[PC] Turning off auto graphic degradation

senticon · April 2017

When game thinks you go do down on framerate, it starts to degrade graphics automatically by turning off some effects and downscaling res detail to 50% or maybe even lower. Problem is, sometimes it glitches out and forgets to restore graphics as they were, so you're stuck without effects or with downscaled res and only way to solve it is by restarting the game. Another problem is that with bad optimization it might dip pretty hard in some moments, but gets back up real fast, at least on my hardware, so this auto-degrade isn't doing anything useful really.

Question: is there any way to turn off auto graphic degradation or prevent it from happening? Maybe I can tweak setting file or use some console commands for that?

arcanjo86 · April 2017

@nitocris83 can you help here

nitocris83 · April 2017

Only time I use console commands is on the internal playtest shard so I don't know the answer off the top of my head for live. I'll ask!

donnyth · April 2017

I get this all the time, after playing for a while. It is annoying because i can't see what kind of loot drops.

greywynd · April 2017

Takes anywhere between 2 to 4 hours for it to happen to me.

senticon · April 2017

It happens during skirmshes and generally major brawls all the time. Because of this I can't see and judge what powers have been used (for SW no WC icon on enemy, no PoP flashing on the ground), also red threat circle becomes very thin, so it's hard to notice it and can easily make you eat up lots of damage. Would be great to have an ability to turn it off.

Btw, have been running DF lately. Funny thing: there were LOTS of people, FPS dropped to crawl, like 3-5 in some moments but thankfully auto-degrade didn't happen. I'm really curious how this thing is coded now...

rafaelda · April 2017

it happens a few times for mt HR after i got my new mont and weapon enchant (Shadowwolf + dread enchant) idk if is related but it goes normal after i relog...

sobac · April 2017

Things like that happen since mod0, unfortunately. There is an easy fix tho - restart the game when you see those glitches.

senticon · April 2017

Yeah, but I'm pretty tired restarting it over and over... Even when I switch toons, those visual issues persist.

beckylunatic · April 2017

senticon said:
Even when I switch toons, those visual issues persist.

That's because the game client itself has gotten "tired". It actually seems to be to be related to how many times you (or stuff in your environment) has queried the servers. It happens very rapidly in a zone like Siege of Neverwinter where not only are there many players in combat but constantly respawning friendly NPCs as well. It happens quite slowly if you're mostly playing in instanced content by yourself. But it also happens if, for example, the game has been asked to calculate a ton of refinement for you.

senticon · April 2017

beckylunatic said:

senticon said:
Even when I switch toons, those visual issues persist.
That's because the game client itself has gotten "tired". It actually seems to be to be related to how many times you (or stuff in your environment) has queried the servers. It happens very rapidly in a zone like Siege of Neverwinter where not only are there many players in combat but constantly respawning friendly NPCs as well. It happens quite slowly if you're mostly playing in instanced content by yourself. But it also happens if, for example, the game has been asked to calculate a ton of refinement for you.

Well, as I said, it feels pretty random or inconsistent, because it never happened for me in massive dragonflight events, though there were tons on players and effects flying around, but it 100% always happens in some skirmishes, which only has 5 players and bunch mobs spawning, like in Throne of Dwarven Gods. It also happens quite often in Dread Ring Demonic events, where there are only up to 20 players in the instance and maybe 10 tops in event area itself. Weird...

beckylunatic · April 2017

Players participating in Dragonflights tend to have been trained (by other players yelling at them if nothing else) to not use powers that query the servers a lot, reducing the strain.

senticon · April 2017

beckylunatic said:
Players participating in Dragonflights tend to have been trained (by other players yelling at them if nothing else) to not use powers that query the servers a lot, reducing the strain.

Well, maybe, but in theory, sheer number of people and estimated calculations for server can't even come close of DF vs 5 man Throne...

beckylunatic · April 2017

Yes but I'd also ask if it always happens even if Throne is the very first thing you do, or does it happen after you've been running the game client for a long time already? Because you might be associating it with Throne, but that's not the trigger, only the last thing you coincidentally happened to do.

Because I know what you're describing, but I see it happen after either a long time, or a shorter time in which many queries would have gone through.

senticon · April 2017

beckylunatic said:
Yes but I'd also ask if it always happens even if Throne is the very first thing you do, or does it happen after you've been running the game client for a long time already? Because you might be associating it with Throne, but that's not the trigger, only the last thing you coincidentally happened to do.

