67 réponses à ce sujet

[Allan Schumacher]

What I find even more worrying is the response he conveniently avoided. Customers who can't get the game to stop crashing long enough to venture out of the starting area are just plain screwed, I guess?

 

If I don't answer a question it's possible I missed the post or don't know the answer.  In your case I couldn't say as I haven't been exposed to any discussions about that.

 

The stuff I've been a part of in terms of discussion have been more towards improving the PC controls/experience going forward (though I'm actually tasked on various back end online work for the bulk of my 9-5. My perspectives were asked for more because I interact with the community on my own time a fair bit and can help collate some of the feedback).

[Allan Schumacher]

Does a post-mortem for a game this size usually involve a total re-design of control schemes? 

 

Or is that something that either gets put into action at the start of production, or not at all.

 

Post mortems are more about examining workflows used during the course of the project and whatnot, as opposed to attempting to fix any particular issue in the game at any moment.

[Allan Schumacher]

You did not answer my question =(

 

What is wrong. CPU, GPU, or Nvidia?

 

Just looking at your system specifications I can't say why the game itself is unstable for you.  If you haven't already, filing an issue with Answers HQ here might help widen the search net over potential issues and possible work arounds.

[Allan Schumacher]

Thank you for that response!

 

On a side note, while I do think you are doing well to adress this and patch it yourselves, and right now you are giving this unprecedented feedback and interactions spree (thanks for that as well), do you not think that seeing these are mostly PC issues, later on eventually giving the community mod tools or at least mods being a possibility, don't you think it would very much make a lot of the PC community very happy?

 

By all means do work your behinds off trying to resolve this PC situation asap, like it seems you are trying to do, with short term and long term options, but really, giving the ability to mod would go along way as well.

 

Mod tools runs into the challenges of licensing middleware that exists in the engine and the reality that we aren't sole creators of the engine so it may not even be our call to make.

 

I'm sure if we were to do it there'd definitely be a good number of PC gamers that would be delighted, but I think that it'd be something we'd have to be looking on supporting from the onset of the project.  Unfortunately I wouldn't expect the mod tools situation to change.

[Allan Schumacher]

Did BW comment on the tactics menu yet? It rlly needs an urgent upgrade to get it up to par with the prequals. Several threads in other subforums about it too.

 

The difference in tactics between the games is a more general concern as it applies to all platforms.  Just hoping to keep this thread more focused on PC specific issues, thanks.

[Allan Schumacher]

No, enemies don't jump. And if you cast a spell from the tac-cam while on an unreachable ledge/area, you do sometimes get ported down. If there is a walkable path, both your companions and enemies will try to take that. But there are rarely situations where the player or NPCs are in unreachable locations. The bigger issue is with smaller collision items; rocks, logs, stumps, etc. which often do require jumped to get unstuck from. Slopes which are too steep to simply walk up would also cause some issues I imagine.

 

The teleportation is due to the tactical camera mode snapping you to the nav mesh (since it drives the pathfinding and without that you wouldn't be able to move).  When this happens you likely got to a place that wasn't "expected" to be traversed (or was considered very bad if your party members and you all ended up there).

 

Things like jump more create challenges to a "tactical camera view for the entire game for all things."  It does cause some hiccups in places where combat uses more vertical elements and/or contains tactical advantages that can be exploited by leveraging jump as well.

[Allan Schumacher]

So, following that, if we assume the point-to-click movement function (which exists in the Tac Cam) works in relation to pathfinding dynamic you described, does it also mean it would be possible in the Action Cam?

 

The Nav Mesh is still there and the pathfinding still works while in action cam (your followers and other entities still pathfind) so from that aspect point and click movement is possible.  There will be some edge cases that may need to be resolved, such as when you move to a tricky position via WASD/jumping, and then try to issue a move where the pathfinding system isn't properly set up.  Off the top of my head we could just do nothing (can't pathfind, so don't move) which may be confusing.  If it ends up requiring some form of feedback to let the player know or alterations to the nav mesh, then potential knock on costs/effects can start to branch and will also need to be assessed.  Though the messaging may exist in patch notes so no in game work is needed to support it as well.  Things like that.

