je_saist

A couple days ago I posted that Nvidia had released a preview OpenGL 3.3 driver... which really didn't mean much since Nvidia doesn't actually have any OpenGL 3.3 graphics cards on the market.

Well. AMD's responded. They've now got an OpenGL 3.3... and OpenGL 4.0... driver out for preview, based on the 10.3 driver release. OpenGL 3.3 is supported across the entire RadeonHD lineup, and OpenGL 4.0 is supported on RadeonHD 5xxx series cards.

The driver release is for Windows NT6, Windows NT5, and Linux: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...ew-driver.aspx

*glances over at Television and wonders if this is the driver set he and Kim have been using*

Given that the underlying processing engine is not changing, just the graphics settings, it's a good possibility that Ultra Mode is more Graphics Processor bound than Processor Bound.

ergo: you might want to look at upgrading your graphics card.

Feline Fellowship on Triumph celebrated their 5th year anniversary shortly after the game celebrated it's 5th year anniversary... however only one or two of the original members are still with the group... and certain amount of drama lead to several other elder players leaving the group, including the group's prestige earning players.

The chipset is a Mobile Intel® 915PM Express

Chipset drivers can be downloaded here: http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-011594.htm

your post reminds me of a certain movie review by The Nostalgia Critic. This one I think to be precise: http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/vid...st-for-camelot

The Nostalgia Critic reviews the movie Quest for Camelot, and is angered by the constant non-sequitur events the viewer of the movie endures. As the film progresses even further into the depths of just doing "stuff" with no motivation, fore-shadowing, or even basic development, the Nostalgia Critic's anger increases. Finally, The Nostalgia Critic explodes, exclaiming EXPLAIN MOVIE! EXPLAIN?!?! while being accompanied with the visuals of video feeds from various explosive tests.

In the same way, I can't help but read your post with the same thought. There's absolutely no explanation. Just a simple subject line, and then a post with one word repeated 3 times.

The question is raised then, why is being unable to work enhancements will in a defeated state "Lame" to begin with? Does the prevention somehow go against the story of the play at that point in time, when you are defeated and helpless? Would not it make logical sense that in a defeated state you would be at your enemies mercy?

If you have to make some sort of enhancement change that is absolutely critical after you died, what's wrong with going to the hospital. Seriously, is hitting Hospital or Base really that hard to do?

I'm sorry, but your post makes absolutely no sense, and I doubt you have any actual justification for it outside of not being able to check your combat numbers while in a defeated sate.

You'll need to jump through some hoops for this laptop.

Typical ATi drivers provided by hardware vendors lack OpenGL support. While AMD is now "officially" supporting Laptops with the current Catalyst release (10.3), they are only supporting RadeonHD 2000 series onwards.

Previous graphics cards were retired a full calendar year ago with the Cataylst 9.3 release.

***

So, the first thing you'll need to do is get a graphics driver to support your Radeon x300. That would be the 9.3 driver: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownloa...?&lang=English

Second, you'll need the Mobility modder to actually install it: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/modtool.php

Follow the instructions on the mobility modder page to install the driver.

I've been noticing a lot of threads flying about on here promoting different methods of fighting in-game inflation. To set the base for this, lets define inflation in the game.

Inflation is defined as the cost of in-game goods in terms of influence / infamy as requested from other live players utilizing the auction house system.

Okay, with inflation defined, why is inflation occurring? Well, one of the simple facts behind in-game inflation is that the developers have very little direct control over the player-base's influence / infamy earning abilities. Some players can afford to farm for days or weeks on end, racking up huge amounts of influence or infamy. Some players specifically create certain archtypes and choose powers that make mass combat with no bosses quick and simple. Some players are able to get lucky with the drop system, get a rare recipe or item, and then list that item for a huge amount of money. Some players also sell items for more than the in-game influence / infamy cap... something the developers have commented on as a direct abuse of the system.

One of the big problems with many of the I have solved inflation with my solution here... such as the arguments for apartments or statues, or any so called influence-sink, is that these ideas are based on the idea that the in-game farmers care about such influence sinks. Such suggestions are based on the very flawed idea that the player base's activities are fully predictable and that all of the player base will agree to utilize one particular influence sink or another. Such suggestions also conveniently ignore the fact that short of permanent bans, nothing is really going to stop the abusers from abusing or finding new exploits. Case in point: abusers racing to find rapid leveling exploits in architect entertainment, and the developers racing to close off the leveling exploit holes.

