je_saist

no.

For starters, let's go back to that processor. Thing is, on the San Diego model processor, you are pretty much going to be hamstrung by the single core performance. I've got an Athlon64 Socket 754 processor at 2.1ghz, and I can tell you from personal experience that a RadeonHD 5770 offered pretty much no performance difference over a RadeonHD 4650. You'll run into the single core processor's performance limit long before you run into the graphics card limit.

You can still purchase X2 939 processors, and for relatively cheap. A Socket 939 X2 3800, for example, can be had for only $45. Unless your running lots of applications that can leverage SMT though, this processor will actually be SLOWER than you one already have... as it's base clock speed is 200mhz slower.

A Socket 939 X2 4400, which shares your 3700's 2.2ghz clockspeed, will set you back nearly $100.

Problem is, you could pick up a Quad Core Athlon II in this $100 price-range, not to mention Phenom II X2 or Phenom II X3's as well, all of which will absolutely trash the Socket 939 processor.

Then there's the memory. The difference between the Socket 939 processors and the Socket 754 processors was the memory controller. The 939 was a dual channel model, the Socket 754 was a single channel model. Now I've had a couple of 939 X2 4000's, and I can tell you from personal experience that they were awful at running in Dual Channel mode unless the memory sticks were matched.

More than likely, you aren't going to be able to match the memory in your computer, which means you'll need to purchase complete new sets.

Another problem is that the Atlhon64 architecture is extremely sensitive to memory timings. You could literally lose as much as 8%~13% performance going from DDR 2.2.2.5 to DDR 3.3.3.8, and another 10%~15% performance in any single application just going from DDR 3.3.3.8 to DDR 4.4.4.12.

Memory also isn't that cheap. A matched 2gig DDR 2.3.2.5 set from Gskill will set you back nearly $90. That's kind of a steep price to pay for memory that you won't be able to use in a future computer. If you try and go for 4gb to max the 32bit Xp limit, you'll be spending out a metric ton of cash... for performance that won't actually be there.

The Atlhon64 3700 San Diego only supported DDR 400 (or lower). Back then there was little to no difference between 2gb and 1gb memory simply because the processor and the memory controller weren't really fast enough to leverage that extra memory space. In most cases, two 512meg sticks in Dual Channel mode would offer more performance than 2gb of memory (single stick or two sticks) in non dual channel mode.

Then there's the price itself. For less than the price of 2gb of DDR ram, you could get 4gb of DDR3 memory: THAT IS FASTER.

Then there's the question of the motherboard. Socket AM3 motherboards are cheap. You can get an OEM model for under $50.

So... let's put this together.

It's actually going to cost you more, per hardware component, to upgrade your computer's processor and memory, than it is to get new components.

You'll actually probably save enough money between buying a much better new processor, and much better new faster memory, over upgrading the old processor and memory, to cover the cost of a low-end Socket AM3 motherboard.

So no. Upgrading your current computer is not a wise investment of your money. A new graphics card isn't going to bring you any more performance now, and a new processor or new memory for your computer are not going to be compatible with whatever you buy next.

What's more is that if you go out and buy a new graphics card now, when you actually are ready to drop the money on a new computer, that same amount of cash you spent now will probably have bought you a much more powerful graphics card.

Save your money.

If you are going to go out and buy now, buy a new motherboard, new memory, and new processor. It will cost you near as much the same as buying a new old processor, and new old memory, and you'll actually be able to tell a performance difference, even with a 6600 graphics card.

* * *
Truth be told, on your computer, you'll slam into both a processor bottleneck, and a systems memory bottleneck, long before you slam into a graphics card bottleneck.

First: the memory. City of Heroes will happily chew through 2gb of ram like it was at an all-you-can-eat Pizza Buffet.

Second: The processor. An A64 3700 at 2.2ghz could be one of two different processors. It could be the ADA3700DKA5CF, which was the Socket 939 Toledo model which was originally an Athlon64 X2 with a disabled core; or it could be the ADA3700DAA5BN, which was the Socket 939 San Diego model and only came with one core to begin with. My money is on the ADA3700DAA5BN.

