Indeed, such an annoying issue should get more attention from the Devs. It has been a few months now with no solution, but the worst of all is their silence.
hello everyone,
if you are having textures problems with the game,try this,do stf and only stf,staying at the same spot,just map change to do stf,you will be able to do them forever,no textures lost there.
But then i tryed to do one toon (doffing),went from esd to sirius then regulus and finally taw dewa,did the new mission there,as soon as i got out i started to loose my textures,so map change is the problem,is sto game engine broken ???,i wish someone would come out and say something about it (from cryptic),at least let us know that someone is working on the issue,would be so nice from them.
p.s.try do play sto with no doffing,and you will be missing a lot a stuff.doffing generate a lot of map change,please help us.
It's not only affecting the Doffing, it's affecting everything. I don't know anymore how many times I had to apologize to my teams and drop out of STFs and Fleet Alerts. The game is basically completely unplayable at certain times.
I also came to the conslusion that somehow the instance changing is what triggers this bug, the more offten I switch instances, the faster it appears. For ex., like the OP said, I can sit in a place for no matter how long and not experience this, but if I do the 'Tour the Universe' daily, it's almost a certain bet that the graphical issue will pop out.
Seriously devs., it's getting pretty tedious to play STO and the fact that this bug has been here since the launch of Season 8 makes me have real doubts about the seriousness of your approach to this game and your expertise.
Makes no sense for this to be moved here. Last I checked this was for peer-to-peer support.
Receive peer to peer support for technical issues in regards to Star Trek Online on Windows here, as well as general technical issues! File a support ticket if you need help from the PWE Support team.
Oh look, it still is.
Anyway, this isn't just a windows problem. I've seen Mac users posting that they have this. Doesn't belong here at all.
Makes no sense for this to be moved here. Last I checked this was for peer-to-peer support.
Oh look, it still is.
Anyway, this isn't just a windows problem. I've seen Mac users posting that they have this. Doesn't belong here at all.
This forum is also for general technical issues which this seems to be the case with this thread.
The dev's haven't forgotten about it, however if they are unable to reproduce the problem fixing this becomes a lot more difficult.
Yes, I'm that Askray@Batbayer in game. Yes, I still play. No, I don't care. Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker. Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
Try playing their own game, on the current live build, that's how we who suffer this nonsense reproduce it multiple times a day.:mad:
Actually I know a few developers that play the game daily (Even have some on my friends list). Also, saying they should log in and they'll be able to reproduce it is false.
If that was the case that it affected EVERYONE there would be a lot more rage, including my own. It's not a good answer I know, but to say they just need to play it and they'll see the problem is a little out there :P
Yes, I'm that Askray@Batbayer in game. Yes, I still play. No, I don't care. Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker. Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
We are getting frustrated with the lack of communication, your post in the last few hours have doubled official responses to this thread in how many weeks has seaon 8 been live!.....
I had the day s8 went live off work , was playing until server was taken down, then patch and started played almost as soon it went live and the problem appeared. Nothing changed at my end as with most people, since then I've reinstalled , then switch to steam, changed all the graphics setting, rolled back and forward on my drivers, the list goes on and on.
If we just had a mention on the patch notes that's it's being looked into would be a lot!
The worse thing is for me is that I realy love this game, I want to play it a lot,... This bug is just a game breaker for me.
Just to note playing my klink toons more as their areas are less populated and the bug takes longer to come. Completed all four empire defences with no problems. Switch to my fed toon who started in ESD, beamed to the academy and got my first glowing texture.......beam to sector space most of my ui icons where missing.
Where ever you go, there you are.......
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
This forum is also for general technical issues which this seems to be the case with this thread.
The dev's haven't forgotten about it, however if they are unable to reproduce the problem fixing this becomes a lot more difficult.
Having spent a wee bit of time, collating duplicate reports as well as directing affected players to this main thread and generally trying to get: observed effects, evidence, technical specs (as requested by Cryptic) & attempted workaround experiences, in one place; I can attest that the majority of reports, were (and still are!) located in the Graphical & Sound Issues sub forum. It's the logical place for people to go.
