My top issue:
Stop giving your morning customers the shaft.
Seriously. This is two mornings in a row that morning customers get no playing time because of this maintenance.
Everyone knows 8-10am CDT (9-11am EDT) is *NOT* the slowest time.
Can we get an explanation why you continue to make the exact same customers bear 100% of the disadvantage of these downtimes?
Would it really kill you to occasionally do it at 6-8am EDT? At the very least, whenever you have to do maintenance multiple days in a row?
Seriously. If you care about your customers, they'll care about you in return.
LOL just quit Cam... that's all I'll say about that. You'll never get your dream of a perfect world. Every other MMO in existence does daytime maintenance, why wouldn't this one :P
Anyway sorry for the OT
I don't know how many times this has been brought up but Freedom made a good case about it in our global RadioFreeSpirit. Is there not a way to make the Hive a raidable instance (w/level base 45) instead of a hazard zone?
Thinking from a server power perspective, I understand having multiple instances of the Hive open puts more stress on the servers, but those instances will only have around 60 - 80 people in it - no different than opening an AP2 which is something we do already.
I'm just curious if there have been any plans to create true raid groups of more than 8 people under one commander. It would be awesome if all 5 teams attempting to kill Kronos or any other GM could get the badge instead of just the 10%ers
OM
poop
[ QUOTE ]
My top issue:
Stop giving your morning customers the shaft.
Seriously. This is two mornings in a row that morning customers get no playing time because of this maintenance.
Everyone knows 8-10am CDT (9-11am EDT) is *NOT* the slowest time.
Can we get an explanation why you continue to make the exact same customers bear 100% of the disadvantage of these downtimes?
Would it really kill you to occasionally do it at 6-8am EDT? At the very least, whenever you have to do maintenance multiple days in a row?
Seriously. If you care about your customers, they'll care about you in return.
[/ QUOTE ]
It is very rare that we get down times like this, and if you are a frequent morning player you already know that. So you want to post on the forums 2 days in a row about maintenance times just so that others can tell you we really don't want to hear it?
i have to disagree. the morning downtime is a pain. it occurs just about every other morning. for a while ( may - june ) it was daily. it usually occurs around 8am central time and stays down up to two hours.
i have always wondered why this couldnt be moved up to the very early a.m.
Why do they do it during those times instead of late at night (very early morning) is because of the bugs that they keep putting in the patches. They do it after they get to work in the morning so they will have time to remove it if they need to before they go home in the afternoon. This shows that the company doesn't like to have to pay overtime and a half for someone to do it late at night (very early morning) when hardly anyone is playing (compared to other playing times). Be happy that they do remove the bugged patches so soon instead of having to wait still the next day for it to be removed.
[ QUOTE ]
My top issue:
Stop giving your morning customers the shaft.
Can we get an explanation why you continue to make the exact same customers bear 100% of the disadvantage of these downtimes?
[/ QUOTE ]
Since I work the night shift at my job, I don't usually get home until around 4am, mountain time. That means that the servers drop 3 hrs after I get home.
While it's hardly the end of the world, nor does it happen every day, it is frustrating that I have to put up with it whenever they go down.
It would be nice (maybe not realistic, though) to stagger the times of maintenance so that the same folks don't have to endure the downtime every time it happens. Just a few minutes ago the servers dropped in the middle of our Siege mish. Yes, we saw the warnings. No, the fight didnt go as quickly as we'd hoped. So, yet again, I get punked by the maintenance.
And to those posters telling us night/early a.m. players to "just get over it", spare me, OK? I've been playing this game for almost 2.5 years, working night shift the whole time. When you have to deal with the downtime during the middle of your peak playtime every single time they do maintenance, for 2.5 years, then you can tell me to get over it.
OK, sorry for the hostility. I just don't like having our concerns dismissed so carelessly by people who most likely deal with the downtime rarely, if ever.
...in CoH racing to 50 is like trying to race to the end of your vacation. -Arcanaville
Debt barely slows down levelling these days. It's just a little bar that measures how much Awesome you've generated recently. (If you're not getting debt, you're just not trying to generate Awesome hard enough.) -Kelenar
The crappy maintenance system is DEFINITELY a top issue. The way maintenance is done right now is an absolute embarassing sham.
