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Okay, here's the info I have obtained from the Ouroboros Discord : If you use Tequila to download CoH for the Rebirth or Ouro QA server, it'll come with the Ouroboros.exe file. That file is a version of the CoH executable that contains updated PhysX SDK so that the physics works with those. You can rename the file and play on other private servers. I've been told, however, that it won't work with Homecoming due to being different source code. So until the Homecoming team updates the client themselves (or releases their source for someone else to update it for them), we're unable to play with the Physics enabled on newer graphics cards on the servers. I'm not well-versed enough with programming to be able to say how easy or difficult doing such an update to the Homecoming client would be, nor do I have any information as to the priorities of the Homecoming dev team so I can't say if it's something they care to do or if there's other things they have a higher priority on. Personally I REALLY hope that the homecoming dev teams can take a look at this fairly quickly and get it enabled, but that's just my opinion. I have no idea how many players out there care or don't care about the physics, so it's somewhat hard to gauge if it's something the community as a whole really cares for.

This is just incorrect. With the exception of specific enhancements labeled as Unique, you can slot the same sets in multiple powers. You can't slot more than one of the same set enhancement in the same power, however. You're right, I apologize - I'd been told that in the sets that contain one unique IO the entire set became unique, but I see that's incorrect. I've updated the post with more accurate information. I also added a bit of info about Memorization badges for badge-hunters or for people who want to craft and sell IOs on the AH.

Oh, one more enhancement I should mention! Prestige Enhancements Prestige Enhancements are available for free at the P2W vendor. There's 5 total, all relatively similar to one another. Each of the prestige enhancements offers a 16% boost to attack damage, a 16% recharge reduction, and a special effect. The special effect is a chance for smashing, lethal, psionic, or energy damage for four of the enhancements, and a chance to knock down enemies for the fifth. Prestige enhancements do not scale up or down in power, and you can only have one of each slotted - but that means five free decently powerful enhancements can be obtained by any character straight from level one.

I'm sort of a weird guy, and I find it hilarious when I'm running around Paragon city and suddenly hear something weird or funny.

I have a beast/thermal MM. In the bio : "I wanted to be a hero, but a hero doesn't light dogs on fire and throw birds at people so I had to be a villain."

BAH! Look at the file dates, I beat HIM to the punch by 23 days! So there! Actually I had used this waaaaaaaaaay back during live, but since I lost those files years ago after god only knows how many hard drive reinstalls, I had to remake it once I found out about homecoming. So technically I may (or may not) have beaten him to it by a decade. I also customized most of my boombox emotes, half of them play queen songs now. The others are a random mix of songs, like Moskau and tunak tunak tun. It sort of makes me feel bad when I come across a Freak dancing to "Hammer to Fall" and I have to kill him. I also customized one of the car sounds to be Nyancat, when I'm REALLY bored I find the car with the Nyancat sound and follow it around the city.

For my custom glowy sound, I use the list of objects from Weird Al's "Hardware Store" song. http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=52389968582638632652 If you don't wanna download and hear the loop, it's here :

I would be OK with a bit of wonky physics if it meant having at least SOME entertaining debris issues. Where can I find more info about this Michael guy and his work on it?

That's a good start, I'm wondering how is this being done - finding an old Ageia card and using it with a new version of Windows? Using an old card with an old version of windows? Somehow figuring out how to enable the feature without having the appropriate card? God looking at that debris makes me want to turn on Hurricane and watch it spin around like a washing machine...

