Mechwarrior Online

[Merusk]

I've had that problem since closed beta. Welcome to my world, bitches.

What has *helped* (but doesn't stop all crashes) is turning off AA and turning textures to low.  I only crash to desktop once every 3 or 4 games that way, and don't get BSOD crashes anymore.

I know it's not a vid card thing as I RMA'd the last one, this only happens in MW and now other people are getting the problem.

[Arthur_Parker]

I did a completely clean install a while back when things started to go a bit funny, I'm assuming latest drivers.  Only issue I've had recently is once getting the radar bug.

[Goreschach]

It might be a problem with the gpu timing out and resetting.  I'm guessing MWO isn't handling some kind of system messages correctly.

Open regedit, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers
For 32 bit windows create a new dword, or for 64 bit create a qword, and name it TdrDelay
Set the value of TdrDelay to around 10.

[Ironwood]

ARG.

BULLSHIT

[HaemishM]

So I guess it's not even worth loading with all the crashes until you guys tell me the game is unfucked?

[Ironwood]

Haven't crashed since I upgraded the drivers, no, now I just don't finish a game at all.  It just hangs and you have to quit the match.  Then your Mech is out of action for about 30 minutes and, after that, you get shitall exp and money for the match you TOTALLY ROMPED.

Yeah, I'd wait.  This is some serious bullshit.  Also, having now been in the cockpit of a Highlander :  This hero mech is shit.  I'm sure the real thing will be ok, but the hero is awful.

[Raknor]

Good to know it wasn't the drivers keeping me from getting the end of match score/xp/cbills.  I got so pissed off yesterday in my stalker.  I had 4 kills and single handedly carried my team to a crazy victory, only to freeze and never see the damage I did. I had to rage for a few minutes downstairs only to come back and see my mech was still in a match. 

MWO got turned off for the rest of the night.

[Merusk]

Odd, I didn't have that problem.

I got dumped once and froze once (with the corresponding 'almost no xp & cash' problem) but if I was there to the end I was always able to see damage done, etc.

[Arthur_Parker]

You used to get xp and cbills if you exited a match after you died, just it only appeared after the match actually ended.  I noticed over the double xp weekend they had broken it, if I left a match before the final screen I wasn't getting anything.  Not tested since patch but I assume it's still broken from what you guys are saying.

[Ironwood]

Arg, fair enough, but that just makes it so much worse because you can't get out of the screen any other way.

:(

[Merusk]

My guess is it's their attempt to curb bot-grinding by folks who'll log in, charge forward, get destroyed and take whatever they can get for the match.

Too bad it fucks those of us who play, get killed then would like to play another chasis instead of watching the idiot jenner run around on the sidelines/ into a wall for 4-9 mins.

[Arthur_Parker]

I just assumed it was a bug as I noticed when they changed it to double xp.

[Zetleft]

Yeah I'm getting the same end of match bug where you have to quit to do anything as well as the close to desktop without any errors just back to windows, which sucks I kinda want to see how I"m doing in my new jager.  And still getting my random lockups on matches.  Just in case I'm dumping my install and downloading from scratch now just to see if that does anything as I'm already updated on graphic drivers. 

[Ironwood]

Yeah, with my broadband, that ain't happening.

There seems to be too many cases of it not fixing it for me to try it right now anyway.  I'm sure we'll see a hotfix soon.

pew pew pew.

[Arthur_Parker]

Well I've played a fair bit since the patch and just had my first lock up so maybe the problem is somehow getting worse, which would be good for seeing a fix soon.

[Zetleft]

Well I've played a fair bit since the patch and just had my first lock up so maybe the problem is somehow getting worse, which would be good for seeing a fix soon.

Yeah last two matches I played where it didn't show the end match screen I didn't get xp or money.  Think I'm gonna wait for a hotfix.

[Merusk]

Based on the drop in my K:D ratio I get the feeling it's not logging stats properly if it happens either.  This bothers me far more than more cash now that I have all the chassis I want.

[Hoax]

Be very careful guys new bug this patch. If you get kicked for afk from the server it resets ALL of your settings, video and keybinds to defaults.

These guys really aren't that good at their jobs.

[Arthur_Parker]

TECHNICAL ISSUES UPDATE

I wanted to take a moment to discuss the recent concerns about patch stability and long-standing bugs/issues in the game. First of all I’d like to acknowledge that we agree stability is not where we would like to see it so let’s talk about what we are doing to address that.

One of the key challenges we've recognized for a while now is that our feature set is ever-growing and expanding and adding new features without disrupting old ones gets increasingly difficult. Now this isn't a new challenge games have been faced with this for many years. So months ago we began work on a suite of automated testing tools.

These tools are designed to essentially automate a lot of the core regression testing, for example checking frame rate on a variety of hardware across all maps. Until now a task like this would fall to QA which means they have less time to test new features and give feedback. These tools are now coming online within the studio and will allow us greater coverage of upcoming builds.

