Void_Huntress
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So, game had been running perfectly fine prior to I20, today after signing in I noticed low framerates in character select. Visibly not running as smooth as before, although I don't know how slow since I can't check framerate easily there.
After selecting a character and logging in, I get a still image of the game that occasionally updates after a few seconds, occasionally goes black for a few seconds.
Windows 7, Nvidia GTS 250. OS up to date, drivers current. Not really sure what's up here.
I tried launching in 'safe mode', and that ran speedily, albeit in an unplayable small full screen mode. (unplayable both for small and for full screen; I require a window for assistive technologies)
So I went from there.
Back to windowed mode, restart, maximized window, running smoothly.
Restored texture quality to Very High for world and character.
Particle Physics to high.
World and Character Detail to 200%, particle count approx 25000.
Environmental Reflections to ... Whoah.
Dropped me to less than 1 FPS just MOVING THE SLIDER.
It took SEVERAL clicks to cancel out of the options menu. WTF, guys?
Reverted to settings immediately before I tried enabling Environmental Reflections.
Shadows to Lowest... no problem. To Low.. back to less than 1 fps.
Water effects, same thing.
I couldn't try Ambient Occlusion, since that's disabled if you don't have Shadows to at least Low.
This is pretty messed up, guys. Ultra Mode worked FINE on this computer yesterday. As of I20, not so much.
I mean, I CAN play the game now that I've got the Ultra stuff off, but it's a lot less pretty now, and I think I remember reading somewhere about some graphical effects not showing up right on certain lower graphical settings, like Battle Maiden's patches?
EDIT: The current version on the beta server does the same thing, but a one of the earlier public beta sneak peeks worked fine for me. So something happened since then and now in I20 development.
EDIT 2: Okay, it's NOT just ultra mode. I get dropped to below 1 FPS from opening any Info window (i.e. to check someone's desc, badges, etc), the Contacts tab, a hero corps field analyst, the SG registrar, the vanguard security officer, contacts who have something for me to do..
I do NOT have trouble with vendors, WW, trainers, contacts who tell me to go somewhere else..
It seems like anything that offers a portrait triggers this. BIZARRE. -
Quote:Where would those calls lie? It seems like determining the frequency of attack/type usage per enemy group wouldn't be difficult to determine. Is it regarding the percentage of encountering the enemy groups?Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Gathering the data is not really a problem for me. More critically important is weighting it, which would require making a lot of potentially controversial judgment calls. -
Regarding the damage type problem, I was thinking about a few ways to gather data.
One option would be to work through the enemy sets a bit at a time in a test mission with invulnerability on. If you have controlled spawns of enemies, you can easily get a good sample of their attack distribution by just parking in a spawn for a long while, then moving to the next controlled spawn. Then if you can estimate the natural distribution of those enemies in their respective group, that would give you a good starting point, yes?
From there, it could just be an inventory of all the enemy groups in standard content, along with any named entities.
Does this seem plausible? I mean, it would take a while, but it should be fairly complete if done right.
EDIT: If you think this would be useful, I'm willing to volunteer my time for it. I mean, having City running in the background while I'm doing other stuff and occasionally moving from spawn to spawn wouldn't be a problem for me. -
Quote:At that point, you might as well start running simulations, right?Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Even the typed calculations include some heavy approximations, because attacks aren't single-typed. What I should do is subject the builds to various kinds of attacks of various typing (energy blasts typed energy/smash/range with 60/40 energy/smash damage, etc) but that would become excessively complicated.
By the way, this sheet is keen. Being able to quantify -- even as an approximation -- what I already knew (why romans are EPIC FUN for me on my blaster but rikti and arachnos are death) is pleasing. -
Quote:You just convinced me to finally try an MA scrapper. I had no idea Eagle's Claw looked that neat. I know I certainly wouldn't change that animation.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
So, yeah. And on that note, the alternate punch animation... does anyone use it? I tried, really hard to get used to it, and finally just gave up. Taking EC and then using the punch is like like taking Siphon Life and slotting it for tohit debuff. I'm sure there are people that do it, I just will never understand why.
