Hellgate London Beta - Sept 17

[Kolle]

I haven't done a ton of looking, but the posts I've read from people on the leaks were using 8800. I am too. Dunno if that's the problem.

[Tagwen]

A friend of mine was having issues getting the game to run smoothly. He was running vista, and had constant hitching and terrible fps. The way we fixed it was to turn anti aliasing off. We ended up having to manually turn it off in the settings file because it wasn't getting saved for some reason. After that the game ran pretty well.

I have had very few issues with the game myself. I was able to play 8+ hours today without any memory leak issues or crashes.

[Smocca]

I play on two different computers:

One uses an 8600gt on Vista (32-bit), the other a 7900gt on XP x64. Both using Nvidia's latest beta drivers. Both have 2gigs of ram. Also I have all the latest vista patches etc (and AA is forced off). I play both in directx9 simply because the game runs like crap in dx10 for me atm.

The Vista setup crashes about every 30 minutes to an hour depending on how much zoning I do. Typical memory leak bullshit. If I monitor task manager I can watch the memory use climb as time goes on. I fucking hate playing the game on this computer.

The XP setup hasn't crashed yet after probably 10 hours of play. No sign of a memory leak. All around, it runs great and I am very pleased.

Sounds like it could easily be the 8xxx line that is experiencing the horrible memory leak. Possibly Vista (or both).

***

As far as the game itself goes (balance, classes, itemization, etc), it seems much better than the last time I played beta (about 2 weeks before launch). I'm level 21 in Act4.

It's a ton harder now and I'm more pleased with my class (Evoker) since status effects are worth using. Before, almost every skill was not worth more than a few points because they don't increase in damage, only % chance to inflict a status effect. Shit was dying so fast that there was no point in even worrying about them. Now there is a huge value in igniting, phasing, shocking etc. The poison line of spells are still shit though.

It seems like good items are rarer now. I haven't found a single unique. I also haven't found a good focus item yet. Usually I would have probably found at least a few uniques by this point, and would have multiple very nice focus items fully socketed. I'm not sure I like this, especially now that you can only upgrade an item a few times.

The major thing killing this game for me right now is the fact that I can't make an elite character until I beat it which basically makes me not give a shit for my current character so it's hard to motivate myself to even play. That and the fact that its next to impossible to connect with anyone. Shitty chat system; can't add people to your friends list unless you are both online; no indication that you got a tell/whisper (since most people keep their chat closed I'm assuming). It was never this hard when I played beta to find a group, or make a few friends. With auto-party on I have not been placed into a single party yet (after 21 levels!).

At this point I'm waiting until I can get subscribed I think (sign-up for it is still broken for me despite reports that it is working) and even then, CoD4 comes out in a few days so I doubt if I'll even bother subscribing for a few weeks (maybe until December when they release their first update).

[Steamrice]

for some wondering how the game plays

got to 31 on my marksman specced for beacons + reflected shots and working on tactical stance now.

normal mode is easy up to act 4 where you might start dying. rare mobs or bosses and giants require that you actually have a weapon made for killing single strong mobs. then when you get to nightmare mode, you might want to consider some thought into what you wear because you will get destroyed FAST and repeatedly unless you know what you're doing. you basically start at the beginning of the game again but the initial zombie encounters are now level 31 and drops are all high level stuff.

some want to know some basic mechanics that work in this game so heres some info. this game plays heavily on what elemental strength you go with and their elemental damage and how you mod them. if you have an electrical dmg gun, you don't want to mod it with +ignite or +poison strength because it won't do anything. the higher the elemental str you stack up, the better chance it will inflict conditions such as phased (+50% dmg taken, -50% dmg dealt), poisoned (dot/no regen), ignite (5% dmg/sec) etc. the numbers you see on a weapon is not the damage, its just a rating. you have to inspect them to see their true stats.

also everytime you level up, you get 5 stat points to distribute. depending on what you distribute determines what kind of armor/weapon you can wear. each armor/weapon has a stat requirement called feed. when you equip them, it takes up that much stat and you have leftover stat to equip other gear. if you find an armor that exceeds your total stats say sta, you won't be able to wear it.

