes/Villains.

At this point it's really a non-issue. Something that can slide easily. They did what they had to do and I have a better understanding of why they might have done it. I'm hoping those that are in on the closed beta are having a good time and are able to weed out the potential problems before OB starts.

As long as what we get when it hits live is on par with what we've always received (that being quality updates), I'll be happy.

True. At the time, the NDA never crossed my mind. The things in my post weren't really sensitive information at all IMO. Most of the post (It wasn't very big) was my attempt at suggesting an adjustment to one of their new in-game costume features. Praise for what they've done and a summary of a login issue I had with a newer transfer (A dominator) to the test server that I couldn't log into test with. *shrug*

You bring up a good point however. One that didn't even occur to me at the time of my posting. Would kind of justify what they did....kinda...