I've always avoided MA in the past because I want more punches to go with the kicks.. and I thought 'hey, I can go check out the new punch animations like I've been meaning to'.
... I'm less than impressed with most of these. :( -
Quote:So, opt in to a channel label, opt out of specific contributors?Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Alternatively, they could not interact in the same space. We could make a system where everyone had their own version of the "channel" and whenever someone joined, everyone "subscribed" to that channel would get the option of whether to add them to their version of it, like a reverse invitation. Which means if that new person then does idiotic things in that channel, anyone could selectively remove that person from their version of the channel. It would be a form of individualized censoring of an otherwise global channel.
This requires no central moderator, because there is no one version of the channel that requires central oversight.
That would be interesting. Potentially confusing for the players, particularly if they start talking to each other about what they saw in a channel, but interesting. -
Quote:This actually reminds me of a problem in the video game review industry (I always have to stop and be amazed that we HAVE such an industry) where many reviewers or even entire publications will only use a subset of their rating space. So you get things like 10 (of 10) is a must play, 9 is a good buy, 8 is solid if you like the genre, 7 becomes 'Consider if you like the genre, otherwise it's just a rental', 6 is 'just a rental', and 5 is 'don't bother playing.'Originally Posted by Arcanaville
This grade would only be useful to sort the arcs within that one list or reviewer. My four star arcs would NEVER, EVER find themselves on a list with Venture's four star arcs in a global search, because those ratings would be specific to a single reviewer. Which reflects a fundamental truth: no one's ratings are precisely, or sometimes even remotely, comparable to another reviewer.
There are sometimes review policies to this effect for some publications. It's kind of bewildering. But the ultimate SOURCE of all of this? Not offending the authors (i.e. publishers). If someone slaps a 1- or 2-star on any scale on a title from a publisher, their PR staff FREAK OUT over being 'slammed' like that (even if it's a genuinely bad title on both aesthetic and technical fronts, and possibly doesn't even function correctly), and will often go so far as to blacklist the publication from further review copies.
It's an interesting set of social dynamics. Some of it isn't directly relevant to the issue at hand (since AE authors don't get to decide which reviewers get to play their arcs), but some of the social effects will still be present, as evidenced by the strong background buzz of 'don't screw over the authors' we have now.
Well, any time you have multiple people interacting in one space, some form of moderation is eventually going to be needed, and I tend to prefer if the participants directly know who is going to be moderating them instead of a GM rolling up and making unexpected changes for unclear reasons. So something along the lines of how global channels work (perhaps invite-only for participation, but publicly visible for reading), with clearly indicated moderators and perhaps a space for that channel's moderation rules.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
A superchannel of multiple players is an interesting notion. I'd want to think about the mechanics of how such a thing would best work. I'm not sure if the best way is to literally create a list everyone could post to. Managing that forces the creation of channel authorities, and those have issues that might be more trouble than they are worth in the AE specifically.
This would allow for more narrowly themed review channels with multiple reviewers.
Alternately, the Twitter approach could be used, and people could toss arbitrary tags on their reviews that could then be searched for. But arbitrary tags are always kind of a sticky thing. -
Quote:The youtube comparison is pretty much it, yeah.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The correct model, I think, for the AE isn't the film industry, its Youtube. Youtube releases content even faster than the AE, most of it is even crappier than what is in the AE. But they've figured out ways to manage that well enough to be usable. Sure, you can just search it, but imagine if the only think youtube had was search features that the AE had. It would be non-functional also. Youtube has channels where you can aggregate content, and playlists where you can see what other people are watching, and favorites so you can save lists of things you want to go back and see, and highlighted content to direct people to interesting things. It doesn't present you with a list of all fifty billion videos in it and offer to sort it by date or alphabetical order. That would be ludicrous.