This means that your processor is likely only to be a single core Socket 939 processor. You'd actually get a larger performance benefit buying a Socket 939 X2 processor than you would a new graphics card.


So, I'm going to be brutal here.

You don't have an upgrade path to Ultra-Mode, even in Low.

You need an entire new computer.

yeah. It was the micro-mekman, I think the same model as the veteran pet.

I just want for the Hess TF to fail one of these days and that Giant Robot to suddenly start marching on Striga Port...

The giant mek-men most recently exposed were a targeting test, I think by Synapse, might have been Castle. One of the power guys / UI guys pet projects is getting the "mass targeting" working so things like Rularuu the Ravager can be made playable: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:CoH_Size_Chart.jpg

I don't think, from an official viewpoint, that we've ever been "teased" with fighting a gigantic Council / Column critter outside of Hess's Task Force in Striga.

Quickly slips this on Sharker's hand:



Remember: the Facepaw hurts less than the facepalm!

doh. thanks. fixed.

... if they ever let Frank Miller get his mitts on those two...

These enemies, as well as the Freakshow "Super-Stunner", are common spawns. They have a chance to spawn under any conditions that would spawn a boss for that group to begin with, or in the case of Chi Masters, lewy's.

As to how they affect difficulty...

Well, depends on what you are playing. Characters that are resistant to end-drain and sleep effects won't notice a Super-Stunner. Characters that can be drained of endurance and be put to sleep will notice a Super-Stunner.

Characters that rely on Defense won't notice a Girlfriend from Hell's lash attacks. Characters that rely on resistances will.

Characters with smash / lethal protection won't really feel the effects of a Chi Master. They'll more quickly feel the effects of the damage debuff or other Tsoo debuffs.

And so on and so forth. In most cases the new enemies will make encounters more difficult. It just depends on what you are personally playing, or who you are playing with, when you encounter the enemies.

Well, before you say the highlighted section, you have to look at the history of each issue.

A "Lot" of things started going screwy largely due to two events:

• Event Number One: NCSoft purchasing City of Heroes from Cryptic
• Event Number Two: Developers being more flexible under new ownership.

Something a lot of new, and for that matter old, players miss is that Architecture Entertainment, or the player-created story content system, was originally scheduled for Issue 13. The development team was able to implement player created mission style content largely due to the NCSoft purchase. At the same time, in secret, the developers were also working on what would become the foundations of power customization.

The developers decided, quite close to the intended launch of Issue 13, to push the Player Created Content feature back. The delay was based on player demand for custom enemies. This threw the time-table of both Issue 13, and what was to be the anniversary Issue, Issue #14 off. Issue 13 became a mix of engine features originally intended for Issue #14, while Issue 14 became dedicated to the release of Architecture Entertainment.

This meant the additional task force content that was supposed to be in Issue 14 was semi-pushed back, creating the content lite anniversary Issue, #15. Had Mission Architecture launched as intended with Issue 13, Issue 14 would have been a combination of the UI updates, day jobs, and Issue 15 content.

Issue 14 also put the squeeze on the coders. The Power Customization work that they would have been doing if not for custom enemies, had to be put off. This meant that Issue 16 was knocked off schedule, and power customization was launched in a semi-completed state. The engine and UI developers just ran out of time for power-pool, epic / patron pool, and costume overlay's in place of all of the other changes that were Issue 16 features.

That is about when we start hitting the Going Rogue hold-ups.

For starters, we, as the player-base, knew about Going Rogue around 6months before we were supposed to know about Going Rogue. If the third party responsible for email marketing hadn't screwed up, the player-base would have known about Going Rogue sometime around the 2009 Hero-Con gathering. The marketing screw-up caused a large percentage of the player-base to mentally accelerate the status of the Going Rogue expansion, placing the development several months ahead of it's actual state.

