flipside

This may have been occurring for some time and I've just missed it, but I just noticed that a character with Fly as a travel power down not project a shadow in Ultra Mode when actually flying. The shadows on the world and characters show as normal, and show correctly when my character simply jumps. However, as soon as I turn on Fly the shadow disappears.

I logged into characters with Super Jump, Super Speed and Teleport and did not see this problem. When using those travel powers and jumping or teleporting, the shadow appears normally on the ground. It is only with Fly that I appear to lose the shadow.

Issue in game or issue on my PC?

After re-reading the info up-thread (admittedly I missed the percentage performance increase you included above Father Xmas the first time through), I think I've settled on the ATI 5770 series. It would give me around a 50% boost in performance over what I had, and what I had I was extremely happy with. At my local Microcenter, I've found a Sapphire brand 5770 model for $155. That's a couple bucks cheaper than Newegg and I should be able to get it today.

My next concern is heat. I'm using the stock cooling unit from Dell (it is an XPS model machine) and had no problems in the past with cooling. But, jumping up a few levels in cards I'm a little concerned now. Thoughts on this?

Thanks again for all of your help!

Thanks Father Xmas.

I had originally ruled out the ATI 6870 for price concerns, but looking back now it would only be $50 more for the 6870 over the 6850. Is this ATI's current top of the line model and/or one that was just recently released?

Hi All,

I'm not the most hardware savvy when it comes to computers, so when it's time for me to change out some components I start to fret a little. Tonight the video card on my gaming PC up and died so I'm suddenly in the market for a replacement card.

The card I had was an Nvidia GeForce 8800GT. It's been running on a 2+ year old Dell computer just fine with no issues until now. I've been able to play CoH in near max Ultra Mode settings with only slight performance hits every now and then. Since the card died and there's no on-board video, I can't boot in to run a Cohhelper or anything of the sort (posting from wife's laptop at the moment). For the Dell system, the best info I can provide at the moment is that it's running 4GB RAM with a "Q6600, 2.4, 8MB, Core Duo Kentsfield, G0" processor, at least that is what my original shipping info has from Dell about it. Additionally, I'm not 100% certain I know the wattage of the power supply. It doesn't list it on my order sheet, and when looking at the PSU inside the case I can make out only one line that says "Max Output Wattage: 750W".

So, with that in mind, I don't care about keeping with Nvidia or switching to ATI. I don't have much of a price/money limiting factor but I don't want to be spending $400+ either. Another limiting factor is that I'm impatient and want to purchase the card tomorrow from a local retailer (Best Buy or Microcenter are the closest).

I had a recommendation from a friend to go with an ATI Radeon HD 5850, but I can't find any of those available locally. Best Buy has a 5770 available in a few brands, as does Microcenter ranging from $130-$190. Microcenter also has the ATI 6850 and 6870 line. Would anyone recommend the ATI 6850 line? What recommendations would you make for Nvidia cards?

I thank you in advance for any help you can provide. If there's more info you need to make a recommendation, I would be happy to provide it to the best of my abilities.

Well Nvidia has been zero help and does not respond to support tickets apparently. Any advice from others here? My next step is to consider a full re-install of my PC to flush out all the drivers and such.

Thanks Flameshot. You're help is really appreciated. I've submitted a help ticket with Nvidia and will see what they say.

Short of cracking my case open, I see from my originial order of the PC that the Ageia Physx card is listed separate of the Nvidia card. I also see in the device manager of the PC the Ageia Physx Adapter is listed separate of the Nvidia display adapter.

Sorry, does that help at all?

Nope, just the single Nvidia one.

It's a GeForce 8800 GT. If it was an older card issue, why did it work before I applied these drivers?

Note that I am not very savy with video drivers and the like. I just install and hope for the best.

Up until today I had the 169.12 version of Nvidia drivers on my PC running CoH. Outdated by a long time, I know, but I never had any problems in the game so never saw a need to upgrade them. While under this version, I had a separate program folder menu for Ageia and it's program options. In CoH, the Physx support was enabled.

I tried installing a new game today and was informed my PC had old Nvidia drivers and I'll need to upgrade to play the new game. So I did, to the 195.62 version. I got a prompt box while installing saying I may need to install again if this install fails. I bypassed it, and the install completed successfully.

I login to CoH to see that my Physx support is now greyed out and unchangeable. I logout, check my program menu and see that the Ageia program folder is now gone, but there are now options in the Nvidia Control Panel for Physx support. It is enabled, or so it says. I checked the Device Manager, and the computer still recognizes the Ageia Physx card.

Overall question, what problem did I cause by installing the new drivers? With this, does the prompt I received during the install indicate a Phsyx driver never loaded and I need to load them again correctly?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Interesting. So, it's during a respec where you can do this. I never knew that. Thank you so much for the info!

Coming into this thread very late, but I have a question. I see a number of builds here that have lvl3 and lvl5 slots in Dark Nova. How did you manage that?

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Actually, there would be an end in sight if you entered a zone that had already been captured.

Even in the astronomically unlikely event that you were the only one in the zone, you could restore the zone AND end the raid (in whatever zone it had migrated to) simply by retaking the three defense points (whatever they may be)

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However, as I mentioned, you could also just ignore the whole thing and go about business as usual. The only thing you'd have to pay attention to would be the occasional rikti fighting with the local bad guys (meaning they'd likely ignore you unless you attacked them - unless they had defeated the reguloar spawn).

