Feedback: NCsoft Launcher

Please note we are only able to test the PC version of the NCsoft Launcher at this point.

If you have both the NCsoft Launcher and Training Room installed:

1. Run the NCsoft Launcher shortcut to get the latest update.
2. Double-click CITY OF HEROES TEST in the NCsoft Launcher’s game list to play.

If you do not have the NCsoft Launcher but have the Training Room installed:

1. Click the NCsoft Launcher link: http://us.ncsoft.com/en/launcher/ncsoft-launcher.html
2. Click Download Now.
3. Follow the instruction to install the NCsoft Launcher.
4. The NCsoft Launcher will start at the end of the installation.
5. Double-click CITY OF HEROES TEST in the NCsoft Launcher’s game list to play.

If you have the NCsoft Launcher but do not have the Training Room installed:

1. Run NCsoft Launcher shortcut to get the latest update.
2. The NCsoft Launcher will start.
3. Create a copy of the NCsoft Launcher desktop shortcut.
4. Right click on the new shortcut and open the Properties option.
5. In the Target window, add the following flag to the end of the line:
[space]/LaunchGame=CohTest
6. Run the shortcut.
7. The NCsoft Launcher will open, starting a City of Heroes Test installation.
8. Click Install.
9. If you are on Windows Vista or Windows 7, confirm the UAC prompts. (if UAC is turned on).
10. After the installation completes, double-click CITY OF HEROES TEST in the NCsoft Launcher’s games list to play.

If you wish to post bug reports related to this feature, please use the corresponding bug thread here.

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Please use this thread to share your feedback with us.

Feedback is important to our development process, there are two types of feedback and both are helpful although some give us more insight and are more easily adapted into game changes.

Objective Feedback: Objective feedback is based upon what you as a user see or experience that other users may also see and experience. This feedback usually can be replicated easily as it involves facts and unbiased opinions. Example: When using the base editor items are sometimes getting caught in columns or pillars.

Subjective Feedback: Subjective feedback is based upon how you feel or experience the game as yourself. This experience may not necessarily be replicated because it is based on feeling and emotion. Subjective feedback is important to us but it is usually helpful if more information is present to describe what and why you feel the way you do. Example: I like the way the graphics look on my shield animation it gives me the feeling of being truly super-powered.

Objective Feedback:
Seems OK, thumbs up for the ability to tell it what region I am interested in. It defaulted to Europe, but since Im play on the US servers i was glad to find the option and have it give me the links to the correct server status pages etc... Having just one Launcher for Live, Test and Beta should be quite good, it correctly detected my installs (a little trouble with live, but that was because I didn't have Live installed correctly).
So far so good.

Objective feedback:
Currently using the NCsoft Launcher to download the test client, and I noticed there isn't a progress bar or % completed displayed. Perhaps this could be included?

Subjective feedback:
I had previously avoided putting test on my system because it was just a little confusing. This however, I found to be easy.

Objective feedback: The install instructions claim that the launcher will prompt for automatic downloads. It does not do this, but defaults to actually doing so.

Also, there doesn't seem to be a provision in place to transfer Steam client users to the NCSoft Launcher. This will be an issue attempting to bring this to Live since Steam seems to check whether the launcher you're using is the correct one and refuses to run.

Subjective feedback: One. I hate, hate, HATE companies that try to gather "usage statistics" and slap the 'recommended' label on the option. I don't mind that you'd like the information, understand that it's useful to you, but the mere fact that you're essentially lying about the reasons for wanting it by saying it's for MY own good immediately causes me to shut it off and strongly not want to do further business with the company.

Second, the NC Launcher uses five times the RAM and runs continuously in the background whether being used or not. Not an issue for me personally, but some people are still running on minimum specs and this will make the game fail to run at all, or run so poorly that it's not worth playing.

While I understand that this is an order from on high from the corporate overlords, I am going to make one last appeal to let those of us who prefer it keep the old launcher. Warts and all. I really don't give a flying leap about "those other games" and thus, having "all your NC Soft Games in the same place" is at best a non-concern and, at worst, an annoyance that makes me want to find an NC exec and make incredibly rude noises at them.