weapon variety: theres a crap load of different type of guns. since i use 2h guns ill describe some of them

thermo cannon which shoots like a cannon and does a huge explosion on impact
zeus gun that chains lightning to another mob
cluster rifle that shoots a small bomb that blows up into 8-10 shrapnels
venom lances that shoots a poison based beam that is great on regenerative type mobs. stops them from healing back
bladesaw frisbee shooter
some gun that shoots 8-10 pelts of flame
a rocket launcher that shoots out 10 mini rockets in a big spread
couple of different elemental standard rifles that pewpews
shockgun which blasts anything in front with 6 lightning balls like a shotgun
firefox gun that shoots a missile and spreads flames where it hits and does dmg over time
Mirv gun that shoots a ball out and breaks into a ton of purple explosions all around

those are just some i can think of for 2h guns. there are duel weid guns which i don't like using atm like mine layers, stun gun, darts blahblah

speccing: currently im focusing on beacon which starts out at +50% dmg taken on any single target i cast on. the 2nd tier of beacon is elemental beacon which adds elemental defense reduction to it. at 3 points into it, it reduces 218 elemental defense. i'd have more but short on skill points but this skill is amazing for trying to get ignite proc on bosses as their defenses are high.

5 points in reflected shot and it has a 50% chance on crit to activate a 10ish second buff that makes all my shots bounce off from a mob to another x2. amazing crowd killer

and the usual +crit passive skill and tactical stance which makes me crouch but gain +range/accuracy/velocity and +crit. the more crit, the better chance at reflected shot going off, the more ownage i get.

1 point in escape which is like a vanish on 15 sec cooldown. needed if i don't want to die from an ambush or playing hit and run.

in normal mode, it don't matter what you spec in, you will get through fine until act 5+. when you get to nightmare mode you will start realizing that you just majorly fucked up and can barely kill monsters at all. if i went with grenades or rapid fire, id be screwed since monsters 2-3 shot me so i have to be on the move.

anyways, im enjoying this game. it has potential to get a whole lot better with time. there are memory leak crashes every once in awhile. I have to turn down texture detail to avoid it happening too often. and if you still think its a mindless killing game, wait till you reach nightmare mode. its HARD. you can switch back between normal and nightmare anytime btw.

[Arrr]

wow, think I lucked out or something. found a legendary sniper rifle at level 6. 7 slots, spectral damage, +1 to tactical stance, +100% damage bonus, decreases power cost of tactical by 18%, and something called smackdown 1.

This thing is amazing so far. I've got it tricked out to the tune of 163 damage rating at level 9. I oneshot basically everything.

[Occido]

Was reading the Hellgate Dev forums cuz of the constant crashing and found this.


FOR WINDOWS VISTA USERS!
Link - Virtual address space usage in Windows game development

"Vista has released a patch that greatly reduces the number of "out of memory" crashes"

Scroll down for 32-bit and 64-bit patches

[Gwen Rockpounder]

Subscriptions are still down this morning in euroland.

For the life of me I cant seem to get a bloody helm to drop I have metric fucktons of zombot blueprints across multiple characters and should have enough to make a couple of them by the end of today but the helm is thus far proving somewhat elusive.

[Indiana]

Originally Posted by Steamrice

for some wondering how the game plays

got to 31 on my marksman specced for beacons + reflected shots and working on tactical stance now.

normal mode is easy up to act 4 where you might start dying. rare mobs or bosses and giants require that you actually have a weapon made for killing single strong mobs. then when you get to nightmare mode, you might want to consider some thought into what you wear because you will get destroyed FAST and repeatedly unless you know what you're doing. you basically start at the beginning of the game again but the initial zombie encounters are now level 31 and drops are all high level stuff.

some want to know some basic mechanics that work in this game so heres some info. this game plays heavily on what elemental strength you go with and their elemental damage and how you mod them. if you have an electrical dmg gun, you don't want to mod it with +ignite or +poison strength because it won't do anything. the higher the elemental str you stack up, the better chance it will inflict conditions such as phased (+50% dmg taken, -50% dmg dealt), poisoned (dot/no regen), ignite (5% dmg/sec) etc. the numbers you see on a weapon is not the damage, its just a rating. you have to inspect them to see their true stats.

also everytime you level up, you get 5 stat points to distribute. depending on what you distribute determines what kind of armor/weapon you can wear. each armor/weapon has a stat requirement called feed. when you equip them, it takes up that much stat and you have leftover stat to equip other gear. if you find an armor that exceeds your total stats say sta, you won't be able to wear it.

