RogerWilco
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Posts posted by RogerWilco
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I am a Dutch guy, and reading the news about GM Cyclone passing away after a cycling accident with a hit and run by a truck, I had to think about the videos from NotJustbikes.
As a person living in the Netherlands, I am puzzled by the North American attitude to cycling and infrastructure and city design in general.
This one certainly applies:
I am posting this to educate people that the North American way is not the only way to do things, and for my own curiosity as to what people think.
NotJustBikes is able to articulate things in his videos better than I could myself. I cannot recommend his videos enough.
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What do you need and want to use it for?
Laptop, desktop, what applications, how much storage?
I am typing this on a 2018 Macbook Pro. In general I haven't been to pleased with the Apple hardware choices over the past 8 years, and this is certainly a machine with some drawbacks.
I might be able to give some advice if you give more details.
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On 10/28/2020 at 2:38 PM, Glacier Peak said:
I'll revisit this question later. Hopefully someone snags one and can answer this before I get one lol
Unless you need the 24GB memory on the 3900, anything from the new 6000 series from AMD looks better price/performance.
The Nvidia cards might be a lot better for ray-tracing.
Things also depend on what resolution you're gaming at.
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I am currently running a Mac Pro 2010:
Xeon 5690 3.46 - 3.73 GHz 6-core
32 GB RAM
MacVidCards GTX980
Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe SSD
3840x2160 Iiyama Gold Phoenix screen (and a second 1080p one)
Either running MacOS High Sierra or Windows 10 via bootcamp.
It's quite happy to run City of Heroes at 4K at around 50 fps and most other things at 1080p.
I also have a 15" 2018 Macbook Pro 2.6 GHz i7 / 16GB / AMD 560X Pro
I am going to upgrade to a new AMD 5900X / 6800XT / ASRock Creator / 64 GB system when those parts actually are available and reviews are out.
The new stuff from AMD looks amazing, especially if you get both the CPU and GPU. Given that it's also very similar to what is in both of the new consoles, I think it will be well supported for gaming. Only thing it doesn't have is CUDA, but that's less of an issue now than it was years ago.
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I'm still using iTunes, not sure if that could fit your needs.
It's been around since 2001, and apart from renaming it, Apple seems to be intent to keep supporting it.
But if you have Android it would not be an option, I think?
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I haven't really followed the project. It it really hard to pull of such a thing.
The video looks nice. But this is the "relatively" easy part. A ton of would would need to be done in 3D modelling to create all kinds of different costume pieces.
With the source now available, there might be a future where some of these efforts can be merged and used as an "upgrade" to the old game, instead of having to do everything from scratch.
We will see what the future brings.
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43 minutes ago, tidge said:
Because of the way Streakbreaker forces a hit while ignoring the actual result (and then resets the 'streakbreaker counter') I don't believe it is 'mathematically correct' to treat the 'rolls of the d20' as independent. A true 'streakbreaker' wouldn't fire until the next result of a roll was an actual 'miss'; that's the point at which there is an actual streak of misses that require 'breaking'.
I wanted to avoid adding the effects of the streak breaker to the discussion as that messes with the math, and I am not entirely sure I fully understand what it does.
My comment was purely on 1/20 and 500/10,000 not being the same because of "the perspective of the actual math", which seemed to be the opposite of what I know about "actual math" , statistics and computer science.
There was a big tread about streak breaker a few months ago. People there verified the odds using a lot of data from combat logs. It does what it is supposed to do, which helps the player.
As I understand it, it prevents you from missing more than 50% of the time, if you have a high chance to hit, while otherwise that would be a thing because random numbers are random.
What a lot of people also do not understand, is that with a 95% chance to hit, you already have a more than 50% chance to miss when you target 14 enemies. 0.9514 = 0.4876 chance to hit all 14
I am to tired right now to have anything sensible to say about alternatives to streak breaker and the rest of your post.
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On 11/7/2020 at 9:44 PM, Faultline said:
Considering that /ah is available from anywhere in a static map, and LRT currently puts you 100yds from the Kings Row Wentworths and 146yds from the Cap au Diable Black Market if you need to physically go there for a Day Job, I don't see the point in complicating an already long menu with multiple locations on the same map.
I actually do use it occasionally to get around a map, for example, to get back to the main island in Talos Island after a mission near the edge.
I don't use it to access the AH, I use it to travel around the map I am already on.
But I won't miss it a lot, I can certainly live without it.
I really like all the improvements for Praetorians, as that was a pain, especially getting to a base. I was always disappointed that with the Trader badge you would get the Wentworths teleport power, but you could not use it as a Praetorian to go to the Trading House in Imperial City. Thanks for all the improvements. It will save a lot of Night Ward -> First Ward -> Underground Imperial -> Studio 55 -> Pocket D -> Base trips and the associated loading screens.
