When will Game Breakers be Fixed

[FrattonFreak]

Can Matrix confirm when are all the key issues planned to be resolved?

Some of these issues suggest that the beta testing to not contain right numbers of people with DW experience given many of these issues have been raised by gamers within the first few days.

I for one am disappointed with some of these obvious game play issues. It would be helpful to understand when these may be targetted to be fixed since since as I mentioned some are game breakers

[Llamageddon]

Yesterday, Erik posted in a thread in relation to this, specifically to performance issues and crashes; "Hopefully very soon!", and I suspect that is the best answer you're likely to get at the moment. It's been mentioned elsewhere by the devs that fixing anything that is stopping players from actually playing is the top priority, but I imagine that after those are fixed, there will be a logical priority of working through other reports based on how much they impact someone's ability to progress through and enjoy the game.

The above are all just observations and assumptions from me though, nothing official.

[R_TEAM]

The steam review get now down the road ....
To the (expected) bad reviews that the game get from user that come from Stellaris or other, more simplyfied, 4X SpaceGames, and are not an so large group ..
Come now more and more bad reviews because the massive problems on nearly ALL points in the game ...
(the only positive atm "i" can say is the nice gfx and the better UI , even its from the UI room to improve ..)
But performance ... stability .. ilogical game mechanics .. broken game machanics .. even full useless game machanics ..
And this not 1.2 or 3 .. its count in 20~30 steps ....
I am not sure if this with the limited dev power on matrix - and on the other side - the more grown bad reputation for the game and as result lower sell rates - even fixable .... ....

[SirHoraceHarkness]

The funny part is that this game is more complete and stable than most of the other recent releases from other dev houses and that includes big names like cyberpunk etc. Stellaris was a bug fest too for a long time after it was released and they forced users to buy dlc just to gain core functions like diplomacy etc. As to the issues these seem to be almost completely machine specific as most users are not having performance issues or ctd. This is normal on a game launch because no dev house even the huge ones run by the huge publishers can account for every single hardware combination out there in gamer land and there is always a few weeks or months of hotfixes to patch up those machine specific issues. I myself never had any real performance issues and only had rare ctd. Now after the latest patch its running even smoother and no more ctd.

Moral? Give Elliot some time and he will get it all fixed.

[Erik Rutins]

Can Matrix confirm when are all the key issues planned to be resolved?
Some of these issues suggest that the beta testing to not contain right numbers of people with DW experience given many of these issues have been raised by gamers within the first few days.
I for one am disappointed with some of these obvious game play issues. It would be helpful to understand when these may be targetted to be fixed since since as I mentioned some are game breakers

There are two parts to your question as I understand it, so I'll respond to each of those.

First, Elliot and I are focusing almost all of our time on making sure that everyone who purchased DW2 is able to play it as intended. That means black screens, startup or during game crashes, freezes etc. have consumed the vast majority of our time since release and will continue to do so until resolved. The bad news here is that we don't know exactly how long that will take as from the start, these were not issues we could reproduce. We've been making progress on these through the updates, but the potential fixes are moving to a lower and lower level and we've also gotten our Technical DIrector Phil involved as part of that effort since he has written engines and very low level code himself.

I think to some degree we got unlucky in not catching these in testing, but certainly in hindsight though we had more than 300 testers signed up, we needed more to make sure we would chance upon the right hardware configuration to reproduce not just an occasional crash, but these completely game-stopping issues. The testing size was mainly limited by what Elliot and I could keep up with, so expanding the core team is also part of future release plans, whenever we get there.

As far as gameplay issues go, the unfortunate result of having these critical hardware-related issues is that for all the folks who are able to play the game, any bugs or balance issues in gameplay have had to take a backseat. We have been moving through those as we can fit them in between the critical issues (as I'm sure you've seen in the update notes) and will continue to do so.

I'm working on a roadmap of sorts to post for the community regarding which gameplay issues we plan to address first, but I can say that right now our focus is on fleet and ship behavior as the next in line.