Because I know what you're describing, but I see it happen after either a long time, or a shorter time in which many queries would have gone through.

Not very long, I usually do couple of quick dungeons than skirmish. Today I did a test, before going anywhere I went to Throne and effects stayed, so you've been right about this. Still, it is an issue and would be great not having it, or at least have means to disable/avoid it without restarting client.

Also found two locations where floor textures disappear when I cast some spells as SW (specifically triggers on Pillar of Power): Spinward Rise and The Blighted Grove in Sharandar. Can provide some screenshots if needed.

miasmat · May 2017

Can someone who has gotten this problem send me a direct message with a dxdiag printout, and a screenshot of how the game looks with these degraded graphics? We'd like to get to the bottom of it, but can't repro it in-house.

hfleet · May 2017

I have been playing this game for over 3 years, and never saw this happen...

Is it a setting or command (hidden or otherwise) to set this feature up?

greywynd · May 2017

miasmat said:
Can someone who has gotten this problem send me a direct message with a dxdiag printout, and a screenshot of how the game looks with these degraded graphics? We'd like to get to the bottom of it, but can't repro it in-house.

It's little things. Drops stop glowing green/blue/gold. There's no flare coming off them.

Flames become non-existent. SFX of spells stop manifesting.

sorvikcorsair · May 2017

miasmat said:
Can someone who has gotten this problem send me a direct message with a dxdiag printout, and a screenshot of how the game looks with these degraded graphics? We'd like to get to the bottom of it, but can't repro it in-house.

Where is the dxdiag printout? I have this happen daily, can start recording for you.

d3drkshadow · May 2017

run dxdiag.exe at the bottom it says save all information click that and it out puts a txt file that is the "printout" i believe miasmat needs

greywynd · May 2017

Siege is making it worse for me.

hfleet · June 2017

Could someone please explain what setting this is? How to turn it on or off.

Also, does anyone have an example of how much effect this has on the game?

dupeks · June 2017

miasmat said:
Can someone who has gotten this problem send me a direct message with a dxdiag printout, and a screenshot of how the game looks with these degraded graphics? We'd like to get to the bottom of it, but can't repro it in-house.

@miasmat have you gotten any screens like you requested? If not, I can make sure to grab that next time this happens to me.

Anecdotally, this doesn't happen too often for me, but certainly does happen on occasion. Like Becky pointed out, it happens usually after a long time logged in (4+ hrs for me) or if I've been zerging HEs / group content repeatedly. So, any time where I've spent at least a while in... let's call it "an effing combat mess"... is when this starts to happen.

I can somewhat reliably get it to happen if I'm zerging WoD dragons with a high-end channel (so we are melting dragons). By about the 10th dragon or so graphics start to degrade. Not sure I've ever reached more than 12 dragons without the issues popping up.

I can also somewhat reliably get it to happen in mSVA if we are doing fast runs. Again, as Becky pointed out, it seems to be significantly more common if we are doing the content quickly (let's say 8min mSVA runs). By the time I've gotten to my 3rd or 4th run the graphics start to degrade. If things go slower (15min runs) I don't usually see the degradation (or I don't stick around long enough for it to happen).

Seems to be worse when there are more things happening. So any theory about number of server requests, or simultaneous server requests, or combat engine interactions might be barking up the right tree...

miasmat · June 2017

Textures are client-side, so it wouldn't have anything to do with what's happening on the server. It could be associated with heavy combat, since lots of combat means lots of players with all their power FX and costume textures.
We suspect that you're seeing the low resolution version of texture because you've run out of video memory. We were tracking the used video memory incorrectly in some cases, and have a speculative fix for texture memory usage going to the Preview shard this week (it might already be there) so if you get this issue on live, please give Preview a chance to see if you can reproduce it there.

dupeks · June 2017

miasmat said:
Textures are client-side, so it wouldn't have anything to do with what's happening on the server. It could be associated with heavy combat, since lots of combat means lots of players with all their power FX and costume textures.
We suspect that you're seeing the low resolution version of texture because you've run out of video memory. We were tracking the used video memory incorrectly in some cases, and have a speculative fix for texture memory usage going to the Preview shard this week (it might already be there) so if you get this issue on live, please give Preview a chance to see if you can reproduce it there.

