i17 Renders Game Unplayable - Win 7, AMD, nVidia

A previously stable and playable system, not fast however, has been rendered unplayable by the i17 update.

"Lost Connection to Map Server" flashes up every 10-15 seconds and stays on for a similar amount of time. Movement across zones is fine for 10-15 seconds then I stop cold with the LCMS pops up. It does this moving or not moving, chatting or not chatting, in WWs or AE, or just in a zone. Pretty much all the time.

If a fix is not found for this I will be cancelling my game subscription as I don't have the money for a new rig.

Really?!? An update killed CoH for me?

Try updating your vid card drivers. I had to uninstall and reinstall mine (ATI Radeon) but it's working fine now.

Lisa

Updated nVidia drivers yielded no change in the frequency of the Lost Connection To Mapserver error message.

Game still unplayable.

Has my rig just fallen below the minimum standard to play CoH?

Processor AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 2.01 GHz
2 GB Memory Installed
nVidia GeForce 6800XT

According to the website information found under System Requirements I should still be able to play the game as I am above the minimum requirements and near the recommended:

Minimum PC System Requirements:

* OS: Microsoft® Windows® XP/Vista/7
* Processor: Intel® Pentium® III 1 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 1 GHz MHz
* RAM: 512 MB RAM or more
* Video: NVIDIA® GeForce 2 Series

Recommended PC System Requirements:

* OS: Microsoft® Windows® XP/Vista/7
* Processor: Intel® or AMD Dual Core processor
* RAM: 2 GB RAM or more
* Video: NVIDIA® GeForce FX 5600 Series (or higher)

I would like the game to work again please.

Sounds like a network issue to me. No ideas on how to fix it though.

I would also suspect a network issue. I have had zero problems with it (other than, for some bizarre reason, something doesn't like a friends Ventrilo client).

Does safe mode help at all?

I will try safe mode but upon further investigation I see that my CPU is being run at nearly 100% and CoH is now using 90% of CPU cycles. W/o CoH running my CPU runs between 0-5% at idle.

I am also only using 58% of the memory at idle while in Oro doing nothing and the CPU is capped.

In Safe mode CoH crashes at start-up.

In addition Ultra-mode is, quite obviously, turned off, disable or otherwise non-functioning and pretty much all my other graphics setting are at or near minimum levels.

I'm having the same problems and my system is a intel i7-920 with a ati hd4850. It's definitely something with the update as I've never had crashing problems before, at all.

I tried to update my drivers, and I got an insane lag - in the character creation screen, and then crashed out of there. I tried the ultra mode thing in beta and it ran fine there.

I'm seeing the exact same problem. Vista, AMD, nVidia. all drivers are updated. I didn't have this problem in Beta - it's only since the patch went live.

If you get a solution, please post it. My friend has the same problem - CPU at almost 100 % when he is in CoX, which makes all our voice programs crash. It's a bummer having to type during mishs! He has reduced everything to minimum for performance instead of quality - but I17 is definitely not improving game quality for us!

There are many things which can impact the performance of the game, both inside the game and outside of the game. In the game, try reducing the graphics settings and also try running with the game's safe mode (checkbox at the user agreement window).

Outside of the game, make sure you system is running optimally (hard-drive is defragged, all unnecessary services and programs are shut down, etc).

I know you've bin told to update your graphic drivers. But did you actually go to your card manufactures website and get the update or are you just relying on windows update? Because despite having gone to the website and downloaded the latest drivers windows keeps trying to make me download an older version.

Hey Tex, thanks for stopping by.

Got my drivers the day i17 went live from the nVidia site. So they are the good ones and up to day. Installed them, rebooted, have a relatively new install of Win 7 on a new hard drive which is not full and defragged. I am technically adept, have been a technical coordinator in the past, build my own computers (well not my laptops) and have shut down all unneeded processes so I have max avail memory.

