...concider this a waste and lesson learned from me. Im done even trying this game...
Below is my FINAL statement of this game, which I have posted in multiple places already. I expect to be banned for this, but I honestly do not care anymore. I can not play without worrying that a crash is around the corner, and having seen horror stories about cancelling, I am THANKFUL AS HELL that my credit card is not in the system. (Granted after the rescent story from EA with Warhammer Online, I dont want an MMO to touch my credit card directly ever again, though....)
For your enjoyment and to fan the flames of idiots who will tare this up... I give you... my "review."
Before I begin here, I should come clean. I am NOT writing this as a review. To be rather honest, I do not review MMOs very well... the attitude of finishing a game before reviewing it stops me. However, I can not stay quiet after the past week.
My issues started innocently enough. I turned on the game, and the first thing I see is a warning box. Apparently, since my video setup isn't the minimum, I may run into issues playing this game. Hmmm... Im running a Geforce 9800 GT with 1 gig of RAM. I KNOW that's more then enough to play this. I mean, the RECOMMENDED is an 8800. So, figuring it had to be a glitch, I clicked to play anyway....
...and found the game apparently is part nag-ware. Over the bottom of the title screen, the message was repeated with a little more detail. It's not my hardware, it's my software! The game wants me to update my graphic drivers! Well hell... why not? I mean, my drivers were over a month old, and frankly, it wasn't asking for me to install drivers that were only in beta (which is why TimeShift was automatically a piece of garbage BEFORE I EVEN GOT TO SEE EVEN THE DEMO IN ACTION). This could only improve things, right? (Sidenote: This is a very odd request, and in fact this is the first game I've EVER had to do a regular driver update to play less then 6 months to a year after I installed my current ones... but a video driver update is pretty mundane).
Well, ABSOLUTELY! Turns out this graphic driver update not only removed that issue, but Im now running Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising at my desktop's highest resolution at the same if not BETTER framerates then I when I first installed this card and tried it at lower resolutions! Turns out NVidia did some SERIOUS optimization, and damn do I LOVE IT!
But that is sadly the only good thing that came of it. With the nagware gone, I sat down to try my new game.... and wow... framerate sucks when I move around.
Excuse me, but what? I have the recommended driver AND a generation higher then the game, so what kind of TRIBBLE is this? I used the default settings.. not cranked up... STANDARD... and this is how it runs?
Well, Im a PC gamer, and an experienced one. I remember the good old days when minimum requirements were a joke and recommended was the real minimum if you wanted the game to be playable. Besides, my CPU isnt recommended, so maybe Im being held back... so I began the next hour or so of tweaking the game, occasionally turning it off and back on to get new settings to take hold and finally I have something that is playable and looks pretty good. Time to play!
And play I did. While the ground battle gameplay was pretty much a clone of every other MMO on the market with some rolling function added in, it was very true to how combat in the Star Trek universe would be, and worked well enough. Really, the game instantly became impressive once I was in command of my own ship fighing Borg. Wow, this was awesome.... while it lasted. This was where the game crashed the first time... and crashed BADLY. I could use Alt-Ctrl-Del and see my active tasks... I could even get to the start menu with the window button on my keyboard... but to get out of the game, I had to turn off my PC. I was annoyed, but maybe it was a fluke. I mean, after all, not every game is stable enough to take rebooting the game that often, and this is a new MMO.
Over the next week, I found myself really enjoying this game in short bouts, but then even a short bout hit a crash. This time, I couldnt even see the windows I called under my screen. I could see my mouse react to them, but I could not see the them. Hard boot again.
Ok, so now the game has 6 hours of time running (not playing, RUNNING) recorded by Xfire, and 2 crashes, both of which required a hard boot to get out of. THIS is not good. Aggravated, I began to look through the forums and I submitted a tech support ticket, putting the game away until I saw a solution.
The forums were an eye-opener. Now before I continue, I should make something clear. Due to a different tech issue, I was on the WoW forums, so Im used to seeing a LOT of threads reporting connection issues and insanely stupid things which make no sense. However, Im not used to seeing not only multiple threads on, but a STICKY/DEVELOPER THREAD on graphic cards overheating while playing the game. Now alarmed, I looked at this thread.