Thanks for the update. Faulty video memory tracking passes the sniff test. I agree with what you're saying about textures being client side, so server interactions might be a red herring. That said, when this issue occured in my past my system monitors didn't appear to be indicate that I'm capping out my dedicated video memory (or any hardware for that matter). If your system was tracking it separately and making its own judgements that would explain why I wasn't seeing issues in my resource monitor.

It's really hard to test this on preview because the issue most reliably occurs in chaotic group content. And getting enough folks to zerg with you on preview for long enough for the issue to pop up is a challenge. We might not get any kind of meaningful feedback until the video memory fix makes its way to live, but the potential fix is very much appreciated. I'll make sure to keep an eye out.

Just some additional details described verbally:
When the issue occurs, textures get scaled down. Various visuals appear as colorful rectangles instead of fully-drawn particles or markings (for example red GF / GWF marks appear as big blocks of red on top of enemies). Weapon enchantment effects often get significantly reduced (lightning, for instance, loses the sparky animation and only the base weapon color shimmering remains). Same goes for armor enchantment effects. Does that sound consistent with what your memory fix would address?

beckylunatic · June 2017

dupeks said:

Just some additional details described verbally:
When the issue occurs, textures get scaled down. Various visuals appear as colorful rectangles instead of fully-drawn particles or markings (for example red GF / GWF marks appear as big blocks of red on top of enemies). Weapon enchantment effects often get significantly reduced (lightning, for instance, loses the sparky animation and only the base weapon color shimmering remains). Same goes for armor enchantment effects. Does that sound consistent with what your memory fix would address?

Weapon enchants lose their halo FX.
Loot on the ground first delays showing a glowing indicator, then stops displaying the glow at all, making items hard to spot.
Flames don't render consistently, then don't render at all. Eg. Nightmare mount mane and tail.
Combat indicators stop displaying. Eg. Warlock curse, which this player has made multiple threads about over a period of some months.
Combat FX delay rendering then eventually stop entirely. Eg. Smoke Bomb visuals. I think I've also noticed this with warning splats being delayed, which means trouble if you're not on the ball with watching for animation tells.

abelcoeurdacier · June 2017

Same issues for me since i return in game, there is 2 month.
I have 770 gtx with 2go vram and i7-6700k 4ghz,16go ram.
But i have graphicals effects on interactive things they disapear too, and graphical effect on quest things disactivated (green poison smoke in sharandar for exemple).
It occur each time few moment after i first log on in game.
It become hard to play with such problems, like playing in a "point and clic" game.

A french bearded dwarf.

amriss · August 2017

This occurs frequently. I can reproduce it easily by taking my great weapon fighter into Icewind, Dread Ring or Bryn. While it does occur in other zones, these zones with my GWF are the most likely to trigger the effect. I logged in today and decided to do a Need for Mead. The effect was triggered before the fight was half over.

Is there any update to a resolution on this issue or even a root cause determination?

abelcoeurdacier · September 2017

I post a short video showing this bug, hope it can help devs.

https://youtu.be/yuLuiGMGeU0

It is like we play the game at 75% of his content.
Thank your to fix this bug please.

alphastream · October 2017

miasmat said:
Can someone who has gotten this problem send me a direct message with a dxdiag printout, and a screenshot of how the game looks with these degraded graphics? We'd like to get to the bottom of it, but can't repro it in-house.

Here is an example. This has been happening to me for ages and nothing I can do to the video card, game settings, reinstalling, or anything else seems to resolve it. I'll play just fine, and drops show up normally:

Then suddenly I notice that drops no longer glow and are barely visible. Sometimes it is so bad, that I can't actually see coins or certain drops (particularly the kind that are zone-specific and get picked up automatically by running over them, but other kinds too).

The only thing that fixes it is to exit the Neverwinter client and restart from Arc. I don't have to restart Arc or the computer, just exit and restart NW. However, that is plenty annoying.

I would love a fix, because this is a serious pain to deal with. As was noted by others, it impacts all kinds of player and enemy powers, making it very hard to play tactically in groups.

btairborne · October 2017

For some odd reason, I can reproduce it on my GF within 5 minutes but cannot on all the other classes. Also, it's a relatively new problem that occurred with the last mod perhaps? Something you guys did with textures. It has come and gone over the last couple years though. Hopefully it is fixed with the next patch per the comments above!

[PC] Turning off auto graphic degradation

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