je_saist

This line isn't exactly accurate. Go run a couple of shadow shard task forces and say that with a straight face. It's one of the few places where Stone's Minerals was a requirement in order to have effective tanking.

Then you mis-understand O2 boost just as much as the players I've had to explain the purpose to before. O2 Boost is a buff.. not a heal. It protects against Stun and End-drain and has tremendous value when facing anything that drains endurance... from the Clockworks in Atlas Park, to the Freakshow with Clamor, to the Witches with Mary, to the Malta in PI.

If the team picks a storm up and is expecting the stormy to act as a healer, the team mis-understands the purpose and point of O2 boost just as much as the player.

Who said anything about everybody on the team? I don't see very many empaths laying Clear Mind on every single player they come across. I don't see therm-rads laying Thaw on everybody they come across. I don't see forcefields or sonic's trying to keep their big anti-mez bubbles over everybody in the team.

Most of these players figure out when, and who, to put their anti-mezzes on. For some reason, this simple teaming ability is lost on a fast majority of players that take kinetics.

No deary. It's called being stupidand ticking off other players who then laugh about the idiot in question in private channels. Maybe you should try understanding the archtypes instead.

I've got both a WP tank and a WP scrapper... and the difference... isn't as noticeable as you might think... and least not in the aspect of how Scrapper sets normally correspond to tanker sets.

For starters, you don't actually lose inherent taunt. Rise to the Challenge retains the same taunt percentage as a tank, 300%. However, you won't build aggro against Gauntlet, so team-mates will have an easy time pulling stuff off of you.

You do lose out on lots of other aspects though. As mentioned the actual resist and defense values of scrappers are down compared to tank values... and it's closer to a 30% split than a 25% split. So you'll take more damage for each hit you resist, and you'll be hit by more attacks with a lower defense.

Your resistances to debuffs, such as your resistance to regeneration and defense debuffs, is also lowered. So enemies will have to stack less debuffs on you to turn your regeneration rate off, or to hit you more often.

You'll also lose out on Rise to the Challenge as well on larger teams. Since RTTC requires mobs to be around you for best effect... you could find yourself low on health really quickly as a scrapper as enemies are taken out and one of your main regen boosts goes away. Granted, even on scrappers, the self-rez isn't as much a part of the attack chain as it is on Fire Aura and Dark Armor sets...

The thing to remember with scrappers is that their best defense is a good offense. Focus on your attacks and combinations with dual blades. The quicker the enemies drop, the less you'll be concerned about living through damage enemies dish out.

double nitpick. It used to be labeled as a Terrorize effect. For some reason though the in-game power display no longer separates between the status effect types... Burn simply is listed as producing just Fear.

Anyways, I agree on the monitoring Defense Values instead of resist values. One of the reasons I don't place much stock in soft-capping defenses on non melee types (other than the fact that most IO's that offer defense values are bloody expensive on Lagworths), is that soft-capping defense is a bit pointless if your archtype doesn't have any resistance to defense debuffs.

Bolded the part that's sort of a mugs game logic. Yes, you're point is valid that CoH needs to stand on it's own... but the only supporting game argument is Dungeon Runners.

The problem with Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault is that while they were NCSoft published games... they weren't actually developed by NCSoft... and they weren't actually owned by NCSoft. They actually were in the same position City of Heroes was in back at Cryptic. NCSoft was the publisher and handled the marketing, accounting, servers, and some of the tech-support. The developer, however, owned the game and was responsible for the actual game management, which meant NCSoft's input was largely limited.

One of the problems with unified subscriptions is that they can be used to prop-up otherwise poorly performing games. SOE uses it's unified station package to prop-up Planetside, Star Wars Galaxies, and Pirates of the Burning Sea... all which would have collapsed if they were responsible for providing their own finances.

However, at some point, propping up a title that should just be allowed to die, or taken out back and shot... is just bad business.

Which is where Dungeon Runners is a good example. It was an interesting concept. Taking a old game engine, making it free to play, then micro-transacting lots of convenient items and abilities... that was toppled by several glaring problems. When I went and tried to review it, I couldn't get over the horrible chat mechanism. There was no way to shut it off. Then there was the community management... or lack-there-of. Yes, the game was a hoot for taking itself about as seriously as a Mel Brooks film... but it really catered to an audience that couldn't afford Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, WarHammer, or Warcraft...

When unified subscriptions work though... they work well. Somewhere around the forums I made a suggestion about a 14month split.

Right now 14months of City of Heroes will cost you around $142. I tossed out a $215 price point to subscribe to both City of Heroes and Aion. This was based on dividing $142 by 2 for a cost of about $71, then multiplying that by 3, for a cost of $13. In this way NCSoft gets around $107 for each game... in advance... for 14 months. In total, you, the player, would also save around 50% versus subscribing to each game for the same amount of time on a monthly plan or with a game card.