Regards,

- Erik

[R_TEAM]

@SirHoraceHarkness
I would not say that you are completly wrong .. especialy with "relases from other game houses" .. but this was most time AAA hundrets of million dollar relases - in no way comperable with any matrix game ....
(and stellaris have many problems on relase - but imho from my remember, an unstable gfx engine was not an problem - and the point with DLC and additional things get for DW2 too ...)
But ....
It is not only the performance .....
It is many , many - many things that dont work ....
Fueltanker .... economy ... useless weapon slots ... ilogical bahavor from fleets , ships , advisors ....
Broken game machanics ... not even modern qol things like fleet formations .. better msg filter systems ...
Better Ui filter options ... UI mous position dedecting problems .... and so one ......
- was simply the things that "just" get on my mind ....
So the performance problems is not only the one broken pillar on the game ....
And even "if" this fixable in an time frame that is not too long .... the other problems are more deep and basicly ...
I have only played ~5h in DW:U on an friend PC - loved it , but it was to much hassle with the old UI and in non way on modern systems adopted behavor .. have waited eggerly for DW2 .... but i dont trade my soul for the game ... is it a bad game - and this looks it is for many players - then i naming it as bad game ... simply

[SirHoraceHarkness]

I'm working on a roadmap of sorts to post for the community regarding which gameplay issues we plan to address first, but I can say that right now our focus is on fleet and ship behavior as the next in line.

Regards,

- Erik

Now that the latest patches have cleared up the ctd issue at least for me fleet AI is definitely the next issue to work on as it kinda breaks down with the new pathing to avoid nebula etc and especially during wars if you let the AI do most of the fighting as they tend to trickle in ships by the ones and twos to die off. Nothing that can't be worked around manually so far.

[alexman91]

The funny part is that this game is more complete and stable than most of the other recent releases from other dev houses and that includes big names like cyberpunk etc. Stellaris was a bug fest too for a long time after it was released and they forced users to buy dlc just to gain core functions like diplomacy etc. As to the issues these seem to be almost completely machine specific as most users are not having performance issues or ctd. This is normal on a game launch because no dev house even the huge ones run by the huge publishers can account for every single hardware combination out there in gamer land and there is always a few weeks or months of hotfixes to patch up those machine specific issues. I myself never had any real performance issues and only had rare ctd. Now after the latest patch its running even smoother and no more ctd.

Moral? Give Elliot some time and he will get it all fixed.

stellaris fanbous convenientlu forget theu just remade the entire game like 5 timesfor being so bad. changing free space to lanes, changing building grid adjacencu bonus, adding pops and jobs which tanked performance, and it took 5 uears of posting before theu even did anuthing to fix performance issues. the solution was permabanning anu customer complaining as toxic. the solution was just stolen from a modder who reversed engineered pop calculations and showed it was dogshit coding. all while selling 10 dlcs and flavorpacks which was just milking with 0 content

[Erik Rutins]

Ok, I'd like to ask that we not turn this into Stellaris vs. DW2 and in general for everyone I know some folks are having serious problems with DW2 but keep your posts civil and polite and free of hyperbole.

Also, no personal attacks or calling people names. That's against the forum rules and will result in official warnings. Please disagree without being disagreeable.

Elliot and I will be working on DW2 until all the issues are resolved to the best of our ability.

[R_TEAM]

stellaris fanbous convenientlu forget theu just remade the entire game like 5 timesfor being so bad. changing free space to lanes, changing building grid adjacencu bonus, adding pops and jobs which tanked performance, and it took 5 uears of posting before theu even did anuthing to fix performance issues. the solution was permabanning anu customer complaining as toxic. the solution was just stolen from a modder who reversed engineered pop calculations and showed it was dogshit coding. all while selling 10 dlcs and flavorpacks which was just milking with 0 content

I would not say that you are wrong (as the story you tell, i know and is mostly correct ... even if it hard readable ...) - but that one game is bad ... make the other bad game not better in any way ....

[baldamundo]

Can Matrix confirm when are all the key issues planned to be resolved?
Some of these issues suggest that the beta testing to not contain right numbers of people with DW experience given many of these issues have been raised by gamers within the first few days.
I for one am disappointed with some of these obvious game play issues. It would be helpful to understand when these may be targetted to be fixed since since as I mentioned some are game breakers

There are two parts to your question as I understand it, so I'll respond to each of those.

