je_saist

* * *
*pafs Tex wif a snowball!*

it won't.

The list of 5670's I listed earlier are going to be the best bang / buck / watt, but they are also $30 over the users price range.

The $50 market is basically full of junk. There's pretty much nothing in there that is going to be that much more powerful than an integrated chipset.

Forefinger: I'm going to be honest. What you should be looking for is to spend a bit more money than $50.

Bzzt:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...27&postcount=1

Already been one public recall of the 300M series. Are you sure you want to say it is a solid card?

Laptops and notebooks were the only places where thermals really mattered, and where the end-customer ultimately noticed an issue.

For the most part a chip that is running 5degrees, 10degrees, or even 20degrees hotter than intended really doesn't make a whole lot of difference in an desktop computer where system components all exhaust their heat into a central location. A desktop chassis has to remove the heat from the hard-drives, central processor, motherboard, and everything else from basically an air tank. Desktop chassis have an additional factor that weight really doesn't matter. Yes, somebody will notice when a desktop chassis weighs more than 50lbs. For the most part though, most users won't really notice the difference between a case that weighs 10lbs and a case that weighs 20lbs... because they won't be moving the cases on a regular basis.

A laptop / notebook doesn't have that luxury. Heat needs to be exhausted through sometimes very limited devices. There isn't space in a laptop to have a massive copper or aluminum heatsink, and that means laptop vendors have to very specific heat measurements in order to make sure their product has the capability to exhaust the heat the system can generate with a specific weighted envelope.

This is where Nvidia's "admission of wrongdoing" is a big deal. Nvidia flat out lied to OEM's and ODM's over the actual thermal properties of Geforce chips. The OEM's and ODM's built their laptops against a lower thermal output than the chips actual thermal output.

Now, why did Nvidia lie? Well, lots of reasons, ranging from being confident that the manufacturing partner's (TMSC or UMC) second generation chips would have the advertised thermal properties, and that issues with the first generation of chips would be written off as teething issues. Then there was / is the problem of AMD, whose products were / are cheaper to manufacturer with better performance per watt ratios.


Now, Nvidia's thermal issues have reared themselves, in quite an ugly manner, with the recent Starcraft game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCra...ngs_of_Liberty

Blizzard posted the following on their message board:

The problem is, this line, is complete and absolute bull excrement, which even Blizzard admitted:

All consumer processors are sold by maximum enabled clockspeed. You buy an AMD processor at 2.8ghz, you expect it to run at 2.8ghz. You buy an Intel processor at 2.8ghh, you expect it to run at 2.8ghz. You buy a RadeonHD 5850 at 850mhz, you expect it to run at 850mhz. You buy a GTX 480 at 700mhz, you expect it to run at 700mhz.

The maximum clockspeed also means there is a hard-limit to how many instructions a chip can possibly compute at one time, also known as instructions per clock, or I.P.C. The hard limit of any chip's I.P.C. means there is a hard-limit to the amount of work a processor can accomplish. Since there is a hard-limit to the amount of work the processor can accomplish, there is a hard-limit to how much heat a processor can put off.

This hard-limit is referred to as Maximum TPD, or Maximum Thermal Design Power. Chip vendors generally tell the OEM's and ODM's what the Maximum TPD's for their chips are, allowing the OEM's and ODM's to properly prepare and manufacture appropriate chassis for the chip products. Some chip vendors, such as Intel and AMD/ATi go a step further, producing their own reference heat-sink designs, and cutting down the research and design work required for an OEM or ODM.

Under most default circumstances then, outside of direct user-intervention, processors should not experience a situation where the chip can overheat.

Now, in all fairness, The Starcraft II overheating fallout wasn't entirely Nvidia's fault. There were quite a few users whose problem basically boiled down to dust clogging up the air-flow.

That being said, Nvidia cards were associated with the Starcraft II overheating incident for a different reason. I've been stating for several months now that I would only buy from a few specific Nvidia vendors because I knew the other vendors were using cheaper parts.

The market reality is, since AMD's 3x00 series RadeonHD parts, manufacturing a RadeonHD board to Sapphire produced Factory spec cost a lot less to produce a Geforce card with equivalent performance. Over the years Nvidia's board partners have been shaving costs by using less mylar layers in the printed circuit boards, more aluminum instead of copper in the heatsink, lower quality capacitors, lower quality digital to analog converters, lower quality memory, and other such cost saving measures.

