Mac Client Dissatisfaction

I generally try to be understanding about bugs, as we are still in the early pre-alpha phase of this game, but there's something I flat-out have to say at this point: the Mac client needs major work.

I have reported some very, very serious bugs -- like the inability to reliably zone without the whole game locking up -- for at least three releases in a row. This is not trivial stuff. Meanwhile, small-but-probably-fixable stuff, like the password box doubling strings when pasting from LastPass/1Password/etc., have also gone unfixed. Whether it's a small fix or a large fix, it's not being fixed.

These problems have been so awful that I actually disassembled my living room Steam box (used for "Big Picture" mode), moved it upstairs, redid the OS and turned it back into a deskside workstation. That's ridiculous. I'm lucky enough to have multiple computers. What about people who aren't and don't? A functioning Mac client was part of the Kickstarter promise, and that's not what we have today. I can't play longer than fifteen to twenty minutes without having to relaunch. Windows, on the other hand, runs for hours like a champ.

Imagine my frustration when I launched R6 on my Mac, deleted 50% of the characters in my double-pasted password, logged in and locked up hard the first time I tried to zone. I was so shocked that I even double-checked to make sure my game client had patched. It felt like Groundhog Day. I'm reliving the same bugs over and over again. I've even tried deleting all the SotA files (.plist ones included) on previous releases and reinstalling the game from scratch. No dice. It's just the way things are, and that's aggravating.

So this time, for R6, I promptly stopped testing on my Mac altogether. There may be new bugs in there. I don't know. I've given up trying. Why report them if they're not going to be addressed? It's upsetting for me to keep repeating myself, and it apparently yields no benefits. Portalarium can build a whole new 3D overland map from scratch, but they can't handle pasted strings properly in one login box. It boggles me.

When I dug deep into my wallet to pledge over $1,500 on this game, I did so in no small part due to the promise of cross-platform support. I think a lot of Mac gamers are used to being second-class citizens, and I was hopeful that wouldn't be the case this time. Richard Garriott's earliest RPGs were launched on Apple platforms, so surely his team should understand that their demographic significantly overlaps with Mac users. Only that doesn't seem to be the case, and I feel like my money benefits Windows development far more than any other platform.

The only real power I have in this situation is to stop using the Mac client, and that's what I'm going to do. From now on, all releases get one initial test round on my MacBook Pro: if the login box doubles my password, that's strike one. If I try to zone and the whole game locks up on me (as it always and invariably does), then that's strikes two and three, and I stop testing right there until the next release.

You want feedback. I want fixes. Throw me the whip, and I'll throw you the idol!

(Side note: I have been editing this message for over an hour now. I hate sounding so angry, but I'm really, really, really frustrated. There's no way to say "I'm upset and disappointed" without sounding upset and disappointed. There are so many other things about Shroud of the Avatar that are going right. The Mac client just stands out as something that is going really wrong.)

 

I think you have a point if it releases in this state...otherwise? not so much.

 

Your post pretty much sums up how I feel about the Linux client as well. Myself and others have reported the same bugs since R1 and they are still not fixed. These include crashing bugs! Why report bugs when it now appears I'm wasting my time doing so?

 

I've been meaning to test the Linux client myself. I'm sorry to hear you're experiencing the same frustrations. Maybe the Mac and Linux communities can compare notes?

 

I haven't seen any issues on mine yet other than having to set the grahpics to 'fastest' to get a playable frame rate. And I'm running on a 2009 iMac, 8GB RAM, 3 GHz intel core duo, and a seriously old ATI gpu with 256MB RAM!

 

Hmmm, maybe the issues are specific to the model I'm using? I have a Retina MacBook Pro (Mid-2012) with 16 GBs of RAM, running OS X Mavericks. Technically, it's a newer, beefier system that should be up to the job. But maybe the issues I'm experiencing are related to my operating system, or to the hardware itself?