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10 minutes ago, Darmian said:
You could just build a room like that in a base though and adjust the lighting how you wish.
I don't think you can.
There are no similar light sources in the base building items.
And the base doesn't have the space, unless you go on the top, but then the lighting gets weird.
Most lighting items in the base not even actually produce light.
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At the moment we have accepted defeat by the game.
We have split our Super Group into multiple, one per global account basically.
I think that it defeats the point of a Super Group and none of us like it.
But as we were getting higher level toons, and the variety of salvage and enhancements gets higher and higher, the situation just becomes just too limiting.
I remember it was a problem for us on live as well, but then we only had 2 really active players, not 4-5.
Instead of being together in one Super Group, we are now all in separate ones in a Coalition. But it's not the same.
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1 hour ago, CrudeVileTerror said:
No no no no no!
Look . . .
You've gone and staked your claim on the wrong hill to die upon.
We all know that when it comes down to the colour shorthand for the various sides, there's really only ONE debate worth having:
It's YELLOWside, -not- goldside!
*plants bigger flag on this hill*
Sounds like we need a green side.
For the Horde! - Oh sorry, wrong game.
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20 minutes ago, Darmian said:
Depends what you want in shot with you though, yes?
I am just wondering what people are using. If people have any favourite places.
Especially for taking pictures of their characters/costumes.
And I find that depending on the lighting, some costumes can look good or not so good, especially because of reflections and shadows.
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I've recently had a few Praetorians go through the portal, and noticed how nice the lighting is in the portal rooms is for screenshots of my character.
I think this is because the portal is a really big light source, but is using the "in doors" lighting model, not the "out doors" one.
- Do people know of any other locations with nice big light sources, that could be repeatedly visited?
- What locations do people use for screenshots?
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On 10/21/2020 at 8:34 PM, oedipus_tex said:
While this is by no means definitive, a bit of good news is it seems at least some powers do line up with the an origin point on the weapon rather than a fixed origin on the player. Of course there are other factors that might make this difficult or inconsistent across powers, but its good to know.
Yes, the engine support that. Some blaster powers also have alternative animations with different origins.
It could definitely be a new powerset, like a Magic Wand powerset, but it would be hard to add it to existing power sets.
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On 10/13/2020 at 5:07 PM, Twisted Toon said:
If they could alter the point of origin for the powers, then the wand could be just another alternate animation for the powers.
I might also make the wand a costume option, like the different weapon styles.
I could see a Magic Wand powerset for sentinels, with some staff Fighting defence animations.
Adding it as an alternative animation to existing sets would be tricky, especially if you want to be able to customize the wand in the costume designer.
Something like what some of the melee powers do could work, but with very little or no customization. Think the hammers of stone or the fire sword of fire.
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On 11/6/2020 at 8:37 PM, Luminara said:
While I was cutting, splitting and shouting at firewood, it occurred to me that there may be, in fact, a problem with the hit chance formula. Granularity.
We're not rolling an icosahedron (20-sided die) when we make hit checks, we're comparing an XX.XX% number to a YY.YY% number. That's 10,000 possible rolls. 10,000. Ten thousand. We refer to "capped" hit chance as having a 1/20 chance to miss, or, alternatively, a 5/100 chance. But it isn't. It's a 500/10,000 chance. And while all of those are mathematically identical, functionally that leaves 500 chances of failure, not 1 or 5. Granted, that still means 9500 of the rolls are going to be hits, and over time, it should average out that way, but 500 possible miss rolls on every check is... nuts. Precision down to the hundredth of anything is the kind of thing you need for piston ring tolerances and rapid production machinery gearing, not a video game hit check.
The formula seems too precise. Too granular. Too many possible rolls for players to miss. That's clearly why they had to code the streak breaker and apply it to hit rolls. It's not there to throw players a bone, it's there to compensate for the overly-complex nature of the hit formula.
And the 95% cap would actually be creating that problem by permitting those 500 potential rolls to exist. It's ensuring that no matter what, the player would have 500 opportunities to miss. The margin for failure is much wider when viewed from the perspective of the actual math, rather than simply considering it to be equivalent to 1/20.
Furthermore, the streak breaker itself lack the same granularity. It's too broad in scope, with huge margins differentiating between thresholds of forced hits. Consequently, players are royally screwed by that mechanic if they're 00.01% below a threshold, or they're forced to slot extra Accuracy or ToHit to go above a threshold, thereby sacrificing slotting for something else, and even slots in something else. There's no parity between the cap, the formula and the streak breaker, they're all using different approaches in an attempt to reach the same goal.
