Profile: Somnulus
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• • Crock of shyte

  • It isn't necessarily true that the OP's issues were strictly hardware-based; but here is a little story about some recent issues I had that may put things into a different perspective.

    Here are my computer specs when I first purchased/subscribed to the game:

    Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 3.0Ghz
    4GB OCZ Reaper PC98500 RAM
    Sapphire Radeon HD3870x2 1GB
    3x320GB SATA HDD
    Windows Vista x64 with Service Pack 1

    The game ran flawlessly on that system configuration. I never had any issues and played for hours on end with never even the hint of a system crash and normally had FPS between 32 and 48 with nearly every graphic setting maxed.

    Then my Radeon burned out. Silly Sapphire/ATI.... they didn't seem to understand that the damn card should either run its fan at full speed all the time, or have some kind of innate temperature monitor to increase fan speed when the chip load/temperature increased.

    Instead, basically the fan would go into roaring overdrive only AFTER it had been operating at dangerously high load/temperatures for hours.

    Bastids!

    Well, that's ok; I had the card for about four months and it had a year warranty, so I sent it in for RMA.

    They couldn't replace it because the card had been discontinued. They offered me a brand new HD4870 512mb DDR5 replacement. Same performance specs, so I accepted. Then I ordered a second HD4870 so I could run them in Crossfire.

    Got everything in and installed and then installed RivaTuner so that I could manage the fans so my new cards wouldn't burn out.

    Fired up AoC and played for about two hours, zero issues... then suddenly the game completely locks up.

    Couldn't even CTRL+ALT+DEL out; locked up my whole system.

    Restarted; played another couple hours. Same event.

    So I fiddled with the fan speeds and raised them up even higher (to 75% operating speed).

    Since then, I haven't experienced a single crash over the last four days of play, with nearly every graphic option maxed out.

    The one thing that is still annoying is the occasional graphic tearing/glitches; they come and go though, and I attribute them directly to the extremely KEE-RAPPY Catalyst drivers, (which are probably ATI's single greatest flaw) and the near-universal lack of direct support in the gaming industry for ATI cards.

    So the upshot is that at first, I blamed the game; but now I am nearly certain that the culprit was the (still) heat-challenged Radeon cards.

    Take it for what it's worth; sometimes you just have to go through all of the possibilities before you condemn the software.

    I will say though, that the better a piece of software is developed, the less likely that it will be capable of crashing your system, even if you have hardware issues.

    
    

  • Posted: 9/17/08 6:59 AM
    Age of Conan
• • Everytime I go back to CoH

  • I can definitely understand that if you are a PvP-centric player.

    For myself, the sheer amount of content, the customization, the grouping and play dynamics, the variety of missions and villians.... it's been worth it to maintain my sub coming right out of beta up until now.

    The new additions coming up look extremely interesting as well.

    It is a damn shame that they just couldn't master class balance; on the other hand, PvP in CoX is very viable if you have the right team composition and actually use tactics.

  • Posted: 9/16/08 3:03 PM
    City of Heroes
• • Funcom blunder: GM Gives ARCH a FREE TIER 3 CITY?!?!

  • ---

    Originally posted by Krawnik
    If you go back to the beginning, I had actually made an effort to defend Funcom initially. Although it's true that they made someone the GL breaking their own policy, ultimately I viewed this as a player error.

    ---

    I am uncertain where you find that Funcom broke their own policy; isn't there a chat excerpt in the first link you posted where you are having a conversation with GM Mabuhai where Funcom's GL policy was explained in detail?

    GM Mabuhai pretty much clearly stated that if a GL had been inactive for 30 days or more or the guild leader has left the guild without promoting anyone to GL, they would promote the next highest ranking officer.

    That seemed satisfactory to you at the time.

    I guess I don't see how they broke their own policy. Was the previous guild leader not absent for 30 days or more?

    ---

    Then this knee-jerk attempt at rectifying the situation came along, which undermined the efforts of our entire crew. Even beyond Ascendant, I'm sure there are quite a few high end guilds on other servers that recognize this as completely unfair.

    ---

    Given the considerable backlash in the community and the untold number of petitions and support emails that were most likely sent to Funcom concerning a situation that turned out to be a complete lie, I'm not sure I fault their reaction to quite the same level as you do.

    The perception in the community was that the blame for the loss of an entire guild and its assets was entirely at the feet of Funcom.

    At that point, they could either try to redress the situation or take no action at all. Given the atmosphere surrounding the issue, no action would have been interpreted as another CS failure.

    Now, when they do take action to attempt to rectify the situation, that is a failure as well?

    As I said; it was a no-win situation for them.