[Allan Schumacher]

P.S. Thank you Allan for the constant feedback now, this is exactly what the angry mob needed, as you can see 99% of us calm down when we get feedback on our concerns.

 

Well, it's 3:40 in the morning where I'm at as well.  I'm expecting the thread to explode when I get into work...

[Allan Schumacher]

I don't really know where you got your numbers from but oh well, all my components except for the GFX card and SSD are more than a year old. This isn't a monster rig, I'm guessing you're a bit sour because you are experiencing loads of issues. Did you try to format and totally reinstall your OS and game?

 

I appreciate the support and I'm glad the game is working for you, but it's important to remember that (especially with PC gaming) a lot of factors can be at play that can cause issues with the game.  I don't have many issues either (I have had two crashes in my Lets Play over the course of 28 hours or so), but it's important for me to acknowledge that my positive experience doesn't invalidate that that are having a negative time either.

 

(This is what I was trying to say earlier with respect to my experiences with M&KB in development not invalidating the fact that it's still an issue for a lot of people).

[Allan Schumacher]

Ah..  I see.  So if it's determined that the branching problem would be significant and the edge cases ongoing after initial testing, is this something that would be worth putting in the game?  Are there any other considerations that would prevent Bioware from approval of this change?

 

It can be yes. Sometimes you're okay with edge cases being unsupported and/or communicated in a low cost way too, though.  So while it may be more involved to have a flashing GUI with localized text string pop up saying "Pathfinding not found" or something, maybe we communicate it in a way via patch notes "we've added this thing, note that if it doesn't work in these conditions here's why" might be a "good enough" for most. 

 

So we wouldn't necessarily be handcuffed, just trying to illustrate how the process may go and some of the things we end up considering.

[Allan Schumacher]

I do believe you are sincere but I am not really happy that you changed some of the keyboard and mouse options without doing an extensive and thorough testing for long periods.
Did no other beta tester not have any misgivings on the changes? where they all happy with the changes?

 

It's a fair criticism.  M&KB Controls aren't good enough for you, and it's valid to say "hey maybe you should have spent a bit more time on this across the board, don't you think :|?"

[Allan Schumacher]

Then the best possible solution would be to "move until blocked". Most of the click to move requests are in relation with looting because you have to be basically on top of the corpse/node to interact, since most of those are reachable in a direct line i don't think that it would cause much pathfinding problems. In combat you're close to your targets anyway.

 

 

Unless you're on a different plane with no connection via the nav graph, I wouldn't expect the pathfinding component to be an issue.  Especially since enemies tend to be bound to the nav mesh (for their own pathfinding) and don't tend to end up in places that would meet this edge case anyways.

 

Though Brogan seemed to be speaking on a more "general" click-to-move.  Or so I interpreted, in any case.

[Allan Schumacher]

@allan schumacher

 

please take a look at some of the caves in the storm coast. the party ai just refused to follow into the caves, you have to steer them one by one in the cave and in the caves itself there was a lot of buging and teleporting around, especially in tactic mode. experienced this bug in three stormcoast caves, nowhere else

 

I'm heading to bed now unfortunately, but if you could please file this off at Answers HQ here it'd help.  It's likely an issue affecting all platforms and those guys help call out issues through helping with triage/prioritizing tasks.

 

Thanks.

[Allan Schumacher]

I've seen some people say SWTOR has "click to move" which... make me think some are talking about something different than myself?

When I say click to move I am thinking of "click on the terrain, my character pathfinds to that terrain."  Not using the mouse to run forward or anything like that (i.e. clicking and holding LMB + RMB).  Or did SWTOR actually have "click on terrain and move there" and I don't remember? (I haven't really played it since March 2012).

