I’ve heard it several times, but haven’t noticed it myself.
is there any fix for my floaty mouse or mouse slowness?
Yeah I have my Kill feed turned off completely which isn’t ideal, but that gets rid of some sim spikes. No fix that I know of.
Hey again Dasaries,
I checked all this out, and wanted to remind you that the information I’m requesting here is diagnostic. I’m trying to get a better picture of what your machine is doing compared to others. Unfortunately you’ve already done so much that I really need the things I requested earlier to go further. How you handle this is ultimately going to be up to you, but without the diagnostic information I requested earlier, we’re basically tapped on ideas. I trust that you know what you’re doing, but keep in mind that we work with our games/engines full time. We’re more familiar with the quirks/intricacies and ways it’ll stress your system. It’s too big a conversation to have on the forums, which is why I’d like this information in hopes that we figure things out. If there is some kind of bug, we’ll need the information to rule out tech issues as well.
Again, if you toss me that information on this thread I’ll be happy to check it out. Good luck whatever you do choose from here.
Hey, I really don’t have much of a resource to submit all these logs to you. I’d need an official way to do so. The rest of these services that would allow me to, charge money or require 3rd party accounts to do so. I really do not trust third party accounts as they can have lapses of security from time to time.
If you can find a system which I can submit all of my recorded games through a file system. I’d be happy to submit them to you!
Thank you!
-Das
Dasaries,
Are they small enough to email / google drive? If so, you can send them to techinfo@blizzard.com with the subject Attn: Drakuloth - Dasaries FPS issues
I have it fully solved now. No issues. Clean slate. I got it.
So what I did was I found someone on youtube that plays up there in Grand Master rank. I asked the guy for his settings. He has one of those GTX 1080 cards. Which are MASSIVE. SO I figured if this guy is having to play comp for a spot just under Top 500, hes gotta know his hardware.
The fix to it, is in the game’s settings. I guess A person has to set textures to “HIGH”, Render scale to “100%” and then the rest of the settings to LOW or OFF. NO more issues and I get my frame-rates that aren’t jumping around now. I que’d up for comp today and was able to play it without worrying that I would jeopardize my score in the game or someone else’s.
The only discrepancy was “model detail” which really has to be “medium”. My monitor isn’t the greatest gaming monitor in the world. So I have to kinda work for it. Its not exactly easy to see some details with it.
-Cheers.
Dasaries,
In response to your reply in the other thread, I’m bumping this topic so we can keep things cohesive. I pulled up your blogspot catalog of the problem. Looking at your screenshots, there’s some really weird throttling going on in them. Your SIM delay goes nuts and your computer seems to completely cease processing the game’s packets for some reason, but it doesn’t seem to be losing them from the servers.
I know you looked over the HWmonitor yourself, but I’m still curious about it because I’d like to see exactly how the PC is behaving with that information. Can you please email the information I requested a few months ago at this post or upload the pics to your blogspot? It’d also help if you can post the link to results of a userbenchmark for your PC.
If you want to go the email route, I put some instructions here.
Greetings Drkauloth good to hear from you!! It’s another day on exploring the mysterious Frame rate drops!
I did update a whole bunch of files today on my blog page for that troubleshooting. You are welcome to look through them!. I added in the HW monitor and bench tests.
Dasaries,
Thanks for cataloguing all that. Were those HWmonitor screenshots taken after doing a game? The results don’t look under load for a few reasons - the first being that your temperatures are super low and the second being that your CPU clock speed never seems to activate turbo. You’re stuck at 3.8 GHz in those hwmonitor tests which is base clock and your CPU should boost to 4.2 GHz while doing stressful things like gaming. O.o That’s pretty odd. Did you disable Intel Turbo Boost in your BIOS or something? Can you turn your turbo back on and get us new HWMonitor reports if it persists afterwards?
