448 réponses à ce sujet

[Rob Bartel]

Hi everyone,

Last week I made the following post in RaenImrahl's very helpful Solutions Roundup thread:

Thanks for the excellent and exhaustive list, RaenImrahl. As you rightly point out, a lot of this information is out-of-date and unofficial.

Solutions exist for 99% of the problems that PC users are experiencing and we need to do a better job of communicating those in a clear, concise, and official fashion.

For the 1% of critical blocking issues for which there are no solutions, we need to do a better job of identifying those and then working with users to find solutions that will get them unstuck. If that requires further code changes and patches, so be it.

This is going to be a long-term process and we aren't going to be able to solve everything overnight. We're going to ask that you be patient and bear with us. I'll start with some fresh documentation surrounding some of the core issues expressed in this thread and will attempt to post that next week. From there, we'll set up some threads to identify who is still experiencing major road blocks and we'll iterate from there.

I know this may seem like too little, too late but I'm here now and will do my best to help.

Here's an update on what's currently underway...

First of all, we've started on a patch to address some of the outstanding issues people are still experiencing with authentication, in particular. There's some fairly complicated and tightly interwoven code in there that interacts on a fairly deep level both with the game and with EA systems. We're in the very early investigative stages so please don't expect a new patch to be released anytime soon but I wanted you to know that this work was now underway.

In the meantime, I'm also trying to consolidate the various threads, tips, and pointers that RaenImrahl's been gathering into a clear, central, and official Technical FAQ. A lot of these issues are ones that have only occurred in the wild and we've never been able to reproduce internally. As a result, it can be particularly challenging for us to provide clear and comprehensive solutions or workarounds but we're going to do everything we can.

To be clear, this is an issue that we're taking very seriously and are applying significant resources to. Our senior online programmer is heading up the patch effort, for example. As for myself, I'm a senior producer on the Dragon Age Operations team and have a 13-year background with BioWare, dating back to the original Baldur's Gate and lead design on Neverwinter Nights. Fernando Melo, who you've also seen present on the forums, is the head of the Dragon Age online group.

Lastly, I wanted to turn the question over to all of you. What are some simple and pragmatic things that we can do here at BioWare that will actually be of real assistance to those of you who are experiencing critical problems with our games? What would you like to see me doing to help? Please use this thread to help brainstorm and discuss some constructive solutions that could be applied.

Thanks,
Rob

[whiteraider]

First and formost, remove the phone home DRM at the core of the nearly week long outage on a single player game!

Then produce a version for 64bit OSes that allows the use of more than 2Gb of RAM, which may not cure the memory leak crashes that people are experiencing but should at least slow down the number of CTDs that occur.

And look very hard at EA customer support and server monitoring, as this was a disaster that compounded the situation.

[Fallstar]

Perhaps you could take a look at uploading characters to the social network. Its one of the more common complaints I see around. Especially since the DA:2 system works so well, (although I know the site was in a beta state when Origins released). Also; good to see some devs still on the Origins forums.

[Animositisomina]

SirLogical wrote...

Perhaps you could take a look at uploading characters to the social network. Its one of the more common complaints I see around. Especially since the DA:2 system works so well, (although I know the site was in a beta state when Origins released). Also; good to see some devs still on the Origins forums.

^ This. I'd be happy enough just to have my DA:O character finally upload. I've done everything I possibly can since I bought the game on 3/25, and it still refuses to upload a profile or allow me to upload screenshots. As most people suffering this problem will tell you, what's more odd about it is that achievements upload fine. So the game knows that the right login details are there, and the right ports are open for data to get through... and yet profiles won't upload. And when you try to upload a screenshot, it says your "data might be invalid." I have one e-mail account tied to BSN and my games. I am logged into that account, my DLC functions as it should. So how can my login details be invalid? It makes no sense.