This issue is also demonstrably cross-platform with PCs and Macs both involved. Being relocated under the PC section (which is PC >only< when you have an identical Mac sub-forum at the same 'branch' level) is just inviting confusion and the spawning of a whole new series of scattered duplicate threads, across the Mac and Graphical issue boards.
Having spent a wee bit of time, collating duplicate reports as well as directing affected players to this main thread and generally trying to get: observed effects, evidence, technical specs & attempted workaround experiences, in one place; I can attest that the majority of reports, were (and still are!) located in the Graphical & Sound Issues sub forum. It's the logical place for people to go.
This issue is also demonstrably cross-platform with PCs and Macs both involved. Being relocated under the PC section (which is PC >only< when you have an identical Mac sub-forum at the same 'branch' level) is just inviting confusion and the spawning of a whole new series of scattered duplicate threads, across the Mac and Graphical issue boards.
As always the sensible head, from those of us affected, thanks for what your doing here russellca.
Where ever you go, there you are.......
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
Having spent a wee bit of time, collating duplicate reports as well as directing affected players to this main thread and generally trying to get: observed effects, evidence, technical specs (as requested by Cryptic) & attempted workaround experiences, in one place; I can attest that the majority of reports, were (and still are!) located in the Graphical & Sound Issues sub forum. It's the logical place for people to go.
This issue is also demonstrably cross-platform with PCs and Macs both involved. Being relocated under the PC section (which is PC >only< when you have an identical Mac sub-forum at the same 'branch' level) is just inviting confusion and the spawning of a whole new series of scattered duplicate threads, across the Mac and Graphical issue boards.
Aha, there you are. Was waiting for your stats since I knew you had all of this in line.
Having spent a wee bit of time, collating duplicate reports as well as directing affected players to this main thread and generally trying to get: observed effects, evidence, technical specs (as requested by Cryptic) & attempted workaround experiences, in one place; I can attest that the majority of reports, were (and still are!) located in the Graphical & Sound Issues sub forum. It's the logical place for people to go.
This issue is also demonstrably cross-platform with PCs and Macs both involved. Being relocated under the PC section (which is PC >only< when you have an identical Mac sub-forum at the same 'branch' level) is just inviting confusion and the spawning of a whole new series of scattered duplicate threads, across the Mac and Graphical issue boards.
I actually had nothing to do with the moving of this thread to this forum. I will say however I did merge a few threads into this. While I understand what you're saying, this forum seems more reasonable as it's a Technical issue with specific graphics cards not just something they can do with a simple update to the client. If I could place this thread in both pc and mac forums I would But i can't. I know it feels like the dev's want this thread down here so it can be forgotten. I know it feels like that when things get dropped to the bottom of the forum list. That said, I know for a solid fact both Brandon and Smirk check these forums as well multiple times a day and read almost every thread. If they can reply, they will reply and if need be, they will make sure that it's still being investigated and see if they can give an update . But people need to know that just because it's in these support forums nothing is EVER ignored or forgotten. Especially big threads like these
The sad truth is, when it's not localized to 1 graphics card type or such it's a LOT harder to track down the problem which is why they wanted details. That's all I can say because I don't actually work at the PWE offices or Cryptics. I'm just a volunteer.
Yes, I'm that Askray@Batbayer in game. Yes, I still play. No, I don't care. Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker. Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
Posting to say I have the same problem... kind of.
I chocked it up to simply using the Mac beta, as I have NEVER SEEN texture dropping when I boot into my oft-ignored Windows 8 partition to play new content (because better graphics with native DirectX) before jumping back over to Mac OS X 10.9 to repeat the new missions with my alts. (I usually play for a couple hours on the Windows side when I do; I mean, I'm already there, might as well hit my dailies while I'm at it.)
I use a GTX 660, but I have seriously outdated drivers on my Windows 8 side due to the OS bricking every time I try to update them too far.
This thread is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long to read start to finish, so I do not know if anybody has suggested/tried this, but NVIDIA owners who use Windows should try rolling back their drivers to R307 or so and seeing if everything is A-OK.