It got to the point in the latter part of 2009 that Nvidia started having to pay vendors to take stocks of Geforce GTX 200 chipsets in order to stay market competitive. Eventually Nvidia was forced to end of life the Geforce GTX 200 series, but not before loosing exclusive Partner XFX, and starting the eventual bankruptcy of exclusive partner BFG.

It wasn't really a surprise to anybody who had been tracking Nvidia's problems that the thermal issues with the laptop / notebook market were eventually going to spill into the Desktop realm... and Starcraft II was one of the first games where Nvidia's out of control thermal issues nearly bit them in the rear end ... again.


Now, as to this specific class-action lawsuit settlement listed here, the list of affected computers does not affect all of the known to be recalled computers containing Nvidia parts: http://nvidiasettlement.com/affectedmodels.html

I suspect that the list of computers in this class action lawsuit are likely the ones where the lawyers are confident that they can prove Nvidia was guilty of possible criminal or civil liabilities.

There's also a tagline on the settlement:

So, even if you do try to participate in the class-action settlement, there seems to be a broiler-plate clause allowing somebody to dismiss at their leisure which computers are illegible for action under the class-action.

Technically, I'm not entirely sure that is entirely legal, but whatever. I didn't ever buy one of the exploding laptops, so it's not really my dog in the fight outside of trying to keep those who are / were / will be involved informed on the background of the cases.

Depends, first of all, we need to define what runs CoH well means.

• If you mean, runs CoH in Ultra Mode Graphics, you are going to need a new power supply, and will be spending over $100 for a GPU
• If you mean, runs CoH well, but doesn't have to do Ultra Mode, then you probably won't need a new power supply and can spend under $100

If you aren't sure what the Ultra Mode options are, read this thread: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=219534

Thing is, even medium range graphics cards from several years back will happily run City of Heroes in high resolutions and high quality levels with the Classic rendering mode (blob shadows, no reflections, no ambient occlusion). Even a Radeon 9600 XT from 2003 would push CoH in 1024*768 with decent particle counts and draw distances.

So you don't need to go spending mega-bucks to get good non-ultra performance. Basically any mid-range part from that 2003 9600 XT up to today is going to run circles around your integrated Geforce.

Now, if I was my money on the line, I'd go with the RadeonHD 5670, as it will happily boot and run at full clocks on 250 watt peak power supplies, and you can pick one up for under $75 if you shop the mail-in-rebates.

The Role-player base. Thing is Penny, there never was a strong PvP player-base to begin with. One of the factors a lot of the vocal PvPer's hate me for is that I remember things they'd rather not be remembered.

Such as the Old Hollows driving more player traffic on each server than all of the open PvP zones combined. The Hollows Revamp was in Issue 12, long before the PvP rebalance in I13. Keep in mind that the role-player base on several servers was saturating Pocket D to the point of creating multiple instances.

Something else is entirely skipped over here, which is a complete inversion of how the the reward system functioned. A lot of players will work in-game content to get specific items for role-play purposes, such as running KHTF for the hat, or the Freedom Phalanx Task Forces for the epaulets, or the Hess Task Force for the loaded dice. Many of these unlockable costume parts and emotes were rewards for playing through existing content.

From a numerical standpoint, most players who have run a task force once, will run it multiple times once the primary reward was over. There are exceptions, such as the Sewer and Caverns Trials that most players would run only once.


In order to encourage players to participate in PvP the developers have been adding various rewards to the PvP system, trying to appeal to the different player cliques spread across the game. Most of these attempts have been outright failures:

• Many of the "badging" players as defined by players who have sought out and obtained all location badges, all history badges, and defeat badges, generally never did the PvP content again after obtaining the badge
• A significant amount of the player base that has extensive badge collections do not have the PvP oriented badges at all
• A significant number of in-game farmers work the rewards system by dual-boxing or triple-boxing rather than participating in active player combat.

From a purely numerical point of view the rewards added to the PvP system have failed to retain players who have participated in the content, as well as having failed to interest new players who are looking at City of Heroes as a game worthy of spending money on.

