All Posts by Jamkull

you'd figure it would happen sooner or later... to many cries from consumers on this one.  it would honestly be stupid if they didn't make it.

the whole concept of KoToR is way better, than rehashing what has already been written with SWG.

plus with bioware, its going to be amazing... especially if they add in the story elements like they did with Mass Effect.

yep this was my first one as well, it reminded me so much of the old King's Quest and Hero's Quest games from Sierra.  Which this was originally a Sierra online product before they sold it.  But cool to see it alive and well.

Well all i can say is that MMOs are trying to have both PVE and PVP elements and in doing so you end up with half-hearted (i'd like to use another word but oh well) features of both.  And you lose a lot of the key features that would seem to keep people around.

I just wished game companies could first work purely on one side then come out with an expansion for the other... or just stick to one or the other. 

oh well... its the age of follow the shirt tail of the last great MMO so we'll see many clones of popular games before you finally get a unique one that caters to more of one or the other. 

But AoC does seem to have some nice features... as well as chronicles of spellborn. 

if you are using a new type video card ie. geforce 8000 series on up or newer ATI type card then you should disable the first 4 rendering options in the SB config.  You can find that on the patcher window.

The ones i speak of are Use Multiple Arrays, Generate Mipmaps in Hardware, Use Occlusion Query and Cache Meshes in hardware.  Disable all those and try running it again.  It will sometimes take a bit to load in but once running it should be ok. The game isn't the most effeciant so you have to give the server time to catch up sometimes and pause from time to time  as you run around.  if not then you can find yourself in the middle of a bunch of mobs and not know it.

i use vista myself with a Geforce 8800 GTX video card and i was having lots of crash issues before figuring this out via trial and error.  But everything runs smoothly now... so hopefully it helps.

p.s. also make sure you are using enough ram, about 2 gigs for most games run on vista.  Also make sure you are using a good Video Card, not one that is designed into the motherboard.  because those share system memory for video memory and they tend to have lots of issues with higher end games.  any video card that ends with 50 ie. Geforce 6150, Radeon 9150 etc. will not be able to perform very well with most 3D gaming.

Originally posted by Biohazard32

Hi forum folks,

I know people are saying the sb.exe crash is rare these days (I played this game when it first game out 6 years ago or whatever it was, and it was terrible then), but years later I'm giving it a second try by some friend's requests and I'm getting sb.exe constantly.  At first it was basically when I'd attack creatures.  Sometimes,though, I get 10 seconds or less of game time.  It will crash a lot when I attack, even take out my weapon sometimes, switch areas, when the background fades into the game when first logging on, and when the text telling you where you are when you enter the game comes up.  It's absolutely rediculous, and the game will let me play for a while once every 25 tries or so maybe.

 

I'm wondering if there are any known tweaks I can do to remedy this problem, and if not I will obviously be quitting.  It will just be a shame, because the gameplay is a lot of fun, when I can actually play it.

I'm running windows XP with a computer that goes above and beyond anything the game's requirements might suggest.  AND, all my video drivers are up to date, and malware taken care of.  Thanks in advanced if anyone has advice.

keep in mind it is an OLD game, and thus newer hardware works much different than some older stuff.  especially if it's direct x 10 compatible.  ie. geforce 8000 series on up or any newer ATI card.

from the patcher window click SB Config then find the graphics tab then disable the first 4 rendering options you see with check marks on them.  they are Use Multiple Arrays, Generate Mipmaps in hardware, Use Occlusion query and Cache Meshes in hardware.  All that is done automatically in most hardware and some of the options like Use Occlusion query is completely incomaptible with newer graphics cards and its not needed.  you can play with the texturing to maxamize your own experience depending on your video card.  SB isn't the most effecient game in the world so take small steps until you get it where you like it.

nonetheless, that's what i did and SB works fine and i'm using Vista even :/

I don't know if this helps but nonetheless, I've played a lot of different brutes since CoV came out.  And of course my favorite has been my dark/invul brute. 

I've never had issues with getting stunned, its extremely rare with Unyielding and/or Unstoppable running.  with dark melee these powers are much easier to maintain.  The only real weaknesses are against those that drain your power that then make your powers shutoff prematurely which makes you vulnerable.  or the use of Fear, which acts like a stun but is a different aspect in the game.  Invul has no real defense vs. fear.  also of course psionics.  but just getting the right enhancements setup you can reduce all that some. 

i honestly don't see any major changes to stun resistance tho.

Originally posted by Achronos

"The visual style is undeniably generic Asian 'Manganesque', just look at the screenshots. Well endowed women with huge eyes, with lean male characters that look like androgynous male models. This I do not find appealing at all. Then again, I never liked Manga or Anime either, like I stated before this is a matter of opinion."

I see your point and totally respect it, like you said it's a matter of opinion about the visual style and this has nothing to do with the gameplay.

Originally posted by Hrothmund

Originally posted by Achronos

Watch this and tell me again it's another grindfest : http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=g-NrbzobRQE

 

I've viewed this before, and my opinion still stands. This nothing but PR, a ten minute video will not convince me of how the eventual gameplay will be like.