Matters were not helped at the 2009 Hero-Con as Going Rogue was scheduled for an early 2010 launch. As 2010 approach, and passed, it became clear that Going Rogue was not going to meet an early launch schedule, so the launch got pushed back to July, then August. Sometime during these delays it was decided that the markets needed to be merged, yet another time-sink for the engine coders.

The delays in Going Rogue's development needed to be addressed, hence the Issue 17 release. Issue 17 contained features originally scheduled to launch as the Free-Expansion to Going Rogue.

So, for the player keeping track of everything, this meant that at least two of the Issue updates released were forced fillers: Issue 14 caused by the Mission Architecture delay, and Issue 17 caused by the Going Rogue delay.


In all fairness, under Cryptic, or another publisher for that matter, we probably wouldn't have seen these shifts in scheduling. AE would have been launched in Issue 13 without the custom creature ability. Issue 14 would have been the day jobs, the chat ui updates, and Khan / 'Cuda Task Forces. Issue 15 would have had the power customizations, and Issue 16 would have been a Going Rogue release. We wouldn't have the market-merge, we wouldn't have a new user-interface for creating characters, and I hesitate to think of what would be missing from Going Rogue... well. In all likely-hood we'd only have just one mission-chain to work through like City of Villains did, instead of the 4 mission chains and their betrayal modifications.

In the light of the actual development cycle, it's exceedingly unfair, if not outright nasty, to fault the development team for not pushing the main storylines forward when they've been breaking their collective backs delivering on lots of long-requested, and thanks to Cryptic, long-overdue updates.

So yes, Issues are still about pushing the storyline forward.

The Shivan Storm will eventually happen. Something we have to keep in mind that is that no date has ever been set on the Shivan Storm. No Issue release has been tied to the Shivan Storm.

The common theory is that if Going Rogue meets NCSoft's sales and subscribers expectations, we'll see more work done on the interactions between the Praetorian realm and the Primal Earth realm. If Going Rogue does not meet NCSoft's sales and subscribers expectations, NCSoft will push Paragon Studios to focus on a Sequel Title, tentatively named City of Heroes 2. If the Paragon Studios does start to work on a sequel title, events in a sequel title will likely take place after the Shivan Storm has already occurred.

And yes, I call it the Shivan Storm for two reasons. A: a player on the forums has ruined the original name by deliberate association. B: Play through Hero Ouroborus again and tell me Lord Nemesis doesn't say the Storm involves Shivans.

No. They draw straws to see who gets to kill the pony.

Depending on your point of view, it's either fortunate or unfortunate, but the squeaky wheel doesn't always get the oil. Sometimes it gets dismantled.

In some of the cases of they gotta do it because we ask so often are the design blunders like Martial Arts as a secondary for Blaster's. I've gone over the design concepts so many times I am, quite frankly, sick of it. Unless there's a catastrophic head injury to every Paragon Studios employee, Martial Art's is never going to be a Blaster second for the simple reason it does not fit the intended design goals of the Manipulation Power Sets.

The term, Manipulation, is one of the key factors of the Blaster secondary archtype, and your power-set suggestion falls prey to the same problems just about every single Martial Arts as a manipulation set ever suggested falls prey too: Too Much Direct Damage, Not Enough Soft Control.

So, let's sound the ground-work once again.

Energy Manipulation is an aberration among the Blaster Sets. It is not going to be used as a model for any further manipulation sets. It has not been changed into a manipulation set because of the cottage rule.

Fire Manipulation is also an aberration, deliberately trading off an extra single target effect for more AOE effects, and trading off extra soft control for straight damage, exampling the constant PBAOE Blazing Aura. For reference, of the other constant PBAOE blaster manipulation effects, Electicity's Lightning Field drains endurance; Ice Manipulations Chilling Embrace does a slow and damage debuff; and Mental Manipulations World of Confusion has a confuse.