I wish there were a way to narrow this down. I've done all the traditional voodoo (deleting .plist files, replacing the executables, checking for memory errors on my hardware, etc.) and I've got nothing. The password problem is being reported by multiple folks, though, so I know that issue isn't specific to my machine.

Do you ever experience issues when you move between zones? My success rate for many releases has been super low.

 

Y'know, your post about quality settings just gave me an idea. I'm going to try and zone with my video quality downgraded to the lowest possible settings. Maybe this is rendering related.

 

Snoferret, you are WONDERFUL! Your post provided me with the last piece of the puzzle I needed -- this problem IS rendering related! When I turned the graphics down to "Fastest," my zoning success rate skyrocketed to something approximating 14/15 attempts (I did lock up once using the lunar portal from Owl's Head to Kingsport). When I restored my settings to their highest limits, zoning failed 100% of the time, although I will admit that I was only using the lunar portal at this point, as it seemed to be the "crashiest" zoning method.

Portalarium, please take note of this and fix it! I'll report this in the bug forums as well, just to be thorough.

 

I have been launching SotA under the fastest graphics each time and I still experience pretty serious problems on my Mac too. Nighttime is still so dark that I can't see anything, my character's face is super pixeled and whenever I play with Jiv, I always see him running while he's laying down or his body appears distorted almost to the point of not being able to recognize him. All of these issues make playing on my Mac difficult at times but also unenjoyable. I understand that this is a tester and not the real game but It still feels like people using Macs are not getting the same support as people on other systems.

 

I'm on a Mac, too, and I can feel your frustration. The game was crashing a lot on me, particularly when going to the overland map. I even had one instance where my entire computer froze on me, and I had to reboot. I discovered that turning off shadows seems to improve the situation and makes the game more playable. Not only does the game look better with the shadows turned off, I no longer have to carry a torch around in broad daylight, or fumble around inside a dark house. Also, another benefit of having the shadows turned off, the game doesn't crash as much when I go to the overland map.

 

Dude, I'm playing on the windows client, with a beefy system and If I set the graphics to anything other than "Fastest" it crashes changing zones, this bug has been present for me since R1. (Both Nvida and ATI uses have reported this problem)

Patience...

 

The frustration is understandable. However, it is still early and Linux and Mac clients have traditionally come a little while after the Win release. As such it should be understandable that some of these versions might lag behind or seem less polished, or that new releases may introduce extra problems in these builds. Not to mention there are still people on Windows that have significant problems playing as well: probably due to their hardware specs as well.

I am sure a polishing step will come when they focus on the problem hardware specs. It actually good there are people will versions not working because it means they will be able to find and fix it with our help. Although it is better to get more of the features fleshed out, or they might just introduce more problems slowing things down further.

 

Guys, a reproducible, 100% crash rate on changing zones goes a little beyond "polish," especially when it's been going on for a minimum of three releases in a row. I want to emphasize that "100%" is not an exaggeration. If you doubt that, check the bug report someone else filed for R6 before I even wrote this post. That's effectively unplayable.

Why even bother to push the client out in this state if nothing's going to be done about it? The last two posters are correct: it's early in the testing cycle. However, the client has also been released by Portalarium for players to test. If we're testing and reporting critical, show-stopping bugs that nobody's fixing at all, why even push the Mac client out at this time? It's in a far, far worse state than its Windows counterpart, yet gets little to no attention.

To Retro, all I have to say is that I have a powerful Core i7 Windows system side-by-side with my Mac, and those rare zoning crashes under Windows are nothing like the Mac experience. If I took your Windows PC away from you for a single test release and gave you a Mac instead, I think you'd see my point quickly. There have been some weekends where I gave up after six, sequential fifteen-to-twenty-minute interval crashes and waited for the next month, only to be frustrated all over again.

Either Portalarium should rescind the client as unready for pre-alpha testing (and pre-alpha fixes) at this phase, or they should act on the feedback they're receiving. Either is acceptable to me. I know they're under significant staffing and time restraints at Portalarium, and I'm sure they'll eventually put out an OS X client I can use. But leaving this issue to languish is unacceptable.