The advantages to this sort of pricing scheme, only making it available for Long Term Subscribers, means that there is a guaranteed player-base for that length of time. It also means that the game developers get about 7months average cost $15 a month... up front.

Nah, they wait until after you've committed a couple of armed robberies and have outstanding warrants before introducing you to the personal care requirements of being a Freakshow minion.

Don't get too comfortable with this bug. It's already being addressed and should be fixed within the coming weeks.

Yes / no / not really. I've discussed the problems with fire tanks... multiple times.. this being one of the most recent: http://zerias.blogspot.com/2009/09/c...-and-fire.html

The theory is that you'll trade off defensive capabilities for more damage. However, Blazing Aura isn't exactly... that much more powerful than an ice, stone, or electric's damage aura... and Burn has a Magnitude 50 Fear affect. So unless you're playing with somebody that has strong mass immobilizes, Burn will send stuff running and ruin any attempts at holding aggro.

So, the Fire aura does not deliver on the promise of more damage for less defenses.

It's also got additional problems in that it's a resist set. When the game launched you could hard-cap pretty much all of your resists. When Enhancement Diversification hit... you can't. You'll actually run pretty much the same smashing / lethal resistance as an Invuln Scrapper. If you're running Single Origin Enhancements you'll actually see an Invuln Scrapper take the same hit as you... and post less damage.

Now, that doesn't mean Fire Aura is hopeless. It does have two advantages on tanks. The first is the HP. The second is the really quick heal... which results in another problem.

You'll often be forced to choose between taunting... and healing. If you toss your healing flames on auto, you'll be able to survive longer than trying to click the heal everytime your health drops below 50%. In turn though, you'll have some issues with holding aggro.

Now, looking over your build, there is one colossal problem : Power Pool: Flight / Level 6: Fly -- Flight-I:30(A)

Take it from somebody whose had a fire tank since I4. Flight is the worst travel power you can have with it.

Now, I know that my build works for me. If you're interested...





and here are the numbers it puts up

The water topic came up while I was talking with somebody involved on the Cider side of testing.

Reportedly this is related to how the developers initially developed water early in the game, with the suggestion being made that some components of the game using vendor specific hardware calls. Also reportedly, a fix has been developed, but the tester I was talking to didn't know why it had not been propagated to the game.

A red-name developer (*pokes Ghost Falcon and Positron) would have to answer for certain but my likely answer is that there still are a couple of vendor-specific calls being made for some effects, such as water.

yes / no / not really.

I hadn't read after this, and was biting my tongue on Bill's "use D3D" comment. Fact is, DirectX is a billion-dollar mistake by many game developers. I understand why a lot of game developers went to DX though since OpenGL was more stagnant than CoH with Jack at the helm.

Now though, as non-Windows computing devices are becoming more popular... Cell Phones... Netbooks... Portal Gaming devices... and the rising tide of gamers running Linux boxes or Mac boxes in addition to Windows boxes... It's becoming more important from a sales point to be able to hit all available markets possible. Using any technology that limits targets platforms is just bad business. Yes, programming today's hottest computer games using the DX api's might save a few quid on programmer paychecks.. .but what happens if somebody wants to exploit that program / application at a later date?

The empirical case in point is QuakeLive. Yes, Quake 3 is an aging PC game... but the only reason it works as a browser game today is because of it's OpenGL roots. Had it been a DirectX title the porting and updating costs would have been prohibitive.

Now, I'm not saying every single hardcore FPS of yester-year is the browser mini-game of the future. I am saying that using open standards increase the developers and publishers abilities to develop or redevelop properties and retain value in those properties. Using DirectX as a development API... especially now... simply limits a products potential market.

***

In the specific case of whether or not OpenGL made the Mac port possible... sort of overlooks something about the port. It's not actually a port.

The Mac Port simply uses Transgaming's Cedega / Cider engine to run the Windows Client. Yes, one of the reasons why support is almost seamless and just as fast is that CoH does use OpenGL... which makes the task of rendering on various graphics cards a lot easier.

That does not mean that having used DirectX would have prevented CoH from running atop Cedega / Cider. Transgaming's technology also supports re-routing DirectX calls. As CCP, the developers behind Eve Online, found out though, supporting DirectX is extremely difficult. The official Eve Online Linux client never ran as smoothly as the Windows client because they used the DirectX API.

There is also the cost prohibitive option of having simply gotten a developer to port the engine over to OpenGL from DirectX. The cost isn't as prohibitive as you might think. Large publishers behind cross platform games for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 do the same. The PS3 utilizes OpenGL 2.0 ES... the Xbox 360 utilizes DirectX 9. This is also why many developers find that the Xbox 360 is easier to develop for first... but have problems porting content developed for the PS3 back to the Xbox 360. Tales of Vesperia stands as a perfect example.

Anyways. Having used DirectX wouldn't have made a port impossible. It would have just required either actually porting the game, or made the Cedega / Cider pass-through a little bit more difficult.