This isn't PR, video like that are upload by korean beta testers because there isn't strict NDA.

 

 

 

To each is their own, and those that don't play this game will probably be missing out on a great game.  Personally I love the far-eastern art style, it is so much better artistically, than most cliche western styles.  plus this game has both a light side and dark side.  Which of course I really dig the dark gothic feel to the dark side of aion.  This game is not the cliche asian grinder.  But of course who cares, I'm going to enjoy the game when it comes out :)

well at least we know now what happened, guess marvel must have pulled the plug on their license and this with what we are left with.  I think CoV/CoH is better :P  especially with all of the new stuff slated for development.

Originally posted by Einherjar_LC

Comparing communicating with other guilds to coordinate non-conflicting times to do a lengthy quest, to other ingame 3rd party apps that sort loot without having to open a corpse, find things out of radar range which gives you a huge advantage over other players not using it, and crafting macros that make things critical to gameplay like arrows and pots that other players have to do manually is a bit of a stretch and disingenuous.

Using your definition, if I called my friends instead of posting to a message board,  would that still be considered using a 3rd party application to communicate our intentions to do a quest.?

That aside, I don't think we are discussing the same quest.  The one I am thinking of does not entail opposing sides working against each other thus there was no exploitation of game mechanics.  Simply a discussion of times so as to avoid unintended griefing of two guilds trying to complete the quest at the same time.

I did not experience a content drought per se, but what I did notice is as the macros, and XP chains took off, the content released was consistently aimed at higher and higer levels to accomodate these "players" and less and less content aimed at your generic players that didn't utilize these cheats. 

The buffing is part of the game IMO and I didn't mind it.  The time it took to fully buff yourself is your payment for being a god for 60 minutes.  It wasn't that bad in the grand scheme of things...maybe 3-4 minutes to buff with full banes depending on armour.  Of course, if you didn't like fully buffing there was always arcane lore to aleviate that, but that oddly enough was considered too much work too, lol.

3rd party app useage is built into the GUI for WoW so not really a valid example, but your whole 2 examples hardly justify your claim of prevalence in all major MMO's.  Like I said, I will concede that they exsist in other games, but to claim prevalence in all major MMO's is an exaggeration at best.

Useful or not, any macro in AC was not built into the game and as such was cheating.  It is cheating because it gives you an advantage over other players playing within the mechanics of the game.

 

But 3rd party apps had no impact on content, the fact was that many of the players that discovered the greater use of life-magic along with the weapon of choice could greatly increase your effectiveness in the game as a whole.  because it was real easy to specialize life magic and unarmed combat plus melee defense. you could easly debuff any creature in the game and practically 1 to 2 hit for kill.  that was on the old olthoi nobles that were then 256 level, and was one of few creatures that dropped the best items in the game.  This was way before 3rd party apps came along.  or even just train life magic for buffs with sword or axe.  With level 5 or 6 buffs you would take little to no damage.  that tells me there is a design flaw. plus after a good 2 years the game was out, there was hardly any higher level content at all.  and higher level players that had been playing for said 2 years which were left with simple grinding and random hunting.  Thus they finally added higher level content.  But after xp chains is when things really got out of hand on the whole leveling spree.  plus with the newest expansion that enabled max level to 275 made the xp curve a bit different as well.  i see a large chunk of content is now around the level 70 to 140 range.

There are still lots of the low level stuff to do, but only crazy thing is how the creature spawns are.  you can simple step south of nanto and run into level 60+ creatures where this was once a lowbie area.  but yet you can run all the way out of your way to Lin which is to the south of nanto and find plenty of lower level creatures to kill.   not like a low level player would survive to even get to those though.  its things like that which destroy the game for new players.  So i can see why one would need level 7 buffs as a low level player.

Another main stream game that people started macroing a lot with was DAoC.  People would drop off druids in RvR simply to add buffs to people.  I seen some people that would solo a lot in RvR but be using a lot of druid/cleric buffs.  because those buffs stay until you die unlike in AC that have a limited time.  i'm willing to wager that still goes on in DAoC.  And most likely by now they have 3rd party apps for crafting i'm sure.  its the innate nature of the beast.

As said for eve for mining etc.

you name the game i can find an app people are using for it.  google is so interesting like that.

Just because the usage of 3rd party apps is built into the GUI somehow justifies it? That's so hypocritical and asinine.  they were smart enough to do that because they know people will do it anyway. 

Originally posted by Einherjar_LC

 

Originally posted by Jamkull

 

Originally posted by Einherjar_LC

"Decal can be found here: http://www.decaldev.com/

A good list of Decal Plugins can be found here:
 http://acheaven.buwahaha.com/DecalIndex.htm"

 

And that "plug-in" is one of the biggest reasons for begining the demise of what was formerly a great game. 

Players couldn't be bothered to actually play the game, so they made up these 3rd party apps to play it for them.  Some to the severe detriment to their fellow players.  But hey, they were getting the maximum XP/Hr for their XP chain.  Who gives a rats ass about the rest of the server.