Greetings Drakuloth.
| Updates for troubleshooting on Saturday morning, early hours of the morning. |
It really HAS been something that IS hardware related and I THINK we are onto something. Your suggestion at the intel Turboboost technology seams to be hinging on something that really has intrigued me now.
My findings: SO i have been looking into this whole ordeal with Turbo boost and Intel’s correlation to my operating system. I think we have something that finally lines up with one another.
When windows 10 runs on a gaming rig. The operating system is trying to conserve energy and it calls for more or less power from the processor. This power saving feature from the operating system itself is DIRECTLY lining up with frame-rate loss. So I kicked up Intel turbo boost technology and suddenly the ceiling and base of the frame-rates, match the Processor’s speed output. We see higher frame rates, and the dips directly are measured EQUALLY to how they were on the lows’. The SAME exact dips, only at a much higher frame-rate.
I am bad at explaining some stuff, but in essence we are seeing that either windows 10 or the motherboard is throttling the programs for “power saving”. That is what it looks like to me. Yes, I have the operating system in “maximum performance”. But watching the CPU run while overwatch is running, the system IS going into some sort of “power saving feature” and it is trying to compensate energy savings for running a program at an extended period of time. Hence, why we see such a very consistent loss of frames over an extended period of time. I am a musician as well and can keep excellent time in my head, and I KNOW if I took a stop-watch out I could PREDICT the frame spikes and losses to the second.
I would say that with the whole GPU put into “maximum power” that answers some questions on part of the fix. But the main focus is the CPU.
Team based games HAVE to rely on the CPU very strictly because you are handling multiple actions that are much more intense than just rendering some frames. You have the environment and everything and everyone happening inside of it. So the computations are very intense, despite this game kinda does not look like Crisis or TCW. But because there is so much information going on, that the game is VERY hinged on having to use the CPU over the GPU. The CPU does LOTS of calculations for network packets and that effects the gameplay just as much.
So Where do I uncover the final piece to such a large mystery? It either has to be the Board’s BIOS telling the CPU to go up or down for power saving, OR Windows 10 doesn’t give you 100% freedom over the power saving plan.
My final test is to figure out how I can get this processor to run at a CONSISTENT 4.11GHz (4.2 is pushing it) and 3.8 is below threshold. SO with that being said. I’ve got some work to figure out.
YESTERDAY’S UPDATES
- The first photo of HW monitor is at idle on that page without overwatch running. (just windows OS)
- The second photo of HW is of OW running on just the main screen
- The third photo of HW is of the game actually running a match DURING an FPS fault-drop where SIM was spiking.
I have intel turbo boost clamped directly in the BIOS so it is off. I make sure to never overclock my hardware, as that is what Intel’s manual directly states what “Turbo boost” mode is.
I can take a look to see how it behaves under Turbo Boost on the BIOS today or early tomorrow, and send you results. We will see what it does!
I had originally only used stock coolers when this first started occurring for me back in November. So that is something I can entirely rule out. November’s Moira patch is where this ALL spiraled out of control for me.
The low Temperatures are very impressive when it comes to how low I can push them on the graphics card and CPU! With that cooling system that I have. Those lines that you see in the photo.
About the cooling and discussion of it:
Yes, with the system I have. The Temps will never appear that the system is “under load”. The cooling system for it is “over engineered” ![:slight_smile:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=5" ":slight_smile:")
I know some people out there, go to the great lengths of actually pushing the computer’s cooling system to the point of having to use a special coating on the board. Due to the condensation that occurs on the blocks. However, I didn’t go that far.
The reason for the elaborate cooling system, hinges on Hardware longevity and reducing the “rate of decay” in which heat causes to components. Components wear out and “fall out of tolerance” at the microscopic level primarily due to heat. The prevention of “soft errors” and “hard errors” hinges on heat.
For the blocks on my components; I assure you they are most certainly properly seated to the CPU’s Lid. I took out a feeler gauge (a tool used in Aerospace engineering) to determine if there is a gap which would cause a potential “hot spot” gathering point on the CPU lid itself due to block seating error. Which there is not.