EDIT: Specifically, the driver version I use is 310.70
I actually had nothing to do with the moving of this thread to this forum. I will say however I did merge a few threads into this. While I understand what you're saying, this forum seems more reasonable as it's a Technical issue with specific graphics cards not just something they can do with a simple update to the client. If I could place this thread in both pc and mac forums I would But i can't. I know it feels like the dev's want this thread down here so it can be forgotten. I know it feels like that when things get dropped to the bottom of the forum list. That said, I know for a solid fact both Brandon and Smirk check these forums as well multiple times a day and read almost every thread. If they can reply, they will reply and if need be, they will make sure that it's still being investigated and see if they can give an update . But people need to know that just because it's in these support forums nothing is EVER ignored or forgotten. Especially big threads like these
The sad truth is, when it's not localized to 1 graphics card type or such it's a LOT harder to track down the problem which is why they wanted details. That's all I can say because I don't actually work at the PWE offices or Cryptics. I'm just a volunteer.
That's all well and good and certainly welcome to hear, but even if Brandon and Smirk do read the boards, this particular problem is so prevalent at the moment, that some communication--ANY communication on Cryptic's end just to confirm that they even recognize that the problem exists would be both extremely welcome and reassuring to the players who feel as though they are simply being ignored.
All things considered I really don't think we're asking for all that much. Just recognize that the problem exists and confirm that the team is investigating.
I understand what you say Askray but this IS a graphical issue. It manifests itself AS a graphical issue. Moving it from the graphics issues thread is tantamount to hiding it. An object lesson on obfuscation.
It may well be a networking issue underlying the problem, many of us have said so but the resultant issue is GRAPHICAL!! :mad:
And the fact remains that this issue started after the release of season 8. MANY players have stated that there were no graphics issues before then. So this IS something that can sorted at the client. However I would guess that whatever has been changed is now far to solidly embedded in the newer content just released to reverse.
It has been stated that the devs "cannot duplicate the problem" which I still find staggering considering the increasing number of people who are reporting this! And if they cant then why not turn TO the player base and use us to HELP them fix it? A little use of remote control from willing volunteers might just help them out!
I'm sure, as you say, that Brandon and the new guy (sorry name escapes me) read these threads. But reading and then acting on/commenting on are two very different things and silence, in this particular instance is nothing but frustrating. Communications is a cheap skill but is priceless for preventing frustrations and wrong assumptions.
I'm afraid I'm at the end of patience with this. I have one toon left that's almost finished the New Romulus reps. Once that's done I'm parking STO until this is either addressed or at the very least acknowledged.
I have other games to play that seem to value its player base more highly.
I find the lack of feedback from Cryptic just sad.
litchy and Ian --> You're both too kind. All I do is hoover up the reports during Thurs downtime.
Real credit goes to everyone for battling through and continuing to post findings in a, sometimes frustrated, but generally civil manner. When you consider the scale of this issue (Jan '14 numbers & long since surpassed) that alone is remarkable. Especially given the usual rants over in the GNN forum over everything up to and including free stuff.
Hat tip also to your good selves; rylanadionysis; shpoks and others too many to mention, who also help redirect affected players to this thread and thus avoid the dilution of this bug across the forums.
Trinitycompleted --> Welcome - glad you were able to find us
As you stated a GTX 660 card and infer that you're using a Mac ('using beta' + 'oft-ignored Win partition'), I'm going to assume you're using the 2012 Core i5 27'' iMac with GeForce GTX 660M. If not (e.g. an actual 660 retrofitted in an old Mac Pro for instance) can you post your specs and I'll update the affected Mac h/w configurations
I actually had nothing to do with the moving of this thread to this forum. I will say however I did merge a few threads into this. While I understand what you're saying, this forum seems more reasonable
Wouldn't dream of laying this at your door even if you had. The VolComMods do stellar work (ps Bran there's the next T6 KDF shipname for you - just sprinkle in a few apostrophes ). I hope the mod/dev who did move it, comes back and defends the action, as I'm going to remain in good-natured & respectful disagreement, over this being the right location.
The online descriptions for both the Graphics and the Mac & PC sub-forums are exactly the same, but in actual practise these latter sections are heavily focussed on hardware, o/s, drivers, crash & recover, network, etc.
i.e. Anything but client updatable, in-game content; lest all reports be caught under the 'technical' umbrella and relocated here.