    ---

    Unlike the Guild Leader of ARCH, I have a deep respect for my members and their efforts. Having their hard work undermined in one fell swoop, due to a series of major mistakes on both Funcom's and ARCH's part, was lke a massive punch in the gut. Some may say "it's just a game", but as a Guild Leader I feel I'd be doing a disservice to my members if I didn't acknowledge their perseverance and hard work. If respecting my membership is wrong - than I am evil incarnate.
    If Funcom wanted to cover their butts on this, they could've taken the time to research what was lost and reimburse it - no more, no less. If you're driving a Yugo and slam it into a tree, I'm pretty sure your insurance company wouldn't hand you the keys to a Ferrari the next day.

    ---

    I honestly do not see what the impact on your guild is.

    All of you know who, between ARCH and Ascendant, actually earned their assets. Is this not correct?

    Your guild is achieving something of merit. It should be a source of great pride, and it is a definite bragging right.

    Again, the only major mistake on Funcom's part that I have seen from the presented evidence is their failure to audit ARCH's complete assets and restore only what the guild actually possessed before it was disbanded.

    Even then, how would that abrogate the personal pride and investment of time and effort of your guild in its accomplishments?

    Between all of the posts from the outset of this whole fiasco, the majority of the blame, again, is placed on Funcom.

    Did they leave the guild leaderless? Did they disband the guild and destroy guild assets? Did they concoct a complete fabrication in an attempt to recover what they allowed to be destroyed, while simultaneously blaming someone (everyone) else?

    No. They promoted an officer to GL because the existing GL had been absent. Every other condition after that was created entirely by the new GL and the decisions s/he made.

    I guess I don't understand the point of attacking Funcom again when they simply attempted to resolve the situation.

  • Posted: 9/11/08 9:53 AM
    Age of Conan
• • Funcom blunder: GM Gives ARCH a FREE TIER 3 CITY?!?!

  • This really was a "damned if we do, damned if we don't" situation for Funcom.

    First, everyone knows that an absent guild leader can effectively put a stranglehold on the guild, how it is managed, potential for recruitment and allocation of resources. Rather than ignoring the situation (which has occurred in many MMOs) Funcom recognized it and tried to address the issue.

    The next thing you know, Funcom is being directly blamed for the actions of the acting GL, both here and on the AoC forums.

    So in an effort to salvage the situation, they restore the assets that were supposedly destroyed by the promoted guild member in question.

    So you have posters/players attacking Funcom for supposedly promoting someone to GL and that individual effectively erasing the guild (which, as it turns out, wasn't accurate, as the individual who actually erased the guild was promoted by the new GL).

    Then you have posters/players attacking Funcom for trying to fix the situation they supposedly botched.

    At some point in this whole legacy of stupidity, you have the former guild leader who basically abandoned the guild whining to Funcom as well.

    Funcom's single failure in this situation was not elevating the guild assets issue to an audit level (if they have one) that would show exactly what assets the guild in question actually had before it was dissolved.

    They basically had two options at the outset of this whole debacle.

    1. Establish that the existing GL had been absent from the guild for a sufficient amount of time to warrant promoting an officer to GL in an effort to ensure that the guild continues to function properly.

    or

    2. Tell the petitioning guild officer left holding the bag "too bad, so sad", effectively stagnating the guild and/or causing it to fall apart.

    All the way around, the central issue was a complete lack of personal responsibility from the former GL and the acting GL, and the apparent duplicity of the guild member who was promoted and then sold the farm.

    In my opinion, Funcom went out of their way to rectify the situation and is STILL getting the lion's share of the blame.

    The whole thing basically revolved around a guild whose GL and officers wanted to throw around the blame stick, when one of them should have manned up and held onto it.

    The most accurate thing you identified throughout all of the posts you linked, Krawnik, was that ARCH was riddled with a lack of leadership and personal responsibility.

    But instead of just restating that very obvious fact here, you hop aboard the blame wagon and come here to whine about Funcom.

    ---

    However, point out a legitimate bug in the game and try to work with the GMs to help fix the bug and improve the game and what you'll get is "it's a known issue", "please e-mail support@ageofconan.com", "there's nothing we can do at this time", or "go suck an egg, we only hook up the hax"

    ---

    Let's see:

    1. If it's a known issue, then it's a known issue. Not much else to be said there. Obviously if they had a solution, they would have told you or applied the solution.

    2. "Email support"; that would be my answer too, because I'll be damned if after this entire mess that began with the best intentions on the part of the initial GM, I'm going to become the brunt of another wave of Funcom-bashing by trying to take the initiative to fix the situation.

    3. "There's nothing we can do at this time"; yup, considering that the GMs in question probably thought they were taking the correct action that started this whole mess, I wouldn't do one damn thing until the CEO of Funcom himself walked up to me and gave me a direct order in writing.