Way back when City of Heroes DVD collection launched it contained a printed comic featuring the characters of Scott Kurtz's PvP-Online interacting with City of Heroes. As far as I'm aware that comic has not been made available for reprint through an online source.

Back then that comic glossed over how players already were using existing powers to fit their roleplay. Power Customization extends the level of control players have over how their avatars interact with other avatars.

Does everybody role-play with their power customization changes? No.

Do a larger number of players leverage customization for their role-playing purposes than the player population that participates in PvP? From a purely numerical standpoint, this is probably a yes.

Could I prove it without diving through all of the chat-logs produced and cross-referencing those logs against the player traffic figures? Oh no. Even then, I'd have to have very specific and fine-grained detail to actually prove any kind of data point. So, this is effectively a moot point. Power Customization is it's own thing that impacts pretty much everybody, regardless of what the players actually use it for.

We noticed. The disconnect is pretty obvious between what Steampunkette is on about, and what you are on about. Now, could I explain what Steampunkette said in a way that would make sense to you? I'm not sure I can.

I can go back to empirical evidence that is known. Long ago there wasn't a Pocket D. There was Paragon Dance Party in City of Heroes, and then the Monkey Fight Club in City of Villains. These were largely role-play only sections of the game, and outside of the Council Invasion in Issue 3 have never experienced general combat.

The Paragon Dance Party zone drew so much player traffic that Pocket D was created, as well as the new canon lore character DJ Zero. The new Pocket D also included the Monkey Fight Club.

So, a role-play only zone drives enough player-base it creates a completely new zone and a completely new content character.

Versus... what has PvP introduced to the game just based on player-traffic alone?

Oh. yeah. Nothing. Everything PvP has introduced has been based on lack of player interaction.



At this point, I do realize that I'm rehashing pretty much everything I've ever said before, and that anybody who actually bothers to listen to the guy who actually has proven, multiple times, that he knows what he's talking about, already full-well knows the arguments and counter-arguments.

I also realize that anybody who can't figure out basic game design for themselves, and haven't picked up on the lessons from past posts, are probably not going to listen or learn the lessons this time either. Which leads to the saying throwing pearls to swine.

So, maybe I need to take a different approach since the calmly logical and forcing reality down readers throats hasn't worked in the past.

Okay, yes. NCSoft needs to hire a PvP developer.

They need to hire me.

* * *
The term offender has been in use for far longer than the Inherent power change. Offender, for the most part, was used to refer to a player who sacrificed powers for team-mates in favor of powers for themselves. For example:

• An Empath without Heal Other, Absorb Pain, Clear Mind, Fortitude, or Adrenalin Boost.
• A sonic without Sonic Barrier, Sonic Haven, Disruption Field, or Clarity
• A Cold Dom without Ice Shield, Glacial Shield, or Frostwork

Players would use the power choices freed up by not taking team-mate oriented powers in order to take powers that buffed themselves, such as the leadership pool, the fighting pool; or for powers that had good IO slotting capabilities, such as the concealment pool.

Now, I'm not going to make any calls on whether or not playing a Defender as a damage class is a good idea. There's a reason the attacks are a secondary set.

I would recommend that if you want to attempt to play a Defender for damage, you go with Cold Dom / Ice Blastfor the strong debuffs, opportunities to rack up on recharge buffs, and hard-controls.

I would also recommend that you keep a dual-build handy with the team-oriented powers ready.

That pretty much answers the question on why you don't see fly on any of the builds getting tossed around on the forums. Most of the builds posted here are not for casual players, and many of the builds neglect factors such as fun, roleplay concept, or character theme in favor of maximum invention origin and stat performance at all costs. This is also "why" you'll see lots of threads of players asking for fly to be changed to ignore the soft-factors of travel risk management in favor of pure statistical performance in a spread-sheet.

Does that mean you should not take fly? I don't think so. Fly, as a power, is pretty much useful to every class with a ranged component. It's also not a bad travel power for melee classes with anti-mez's for those who don't build with IO's in mind.

In the past, armor sets with no knockback protection (Dark and Fire) pretty much needed Acrobatics, and it was a safe presumption that these armor types with fly were probably players you didn't want to interact with. With the defense set and resist set knockback protection IO's being relatively cheap (at 75 regular merits) pretty much anybody with a dark or fire armor can easily pick up some protection against knockback and be free to take the fly power pool.