This is an external customer-facing forum, that to the best of my knowledge, is completely detached from any internal defect management. Being geared for the purposes of both eliciting customer feedback whilst allowing peer-to-peer assistance, the case can be made, that here, issues should reside where it makes the most logical sense for a player to easily find them. The better to avoid duplication and find help if available. Not grouped with reports that align with a developer's perspective of what >might< (still not reproducible remember!) be a potential underlying cause to the visible, graphical, symptoms.
it's a Technical issue with specific graphics cards not just something they can do with a simple update to the client.
I'll draw on my decades of extensive legal experience (well 'Perry Mason' through to 'Suits') and state "Objection! Facts not in evidence."
On the issue of graphics cards alone. From the anaemic to the powerhouse, the list of affected h/w configurations is now so broad, that if there was a simple direct causation, then it would be a wonder if anyone playing STO was not affected! There must be more here.
Nor should we forget that the Step Between The Stars FE texture load/render 'blackout' problems were fixed in the game client. The Dyson Sci-Destroyers incomplete loaded texture sets (offloading by camera distance rather than game time) being investigated, may yet have a software fix.
On the evidence to hand, the move seems premature, inaccurate (due to a lack of a cross-platform home). It will deny casual searchers from finding answers; spawn unnecessary duplicate threads and increase the workload for volunteers and Cryptic mods alike.
Just a heads up to those with this problem.
My final resort, I'm deleting my install which is now through steam, last install was through the cryptic launcher and will be reinstalling thorough ARC !! Will post update as if this solves the problem later, fingers crossed....
Where ever you go, there you are.......
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
litchy and Ian --> You're both too kind. All I do is hoover up the reports during Thurs downtime.
Trinitycompleted --> Welcome - glad you were able to find us
As you stated a GTX 660 card and infer that you're using a Mac ('using beta' + 'oft-ignored Win partition'), I'm going to assume you're using the 2012 Core i5 27'' iMac with GeForce GTX 660M. If not (e.g. an actual 660 retrofitted in an old Mac Pro for instance) can you post your specs and I'll update the affected Mac h/w configurations
It's a touch more complex than that, I'm one of "those" people who built their Mac.
I use a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5 TH motherboard with an Intel Core i5-3570K. The 660 is the real deal, a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 2GB.
I run Mac OS 10.9.0 and Windows 8.0. I encounter the texture dropping problem almost immediately using the Mac beta on the original recommended settings. If I dial down the detail, I can stave it off for a while.
As mentioned before, when running it under windows with just about every graphics setting maxed out, the issue does not occur.
Actually I know a few developers that play the game daily (Even have some on my friends list).
Should I clap for you or something?
Also, saying they should log in and they'll be able to reproduce it is false.
No it's not false because they are probably not trying to log in on numerous different config'd systems in order to even try to reproduce the issue. Trying to recreate the issue from only a small select control group is like blindly agreeing with what 4 out of 5 dentist say about one particular brand of toothpaste. There's a reason why the 5th has something different to say.
If that was the case that it affected EVERYONE there would be a lot more rage, including my own. It's not a good answer I know, but to say they just need to play it and they'll see the problem is a little out there :P
Ten years as a Police officer and if I had that line of thinking you displayed there while on patrol only one street in my district would be without problems and I'd simply stay right there during my whole shift while chaos ran amok on others. Just because you don't find issues on one street (computer system or small group of systems) doesn't mean you shouldn't look for signs of trouble on others close by, so if my line of thinking is "way out there" I apologize for holding someone (the devs) to a higher standard and not suffering from an indifference based way of thinking. I have a background in technology systems integration, matter of fact helped our fleet admins figure out several problems with how some of our patrol cars mobile data units linked remotely to the national NCIC database so officers could pull warrant information reducing the time officers spent waiting for someone else to pull warrant information or the need to actually bring someone in to verify the warrant. The old "we can't reproduce the problem" excuse doesn't hold with me.
Different line of work, same process of problem diagnosing and elimination applies. If there is a known problem with more then one system, it can be reproduced on others and we already know what two controls to test with, the current game build and the one prior to the influx of reported problems. Long winded post I know, but frustration with this issue has taken hold. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Played after another install, this time ARC, got 2 hours before the first texture problem, a couple of times maps loaded with missing texture but after 5-10 seconds they cleared and the game was normal, then with each map change this became longer untill the texture problems didnt fix themselvers.