First, Elliot and I are focusing almost all of our time on making sure that everyone who purchased DW2 is able to play it as intended. That means black screens, startup or during game crashes, freezes etc. have consumed the vast majority of our time since release and will continue to do so until resolved. The bad news here is that we don't know exactly how long that will take as from the start, these were not issues we could reproduce. We've been making progress on these through the updates, but the potential fixes are moving to a lower and lower level and we've also gotten our Technical DIrector Phil involved as part of that effort since he has written engines and very low level code himself.

I think to some degree we got unlucky in not catching these in testing, but certainly in hindsight though we had more than 300 testers signed up, we needed more to make sure we would chance upon the right hardware configuration to reproduce not just an occasional crash, but these completely game-stopping issues. The testing size was mainly limited by what Elliot and I could keep up with, so expanding the core team is also part of future release plans, whenever we get there.

As far as gameplay issues go, the unfortunate result of having these critical hardware-related issues is that for all the folks who are able to play the game, any bugs or balance issues in gameplay have had to take a backseat. We have been moving through those as we can fit them in between the critical issues (as I'm sure you've seen in the update notes) and will continue to do so.

I'm working on a roadmap of sorts to post for the community regarding which gameplay issues we plan to address first, but I can say that right now our focus is on fleet and ship behavior as the next in line.

Regards,

- Erik

What's the status with performance issues specifically? I'm only having very occasional crashes, but the performance gets worse and worse lategame to the point it becomes basically unplayable - especially on larger maps. Is that a known issue? And is it happening to everyone or just to some users? And is it being prioritised as well?

Have still been having a lot of fun with it though - and have no doubt it will eventually be polished to perfection!

[SirHoraceHarkness]

What's the status with performance issues specifically? I'm only having very occasional crashes, but the performance gets worse and worse lategame to the point it becomes basically unplayable - especially on larger maps. Is that a known issue? And is it happening to everyone or just to some users? And is it being prioritised as well?

Have still been having a lot of fun with it though - and have no doubt it will eventually be polished to perfection!

A huge help would be to go to the tech support section and fill out the bug report form and give the needed crash logs etc because so far it looks like its specific hardware combinations that are causing the issues. This is why some players have had zero issues from day one and others are crashing to desktop repeatedly. The ONLY way for the devs to fix the hardware specific issues are for those suffering those issues to do bug reports. If you don't then you will have to hope someone with a similar hardware combination sends in a report and the issues can be addressed.

[R_TEAM]

i have nearly "zero" CTD .. but performance is on an 2k star map not so "brilliant" .... (down to ~10fps sometimes - 4k desktop resolution)
The problem is additionaly the UI overlay on the Map ...
It is only split in 3 stages ..
at the lowest it is a acceptable performance, but would definitly expect more smothness from such low gfx on screen - but you get only few informations ...
on the med level you get the bad performance i mentone earlyer - and it is after early game an info overkill - most things overlapp other and so not readable - a better info - but many useless as cant read properly...
and with the experience from the med level i dont use the max level at all .. ..
would be definitly better to change the 3 stages to an additiv system ....
(you get 8~10 keys - at best number block - and with every number you add on info level to display ... as example -> on 1 the star names , on 2 refuel symbols .. and so on .. free mixable to the needing - if i press 1NB and then 2NB i get star names and refuel symbols . if i press 1NB again star names dissapear and only the fuel symbols stay ...)

[Erik Rutins]

What's the status with performance issues specifically? I'm only having very occasional crashes, but the performance gets worse and worse lategame to the point it becomes basically unplayable - especially on larger maps. Is that a known issue? And is it happening to everyone or just to some users? And is it being prioritised as well?

The late game always demands more of a system than the early game, however there are definitely performance issues affecting some systems much more severely than others. I have multiple saves from players with much better hardware that are slow on their systems and fast on mine. I have examples where on some systems they can have 140fps in the system view and 5fps at the galaxy level. Same save file on my system is only a 10fps difference from system to galaxy. Other situations where a very high end GPU is trying to run the game while still in some kind of power saving mode, instead of using its full capabilities. Other issues where the driver is trying to switch the load to the integrated (below spec) GPU, resulting in crashes or performance issues, etc. We've been addressing some of the performance issues we could find as we go, but we think that some of these are being created by the other low level issues we're dealing with that have to do with the crashes as well.

Issues preventing any gameplay come first, performance is next in line, then come the gameplay issues reported so far mostly in order of severity/frequency.

