Goliath Bird Eater

Absolutely LOVE how people assume Positron was the evil mastermind solely keeping us from having merged markets. I don't think Paragon Studios is a dictatorship, and WW's promotion doesn't enable her to do whatever she wants to the game. With mention in the other thread about Information (Praetorian currency, I guess), it probably came down to making the decision to either support 3 separate systems of currency and 3 separate auction houses, or just combine and simplify down to 1 currency and auction house.

Protip: The devs said that there were certain tiers of players that were eligible for the GR beta, but they never said WHEN those tiers would be invited or even if they're separating beta entrance by those tiers. Also, there's no set amount of time by which the devs must let another tester group into beta. The beta will progress as it needs to progress, and sometimes things take longer than the developers expect

Finally, IBTL. We do NOT need any more of these threads.

If I may nitpick, even Marvel doesn't classify them as Mutants. Cases like the Fantastic Four or Spider-Man, who all gained abilities as a result of their molecular structures being mutated by outside sources, are considered Mutates. Still human, but with post-natal altered genetics. Mutants, on the other hand, are not just born with various abilities, but actually born with a specific gene absent in non-Mutants. It's gotten to the point in the Marvel universe where Mutants are considered by many to be their own separate species. They're feared, hated, persecuted, and discriminated against because they're genetically not H.omo Sapiens. The Fantastic Four, on the other hand, don't have to deal with much of that partially due to the fact that they've made it clear that they were human before going into space, and that any other humans exposed to the same conditions as they would also have super powers.

TL;DR version: Even Marvel says that the Fantastic Four would be of a Science origin in CoH terms.

Now, you wanna talk about a convoluted origin? My Crab Spider started out as a low-ranking Freakshow member who joined Arachnos, underwent strenuous physical and mental training to become a Wolf Spider, was subjected to various scientific experiments and alterations in order to become a Crab Spider, then gradually replaced most of his organic body with advanced cybernetics and robotics. PLUS, he also makes use of a few magical artifacts!

The particle effect replays on tough hide, but not the actual physical character animation. At least, not on the character of mine with that particular mutation. That's probably working as intended.

Yeesh. There's fraud protection, and then there's just pants-on-head retarded. Anyways, it's nice to see ya back.

While some of us HAVE changed avatars, and maybe even forum handles.

Hrm ... that's what I was afraid of.

A lot of the graphical coding work to fix the old ATI problems and enable use of Ultra Mode was done before the 5xxx series cards were released -- the HeroCon Praetoria demo was run on 2 crossfired 4970s, if I remember the specific model correctly. The 5xxx series of cards have a different architecture and handle AA differently than the 4xxx series, and this likely explains why some of the most powerful GPUs on the market suddenly can't smooth out jagged lines in our 6-year-old game.

Guess I should officially bug it and PM an appropriate developer.

Language, WW! Language!

Good to hear that the problem's resolved. Now go pester Dell for that other 2 gigs of RAM. If you've got it listed on the invoice or their website, they can't weasel their way out.

Not to sound rude, but that's an awfully vague question. Any number of things could be causing your PC to restart when playing CoH. Let's start by getting some basic information:

Are you playing on a desktop or laptop?
What's your Operating System?
What's your CPU?
How much RAM do you have?
What's your video card?
What drivers are you using with your video card?
Did you have problems before switching to ATI?
Did you have problems prior to Issue 17?

That should provide a decent starting place.

The developers, programmers, and engineers at PS have done a whole hell of a lot to get as many people's systems running properly as possible with the various graphics updates and fixes that were included in Issue 17. But the reality is that there's only so much they can do with regard to hardware. Unfortunately, those of us who use ATI cards are stuck in the middle of what happens when a development house has done all they can and must request that the hardware manufacturer try something. All during the I17 closed and open beta, I was in regular contact with The Television, discussing the various problems ATI users still experienced. Paragon was able to hammer out the majority, with two notable exceptions: a bug where those using Catalyst 10.2 or 10.3 drivers would experience massive, rapid framerate loss and RAM consumption (which quickly led to client crash) when they tried to change the quality of the shadow map shader; and graphical artifacting that occurred whenever FSAA and AO were used in conjunction with each other. Those two particular issues had to be forwarded to AMD/ATI for investigation.

When the 10.4 Catalyst drivers were released, the shadow map shader bug had been fixed. That only leaves the FSAA/AO conflict to be resolved, if possible. The 10.5 Catalysts were released a few hours ago at most, and as you can likely tell from my previous sentence, they do not include a fix for the FSAA/AO conflict. This is not Paragon Studios' fault! This isn't a game-crashing bug, so it probably isn't high priority for AMD. Also, remember that AMD typically releases hotfix drivers to cover changes that weren't able to be included in the WHQL driver release. Finally, and most annoyingly, CoH is NOT the only game that's had issues with FSAA, AF, and/or AO when being run on the 5xxx series of cards. While it's a powerful series, there ARE some design flaws that have had to be ironed out since the series was introduced.

Long story short: Yeah, it sucks about FSAA and AO not working well together. But at this point, it's not up to paragon Studios to try and come up with a fix. They've done all they can do. It's not their fault that one series of ATI card has difficulties rendering both FSAA and AO.

Oh, and just as a point of reference: the Hero-con Praetoria/Ultra Mode demo that included FSAA and AO was run on two Crossfired 4xxx cards (the specific models escape me right now), before the 5xxx series was even released.

Spin that I wholeheartedly approve of!

And if I may be so bold as to quote Frank Zappa:

Depends on what you're talking about when you say "mistake".

If you mean the fact that the mitos on the LGTF had a 50 mez protection, well, I could kinda agree. But Castle probably wasn't thinking of the LGTF encounter design when he fixed the problem of them perma-holding themselves. He just saw that something wasn't working as it should, and corrected it. And he has since reduced their mez protection to a level much more in line with the capabilities of a single team.

Now, if you're talking about him making it so they're no longer perma-held, then I'd respectfully disagree. A bug is a bug, and bugs need to be fixed. But since this particular bug had been indirectly aiding players for who-knows how long, folks got in an uproar after it was fixed. That's trying to have it both ways, in my humble opinion. To not fix (or revert) a bug which breaks intended design and gives players an advantage is tantamount to giving players permission to use exploits to cheat the system. So in that sense, Castle did not make a mistake.

Edit: While I'm quoting you, Flea, I'm actually using "you" more in the general sense. I'm not really singling you out, but your post gave me a jumping off point.

Unfortunately, doing so has denied both sides of railing kills.