I notice when the game was fine i would get a patching note and bar at the top of the screen with map changes, then this would not appear and the problems start.
Oh and with the devs not being able to get this problem, it was stated in another thread that they use a unpopluated test server to find bugs, would this be why they cant replacate it, as it mostly appears in high useage/populated areas.
I still get the feeling that this is the client not getting on the fly texture updates from the server. Worse of all I am beginning to belive they will never fix this bug at the moment it's not hitting there income so they just don't care.:mad:
Where ever you go, there you are.......
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
I too am experiencing this issue. I even got a new video card thinking that was the issue. So, on my AMD Phenom quad-core with 4GB of RAM, running Windows 7, using both an NVIDIA 560GTX and a NVIDIA 650 GTX Ti textures won't load sometimes. (Probably about 50% of the time.)
Gonna chime in, I'm also having this issue. It hits me after many hours of play tho. Textures will sometimes take a long time to load, and particle effects will be blocky. It almost seems as tho my video card has run out of memory or something. I wonder if it's some kind of memory leak or failure to release unused video memory, as it seems the beefier the rig the longer it takes for the problem to manifest itself.
I dont know if any of you guys contacted PWE support but i figured that 4 months with the problem and atleast a month since a response from cryptic was worth a mention and see what they say or if they have any infomation for us. I explained the problem in detail and the limited communication leaving us in the dark as to what was going on. They replied very quickly and this is what they said:
We understand that most of our players are having graphical issues since the launch of Season 8. I can confirm that we are aware of this issue and we are looking into this.
Here are some workarounds that you may try:
-logging in and logging out of the game
-Avoid from using alt + Tab while playing STO
-Changing the video graphics to above minimum
-Turning on 'Underwater View under Advance Video Settings
Rest assured that we are doing our best to resolve this issue. Please keep an eye on our official website and forum for updates regarding this matter.
I hope some of these suggestions help you guys play the game (logging in and out is a must as we all know so not much help with that one). personally I appreciate the fact that they admited that this is a problem and responed so quickly to my message.
I guess all we can do now is wait and see what happens and Hope this does get resolved soon. Anyway just letting you guys know what the score is at the moment.
If I remember correctly, the textures are actually stored on your hard drive, and have to be uncompressed before loading. The slowest part of my gaming machine is the HD. It might be interesting to start a PerfMon session while the game is running to see what the disk I/O looks like. Perhaps reading the textures from the disk, and into video memory gets slower and slower as the machine goes I/O bound. Hmm...
I dont know if any of you guys contacted PWE support but i figured that 4 months with the problem and atleast a month since a response from cryptic was worth a mention and see what they say or if they have any infomation for us. I explained the problem in detail and the limited communication leaving us in the dark as to what was going on. They replied very quickly and this is what they said:
We understand that most of our players are having graphical issues since the launch of Season 8. I can confirm that we are aware of this issue and we are looking into this.
Here are some workarounds that you may try:
-logging in and logging out of the game
-Avoid from using alt + Tab while playing STO
-Changing the video graphics to above minimum
-Turning on 'Underwater View under Advance Video Settings
Rest assured that we are doing our best to resolve this issue. Please keep an eye on our official website and forum for updates regarding this matter.
I hope some of these suggestions help you guys play the game (logging in and out is a must as we all know so not much help with that one). personally I appreciate the fact that they admited that this is a problem and responed so quickly to my message.
I guess all we can do now is wait and see what happens and Hope this does get resolved soon. Anyway just letting you guys know what the score is at the moment.
That is INDEED a good and timely response. Thanks for passing that along.
Now for my question. Why couldn't the "community managers" relay this information? How many times in this thread have we literally pleaded for ANY kind of feedback? Anything at all.
If I remember correctly, the textures are actually stored on your hard drive, and have to be uncompressed before loading. The slowest part of my gaming machine is the HD. It might be interesting to start a PerfMon session while the game is running to see what the disk I/O looks like. Perhaps reading the textures from the disk, and into video memory gets slower and slower as the machine goes I/O bound. Hmm...
Oh and with the devs not being able to get this problem, it was stated in another thread that they use a unpopluated test server to find bugs, would this be why they cant replacate it, as it mostly appears in high useage/populated areas.
