Ralathar44

After more testing the bug is definitely still present. Specifically in my last sessionI played for a short time today, less than 30 minutes, before encountering the first combat. This time my chanter alone was enough to cause a noticeable 1/4 - 1/3 second stutter with the very first summon of the session. This continued to happen with the first summon of every other summon I had. Bug is not resolved.

So, it's much better than it was but I don't think it's completely fixed. My first game back I was able to repro the stutter again. In case it was the save state I quit out and tried a few more times without repro. However being a bit sneaky I made sure to keep a few summons unused until after I'd played for a couple hours and was able to repro the stutter again. I'm guessing that the way things were loaded into memory has been optimized somewhat and it's lessening the issue. But I believe the actual issue remains, it's just been minimized. It's prolly good enough now to where it's ok, not ideal but ok. That's a big improvement from where it started though. I'll keep testing/playing/enjoying though in case it's intermittent.

No worries . I have some QA experience in and out of gaming. I appreciate all the hard work from you and all the teams. I will wait patiently and am VERY happy with the game. Hang in there through the post-release craziness haha.

I'm so sorry for the late reply, I wrongly believed I would get forum notifications (the bell up top left) from replies to topics I created, but I've only received notification about likes. Looks like those were the default setting from when I created my forum account . I pulled a save from 2 days after my post so it should still hopefully be appropriate. As with the others the uploader said the save file was too big. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-PcffzJ0f1ayz-CnRN9NY1UIt04LNgf9/view?usp=sharing

I judge the medium within it's limitations. Different outcomes for every major choice means a gigantic spiderweb of content work that only a tiny % of people will ever experience. It's just not financially viable. Even the best series at creating the illusion of your choices mattering are rather thin if you view them with a critical eye. That's why you can choose to be reincarnated to the wheel when you talk to Berath, and it happens. You become a wolf or some such and credits roll. But you cannot make major impact on gameplay story. Because the cost. Even games like Undertale or The Witcher 3 only give you a few pivot points because of this. I think there is great value just in making you ponder uncomfortable choices and the meaning of your actions. About making us question the normally easy bad/good answers we get delivered on a daily basis. I mean did the fact I had very little control over what happened in Spec Ops the Line really matter in how impactful that game was? I could have made very different choices in that game but in the end none of it mattered at all. But that doesn't mean that the asking of those questions or questioning of those choices has no value.

I think Pillars of Eternity 2 is good example of both how you can execute meaningful story/choice in a game as well as how fragile that feeling can be in a way well beyond the ordinary fare of games. This has spoilers for Pillars of Eternity 2 as it's used as an example. If you are not ok with that, turn back now. Specifically the Trading guilds in POE 2 put you in very uncomfortable situations with choices that go beyond good/bad that are compelling. Each of the two trading guilds is heavily expansion/profit oriented in different ways and they both, in a nice touch, go out of their way to use your own ideals against you in their reasoning via the game's disposition system. They make compelling cases and I ended up helping them accidentally a disturbing amount while just trying to do good for the people, which appears to be the intent. This forces the weighing of thoughts like "I'm doing good here but I'm also helping X trading guild that will undoubtedly be a long term negative". When looked at face value, the choices are very standard. Blow this up or restore it. Help this town survive or do not. Feed the starving town via methods that may be illegal, political, or compromise their culture. Support this culture or support the new culture that is usurping it. The game is steeped in such choices that are very straightforwards in nature, stuff that COULD be very one note "yay I'm the hero/villain" and done. Choices made hundreds of times in RPGs that just fade into the background noise. However It's the context that makes the choices so compelling in POE 2. For example restoring a magical pillar ensures the short term survival of a village (starvation) and allows souls to continue the cycle of life undisrupted, however it would allow a trading company to exploit the land and it's people to the point of essentially controlling them both in their rampant greed and pursuit of expansion and more money. Hotheaded, young, and idealistic as they are. Conversely you can choose to destroy the pillar which would jeopardize the short term survival of the village and remove a major avenue of souls to return to the cycle, but pleases the other trading company who is just looking to sabotage their competition who has a jump on them really. But they are older, more patient, and more manipulative and present themselves as trying to avoid the negatives of the first choice. Either way you are theoretically doing some good, but also some ill. There is no "clean" solution or even a pure "dirty" solution. Which is better likely depends on your ideologies. The game has many of those moments where I sit and ponder the ramifications of my actions and how any action, good or bad, will benefit one faction or another in their greed disguised as benevolence, or perhaps benevolence that has begun to show the signs of corruption and greed. They intertwine. That's not to say the game doesn't have it's share of "yay I R good" or "look at me, I'm a bad bad man", moments I also enjoy, but these much more complex moments are definitely the standouts of the game story telling IMO. At least that's how I feel 30 hours in. Unfortunately where it falls apart is their disposition system currently needs some work. The spells the story and choices weave is compelling and strong, yet when the game misreads your character and presents you as something you do not feel is correct the spell is instantly shattered. In my own case I pursued non-violent options and was honest in nearly every situation. However after a few initial successful uses making the scenario compelling the system treated me as if I was aggressive or dishonest in a few scenarios. As this is very counter to the behavior of my character it completely took me out of the moment painstakingly crafted by hours of gameplay and story.....showing the broken machinery behind the scenes on the floor. 95% success and 5% failure robbed almost all of the impact. I cannot tell you, as a player, how shaken this made me despite me having an idea how complicated these systems are. Logically, they will patch the new game and it will improve. Logically it's understandable considering how hard this stuff is. Emotionally none of that matters as an end user though, my head cannon character still lies broken in pieces on the floor. Once shattered the illusion is difficult or even impossible to restore. Gaming is truly a tough and merciless industry. So as an enthusiast with some QA experience looking to learn more about games, POE 2 is proving to be an excellent case study for the story aspects and player choice. For anyone looking for a game that makes you think about both of those in a different way than POE 2 I recommend "The Magic Circle". It's another great game to play to understand both doing story/choice well and also in how missteps can be made. Of great potential and great moments that nonetheless get held back by other aspects.

