Come for the Milestone, Stay for the Complaints

The first of all my many characters has finally broken the Level 40 barrier. (Terrorgeist.) Yay me! What does this get me?? An anticlimactic "3 more power slots" and the opening of Epic Power Pools! ...oh, but you don't actually get any of them yet. But they're there. Trust us. Would we lie to you? [cue the sound of my pretty red balloon deflating.]

Let's Talk About Lag, Bay-bee!
ok, look.... This lag issue needs to be resolved, it's getting out of hand. Cryptic has cast us all as frogs in their little pot of quickly-heating water, and I'm starting to sweat. I got used to the rubberbanding whenever I approached the Atlas statue. I grumbled but tolerated the snapping-back-and-slapping-to-the-ground whenever I try to superleap anywhere. Then came the consignment market. Every time I click on a Wentworths employee, I freeze up for 5 minutes, then disconnect. The only time this doesn't happen is when I immediately log back on after the dump and reclick the employee. Every other time, blammo! This is intolerable. I've begun getting up and puttering around the house after clicking a WW employee, knowing I now have time on my hands that would be better spent picking up clutter or making a sandwich.

A random poster to the CoH forum spake:

Using SYSINTERNALS program called FILEMON , I note that the "City of Heroes" Updater and the "City of Heroes" program itself are accessing the DMA process very weirdly. All of my other programs access my hard drive in 64 KB chunks. It appears that the "City of Heroes" program is failing to honor the DMA BUFFER SIZE of Windows (Vista may use a differing method, but we're not all running Vista are we).

I have noted that when I access the Wentworths Consignment House that the "City of Heroes" program is trying to load up a 1.23 MB block through the DMA but without chunking it into 64 KB segments. In fact, when the "City of Heroes" client is pulling a few *.PIGG files off the hard drive, it regularly exceeds the DMA BUFFER SIZE without care.

I have yet to see another program I own or use fail to honor the DMA BUFFER SIZE like "City of Heroes" does regularly.

This explains the needless (and ultimately non-functional) problems with the new Wentworths market and most likely is also the source of woe for mission map and zone loading.

I have only a vague inkling of what he's saying, but he certainly sounds like he knows exactly what he's talking about. This man should be paid attention to and probably also given an offer of employment from Cryptic.

I'd really like to blame the freeze-up that occurs during the bigass Rikti battles on this same issue, but I'm not sure it isn't my mediocre graphics card. Has you tried taking part in the battle in Talos? It goes like this:

• Enter battle zone on hilltop outside train station.
• Watch as your screen freezes.
• Collect 5-10 snapshots of a battle going on around you as you frantically press buttons hoping it's doing something.
• See that you're now dead. Go to hospital.
• Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's annoying... Like having a hive of angry bees in your underwear.