If you do take fly, do be aware that it is the slowest travel power in the game. The slow speed is balanced against the risk of using the power. Fly allows you to avoid pretty much all enemies when traveling. Fly is also lag resistant, so if you have a rubber-banding or a re-synch, your chances of suddenly winding up in a mob as the server places your character where the server thinks it should be are pretty much nil.

* * *
Now, in all fairness, as a /dark, if you are able to gain a significant amount of defense, the combination of strong to-hit debuffs will make it difficult for enemies to hit you.

Thing is, dark does a pretty good job of flooring enemies to-hit values to begin with. E.G. my own Robotics / Dark mastermind was capable of taking on con-red Elite bosses just on SO's alone. Between all of dark's debuffs, well, defense just isn't that valuable.

If it was my influence on the line, I'd be looking at builds that focused on Accuracy and Recharge. /Dark gets no defense debuff component, and your base heal depends on an accuracy check to heal. Do the math yourself.

Recharge can also help you sustain being nasty at higher levels with the Epic Power-Set proliferation, Soul Drain, Dark Consumption, and Soul Transfer are all corruptor powers. A Soul-Drained mob coupled with, a mob with lowered resistances through tar-patch, inferno, and a sky high recharge? Again, do the math yourself.

The canon lore reason is that players are already part of a SuperGroup in Praetoria: The Powers Division.

From a story-standpoint, Cole and his lieutenants as well as Calvin Scott and the Resistance, would not accept the player's character actively joining in a group that is un-related or un-affiliated with their own movements. The storyline of Praetoria is about how the player, through the Powers Division, deals with the various factions of Praetoria.

Introducing the ability for players to join existing Groups, or form their own groups, would in effect be saying the story content doesn't matter. Sorry. It does.

The canon lore reason isn't the only one, since not everybody cares about the story. There are several technical problems, such as the player's ability to change factions at the drop of a hat in Praetoria. Changing factions in Primal Earth is a huge deal, with players loosing access to their bases, and effectively being put on probation from their group.

Going back to the story, by the time the player completes any one of the 4 faction arcs, they'll have good reasons to go to either the Rogue Isles or Paragon City. How exactly would a Hero Super-Group handle somebody who is playing a Resistance Warden deciding to go to the Rogue Isles and becoming a villain? How exactly would a Villain-Group handle a Loyalist Power guy out to advance their own self deciding they could get bigger press in Paragon City>

This is just one of the massive technical hurdles that stand in the way of giving SG access to a Praetorian. How does the system handle somebody who changes sides?

And now, like the Nostalgia Critic, I guess it's time to say hello to that big elephant just sitting in the corner. I'm going to try to be as polite as I can when I say this:

If your character not earning prestige from 1 to 20 is such a really big deal that you feel you have to make a forum thread complaining about it: You have officially crossed the line of what is right and what is wrong to complain about.

Get Some Perspective Please.

Players still keep earning Prestige at level 50. Players still keep earning prestige while exemplared. Missing the prestige gain from 1-20 is not, in any way shape, form, or mental construction, a big deal.

Okay. Elephant dealt with, onwards!

Basically, you get put on probation. You loose access to the Group, and you stop earning prestige. Any prestige you have is put into escrow.

If you change alignments back without quitting your Group, all of your prestige, as well as rank, should still be same.

You cannot join an Opposite Group during an alignment change. If you are in a SuperGroup and you change alignment to Villain, you cannot join a Villain-Group until you quit your Supergroup.


The developers did state at the last event (PAX I think) that Cross-Faction groups were something being tabled. Implementing cross-faction groups requires massive amounts of data-base work, as well as complete rewrites to several existing sections of code. The amount of work needed means there is no schedule on when Cross-Faction groups will be implemented, and a strong emphasis needs to be made that Cross-Faction groups may never be implemented due to the work required on the current system.

Short version: servers don't work like that.

• First: Back in 2003 NCSoft cut a deal with Microsoft to exclusively use NT5 64bit for all of it's hosting OS needs. Given that NCSoft has not publically cut a new contract with Microsoft for any NT6 operating systems, nor cut a contract with a traditional Linux or Unix vendor, the assumption has to be made that NCSoft is still running NT5 64bit as the background server for it's games.
  