As you've mentioned before, and I've noted to other folks, establishing the value of arcs should be done by word of mouth first. If you produce something worth playing, your initial testers -- be they friends, SG mates, or just some adventurous folks you found on global -- will want to share it with other people. Who, if they enjoy it, will want to share it with others.
From there, the system can note patterns in who upvotes (or downvotes) what arcs, and it's easy to track trends (arc Y tends to also be upvoted by people who like arc Z, but tends to be downvoted by people who like arc Q), enabling actual suggestions based on what people play through and up or downvote.
Trying to pin specific star ratings on arcs as if the discrete numbers matter is pointless, because nobody is working on the same scale, and there's no way for the system to figure out what particular players mean when they use 3 star here, 4 star there, and five star here so that it can normalize them.
When it comes to looking at an arc's history, I think the things that need to be tracked are how many people have tried it total, how many people have played it to completion, how many people took the time to upvote it, how many people took the time to downvote it.
...this is all separate from the matter of a properly working search tool, of course. -
I just tried it with my blaster (on +0/x1 with bosses, but with an alpha level shift), just to see how badly that would go.. And the answer is, with only deviation from the rules being inspiration use... After a few tries, I can consistently get MOST of the way through the second wave before I drop.
Of course, I'm also not using inspirations very well. I suspect I can get to the third wave with more varied inspirations than just 'some purples, some break frees, and maybe a couple blues'. But I start getting confused if I try to juggle too much. -
Quote:I'm looking forward to getting booted from iTrial pugs when I inform them I will have to sit still for part of it because I can't play under specific conditions. XDOriginally Posted by Arcanaville
You don't have to win, you just have to play.
(More accurately, I'm curious to find out how many teams actually WILL boot me for that. It'll be an interesting research experiment. I don't often get booted from TFs for that, but very seldomly nowadays are TFs that tight on requirements. Most of the pug ITF teams I've been in lately can handle rommie with half the team AFK.) -
Quote:Yeah, pretty much.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
** Obviously globals can be changed and so can account names because it actually happens, but the process isn't necessarily one that could easily be incorporated into a bulk automatic transfer and import.
This type of procedure for some installations is often a largely MANUAL process that has to be double-checked at a few points for potential data integrity concerns.
I know that for at least one MMO for at least part of its lifetime, there WAS no automated tool for moving characters between servers. Someone pulled the records for the character and more or less created the character (mostly) by hand on the new server. Not because they COULDN'T make a tool to do it automatically.
But because they didn't trust such an automated tool to never trip over something and cause problems.
Bulk processes have the minor disadvantage that they can't THINK and make judgements when something surprising happens. -
Quote:Honestly, while I've voiced some objections in the past on some of the later stuff.. I'm of the firm opinion that anyone who claims to be UNABLE to get basic alpha slotting (slot unlocked, a single common in it) is either NOT TRYING (this includes stubborn refusal to accept the idea they're doing something wrong, for some folks)..Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Alpha's requirements for participation are so low for an MMO, they barely qualify as being requirements. The requirements for the other announced slots don't even require to succeed in the content that gates them.
The only way the end game could be more accessible to casual players would be if incarnate slots were unlocked as a day job.
... or is so far into 'special needs' territory that the developers CANNOT cater to them. -
Quote:Just to be clear, I'm not actually objecting to the implementation at this point. I understand the need for currencies, I just get sad when I see so many of them, and I don't feel the CoX currencies were planned very well overall. Side effect of how they've organically grown as the game has been developed, I suppose.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
And that's what generates the need for differing currencies. The need for differing progress from differing activities. And that is completely different from any set of options we currently have in the standard game or the enhancement system. We can choose different powers or different enhancements, but all roads lead to the same choices. And its not the number of choices that makes progress non-linear, but rather the number of different ways to progress itself.
As to eventual Incarnate rewards, I've resigned myself to the fact that if I keep playing, some things are going to be out of my reach until such a time as I feel I can afford the mandatory downtime that follows high intensity team events. Other things are simply going to be out of my reach.