I hope that's not true as they will never replicate the issue. They need to be using the client "in the wild" in other words in a working environment not a sterile low usage one.
Comments
if you are having textures problems with the game,try this,do stf and only stf,staying at the same spot,just map change to do stf,you will be able to do them forever,no textures lost there.
But then i tryed to do one toon (doffing),went from esd to sirius then regulus and finally taw dewa,did the new mission there,as soon as i got out i started to loose my textures,so map change is the problem,is sto game engine broken ???,i wish someone would come out and say something about it (from cryptic),at least let us know that someone is working on the issue,would be so nice from them.
p.s.try do play sto with no doffing,and you will be missing a lot a stuff.doffing generate a lot of map change,please help us.
Really, to have this serious type of issue and not attend to it for such a long period of time is simply unacceptable.
Guessing moving it here says it all, this board is even more of a graveyard than the graphics board.
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
I also came to the conslusion that somehow the instance changing is what triggers this bug, the more offten I switch instances, the faster it appears. For ex., like the OP said, I can sit in a place for no matter how long and not experience this, but if I do the 'Tour the Universe' daily, it's almost a certain bet that the graphical issue will pop out.
Seriously devs., it's getting pretty tedious to play STO and the fact that this bug has been here since the launch of Season 8 makes me have real doubts about the seriousness of your approach to this game and your expertise.
Oh look, it still is.
Anyway, this isn't just a windows problem. I've seen Mac users posting that they have this. Doesn't belong here at all.
Mine Trap Supporter
This forum is also for general technical issues which this seems to be the case with this thread.
The dev's haven't forgotten about it, however if they are unable to reproduce the problem fixing this becomes a lot more difficult.
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
I know how they can reproduce it....
Try playing their own game, on the current live build, that's how we who suffer this nonsense reproduce it multiple times a day.:mad:
Actually I know a few developers that play the game daily
If that was the case that it affected EVERYONE there would be a lot more rage, including my own. It's not a good answer I know, but to say they just need to play it and they'll see the problem is a little out there :P
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
I had the day s8 went live off work , was playing until server was taken down, then patch and started played almost as soon it went live and the problem appeared. Nothing changed at my end as with most people, since then I've reinstalled , then switch to steam, changed all the graphics setting, rolled back and forward on my drivers, the list goes on and on.
If we just had a mention on the patch notes that's it's being looked into would be a lot!
The worse thing is for me is that I realy love this game, I want to play it a lot,... This bug is just a game breaker for me.
Just to note playing my klink toons more as their areas are less populated and the bug takes longer to come. Completed all four empire defences with no problems. Switch to my fed toon who started in ESD, beamed to the academy and got my first glowing texture.......beam to sector space most of my ui icons where missing.
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
Having spent a wee bit of time, collating duplicate reports as well as directing affected players to this main thread and generally trying to get: observed effects, evidence, technical specs (as requested by Cryptic) & attempted workaround experiences, in one place; I can attest that the majority of reports, were (and still are!) located in the Graphical & Sound Issues sub forum. It's the logical place for people to go.
This issue is also demonstrably cross-platform with PCs and Macs both involved. Being relocated under the PC section (which is PC >only< when you have an identical Mac sub-forum at the same 'branch' level) is just inviting confusion and the spawning of a whole new series of scattered duplicate threads, across the Mac and Graphical issue boards.
As always the sensible head, from those of us affected, thanks for what your doing here russellca.
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
Aha, there you are. Was waiting for your stats since I knew you had all of this in line.
Mine Trap Supporter
I actually had nothing to do with the moving of this thread to this forum. I will say however I did merge a few threads into this. While I understand what you're saying, this forum seems more reasonable as it's a Technical issue with specific graphics cards not just something they can do with a simple update to the client. If I could place this thread in both pc and mac forums I would
The sad truth is, when it's not localized to 1 graphics card type or such it's a LOT harder to track down the problem which is why they wanted details. That's all I can say because I don't actually work at the PWE offices or Cryptics. I'm just a volunteer.
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
I chocked it up to simply using the Mac beta, as I have NEVER SEEN texture dropping when I boot into my oft-ignored Windows 8 partition to play new content (because better graphics with native DirectX) before jumping back over to Mac OS X 10.9 to repeat the new missions with my alts. (I usually play for a couple hours on the Windows side when I do; I mean, I'm already there, might as well hit my dailies while I'm at it.)