Here is the big stand out item for me:

PRE-i17 the game worked and was very playable. Perfect? No, but then again nor is my system.
POST-i17 the game is unplayable. CPU gets run hard and I also notice that my laptop and my desktop are relating to the network differently. My desktop, the problem child, not only is using up its CPU cycles but is also moving way more data via the network. The additional overhead imposed on my system by i17 is killing my network connection or my computers ability to keep track of the connection.

FYI...
Turning off the Firewall seems to fix the problem for me. If I re-enable the firewall, the problems start again. Turn the firewall back off and the problems stop.

Not too sure I like running without a firewall though... and this sure didn't happen pre-I17.

This is *NOT* about the minimum requirements being raised.

This is about, shall we say, *lateral* changes to the engine, some of which are designed, in fact, to help lower end GPUs function better.

But with every change there is always the possibility that there was a bug on the end of the developers, or, an unforeseen conflict on some systems; not that the developers purposely increased the complexity of the game leaving some computer set-ups moribund.

So, we've seen so far that every time someone has reported an inability to play and people have run out shouting, "Ultra Mode has left low-end computers in the dust!", it has been shown that something else was the problem. Some of the things that have surfaced:

• Intel GPUs have faults in their drivers. Previously, CoH programmers kludged around those faults. The updates have revealed those faults again, but, it's the fault of Intel, not CoH.

• Background programs running: Most notably the ATI poller (External Events Utility) and the Google Toolbar.

• Firewall issues (other past CoH Issues have had Firewall issues exposed)

Same problem here, AMD 3800+ Geforce 9500GT WinXP - worked fine before patch. 100% processor ever since.

Can't even talk on vent with the game running.

Someone help us!

Old sig, first post in (years maybe).

Game unplayable, even in safe mode.
Newest drivers loaded tonight just to be sure.

I believe that everyone's pretty much pinpointed the question: regardless of pre- or post-i17, I've noticed few to no graphical errors, even on an old 7600 GT. I may not have been around other players much, but as Zombie Man noted, it's clearly not a graphical issue with the newest patch - at least as far as this problem is concerned.

What is, unfortunately, a problem, is that City of Heroes is throwing off the network connection periodically, if not continuously. (I'm encountering redbars and connection 'loss' every five seconds, for between two and three each time.) This may be a function of how it moves data: on some ISPs (I'm looking at you, unnamed giant media conglomorate) the routers provided are pathetic, and incapable of handling a large number of simultaneous connections. This is especially noticable when torrents and the like are active.

I've encountered effectively the same issues as the others here, and found that a variety of things don't seem affect how the packets are being (mis)handled:
- Turning off both Windows Firewall, and any others currently running,
- Setting my IP to the Demilitarized Zone on my router, and
- Opening the appropriate ports for City of Heroes, with or without DMZ active.

So, this is pretty much equivalent to the issues which show up on my network connection when a torrent is being run. Unfortunately, if the manner in which the server handles connections has changed to something akin to this, then a great number of customers may full well be having an enormously hard time.

For a picture of what this effect looks like, I present this. To view this on your own, type '/netgraph 1' (no quotes) into your chat bar. Additionally, you can type 'ping google.com -n 100' into your Run menu while City of Heroes is running, and see how the number and timing of dropped/delayed packets coincides precisely with the game.

Finally, much like the OP, I'm running Windows 7 with an AMD and nVidia setup. Attempting to reduce City of Heroes to XP Compatibility Mode (SP 2 and 3 both) was fruitless.

Hope this helps.

You could also try temporarily disabling your anti-virus/spyware programs while playing the game. I managed to fix the odd-ball lag I was having by either disabling my anti-virus program, turning off its Realtime protection, or adding it as an excluded process.

I am not running Anti-Virus on my machine. The ones that I have tried on my rig have degraded performance. I have a hardware firewall and use the router firewall and don't download stuff that could have viruses. I also run periodic virus checks just in case.

Waiting on tech support on this one.