Three freakin mornings in a row your morning customers get the absolute shaft?
What the heck.
And why is it that this issue is so tabboo people are not allowed to discuss it on the forums? Every time it gets raised (the issue of daily maintenance and its inordinate impact on the SAME customers) the thread is erased.
Insecure about something that you SHOULD be embarassed about, Cryptic?
Seriously. Maintenance should be done during your most dead time. That ain't 9-11am.
Furthermore, it shouldn't hit the SAME people three days in a row.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
My top issue:
Stop giving your morning customers the shaft.
Can we get an explanation why you continue to make the exact same customers bear 100% of the disadvantage of these downtimes?
[/ QUOTE ]
Since I work the night shift at my job, I don't usually get home until around 4am, mountain time. That means that the servers drop 3 hrs after I get home.
While it's hardly the end of the world, nor does it happen every day, it is frustrating that I have to put up with it whenever they go down.
It would be nice (maybe not realistic, though) to stagger the times of maintenance so that the same folks don't have to endure the downtime every time it happens. Just a few minutes ago the servers dropped in the middle of our Siege mish. Yes, we saw the warnings. No, the fight didnt go as quickly as we'd hoped. So, yet again, I get punked by the maintenance.
And to those posters telling us night/early a.m. players to "just get over it", spare me, OK? I've been playing this game for almost 2.5 years, working night shift the whole time. When you have to deal with the downtime during the middle of your peak playtime every single time they do maintenance, for 2.5 years, then you can tell me to get over it.
OK, sorry for the hostility. I just don't like having our concerns dismissed so carelessly by people who most likely deal with the downtime rarely, if ever.
[/ QUOTE ]
Just be thankful ya don't live in the UK. 
I agree the extended downtimes is a pain in the [censored] if you only play in the mornings. If there's no huge patch then there shouldn't be any delay with the server maintinence.
I agree and disagree here. As a person that has had a variety of schedule changes and late night or early morning playing sessions get interrupted by the maintenance, I can say that it is very annoying. But it is scheduled. I can anticipate the servers being shut down around 9am and I check periodically to see when they are back up.
Yes, this is an annoyance, especially for people that have this time set up for their daily game sessions.
But I would rather have that schedules downtime and have it fixed and maintained than have them do emergency maintenance on the server at 9:30 or 10pm on a Friday or Saturday. Which is exactly what happened to people on Protector last week.
And saying that 9am to 11am isn't their deadest time may not be completely true. When would you like them to do it? I have had a majority of my supergroup online and doing PvP or missions until 6 am here and there are still quite a few people playing. I have stayed on doing a Respec until the kicked us from the servers some mornings.
I understand the frustration of people not being able to get on the game when it is most convienent to them, and right now the hours of 9 am to 11 am are the most convienent for me to play as well.
The staggering of server downtime would possibly fix this complaint. If the east coast server went down at a different time than the west coast servers, at least you could have a server up to play on, but this may impede Cryptic from performing the tasks necessary, or doubling the amount of work and resources they need to allocate to it, which people will then complain about Cryptic not making new content of not offering Power customization.
And it is not like this happens all the time where the servers are down for hours at a time for days in a row. Only occasionally.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
My top issue:
Stop giving your morning customers the shaft.
Can we get an explanation why you continue to make the exact same customers bear 100% of the disadvantage of these downtimes?
[/ QUOTE ]
Since I work the night shift at my job, I don't usually get home until around 4am, mountain time. That means that the servers drop 3 hrs after I get home.
While it's hardly the end of the world, nor does it happen every day, it is frustrating that I have to put up with it whenever they go down.
It would be nice (maybe not realistic, though) to stagger the times of maintenance so that the same folks don't have to endure the downtime every time it happens. Just a few minutes ago the servers dropped in the middle of our Siege mish. Yes, we saw the warnings. No, the fight didnt go as quickly as we'd hoped. So, yet again, I get punked by the maintenance.
