je_saist

Flash is Flash.. it's... um... not that good.

Anyways, mobility 5870? You Should be able to drive every setting maxed, except one.

Don't enable Anti-Aliasing AND Ambient Occlusion, at least not right now. The two don't exactly work well together. No, I can't tell you when a fix for the two will propagate.

I'm tempted to say, let it go. I can give all of the evidence in the world, it's not going to change what that player thinks or does.

Thanks for helping though, catnip cookie?

This is really a design question for Posi or War Witch, rather than the tech lead. The tech is already in the game to flag players for Enemy Target in any zone. E.G., if Tele wanted to, he could flag me as an enemy target on the steps of City Hall, and then beat the stuffings out of my avatar.

Last Chaos. It's a free-to-play MMO: http://lastchaos.aeriagames.com/

Nope. Again, this is a design question, not a tech question. CoH already tracks what players kill, and at what level they kill it, and at what level they con. the Last Chaos system could be implemented into the existing tracking engine simply by flagging the players to drop salvage like an NPC critter.

I'm also going to torpedo the idea that you could sell Posi and War Witch on the idea to begin with, with just two words: Tabula Rasa.

If you didn't hear about, or play, Tabula Rasa, it was a big budget game from Richard Garriot, funded by NCSoft. You might also know them as the owners of Paragon Studios. Throughout it's extensive beta process Tabula Rasa was a strict PvE game, much like City of Heroes. The focus of the game was on an inherently imbalanced team, a game where classes complemented each other, and challenges were built to be taken as a team. PvP didn't exist in the Tabula Rasa lore. Towards the launch date, Richard Garriot and the developers finally caved to a very vocal base and implemented a minor dueling system.

After the game launched, Richard Garriot left for his trip into space. The developers he left in charge did not have a firm grasp on the game lore, or the design of the game. The new lead developers promptly listened to a very vocal population of the game, and quickly tried to implement a PvP system on-top of a system that was not designed for PvP. The new lead developers also listened to the vocal population that was saying that the end-game had to be PvP, couldn't be anything else.

What this meant was that you basically spent 50 levels learning one way to play the game... hit max... then promptly had to clone yourself, spec into a completely different build, for a completely different game.

The result was a complete and total disaster. NCSoft and Destination Games found out the hardway that the vocal PvP population, the guys calling for PvP-end-game content, and PvP in general, were a drastically small minority. Tabula Rasa bled subscribers after the changes, with near immediate losses being tracked in 1 month and 3 month increments after the changes went live. In early 2008 it was claimed that Tabula Rasa had cost NCSoft over $100 million dollars. The same year Tabula Rasa was shut down.

The fact is, there isn't that large of a financial base willing to pay for a PvP-Experience, especially in a game that isn't designed for PvP. NCSoft has been down that road before.

There's also the huge design questions with implementing an open-world PvP system. Most games that work a PvP system, such as WarHammer or World of Warcraft, and so on, have dedicated zones players have to go to. You can't be auto-ganked in a town. There's a very good reason Open-World PvP games have largely fallen off the map. The number of players who will willingly pay for them is simply too low to actively court.

and even more when you start applying filter effects like AA and Anistropic Filtering.

well, with BFG out of the market, EVGA and XFX are the best options.

!!!

*grabs the Foam Bat*

Hold Still Cappeh! I'll help you!

are you looking for a serious answer to that? I gave up on ever seeing green-rep again.

Heaven knows it needs a redesign. Fermi's biggest problem, to me admittedly, is that it was created as a General Purpose GPU rather than a Graphics GPU. A refocused design could shed off lots of the transistors that really only matter if you use OpenCL to leverage Fermi as a processor.

I think this is why the GTX 460 is such a great card.

Given what I've heard over what the GTX 460 costs Nvidia to make, well, I'd honestly be leery of buying any cards at a lower price-point. I'm already leery of the stuff coming out of the likes of Sparkle, Galaxy, and other low-end vendors. Less mylar layers in the boards, cheaper capacitors, and other quality issues worry me as Nvidia board partners try to keep costs down.