Let's take a look at Enhancements, Inventions, and all the fun that comes with them. 1) Enhancement Basics Starting at the basics! Enhancements usually come in five 'types'. Training, Dual-Origin, Single Origin, Hamidon (Special) Origin, and Invention. Training enhancements can be slotted by anyone, but they are (comparatively) super weak. They usually boost most powers by 5-10% or so. They only boost one aspect of your powers. Dual-origin enhancements are specific to two different origins, but they are TWICE as potent as Training (IE : 10-20%). For Example, a DO 'amulet' enhancement may only be slottable by Natural-origin or Magic-origin characters. Single-origin enhancements can ONLY be slotted by a specific origin, but they are twice as potent as Dual-Origin. (20-40%) Hamidon Origin enhancements (Also called 'Special Origin' or 'Special Enhancements') can be slotted by any origin, and they enhance TWO aspects of a power instead of one (Such as Damage & Accuracy, or Recharge & Endurance Reduction, etc). These can't normally be purchased, and are found in special encounters. Each power boost is roughly the same as a Single Origin. Invention Origin enhancements are crafted instead of found (usually) and behave differently than the other four. I'll explain these in greater detail later on. With all these enhancements, you can only use an enhancement that's 3 levels above or 3 levels below you. Enhancements over 3 levels can't be put into your powers, and below 3 levels provides ZERO effect. Enhancements get a bonus if they're higher level than you, and are weaker if they're lower level. So if you're level 20, you can slot enhancements up to level 23, or down to level 17. Level 16 or lower won't have any effect on your powers. Always keep an eye on your enhancements when you level - it can suck to have a power suddenly lose 30% of its effectiveness because you've outleveled your enhancements! Training, Dual-Origin (DO), and Single-Origin (SO) enhancements can be found OR purchased from vendors - but DO and SO can only be bought at higher levels. DO enhancements start appearing on vendors at level 15, so you need to be 12 or higher to buy them. SO enhancements appear on vendors at level 25, so you need to be 22 to buy them. Some trials and missions reward higher-quality enhancements as a bonus for being tougher. All those 'DFB' (Death from Below) groups you see advertised in chat are popular in part because they let low-level characters acquire random Single-Origin enhancements. Other trials, task forces, and similarly challenging content can give rewards normally only available to higher-level players, to encourage group play. Hamidon Origins can only be found from defeating super tough fights, at the end of task forces, and similarly rare circumstances. Until Inventions came out, they were considered the best possible enhancements in the game; even now they're very desirable since many Invention enhancements can be quite costly and rare. Invention Origin enhancements, IOs, change things up from normal enhancements in several ways. First, they NEVER EXPIRE when you outlevel them. Instead of expiring, they have varying power levels based on their level. A level 10 IO will give the same bonus to a power if you're level 10, or if you're level 50. Because of this, IOs early on are much weaker than later. You still can only slot an IO that's at most 3 levels above you. Low-level IOs have roughly equivalent power to training enhancements, mid-level IOs have roughly equivalent power to Dual-Origins, and so on. The highest level IOs (Level 50+) are a bit stronger than Single-Origin enhancements, making them potentially the strongest in the game. IOs won't need replacement as often due to their inability to be outleveled, but you'll want to replace them as you gain levels to ensure they're giving enough of a bonus to be worth keeping. After all, a 7% boost to a power that doesn't expire is not worth keeping over a 33% boost even if it does, right? IOs can affect one statistic of a power, or multiple - they can be part of a 'set' which grants bonuses the more enhancements of that set are slotted, and in some instances do unique things like changing a knockBACK effect to a knockDOWN effect, or boosting HP/Endurance, or even granting a bonus to powers other than the one it's slotted in. IOs are primarily crafted. While it's possible to get one here or there from a trial or other mission, this is very rare. Crafting is a whole system by itself, so let's take a look at that! 2) Crafting IOs - Getting started. So you want to craft an IO! There's 4 things you need - The invention workbench, the invention Salvage, the invention recipe, and Inf. Workbenches are located in very specific places, the easiest way to find them is to go to the University in Cap Au Diable or Steel Canyon. If you are in a supergroup, you can put workbenches in the SG base. The second thing you need is salvage. Salvage drops at random from enemies you fight, the higher class of enemy (Bosses, Elite Bosses, Arch-Villains) have a higher chance to drop salvage than lower-classes (Minions and Lieutenants). Underlings can NEVER drop salvage, so don't try farming easy-to-kill enemies that spawn infinitely. Salvage is also easy to find on the Auction House (Wentworths for Heroes, Black Market for villains). The last thing you need is a recipe. Unlike other games, recipes for IOs are single-use. So if you want to make 3 healing IOs, you need 3 Healing recipes. Even different levels use different recipes - you could find a level 10 Healing recipe from a random drop, and purchase a level 30 healing recipe. Recipes for common IOs (Healing, Recharge, etc) can be bought from the workbench while recipes from sets have to be found at random. The AH is a great place to find the rarer recipes, or to (hopefully) get the common recipes cheaper than buying them from the workbench. If you need Inf, you can always consider selling off recipes you don't need! Once you have the recipe & Salvage components, go to the workbench and hit create. IOs tend to be more expensive than other enhancements because the recipe can cost influence, the salvage (if you don't have it already) costs influence from the AH, and it costs money to craft as well. Be aware that trying to replace all your enhancements with IO can deplete your inf very, very fast! One additional tip : If you make enough IOs of a particular type and level, you can MEMORIZE the recipe. Doing so makes it so that you no longer have to pay to purchase a recipe, and as such can craft IO's for significantly less cost. When you craft enough of a particular IO at a specific level, you earn a badge. If you're badge-hunting, then you can earn a total of 45 memorization badges. In addition, certain badges will grant you bonuses in the form of increasing the maximum amount of salvage or recipes you can carry! For details on how many enhancements of a specific level you need to earn the badge, see this wiki page : https://cityofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Memorization_Badges 3) Invention Sets Sets are different from normal IOs in three ways : First, some sets can be 'unique'. If a set is unique, then you can only have one enhancement in that set slotted in ANY of your powers. Other times, specific IOs from a set might be unique - such as the global recharge reduction from 'Luck of the Draw'. The other pieces of the set aren't unique, but the 6th piece which offers a global always-on bonus is. Second, sets provide different bonuses for different pieces. For the 'Panacea' healing set as an example, there's 6 different enhancements : Heal/Endurance, Endurance/Recharge,Heal/Recharge, Heal/Endurance/Recharge, Heal, and Boost HP/Endurance. The first five pieces are like normal Healing, Endurance Reduction, or Recharge reduction enhancements. The 6th is a unique bonus that boosts your maximum HP and endurance. All together they boost a single power's healing by 97.49%, reduces the recharge by 73.78%, and reduces the endurance cost by 73.78%. Last, sets provide unique bonuses the more you slot them into a specific power. As an example, here are the bonuses for the 'Panacea' set I mentioned above : 2 Slotted : Gain 2.5% endurance recovery, 2.25% smash/lethal resist, and 3.75% mez resist (Immobilize, Hold, sleep, stun, etc). 3 Slotted : Gain 10% HP Regen and 10% knockback resist. 4 Slotted : Gain 1.5% max HP, 3% Fire/Cost resist, and an additional 5% mez resist. 5 Slotted : Gain 7.5% recharge reduction to all powers, and 7.5% range to all powers. 6 Slotted : Boost healing by 6%, gain 3.13% melee defense and 1.56% lethal/Smashing defense. The important thing is these bonuses only apply if the enhancements are slotted into the SAME POWER. If you put 3 of them into 'Heal Other' and then 3 of them into 'Heal Self', you do not get all 6 of the bonuses, you only get the 2 and 3 slot ones. Put all 6 enhancements in the same power and get all 6 bonuses for maximum effect. Now with sets being super powerful, having slot bonuses, and many times unique effects you wonder why would anyone want normal IOs or other enhancements? The tradeoff of course is since set recipes can't be bought from the Workbench, you're 100% reliant upon them dropping for you (rare) or buying them from the AH. Buying from the AH could be difficult and/or expensive when it comes to rare, hard-to-get and popular sets so be prepared to spend quite a lot of money or search for a while to find the recipe you want! 4) Consignments - CoH's unique auction house system Since the Invention system and the AH go hand-in-hand, let's go over the consignment system a bit. The AH system is very different from what you're used to in other games because you go in blind. The way it works is this : Seller puts up a recipe on the AH saying 'Sell it for 10,000 inf.' Buyer #1 sees the recipe is being sold, but does not see how much the recipe costs. He'll place a bid to try to buy it for 5000 inf. This bid isn't high enough to buy it right away, but the bid stays in the system. Buyer #2 sees the recipe and is more impatient, he bids 100,000 inf. Since this is above Seller's cost, Seller gets the full 100,000 and Buyer #2 gets the recipe instantly. Buyer #1's bid stays in the system until he either cancels it, or until someone lists another copy of the recipe for 5000 or less inf. This can mean some difficulty in trying to know 'what should I sell this recipe for?' and 'How much should I bid for this recipe?'. To help that, there is a 'history' where you can see how much previous items have sold for. This isn't perfect, but it's a good starting point. If there's something you REALLY want, you can always place a bid, cancel if it doesn't win, place another (higher) bid, cancel if you don't win, and keep going until you find the price high enough to get that recipe. Keep in mind that selling an item for a large amount may get few buyers, but you might get lucky and sell for a lot of inf to an impatient person - or if it's a very rare and sought-after recipe! The AH lets you sell all sorts of things. Recipes, Salvage, and enhancements (Both crafted and dropped) can all be sold. If you completed a difficult trial but the enhancement you got at the end isn't useful for you, put it up on the AH and get some cash out of it!