Appearantly at least PART of the issue was an NVIDIA driver. It had been rolled back to the very one I had downloaded earlier that week. So, by days, I dodged a bullet. Phew....
Still, the complaints have come in slowly, but steadily, regardless of GPU maker, and stopped only when Cryptic proved poor enough that when they took the forum down for maintenance, they were DOWN... as in the next day I was still seeing the site down.
Curious, I looked from work only to see not only is it working, but their site just isnt updating for FIREFOX without dumping the website cache! On top of some very SERIOUS possible technical issues, they can not even keep their forums working right for the major browsers?
But hey! they DID get back to me on my ticket! Yay! I might have an answer to my problem! Please?
(copy and pasted aside from the title since it was a graphic)
"Customer Service Response:
Please attempt to roll back your video drivers to the last previous revision and re-test if your issue still exists. Please try to uninstall your current drivers and then update to the newest set. You can accomplish this by: - Clicking "Start", then "Run" - In the command line type "devmgmt.msc" (without the quotes of course) - Double-Click on "Display adapters" - Select your current video card below the "Display adapters" category and Double-Click on it - Click the "Driver" tab - Click "Roll Back Driver" - Click "Yes" when it asks if you are sure A reboot may be required once completed. Please let us know whether this resolved your issue or you are still experiencing the issue. Sincerely, Cryptic Studios Technical Support "
REALLY?!?!?!?!? I had installed this driver (the latest since Nvidia rolled their own latest back to fix an overheating issue in the drivers) LAST WEEK BECAUSE THIS GAME SAID TO ****ING UPDATE! And since I uninstalled the old driver first, I can assure you it's a CLEAN INSTALL! On top of this, I SENT THE DXDIAG INFO, WHICH INCLUDES THE VIDEO DRIVER VERSION IN THE TICKET!
And with all that, THIS IS THE BEST YOU CAN DO Cryptic!!!!!
Then I saw today new people talking about the game burning out their video cards.
Yeah.... It's over, Im done, Im sorry if anyone considered following me into this game, Im thankful my graphic card didnt take enough abuse to break, Im thankful that I only subscribed with the gamercard code they offered for ordering online through Atari directly, and Crytpic can suck my ****.
Also, if this entry stops ONE person from being ****ed over by this game, Im happy to be of service.
I'm sorry to hear you've had such a run of bad luck, Diortem. I'm not that good with the technical side of things here, but I do know one thing. Our tech support staff is incredibly knowledgable, and more than willing to help you with your issue.
Yes, you did get a fairly standard reply to your tech support request, but you have to understand our tech guys get a lot of questions like yours, so a stanradized reply to your first request for help isn't really unwarranted. If you didn't know what you were doing, the information they provided you would almost certainly have been very helpful.
If you were to reply to that ticket, and mention that you've already tried that, and it hasn't helped, you would then move on to the second phase, where they'd try to figure out if there are any unique issues you're facing that they can help you solve.
Finally, you mentioned at one point running X-Fire while running STO. This is almost certainly contributing to your issue. STO is a fairly intensive game, and it's selfish as a result. It wants your CPU to itself when it's running, and any background applications can cause severe performance issues.
You sound like you enjoyed STO a lot while you were playing it. I sincerely hope this helps, and I genuinely hope you continue your efforts to try and work this problem out. In the mean time, I'm closing this thread.
Comments
Yes, you did get a fairly standard reply to your tech support request, but you have to understand our tech guys get a lot of questions like yours, so a stanradized reply to your first request for help isn't really unwarranted. If you didn't know what you were doing, the information they provided you would almost certainly have been very helpful.
If you were to reply to that ticket, and mention that you've already tried that, and it hasn't helped, you would then move on to the second phase, where they'd try to figure out if there are any unique issues you're facing that they can help you solve.
Finally, you mentioned at one point running X-Fire while running STO. This is almost certainly contributing to your issue. STO is a fairly intensive game, and it's selfish as a result. It wants your CPU to itself when it's running, and any background applications can cause severe performance issues.
You sound like you enjoyed STO a lot while you were playing it. I sincerely hope this helps, and I genuinely hope you continue your efforts to try and work this problem out. In the mean time, I'm closing this thread.