Here's a screenshot of the actual error message: i51.tinypic.com/mauuiq.jpg

[woloif]

Rob, there are some serious ctd issues with this game. it really needs to be fixed most of all. it could be related to the memory leak issue. or the way it handles multiple cores. maybe set an actual cfg switch to force affinity like NWN had.


also a lot of ctd's are comming from combat, such as holy smite or that mana ability from awakening.

Modifié par woloif, 19 avril 2011 - 08:37 .

[Sussurus]

Thank you for at least adressing that there are issues that have gone neglected.
The DRM and CTD's are the biggest that will be raised.
My major issue is the oversights of content.

A short list of the most frequent I encounter.
Ancient elven boots, not placed in lothering... ( I really want my shiny boots.)

The last Blackwood company quest bugging out commonly if not taken while in Denerim and done before moving to the world map.

Miasma spell not staying activated on area exist.

Sneak getting removed by Rally talent, even a friendly one.

Many sustained talents getting turned on and off despite tactics.

The awakening joining for the last companion not occuring if you recruit them last..
Meaning unless you get Justice last it skips straight to Amaranthine... ( sorry to many lasts to last.)

The quest to help or hinder the guards / smugglers..
You can start one and end up finishing the other, while still having options to complete sections of the first bugging both.

A master lyrium potion being sold in shops would be nice in Awakenings as well.

I think it's related to the memory issue, but the game slows a lot faster with AoE sustained spells activated.

Modifié par Sussurus, 20 avril 2011 - 08:43 .

[RaenImrahl]

Rob Bartel wrote...

*snip*

A lot of these issues are ones that have only occurred in the wild and we've never been able to reproduce internally. As a result, it can be particularly challenging for us to provide clear and comprehensive solutions or workarounds but we're going to do everything we can.

*snip*

Rob,

Thanks for the update.  On the subject of replicating errors, I'm curious about the hardware specs and OS information of the machines Bioware uses for its testing of DAO.  I think some of the issues you refer to above, the ones that are very hard to reproduce, seem to be very machine-specific.  For example, some of us with Win 7 64-bit machines almost never encounter crashes, while it seems others do-- extensively.  Perhaps at some point (I don't think this is urgent), you'd be kind enough to post some of your test machine specs... maybe comparing specifics, we can see a pattern?  Just a thought.

[Funkjoker]

Aah...the first BioWare-human showing up after a long periode of time^^

Here we go.

Crucial technical bugs:

http://social.biowar...es-89244-1.html

^ Since patches 1.03 and 1.04 there happen to be many random crashes within DAO. Some people suggest that the .exe of DAO cannot handle >2gb of memory. Windows error reports are within this 1 year old thread. This has nothing to do with people being incompetent with Pcsettings/hardware whatever, as this is the only game the regularily crashes while playing.

http://social.biowar...ak-87363-1.html

^ After this thread one of your staff member, Andreas Papathanasis,
started this thread:

http://social.biowar.../index/600984/1

However, he hasn't come with any solution to this problem within one year and no one of BioWare came ever back to this thread; even after sending a PM asking whether Mr. Papathanasis could inform us about this issue the request remained ignored.

Important flag fixes.

http://social.biowar...-7090781-1.html

BioWare seems to have some problems with Awakening and or DLC flags. However, even Origins aren't all correctly set. Best example: The flag that the Warden pursuits Morrigan after DAO or DAA. This can only be fixed by installing: http://www.dragonage...ile.php?id=1120

There are ->several<- other flag issues. ^ is just an example.

^^^^^^^
Are the most important for the overall DAO experience and for importing the saves in DA2.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are still many issues left, especially DLC issues or Awakening. I won't post them now, as the ^ are more important. If you want to know some issues regarding quests, balance, DLC etc., please write it.

Modifié par Jean-Funk Van Damme, 20 avril 2011 - 12:49 .