  One of the factors to keep in mind is that Microsoft's server presence is pretty low, with everybody from Netcraft to Top500 Supercomputers knocking Microsoft's ability to provide stable software that requires little regular maintenance. There's a reason why major financial institutions like the London Stock Exchange, and many Wall-Street brokerages in the US, don't use Microsoft products. There's also a reason that most other MMO providers (such as Blizzard and EA / Mythic) generally run their MMO's on *nix type systems.
  
  Assuming that NCSoft does not have a migration plan to get their games off of Microsoft products and onto a *nix system, the regular maintenance required for NCSoft games is going to continue. You can wish and wish all you want for that maintenance to go away... but unless the server background tech changes, it isn't.
  
  
• Second: because the maintenance required for systems running on what are assumable NTFS formatted drives, rather than fragmentation resistant file systems such as EXT, BTRFS, or even Reiser, is in and of itself time consuming, there is no way to run both a patch and verify session at the same time a disk-check and verify is going on.
  
  Seriously. Try running a chkdks /f /r on YOUR primary hard-drive while trying to use the Operating System.
  
  
• Third: To spin the rumor-mill for a minute, there is some evidence that the background technology could be changing. One of the hot-rumors floating around is that Infogrames is trying to play nasty over NCsoft's usage of a Cryptic developed engine, reportedly because Infogrames does not understand why their super-hero MMO failed to bury NCSoft's Superhero MMO in the marketplace and figures that if Infogrames can't kill the competition fairly, they'll do it legally.
  
  It has been suggested that NCSoft has authorized the development of a new processing engine, or is in the process of porting another existing engine to be used as the processing engine for CoH. It has been suggested that Issue 20 could be bringing a version of CoH backed by Valve's updated Source engine, and native code clients for Windows NT6, Windows NT5, Apple OSX, and Linux. A new processing engine could mean a new background server system, presumably one that is based on *nix type technology. Is this any of this true? I don't know. Again, this is entirely spinning the rumor-mill.
  
  Moving to a *nix type OS to host the game would allow use of a fragmentation resistant file-system, and lessen the amount of maintenance required to keep the game in a functional state. Again, I don't know if NCSoft is actually going to pursue such a strategy. (watch me be right and have the devs cursing at me again)

... when you go searching the forums, remember these two important points:

• The Majority of the game does not use the forums in anyway. Based on numerical calculations this majority is defined as 85%~95% of the playerbase figuring a sustained paying subscriber base of 60k~120k versus the number of players listed for membership of the forum cross-referenced against the number of players with active posts and post-dates in the forums.
• The majority of the players active on the forums sharing build advice are hardcore min-maxers who must use the most powerful sets possible to achieve the highest possible performance result. This majority is defined as no percentage as it's based on perception and threads seen.

The Sonic Resonance power-set doesn't have that many spaces for racking up IO bonus's. I've got an ice / sonic controller that took all of the sonic powers outside of sonic cage and sonic repulsion.

Of the powers that are left, Sonic Siphon, Disruption Field, and Clarity take no IO sets at all. Sonic Barrier, Sonic Haven, and Sonic Dispersion all take resistance sets only... and most players agree the resistance IO's have some of the worst set bonus's unless you 6 slot the powers out for the defensive bonus... and that's a whole thread of it's own. That just leaves, in the powers I took, with Liquefy offering the only power with any IO sets that might be useful for min/maxing.

Does this mean that you shouldn't take Sonic? Oh Hell No. It's a GREAT Powerset. It's basically a one-trick pony in this aspect, since it's largest debuff effect is a resistance debuff, but even power-house debuff sets like Cold Domination and Radiation Emission will struggle to match the sustained resistance debuffs sonic can manage. Even if you get cold-domination to the point where you'll be stacking heat-loss and sleet on a regular basis, you'll still have a lower average resistance debuff compared to Sonic.

The power-set is a bit more practical than the Force Field standby, notably because it combines team protections with a debuff, rather than team-protections with nothing.

Now, would I roll an Elec Control / Sonic?

If I was intending to spend a significant amount of time soloing, then no, I wouldn't.

