Forbin_Project

Originally Posted by Doctor Roswell

In that case, at least, they have a legitimate exclusivity to fall back on: paying customers were promised back when the Collector's Edition was released that Prestige Power Slide would never be available by other means; it was part of how they justified the added cost of that edition versus the normal one. However (and I've mentioned these before):

• I don't claim to speak for everybody, but as one of the people they made that promise to, I'd personally have ZERO problem with them going back on it.
• If they don't want to do that, there's nothing stopping them from releasing a (non-prestige) Power Slide with a different (or completely absent, which might work better with current path auras anyway) glow effect. It's really just Sprint with a different animation, after all. That would be a proper compromise, I think. People who want to pay money to slide can do that, people who want something to lord over other people still have their "prestigious" purple foot glow.

Originally Posted by Cathulhu

Did you read the post I was responding to? In the context he wrote, it seemed he was wondering why it was FOR SALE for a limited time. My response was in regards to such a question. I'm sorry if this confused you. In my origional post, simply replace my use of the phrase "limited time" with "for sale for a limited time" if it is unclear to you.

Originally Posted by rsclark

Maybe you should have a talk with them about respecting their customers more.

Originally Posted by rsclark

And your point is?

Also, I believe you have confused "all businesses" with "huge companies that advertise on TV". I got a nice burger joint down the road that does none of this crap.

Originally Posted by Sermon

You are right. I didn't mean to imply that it is perhaps a marketing strategy which is bad for the game (and the game's bottom line). It may not be a bad strategy per se, but I am suggesting that it could be in this instance.

Originally Posted by rsclark

Do you disagree that is it a marketing ploy?

Are marketing ploys not a form of manipulation?

Personally, I want them to stop manipulating us and just sell us a product at a reasonable price without all the stupid mind games.

Originally Posted by Organica

You haven't established that this is bad marketing. In fact, as Cathulhu explained, "for a limited time" is very good marketing for Disney, for example, and may prove to be very good marketing for CoH.

Originally Posted by PSLAnimal

Yeah, about that; the gladius should really almost belong to a whole new powerset. The Roman gladius was a stabbing sword, not a hack/slash weapon. A Roman-styled "stabbing-sword" scrapper/tank set could be a lot of fun, and actually give the gladius a style to fit its purpose.

Originally Posted by KnightofKhonsu

You are exactly right. A message board is populated by certain percentage of the gaming population and thus does not even come close to representing the player base as a whole. You cannot even begin to gather empirical evidence to quantify the remark that Doctor Roswell made. It is not possible. Moreover, making up a message board poll is about as scientific as measuring the stinkage factor of a fart. It still stinks and fails to do anything but gauge the members of a message board’s opinion, nothing else.

Originally Posted by Organica

I feel the same.

Generally I've liked the unlocks. It's nice that I can make a brand new character with a halo, whatever aura I want, whatever cape I want, etc. But it's never bothered me that some things require you to earn them. That's kind of the very definition of most MMO's, and I don't think it hurts CoH to have a little of that in the game, especially for things like costumes that don't actually affect game play.

It's nice when you can mostly have both, and it' nice that there's still a few things you still need to earn.

Originally Posted by je_saist

If you believe the marketing, it offers C.risp A.nd R.esponsive P.erformance

No, subtlety is not one of my strong points.

To run all Ultra Mode options at once in 1680*1050 the starting point is around a AMD RadeonHD 4850 / Nvidia Geforce GTS 250. These have the respective theoretical throughput rates of

• 10,000 MegaPixel / 25,000 Megatexel
• 11,808 MegaPixel / 47,232 Megatexel

For the AMD architecture then, cards that will run Ultra Mode include:

• RadeonHD 4730**
• RadeonHD 4770***
• RadeonHD 4850
• RadeonHD 4850x2
• RadeonHD 4860
• RadeonHD 4870
• RadeonHD 4870x2
• RadeonHD 4890
• RadeonHD 5750
• RadeonHD 5770
• RadeonHD 5830
• RadeonHD 5850
• RadeonHD 5870
• RadeonHD 5970
• RadeonHD 6850
• RadeonHD 6870
• RadeonHD 6950
• RadeonHD 6970

**I've never actually seen a 4730 for sale. On paper it has the shader and texture power to execute the OpenGL 3.0 calls in the 1280*720 resolution range.
***As far as I am aware the 4770 was only sold with a 512mb memory configuration. The card also had a 128-bit memory bus. While it's not far off from the 4850 in terms of theoretical power, the memory configuration places this cards target resolution more for 1280*720

For the Nvidia architecture these include:

• 8800 GTS*
• 8800 GTX*
• 8800 Ultra*
• 9800 GTX
• 9800 GTX+
• 9800 GX2
• GTS 240
• GTS 250
• GTX 260
• GTX 260 216
• GTX 275
• GTX 280
• GTX 285
• GTX 295
• GTS 450
• GTX 460
• GTX 460 SE
• GTX 465
• GTX 470
• GTX 480
• GTX 570
• GTX 580

*the Geforce 8800 series has the shader and texture power to execute Ultra Mode Code, but memory counts of 256mb and 512mb of local video memory really cuts into the ability of the cards to render Ultra Mode in high resolutions

The list of mobile cards that can render in ultra mode is significant shorter:

• Mobile RadeonHD 4850
• Mobile RadeonHD 4850x2
• Mobile RadeonHD 4860
• Mobile RadeonHD 4870
• Mobile RadeonHD 4870x2
• Mobile RadeonHD 5830
• Mobile RadeonHD 5850 GGD5
• Mobile RadeonHD 5870

• 9800M GTS
• 9800M GT
• 9800M GTX
• Quadro FX 3700M
• Quadro FX 3800M
• GTX 260M
• GTX 280M
• GTX 285M
• GTX 460M
• GTX 470M
• GTX 480M

Now, I have the well publicized opinion that most of the Geforce cards are rip-offs. Outside of the Geforce GTX 460, pretty much the entire street price for Nvidia cards are way over-priced compared to AMD cards with similar frame-per-second performance: http://www.pricewatch.com/video_cards/

Case in point: Nvidia wants $500 for the GTX 580. However, in realistic gameplay, the $500 msrp GTX 580 doesn't actually buy you higher resolutions, more anti-aliasing, or better texture quality... compared to a RadeonHD 6970 with an MSRP of $369, and a street price only a few bucks more. So... what are you spending nearly $125+ for? Best as I can figure, a little badge that says Nvidia.

One of the problems with my opinion is that Nvidia offers huge discounts to OEM vendors in order to keep system price parity with AMD offerings. So, if you are buying a pre-built computer from a major OEM like Dell, HP, or Gateway, their computers won't have the price / performance discrepancy you'll find in the add-in card market.

So it's very possible that you'll find one of the card listed here available in a pre-built system for not much off an equivelent AMD card.

Originally Posted by Android_5Point9

It does however, show you locations for badges, day jobs, enemy group locations and level ranges, Rikti dropship paths, zone event/GM markers, plaques, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting. Very handy, I highly recommend it.

Originally Posted by Sermon

I appreciate the attempt to offer convenience, but why limited time?

Originally Posted by DreadShinobi

A small one time fee that will quickly add up with more small one time fees because they will not stop. This is city of microtransactions. It's also why I'm not paying them anything until they put out content of quality again.

Originally Posted by Sermon

I dunno why they have to continually try the patience of the playerbase with little stunts (exclusive items, limited time offers, and the upcoming grab bags). I have just about hit my limit of patience with marketing. I feel less and less like I am voting with my dollar and more and more like I am begrudgingly giving them my money. This change in my personal attitude saddens me.

Originally Posted by Zortel

Why not let people get all the normal weapons and shields and keep the Romulus nictus sword and shield (?) exclusive to the ITF?

Cause that makes more sense than no weapons apart from an exclusive bow.

Originally Posted by Rodion

There is a toggle to indicate you're looking for a team, and you can set it to several different values: including looking for trials, looking for patrols, looking for missions, looking for any, not looking, etc.

When you open Find Member team search window an icon will appear by each character indicating what kind of activity they're looking for, which you can filter for so only those players are displayed.

So, the functionality is already there, the problem is that very few people seem to know about it. I just checked on Freedom, and out of 700 or so players who are listed in the Find Member window 5 were looking for team and 12 were looking for any. Hundreds of people were set to "not looking" and were not teamed and were not in a mission. (And while I was looking at the window with my search flag set to not looking, someone asked me out of the blue if I was interested in doing radio missions.)

It's possible that those people are just putzing around solo, or are just waiting for friends to show up, or they could actually be looking for teams but don't know how to find them except through chat channels. We really don't know.

I try to use the search toggle when possible, but hardly anyone seems to know about it.

The problem may be that the search function is backwards. It's set up for a team leader to find members, but most people want to find teams. Personally, I don't mind running a team, I just hate sitting around sending cold tells to people I don't know asking them to join me (since so few people set their status). I also don't like spamming the help channel with "looking for members" because that's not what the help channel should be for. While the global recruiting channels are fine, they have a lot of limitations: you have to know about them, you have to be invited to them or sign yourself up (and there's a limit to the number you can join), there's a limit on the number of members, etc. I'd like to just set the toggle to "looking for members", with a note saying what I'm doing, and anyone who's interested can ask to join. But that's not a current option, though I admit I could just set my status to something else and see if "Running hero tips, send tell for invitation" gets any bites.

That's sort of what the LFG queue is supposed to do, without making any one person responsible for leading the league, but most people who run trials want to exert control over who's on the team (usually for very valid reasons).

Originally Posted by Zombie Man

While I certainly don't keep three Rock powers in my trays, whatever is left over from powers is rapidly filled with macros.

We had this argument before when we only had 3 trays and those against asking for more made the point: "Well **I** don't need more than 3 so, I'm against it." Which is the ultimate selfish argument. If they had their way, we'd still only have access to 3 trays.

If a number of people can find use for more than 9 trays, what is it to those who can't to argue against it?

Incidentally, if it were up to Positron, we'd only have 4 trays, but pohsyb snuck in the full 9 that we have now, flummoxing Positron, who is even more flummoxed by how popular that was.

Originally Posted by Zombie Man

Yes, except for the Cimeroran custom weapons inexplicably.

Originally Posted by Zombie Man

I would contend you're not playing the game enough...

Screenshot

Originally Posted by CactusBrawler

I'm just hoping beast mastery doesn't cost 800 points, y'know seeing as it can only be used by one AT.