[fluffyamoeba]

Are the crash report generated by windows actually any use? The game crashes so frequently on my PC since 1.03, I can probably create one fairly quickly if there are more needed than the ones linked in the post above

[Springwalker]

Thank you for letting us know that we are not the forgotten children. I would like to add my vote to the illimination of the use of DRM. The rest of my fellow players are doing just fine a job at adding to the list of things to do.

Modifié par Springwalker, 20 avril 2011 - 01:28 .

[Snargelfargen]

I am a casual player who just decided to play DA today after leaving it for a month, so I probably have a different perspective from most regular forum-goers. So here it is:

I don't have the time (or interest) in figuring out why all my DLC is now unauthorized. When I check this forum here, or the steam forums I instantly find several mega-threads and dozens of individual posts all about similiar problems. This is overwhelming and makes me want to find some other, more reliable game to play.

You need a "READ THIS FIRST" thread with a couple quick fixes and links to the mega-threads. A message or link in-game would be even better.. I know it sounds like I am a moron, but honestly a lot of us don't post on forums and only play occasionally after work. We aren't going to delve into the internet or mess around with .xml files when we can afford to buy/rent something else.

Edit: I just found such a post by Fernando Melo a little further down. This is exactly what I was looking for but seriously, its sandwiched between a dozen other threads. When almost every single thread in a forum is about the same thing, you know its about time you started cleaning up!

tldr: People are lazy, give them too much to read and they just get frustrated.

Modifié par Snargelfargen, 20 avril 2011 - 04:00 .

[sea-]

Rob Bartel wrote...
Lastly, I wanted to turn the question over to all of you. What are some simple and pragmatic things that we can do here at BioWare that will actually be of real assistance to those of you who are experiencing critical problems with our games? What would you like to see me doing to help? Please use this thread to help brainstorm and discuss some constructive solutions that could be applied.

I'm glad you asked this.

My number one issue with customer/technical support from games publishers is that it's very common to avoid talking about issues for which there is no known solution.  For example, on the 2K forums recently, I noticed that certain, recurring bugs that many people were suffering from were being outright ignored by the support team, while they would comment on other things with easy fixes.  No explanation was provided anywhere as to why this was, and all queries as to the reason were ignored as well.  This created a lot of hostility between 2K and its community.

I would much rather a steady amount of activity were maintained by BioWare and EA support staff, even if it's a simple answer of "we can't talk about that" or "there is no known solution, but it is on our list of things to look into."  It's a lot better to at least show that you're listening than it is to give fans the sense their problems are being ignored.

As for actual fixes that need to be implemented, aside from the problems with authentication, are there any plans on fixing outstanding bugs with various quests, scripting issues, etc. for both Origins and Awakening?  There are a number of unofficial fixes for these (Qwinn's Fixpack, various fixes for Awakening on Dragon Age Nexus, for example fixing Sigrun's personal quest, items with the wrong graphics/appearances, item sets with pieces missing, etc.), but these aren't 100% effective and can potentially cause problems, conflicts and save incompatibilities.  I'm hoping that there are plans to bring at least some of these into an official patch of some sort.

There's also the long-standing issue of certain spells and abilities leading to semi-random game crashes, the most well-known being Mana Clash.  Many of these crashes did not exist in the initial version of the game, but came about after updates were released.  Another similar (related?) issue has the game "slowing down" over time, with load times gradually increasing, more lag/stuttering when looting containers, framerates getting lower, and less responsive AI party members.  Can we expect these problems to be fixed at any point?

Last, are there any plans to fix outstanding issues with the the Toolset?  There are a number of issues, such as 2DA/M2DA files not being loaded properly/consistently or being "forgotten" by the Toolset during use (leading to export errors), and small interior rooms leading to corrupt/poor-quality lightmaps.  I assume this is far lower priority, especially if work is underway for a Dragon Age II Toolset, but still, it'd be nice to know.

Finally, thanks for your informative and timely post.  It's glad to see that you guys haven't forgotten about Origins. 

Modifié par sea-, 20 avril 2011 - 06:10 .

