XCOM 2 Dev is "Working Furiously" To Fix Framerate Issues

[Steven Bogos]

XCOM 2 Dev is "Working Furiously" To Fix Framerate Issues

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XCOM 2 developer Firaxis claims it "didn't know it would be like this at launch" in regards to technical issues.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/xcom%202?os=xcom+2] detailing the problems and their upcoming fixes.

"[The technical issues are] the first thing we talk about about when we come in in the morning", claims lead designer Jake Solomon. "We take it incredibly seriously. Me and all the leads, that's what we work on all day and that's what we're committed to right now."

"I can honestly say that we didn't know it would be this way at launch," continued Solomon, musing that "maybe it was our optimism about our new deferred renderer and MSAA - a lot of little things like that."

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"Maybe this is damning on me, but I'm sitting here talking to you now on the laptop I use to play it on," explained Solomon, "and I didn't see these issues. We didn't catch this stuff in compatibility testing. We're fully, fully accountable for the product in people's hands, so we certainly take responsibility for it."

He said that while he couldn't give any exact dates as to when the fixes would be rolled out, they would be coming "soon".

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun [https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/19/xcom-2-framerate/].

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[Amaror]

Glad to hear it, but stuff like this would always be better to hear right after the actual release when the issues became apparent. You know, not half a month later.

 

[Alleged_Alec]

While they are at it, I would really like a launcher which doesn't use ModLauncherWPF. I just want to play the base game, but I can't do so, since the ModLauncherWPF has a fatal .NET error every time I try to start up the game.

 

[Tiamat666]

Wow, those screenshots look really sweet. The armors, the weapons, and the aliens. Everything is so shiny and vibrant. I hope they fix their issues soon, as I really want this game to succeed.

But I'm sure by the time I'll get to play it, in a year or two, things will be smooth.

 

[Breywood]

So I was justified to wait, but this is one of the few new releases I'm looking forward to thus far. I was really happy with the first reboot, so I'm looking forward to when it's in a price range that I can manage.

 

[LazyAza]

Super weird they didn't catch these issues. My computer is somewhat old now but uses very standard hardware and based on their recommended specs should be fully capable of running this game flawlessly, and while the frame rate is fine most of the time now and then I'll get a sudden single digit fps or a load screen that straight up freezes for seconds at a time.

So nice to hear they're addressing it.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Glad to hear it, but stuff like this would always be better to hear right after the actual release when the issues became apparent. You know, not half a month later.

Look on the bright side, they could take the DICE route and aggressively claim everything is working as intended for three months, then admit there might be some minor issues, maybe, that they might look at addressing.

 

[bificommander]

Will they be doing something about the loading times too? As the game progresses, the after-mission loading times to get back to your base keep growing to over a minute.

It's a great game, but seriously, the amount of technical problems and graphical glitches (including quite a few that were in the first game too) is somewhere in the Assasin's Creed: Unity catagory.

 

[Renegade-pizza]

Glad to hear it, but stuff like this would always be better to hear right after the actual release when the issues became apparent. You know, not half a month later.

Considering most publishers would flat out ignore the issue or try to brush it off, I don't mind. I think Firaxis wanted to get an idea of the issue, before making a public announcement.

Also, he admitted that they made a mistake and gave an honest answer. The game runs well on my PC(not ultra settings, but it still looks nice) and aside from the occasional minor bug or frame loss, the game runs well in all other respects.
Aside from the loading screen, of course.

 

[Amaror]

Glad to hear it, but stuff like this would always be better to hear right after the actual release when the issues became apparent. You know, not half a month later.

Look on the bright side, they could take the DICE route and aggressively claim everything is working as intended for three months, then admit there might be some minor issues, maybe, that they might look at addressing.

As I said it's still nice to hear, but having more experiences with indie devs or devs like the Paradox development studio just showed me personally how lacking the communication from most of the larger development studios truly is.
Your customers are not completely unreasonable, developers. If you show them that you heard them, they will be more patient and let you do your work. It's when you ignore them that they get pissed of.

Considering most publishers would flat out ignore the issue or try to brush it off, I don't mind. I think Firaxis wanted to get an idea of the issue, before making a public announcement.

Also, he admitted that they made a mistake and gave an honest answer. The game runs well on my PC(not ultra settings, but it still looks nice) and aside from the occasional minor bug or frame loss, the game runs well in all other respects.
Aside from the loading screen, of course.

As I said it is nice to hear. And stop with the "It works for me, so everyone else obviously just has a sh***y computer" defense. That's not a valid defense and you know it. Lots of people have issues with the performance and just because you don't doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist. I personally can run the game pretty good as well if I tweak the settings accordingly, but it's still really really obvious that the game was barely optimised. Considering the graphics of the game and that most of the game is top-down, which means less things to render, the performance is pitifull especially comparing it to better looking games like The Witcher 3 or MGS 5.
What makes it worse, in my opinion, are the, sometimes huge, response delays after actions. Shoot at an alien and you suddenly have to wait 3 seconds for the game to continue. Give an order and it takes the game a second or two to actually do it. This doesn't happen in all the cases but it's annoying when it does. This is not a good performance. Not at all.
But as I said it's good to know that they work on it, it would just be nice to hear that earlier. Communication is key if you release a poorly optimised game like this.