Influence sinks do not solve the base problem of inflation. The prices of goods on the WentWorths market are driven by what each individual player lists their auctioned item for.

Now, there are various methods that allow players to operate around the insanity of the auction-system. Architecture Entertainment tickets, for example, can be used to pick up rare salvage pieces. Ouroboros arcs can be used to locate a specific type of enemy in a specific level range, and the enemies can be farmed for particular low level salvage drops. Task Forces and Strike Forces generate merits, which can be turned around and utilized to buy a variety of items directly.

While I don't have any direct proof, anecdotal evidence from the rising prices of goods on the Auction House and chats recorded from various server badge / grouping channels indicates that a large percentage of the player base utilizes these external methods in order to bypass the players abusing the Auction House system.

So, with this in mind, solutions to the problem of inflation need to meet certain criteria:

1. A solution to the rising inflation of Auction House goods must be equally available to all players on a consistent basis. Solutions based on luck of the drops or time played are inherently unfair to the casual player or may only have 4 hours a week to spend in the game, or for regular players who might run into problems with work scheduling or other outside issues.
2. A solution to the rising inflation must be neutral to all alignments. Devising a solution that only benefits one alignment will do nothing but anger a significant amount of the player base.
3. A solution to the rising inflation cost should be non-farmable, or have decreasing values in farm environments. A system should encourage players to... play the game... and not simply "work the system" for maximum benefit.
4. A solution must keep in mind that the vast majority of the game needs to be balanced against Single Origin builds, not tweaked IO builds.
5. A solution does not need to encourage players to participate in the Auction House System

****

With these criteria in mind, the answer is fairly simple.

Increase the drop-rates on Merits, invention recipes, and Salvage so that more players can have more items to put into the Auction House, and be able to fill the market demand.

The simply answer is complicated, again, by the player base. Improvements or bonus's to the drop system will simply cause the abusers to just abuse the system more. There's no guarantee that increased drops would enable the casual player base to catch up and have access to good io sets and in-game items without also partaking in farming and market-gaming.

Now, I don't mean for this to be a simply hopeless point of view on the state of the game's economy, or what passes for an economy. Remember, it's a game. It doesn't actually have to follow real-life rules.

So, with that in mind, This is my opinion:

the best way to combat the auction-house inflation is to continue on the development path of removing the Auction House as a critical part of the game, or as a critical part in fitting an avatar with IO set enhancements

Now... how exactly can this be accomplished? If I was in War Witch's high-heeled stiletto pumps, I would start looking at putting some value back into being in a Super Group or Villain Group.

• Players who are in a supergroup and in supergroup mode get a bonus modifier on mission completion drops to pull from a higher drop pool. However, the more missions that are completed in a successive time period decrease the modifier bonus.

  To set some base numbers for this, let's assume a mission completion time of 30 minutes. Every 30 minutes a player in SG mode is given an auto-bonus to raise their mission completion reward one drop tier. With a time-limit in place, players with speed-run focused characters can't knock out radio or Ouroborous missions and "game" the system for better drops.

• Players who in a supergroup and in supergroup mode get a bonus modifier to drop salvage that is needed in recipes they have.

  The implementation of this is as such: When reward drops are rolled, the system does a quick check to see what recipes are in your inventory, and what salvage those recipes require. If the enemy you defeated has a droppable salvage that will work in your owned recipes, that salvage is given a higher weight chance to drop. Okay, in all fairness such an implementation might create a huge backlog on the server with constant table-look ups and comparisons... I don't know. However, if the servers could handle the extra calculations, this would drastically help players get the right salvage from the right enemy mobs without having to farm / grind.

• Add Purple recipes to an unlockable Super Group Vendor.

  Now, I know that the development staff isn't too keen on assigning merit values to Purple recipes. That being said, I'm always in favor of more content for the game. So, my proposal is pretty simple. Super Group / Villain Group members can unlock a Went Worths / Black Market Contact who assigns a Task Force / Strike Force to look in on shipping problems that the Auction Houses are having. Completing this Task Force unlocks a special Base vending item where Purple Recipes can be purchased for merits.