EDIT: Also, adding one last bit of Objective: Download speed is noticeably DEGRADED on my connection by the launcher (about 10k/bps loss.)

Question. What about people who play and launch through Steam? Will they need this?

Subjective Feedback: I'm not one of these people but it is installed on my computer. I would rather use the bloated software I already have installed to launch the game rather then download and install a different bloated application.

I used the NC launcher years ago. Back when NCsoft had lots of games like Dungeon Runner and what ever that mech shooter was called. CoH is the only game you guys have that I play and I hate to run this extra stuff for no reason. I'm fine with the current Live,Test,Beta loading methods.

EDIT: Lily Inverse said it better. I hate launchers and all the marketing BS about how its going to be so great and change our lives.

Second Edit:
Objective Feedback: It installs fine. NCLauncher.exe is running at 30000K memory This would be the extra unneeded bloat I was posting about. Unlike the current launcher that I only start when I need to update then close and skip to get into the game.

Objective feedback: the look of it seems solid and download speed was significantly faster by a good 2.5 times and it is very nice to be able to launch test or beta from the launcher

subjective feedback: compared to the old look this thing is 100x better. i also dont really like the "recommended" for sending feedback information. the download speed was also immensly faster for me, usual download rate was 250-347 kbs but with this i was getting 800-840 kbs

overall i think its fine, i rather have 1 launcher than 20 launchers that each update individually, this one updater will make it easier to see things

Objective Feedback:
I had to download the latest update of test, and noticed that it was actually downloading slower through the NC Launcher. Other than that, the program ran fine with no errors or problems.

Subjective Feedback:
I like the fact that Live and Test are available in one place. I don't mind seeing the other NCSoft games even though I don't play any of them. I do mind the extra resources the launcer uses as was already stated by others.

Installed nice and easily for me.

Found where I had installed, and *then* moved games, or just butchered the install... All worked nicely.

For me, the download speed of the Test Server patch (EU) was at full line speed available (20Mb).

Turned off the "launch at Windows startup" and set the option for it to *close* down when the game is launched.

This was a trick i learnt from when i was playing TR. It works for me, and i like how fast it actually patched up to the test server (about 90seconds after i downloaded the patch).

I just wish i could set Steam up to do that as well

RAM usage *after* the Test server patch stayed high, but at least just restarting the launcher resolved that issue.

Nice and smooth, and actually works Now i can remove all the icons i have on my desktop for NCsoft games (well Guild Wars, GUild Wars patcher, and CoX/CoX Test.)

*edit* Its nice that the option for verifying files is there... Its been a while but i cannot remember if it is *automatic* after a game/PC crash or not. If it isnt, then it can be handy for some people as well who just want to quickly get back ingame

Objective feedback: Upon completing the download, my Windows 7 taskbar appeared to inform me of this as I was playing. This can be disruptive to play experience if it happens at the wrong time..

Subjective feedback: .. And it DID happen at the wrong time in this case. I was ahead of the team on an ITF, running into the center of a spawn solo to plant a poison trap. Only suddenly I can't click on the power to activate it. I figured it out quickly enough but I cared enough to post of it.

Objective Feedback:

Was able to download and install the new launcher with no problems and was able to launch Test, Beta, and Live (although this started up the current updater/launcher as Live is currently not active with this system) without any problems occurring.

Subjective Feedback:

The small "information window" (currently cycling between 'Buy the Animal Pack', 'Refer a Friend', and 'Strike Target 2/22 - 2/28') seems to cycle at a pace of 7-8 seconds. While that timed doesn't seem to long, sitting in front of my computer waiting for it to cycle through all the different choices seems to take forever; it would be great if there was a way to manually advance it like there is on the main CoX website.

Also, clicking both "Server Status" and "Patch Notes" launches your web-browser; with all the information available on the launcher, it would be great if those two pieces of information were available on the launcher itself. Perhaps it might be possible that when clicking on those options the requested information replaces the main CoX 'splash' (what is currently displaying "City of Heroes The Animal Pack!"). After all, if I'm going to have to have a big fancy launcher for CoX I would like it to have all the information directly tied to it (such as if there was a patch and what it was or if the servers are up or not) displayed right on it.

