[Known][Game Freezing, Framerate, Hitching issues...

Reproduction Rate:100%

Blocker? No

Details: Game freezes upon enterning scenes(any) for 2-4secs and the frame rate drops to single digits. I have also noticed random FPS drops while traversing the overworld map. Most spots I'm getting between 15-20fps and at times it will drop to as low as 5fps. I've noticed that frame rates are better than they were before, after the freeze, in some areas. In others, the frame rate is actually lower than before. Hitching actually seems to happen more often now than in r39. It's pretty much constant. Some areas have light hitching, and others make it difficult to play. Sieges are one area where hitching is really bad.


User Specs:
OS: Linux 4.4 Ubuntu 16.04 64bit
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6500 CPU @ 3.20GHz (4) System RAM: 15992
GPU: AMD Radeon (TM) RX 480 Graphics GPU RAM: 7816
SDD: ADATA 550 240gigs

 

Hitching has become ultra bad.
The most critical thing that causes hitching as of R40 is "shadows in video options on" and then casting Light...

Turning shadows off fixed it for me.

 

Would you be able to include your system specs along with the report for us to review. Thank you.

 

Thank you for reporting. Would you be able to provide us with greater details of specific locations where hitching has become very bad for you? You can get the specific location coordinates by using the in-game /loc chat command and pasting the copied contents here.

 

Title: Hitching/Lagging with Shadows turned on
Reproduction Rate: 100%
Blocker?: no
Details: Whenever i turn on shadows, hitching/graphic lag becomes very bad. It gets worse when i cast Light. As soon i turn shadows off everything is ok again.
Graphic Settings are all maxed. Shadows maxed as well.

Steps to Reproduce: Always

User Specs:
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_ldr.170209-0600)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz (12 CPUs), ~3.2GHz (Overclocked to 4.5 Ghz boost)
Memory: 32768MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 32740MB RAM
Page File: 18322MB used, 47154MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 64bit Unicode

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti AMP Extreme (6 GB)
Display Memory: 1682 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1952 MB
Shared Memory: 3825 MB
Current Mode: 2560 x 1440 (32 bit) (75Hz)
Monitor Model: ASUS PB277
Monitor Id: ACI27B5
Native Mode: 2560 x 1440(p) (74.925Hz)
Output Type: Displayport External

Game is running on an SSD

 

Submitting: 43962

Thanks

 

Not sure that would be all that helpful, as it is kind of a persistant issue. It seems to happen everywhere, however some locations are worse than others. Two locations where hitching can get bad are The Crag Foothills and Deep Ravens Wood. It seems the worst around the Mobs in the scenes. I can still post specific locations where it happens, but, as I said, it happens all throughout the scenes. Anyway, let me know if you still want the /loc or any other information; more than happy to help out!

 

Noticed this in this release as well. Upon entering a scene, everything would freeze for several seconds. The problem actually appeared on the QA server, but thought nothing of it at the time. Nothing has changed with my system, nor did this problem exist in the previous release.
My system specs are in the spoiler tag, as always

 

Has grayfog's suggestion above helped this issue for either of you, by turning off shadows?

 

I will give this a try and get back to you

Edit: @Attenwood - I turned off Shadow Distance (set to none), and it made about a 80-90% improvement, so that seems to be the bulk of the problem. Tested this in Owls Head which was the worse of all. I will leave Shadow Distance off for now while you guys sort this out.

 

Will set to 'none' and see if there is any effect, although I seem to think that it has something to do with spawning of mobs/nodes. We shall see!

edit: @Attenwood, still experiencing hitching with no-shadows, and I even tried reducing the quality to Fastest setting. It did seem to make an improvement, but it's still very noticible. However, lowering quality and shadows did nothing at all for scene load-up freezing.

 

You guys and gals that have access to the QA servers need to report issues like this when they occur, in the hopes that it won't make it into the build. (^8

 

Tried turning down the Shadow Distance and it seemed to help a bit in scene areas already traversed, but the hitching on entering a new scene is still gawd awful. Worse in R40 than previously, and seems to be getting worse with new patches. Can't anyone manage a non-blocking file read?

 

Yep, playing with this some more, and although turning down Shadow Distance helped a bit, the problem is still there. @Attenwood

 

Which scenes are you noticing the hitch the most when loading into scenes?

 

@Attenwood I'm noticing the stutter most when going into heavily user-deco'ed scenes: Owl's Head, Brittany Alleys, Rift's End, but it not restricted to those scenes, e.g., I've had it in Brittany Estates which has little user content near the Novia entrance. It is not common in adventure scenes. It is more common when I have just started the game though, again, it is not restricted to that time.

Here's some further data with a SWAG as to what's going on:
- OS X Activity Monitor is showing a lot of file system I/O when this is going on, though it doesn't give specifics about what's being accessed.
- My system has a hybrid drive, an SSD cache in front of a HD main store.
- This problem appears to be different from the server-side hangups (ALTAIR9000) I was seeing in R39. Those have largely disappeared in this release, at least when entering scenes. Instead I get a long pause or (very occasionally) no lot-level user content showing up at all.

What I'm guessing is causing the stutter, at least on OS X, are blocking file reads to load definitions of user-placed (and sometimes scene) assets that are referenced from the scene level data structures being pulled from the server. (I'm making assumptions about where SotA stores various things but they seem to make sense from an architectural point of view.) That would fit with the I/O activity I'm seeing, as well as having a built-in SS cache that would more likely have assets prefetched when I enter scenes later on in play, rather than just after startup.

 

Same here. The worst of them are any zone with lots of deco, but I also get it in places like Nightshade pass, but not as bad.

 

Same here, the framerate are bad, specially in Xenos.... in Deep Ravesnwood sometimes my screen freezes for a secont... really annoying



Specs: Core: FX AM3+ 8120
16gb DD3
GTX 1070
HD SSD 240gb

 

What happened to the game? Since two days now I can barely get in ... stuttering memory leaks..... Never had a real issue before. It might crash yes but preformance wise it would always be playable. Now it freezes up the whole PC for sometimes a minute and I get a slideshow. Have not changed anything on the PC except the current windows updates. Also installed just now the latest nvidia drivers which changed nothing. Used to play with settings maxed out now I have them set to the lowest and turned all functions off. Still same issue. Tested also several other games on the pc just to make sure and I have no issues at all.
OS: Windows 10 (10.0.0) 64bit
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K
CPU @ 4.00GHz (8) System
RAM: 16333
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
GPU RAM: 4060
SotA.EarlyAccess.Win.64.587.Date.04.07.17
Samsung SSD

 

Same issue. Changing my settings to "auto" seems to have resolved the problem.