And to those posters telling us night/early a.m. players to "just get over it", spare me, OK? I've been playing this game for almost 2.5 years, working night shift the whole time. When you have to deal with the downtime during the middle of your peak playtime every single time they do maintenance, for 2.5 years, then you can tell me to get over it.
OK, sorry for the hostility. I just don't like having our concerns dismissed so carelessly by people who most likely deal with the downtime rarely, if ever.
[/ QUOTE ]
Right on the money.
The thing is, what you said makes TOO MUCH SENSE for it to be continually ignored by the devs.
It doesn't make sense to do maintenance any other time than your MOST DEAD TIME (which is not 9-11am).
It doesn't make sense to have your maintenance window affect the SAME EXACT PEOPLE 100% of the time. This is especially true when you hit people 3 days in a row.
This is basic, reasonable logic folks. The customers deserve a little better here, and they certainly deserve an explanation.
The way Cryptic hides under their desks about this issue is just mind boggling.
If you think you are doing the right thing, then stand in front of everyone and explain yourselves. Don't sneakily delete posts and threads and hope people won't notice. That's Verant/SOE type tactics.
You can do better, Cryptic! Your staff is one of the more connected in the business.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
My top issue:
Stop giving your morning customers the shaft.
Can we get an explanation why you continue to make the exact same customers bear 100% of the disadvantage of these downtimes?
[/ QUOTE ]
Since I work the night shift at my job, I don't usually get home until around 4am, mountain time. That means that the servers drop 3 hrs after I get home.
While it's hardly the end of the world, nor does it happen every day, it is frustrating that I have to put up with it whenever they go down.
It would be nice (maybe not realistic, though) to stagger the times of maintenance so that the same folks don't have to endure the downtime every time it happens. Just a few minutes ago the servers dropped in the middle of our Siege mish. Yes, we saw the warnings. No, the fight didnt go as quickly as we'd hoped. So, yet again, I get punked by the maintenance.
And to those posters telling us night/early a.m. players to "just get over it", spare me, OK? I've been playing this game for almost 2.5 years, working night shift the whole time. When you have to deal with the downtime during the middle of your peak playtime every single time they do maintenance, for 2.5 years, then you can tell me to get over it.
OK, sorry for the hostility. I just don't like having our concerns dismissed so carelessly by people who most likely deal with the downtime rarely, if ever.
[/ QUOTE ]
Right on the money.
The thing is, what you said makes TOO MUCH SENSE for it to be continually ignored by the devs.
It doesn't make sense to do maintenance any other time than your MOST DEAD TIME (which is not 9-11am).
It doesn't make sense to have your maintenance window affect the SAME EXACT PEOPLE 100% of the time. This is especially true when you hit people 3 days in a row.
This is basic, reasonable logic folks. The customers deserve a little better here, and they certainly deserve an explanation.
The way Cryptic hides under their desks about this issue is just mind boggling.
If you think you are doing the right thing, then stand in front of everyone and explain yourselves. Don't sneakily delete posts and threads and hope people won't notice. That's Verant/SOE type tactics.
You can do better, Cryptic! Your staff is one of the more connected in the business.
[/ QUOTE ]
Early morning is usually the slowest time. While it may be personally be irritating to you, it doesn't affect the average player that is afternoons/evenings.
Still here, even after all this time!
I have to agree with Futurias here. It's been 8:00 AM central time as long as I can remember. I personally don't like it when I have a day off from work and they do maintenance either, but I KNOW that is their time slot and it's a possibility.
Look on the bright side. Back in the day (as my Dad used to say) they did DAILY maintenance. At least now it is not very often. 
Cam you seriously didn't read my post in the other thread...
This is a teen targetted game! Where are teens at 9am - 11am central? Regardless of timezone, they should be already in or on their way to school. By sheer demographic, gamers are in their teens to early 30's, the majority of which are still in school to some extent.
The rest of the world is assumed to be employed in a 9-5 which makes sense. There are many people who have oddly scheduled playing hours due to occupation but I will safely guess that 80% of the workforce is on a daytime schedule which makes this an oppotune time to run maintenance.