• Allow Super Group members to set a flag for class item only non-proc drops

  The implementation here is based on a simple white-list / black-list. Players in a Supergroup can choose to set a flag to only get recipe drops that boost the powers they actually have. So tanks, scrappers, brutes, and stalkers would get recipe drops with equal weighted values towards melee attacks, defenses, and resistances. Blasters would get recipe drops weighted towards ranged, pbaoe, and mezzes. Dominators would only get recipe drops with higher weights on control and mez recipes, with lesser weights on ranged, pbaeo, and melee damages. Controllers and Masterminds would get high weights on pet damage, control, mezzes, buffs, and debuffs. Defenders would get high weights on mezzes, buffs, and debuffs, with lower mezzes for ranged damage. Corruptors would get equal weights on buffs, debuffs, ranged, and pbaeo recipes.
  
  The idea is that players who are flagged for specific drops will get recipes that they can actually use. Every tank, scrapper, and blaster whose gotten pacing of the turtle from Katie Hannon knows what I'm on about here.
  
  By separating procs from the blacklist/whitelist, players can't use melee + defense/resist types to farm for valuable procs like Luck of the Gamber 7.5, and controller / corruptor / defender / mastermind types can't farm for Miracle and Numina procs

Now, this list is by no means exhaustive, or that it is the only way that the abuse of the auction-system can be addressed. I think, however, that the suggestions stand as examples on how to address the base issues and problems with the current drop-system in regards to how the whole game operates... rather than directly punishing the player-base, or further segregating the player-base.

Moving increased rewards into a SuperGroup mode gives players more reasons to work together as a team, without having to feel that they need to solo-farm every minute they are logged in and hit up the auction house to buy / sell / trade.

My opinion is that while the longevity of the game is not going to be jeopardized by making the Auction House more, or less, important to the player base, I am of the opinion that trying to establish and maintain a functional economy that depends on the actions of an erratic player base is probably not one of the best ideas going.

I'm also of the opinion that if the development staff doesn't, at least in some way, address the abilities gap between the hard-core players and the casual players, there will be a generation of a World of Warcraft enviroment where players feel they must continually tweak out and optimize a single avatar in order to continue to participate in the high-level challenges and (future) end-game content.

Admittedly, some of this may already be a moot point at the development level. We, as the player base, still don't know what Mr. Miller has up his sleeve in regards to that future end-game content, nor how players can make their avatars more powerful. We also don't know if the development staff actually intends to introduce The Battalion as an enemy group that requires IO's to fight.

Okay... first question. Why on earth do you want to render everything in a zone to begin with?

Second question: do you know what Anti-Aliasing does?

Reason I ask this is because I'm not exactly sure you have a full handle on what AA does, and what the different levels are. To give a background on Filter effects, drop by Bit-Tech and read these two articles: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...ng_filtering/1 :: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...ng_filtering/1

The short version is that the function of Anti-Aliasing is to remove jagged edges from off-angle lines in a rendered 3D scene.

The same function can also be achieved by increasing the amount of pixels available to render in. The more pixels that can be drawn into, the less a rendered display needs to fudge pixel color values where different colored or textured items meet.

In some 3D cases, you can actually over-render a scene, providing too much detail separation: http://www.cgarchitect.com/upclose/V...%20Effects.pdf

***

Now, one of the things to keep in mind about Full Screen Anti-Aliasing... and this is a gross under-simplification of what's going on... is that you are basically rendering the scene in a resolution that is x AA amount times your resolution.

What this means is that if you render an 800*600 screen at 2X Full Screen Anti-Aliasing, you are effectively rendering the scene at (800x2)*(600x2), or 1600*1200, and then down-sampling that image back to 800*600. At some point on a fixed resolution display, you will start to lose obvious benefits of the image being super-sampled in a higher resolution, and then scaled back down.

This super-sampling and scaling back is why Anti-Aliasing typically carries such a high performance penalty. It's only been recently that graphics cards have gotten to the point where they can run medium levels of Anti-Aliasing without actually loosing much in the way of pixel pushing performance.

Case in point: Microsoft's DirectX 10.1 specification basically requires that all DX 10.1 certified graphics cards be able to render a 3D sceen with 4x Anti-Aliasing.

*a paw suddenly appears out from under the ring, grabs Fedor, and drags the Sackthingy under*

*after a few minutes of odd noises from under the ring, Fedor is pushed back out, tied up with pink ribbons, wearing a light blue bonnet and matching bib, with the words "Property of the Princess" on the bib...*

*from the other side of the ring a blue kitten sneaks into the shadows, cackling maniacally*

Kittens can be sneaky and ebil too when required!

The collars and restraints visible on the Ghouls make me think "Escaped Science Project" ... so yeah, I'd buy them as the Praetorian Vhaz.