The GPU is properly seated and secured as well. ALL portions of the full coverage block properly touch all GPU’s VRMS, the processor lid itself, and the RAM banks on the card. To verify this, without the GPU having a block on it, (and just a stock cooler) the Frame rate losses are still there. Originally the computer had just the CPU cooled by the fluid block, and the NX-1080 was purchased and ADDED due to an assumption I had in the first place of overheating causing frame rates to spike. Again, nothing has solved this.
For the record I am playing other games and I don’t see this occur in them. Sometimes I play Tom Clancy Wildlands and others it is Dead by Daylight. I get a 6 hour gaming session in on these games, each. I don’t see the Frame losses at all. I dont know, it is only overwatch that does this.
With the new settings in this game, the frame losses are pretty much gone and only weird pauses here and there on Overwatch with the graphics on the game’s menu choked down completely. But I still have the every 2nd or 3rd game, where sometimes the Frame rates are just too low for enjoyable gameplay. So I restart the game, and my problems are 100% gone for a couple of matches. That much is what baffles me. Hardware corruption or soft errors that may not force the game to crash?
I have to ask myself, why only this game though?
With playing Widowmaker (alot and probably too much). ( her Character design was the selling point as to why I bought this game in the first place.)
It is the most noticeable for her and the MOST frustrating. I chose as best as I can, NOT to have duels with other snipers in the game, and avoid them at ALL costs. So when the MM system for QP puts me in with other sniper mains, I just cringe, because I want the sniper practice, but at the same time it’s just out-right a “face palm n’ cringe thought”. With this performance issue.
I can handle normal gameplay with her, but sniper battles are an embarrassing and demoralizing due to this issue with the game I have . I’ve suffered countless problems since November on this.
I use to play TF2 sniper a TON (500+ hours) on that guy. But I think this game has the overall best “sniper experience”.
Thank you
-Das
Streaming while playing will cause loss of FPS unless your system can handle the additional work. Also, is your RAM DDR4 @ 3000 MHz or higher? Fast RAM helps with dips in FPS.
Dasaries,
Very interesting follow up! A thought occurs. I cannot for the life of me recall if I recommended this, but that behavior sounds like you’re being throttled by Speedstep.
“Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology is an advanced means of enabling high performance while meeting the power-conservation needs of mobile systems. Conventional Intel SpeedStep® Technology switches both voltage and frequency in tandem between high and low levels in response to processor load. Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology builds upon that architecture using design strategies such as Separation between Voltage and Frequency Changes, and Clock Partitioning and Recovery.”
Did we ever try disabling this in any of the threads we bounced to? Just follow the directions there for How do I use Enhanced Intel Speedstep Technology and ensure that it’s off rather than on.
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Greetings Drakuloth!
I was JUST thinking that too! I think it clicks. yeah I am going to play around with speestep on this and see if this it.
PS, the new live patch today is great. You and your team did a great job on it!
Okay so here is the summary here to my findings. I appreciate the challenge and I think this pretty much sums all of this up.
Today's TESTING
Okay, I have to say that this whole topic here I am going to talk about is from Testing purposes. It’s not meant to jab at anyone or offend anyone at all. I am doing this out of pure volunteering here. So in testing we find what reacts and how it reacts in computers. We want to take every variable here and see what effects what. This testing actually ONLY covers the game “Overwatch”. All of the other titles I own, have no fluctuations that are even considerably noticeable. So we are talking strictly here about the game “Overwatch” and ONLY Overwatch. So I am talking about testing lots and lots of settings for this game. To see what works and what does not.
In my findings today, I first covered “Speed step” in the computer’s BIOS. I was under the impression that locking the processor’s speed in would initial solve this. I made this first assumption with the behavior of “intel turbo boost”. But…When I did these tests with "speed step "disabled (which locks the processor speed). The frame rates crashed EXTREMELY fast. and had major hangs. So speed step has to remain “enabled”.