And I will repeat *this* again too. Every other MMO that I know of has a normally scheduled maintenance in the mid morning, though usually more like 10-2pm. If you would rather have that long of a maintenance, I suggest you write to the corporate offices.
I call the following the Dev logic monologue:
"I make money from players"
"More players means more money"
"Most players work during the day and play at night"
"Some gamers stay up all night to play"
"There is a 6 hour time zone difference crossing the US"
"I will perform maintenance when most of those timezones are inactive"
"I hope Cam stops bothering us, we're trying our best to make everyone happy"
-Fini
I hope that the ability to drop missions is simply an option with no requirements or penalties. Personally I know that on occassion getting missions to hunt in zones I look at as a chance to explore new places. However getting missions to hunt in certain zones I regret. Same with some missions, the not knowing what zone the mission is in is a pain. Sometimes that places a significant factor in which mission I would pick. To simple be able to say as a player " I don't feel like hiking to XXXXXX and get a new mission would improve the fun of the game I believe. Now if this would simple recycle the mission possible giving it a different location I think eventually most characters would go through most of their missions. I also hope that contacts can be retooled so that at least prior to level 14 they don't give missions outside the zone you're in. It's hard enough to do your first few missions across the zone.
I also hope for a "flash back" option. Something that would allow you to auto extemp/lackey to approperiate level range for missions like how task forces do now. So we can work on the varies story arcs and finish out contacts regardless of level progression.
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I hope that the ability to drop missions is simply an option with no requirements or penalties. Personally I know that on occassion getting missions to hunt in zones I look at as a chance to explore new places. However getting missions to hunt in certain zones I regret. Same with some missions, the not knowing what zone the mission is in is a pain. Sometimes that places a significant factor in which mission I would pick. To simple be able to say as a player " I don't feel like hiking to XXXXXX and get a new mission would improve the fun of the game I believe. Now if this would simple recycle the mission possible giving it a different location I think eventually most characters would go through most of their missions. I also hope that contacts can be retooled so that at least prior to level 14 they don't give missions outside the zone you're in. It's hard enough to do your first few missions across the zone.
I also hope for a "flash back" option. Something that would allow you to auto extemp/lackey to approperiate level range for missions like how task forces do now. So we can work on the varies story arcs and finish out contacts regardless of level progression.
[/ QUOTE ]
Mission drops are already active. They let you drop 1 mission for full clear and reward every 7 days. That's it. Oh and not timed missions or TFs or badge missions.
I like the idea of these posts but "Top Issues" they are not. Horrible performance in CoV has never been acknowledged. THAT should be a Top Issue. I have a brand new Nvidia 7800GS vid card and far above the minimum hardware needed for this game. There are many, MANY people that are high end players that tweak the heck out of their systems for performance...that just doesn't transfer to CoX. Read the Tech forum some time.
Most bug fixes....irritating but not Top Issues. I would appreciate honesty from the Devs on the performance issues and could accept a statement of "Yes it's screwy. We are working on it". As it is, I think that I am leaving the game for at least a few issues soley because the software is running so poorly. I hope that things are ironed out by then because this is a great game in every other respect.
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El Humidor can run any character all the way across the zone without taking so much as a scratch because he is smart about how he travels. The Hollows is something of a right of passage. If you can traverse it safely, then you can traverse any zone safely.
[/ QUOTE ]
exactly right
[ QUOTE ]
Horrible performance in CoV has never been acknowledged. THAT should be a Top Issue. I have a brand new Nvidia 7800GS vid card and far above the minimum hardware needed for this game. There are many, MANY people that are high end players that tweak the heck out of their systems for performance...that just doesn't transfer to CoX.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yep, gotta agree with you on this one.
My comp is far from being a $7000, boutique-built, polygon-crushing monster, but it's no PIII-256 mb ram-onboard video email machine, either.
DFI Lanparty nForce3 250 mobo
AMD 64 3400
2 gigs OCZ platinum pc3200 ram
evga 7800gs superclock
X-Fi Music soundcard
510 watt power supply
CoV runs fairly poorly in open zones (at least it FEELS poor compared to my performance in other demanding games like HL2 Ep. 1, Oblivion, etc). I have to turn my settings down significantly every time I switch to villains. Quite frankly, I haven't spent much time in CoV SPECIFICALLY because of the performance issues.