It has been explicetely stated in the past that the most recent manipulation set, Mental Manipulation, would serve as the model for any future manipulation sets.

So with that in mind, kiss your Tier 1 bai bai.

All Blaster Manipulation Secondaries, aside from Energy Manipulation, have a ranged immobilize as the first attack: Web Grenade, Electric Fence, Ring of Fire, Chilblain, Subdual.

So, first attack: Has to be an immobilize.

Second attack is free to be a straight damage. Body Blow could go here.

Third attack needs to be soft control. So here's where Quick-Strike can go, only it will knockback, no longer a chance for knockback.

Forth Attack needs to be something with a bit of range. So lets bring in Repulsing Torrent, but kick it up to 60 foot range.

Fifth attack will be Build Up. While the precedent is set by the Devices and Energy Manipulation power-sets for a Manipulation set to skip a straight damage boost, that precedent won't really work here. Remember, Power Siphon sort of makes sense in a Melee set since the player is constantly engaging in direct combat. from a mechanical point of view, it won't work in a manipulation set that lacks repeated attacks. So, Straight up Build Up.

6th Attack: The 6th Tier is generally used for mitigation: Cloaking Device, Stun, Lighting Clap, Ice Patch, Drain Psyche. Only in the case of Fire Manipulation does the Tier only do a straight damage, that being Blazing Aura. Kinetic Melee lacks an equivalent effect, as does Kinetics. So, let's mod one of the Kinetics attack. Fulcrum Shifter: Your player expends a field of kinetic energy, drastically lowering the damage capability of your opponents in a PbAOE field, while transferring that damage capability to any nearby team-mates. Player is unaffected.

7th: The seventh power tends to be bit of a unique slot across all blaster manipulation sets. Electic Manipulation makes up some of it's lack of damage with Thunderstrike. Ice gains Shiver. Fire Manip gets Consume, Mental gets World of Confusion, Energy gets power boost. There's no clear direction into the theme of the power, be it mitigation, damage, control, or buff / debuff. Since we are lacking a bit on straight damage, let's borrow a page from Electricity's book and go with a PbAOE. This is where Burst can go.

The 8th tier also lacks a consistent theme across all archtypes. Ice and Mental get some hard control, Fire now gets straight damage with the change to burn, Electric and Energy get self-buffs, and Devices gets time bomb. This is probably a good place to put some soft control for a Kinetic Manipulation. It's late game, but say hello to Siphon Speed

The 9th tier is almost universally an Oh Excrement Tier. This is where you have powers designed explicitly to get players out of melee combat. Mental's Psychic Shockwave stuns and reduces enemy recharge. Ice's Frozen Aura puts everything to sleep. Hot Feet has a high magnitude fear and keeps enemies from flying. Electic's Shocking Grasp has a massive stun as well as an end-drain and a recovery debuff. Total Focus is a high magnitude stun. Of them all, only Gun Drone doesn't quite fit as it's got a significant amount of set-up time compared to all other Manipulation Tier 9's.

Still... neither Kinetic Melee nor Kinetics has a really, oh Excrement, I'm in trouble power. I'm reluctant to take Concentrated Strike because, well, that's what Energy Manipulation did from Energy Melee (tank), and that's often considered to have been a bad design choice. I think something that would work is adding some damage and a chance for knockback to Inertial Reduction, making it player only, and shortening the length of the jump buff. The objective is, activating the Tier 9 pulses a damage AOE not quite as strong as Psychic Shockwave, and with a lower chance for stun, but gives the player an opportunity to bounce out of melee range. I'm not sure what to call this semi-new power... although Inertial Compulsion has a nice ring.

So, a Kinetics set modeled to be a Manipulation Set:

• Tier 1: Ranged Immobilize
• Tier 2: Body Blow
• Tier 3: Quick Strike
• Tier 4: Repulsing Torrent
• Tier 5: Build Up
• Tier 6: Fulcrum Shifter
• Tier 7: Burst
• Tier 8: Siphon Speed
• Tier 9: Inertial Compulsion

* * *

Yes. This was an over flowery way of saying your laptop probably has an Nvidia graphics chip, it's not detecting CoH because CoH uses OpenGL, and yes, this over-heating problem is pretty much specific to Nvidia LYING to system vendors about how hot Geforce parts actually are.