Elec control tends to be low on directed damage. This, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. Elec Control is very effective at esoteric controls with a wide range of powers to keep enemies in check. As Sonic offers pretty much no offensive capabilities, and it's resistance debuff probably isn't going to be enough to off-set the low damage of elec-control. If you are soloing a lot, this will make Elec / Sonic an annoying pain in the rear end since you won't have anything to use 3 of your sonic powers on (Sonic Barrier, Sonic Haven, and Disruption Field) until you hit 32.

If I was intending to team on a regular, it would be a considered combination.

No. Nor do they have the same damage cap as of I18.

Brutes damage cap as of I18 is now 775% while Scrappers Damage cap is 500%. The scrappers Critical abilities mean that they'll be doing 500% x2, or 1000%, damage on a critical strike. Granted, players will rarely ever see these combat figures without a kinetics along that is pumping fully saturated fulcrum-shifts.

The intent is that when running in what is referred to as the extremes, the melee classes line up as follows:

• scrappers do the most sustained damage of the melee classes with the lowest sustained survivability
• stalkers do the most burst damage of the melee classes with the lowest survivability
• brutes do less burst damage than scrappers, but are more survivable
• tanks do less damage than everybody else, but are the most survivable

The indication has been made, although not officially confirmed, that some of the Incarnate encounters will be counting on teams being able to press into these extremes. In most cases, such extremes can be met by teams running on just SO's.

... ....

I really have no smart-mouthed retort for that since Wendy, Marvin, and Dunder Mutt were the direct precursors to the Wonder Twins and Blip... I mean Gleek. Technically, the Hanna-Barbera production team learned from their mistake, as the follow-up trio were nowhere near as bad as the first trio.

That being said, the second go-around of wimpy hero sidekicks for the Super-Friends annoy me more than Marvin, Wanda, and Dunder Mutt. Mostly this is because Hanna-Barbera, after figuring out the trio was a bad idea and was turning viewers off, instead of creating entirely new characters simply raided their back catalog... specifically the 1966 Space Ghost show.

Space Ghost's two sidekicks were Jan and Jayce, and they had a pet monkey named Blip. The Wonder Twins were named Zan and Jayna, and their pet monkey was named Gleek.

I mean... seriously, Hanna-Barbera wasn't even trying. They just took the side-kick trio from Space Ghost, colored Blip blue, and called it a day. The sheer abject laziness of the shows producers, neverminding DC signing off on the project, just annoys the daylights out of me.

Basically, the current version was a compromise reached between the developers and the playerbase over how the power should behave. Given that there was already a long, drawn-out, and frankly ugly, war between the players and developers over how the rage power should work, and how the player should be affected, it isn't likely that Castle, Sunstorm, or Synapse are going to be open towards revamping the power... yet again.

You are free to make any suggestions you like about the power, but be-aware that pretty much any suggestion you make that would successfully retain trading off the damage and to-hit boost for a player debuff has more than likely already been made, and already discussed to the point of nausea. You might also need to be made aware that suggestions have been made to implement a version of Rage without a player debuff, and that those suggestions have been flat rejected.

*punts the puppeh*

Anyways, on the topic of the first response, I really don't understand the issue with the Hero Choice Mission. In fact, I don't think Captain Moodswing played the same level 50 alignment mission I played.

In the alignment mission I played, my avatar went to go turn herself into the police. While turning herself in she was attacked by an assassin. After defeating the Assassin, and allowing the assassin to live, my avatar then went after her double.

My avatar fought my double to a standstill, defeating her double as well, and engaged in a parley... allowing the double to live instead of finishing the double.

The villain assassin suddenly struck, killing the double right in front of my avatar, and successfully getting away... showing that my villain adversary was in fact competent in her own way. My avatar also realized that the Assassin probably wasn't even trying in the original fight, having encounted my avatar on my avatar's playing field, rather than the assassin trying to engage me on her playing field.

I'm left with the thoughts that had the assassin engaged me properly, I would be the one that was dead. I'm also left to ponder the implications of my Heroic acts. The fact that I left the assassin alive and that the assassin was able to strike again, is entirely my own fault. Did I ultimately pick the right choice?

The events described here:
That is not what happens. I'm sorry. That is not what happens.

If you think that is what happens, you need to replay the mission and understand the context of the actions that occur. That statement is from somebody that either read about the mission, and didn't actually play the mission; or from somebody who played through the mission, but didn't actually bother reading either the NPC chat, the mission text, or the mission clues.