Objective: Installed easily. Picked up all 3 of my installs (live, test, beta). Let me know (yellow dot) that Test needed to be updated. Updated smoothly. No visible issues.

Subjective: I found the options to disable load at startup, background updating, and to make it close at game launch. I am a minimalist and so I availed myself of these options.

However, I now find myself wanting to axe the section for "uninstalled games". I don't like seeing it there. It's invasive and unnecessary. It's extra clutter for no reason.

An option to turn it off or hide it would be appreciated. And NO, it's never, ever, ever, ever going to make me consider buying those other games they sell. That's the kind of thing that actually DISSUADES me from ever doing so.

Creating a Separate Desktop Shortcut

Subjective: I like the ability to create an Icon for each install (Live, Test, Beta). This, coupled with having the Launcher terminate upon starting a client, gives me the same functionality I've always had with the old updaters. I like that.


Objective: When creating a shortcut for each install, there's no way to change the Icon through the Launcher. And when attempting to choose a different icon through the Properties of the shortcut, I get this message:

! Windows can't find the file %ProgramFiles%\NCSoft\Launcher\Config/Default/Icons/coh.ico.

Probably because the path is half DOS and half Unix.

But even if the path was correct, there is only one CoH icon in ..Default/Icons/*.*, namely, the default Heroside launcher icon. There should also be the default Villainside launcher icon, the default GR launcher icon and the all-cities icon from the Going Rogue disc.

Of course, I know how to find the usual icons from the other .exe files through browsing, but, it should be easier. There should be these:



(Actually, these don't look so great to begin with. Some new art that looks good at the resolution would be nice.)

Objective Feedback: The download went vert fast, and I had no problems with the install, or with updating the Test and Beta servers.

Subjective FeedbackThe launcher looks rather nice - it even has a color scheme that's shades of gray
I like the way there's more info and links with it too.

One thing I'm not sure about is if this is going to totally replace the current updater or not? Because I was still getting the updater appearing after I started the game via the new launcher.

Objective feedback:
The download speed for updating the testserver is slower. Definitely not faster.

Since a few weeks I had an error which didn't allow me to update the EU test server. I hadn't gotten around to trying to fix it yet, but now I wont have to since the NCsoft launcher fixed it automaticly for me. Very good!

Subjective feedback: I like the look and feel of the updater. The news and various links are presented much cleaner and clearer than on the current EU one.
I love how all the different servers are in one updater now.

Objective feedback:
Downloaded, installed, and ran without a hitch. Updated and ran the EU test server okay. The download felt slower, but I didn't manage to catch any numbers to actually compare.

Subjective feedback:
I was ready to hate this launcher, after the comments I'd read about it. But once I found the settings window, I rather liked it. The actual layout of the CoH news tab thingy is about a hundred times better than what us Europeans had on our launcher, and I love that we can finally get some sort of graphic. I was always envious of the US patcher for that.

Based on rather common complaints, I'm not sure how long it'll last, but I like it for now.

Query: The current launcher tries (or used to try) to determine if your game ended abnormally (crashed) and automatically runs a file verification if it thinks you crashed. I have never needed this functionality - my game files have never been corrupted in nigh 7 years of play. I bypass the existing launcher, and this automated file validation check was part of why. (If I think I need to check them, I can still do it manually.)

What's this launcher do in this regard, if anything? (I'll try to test it this weekend by munging a game instance, but I figured maybe someone already knew.)

Objective:

I didn't have Test installed, so I did the copy trick (copied the City of Heroes folder to CohTest, and removed the checksum file) and then installed the NCSoft installer. The NCSoft Installer did NOT find my CohTest, although it did find the regular City of Heroes and CohBeta.

Just saying: to do the copy trick, I need to use the old cohupdater.exe. The NCSoft Installer can't figure out that it has to update CohTest. This'll be a big pain if I have to actually download the whole thing to get NCSoft Installer to recognize it. (I.e., if cohupdater.exe ever goes away.)

EDIT:

Confirmed. After running cohupdater.exe for Test, the NCSoft Installer found the test install and listed it for me to choose. I didn't have the filename messed up or anything like that, just a short download from test and I was ready to go.

Objective feedback: Windowblinds makes it look a little funny. Solution is to make the NCLauncher a total exception, not getting skinned at all.