Having thought about it from that perspective, I think the HC team needs to spend a little time poking around in these mechanics, maybe trying a few alterations. The streak breaker should match the granularity of the hit check formula, the hit check formula just doesn't need that level of granularity with the cap in place, and the cap is counter-productive to preventing streaks or working within the confines of the streak breaker thresholds (in fact, the cap is completely pointless at 95%, it should be at 90.01% since that's where the streak breaker kicks on with a forced hit after one miss. functionally, they're stepping on each others' toes).
Frankly, I'm surprised the engine hasn't shit itself into oblivion, trying to juggle all of that. @Jimmy, thoughts?
Sorry, but this is just mathematically incorrect. Your "perspective of the actual math" just is not.
Each "to hit" roll is a separate random event. 1/20 and 500/10,000 makes no difference.
Those same "500 potential rolls" exist with a humble 20-sided die, if you roll it 500 times.
The problem is that you are rolling those 500 times every day you play, maybe even more.
1/20 and 500/10,000 are equivalent, as long as the random events are independent.
The streak breaker messes with that a little, but in the player's favour.
The precision just helps with debugging and people parsing logs to optimize their build. It makes no difference to the math.
And it better shows what the computer is actually doing, the internal number it uses probably has even more precision, about 6-7 decimal digits if it is using 32 bits.
95% cannot even be represented precisely in binary, so it's probably using 94.9999988079071044921875 %
And a few months back there was a huge thread (which I think was already mentioned here), that looked at all the details of the combat and to hit mechanics. It is behaving as it is supposed to.
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23 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:
In a live game that relies on players playing and more importantly paying longer, yes. Here, no.
I did not like it on live either. I didn't like it that friends on F2P accounts could not join me in Praetoria.
It makes even less sense for a free game.
And it's not just MMOs.
- With Civilization, you can only play together if you have bought the same DLC, or otherwise people have to disable DLC that others do not have.
- With Paradox games like Europa Universalis, any DLC that the host of the game owns, can be played by all who join that game.
I play a lot more Paradox Studios games as a result, and am more likely to buy the DLC.
Make sure your best content is free and easy to access. That is what gets new players hooked. No game survives without new players.
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16 hours ago, Marine X said:
I didn't play games in my teens and 20's, I started playing when I was 40 to replace things I could no longer participate in. I play COH for the enjoyment of the game, I enjoy it even more as I succeed at things, real or not, That is kind of why most people play a game isn't it ? Whether it be Chess or Softball, success still feels good.
I started playing computer games before the internet, but not that much. It is when multiplayer games started to become a thing, that I really started to enjoy computer games.
To me it is a fun activity to do with friends (and strangers). Just like a board game, of a pen-n-paper RPG, or playing in an orchestra (which I also used to do).
My enjoyment of multiplayer games goes all the way back to MUDs in the early 1990s.
I don't care if I succeed, as long as we are having fun. "We" is the most important word for me there.
My friends live in different countries now, and Covid is a thing. So having an online game is even better now.
I also like the roleplaying aspect of CoH. I can create different characters and play them.
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15 hours ago, Luminara said:
I think the biggest problem with grind is that it is that. We call it grind because it is. It's repetitive, dull and not terribly rewarding in and of itself, even if the reward at the end seems worthwhile when we start. Taking the repetition out of it goes a long way toward removing the feeling of grind. Co* has already gone a fair way toward that goal, with more widely available contacts and a broad range of content, but it is an old game and a lot of people have already done every mission and arc and *F so many times that it's always going to feel like a grind for them. That's what prompted me to suggest branching content. Having the option to do something different even though you're technically on the same content can make it feel fresh.
Most of the resources necessary already exist. The code which causes certain NPCs to be present or absent depending on the player's actions is a big part of this, I think it could be adapted to apply to missions, or at least give a solid direction for writing the necessary code to branch missions. Do X, and Y opens up. Fail or refuse to do X, and Z opens up instead. Maps and enemy groups would be easy to recycle, or partially redesign, @Piecemeal is already doing that. Add the appropriate dialog and contacts and we're up the tree.
Ideally, this would be applied to radio/paper missions as well as normal content. Having some randomization in the mix would really keep it feeling fresh for a lot longer. I'd also, if I had my way, use it to revamp some of the longer story arcs and *Fs, both to shorten them to manageable lengths and to offer deliberately placed potential end points, so players could opt out for a lesser reward rather than slog through something that takes 12 hours or a week of shorter gaming sessions to complete.
Additionally, this would be a better way to handle alignment/morality missions. Rather than simply offering players the choice to reinforce or change in a dialog window before the mission, have a branched path within a mission which leads to them making the choice there, as an action or decision. It could extend to a full 10 mission arc, if the player continues to make the same decision, or end when the player changes his/her mind, at which point they could pick up a new tip and follow that path as far as they choose. And because it's more dynamic than selecting an option in the mission window, it creates a feeling of being different.