I was just voicing another perspective on classification, that's all. -
Quote:All of this is true, I was just making the point that while the incarnate system is definitely more free in specifics, it isn't as fundamental a change as it might seem; we already have more freedom than a lot of people realize.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Important distinction: when you gain level 20, there is only real way to measure progress from 19 to 20, or alternatively many different completely fungible ones: you earn linear XP to get from 19 to 20. When you gain level 20, you get exactly the same reward I do: you get to pick from a set of powers that is available within your powersets. Although you can pick different things, there is no way for you to change the way to get to level 20 in a way that would give you a different set of options. So the reward is essentially singular.
In the Incarnate system, the primary means of progress make a distinction between what you do, and what progress you make. I can do something that will present me with a totally different set of options than you will have. While you could argue that the order in which you take powers is not fixed and therefore non-linear, its possible to make a linear chart of progress from 1 to 50, and what specific reward you get for achieving each level from 1 to 50. you have no control over the order of progress through the system. With the Incarnate system, there is no way to make such a linear chart. it is, therefore, non-linear.
When it comes to incarnate slot acquisition, that's less non-linear than you had previously predicted. Right now, it seems that after Alpha we have two linear tracks. And when it comes to actual incarnate abilities, that's no more non-linear than putting things into enhancement slots is now. We just happen to be able to put more dramatic things into them.
Yeah, you're correct with each of those. I was just noting that all hazard zones (to the best of my knowledge) and the RWZ, however, have had their minimum levels completely removed.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I wasn't aware RWZ was no longer level locked. However, one of the specific example I was thinking of was Cim, and the ITF which I mentioned. I'm assuming the Midnighter arcs that grant access to Cimerora still have minimum levels, and thus by extension Cimerora is level locked implicitly. I believe Ouroboros still has a minimum level as well, or has that been changed?
And even with sidekicking, task forces have always had minimum true level limitations which I believe are still in force. -
Quote:I suppose my math must simply be wrong here. I'm not as good at the survivability calculations as a lot of the other folks, though, so it's not really that surprising.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
2. Calculations suggested Electric Armor was weaker as well.
Again, at the time I was looking at it, it didn't seem like that was the case, but I may simply have overlooked something in my methodology.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
3. Energy Aura had an easier time improving its situation by stacking power pool defenses than Electric Armor could by stacking resistances.
That's alarming. I'm glad that's no longer the case.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Brute Electric used to be so bad, it was actually the only Brute powerset to fail my maximum rest test for all damage types except energy. That means if you were to slot rest full of Heal enhancements and put your healing while resting at the regen cap, then you could survive more stuff indefinitely while resting than you could if you slotted all the defenses of Brute Electric with SOs and stood there with all your toggles on (discounting the effects of endurance drain). That's with rest's debuffs which makes you take quadruple damage. -
Quote:The argument can be made that normal power acquisition is somewhat nonlinear. From level 6 onward, I get to choose when I start taking power pools, in what order. Within my primary and secondary selections, I get to take many powers in arbitrary orders, even skip large groups of them.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The Incarnate system is different in a number of ways, one of which is that it is non-linear. There are path choices and branching choices through the system that are created by using a middle layer between what players earn and what they gain from the system in terms of Incarnate XP or Incarnate Power components. But since these things are, in effect, middleware between XP and Powers, they can't be tradeable either.
Most zones are no longer level locked at this point; those were lifted last year. You can walk a level 1 into the RWZ, despite the text of the guard outside the Vanguard building.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Actually, all of those level gates are to my knowledge still there. Zones are still level locked, and task forces still have minimum level gates. -
More factual hitching: 'never raised level cap'. I suppose 40 to 50 doesn't count? I suppose it could be argued that was less of raising the level cap and more of a delayed rollout, but still.