With Intel Turbo boost “ON” we have frame rates that are higher and they operate at the higher end of the processor. So this means whatever there is going on , is increased by 20%. Cool. But we still get the slow “Rate of decay” on frame-rates. Just not ultra bad. It’s bearable.
Which leads me to the next test of “overclocking”. Normally I NEVER overclock hardware, but for the sake of doing this as voluntary testing, out of the kindness of my heart. I allowed my Intel I5-7600k To go through under-clocking and OVERCLOCKING outside of the factory limits. My Cooling system can handle ALOT. Even taking the Processor up to 4.3Ghz on this CPU, it didn’t budget the temp AT ALL. So what did a 4.3Ghz overclock have in comparison to running this game at 4.1ghz?.. NOT enough to even say that it made the game any better or having it stall out.
- What we have hit with overclocking is called a “point of diminishing returns”. This is a very important factor here. So if we are at 4.2ghz there is improvement. But at 4.3ghz. There was no increase on the performance itself to say "this was enough to offset performance issues. BUT, below 4.2ghz, is where the drop-off started on this processor it seams to remedy it some. So 3.8ghz-4.0ghz shows where the threshold starts to become a problem.
So I guess it would boil down to the processor Cache size. Instead of saying “i need to overclock” its more like “I need to buy a bigger processor” for actual frame-rate gains, over a GPU at some point.
I WOULD say that Overwatch is very reliant on the CPU. I mean we are talking ALOT. It’s just the nature of how the game is engineered and has to be. In other testing, which is the FIRST rocks I tried to undercover. I did GPU testing back in November and In December. I HAD throttled my graphics card just the same with tests taking the card clear down to a bare minimum speed and frame rate loses were still there. Maybe at most I suffered a 10-25FPS loss on speed, but when you play with the CPU more, it’s where we see the problems really occur. So the GPU is off the table for discussion.
The Hard conclusion.
To the best of my abilities and training I cannot pinpoint where this frame-rate fluctuation happens, or why “SIM spikes” occur. These are my available resources and I have completed my studies to the best of my abilities.
I would kindly, and I MEAN kindly suggest here, that it is on the table for discussion on my Findings with the Engineering Department there at Blizzard. On how the game runs. I see hundreds of posts on Reddit, youtube, IGN, and other gamer forums that they too have “Frame rate losses”. Does every player have the same circumstance as I do? Probably not. But They all have some sort of “Symptom” that sounds the same.
The forums on Technical support are FLOODED today with reports of Frame rate loss reports. We are talking VERY flooded. Its an impressive amount.
I agree, No game dev should ever have to reinvent the wheel at all. But I have EXHAUSTED everything that I would do, outside of looking at the official testing computers you use in your engineering department, I would have to know their system specs and Overwatch League’s systems. I mean are you running Intel XEON, i7, Opteron, or even playing this game on a Quadro or Tesla card? Those are VERY important factors to know.
-Das
Dasaries,
We do have an increased number of reports of fps issues with this patch - more than normal actually. The developers are doing some investigation on the latest spike to see if there’s some kind of optimization they can do there, and I’m working on getting some information at that thread in case we can find a work around in the mean time.
Your issue however wouldn’t be related, and honestly you’re right - we’ve nigh exhausted all possible troubleshooting for your issue. I’m going to run this by some more people to see if there’s anything else we can try out that might explain your version of the problem, but please do keep in mind a couple things:
- We’ve got an ongoing investigation on this latest spike in reports. Things may be a bit delayed.
- A lot of the reports you reference have wildly different reports of symptoms. While it’s true the same root cause can cause different symptoms, this is rarely if ever true of a game engine. If it’s an engine issue we’re looking at, it usually affects a large number of players in identical or near-identical ways.