Bug: NPC "Weto" in location "Sayuka" replies with the text *missing string 66*. Repro: 1. Go to the town of Sayuko. 2. Participate in the conversation event between "Weto" and "Tipa" in front of the "Huana Longhouse". 3. Listen to both sides, exhaust options, eventually support Tipa. Minor Huana rep gained by choice. 4. Talk to Weto again after conversation resolved. 5. Observe that *missing string 66* displays in chat as well as above "Weto", however audio plays as intended, DxDiag.txt

Bug: After running for multiple hours game appears to run more sluggishly, enough so it becomes noticeable to the naked eye. Repro Steps: 1. Start Game 2. Play it for hours on end because it's awesome. 3. Observe degraded performance. Notes: 1. I have not confirmed if this is tied into the loading of new assets. From observation it appears that new assets get loaded into temporary memory as you play the game and then are dumped when you exit game. As such multiple summons, monsters, and areas slowly bloating the memory footprint may be relevant. Or it may not be. Coding is hard :D. 2. The area I found this most easy to notice is right in front of the Wild Mare in Queen's Berth. The copious amount of water there seems to put a small strain on my system I can barely notice during fresh starts. After playing for awhile this degrades considerably though to where it FEELS like it was under 30 FPS, perhaps as low as 20. 3. I've only been able to repro this 3 times so far, but it's been consistent. No idea of hours needed to repro as I'm busy being sucked into the game lol. My guess would be 3+ but I'd also try 5+. As mentioned making it load as many assets as possible in temporary memory may impact this if that ends up being relevant. DxDiag.txt

Bug: When summoning minions in combat, the game will stutter. Repro Steps: 1. Enter combat with something 2. Summon a minion 3. Observe stutter Important notes/Required Conditions: 1. Must be first time to summon that particular minion in that gameplay session. It will not stutter again in future summons until game has been closed and restarted. 2. This can and does happen per individual minion. as such if you "minion dump" by summoning several minions at once, the stutter can last for a full second or more. Subjectively: this feels very crippling in more challenging battles. 3. This affects chanter summons, item summons, and priest summons that I have confirmed so far. Edit: 4. This also seems to affect spells that summon a minion conditionally such as Ninagauth's Killing Bolt's Spectre summon on kill. Speculation: I suspect the code for loading the minions into combat is causing the stutter. The game appears to stop, process their load into combat, and then continue. As the stutter is noticeable and impactful, especially for minion builds, this likely needs optimization. Of course, having worked some QA in the past this could also be a bug and not optimization. Everything can always be a bug lol . Caveat: I am still running on non-SSD. Pity me lol . It's quite possible with an SSD this load-in time would not even be noticeable depending on how the code is structured. The rest of my system should be fine or even good as you should be able to see in the attached dxdiag. DxDiag.txt