I learned my lesson waiting for Runic Games' Torchlight II port, which to this day remains vaporware: when things go off the rails, speak up. I've been reasonably reserved for three releases. That's patience enough. I would like an open dialogue on the issue now. It's needed.

 

You've successfully articulated how we, the Linux community, feel as well. It's time for Portalarium to bring all clients to equilibrium. I would like to hear from them that they are actively working to resolve some of these outstanding issues.

 

This is the first release I've had major trouble with the Mac client. Mine crashed while zoning & randomly during gameplay every 15-20 minutes. After a day or so I just rebooted into BootCamp and ran SotA under Win7 on the same MacBook. It worked really well. I went back to the Mac client Monday & it worked much better for me, even though I don't think it had been updated. I think it only crashed once or twice? Not sure why.

 

I run on a late 2013 IMac with OSX Mavericks and did not have these reported problems in this build. The game ran fine.

 

I'm running the windows client and I get lock ups too! Zone loading issue, it hangs all the time and never finishes. It was good for most of R6 though, this was much more stable. Near the end I got that one where it stops at 50% and I can't do anything. Only solution is to delete your character. during R5 I hardly played at all due to issues-especially with loading scenes. I'm running windows 8.1. I've had your same issues the past 3 releases as well. So I don't think it's a Mac exclusive issue.

I expect these issues. R6 was a huge improvement though, I was able to play much longer with basically no issues till Monday.

 

I've reported several bugs in both R5 and R6, with R6 being nearly impossible to play on my iMac(late 2012) and MacBook Pro(2013) via OS X. I ended up playing via bootcamp (win 7) on my iMac. At the tail-end of the weekend I found the tip for running with the "fastest" video settings and I was able to play via OS X. However, at that point I was pretty much done for the weekend, so I cannot comment on the gameplay in this video gimped setting mode.

I understand that the Windows platform has a much greater population and it makes sense for Portalarium to focus on this, however it seems as though the Mac and Linux platforms are falling further behind. R5 was somewhat playable, R6 gives the feeling that it wasn't even tested because I've tried on several variations of apple hardware (even beyond what's listed above). The end results were crashing while phasing (between town, map, portals), video glitches, or simply crashing after sitting idle for 5 minutes. From what I've read, none of this is new to others in the OS X supporter base.

Although we are all well aware this is Pre/Alpha and that I'm hopeful the OS X and Linux clients will catch-up by go-live. I fear that if the OS X and Linux groups of players aren't able to play using these clients soon, frustration with these groups of players/supporters will continue to grow because we cannot play or test SotA on these platforms as we expected. In addition, these platforms won't receive as much testing by the community and the likelihood of issues/bugs come go-live will be far greater than the Windows builds.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm in this for the long-haul. I spent a good 12 hours this past weekend during R6 and equal time during R5 trying various hardware, graphics chips, etc... In order to do what I could to report issues or help provide insight to the Portalarium staff. I will continue to do this, however when the issues continue or get worse with each release it can test one's resolve.

My opinion is that if there is no time for the staff to focus on other platforms at this time, they should state any known issues or set expectations for OS X and Linux supporters prior to the next release. If this means they state that the "fastest" graphics mode is the only way to run, then say this. If they need to hold off on releasing builds and simply state that the Mac/Linux clients won't be available until R7, R8, etc. To me, this would be perfectly acceptable as well.

With all of this said, I will try again during R7 and hope to see improvement in the stability of the OS X platform. If things aren't resolved with other graphics settings, I will then try using the "fastest" settings if needed. This would be a better option rather than bootcamp/windows since there are plenty of folks testing windows. Although this will downgrade the graphics, I hope it will playable like it has been for others, thus allowing further exploration and testing on the OS X client.

 

Just a note - last release was fine on my mid 2010 macbook pro - this one was unplayable. totally. Here's to hoping next release will be better for macs.

 

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