- I’ve been able to completely fix dozens of FPS issues in the time we’ve been troubleshooting this, which is part of why I’ve been so hard-headed about this being something client-side. Now, yours has been UNBELIEVABLY pesky, which is part of why I want to knock heads together with a few other people and see if we can come up with a reason this may be happening.
I appreciate your patience and all the information in the mean time. I know that this is irritating behavior and impacts your ability to predict movements and the like. If we do end up opening an investigation on this, this’ll be the first thread I send the QA team.
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Dasaries,
Question - can you currently reproduce this behavior by hitting the TAB key (or any other key on your keyboard - especially whichever hot key you use to view the score/team screen?)
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Hello Drakuloth, It is really appreciated.
Yeah it is completely frustrating. Today I had Comp matches that were bad, because the frame rates crashed into the 90s and they needed me to widow play. So that was really etchy gameplay. (while receiving nasty remarks). Since aiming is SO much more different in Comp than it is QP (the higher expectations of headshots vs body shots). There really is a great deal of frustration that is tied to the aiming issues caused by these frame rate losses.
Here is the information you requested:
When I tab out to the team fields. It takes the game from 220 FPS down to 60FPS, but does NOT stutter the game, when that overlay for team score is in use. When I release the tab key the game brings itself back up to the frame rate threshold. I did try to cap the game at different frame rates. But it still falls at the same rate. Whether my graphics cards are fluid cooled or factory cooled.
When in the title screen, the player settup screen, the settings menu or even tabbing to player score. It NEVER allows the game to go above 60fps. So whatever happens here, is your game runs a “speed limiter” as I like to call them. Is kinda what I am hinging on. WHAT makes the graphics card do this? That is the big question. Because In theory if the game is parked on the title screen. It is telling that card to ONLY use 60fps? But if I were to go to let’s say “Route 66” and NOBODY is around, ( as they are already settup near the enemy, our team defending), while I am looking back towards the spawn room. The game engine is running and the FPS meter is ticking back and fourth. Even though there is NOTHING happening infront of me.
Yeah I am just as baffled as you are.
I did play Dead By Daylight, Deceit, Quake champions, for HOURS today and yesterday. I don’t see this at all in those games. Nothing. I mean if I saw something where it points to one piece of hardware, patching or update. I would be changing it out of the system, or within the system, without hesitation.
I am pleased to hear that the software engineering department knows about this now. I know that it is hard to decide what to utilize more. The CPU or the Graphics card, when it comes to handling game information. Since there are such a wide range of Motherboards and how the data is handled through the North Bridge or the Chipset. Yes, it is so different on all. It can become tedious work. So I think most game engineers just try to work around with only using primarily the graphics card to crunch the game information. Since there is such a narrow variety now for them. (Nvidia and AMD/ATI) boards, compared to the hundreds of boards out there.
I really don’t know at this point what is the missing piece to this puzzle. If Programs A, B, C, D, E and F work fine. But G doesn’t. I think it really comes down to a graphics setting that your game uses. But these games do not. I am really hoping it is just an Oversight that I am not catching. But since I have played around with every Nvidia setting it has. I really am Not sure at this point.
As for a game engine overhaul. Thats something I would feel really bad to push on someone. It’s bad enough re-doing something without having something else break. But from my understanding. This game utilizes the processor quite a bit more. As it very much so, resorts to using the cpu first. Over the Graphics card. Compared to the other games that are relying on the graphics card MORE to do the work. I guess if people can make programs that only use the Graphics card to crypto mine, than its feasible in some aspects to push more load into the graphics card. I know that Blizzard uses it’s own proprietary engine, compared to other games that rely on engines such as “unreal engine” and “unity” and other engines. I respect proprietary game engine builders. Because it allows for unique creativity and flexibility that other engines may limit a developer to.
(I will be posting more later, gotta catch some rest)
Day 2 of the postings.