If you've GOT a system with AMD graphics though, and you are reaching the point of thermal shut-down under City of Heroes, my money's on your system fans being clogged up with dust.

Also, AMD would /really/ like you to file a Catalyst Crew Feedback over this matter: http://www.amd.com/us/CatalystCrewSurvey

developers are against allowing the de-crafting of crafted IO's.

Currently the enhancement system is the only real in-game monetary sunken cost device, other-wise known as a money-sink.

The use of the enhancement system as a money-sink drives several of the design factors of the game. For example, players can only unslot and remove 10 enhancements at a time during a power respecification. Personal storage of crafted enhancements is limited through super-group bases, auction house slots, and personal email. The developers have declined to develop personal enhancement storage beyond the already limited instances.

Unless there is an abrupt about-face from the entire development team, this design position is unlikely to change, even if using a time-scale that's based on geological movements.


There is also the issue that what you want, ways to avoid interacting with the market, are already implemented in the game in several different format's.

Uncommon and Rare salvages can be purchased directly through the Architecture Entertainment system using AE Tickets. Common salvage can be awarded randomly using AE tickets. AE Tickets can also be used to purchase some types of enhancements.

Regular merits can also be used to purchase salvage, recipes, and enhancements.

Hero and Villain merits can be used to purchase salvage, recipes, Purple Recipes, and PvP recipes.

Ouroborus can be leveraged to fight specific enemies for specific salvage drops. Hamidon Raids can be run for Hamidon Enhancements.

So, if you don't want to participate in the market, there's multiple ways in which you can empower your character without ever touching a Wentworths or a Black Market station.

Some players already argue, and in some ways I agree with them, that there are already too many alternative ways to advance a character in City of Heroes. Technically, yes, Regular Merits can be converted into Hero / Villain merits by leveraging a massive influence sink... but for the most part the rewards systems are largely separate.

So while it is possible that the developers might consider yet another method allowing players to bypass utilizing the market for rewards, it is not exactly plausible. The impression has been given that players who don't want to participate in the market should go ahead and do what most players in the game do anyways: leverage the existing content and rewards systems.

it does happen. Nobody is saying it doesn't.

One of the issues here, the developers do consider players who bypass the market and personal wealth limitations by off the market trading to be... get this... abusing the system. That much has been flat out stated. Players who charge more than the personal player wealth cap for an item are considered to be in violation of the game's terms of service.

Another issue is the anti-real-money-trader issue. Many of the existing restrictions on item transfer capabilities implemented in the game are done so to prevent Real Money Traders from leveraging the system. One of the catastrophically large problems with your Inf.On.Delivery. cross-server-trade trade idea is that it removes a rather large time barrier from the R.M.T.'s.

Right now, R.M.T. item suppliers are largely constrained. In order to deliver purchased services and goods in games, R.M.T. players have to have avatars across multiple servers, which increases their log visibility, and makes identifying them much easier for the Game-Moderators. R.M.T. players also have to have each of these server avatars at a specific level. This means that an R.M.T. player has to sink a considerable amount of time into each server they wish to sell on. This combination of suken-time and log visibility makes life difficult for the R.M.T. player, but really doesn't have a direct impact on the normal player who is not trying to abuse the market system and terms of service.

I'm going to be blunt. What you want Enrious is a Real Money Trader Player's Wet Dream.

What you want is the ability to directly charge for and send items across servers. This would allow R.M.T. players to focus on one server only, and then they could simply email items / services with wild abandon.

Yes, the developers could monitor all private trades, and it would be possible to eventually track down the R.M.T. players even with an Inf.on.demand cross-server trade platform.

Short version is: Our. Developers. Are. Not. Stupid.