[Nypheria]

I dont have the technical knowledge to offer any fancy-pantsy advise, but regaining the trust of your consumers should be critical....(Snartgelfargen as an example). And maybe use these experiences as a reference to future issues with games before releasing them.

Thanks for popping in, asking our opinions and addressing some issues!

Modifié par Nypheria, 20 avril 2011 - 06:42 .

[BWMagus]

Yeah, I guess the main things are DRM issues and crashing. Besides that, there's about 1000 little things that are wrong that various mods have attempted to fix, like numerous weapon enchantments that are not implimented, sustainables turning off on their own, unobtainable equipment (especially from stealing), no base critical chance for player character, threat not being generated as stated by all sorts of abilities, and so on. It'd be nice if those were fixed so the game worked as stated, especially for new players who feel cheated when they keep dying, only to find out it's because alot of their equipment is broken and the skills don't work as stated. I'd really love to see actual numbers in the game, aka, precisely how much damage will this move do, how much threat does Taunt give me, how much and how long of a buff/debuff is this, etc. But since I don't see anyone bothering with that now, at least try and fix the crashes and DRM things, so the game can be run reliably.

[RaenImrahl]

One quick suggestion for the 1.05patch: have the game version display on the launcher screen and/or the main menu of the game, like it does for DA2. Some people report problems when they (mistakenly) try to apply the 1.04 patch to the Ultimate Edition.

[Luke Barrett]

Hey, everyone. Just wanted to chime in and say that I'll be taking charge of relaying all these issue on to design/programming in order to get this patch rolling. Now, admittedly I have much more experience with DA2 mechanics than DAO so I apologize in advance if I ask anything really dumb

Modifié par Luke Barrett, 20 avril 2011 - 11:08 .

[Luke Barrett]

RaenImrahl wrote...

Rob,

Thanks for the update.  On the subject of replicating errors, I'm curious about the hardware specs and OS information of the machines Bioware uses for its testing of DAO.  I think some of the issues you refer to above, the ones that are very hard to reproduce, seem to be very machine-specific.  For example, some of us with Win 7 64-bit machines almost never encounter crashes, while it seems others do-- extensively.  Perhaps at some point (I don't think this is urgent), you'd be kind enough to post some of your test machine specs... maybe comparing specifics, we can see a pattern?  Just a thought.

Our in studio hardware is somewhat limited compared to the enumerable combinations of PC setups these days. We've got access to compatability labs that pretty much have everything but that obviously takes longer to test and requires very specific instructions on how to produce the issue.

The majority of us test on win7 x64 but whenever we see hardware issue we contact users to get config info and then attempt to replicate those specs.

Modifié par Luke Barrett, 20 avril 2011 - 11:24 .

[Rob Bartel]

Thanks everyone. Luke Barrett from our QA team will be parsing through this list, following up with some of you for more detail, and filing individual bugs on these issues. What I'm hearing, however, is that there are three primary categories of concern - authentication, crashes, and character profiles. Beyond that, there are also a range of issues with the actual game content and then, beyond that, some further issues with the toolset. For now we'll do our best capture the data and get the bugs filed so they can be tracked and assessed in a more thorough manner. Once we have a handle on the overall scope, I'll start making some judgment calls as to what we can properly address and what we can't. We won't be able to fix everything, of course, but I'm going to try to ensure that the major sources of pain are getting addressed and that DAO PC is on firmer footing for the future.

Also, I've invited RaenImrahl to become a tech support moderator on these forums and he's graciously agreed. It'll take a little while for him to tackle the paperwork and emerge out of his chrysalis with his new BioMod powers intact but I'm sure you'll be there to welcome him when he does.

A big thanks to all of you for your continued patience. We're trying to be as transparent as possible in this process but, as a result, it will likely seem like a much longer wait before you're seeing tangible results. Your help and support in these threads is definitely appreciated.

[woloif]

congrats RaenImrahl!!!