weapon variety: theres a crap load of different type of guns. since i use 2h guns ill describe some of them

thermo cannon which shoots like a cannon and does a huge explosion on impact
zeus gun that chains lightning to another mob
cluster rifle that shoots a small bomb that blows up into 8-10 shrapnels
venom lances that shoots a poison based beam that is great on regenerative type mobs. stops them from healing back
bladesaw frisbee shooter
some gun that shoots 8-10 pelts of flame
a rocket launcher that shoots out 10 mini rockets in a big spread
couple of different elemental standard rifles that pewpews
shockgun which blasts anything in front with 6 lightning balls like a shotgun
firefox gun that shoots a missile and spreads flames where it hits and does dmg over time
Mirv gun that shoots a ball out and breaks into a ton of purple explosions all around

those are just some i can think of for 2h guns. there are duel weid guns which i don't like using atm like mine layers, stun gun, darts blahblah

speccing: currently im focusing on beacon which starts out at +50% dmg taken on any single target i cast on. the 2nd tier of beacon is elemental beacon which adds elemental defense reduction to it. at 3 points into it, it reduces 218 elemental defense. i'd have more but short on skill points but this skill is amazing for trying to get ignite proc on bosses as their defenses are high.

5 points in reflected shot and it has a 50% chance on crit to activate a 10ish second buff that makes all my shots bounce off from a mob to another x2. amazing crowd killer

and the usual +crit passive skill and tactical stance which makes me crouch but gain +range/accuracy/velocity and +crit. the more crit, the better chance at reflected shot going off, the more ownage i get.

1 point in escape which is like a vanish on 15 sec cooldown. needed if i don't want to die from an ambush or playing hit and run.

.

You play almost exactly as I do. In fact, I think it's the only viable way to play a MM.

[Fakuss]

The forum concensus seems to be (as I have been reading on 5 different boards):

Evokers are hardest to play early on but their status effects at higher level make the higher difficulty modes much more manageable

Summoners are the (possibly) the highest DPS class in the game with a full elemental+warper build but take a lot of micromanagement to control and deal with many pets at once; pathing issues will be your biggest enemy

Marksman are the easiest class to play since it's just like playing a FPS. There's a lot of different ways to play it, and all those ways do not involve grenades.

Engineers are like playing a marksman with pets, the tanking bot can really tank too! The only downside is ... well I don't know.

Guardians never die and are essential in higher difficulty mode party play, the anchor effect and defensive aura seem most popular.

Blademasters can handle groups of mobs very well, their skill tree is all over the place though.

[Sharmai]

Ok I got the FoH guild tag last night when the subscription servers were up and I made it into that small time frame window and subscribed. Unfortunately for me to add you to the guild you have to be online at the same time I am. The current character that is guild leader is Vtech so add him to you friends list if you can. If it says it can't find vtech them try for sharmai as that is the other character I am playing on.

Right now there are a few bugs they need to fix with guilds imo.

1. Characters need to be invite-able even when offline.
2. Guild Leaders characters need option to join guild if they aren't the character that created the guild. (this can be solved by #1 being implemented)
3. Need to be able to promote people to officers
4. Need guild bank (I think thats comming in december patch anyway)

[Indiana]

Originally Posted by Sharmai

Ok I got the FoH guild tag last night when the subscription servers were up and I made it into that small time frame window and subscribed. Unfortunately for me to add you to the guild you have to be online at the same time I am. The current character that is guild leader is Vtech so add him to you friends list if you can. If it says it can't find vtech them try for sharmai as that is the other character I am playing on.

Right now there are a few bugs they need to fix with guilds imo.

1. Characters need to be invite-able even when offline.
2. Guild Leaders characters need option to join guild if they aren't the character that created the guild. (this can be solved by #1 being implemented)
3. Need to be able to promote people to officers
4. Need guild bank (I think thats comming in december patch anyway)

You could invite offline people in beta. That doesn't work anymore?

[Gwen Rockpounder]

Turning off AA and turning shaders down to very high from extreme in dx10 is one of two things I tried today to alleviate the crashing I have. The other was to try a bladesmaster instead of a marksman after repeated reports of the shooting being a major contributor to the memory leak etc. I crashed once in 3 hours, yay i guess. It still looks very nice graphically.

The zombot idle animation almost made it worth the long wait to collect the parts alone

Many thanks to Steamrice for his post btw, it explained some stuff much better than the manual does!

Subscriptions were up for an hour or so earlier apparently but is down again atm.

[Qhue]

Its been days and I still havent found a single bloody ticker...

With subscription do you get to share a stash among your characters? That would be really nice as I find things like a nice Unique gun on my Blademaster that is going to waste.

[darrin]

lol i bought today and havent been able to play due to some stupid error.


if its any concillation, more people are on the technical forums than on the rest of the board on the forums.. lol

[Grave]

Are there any rogue or melee types worth playing in this?

Or are they at too much of a disadvantage compared to the ranged classes?