You crack me up talking about how great of a game AC is to play, and then the first thing you do after that is refer people to a website of programs that essentially plays the game for them.  Way to let them experience the game.

Why don't you just give them the locations of the buffbotts and the newest macros so they can really fit in with the "players"(and I use that term loosely) that are left in AC.

Yeah, I'm bitter.  You jackasses ruined a great game for alot of people with your selfishness.

 

but your rant is obviously without knowledge because most of the apps used for decal simply add functionality that is already available in a majority of today's MMOs.  Maybe not so much the xp/hr type thing, but personally it doesn't matter that much to me.  But the Mapping function which is something that was sorely needed is something worthwhile.  Find It! allows for a loot window much like what you find in WoW.  But it filters the things you are not looking for, because in AC you do end up with a lot of useless loot.  Plus the Xp chain thing was changed so that it doesn't work like it once did, that was something people took advantage of that was a faulty game design mechanic.  That was changed back in '04 or so..

 

The only bad thing is the player themselves that make and use such programs as UCMs etc.  which of course i'm not one of those.  I've played AC since April 2000 and with all the new functionality of newer games people that try AC now will be set back quite a bit without some of that which they are familar with.

Sorry you feel such is somehow damaging the game...   But honestly they have helped a lot to me.  But the cool part right now is how the community is real heavy on cracking down on people that do UCM.  Because there are always ways to deal with them our way rather than waiting on an Envoy.  :P  at least on morningthaw anyway. 

But you don't have to use the programs if you don't want to, the only thing that destroys one's experience is other players around them.  And that can be said about any game.  It really matters not what programs they may be running in the background.  lord knows you got plenty of them with WoW and many other games out.  but funny how no one complains about those it seems :P

 

 

My rant is very well informed thanks.

I played AC from beta until 2005.  I saw everything I wrote about happen first hand.

As for what you consider useful.  We never needed a 3rd party app to find our way around...spend some time playing the game, exploring, and learning the portal routes.  That's what we did in the "olden days" before all you bot babies came along and couldn't be bothered to learn your way around.

The loot program is beyond ridiculous.  It takes a whole 10 seconds to open a corpse and check the loot.  But it's much easier to have a 3rd party app scan the corpse before you even open it to see if you need to waste your time.  Talk about vitual laziness.  Again, if you play the game long enough instead of letting a 3rd party program do it, you will quickly learn what is useful and what is junk loot wise. 

I am aware the XP chain was changed from how it was, but it's still going on, just a different way than before.  And the Partron/vassal system was not a poor mechanic, it was a great game mechanic exploited by unscrupulous, selfish players that cared more about XP/hour than their fellow players or how their actions would affect content.

Some players did alot to ruin the game for others around them, and it was exactly because of these laziness 3rd party programs.  I couldn't care less about WoW.  They built functionality into their game to accomodate them.  AC did not.  It was this bastardization by the players that ruined the game for many other players and it had everything to do with the programs they were running. 

Unless you're going to try and tell me buffbots and portal bots, to name a couple, are good things.  I mean the game not being challenging until level 30+ is a good thing right.  That's about how it works out with all those lower levels walking around with full 7's.  And why bother learning your way around or the portal system when there's a portal bot you know of that will summon a portal to exactly where you want. 

Anyways, I have never, nor will I ever use a 3rd party program.  These games are easy enough as it is and I am more than capable of playing the games within the intended framework the devs give us.  The only reason to use 3rd party apps IMO is laziness.

Well for those of us that started out in the "olden days" its not to hard to understand that concept of memorizing the portal routes etc.  but for new players that aren't use to the "old way"  it can be a daunting task.   personally i still have a lot of old portal maps in my head, but now they've added a metric butt ton more that are all over the place now to instantly put you any where.  they've even moved a lot of the portals that were outside towns right in the middle of towns but in bunkers etc.

With the hundreds to even thousands of corpses a day is a real daunting task now to check for quality of the item as far as salvage and spells you might want/need, AL and resists. I remember the days when all i cared about was simply the AL quality and spells that were on it.  that was pretty cut and dry, but now it has developed into a real animal when it comes the nit picky things you have to look for now.  so a helpful tool to find stuff is great.  and even if i use it and you don't just how detremental is that?  it really makes no difference.  your argument on that is mute. 

Simply put, WoW is one of the most mainsteam games around and it allows 3rd party apps to be designed right into the UI itself.  which they like to call "add-ons"  and is exactly what decal does for AC.  They add on all sorts of functionality that was not original to the games design.  But you see no one complaining... 

as far as the macroing thing goes that a completely different animal in of itself.  and i don't condone it personally.  But honestly it has never bothered me if someone else does.  Because its so easy to ignore and experience the game the way i want to.  Thus this is a massive multiplayer game and you will end up with people of a variety of playstyles.  And depending on the policy they take the chance of getting caught and banned, which they do that same thing in AC.

if someone doesn't play just like you and you have a real issue with that, it makes me think you are the selfish one here. you have to understand that different strokes for different folks and there is more than one way to play the fiddle so to speak.  you can name call all you'd like but anyone that sits at a game all day is inharently lazy :P  if you think by any means that you are gai