[Allan Schumacher]

Hey Allan, can I check, are the devs aware of and working on the bug that flags non-Human PCs as being human and gives them dialogue and quests regarding being a Trevelyan? From what I read that's only happening on PC.

 

It's the deal breaker for me. Bad controls I can muddle through, but losing out on the story content I specifically chose my character to see is to lose the reason I want to play the game at all.

 

Thanks.

 

This is definitely a serious issue and is being investigated and is considered critical/high priority (it affects all platforms too I believe).

[Allan Schumacher]

This is absolutely key for melee combat on hard or nightmare. WASD is not responsive enough during combat, and being able to hold LM+RM to move around would also address many of the issues players have with DW Rogues and 2h Warriors being useless. This was a feature in DAO and DA2, but if it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is, I suppose...

 

In what ways is WASD not responsive enough?  The inertia of starting moving?  I'm not sure why would hold LMB+RMB alleviate this when at first glance it seems like it wouldn't be much different than holding LMB+RMB = holding W.

 

Just curious if the issue is something else and that LMB+RMB wouldn't innately fix that if that other issue wasn't addressed.

[Allan Schumacher]

SWTOR may or may not have "click on the terrain and move there" but it does provide movement and character control with the mouse only, leaving the other hand free to select skills, etc. The end result being a nice coordination of the mouse hand for movement and the other for attacking, which is lacking in this game. I can see where a player who is accustomed to moving AND attacking with the keyboard would not see the issue, but for me, and apparently many others, it is a huge issue.

 

For sure.  My question was more about making sure I understood what people were talking about just to make sure that we were on the same page.

[Conal Pierse]

Here are the patch notes:

 