Inf.On.Demand cross-server trades are simply a bad idea that is only going to benefit two classes of players.

Those who are Real Money Traders.

Those who are already in violation of terms of service.

Our devs realize that. Our devs are not going to cater or do anything to help those two classes of players.

Period. Stop. That's it.

don't forget jetpack temp recipes on the market. those things tend to be dirt cheap too.

From what we know of the incarnate system, it's additive to additional characters. Incarnate powers are not replacing enhancement slots, or are incarnate enhancements replacing training, dual, single, hamidon, or invention enhancements. The Incarnate system, as far as we know, will be a completely separate system.

Moon zone. Really?

Isn't it about time this dead horse got put out to pasture?

Yes. Some missions do take place on a moon base.

Now actually try to come up with a way to represent a moonbase in such a way that it fits into the current engine with no modifications. Now try to come up with a good explanation on what this has to do with Positron's job. He's not an artist.

You know, everytime the developers do interesting groups, somebody eventually complains. Rularuu, Malta, Carnies, Devouring Earth, and Arachnos all have unique abilities to their groups, yet most players don't want to run content that pits players against these groups. The new Syndicate, Detroyers, Pratorian Police, and Resistance mobs fit into this as well. New, unique, and interesting... yet a lot of players complain about the capabilities these mobs have.

So, not that I'm sorry for saying this, but the impression I get is that players demanding another "unique" enemy group, don't actually want a "unique" or "interesting" enemy group. The impression is these players want another enemy group that is like the Freakshow or 5th Column / Council. Easy to farm with non-unique attacks.

Uh huh.

Do you even know why Jetpack costume pieces aren't in the game? Here's a hint. Go create a huge character and a really tiny character. Give them both a jet pack recipe and go make it.

Activate the jet-pack.

Notice anything? Say, maybe the jetpack is the same size on both avatars and that it's not actually connected to the body?

Fact is, the entire reason backpacks and other such items are not in the game is because implementing a scalable add-on object requires time and resources. This is something that, if ever implemented, would need to handled by the engine guys, and by the art guys.

Positron doesn't enter into this equation either.

Last I checked this was what Castle, Sunstorm, and Synapse did. What does Positron have to do with new power-sets, other than raising his hand when the entire dev team gets together for a yay / nay session?

Again. What does this have to do with Positron?

Okay. Fine. You've got an axe to grind here. Fine, it's obvious that you don't understand basic game design, much less the game at all. It's also clear you don't have any sort of grasp over what each developer does. There's also the problem that your post is severely out of date if you were going for a comment on Positron as Lead Designer. For reference, here's what a lead designer does:

Almost all of the examples you used are either tech limited, such as the moon-base, backpacks; or time and resource limited, such as everything else.

Also, bonus negative rep for not not reading post #5. This is about what the Character Positron would say.

Thing is I've fought her in the new arcs and I haven't actually seen her use any different powers from her incarnations in the old arcs and the Shadow Shard Arcs. So the change on paper is acedemic. From the players point of view, she still does psychic blast with psychic control. The same applies to Marauder. He might now be a brute, but because of the method that NPC powers are exposed to the player, he is standardized against NPC spawn power ratings, not archtype power ratings. The only reason Marauders change might make a difference is due to it being hinted that the blaster strapped to his arm will be a functional weapon in a future game update.

Neuron stands out from the other changes Now because he visibly uses a different set of powers from Synapse now, lacking the ranged blast and having Super Reflexes for his secondary.

This may be a case of potato / potatoe. Most of the other signature characters never really had attacks that mapped completely to any particular power-set combination. Some, such as Sirocco, completely inverse their signature archtype.

In most cases, on power choice alone, any archtypes modeled after the power choices of the Pre-Going Rogue characters should map to the power choices of all of the characters but Neuron.

... no. He didn't have a point.

And no, it seems like you have about a firm a grasp on what empathy does as that poster does over what Force Field does: Absolutely none.