Not going to argue that. I hope the GTX 460 indicates a revival on Nvidia's part. However, Nvidia's problems as a company are from their corporate culture...

!!!

No Tele! Don't answer! You'll activate the Curse of the Golden Girl! http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...5&postcount=90

This post walks you through the ultra-mode settings: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=219534

So yes, set everything but the Ultra-Mode options and you should be fine.

Do me a favor... when you are loading CoH there's an option for Safe Mode:



Load into Safe mode and report whether or not the problem is occurring.

My suspicion is that the game is trying to run with Ultra-Mode settings, which is out of that GPU's reach.

The drop finally is showing up on Average Selling prices.

I'm honestly not sure which I'd recommend buying if you only had $200 to spend. I still think Nvidia's driver support is the industries worst, and their *nix support is direction-less... but... bang for buck, the ability to overclock is a decided bonus over the 5830.

Well, Nvidia's winning the battle in benchmarks... but benchmarks aren't real games. Most of the benchmarks where Nvidia dominates tessellation are synthetic. In the available games where tessellation is used as part of an optimized game package, such as Dirt 2 or the Unigine Heaven Demo, the GTX 400 series really isn't able to drive that synthetic domination. Granted, this could also be because the games are built against the RadeonHD 5x00 series and thus can't leverage the extra tessellation power; or the developers feel limited by the RadeonHD 5x00 series tessellation engine and code for that limitation.

Beyond that... well... anything is anybody's guess. I agree that AMD just won't double the SP's and call it a day. AMD's engineering process has largely been "think laterally." Across recent processors and GPU's AMD has approached their design with limits on power consumption. E.G. the RadeonHD 5000 series was designed to use the same amount of power as RadeonHD 4000 series cards, but roughly doubled the performance within that power envelope.

Nvidia's GPU design since the 8000 series has basically been mega-chip, with a philosophy of throwing transistors at the problem, regardless of power draw, heat-output, or anything else. It's a good way to win ultimate performance crowns, but it sure hasn't materialized as an effective long-term business strategy. Granted, Intel could have told them about that after the Pentium4 Emergency Editions.

I think the only concrete guess I can make about the chip is that AMD is going to rework the memory controller yet again. Case in point, the RadeonHD 4850. It's texture and shader engines are nowhere near as massive as the Nvidia GTS 250, but the AMD GPU is far more efficient, and can expose more of it's available power. The result is that the HD 4850 can compete with the GTS 250.

Still, it's all conjecture.

For all I know, the 6000 series will be another dog, offering nothing over the existing 5000 series cards.

vertical lines or grey screen is a memory issue with DDR5 timings. You need to contact your vendor and replace the 5870.

http://www.ngohq.com/news/17176-work...pes-issue.html

The driver problem that generated this issue was fixed last year in the Catalyst 9.10 series. If you were getting the problem after that, AMD was looking to get those cards back and was offering free replacements for a while. My guess is that your card was likely a launch model that has been sitting on somebody's shelf.

well... the only thing that seems out of place is your sound drivers. They are out of date.

The rest of the behavior... well... it doesn't add up. The system reports a 4600 series graphics cards... and they aren't exactly known to run hot... nor do they require much power. So this doesn't sound like the graphics card is over-heating.

What it honestly sounds like is a dying power supply, or your motherboard might be going as a result of the previous card overheating.

Quickest way to check this would be to try another power supply and see if the problem continues...

Also: for reference. Anti-Aliasing works on ATi graphics cards.

What is broken right now is Anti-Aliasing + Ambient Occlusion on RadeonHD 5000 series cards. AA+AO on 4000 series cards has been fixed.

Hey, Bobcat has standards for who can join!

none.

Why? Because Warshades pair together power-set choices that come from different archtypes. You can set a Warshade up to behave like a Tank with Dwarf-Mode, a blaster with Nova Mode, a blaster / scrapper hybrid with native shields and Eclipse, or even a controller.