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These two things make me vote against this idea due to the many things folks here have said already:
<ul type="square">[*]I don't want to be forced to do something I don't want to do.[*]It's impacting my* gameplay by having "out of normal" spawns. Now not only do I need to take down those 5 Hellions, but I also need to take down the 4 Rikti with them.[/list]* This is an "implicit" me, meaning "the player", not me personally.

Really, all you need to do is put in an end-of-life timer to the event and you've shored up all the holes.

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What new zones have they added? I count 1 - Cimerora.

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Depends on your viewpoint and/or when you joined the game? I've been around since about a month after initial release in '04. Working backwards just off the top of my head, I can think of: Cimerora, Ouroboros, The Ski Shalet, Pocket D, Bloody Bay/Siren's Call/Warburg/RV, Croatoa, Striga, Hollows, Shadow Shard, RCS (now called the RWZ), Peregrine Island (even though it was a long time ago, PI didn't exist at launch).

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Will start out by saying that I have read the whole thread. I like the idea of improving the current raids to make them a little more interactive. Currently, it's a bore-fest when a raid happens; sirens sound, heroes clamor to the nearest "hill" in the zone, Rikti beam in, everyone begins seeing the "Rikti-Raid: PowerPoint Edition" version of the raid, everyone hits as many AoE powers as they can for 15 minutes, done. Blah. I did it for the badges once. That's about it. Same as the zombies.

But, your suggestion forces me into a game world which I have no control over the outcome. Why? Because I'm logged off, and the raids can occur, and no one is around to turn them away. When I login, I'm forced into a Rikti conquered zone with no end in sight (until server reset or folks take a proactive fight to reclaim the zones).

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If they're maintaining a server that's actually completely empty, then it ought to be shut down, if only for financial considerations.

Of course, I don't believe that would ever happen, so it's a ridiculous argument to say the raids couldn't be stopped.

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Mustering up enough folks to take on the raids is subjective and anecdotal at best. I've been on servers and at times where a raid occurs, and no one (READ: not a single hero) begins organizing groups or goes to the local "hill". It happens, it can happen and it will happen. It's not due to underpopulation. It can be due to timing (i.e. at 1:37PM when a majority of people are working, during the wee hours of the morning, during a national political speech that everyone is watching, etc.), it can be due to unwillingness or care to participate, etc. Saying that the probability is small is anecdotal with no fact to back it up, based solely on the fact that you are suggesting to implement a new mechanic that no one has: played, tested, re-tested, reviewed, etc. Just for an anecdotal observation, I was just logged in and was in Boomtown. Not a single hero, none. Does that mean the server should be shutdown? No, means the zone stinks and no one goes there. Making a mandatory participation Rikti event in a stinky zone doubles the stinkiness.

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And AGAIN, I tell you the raids would STILL be temporary, they would STILL be one zone at a time. You could STILL leave the zone temporarily until it was done while those interested could participate. NONE of these things would change. Only the implementation of HOW the raids are realized would change.

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Under all of your suggestions thus far, using the word "temporary" is completely false. Temporary implies that something is taking place and will cease to end at some point through no interaction of my own. Having the server reset being the "cease to end point" is not a solution though. The current implementation of the Rikti raids end within 15 minutes of start, whether I go out there guns blazing or sit in the CH toiling away. As someone else noted, they would need something as similar. Your statement of "temporary" hinges on the fact that someone else will come along and do it for me. That is not guaranteed, as said above and by many others. Granted, if this were to happen, in the beginning most likely all the raids would be jam packed, because most likely there will be some badge or shiny associated with it. After a bit, just like any other event in this game, it will lose it's luster and no one will want to do it. Then you fall into the scenarios as mentioned by everyone else; login, zone overtaken, "Ugh, now I have to spend the first 20 minutes or whatever of my night dealing with this. Sucks I only have an hour to play." I, and a large majority of the posters in this thread, don't want that scenario. This game is built around the concept of "casual play", meaning that if I only have 15 minutes to play, I can actually login and make some progress. You suggestion presents the possibility of denying me that.

Now, suggestions to be helpful... honestly, I like the proposed idea of the dynamic objective points and the in-zone NPC's helping (sidenote: what about zones without NPC's? Boomtown? Perez? Crey's?). Throw Vanguard assistance in to taste. The change I would make to have the suggestion meet what everyone else is saying is, if the Rikti successfully take the zone, they don't immediately move on to another. They remain in the zone for some amount of time (say 10-15 minutes like the current raid) with a couple objective points to allow some control by the players to retake the zone. If they aren't defeated in 10-15 minutes, the Rikti port out, their objectives disappear, the zone returns to normal and they move on to some other zone. That retains the feeling of a mass invasion in all zones, but gives the players who don't want to participate their way out as well. This makes it, as it currently is, a minor inconvenience to me if it's happening in the zone I need to do stuff in.

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Atlas Park-6 (Gnome infestation)

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This suggestion of a gnome infestation has so much merit, it needs to be it's own post.

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First, thanks all for the responses and info. It was very helpful.

One thing I have noticed (and something I should have checked before) is that the average damage is a bit lower than Fireball (~54 compared to ~75).

I just respec'd into Fissure and have some questions on usage. I'm a little confused on how the "AoE" portion of the power happens. Is it centered around the target? Is it centered around me? Is it a cone towards the target? I've read over the power description a couple times and all I see is "Close (Targeted AoE)".

Any help is much appreciated.

Edited as I didn't bother to look which is which before I posted.

Well, I waited like 5-10 minutes, then posted. And then they come back online (or whatever happened was fixed). I am impatient I guess.