Was Fulcrum Shift awesome once?

Question for long-time Vets: Did they change the sound and visual effects for Fulcrum Shift at some point? I seem to remember someone mentioning that they did.

I ask because the sounds and visuals seem so out-of-whack with how powerful the buff actually is.

I can't SEE which members of my team are being buffed, the sound effect doesn't scale well with how many enemies are being affected...overall it just seems like some designer was out to lunch on the sounds and visuals for this freakishly powerful buff.

i dont believe thats how the sounds works, i know the sound is louder if your closer to the enemies being hit, and the more enemies hit make a louder sound. the sound and visuals are definitly noticeable on larger mobs

I don't believe the visual changed, but the sound did. Somewhere around Issue 7 or 8, I believe, the old sound, which was closer to the sound of Siphon Power, with a loud "Fwaap!" sound, was replaced with the jingly effect that we have now. That may have been a performance issue, as I recall stories of hangups when it was cast on a large group.

As was said, the visual hasn't changed, but the sound used to be closer to a loud smacking sound. But at some point it started to cause a lot of problems. For many people, one of four things would tend to happen:

1) You went in to a sound loop crash

2) Your screen froze for a long time

3) Your screen froze for a long time, and then you crashed

4) It worked normal

This was all happening around the time that a lot of sounds were causing sound loop crashes, but Fulcrum Shift's was the worst offender.

A lot of people prefer the old sound, because they feel it sounded more "powerful" than the new sound, but I like the new sound a lot better. The old sound effect made it sound like every other power in the set, or pretty much like what it was: an AoE version of Siphon Power, which didn't seem that exciting to me when I first got it.

While the new sound doesn't really go well with the rest of the set, I like that it sounds more like what the power says it does: transfer energy from your opponent to you and your teammates. I wish they'd redo the whole set to fit a similar sound theme, while also beefing up the Fulcrum Shift one a little to sound more powerful than the rest of the set.

I also wish they'd redo the Dark powersets' sound effects. Those have always sounded goofy to me. Not to mention most of the graphics look like clumps of hair.

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When I read the title, I came in here with the intention of posting "Your use of the past tense confuses me." Then I realized you were talking about the FX of the power. You ruined my snarky reply!

That said, I've only been around for 2.5 years, so I don't think I predated the change. But honestly, I didn't even know it had a sound effect, and the visual was always so muted it was usually lost in the auras of my toggles. The effect I always went by was the Damage Buff in my Powers Window turning blue, and my damage numbers increasing by an order of magnitude.

And Head Splitter one-shotting +2 bosses.

i wasnt here for the original sound effect either, but i like the current sound effect.

as for visuals, since i16 i guess it depends on the colors that the player has set, since some colors (like black/black) are ner invisible while other colors are much more noticeable.

I remember herding the entire eden trial room around the crystal titan (on my invul tanker) into one of the little holes around the room and having a kin fulcrum shift (fwaaaaap!). The buffs went across the screen, 3 people DC'd, and a blaster cried out in delight and ran in and nova'd.

Good memories :P

Wow. Learn something new every day. I was around for the days when Fulcrum on a huge herd would crash people, but I had no idea it was because of a sound issue. I always just assumed it was gfx overload from so many targets or something.

t MrQuizzles, the error message is something like CoH has encountered an error and has to close, please describe what you were doing when it happened in order to help us solve the problem, or something like that. Unless you're being very cheatyface, you'll almost never see that message nowadays.

The numbers of targets hit was a big issue. Many crashes, many many crashes.

Even with 16 targets its overbuff for anyone but a brute, hitting 100 or more was just crazy. Fun but crazy.

I never saw it in person, but people I trust told me stories of crashing Crey's Folly from herding 600 Freaks and someone hitting a nuke.

The old Kinetics whip-crack sound was so much cooler. It used to make up for the underwhelming visuals with awesome sounds on Siphon Power and Fulcrum Shift... I just can't get into the set at all without it.

I've always missed the old "Crack of Doom" of Fulcrum Shift... the new dingle bells don't even come close. The original FS sound was very similar to lightning clap or lightning storm from the Storm set... it was MUCH more impressive. I have to say that I truly DESPISE the new fulcrum sound. Let's see, CRACK! of Doom or dingle dingle dingle... hmm, I wonder which is more impressive and in keeping with one of the single most powerful buffs in the game?

I never heard of lag issues from the sound effect before... it was all the visual effects and applying all the buffs that tended to lag in the old days. As far as I can tell all they did was replace one .wav file with another.

I wish they'd provide us with a directory of the sound names in the game and what power/object they are associated with. The "How to replace sounds' thread has been helpful, but it's basically a collection of sound names/locations that people have discovered so far, so it is very incomplete.