[RaenImrahl]

Luke Barrett wrote...

Our in studio hardware is somewhat limited compared to the enumerable combinations of PC setups these days. We've got access to compatability labs that pretty much have everything but that obviously takes longer to test and requires very specific instructions on how to produce the issue.

The majority of us test on win7 x64 but whenever we see hardware issue we contact users to get config info and then attempt to replicate those specs.

Thanks, Luke.  Good to know... those who are quick to simply blame a conflict with DAO and Win 7 should take note.  The issue is much more complex than just that, obviously.

woloif wrote...

congrats RaenImrahl!!!

Thanks!  As I mentioned to Rob, I'll be heading back to grad school in the early fall, so I hope to make the best use of my free time until then.  I accepted Rob's generous invitation because he, Luke, Fernando, and others at Bioware expressed such a determination to work on DAO going forward.  They have my thanks for that, as someone who loves the game, and in that context I am happy to make whatever small addition I can. 

Much of what I've done in this forum is in keeping with my background... reporting information and helping people find what they're looking for.  So that's what I plan to do going forward.

Best,

RI

Modifié par RaenImrahl, 21 avril 2011 - 05:19 .

[woloif]

im so glad to see faith rewarded once again.....and to those that didnt believe me, its sad. thank you bioware and to those others that helped make this possible!

Modifié par woloif, 21 avril 2011 - 02:15 .

[fluffyamoeba]

The original DA:O launch was 2 weeks after Win7's release. So it's really not surprising that it wasn't tested much on win 7 as DA:O was finished before it was available.

[ejoslin]

If you're fixing dialog bugs, I have a very comprehensive bug fix patch (ZDF Dialog Fix in my signature). If nothing else, the list of fixes may be a good thing to have on hand. It just focuses on companion dialog issues (with the exception of Morrigan as Terra_Ex has a better fix).

[Pallando]

First, I wanted to thank Bioware for willing to fix things in DA:O.

Basically, this week, I finished Awakening and Witch Hunt and encountered some of the bugs mentioned here.
Thus, I felt somewhat betrayed considering how many DLCs were developed afterwards and how soon DA2 was released. I really enjoyed the game, but suddenly, it felt as if I had bought a shiny sailboat just to find out it was sometimes taking on water, and that the person who sold it was quickly building another one, while selling tie-ins to improve the looks of my water-filled boat. I don't want to offend anyone, but that's how I felt. And that's why it's great to see you still care about DA:O.


Then, as it has already been said, there are problems with online authentication, program crashes and content-related (sometimes game-breaking) bugs (like, in Awakening, mana clash, sigrun's quest, "rumblings from beneath" unavailability, morrigan's pseudo-stochastic romance flag, the "silverite mine items loss", ...)
I think the unofficial wiki lists the bugs that any player might come across...

Eventually, it might help you if you had some easily accessible page where one can declare a bug or "+1" one already listed. Gamers would have to choose the game, then the section (map location or quest name for example) and see if the bug is already reported. Moreover, bugs could be sorted by importance ("critical", "minor", etc...) and your response might be adapted to the gravity. For example, an "anecdotic bug" where a flag is not properly set if specific conditions are met could be treated by just telling how to self-edit this flag... Considering the fan base you have and how active is the modding community, such a way of communicating might prove efficient...

[aries1001]

Thank you for still supporting DA: Origins, Bioware and fixing the problems with it.

I have had no problem at all that I can recall in DA: Origins, except maybe not getting Morrigan's Ring (I had two rings occupying my ring slots in the inventory screens so maybe that's why?). For Awakenings, I had several crashes, (I had to restart the game), but after I turned off automatic uodate for my AVG antivirus program, they did go away - for a time. In Awakeking, I couldn't make Sigrun a Warden. I tried, but I couldn't. Maybe because I did something else first?

Also, this: Will the import issues from Awakening, Witch Hunt etc. be fixed in the patch? or will it be fixed in the DA2 patch?