I think really what I would suggest at this point, since we have covered EVERYTHING here, including the DDX software that I would use to diagnose a problem, would be if I had myself an actual software used by your developers for testing. (talk about a big request). I am CERTAIN that it would uncover some very big things here.
- Compatibility for users
- software stability
- What piece of hardware does the game not play well with.
If I was testing this from a standpoint today at Blizzard studios and was in your team’s shoes. I would begin asking these very questions
Hypothetical(s):
-
Are we finding that a piece of hardware from a certain vendor doesn’t work with this game?
-
Could there be some sort of anomaly where a memory stick brand that doesn’t allow the game to properly function?
-
Is there a BIOS setting that prevents certain parts of the cards, CPU, or RAM to address what we need?
-
Is there a default graphics card setting on both cards that are causing this issue.
-
Does one graphics card sub-vendor play differently than another sub-brand (same chip maker, different board maker).
-
Do certain motherboards handle process requests in certain aspects more than others?
Map reviews on their performance FPS drop rates.
- . LiJang Maps (TERRIBLE frame losses)
- . Junker town (bad frame losses)
- . Rialto (terrible frame losses)
- . Numbani (moderate losses)
- Volskaya Industries (bad losses)
- . Horizon Lunar colony (moderate to bad)
- . Durado (low-moderate losses)
- . King’s row (low-moderate losses, until reaching final capture point)
- . Hanamuru (low-moderate)
- . Eichenwalde (moderate losses)
- . Watchpoint Gibraltor (low-moderate)
- . ilious (moderate-bad)
- . Temple of Anubis (bad losses)
- . Hollywood (mainly bad on Capture point 1)
- . Oasis (moderate bad)
- . Nepal (TERRIBLE frame rate losses)
What we know remedies the situation:
After 1-2 games played, TURN off the game completely. Restart it and begin playing again.
This is something my Uncle keeps pointing fingers at and saying the word over and over which is “leak” or buffer overflow problem. ONly it doesn’t trip up the game enough to crash it.
Anyway, what I am going to do next, is something absurd next to get the data I need, and I may get a leave penalty | (im racking up TONS of those BTW!) ,which is another topic for fixing “leave penalties” I’d like to see a 15-20% leave penalty on quick play matches , not 75%. | I am now probably listed as a Habitual leaver on the MRR system. But whats gotta be done, has to be done.
Extended testing for today:
SO I tested this game on EPIC settings to see what it would do: Playing the game didn’t seam fun at all. It was VERY sluggish. This testing was done on LiJang Tower. Sim spikes were only present during replays.
Running the game on ULTRA settings. I can run this game on ultra settings, straight across the board. The gameplay starts out very reasonable. Nothing but smooth performance at 145 FPS. I get good clean shots with widow and I can actually see what my targets look like. I could run this game on Ultra settings all day if I wanted to. BUT that Nasty SIM rate just slowly climbs. When It hits the 14.4 it goes down to 85FPS and becomes nasty. Thats roughly 3/4 of the way through the match that the game was running almost PERFECT. So that shows me its not an immediate graphics setting. But again. It’s not heat. THis card plays other games maybe 6 hours straight in other games, without a break between action. This testing was done on Volskaya Industries
At this point. I don’t want to give up. As there is tangible value here in our findings and I think there is a key here that will unlock a lot of doors, once it is found.
Heya Dasaries,
Thanks as always for the details. I’m going to gloss over a bunch of this as it’s not really our department here in technical support, but as for the things that are tech relevant:
- We intentionally limit FPS in the main menu. Overwatch’s engine will use as much of your computer as you allow it to. In the main menu, with FPS uncapped, it was working some rigs to the bone. We capped the FPS to 60 there by design.
- Even if you aren’t DRAWING things in a way you’re seeing, there are things happening around you and there’s a giant panoramic background behind the things you’re actively viewing. Your GPU and CPU are aware of all of this. Your client is calculating things constantly, and our in game FPS display continually updates so you’ll see the fluctuations.