Just kind of frustrating, that's all
...in CoH racing to 50 is like trying to race to the end of your vacation. -Arcanaville
Debt barely slows down levelling these days. It's just a little bar that measures how much Awesome you've generated recently. (If you're not getting debt, you're just not trying to generate Awesome hard enough.) -Kelenar
yeah, I've been experiencing some serious problems in terms of performance as well. Up until the last patch, I played on high settings with no lag and low load times...post-patch however, it takes me at least 10 minutes to actually get onto a character, and when I do, it's laggy as hell (on LOWEST settings!). I mean, we're talking 5 second power use delay kinda lag.
Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3800+
1 gig OCZ RAM (heatsinked)
256mb ATI Radeon X1300
160gb SATA2 HD (where CoX is installed)
80gb ATA133 HD (separate virtual memory drive to boost performance)
As you can see, this setup ought to be well over playable with high settings...however it's become unplayable for me on low.
I feel jipped out of my money, because I'm paying for game time that I can't actually use.
This is not a signature.
I got no performance issues with CoH or CoV with my
AMD Athlon 3500+
2GB Kingston PC3200 Ram
ATI Radeon X800 Pro 256MB AGP
Soundblaster Live! Sound card
I keep it on recommended, and it runs just fine.
ATs to 50 - TA/A Def, Nrg/Nrg Blaster, EM/EA Brute, WS,ELM/ELA Stalker
Enigma, with 2gigs of ram in there you try turning down/off the virtual memory? With that much actual ram i doubt windows will really need much vram. The big problem is it tends to use the vram first which, being on the hard drive, is considerably slower than your nice pc3200 sticks. If you've done this, well then i dunno man.
Here's an issue...
Why are wings not listed in the first 12 months worth of veteran rewards???
Hello?? Did we forget about them? You only spent 6 slagging months working on them!! You qued them ahead of Villain epics & other things we desperately need...like new contacts & new zones.
Who gets to use the wings?? The 25 players who have been here since Day 1 CoH has been live? Wow..that'll be cool...a piece of content no one can have.
Awesome job Devs...once again you're about to completely alienate your entire client base.
Somebody PLEASE tell me the devs aren't actually this ignorant, and this is some kind of big oversight.
Why do I do do do things I do
Nobody was ever there for me to talk to
Once I was youngster, pure and true
Now I'm running with a sick, sick crew.
Here's another complaint. My freedom server sg (F.I.S.T) just added a few teleporters to our base, and we now have a teleporter to Peregrine Island. Let's not kid ourselves, at least 90% of the activity on Peregrine Island revolves around the Portal Corporation missions, and I for one get annoyed at having to travel all the way across the island from the ferry. In addition, if we are clever enough to head back to talos island to sell enhancements for full value (something I ALWAYS do, because I ALWAYS play in sg mode to earn prestige), then we have to fly back across the island once again to get to more missions. So with the prospect of teleportation to PI finally available to ease my pain, what do I discover? The teleport arrival location on Peregrine Island is actually FARTHER from Portal Corp than the ferry!!!!! I cannot imagine how obtuse developers had to be to select the location they did. A teleporter arrival location on PI placed where it now is serves NO POSSIBLE PURPOSE other than to require us to spend even more time travelling than we already did, and less time enjoying missions. What POSSIBLE PURPOSE can this serve?!?!?!
I couldv'e sworn that one of the rednames posted something about putting mission doors into neighborhoods that are the same level range as the character's current level...
Guess that would be for an "upcoming" Issue, or something. Or it just doesn't apply to the Hollows. <_<
If Safeguards are anything like Mayhems, at least a level 5 Flight Pack power will be used a lot.
Dungeoncleaners! (ID#125715): Slay the Adventurers! Rescue the Monsters! Return the Treasure!
Peppermint Cat-- Lv50 Mewtant Ice/Eng Bls