    Because God forbid that I make a mistake that causes even the slightest discomfort for my PERFECT player community.

    Every one of those replies (minus your obviously sarcastic characterization) were politic and neutral. There is nothing wrong with that when you are dealing with a situation that is not yet been fully resolved.

    AoC has its fair share of problems and normally when the community and those here at MMORPG.com get irate or are overly critical of the game, I could care less. I enjoy the game, sometimes more, sometimes less.

    When this situation first emerged, I ignored it because it just smacked of deception from the get-go.

    But I just can't understand why, after you went through this whole ordeal where everyone began blaming Funcom for a guild ceasing to exist, only to find out that those involved were lying through their teeth (and most likely are still omitting information) you would come back here and yet again bash Funcom for trying to address the situation they supposedly botched to begin with?

  • Posted: 9/11/08 8:20 AM
    Age of Conan
• • Darkfall: video and beta

  • Just downloaded and watched video.

    1. Personally I don't understand the comments about the quality of the graphics.

    The models are reasonable, and easily on par with World of Warcraft in design. Of particular note for myself was the skinning of the mounts; when I was watching the lizard-like mounts, I noted that the joins between the legs and the torso were very smooth, with no breaks in texturing, which I found refreshing.

    The textures that I saw throughout the video were seamless (as opposed to the texturing in Vanguard on release; in many areas, the textures were stretched and disproportionate, which definitely detracted from immersion gameplay).

    Many of the environment textures were mediocre (walls, ground, etc) but they were definitely serviceable and again, at least on par with WoW and many other games.

    The armor texturing, lighting, and highlights were nice; not overdone, just enough to give that metallic feel without making it look plastic.

    The environments were very interesting; I liked the variety and I'm looking forward to exploration.

    2. The animations in general were not particularly dynamic, but then again, for me personally, I am definitely willing to exchange complex animations for the smooth operation of the client.

    For a PvP-oriented game, you also have to consider animation times as a balance factor between classes; more complex animations take longer to complete, which means (as we've all seen before) that attacks with longer animations normally mean the player is dead before the animation/attack completes. It looks to me like they made a serious effort to balance caster, ranged and melee animations to try to ensure that each classes' attacks took approximately the same amount of time.

    That's a good thing; again, no player enjoys being killed simply because spell A, bow attack B or melee attack C takes eons to complete as compared to other classes.

    If that was the balance they were forced to strike, then it's completely understandable.

    3. The combat actually looked fast and difficult (from a survival viewpoint) which, in my opinion, should make it interesting. I can see a high frustration level starting out as people acclimate to getting their backsides handed to them on a regular basis, but once groups begin forming effective strategies, I think it will make for some very interesting battles.

    The one thing that slightly concerned me from the video was that it appeared that the creature-based humanoids (orc-types, wolf-types, etc.) tended to dominate combat; I'm hoping that isn't the result of a developer bias towards those races but just the result of the combat video they actually decided to use.

    If it is the result of developer bias, that is going to be a real issue. PvP-oriented MMOs are predominantly made up of min-max player populations; if the first edge is race, and being an orc means you can hand a human, dwarf, elf (whatever) their backside every time in combat, then it stands to reason that competitive players will want to succeed and will choose the race with the highest survivability.

    That, of course, leads to a serious population imbalance.

    4. Vehicle combat looked good; it wasn't overdone, which is fine. Screw complex particle effects if they are going to detract from client performance. Anyone who has seen a cannonball actually hit a ship knows that it really isn't all that damn impressive. About the only thing that would add to their existing cannonball impact animations would be debris and visible structural damage.

    Again, although it would be nice to see splintered wood flying everywhere and see ships fly apart, if it's going to bring combat to a crawl, no thank you.

    From the first ship combat, it seemed clear that you could board ships, which is good.

    The only thing was that I didn't see that occurring during the larger ship battle; to me, that would be integral to a smaller force defeating a larger force. While your smaller ships engage the larger ship, a boarding party swims across and tries to take the larger ship. At a minimum, it would force the crew of the larger ship to respond to the boarding party and take the pressure off of the attacking smaller ships for a brief time.

    In my opinion, just based on the video, the game play looked solid and the combat looked interesting.

    I do agree with earlier posters who mentioned that they seemed to gloss over crafting pretty quickly. Then again, in a promotional video for a game that is largely billed as PvP-centric, I can see the rationale for emphasis on combat.

    I will definitely be giving it a go. We'll see how the playability pans out. If it is indeed a large, open "sandbox" type world and the PvP is balanced well, it will be very enjoyable.

  • Posted: 8/30/08 1:57 PM
    Darkfall