I use a GTX 660, but I have seriously outdated drivers on my Windows 8 side due to the OS bricking every time I try to update them too far.
This thread is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long to read start to finish, so I do not know if anybody has suggested/tried this, but NVIDIA owners who use Windows should try rolling back their drivers to R307 or so and seeing if everything is A-OK.
EDIT: Specifically, the driver version I use is 310.70
That's all well and good and certainly welcome to hear, but even if Brandon and Smirk do read the boards, this particular problem is so prevalent at the moment, that some communication--ANY communication on Cryptic's end just to confirm that they even recognize that the problem exists would be both extremely welcome and reassuring to the players who feel as though they are simply being ignored.
All things considered I really don't think we're asking for all that much. Just recognize that the problem exists and confirm that the team is investigating.
I understand what you say Askray but this IS a graphical issue. It manifests itself AS a graphical issue. Moving it from the graphics issues thread is tantamount to hiding it. An object lesson on obfuscation.
It may well be a networking issue underlying the problem, many of us have said so but the resultant issue is GRAPHICAL!! :mad:
And the fact remains that this issue started after the release of season 8. MANY players have stated that there were no graphics issues before then. So this IS something that can sorted at the client. However I would guess that whatever has been changed is now far to solidly embedded in the newer content just released to reverse.
It has been stated that the devs "cannot duplicate the problem" which I still find staggering considering the increasing number of people who are reporting this! And if they cant then why not turn TO the player base and use us to HELP them fix it? A little use of remote control from willing volunteers might just help them out!
I'm sure, as you say, that Brandon and the new guy (sorry name escapes me) read these threads. But reading and then acting on/commenting on are two very different things and silence, in this particular instance is nothing but frustrating. Communications is a cheap skill but is priceless for preventing frustrations and wrong assumptions.
I'm afraid I'm at the end of patience with this. I have one toon left that's almost finished the New Romulus reps. Once that's done I'm parking STO until this is either addressed or at the very least acknowledged.
I have other games to play that seem to value its player base more highly.
I find the lack of feedback from Cryptic just sad.
Real credit goes to everyone for battling through and continuing to post findings in a, sometimes frustrated, but generally civil manner. When you consider the scale of this issue (Jan '14 numbers & long since surpassed) that alone is remarkable. Especially given the usual rants over in the GNN forum over everything up to and including free stuff.
Hat tip also to your good selves; rylanadionysis; shpoks and others too many to mention, who also help redirect affected players to this thread and thus avoid the dilution of this bug across the forums.
Trinitycompleted --> Welcome - glad you were able to find us
As you stated a GTX 660 card and infer that you're using a Mac ('using beta' + 'oft-ignored Win partition'), I'm going to assume you're using the 2012 Core i5 27'' iMac with GeForce GTX 660M. If not (e.g. an actual 660 retrofitted in an old Mac Pro for instance) can you post your specs and I'll update the affected Mac h/w configurations
Wouldn't dream of laying this at your door even if you had. The VolComMods do stellar work (ps Bran there's the next T6 KDF shipname for you - just sprinkle in a few apostrophes
The online descriptions for both the Graphics and the Mac & PC sub-forums are exactly the same, but in actual practise these latter sections are heavily focussed on hardware, o/s, drivers, crash & recover, network, etc.
i.e. Anything but client updatable, in-game content; lest all reports be caught under the 'technical' umbrella and relocated here.
This is an external customer-facing forum, that to the best of my knowledge, is completely detached from any internal defect management. Being geared for the purposes of both eliciting customer feedback whilst allowing peer-to-peer assistance, the case can be made, that here, issues should reside where it makes the most logical sense for a player to easily find them. The better to avoid duplication and find help if available. Not grouped with reports that align with a developer's perspective of what >might< (still not reproducible remember!) be a potential underlying cause to the visible, graphical, symptoms.
I'll draw on my decades of extensive legal experience (well 'Perry Mason' through to 'Suits') and state "Objection! Facts not in evidence."
On the issue of graphics cards alone. From the anaemic to the powerhouse, the list of affected h/w configurations is now so broad, that if there was a simple direct causation, then it would be a wonder if anyone playing STO was not affected! There must be more here.
