runt9

Oh boy, I never thought I'd see the day that I'm about to say this, buuuut...

The GTX 460 is the single best bang-for-your-buck card out there right now. Though it's SIMILAR to its 465 and 470 bretheren, a 600 watt power supply should be able to handle it just as well as it could handle a 5850. A 460 is usually cheaper than a 5850 and can stand toe-to-toe with it in any battle. It's the rare gem in nVidia's horrible pool of 400 series cards... I personally have a 5770 and said I'd never go back to nVidia after they messed up with their 200 series and 400 series, but they took the market in a chokehold with the 460.

Point being, if you're wanting to spend under about $250 for a card, there is no better card than the GTX 460 right now, and though I've almost become an ATi fanboy, I will concede that the 460 is better price-for-power than anything ATi has at this moment. There is no reason not to get the 460. Period.

For me, I play with a herd mentality. In my SG, whoever the tank is will round up their aggro cap, bring em to a corner, and then let the AoE fly from our blasters, scrappers, and the tank. Usually, like my Shield/Dark tank, will jump into the middle of everything, hit Soul Drain, Melt Armor, and Shield Charge. The ONLY thing left standing are bosses at half strength, and usually by that point, we've got some sort of Ice Storm, Fireball, Spine Burst, or any number of nukes hitting the point at the same time I shield charge. This means that anything that's over my 10 target AoE cap will STILL get destroyed by AoE. It's just a natural flow, but most of the time, I make sure that I target a boss while they're herding around me, just to make sure that the instant my Shield Charge is done, I'm keeping the aggro of that boss because I don't want him smacking my scrappers or my blasters/defenders trying to nuke.

Even when I'm playing a support toon, I like seeing the mob herded together with the boss trying to hit the tank, because as long as the tank is holding aggro, I can drop any sort of AoE on the mob, along with everyone else on the team. Tsoo? Malta? Doesn't matter to me. Herd, AoE everything to death, then you've only got half-strength bosses that you can finish off with some good ST.

*slaps thigh and chuckles politely* So THAT'S what happened to the Titanic... It didn't hit an iceburg, it tried to barrell roll AWAY FROM ONE!

The thing with this right now is you're probably reading over all these posts going "Daaaayuum. There's a lot of stuff to take in and it all sounds too overly complicated..." With this game, it's all about how YOU want to play it. If you want to be a casual player and never touch a Task Force or an IO in your entire stay in CoX, then that's your choice. You can do nothing but do some story arcs and solo your way through the levels, maybe with a couple of friends, and you'll see 50 after 3-4 months and be perfectly happy with it. A lot of the things some of these guys are talking about are the difficult pieces of the game. Task Forces can be daunting, especially on a team of people you don't know because they've usually done them all a million times and expect you to know what YOU'RE doing. Same thing with Rikti Mothership and Hamidon raids. The easiest thing to do is just simply enjoy your first 50. Level it up slowly and surely, experimenting with the powers, enjoying all of the time you have with the character, and probably just stay away from some of the harder aspects of the game. Once you've got a 50 under your belt, you'll feel like you know the game a little better, you'll probably have your 3 month vet reward badge, and THEN you can use that 50 to complete Task Forces and Trials and Raids and the difficult parts of the game with the groups of friends that you've built up over the life of the character. I believe it makes it a lot easier to meld with the game rather than emersing yourself in every little detail of the game at once.

Also, this game is INSANELY Alt-Friendly. Positron has said it himself before. You may go months without EVER having a level 50... *looks at 3 month veteran reward badge and over 40 characters rolled, the highest of which being 44* For people like me, that's the true fun of the game, getting into the character creator and coming up with something new and exciting to play. Don't get me wrong, I usually run ITFs and Manticore TFs all the time because they are some of the most fun TFs to do. However, I've still logged onto one character, only to switch to another within a few minutes because I didn't feel like playing that character at the time.

Like I said at the beginning of this wall of text, the game is what YOU make it. There's something for everyone. You can be Good, you can be Evil, you can design your own stories and then play them to your heart's content, you can farm, you can hit up the market and make billions of influence/infamy, you can team with 7 other people, you can solo, you just have to play the game to decide what YOU truly believe makes this game fun for YOU, and that's something very few other MMOs have EVER been able to offer, and that's why I plan on continuing to feed NCSoft my money.