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Quote:I'm a little perplexed at this. From my time playing my Energy Aura brute, my friend playing his Electric Armor brute, and a lot of time spent trying to hammer at mids to sort it out, I keep coming to the conclusion that Energy Aura is notably weaker.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
At the time, I thought (and still in retrospect think) that Electric Armor was in greater need of the buff than Energy Aura (although both needed attention at the time).
Can you explain your reasoning that Electric Armor was in greater need? -
Quote:That messed me up way back in the day. My mother set up my ncsoft account for me way back for Guild Wars..Originally Posted by Arcanaville
If your name is on the credit card that was used to pay for everything, that might be very helpful to your cause. As far as I'm concerned, the person that pays is the person that owns.
.. and I've NEVER been able to get my name on the account since.
VERY frustrating.
Each time I asked support about this, the answer was an immediate emphatic "NO. We CANNOT do that."Quote:Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
Support is there for a reason! -
Quote:For me as a potential AE player, I've mentioned before that I feel the search tools are still incomplete, and inexplicably so. Among other problems, we can search for inclusion, but not search for exclusion.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
It doesn't matter in the sense that public opinion on dev motives is not controllable. The problem for me is that ironically the AE is not a comsumption-focused tool. It actually focuses on authors too much, and worries too much about the concerns of authors and not enough about the concerns of content consumers. If the AE focused architecturally on ensuring that the players have the best possible chance to play the best possible arcs, good writers would flock to it and bad writers would be weeded out, and for me that's the best of all possible circumstances.
As a potential AE author, I feel if I can't find the arcs I want, I can't assume any potential audience could find my arcs if my work is what they would want. This erodes motivation to actually attempt to craft a work.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I don't think I'm misrepresenting the desire of most authors in general too badly there. -
Quote:Yes, thank you, I DID in fact see that part in the "faq" and I was asking for a third option than the two Peerless enumerates below, one I'd even be willing to pay for.Originally Posted by Cloud_Surge
..
Honestly? I'm fearing I might need to do that because sometimes nothing else is heard.Quote:Originally Posted by PeerlessGirl
You've got two choices, eventually.
1) Use it and deal.
2) Quit CoH.
I do not fear change. I despise UNNECESSARY change.Quote:Originally Posted by PeerlessGirl
All in all it's a win-win. Don't fear change, embrace it.
There have been some subtle changes to the company lately, between the drops in communication, the focus in development, and things like this.
I'm scheduled to start that 'year plus two' plan later next month -- I was on a 3 month plan prior to accepting that when it was offered -- but I may be forced to cancel instead. If my pleas in the forums are unheard, maybe voting with my wallet will make a difference.
If not, well. I survived before I found CoX, and I'll survive if I leave it. -
Quote:Can I pay to get the aura and NOT have to EVER use the NCsoft launcher?Originally Posted by Alpha Wolf
If you use the NCsoft Launcher, all your existing and new characters will unlock the Wisps aura on your account.
Failing that, can I pay money to not EVER have to use the NCsoft launcher?
Seriously, I do NOT want this thing. -
At this point, they're not likely to delay the slot. They've got their stuff scheduled for I20, and barring any serious issues (and the Alpha slot delay was because of serious issues, not just story concerns), they're going to deliver it.
For those who want to help make it clear to the devs you want something else as soon as they can find the dev resources for it?
Once the issue releases, unlock the slot, then put NOTHING in it. Don't craft any Lore powers, keep the slot empty, well past the time you obviously COULD put something in it. Vote with your characters. -
Quote:If we actually manage to get new players, to them Praetoria will be the 'main' universe, against which they'll be judging the primal content.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
No matter what they do with Praetoria it will always feel like a second-fiddle tacked-on alternate universe to a lot of people.
Just a thought. -
Quote:I don't know about Luminara's situation, but sometimes there's disabilities that can't be overcome. Just like no amount of 'can do' spirit can help a person with no legs to tap dance, there are mental disabilities that simply are, and all the 'help' in the world won't change the reality of them.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I can help you be more social and run TFs with you, but you'll also need to help yourself by accepting the help, otherwise you'll stay stuck the way you are.