 

[DoPo]

Will they be doing something about the loading times too? As the game progresses, the after-mission loading times to get back to your base keep growing to over a minute.

You can press Caps Lock and that would (almost) skip the loading screen. If your hardware is rather old, it might crash the game but overall, it seems to work for most people.

It's a great game, but seriously, the amount of technical problems and graphical glitches (including quite a few that were in the first game too) is somewhere in the Assasin's Creed: Unity catagory.

Really? Because I can't really see that. Sure, there are some glitches here and there, some performance issues, too but I've hit worse in the previous game. And that was when I played it at the end of 2014 - so way after launch. There haven't been any patches for it after I started playing it and I'd hit way bigger bugs more frequently than in this game - the grapple hook one, being a particularly terrible one. Comparing it to Unity doesn't do the game any justice.

 

[Fat Hippo]

What makes it worse, in my opinion, are the, sometimes huge, response delays after actions. Shoot at an alien and you suddenly have to wait 3 seconds for the game to continue. Give an order and it takes the game a second or two to actually do it. This doesn't happen in all the cases but it's annoying when it does. This is not a good performance. Not at all.

This is actually not a performance issue but rather part of the way the game works...for some reason. Which is why a smart individual created the "Stop wasting my time" mod for the game, which you should be able to find easily over Nexus mods or wherever you please. A little bit weird that you need a mod for such an obvious improvement, but it should still increase your enjoyment of the game.

 

[Amaror]

What makes it worse, in my opinion, are the, sometimes huge, response delays after actions. Shoot at an alien and you suddenly have to wait 3 seconds for the game to continue. Give an order and it takes the game a second or two to actually do it. This doesn't happen in all the cases but it's annoying when it does. This is not a good performance. Not at all.

This is actually not a performance issue but rather part of the way the game works...for some reason. Which is why a smart individual created the "Stop wasting my time" mod for the game, which you should be able to find easily over Nexus mods or wherever you please. A little bit weird that you need a mod for such an obvious improvement, but it should still increase your enjoyment of the game.

Really?! Who thought THAT was a good idea. I get it if there are some fancy animations or something that the devs want to show of, but why would they make literally nothing happen on screen for a few seconds. It doesn't make any sense.
I thought it was a performance issue, because this is the sort of thing that would happen if the processor needed to catch up to what is happening on the screen or would wait for some ressources to load from the harddrive.
Hmmm... thinking about it ... maybe they once intended there to be animations for more stuff, but couldn't finish them and forgot to remove the pauses in the game?

 

[SomeLameStuff]

Will they be doing something about the loading times too? As the game progresses, the after-mission loading times to get back to your base keep growing to over a minute.

Wait 2-3 seconds, then press capslock. Loading will complete almost instantly, with a very slight chance of crashing.

 

[Elfgore]

All of my issues went away the moment I turned of anti-aliasing, so I consider myself one of the lucky ones that I can play it with no FPS drops.

Hope they do get it fixed up though, I know a few people who have been having issues and really want to play it but can't.

 

[EndlessSporadic]

Have both sides considered the poor framerate may be due to third party applications? Why do the players, and less so the developers, always assume it is the developer's fault when the players always have these obscure third party applications running in the background that interfere with the rendering chain?

 

[Callate]

Aren't there any decent third-party testing labs out there? If not, someone should start one. A warehouse space, a bunch of PC hardware- much of it slightly to moderately obsolete- and a slew of testers. As start-ups go, this would not be one of the more expensive ones.

And then we'd all get the pleasure when the information leaks came out: "Oh, hell, no, we told them it ran like crap, and they released it like that anyway."

 

[DoPo]

Have both sides considered the poor framerate may be due to third party applications?

Both sides of...what?

But to answer your question - yes, it has been considered and it has been found that it's not the fault of third party applications. It's very very very easy to see that when you don't have any potentially problematic third party applications, when your hardware can run other games even better than this and also that when you turn off one graphics setting in XCOM, you immediately get a huge boost of performance. It pretty much completely rules out these "interferences" you're trying to sell. Moreover, there is the history we should also take into account - XCOM: EU had a slew of technical problems at start. It even still has some that were there initially, however, EW and patches have changed and alleviated most. Yet it remains a game that is very well known for having technical problems and those would be the ones caused by the developers.

I really don't get what you're trying to say here. Have you tried XCOM 2? I can only imagine you haven't, hence your comment, however, it's very easy to spot where the problem is when you play the game. The problems are in the game itself. That's not really a secret, either. I'm mostly not sure why Mr Solomon is said the words he did - I find it very hard to believe the problems were not noticed until release. I frankly think that Mr Solomon is lying. Or has been lied to. At any rate, what he explained wasn't the situation at Firaxis. It's not the case of the bug with custom voice packs which would crash the game if previewed from your armoury - that is something you can have slip past. The other bug with being unable to load a save where there are burrowed Chrysalids is also something I think is possible to miss. Probably shouldn't have been missed but possible. Performance? I don't think you can easily miss that. I don't think QA can easily miss that.

What I think Mr Solomon should have said is something like "We didn't expect there to be as many people affected by performance problems. We knew that some configurations may have hiccups but we didn't have the full picture. We apologise and we're working on it".

 

[Broslinger]

The Escapist sure did give this game a good score for something that has to be furiously worked on in order to fix basic issues. Pretty weird.