Singleplayer

• Fixed case where game would incorrectly think the player has more than one race/class/gender
• Fixed case where users who changed their voice off of default, would have their voice set back to default when interacting with Hawke’s chargen settings.
• Increased duration that search highlights things, and added highlighted items to radar while they are highlighted.
• Fixed several conversation lines which would take a very long time to advance to the next line unless they were manually skipped.
• Fixed case where followers could float above the ground after extended periods of play
• [PC] Fixed some hitching in conversations.
• [PC] Pressing the interact key (default “F”) will take everything from containers.
• [PC] Hair should be less shiny on lower quality settings.
• [PC] Improved push-to-talk functionality when using keyboard and mouse
• [PC] Added ability to rotate character models with the mouse in UI’s that show character models
• [PC] Added an option to enable / disable tactical camera on mouse wheel scroll out.
• [PC] Hiding the HUD on the PC will now hide all UI elements
• [PC] Fixed being able to drag abilities from a tree that was not selected onto the quickbar
• [PC] Fixed being able to toggle UI state for the tactical camera on the quickbar when the tactical camera is unusable
• [PC] Fixed case where clicking quickbar elements in Eyefinity would trigger attacks
• [PC] fixed case where extra mouse-up events were triggering in UIs
• [PC] Fixed issue where mouse-up events were missed when dragging off of UI elements and then releasing the mouse button
• [PC] Fixed loading Icon not animating while Mantle creates shaders during load screens.
• [PC] Fixed mouse cursor flashing while targeting AOEs
• [PC] Fixed situation that could result in a hang on the start menu.
• [PC] Fixed situation where war table could become non-interactive until users right clicked on it.
• [PC] Fixed situation which could cause mouse-look to snap to a facing rather than turning smoothly
• [PC] Holding right click and pressing the camera turn buttons in tactical camera will cause the cursor to strafe in the same manner the camera behaves outside tactical camera
• [PC] Made some changes that should improve Mantle performance
• [PC] quickbar indicator for pause state should no longer remain highlighted when game is not paused
• [PS3] Increased number of save slots to 30
• [PS4] Improved conversation performance during fast install
• [PS4] Increased number of save slots to 50
• [360] Fixed case where movies sometimes decoded incorrectly
• [360] Fixed Crash when selecting storage device when select storage device warning is present
• [360] Fixed the online connection error being displayed twice when attempting to login to Origin with no Xbox live connection.
• Assorted stability improvements
• Fixed crash that could occur after some conversations
• Certain boss creatures are now immune to Disruption Field
• Creatures in rag doll will now pause when the game is paused
• Fix to Spirit Blade so it longer triggers combos
• Fixed a couple focus abilities to be weapon agnostic
• Fixed a few DA Keep world state import reactivity checks.
• Fixed a few situations that could result in there being no conversation selection indicator during conversations
• Fixed an issue caused by changing characters at the same as targeting an AOE ability
• Fixed Audio cutting out when using AOE abilities while radial menu is open.
• Fixed being unable to finish quest “Safe Keeping” if the user places key fragments in the forger, then leaves the zone without getting the finished key.
• Fixed camera shaking when making small camera adjustments during character creation
• Fixed case where blizzard would pause the game when it turns off
• Fixed case where controller rumble would get permanently disabled
• Fixed case where Imshael could end up in a location where players could not fight him.
• Fixed case where interaction text would not update in tactical camera
• Fixed case where mana or stamina was incorrectly displayed on mounted character’s portraits
• Fixed case where users could get stuck loading a save in a certain dragon combat area
• Fixed case where users could get stuck on an infinite “Connecting to Dragon Age Servers”
• Fixed Crippling Blows to have a 15% damage bonus instead of .15%
• Fixed Cullen’s hair having some strange shadows during cinematics
• Fixed exploit that would allow bypassing ability cool-downs in certain circumstances
• Fixed exploit that would allow users to take no damage.
• Fixed issue where orders to interact with trebuchets made in tactical mode were un-interruptable.
• Fixed issue where user loses control of the party if he enters tactical camera at the same time as a cinematic triggers
• Fixed issue which could cause potion counts to be reset due to party member changes.
• Fixed issue which could result in an infinite “Connecting to Dragon Age Servers” on the main menu.
• Fixed issue which could result in the Radial menu not staying open
• Fixed issue which could result in the screen re-sizing UI to stop working until exiting and re-entering the screen re-sizing UI.
• Fixed scripted autosave in the western approach which was made which if loaded could result in certain NPCs to not show up until after leaving the area and coming back.
• Fixed situation where followers could get stuck while pathfinding to the player.
• Fixed some of the collectible books being non-interactive in Skyhold
• Fixed slot types on several crafted items
• Fixed some item names getting cut off in stores
• Fixed weapon type on several crafted weapon parts.
• Ground rings scale on Dragons in Tactical Camera
• Radar will be shown during radar tutorial, even if the UI is set to be hidden
• Radar will show way points immediately after coming out of UIs, no longer requires player to move first.
• Target lock is cleared when entering tactical mode.
• Unified sort order for stat listings during item modification

 

Multiplayer

• Fixed issue which could result in negative XP being granted in some multiplayer matches
• Fixed crash that could occur while switching characters in some multiplayer menus
• Cursed chests in multiplayer no longer look different from un-cursed ones
• Fixed some missing information on end of match screens when servers are slow in Multiplayer.
• Fixed Players losing their ability to target when dying while recovering object in multiplayer
• Fixed situation where host migration after end of match would fail to show end of match details for the remaining players
• Fixed issue with players being interrupted while interacting with objects in Multiplayer
• Fixed issue where host can be returned to an empty lobby after quitting out of a match while in the operation failed state
• Improved appearance of ledge drop-downs in multiplayer.
• Fixed case which could cause keys to not drop in Multiplayer
• Fixed case in Multiplayer where players could attempt to use abilities while dead.

[Conal Pierse]

While I can't go into details on patch 3, I'd like to remind people of what Scylla said yesterday:

 

Beyond Patch 2 we’ll continue to release patches that focus on gameplay improvements. We’ve already lined up a number of improvements and fixes we’d like to include in Patch 3, and of course we’ll continue listening to you to make sure we’re addressing your concerns.

We appreciate your patience.

[Conal Pierse]

They are aware of this and dev is investigating. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Sorry, couldn't resist =P

Took the words out of my mouth.