Yes, the majority of the game is about levelling. And that's fine. The thing is, the early levels are super, super boring and suck tremendously because you're missing 80% of your powers, and almost all the best and most enjoyable powers are the ones that come later on. I do rush through levels, but only early ones. Once I hit ~24-26 I slow down because at that point I've got most of the fun stuff and I can enjoy the levelling experience more leisurely. That said, DFB is amazing for so many reasons. The fact that it's such good XP at such a low level is incredible. I've joined a DFB on a freshly made level 1, and exited at level 8. Sure, I could have done contact missions and gotten 1 level every 2 or so missions, but it's a lot slower of a grind. If I make a mastermind, doing DFB three times is enough to get my mid-tier minions which is a major milestone. Then there's the fact that we get a whopping 5 SOs doing it; early on when you're stuck with the measly 8-10% boost from training enhancements, the sudden 33-40% boost from a SO is tremendous. There's no other good reliable sources for that many SOs early on. And those temp powers are pretty great too - the accuracy one is a flat 12% tohit, while the recovery one is super helpful early on before you have SOs in stamina. Just getting them early on can make a drastic difference once you're off doing other things.

I feel like if you want to be the healer that focuses on the team the best option is to be a Mastermind, so you can focus on your heals and let your pets just do their thing. You can focus on topping people off and helping out, while your pets contribute damage. One of my favorite 'pure support' builds is a Thugs/Thermal MM which has zero attacks (I use a blackwand and my apprentice charm during periods where there's little to no incoming damage) but instead focuses on buffing, group-wide topping off health with warmth, cauterize for spot healing, and phoenix if someone does manage to fall. Just because I myself am staring at the team's life bars doesn't mean I'm not helping DPS because my thugs just do their thing. If we need to focus down a specific enemy, I do have an attack button that'll focus them but otherwise they just attack whatever they want. It also means that you can, potentially, do some solo work if you really felt like it. Options are never a bad thing to have!

Ultimately there's one important thing to remember :

I like to think of it this way: There's a specific combination of powers that fits me perfectly, but I don't know what combination it is. I'm going to experiment with different combinations until I find it. Plenty of stuff will feel fun, but nothing yet has been QUITE what I feel like I want, and so I'll keep trying until I get that perfect combo.

Ultimately the question here is, is it more fun to be given access to something or to have to 'earn' access to something. And that's not a question every player will agree with. There's arguments for each - if you 'earn' access to something it makes you tend to appreciate that a bit more. When you only had a single costume slot, and you suddenly unlocked your second - you were elated because now that option that was previously denied to you becomes available. That sense of achievement can make rewards more special than they otherwise would be. Some people really love that sense of satisfaction and accomplishment you get when you unlock a new special privilege, and they look forward to each new unlock for that reason. But it also does mean locking people out of content. People who overlook that second slot mission, people who don't progress to the point where they can do it, and so on - they are left out. Some people can't play much (Time issues and the like) and just want to dip their waters into character customization after hearing how many options CoH has. They don't want to grind to level 20 or 30 or whatever. Granting them early access means they can experiment and have fun and all that, but it also means that now those privileges are no longer 'special', there's no sense of achievement for it. Being given a reward for free versus working for a reward is a discussion that pops up constantly in games, and there's no right or wrong answer for everyone. Personally I prefer to lock the stuff behind missions to give me goals to work towards, milestones to be pushing forward to, and a reason to go out of my way to unlock something I otherwise couldn't have. But that's just because I love that feeling of accomplishment and achievement.

Another thing to consider, that I just thought of : Damage types. Specifically, if you're the kind of person who fights a lot of CoT then mercs will suffer badly. CoT spectres have a ridiculous 40% resistance to both Smashing and Lethal damage, which hurts Mercs badly as every single damaging attack that soldiers and spec-ops use is lethal or smashing. I don't know if there's any enemies that are heavily energy resistant off the top of my head, but I know that when I play my Robots I clear CoT stuff so much easier. (CoT spectres take 30% MORE damage from energy, making robots their natural enemy) Thugs are especially bad because even their Boss Minion is pure smashing damage, while the others are lethal. Beasts, Mercs, Ninjas are mainly lethal/smashing with the bosses offering more variety with Boss damage types. Necromancers get a lot of versatility since the toxic damage from zombies is mixed with negative energy and smashing damage. And demons are all over the place thanks to each of their Tier 1 minions having different damage types.