However, if you tune a Warshade to fight in one of these modes you'll have far less over-all powers than somebody with the original archtype. A dwarf form won't have the damage or aggro control of a tank. A Nova form won't have the sustained damage of a blaster, either in single target or AOE target numbers. A human-form eclipse operating mode won't have the melee damage of a scrapper, nor the ranged damage of a blaster, nor the overall control of a controller.

A Warshade is powerful because it can blend all of these aspects into one character. You can race in, eclipse, deliver a few close melee boosts, then clear to ranged to blast. You can take damage as a Dwarf. You can hover in the background and blast from a safe distance with Nova. You can have minor control on enemy players.

You won't ever be as good as a dedicated archtype. You won't ever play like a Dedicated Archtype. You, however, will be able to fill multiple roles on a team.

Slight problem. It's not a port. It's running the Windows Executable atop the Cedega engine compiled to work against Darwin BSD.

Second problem: Transgaming is still developing the next engine, code-named Maudite. There are very few players providing feedback on CoH compatibility to Transgaming through their own bug-reporting system: http://www.cedega.com/support/contact/ (You'll need to login with a Cedega account to use the form).

There's also a lack of players posting to the NCSoft support system. You need to file bug reports and hardware information: http://us.ncsoft.com/en/support/

Only by filing bug reports and giving Ghost Falcon, Television, Pohsyb, and the guys over at Transgaming something to work with can they address any of the issues. Manga and I can't do it by ourselves... although heaven knows we try.

slight problem with your claim.

GM Teleports show up too.

I've had to get GM's to teleport avatars around when I've gotten stuck trying to find broken Geometry during beta tests. Their teleports show up in the combat log as well since... hey.. get this: their powers are exposed in the same way player powers are.

I'm going to be blunt. If you have a personal problem with a Forum Moderator or a Game Moderator: take it to private messages or contact the support staff through the PlayNC website. It is against Forums Terms of Services to "call out" or "make accusations" against NCSoft personal.

Your offer is most attractive... *flops and sips at the milk*

*plots Fey's Funishment for stealing from a kitteh*

now just where did I put those yarn balls...

check your PM's

You know. There's this ultra-tiny low-cost non-expansion "thing" that the developers have been spending the past 2 years working on called GOING ROGUE.

Maybe you haven't heard of it. One of the small and unimportant features in this Going Rogue thing is the ability to make the 10-base archtypes independently of Hero or Villain alignments. Another small and unimportant feature is the ability to take an existing Hero or an existing Villain and swap them to the opposite alignment. Accomplishing these features has seen the additions of 4 new alignments. Two of these alignments, Resistance and Loyalist are exclusive to the new low-level zones created for Praetoria. The other two alignments are Rogue and Vigilante and comprise the middle grounds; such as a smuggler whose on the road to redemption; or a vengeful enforcer of the law that believes they are above and beyond the law.

If you don't mind me breaking the role-play answer here, what you want when you say you want a heroic mastermind, or a hero archtype with the mastermind ability, is this: You want to render several years of work to improve the game invalid.

I'm sorry. It's that simple. You want the devs to just forget everything they just built, and give the same thing to you... for no cost.

Not. Going. To. Happen.


... What Mimic Hero idea that has been kicking around for oh so long?

Now, as far as your second idea here goes... that's not going to happen for design reasons as well. The basic problem is, you don't have a grasp on how a mastermind works. So here's how a mastermind works.

The first level pets all have either 1 or 2 minor attacks. While the attack type might change, such as in Demon Summoning or Thugs, they pretty much all correspond to weak melee or weak ranged attacks.

The second level pets are mostly all additional attack damages. Robotics is an inverse, where the second level pets contain shields and heal functions if upgraded.

The last level pets range from tank types to control types.

One of the basic problem with your AT split is that each set here is adjusted in and of-itself. The off powers and each summonable pet is adjusted in and of itself for the set. Case in point: Demonlings have base resistances to Lethal, Smashing, Fire, Cold, and Toxic. Soldiers, however, only have base resistances to Lethal and Smashing.