[Conal Pierse]

Hey Everyone,

 

We're working on getting a hot fix out for the PC graphics issue as soon as possible. In the meantime, here is a workaround you can try:

 

To start, make sure the quality setting you choose is equal to the setting set for Mesh Quality inside Options>Graphics

 

You will need to add a new command line parameter. To do this:

 

Through Origin:

1. Right click on the Dragon Age Inquisition title
2. Go to game properties
3. Type the command line parameter in the Command Line Properties box.

Through shortcut:

1. Right Click Shortcut
2. Go to Properties
3. Under target go to the end of the field and type the command line parameter into the box

Once there, add the following command line parameter: -ShaderSystem.ShaderQualityLevel <quality setting>

In this instance, <quality setting> should be one of the following:

• Ultra
• High
• Medium
• Low

An example of how to set your quality to high would be: -ShaderSystem.ShaderQualityLevel High

 

Please note that once the hot fix is out, you will need to go back in and remove this workaround from your command line.

 

It’s also important to note that pre-patch 2, all users on PC were being forced to use the Ultra shader quality. This means that those of you playing on lower settings will notice a decrease in quality, particularly players using low or medium settings.

To achieve the same visuals as pre-patch, users on lower settings will need to change their settings to Ultra, which should likewise be used in conjunction with Ultra mesh quality. Mismatching the mesh and shader settings will result in other visual artifacts like overly shiny hair.

Please be aware that changing settings to Ultra may impact performance on some machines.

 

Sorry about any frustration this may have caused.

[Bryan Johnson]

Just backspace delete it from the command line properties to get rid of it

even the forgetting to remove it will likely cause no harm

[Bryan Johnson]

Has anybody tried setting the command line argument from within Origin?I think the properties window lets you specify arguments to pass to the game on launch (and it's a bit cleaner than going hunting for the executable and hoping you don't screw anything up).I'm surprised they wouldn't recommend doing it that way, assuming it works.

We did we gave both as a shortcut and through origin

[Conal Pierse]

Later on today we'll be implementing a hotfix for Patch 2 on PC to address graphical issues our players have been experiencing. This fix will ensure that the graphics settings are working correctly for everyone; however, players who are using lower graphics settings will notice changes to the visuals they are used to.

 

Before Patch 2, released December 9, shader quality for all PC users was being forced to run at Ultra. This impacted the performance of low-end machines and caused some unintended visual artifacts for users whose mesh quality was set lower than Ultra. As a result, users with Low or Medium mesh settings saw hair that was shinier than expected.

 

We attempted to address this in Patch 2 by binding the two settings so that mesh and shader quality were always the same. However, this fix wasn't properly implemented, and it forced shader quality to Low. We provided a command-line workaround Tuesday, but that still required players to ensure that the new shader quality matched their mesh settings.

 

This hotfix will correctly bind the mesh and shader settings and eliminate this issue. However, now that shader quality is being set correctly for everyone, players using lower settings will notice a decrease in the quality of visuals. This includes the removal of some features such as scars and freckles.

 

Most notably, the lower settings do not support blending of the age layer, so some users may notice that their Inquisitor (or custom Hawke) has aged considerably. And while this change is how it was originally intended to work, it could be understandably frustrating for people who created their characters before Patch 2.

 

If you would like to correct this change, you can set your mesh quality to High or Ultra. This will enable features that are disabled on lower settings, but may impact your framerate and performance.

 

We're sorry for any stress or confusion this may have caused, and we thank the community for helping us quickly identify and address this issue.

[Conal Pierse]

Is it possible that the stuttering issues some players were experiencing before or after the patch were related to this whole shader/mesh kerfuffle? (I apologize for not using technical terms, but like Commander Ren Hoek, I am a layman.)

There would have been a performance impact for players who would normally use graphics settings below Ultra, as the game was forcing the shader settings to Ultra. I'm afraid I don't know enough to comment on whether this is related to stuttering that some players experienced.