Audio / dialogue freezes during first time encounters.

[StutteringPuggle]

That's my first post here, so welcome everyone! I just want to write in the beginning that English is not my first language, so forgive me any mistakes. I hope this post will be understandable for you. 

 

I bought Pillars of Eternity shortly after the release in 2015. I do believe that it's a great game and awesome classic RPG, but sadly one thing is breaking it for me: freezes. 

 

I've searched the Internet far and wide and learned that some people had major freezing issues, sometimes as long as 15 - 20 seconds. I know that disabling the Internet connection, deinstalling Hamachi, deleting portraits and other similar tricks have helped some people, but not me. I was waiting with hopes that maybe my problem is going to be fixed with one of the upcoming patches. As for today, it presists. 

 

The nature of the freezes is exactly the same as in this post: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/82915-game-freezes-frequently-when-loading-audiodialogue-files/

 

Freezes start during the character creation when changing the models, and they're still there during the gameplay while playing audio or dialogue files. They are the longest when playing for the first time (2 - 4 seconds), after that, it is usually better to almost unnoticeable but as soon as I encounter a new character with new voice files or dialogue, it happens again. It seems like game needs a while to "prepare" it, and after that it goes smooth until the next restart.

 

I tried every possible thing I can think of and I'm still unable to fix it. My drivers are up to date. Here are my specs:

 

- Windows 8.1 64-bit

- Intel Core i5 4460 @ 3.20GHz

- 16,0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 RAM 

- 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti 

 

 

Any help will be appreciated. 

[Aarik D]

Hello StutteringPuggle,

 

Welcome to the forums and thanks for joining us! Try messing with your graphics settings in game and see if that improves performance. Try disabling Vsync and changing the Frame Rate slider, as well as the Graphics Quality slider. 

 

Thanks!

[StutteringPuggle]

Thank you for your quick response! 

I tried chaniging the settings: disabling the v-sync, lowering the frame rate slider and quality slider. Sadly, there's no noticeable difference. It still takes a while to change models in character creation, open inventory for the first time, load audio/dialogue files for the first time etc. It is not 20 s as sometimes mentioned, but it is still very noticeable (2 - 3 seconds) and the immersion suffers.

 

What is even weirder, I remember I tried running game from the SSD a while ago. Loading times improved, but the loading freeze presisted. Which means there's a conflict with my system rather than my HDD. II know my PC is not a beast, but it should handle PoE pretty easy, right? 

 

Or maybe everyone is experiencing this to some extend and I'm just being picky? Anyways, I've never noticed this kind of slowdowns in my other games, and that gives me feeling that something's not right. It certanly is distracting.