In creating branching content, in offering players the feeling of doing more than rehashing what they've been through more times than they care to count, the feeling of grinding can be reduced or alleviated. Granted, we're still just pressing 1 2 3 over and over again, but that's reflexive, we can do that by muscle memory alone. The actual experience of going through branched mission possibilities would feel different with different play-throughs, and no longer be a grind, but an exploration.
It is one of the reasons I like the Praetorian missions.
They offer some of this branching and choices.
There are a few missions like that in older content as well, but it seemed to be the direction that Paragon Studios was taking before the shut down.
Safe a person in mission X, and they can help you in mission Y.
Make a moral choice, and have people remember that in another mission and act accordingly.
The mechanics largely exist in the game.
We were going through the Loyalist missions for the first time about 2 months ago, with a new friend who was playing the game for the first time. We got to Praetor Sinclair, and we thought he was so obtuse and annoying that we decided to switch sides then and there, and do everything to work against him instead. It is when the game comes alive like that, and you can make a meaningful choice based on that decision, when I am really having fun.
I would also mix heroes and villains more. Have people do missions in each others zones, without PvP, or at least without the option to grief each other. Makes Vigilantes and Rogues more interesting as well.
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On 11/8/2020 at 10:37 PM, DSorrow said:
There's always a very fine balance between more stuff to do and a checklist of chores to get to do the stuff you actually want to do. There's always the danger that the list of things to do is so intimidating that some people will just pick another game. I keep coming back to CoH because we don't have a grind, and I can just instantly hop on to do whatever I like instead of thinking of the stuff I "have to do" before that. For me, at least, the type of grind you have in WoW and many other MMOs fosters a short term commitment: I'll play a lot in the short to medium term, then get frustrated at how much of my precious game time is going to activities I don't actually enjoy, quit and never come back.
That said, while I don't care for unlocks that basically boil down to "spend a bunch of time doing something simple", I wouldn't mind mastery sort of achievements. Spending a bunch of time getting better at something so that you can complete a skill based thing is much more satisfying.
But that's me, though. Different strokes for different folks.
This is one of the reasons I switched from WoW to CoH back in the day.
In WoW so much things are behind big grinds.
I play games to do fun stuff with friends and the occasional strangers.
I hate anything that stops me doing that.
Grinds are just methods to draw out the (expensive to make) content in a game.
People get bored when they run out of content. The amount of existing content is actually one of CoH's strong points. I have now been playing with friends almost every day since May 2020 and have hardly repeated any content, and I haven't touched AE yet.
CoH has near infinite content because of the AE system. I think promoting and integrating that more, would help.
The only other thing that can keep people hooked is PvP, but that's really hard to fit into this game properly.
I really liked the Going Rogue/Praetoria content back on live, and still do. I really hated that my friends on F2P accounts could not enjoy this content with me.
I would have made it the default starting area for new players, if I had been Paragon Studios.
I think this game can have a decent future and continued player engagement, if we would be allowed to stream and make videos again.
No game survives unless it gets new people. Two of the friends I play with today have never played the game before 2020.
As a "free" game, this game still has potential, despite it's age.
I think a few things could really help with that:
- Updates to the graphics engine, especially the lighting, which would also require changing in game models.
- Voice acted dialog.
- New content, of course.
I really like that all clothing options are free now.
Back on live, I found that some clothing unlocks were actually a big disappointment.
I could see a model where we crowdfund 3D artists to add stuff to the game, and it's free for everyone, after the goal has been met.
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I think that the game has had a very strong Red/Blue/Gold theming for many years.
It's clear that the developers and designers of the game have used those colours for a long time.
It's even the default GUI colour if you make a new toon.
And with rogues and vigilantes, the lines have become more blurred.
I mostly play "heroes", even when back on live, I had some friends who mostly wanted to play villains, my characters would always rescue people, and let people live to face justice.
My "red side" characters usually are just those that haven't had a lot of luck in life. I can't play a proper sociopath or psychopath.
And there are many in superhero comic books and movies, who also blur the lines.
Personally, I really prefer the stories in Praetoria, to many stories in either Paragon City or the Rogue Isles.
I play a lot of Praetorians as a result. A lot in Mercy are especially bad: how many snake invested caves are there?
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Yes. It is good to be back.
Thanks Homecoming team and everyone else involved.
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What a nice story.
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Thanks for letting us join. we had a lot of fun follwing the Rainbow Yellow Brick Road.
😀
On cycling and North American culture
in Off-Topic
Posted · Edited by RogerWilco
Some more videos about cycling in the Netherlands from another Youtube channel.