Tomorrow's update should have some nice performance improvements as well as some additional crash fixes, but I don't expect all the performance issues to be solved until all the low level issues are also resolved. We have been making progress in all of those areas, but we haven't yet found all the answers though we will keep at it until we do.

Regards,

- Erik

[SirHoraceHarkness]

Late game definitely starts to show some lag on maps with many stars and empires but its consistent with only the occasional freeze for a split second or so when you zoom into a system or fight. However compared to DWU its flowing along like its early game because late game in DWU on a big map filled with lots of empires would turn into a literal slideshow no matter how beefy your system and zooming into busy system or fight would freeze the game sometimes for a minute or more until it could catch up. DW2 is definitely a huge performance upgrade over DWU on every level and its only going to get better as their iron out the kinks.

[Mike847284]

[/quote]
stellaris fanbous convenientlu forget theu just remade the entire game like 5 timesfor being so bad. changing free space to lanes, changing building grid adjacencu bonus, adding pops and jobs which tanked performance, and it took 5 uears of posting before theu even did anuthing to fix performance issues. the solution was permabanning anu customer complaining as toxic. the solution was just stolen from a modder who reversed engineered pop calculations and showed it was dogshit coding. all while selling 10 dlcs and flavorpacks which was just milking with 0 content
[/quote]

As a big fan of Stellaris, I must say it was Distant Worlds that lead me to getting Stellaris in the first place. While Stellaris has had plenty of problems, it is the most popular Space 4x game for a reason, it is very good and very well supported. It is not everyone's cup of tea, no.

I also love Distant Worlds 2 as I love to micro manage, the private economy is something that is lacking from Stellaris.

Take each game for what it has to offer, no game is perfect hence why we play multiple games. I for one will be playing Distant Stars 2 and Stellaris for years to come.

One of the reasons why Stellaris has had so many changes is it was a rather unique style of Space 4x type game, it set the new bench mark with many new novel ideas and styles of game play. It was also the first space game developed by Paradox. Just like the original Hearts of Iron had many problems compared to Hoi IV, (yes I have played them all, I am getting too old).

So rather then turn it into a Stellaris vs Distant Stars competition, play both and enjoy both. They are likely the best Space 4x types games you will find for some time. I am sure with a few months of patches and fixes Distant Stars 2 will be a lot more polished. I enjoy it right now even with its bugs. I can see it growing into a great game like Distant Worlds Universe ended up being.

[baldamundo]

A huge help would be to go to the tech support section and fill out the bug report form and give the needed crash logs etc because so far it looks like its specific hardware combinations that are causing the issues. This is why some players have had zero issues from day one and others are crashing to desktop repeatedly. The ONLY way for the devs to fix the hardware specific issues are for those suffering those issues to do bug reports. If you don't then you will have to hope someone with a similar hardware combination sends in a report and the issues can be addressed.

yeah, as I say, i've had very few actual crashes, but it's hard to know what's even worth reporting exactly when it comes to performance issues. Particularly without having a benchmark for what normal performance is meant to be lategame - as mentioned, all complex games inevitably slow down to some extent lategame & in large or densely populated scenarios - and with so many different variables feeding into it even just in terms of graphics & interface settings let alone the scenario and the actual simulation.

The late game always demands more of a system than the early game, however there are definitely performance issues affecting some systems much more severely than others. I have multiple saves from players with much better hardware that are slow on their systems and fast on mine. I have examples where on some systems they can have 140fps in the system view and 5fps at the galaxy level. Same save file on my system is only a 10fps difference from system to galaxy. Other situations where a very high end GPU is trying to run the game while still in some kind of power saving mode, instead of using its full capabilities. Other issues where the driver is trying to switch the load to the integrated (below spec) GPU, resulting in crashes or performance issues, etc. We've been addressing some of the performance issues we could find as we go, but we think that some of these are being created by the other low level issues we're dealing with that have to do with the crashes as well.

Issues preventing any gameplay come first, performance is next in line, then come the gameplay issues reported so far mostly in order of severity/frequency.

Tomorrow's update should have some nice performance improvements as well as some additional crash fixes, but I don't expect all the performance issues to be solved until all the low level issues are also resolved. We have been making progress in all of those areas, but we haven't yet found all the answers though we will keep at it until we do.

Regards,

- Erik

Thanks for the detailed answer - that's very informative! Sounds like it must be hellishly complicated.