3 The CPU tends to be used more because we put a lot into audio. - We aren’t able to share any QA tools or anything like that
As for your hypotheticals:
- Particular brands/vendors of hardware do not usually vary outside of things like how well their cooling performs or how far they overclock your chips. The only caveats here would be if you just happen to be sub spec (you aren’t) or there’s something up with your motherboard’s BIOS (IIRC we updated yours, but this has been a long thread.)
- As far as a BIOS setting, you’ve already hit the major offenders
- Most motherboards just divide priority approximately along north bridge/south bridge. As long as you’ve got a solid mobo and your power flow is good this should not affect things.
We test the game on a ton of different setups, and whenever we find particular bits of hardware with issues in common, we have the QA folks test rigs with the reported setups. So far the issues are just happening on disparate setups, and the biggest problem is that they aren’t happening for everybody.
There are some details you mentioned there that I’d missed previously in the other text walls, and your Uncle may be on to something there. When the performance starts fine and becomes reproducible after a certain amount of time, that may indicate there’s some kind of memory leak going on. That said, you’ve already hit normal offenders here, assuming you’re still playing with all your extraneous background programs disabled.
Buffer overflow exceptions tend to cause crashes, but radar pre leaks can cause this kind of behavior. There’s a bunch of things that can cause that kind of leak but it’s usually either a program conflict, driver issue, bit of poorly written code, or a hardware issue.
You’ve got two accessible memory types for this - your RAM directly and your backup page file. The page file’s a complicated beast because there’s almost nothing you can do about it other than make it bigger or smaller or move it to a different drive, and I honestly wouldn’t move it off your SSD given the speed of your platter drive. The only other option for the page file is reinstalling your whole OS and the game on a different SSD.
As for your RAM though, you could theoretically test by removing individual sticks of RAM or testing RAM in different slots.
Keep in mind you may want to table the troubleshooting for now while we check out the new Symmetra rework patch issues with tabbing.
Yeah don’t worry. I can wait! I’m not in a big hurry!
The game works, that’s 3/4 of the battle! Especially for getting software to run 70-80% bug-free.
Here are some finale thoughts on this. I am Just going to put down what I can on here. Because I am not a welcome opinion on the forums. (as I have harshly found out). But because solid, direct feedback is vital, Here are some quick thoughts. Again thank you!
This new sym rework is very taxing on everyone. As there are lots of imbalances happening with the game. It’s stressing everyone out. Making a hero that wasn’t easy to play on attack, to now a star for the Main attraction (all smiles here). I would say that from my own point of view, observing team based games that I did with Valve stuff on a Clan server. That re-balancing, is difficult, even for the best game developers. NO, I do NOT have the experience that you have, or your team. But It is up for discussion always, and friendly conversation about what we hold true to gaming.
Yes, We modded our servers for SRCDS that wasn’t “official valve content”. But when you can build a game into a VERY competitive environment, where everyone is NAIL biting and the picks are UN-predictible for an outcome. That is where players are drawn in, to really put the pedal down, and become inspired.
I’d have to say that the most memorable moments from your Game, World of Warcraft, (Like for example). Wintergrasp and The Battle of Alterac Valley. Those matches came down to such a wire, that when the match was over with. It was a “good game”. That was always what made a person feel like they really did play a game, and not just “tossing some paper in a fire”. Even if a person lost. It’s that kind of stuff that I miss most. and would ENCOURAGE a system designer to do for this game. Because adjustments and very, very fine tweaks are really what keeps player interest going. At some point, a person has to allow the class to be a class, but bring out the tenacity of a player and their endurance.
Yes, my uncle is working on extremely high end systems out in a couple of different states. I’ve had training from him. He works with stuff for the big med companies, so hes got a hand with working directly in conjunction with Microsoft for that company. As to what software should and should not do.