That also has to do with the attack time. If you think of ranged attacks, a lot of the time, the longer-activated attacks will still register their hit long before the animation of the attack actually hits them. With these, the time from click to hit will vary, but it serves no dependence on the animation. There is a set click-to-hit time, and it only really varies when at a slightly longer range. I know it sounds stupid, but I've seen it happen time and time again. The animations don't actually cause a quicker hit time, though it may seem like it. Heck, most of the time, you'll see the punch hit them, and then a split second later, the number for damage appears over their head. Some people don't like the new animations BECAUSE of the fact that there's a delay after the animation and it can be harder to judge than the normal animations that are timed appropriate to the activation and click-to-hit times.

I was actually intrigued about this when I first saw it. I thought "hey, MA actually has some quicker animations now! Hoorah!" And then I realized that when you actually play the character, though the animations ARE shorter, the icon will still stay highlighted through the full activation time, whether it's the shorter or longer animation. It doesn't ACTUALLY change the activation time, though the animation will trick many people into believing it should.

Heh, yes. Page Down can be screwy, and B can be a little bit as well. For me, it's just much easier to scroll in 'til I hit first-person, then scroll back out as I desire. That way, if I hit Page Down and I'm still not dead center, I'm not tempted to want to throw a heavy object against the wall, like my expensive monitor... It's also ever so slightly easier than setting up a bind, though I'm sure that bind can come in just as handy, and I might even end up using that someday... Haha.

This is why this community is good. Within 11 minutes, this guy had 6 responses all telling him different ways to get to the same point. Then shortly after his second post, people had pictures up with detailed instructions on how to read IO's, all without a single bit of mockery, sarcasm, or idiocy. This is one of the things that keeps me around.

I used to use the Arrow Keys for my turning, but after a while, I just got used to having the mouse in my right hand, much like I'm used to with first-person shooters. It helps out a lot to just be holding down the right mouse button half the time.

Also, if you ever DO use the middle mouse button and get your character off of the pivot point a bit, the easiest way to do it is to scroll all the way in, then back out. That resets the camera, and it's a lot easier than memorizing the hotkey for it.

Use the right mouse button rather than the middle mouse button.

Thank you very much for the responses. I'm going to go ahead and start writing and see what sort of concoction I can come up with... haha

Hello... Sorry to revive a dead thread and everything, but I had a couple questions...

1. Is Roleplaying still big nowadays? I play on Virtue and I catch wind of some local conversations from time to time, but I haven't been to Pocket D in ages so I don't know how big the scene is there.

2. I'm beginning my 4th month of an active account, even though I've had an NCSoft account for probably 2 years now. I've grown a little tired of the constant "mish, mish, mish, OH LOOK, ANOTHER LEVEL!", though I do enjoy my Task Forces from time to time. I was looking into Role Playing as an option to spend my time because I thought it'd be a fun new experience and a great way to meet some neat people online. Should I spend more time learning about the game as a whole first before I jump into roleplaying, or is it safe to go ahead and try my hand at it, assuming that it takes a long time to truly grasp all aspects of it?

3. How much has changed from the original guide? As far as I can tell, Atlas is still a popular hangout, and I haven't been to Pocket D since my last month (December of 09) and during that time, there were TONS of RPers. Is Pocket D the best place to go? Is it still the same method of introducing yourself to everyone? Also, the (()) thing seems like it's still popular as I see a lot of in-team and broadcast chat with those around many people's sentences (I do play on Virtue, the un-official RP server... haha), so is it safe to assume that when a character that uses (()) sometimes DOESN'T use (()), they are in character? Is the best way to truly grasp all of this just to forge a character, hop into the city, and attempt to join in?

EDIT: 4. Is it wrong for a male to play a female character? The reason I ask is because I feel like the females have the better costume designs and, from my point of view, would be more fun to role play. I do consider myself a very feminine and sensitive male, and have really been friends with more females than males over the years and just feel that I could do a lot more justice to a female character than a male character. I just don't know how socially appropriate this is.

I appreciate any and all help given to me. I try to not sound like a noob, though I know that no matter what I do, it's still going to happen what with me only carrying a 3 month vet badge. I do hope people look past my miniscule post count and my short time playing this game and offer some help and advice to help me get into the less-serious part of this "kill, level, make money, be the best" sort of game.

Grrrrr... I was on Manticore TF, mapserv'd RIGHT at Hopkins... *sigh* Cmon Virtue!