Primarily because there's more content available for heroes. Hero-side there's 11 normal 'city' zones, 9 Hazard Zones, 6 Trial Zones, and the tutorial zone. Villain-side there's 7 normal city zones, 1 hazard zone, 1 trial zone, and the tutorial zone. Heroes can fight off 10 giant monsters, Villains have 5. Heroes have 20 task forces, villains have 10 strike forces. There's 4 co-operative ones. Second, people go where the population is - since there's so many more heroes it's easier to find a team, easier to do groups, and thus more people play them. Fewer villains means fewer options for teams, strikes, et cetera. And a big one is that I do see a lot of people who dislike villain zones. Grandville in particular is bad for villains with little vertical movement abilities. Thanks to prestige powers and abundant jetpack inventions/temp powers from mayhems/etc this isn't as bad as it used to be, but I still see complaints. Personally I love the villain side more, Mayhems are much more fun than Safeguards, but I wish there was more 'hero' groups and fewer infighting between villain groups. Villains spend WAY too much time fighting other villain groups with newspaper and other missions; the only hero groups really are Longbow, Legacy Chain, and Wyvern. If they would have added in another 3 hero groups and give the villains a more active 'evil' role and I'd be so very, very happy.

Honestly I don't care in the slightest about the performance increase/decrease. What I care about is that when AGEIA is enabled, it produces a huge amount of persistent physics objects that otherwise vanish. Used bullet shells, debris from trash cans and destroyed objects in Mayhem/safeguard missions. Leaves from trees. Rocks and rubble from stone powers. They would stick around, and interact with powers in useless but visually fantastic ways. Need to see what I mean for yourself? Here's a couple (low quality) videos showing off what it was like. Without being able to turn AGEIA Physics on, those objects are no longer persistent. The shells eject from weapons but the second they hit the floor they vanish entirely. Trash and debris does its own animation then vanishes into thin air. All I want is to be able to turn on the feature that makes those shells become permanent (While you're on the same map, at least) objects that can be interacted with by powers. The old, old option would actually have a max count of 1500 of these 'persistent' physics objects in the map : I never had an AGEIA card, but I know that old nVidia cards would allow this to be turned on because at one point, ages ago, I had these physics enabled and working. I ran around with a Merc/Storm MM and they'd use full auto to just SPRAY the area with bullet shells, and then use Hurricane to suck 'em up and swirl 'em around. Gravity Controllers were amazing too - Lift would not only grab the target, but EVERYTHING Around the target would be flung up then down. Gravity Distortion would suck up all kinds of things. Super-strength stuff like hand clap would send everything flying in all directions. All I want is for those 1500 persistent physics objects to be present in the world and to be affected by my powers like they always used to.

I tried these and they work PERFECTLY, thank you! This probably works but holy crap is it convoluted, Healix's way is so much easier

I'd like to make a macro for specific powers to toggle between them. IE : A Macro for a single key that toggles between Fly and Hover. If I am flying and I press the button once, it turns off flying and turns on Hover. I press it a second time and it turns hover off and flying back on. Or the same thing for Super Jump/Combat Jumping. I asked in Discord and was given info but I probably messed it up because it's not working for me now.

Sadly I could find nothing helpful within the profile inspector. This is gonna drive me nuts I can already tell.

I joined a frostfire team over the weekend on my thermal mastermind, we had some fun and killed us an elite boss. Afterwards, I was flying back to Paragon City and noticed a level 11 tanker (I was 18 at the time) getting into a fight with way too many trolls. So being the meddling do-gooder I am, I started chain-healing him. He didn't seem to understand that for all intents and purposes I was making him invulnerable to the trolls, since I could outheal their damage easily, so he ended up running back to get them zapped by police drones. But hey, I tried!

I did some looking into that 'refactoring' that Colette mentioned, and it mainly leads me to SEGS. I'm a bit confused about that. My assumption about SEGS was that they were trying to recreate the server-side stuff from scratch, since the code was never made available. Once the server code was made available, the advantage that SEGS had would have been twofold - being 100% legal by containing no code that was written by the NCSoft employees, and being potentially faster by being more optimized. But all the SEGS stuff I see seems to mainly be server side, and I don't see much about client. So I have no idea if that's going to be a future option or no. If CoH is using the latest PhysX SDK, however, it introduces possibilities. Slight, perhaps, but possibilities. Perhaps there's advanced options using Profile Inspector, I'll head home and dig around there to see if there's anything I can find that might enable support. I know it probably seems stupid to fixate on this, but it was seriously an amazing feature and I had so much fun with it way back when.

That'd be amazing, though I hope that someone out there within the extremely talented modder communities takes pity upon us and create some high res textures. I know a lot of games out there have had 4k retextures, but since CoH/V has been gone there has never been any reason for them to take a look our way. If I could get 4k textures AND the persistent shells and other physics objects? I'd be in 7th heaven. Well I mean I'm ALREADY in 7th heaven having this game back, but I'd be in 8th heaven or something.

If you're that upset about it, OP, just avoid outdoor missions and focus on doing indoor ones.