He knows my abilities on hardware (vs software) and knows that I have DDX’d this thing to kingdom come. Oh yes, Ive done the whole Operating system thing. If there was a solid fix for it. It would have been fixed 3 times already. (3 OS wipes).
Well hopefully when things are on the table for a Graphics engine tweak, The fix can come about this year. I know that seeing a game that can be run on Ultra, run fine for a match, then require a restart after every game, to mitigate frame-losses is something that A big pool of threads talk about. Believe me, I went there first, because I didn’t want to have to open up a ticket on this. Its a BIG thread! A lot of great ideas and thoughts have been thrown around. That is the joy of computer Diagnostic. It kinda reminds me of House M.D. (except we aren’t playing with Human lives. (thankfully!) Where troubleshooting comes with every diagnostic that can be made possible. I know that I could run out and buy a larger CPU and larger GPU to offset the problem. It is tempting. And yes, I would love to play this game 6-8 hours a day again on my “off season” when it comes up.
But honestly there are two things going on here that makes this difficult. The FPS being the primary key here. Where consistent game-play isn’t possible, and Non-registering shots with Widowmaker. Especially Widow V Widow. I can click and the gun does not fire. Despite the game registering me as “dead” because someone saw me first, before I saw them. Even though it was the opposite. That is what FPS drop has done.
I love the feel of a “sniper” from games, and what made me throw down the money on this one, I felt the character WIdowmaker was VERY well thought out. I mean I’ve got a couple a TON of hours socked up on TF2’s sniper and he never felt this “smooth” and “coherent”. When I bought this game. I was looking for an FPS that just felt “good”. Which is difficult to come by. Valve made their niche for TF2 and I did go back a few times to compare it. Pat yourselves on the back, Overwatch feels EXTREMELY “smooth”.
The big thing with TF2’s downfalls is their “kill cam” Which cannot be turned off, AND it causes freeze’s. I’d see TONS of disconnects from users, because the kill-cam crashed their hardware. As well as Nvidia’s SLI NEVER worked correctly with the game. It would have to be turned OFF, or it’s game would Have RANDOM frame-rate crashes. I guess since SLI does do Maximum PRF. It can create issues on games like that.
Well the last topic of the day for this, before I close it out for now. Is some feedback from MY experience through the years of TF2’s rein on the team based shooter-game genre. I would STRONGLY suggest that when your system builds a match of players. That some extreme-reduction in toxicity would be to have some level capping on QP matches. That way players 0-100 are in a group of their own, despite their skill-level and then 101+ to begin matching them in with the other higher experienced players. It’s really taxing on players (both hard for the fresh accounts, and stressful on the long-term accounts.
It would most certainly take toxicity down a few notches. I know that I turned off comp, after I started falling fast. Players at lvl 50 were in my comp matches for 300+ and Honestly I couldn’t tell if they were throwing the game, or just having a really bad match due to stress. I have to give them the benefit of the doubt though. So It’s something to really consider for your match building engineers.
The LAST thoughts: SNIPERS become toxic and we have our egos. I cannot tell you HOW many times I had to shut down a match on my server (srcds) where snipers were really going to town, into an all-out toxic fight. The rage was too much. I’d tell ANYONE that runs a server where it matches snipers. To NOT put a sniper main vs a sniper main. It will save you grief and a lot of stress! (a lot of grief).
Well I think this about sums it up then for the time being. Glad we could have this conversation about the game, and talk about it. It sounds like your staff at Blizzard works hard, despite us end-users being cranky, hang in there!
Thank you!
-Dasaries
How about I get a reply. I’ve posted numerous posts on here reddit you name it and haven’t heard a thing.
I’m a Xbox one x player and the game has been unplayable for me. The aim is completely screwed up as well as the FPS drops in team fight etc… I’ve literally done everything to try and fix this it is 100% the game update that messed things up and there are multiple people who have the same issues as me