Nor should we forget that the Step Between The Stars FE texture load/render 'blackout' problems were fixed in the game client. The Dyson Sci-Destroyers incomplete loaded texture sets (offloading by camera distance rather than game time) being investigated, may yet have a software fix.
On the evidence to hand, the move seems premature, inaccurate (due to a lack of a cross-platform home). It will deny casual searchers from finding answers; spawn unnecessary duplicate threads and increase the workload for volunteers and Cryptic mods alike.
My final resort, I'm deleting my install which is now through steam, last install was through the cryptic launcher and will be reinstalling thorough ARC !! Will post update as if this solves the problem later, fingers crossed....
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
It's a touch more complex than that, I'm one of "those" people who built their Mac.
I use a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5 TH motherboard with an Intel Core i5-3570K. The 660 is the real deal, a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 2GB.
I run Mac OS 10.9.0 and Windows 8.0. I encounter the texture dropping problem almost immediately using the Mac beta on the original recommended settings. If I dial down the detail, I can stave it off for a while.
As mentioned before, when running it under windows with just about every graphics setting maxed out, the issue does not occur.
Should I clap for you or something?
No it's not false because they are probably not trying to log in on numerous different config'd systems in order to even try to reproduce the issue. Trying to recreate the issue from only a small select control group is like blindly agreeing with what 4 out of 5 dentist say about one particular brand of toothpaste. There's a reason why the 5th has something different to say.
Ten years as a Police officer and if I had that line of thinking you displayed there while on patrol only one street in my district would be without problems and I'd simply stay right there during my whole shift while chaos ran amok on others. Just because you don't find issues on one street (computer system or small group of systems) doesn't mean you shouldn't look for signs of trouble on others close by, so if my line of thinking is "way out there" I apologize for holding someone (the devs) to a higher standard and not suffering from an indifference based way of thinking. I have a background in technology systems integration, matter of fact helped our fleet admins figure out several problems with how some of our patrol cars mobile data units linked remotely to the national NCIC database so officers could pull warrant information reducing the time officers spent waiting for someone else to pull warrant information or the need to actually bring someone in to verify the warrant. The old "we can't reproduce the problem" excuse doesn't hold with me.
Different line of work, same process of problem diagnosing and elimination applies. If there is a known problem with more then one system, it can be reproduced on others and we already know what two controls to test with, the current game build and the one prior to the influx of reported problems. Long winded post I know, but frustration with this issue has taken hold. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Very nice. I'll amend the entry.
I notice when the game was fine i would get a patching note and bar at the top of the screen with map changes, then this would not appear and the problems start.
Oh and with the devs not being able to get this problem, it was stated in another thread that they use a unpopluated test server to find bugs, would this be why they cant replacate it, as it mostly appears in high useage/populated areas.
I still get the feeling that this is the client not getting on the fly texture updates from the server. Worse of all I am beginning to belive they will never fix this bug at the moment it's not hitting there income so they just don't care.:mad:
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
http://www.stoarchive.com/
We understand that most of our players are having graphical issues since the launch of Season 8. I can confirm that we are aware of this issue and we are looking into this.
Here are some workarounds that you may try:
-logging in and logging out of the game
-Avoid from using alt + Tab while playing STO
-Changing the video graphics to above minimum
-Turning on 'Underwater View under Advance Video Settings
Rest assured that we are doing our best to resolve this issue. Please keep an eye on our official website and forum for updates regarding this matter.
I hope some of these suggestions help you guys play the game (logging in and out is a must as we all know so not much help with that one). personally I appreciate the fact that they admited that this is a problem and responed so quickly to my message.
I guess all we can do now is wait and see what happens and Hope this does get resolved soon. Anyway just letting you guys know what the score is at the moment.
http://www.stoarchive.com/
That is INDEED a good and timely response. Thanks for passing that along.
Now for my question. Why couldn't the "community managers" relay this information? How many times in this thread have we literally pleaded for ANY kind of feedback? Anything at all.
Which sounds more and more like a memory leak.
I hope that's not true as they will never replicate the issue. They need to be using the client "in the wild" in other words in a working environment not a sterile low usage one.