Um. Please get out of 2002. ATi's drivers across Windows and *nix are currently far better than Nvidia's drivers, especially in the 64bit realm.

***

Edit. Okay, I decided I'm actually going to be nasty about this. Couple of background links first:
http://zerias.blogspot.com/2007/12/c...on-nvidia.html
http://mepislovers.org/forums/showpo...01&postcount=1
http://www.hardocp.com/news.html?new...VzaWFzdCwsLDE=
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/new..._abnormal_rate
http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/i...set-licensing/
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/10/...mi-boards-gtc/
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=734

First off, Nvidia's driver support has been hands down absolutely abysmal for years. On my own systems across Geforce 6600 GT, Geforce 7900 GT KO, Geforce 6800 Mobile, Geforce 9500 GT, and Geforce GTS 250 I've run into countless problems with SLI not activating properly, cooling fans running at full tilt, cards downclocking themselves under 3D loads, and more X-server and Windows Blue Screens than I care to count.

On a front that's important to me, Open-Source support, AMD and Intel lead the pack. 3D support is already implemented across a wide range of their cards. Both Intel and AMD directly sponsor employees to write open-source drivers, and the hardware specifications are available to anybody : http://www.x.org/docs/intel/ http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/ : Nvidia? Well, they don't have an open-source strategy. Their Linux strategy simply consists of a binary driver... that's awful: http://www.mepisguides.com/Mepis-7/h...ati-64bit.html

On a front that's important to other gamer's is Nvidia's treatment of PhysX. Even if you've got an Nvidia card in your computer, if you're not using it to render the scene, you can't use GPU PhysX... and trying to lay hands on Ageia's actually Physics Processing Card? Well, hope you have lots of money for Ebay and lots of faith that Nvidia will keep updating drivers for it.

***

Then there's the Nvidia hardware. I mentioned the problems I had with the fans running full tilt. ALL THE TIME. Until I downclocked the cards. Well, Nvidia flat out lied to a ton of hardware vendors about their cards actual thermal envelopes. The result was a string of exploding laptops and product recalls. Nvidia's stock took a beating as the sheer scale of their hardware failures came to light...

If hardware problems ended there, that'd be nice... but they don't. Nvidia's pretty much abandoned the AMD motherboard market. The good news is that right now I can actually find a couple of Socket AM3 motherboards with SLI support... a 2 way SLI MSI at $99.. .and another MSI at $160 with Triple-SLI. The bad news is, these are MSI boards... so you know the bios is junk. Neither board supports Crossfire either... and Nvidia won't let AMD add Crossfire support to AMD based chipsets... but they'll enable SLI on Intel motherboards without skipping a beat.

Then there's the whole court case with Intel over the rights to the Intel bus technology... and the problems with Nvidia integrated motherboards having a higher failure rate than Intel or AMD/ATi counterparts... which again links back to Nvidia not telling the truth about their thermal issues.

Then there's the actual card supports. Nvidia's high end shipping cards... the Geforce GTX 200 series... is pretty much based off of the same architecture that spawned the Geforce 8800 back in 2006. Yes, their powerful cards, but OpenGL and DirectX have moved on since then... and come on, Nvidia helped write and ratify OpenGL 3.2. You'd think they'd be able to produce a graphics card that actually SUPPORTED everything in OpenGL 32.... which brings us to Fermi. Right now Fermi's a pipe-dream. Nvidia can't even demonstrate it in Ikos boxes. They've got a nice white-paper... but that's it. The card doesn't actually exist. Nvidia hasn't actually gotten any working samples from the fab.

AMD / ATi? Intel? Well, AMD / ATi just launched the RadeonHD 5x00 series... which... quite frankly blows Nvidia's best offerings out of the water... at lower price points. Intel's demonstrating functional Larrabee silicon. That Intel bit is the most panic inducing part. Right now Fermi and Larrabee are looking to be launching in the same time-frame. Intel has operational silicon. Nvidia. Does Not.

***

Now, I could continue on about how ATi cards and drivers perform better at certification tests... but there's not really a point. Anybody who seriously believes there's issues with AMD/ATi cards or drivers is quite literally stuck back in 2002. Yes. There were problems. Yes. OpenGL support /sucked/. That support has been fixed. It was fixed almost literal years ago.

So. here's my piece of advice. I'm going to look a lot harder at what everybody else but AMD is doing before I go knocking down their door again. You should too.

When it comes to errors or problems with power-sets that are not rebalanced after changes are made to the way the games, it is never a dead-horse until a developer says yes or no to revisiting the issues.

Case in point here is the Invuln Armor set rework back in what was it... I12? Dev's only addressed the issues with Invuln after players wouldn't let up. So there's hope that sets that have needed reworks for even longer (fire aura), or sets that just don't seem to work right for their task (Dark tank, gravity controller) will also get reviewed.

Bianca Beauchamp?

(edit: if you didn't get this joke, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiN_Episodes :: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...s_Sinclair.jpg )