What you propose is a system that would be impossible to balance. Allowing players to choose what AT their mastermind pet would be, even a limited choice, would damage the developers abilities to correctly balance the rest of the set. Case in point: Demon Summoning. It's whip attacks are of a far shorter range than other Mastermind primaries, requiring Whip users to be in closer range to the combat. This would be a potentially great combo if you have pets that like to be in melee range... but what happens if the pets you choose were ranged attackers?

So, from a design perspective, what you want, isn't going to happen.



Admittedly, there is a second way to interpret what you posted. It could be that you are trying to create a completely new Archtype that is like a Mastermind, but gets a pet at every level. A sort of Gemini Replication archtype.

One of the big problems with a new Gemini Replication archtype is that Mastermind's already exist. There would be a significant question of just how much value a new archtype could bring when aspects of that archtype could be implemented in an existing archtype.

The developers already have a system setup to deliver increasing amounts of pets at predictable and balanced increments. The developers already have a system setup to control numerous pet critters in a combat situation. The developers already have a system that is resistance to lag issues and allows some sort of player survivability. Those system implementations is already found in the Mastermind power-set.

A new "Gemini Replication" archtype would mean not only having to replicate those systems, but also extend those systems to handle increased numbers of pets. Given that full-level masterminds, as is, already cause problems with blocking doorways, their own micro-lag issues, and everything else associated them, an archtype with increased pets would simply make those issues worse.

Now, it would be possible for the developers to input a Gemini Replication power-set into the Mastermind Archtype. Which is where we get to the final problem that I'm going to address in this post.


What you want, but don't directly ask for, is Mastermind Pet Customization.
Well, Mastermind Pet Customization probably will happen within the next year. We know for a stated fact that exposing Pet Customization requires both processing engine and User Interface engine work, tech work that will not be available until after Going Rogue launches. One of the key issues is that you won't be able to just make your pets look like anything.

For example, if you took Mercenaries, you'll likely have a range of costume options suitable for soldiers exposed in the UI system. You will not, however, have the options to make your Mercs look like Clowns, ballerina's, or Trolls. If you took Ninjas, you'll like have a wide range of oriental robes and outfits available for your Ninja's, but you won't be able to make them look like a soldier.

The only class that the developers might extend player costumes to is the Controller Illusionist class. This is because the Illusionist's decoy's are supposed to be copies of the player.

Now, it might be possible to sell the developers on the idea of an Illusionist type power-set re-implemented atop Mastermind's. E.G.

• Phantom Army: no longer invulnerable, can be defeated.
• Spectral Terror: gone
• Spectral Wisp: replaces Spectral Terror: low fear components
• Phantasm: well. Not really much to change here.

Now, I'm not saying this is the only way to get what you want into the game, or that this is the best way to sell the developers on Illusionist for Masterminds, or that the developers should even DO Illusionist for Mastermind to begin with (I, for one, don't think they should).

Now, 28months ago was a long time, and to be honest, the implementation of what you wanted was just as bad back then as is now.

The idea of implementing any kind of Mastermind on a Hero-side...

well, I've never been a real big fan of duplicating archtypes across instances of the game. I still believe, if you want to play a Mastermind... play a Mastermind. I've been hammering on the developers need to make each archtype different from each other as Going Rogue launches. There really should be something to make you say I want to play that archtype.

For a long time then I was against what Going Rogue allows... but what sold me is that Going Rogue goes beyond a simple side-switching mechanic, and tries to flesh the game out with the morality overlay system. Castle, and the other power balancers, have also started working on the inherents. We've seen the fruits of this on the Defenders Vigilance. So I look forward to see what changes other archtypes will get.

Going Rogue gives you the ability to play a Heroic Mastermind. I might not be the happiest clam in the ocean about this, but at this point, undermining reasons for players to go out and BUY Going Rogue is just a bad idea on the part of the developers.