We also developed internally a headless version of our game, what this is, is a version of the game that runs without rendering. This is useful because it allows us to run up many instances with fewer resources which allows us to generate much broader test cases. Where before 16 separate machines could be needed to test a single game we can now run that same test on a single machine.

Ultimately what this means for you is that we can generate much greater coverage over a larger feature set faster than before. This should help make even issues with low reproducible rates easier to reliably and quickly reproduce where we can debug them. To put it in more direct terms let’s say over the course of a week’s testing QA can complete roughly 150 games, with this new tool a similar amount of coverage can be provided by the tool in a single automated run over night.

This represents a portion of the background development work that isn't immediately visible from the outside looking in.

As you can imagine we expect this will greatly improve our ability to rapidly find hard to reproduce issues and resolve them before they make their way to production.

Now let’s address some specific issues that our outstanding:

Hanging at the end of matches

This was introduced in the recent patch and we have just finished hot fixing the servers to resolve this issue.

Black Screen Issues

There are two separate black screen issues that we are aware of, one that persists where users get a black screen and not the loading screen and drop back to Mechlab, and one where users get into game but experience a black screen instead of the start-up sequence.

The first type remains unsolved but we’ve suspected poor connection quality, high packet loss, poor quality ISP etc. for some time but haven’t been able to 100% confirm this. We ask that you keep submitting user logs (which we’ve been updating with new information) to help us isolate this one further. The second type has been addressed and pushed to the servers at the time of writing this.

HUD related Issues

The random HUD corruption issue that was introduced a while ago we’ve tracked down to a random memory stomp that corrupts the HUDs display list. These type of issues are very hard to reproduce reliably our goal is to use the new tools to try to generate these issues consistently in the coming weeks. We also continue to get suggestions from the community of more reliable ways to encounter this issue that we are exploring.

Disconnects

We’re aware of some of the issues surrounding why users disconnect. These issues are generally not quick fixes. There is work coming for the new lobby that will largely address these issues. We are looking into re-joins also to help address disconnects.

Crashing Mid Game

A new mid game crash was introduced in this latest patch and we have identified the cause and will be hot fixing this issue on Friday.

To summarize, the hanging at the end of matches, one of the black screen issues, the double listing on scoreboards and one cause of crashing mid game have been identified and are being actively hot fixed.

The crash fix coming Friday may also help to reduce some of the HUD issues. As for the remaining Black Screen issue we ask that you file a support ticket and give as much detail to help us isolate the underlying cause. We also continue to add more and more telemetry in the background on a number of these issues that help us to identify their severity and where they occur.

Sorry for any issues you've experienced, as always though we ask that you please file a support ticket describing any issue encountered with your system configuration details and what happened coupled with any crash dump that may have been generated (located in C:\Games\Piranha Games\MechWarrior Online\USER) your feedback is much more useful to us via support and helps all of us where feedback via the forums is less useful (other than the patch feedback forum).

A quick note on another hot technical issue, there is another command chair post in the works regarding the match maker that will outline the work being done to improve it and what will change in the upcoming tuning pass.

Again thanks for your patience while we continue to work to improve this situation for everyone.

2013 APRIL CREATIVE DIRECTOR UPDATE

Welcome to April!  Teamplay takes a giant leap forward with the addition of new team structure elements.  After reviewing the test branch, I'm incredibly excited to get this very important feature into the game.  Since my last update, PAX East and GDC have come and gone.  We have announced details about upcoming features like 12 V 12, Lobby, DirectX 11, UI 2.0 and Community Warfare.  Along with a launch date of Late Summer 2013!  This month we see the addition of several new features, consumables, and a new line of BattleMechs called Champions!

New Content:

`Mech of the Month - Highlander (19th)
Hero `Mech of the Month - Heavy Metal (2nd)
Champion `Mech - TBA  (19th)
New Patterns - Digital (2nd) and Fractal (19th)
New Cockpit Items - BattleMech Statues (2nd)
New Modules - Air Strike and Artillery Improvment
Team Structure and BattleGrid Improvements
The team has been busy adding new functionality and roles into the command hierarchy.  The first phase allows players to join two lances, each with a commander.  Players will now see there lancemates name, health status, and grid location on the HUD.  Lance Commanders will be able to issue lance commands via the BattleGrid.  Company Commanders can now also issue orders to individual lances.

Artillery and Air Strike Consumables
Two new consumable items bring new tactical options to the battlefield, especially for scout players.  Using line-of-sight targeting, players can elect to reign down a damaging barrage of focused artillery or linear air strikes on their enemies.

Champion BattleMechs
We’ve decided to add a new style of Hero BattleMech, one that represents the community – the Champion.  Similar in nature to the Founder's BattleMechs, a Champion `Mech is based of an existing variant with a special permanent 5% XP boost and lower [MC] price point.  Our first Champion BattleMech will be revealed on April 12th.

Improved Night and Thermal Vision
We have adjusted both Thermal and Night Vision modes to be better in different situations.  Thermal Vision will no longer be the defacto standard, and Night Vision will have more uses than ever before.  These improvements bring these modes closer to their intended original design.

Community Events
March saw more event testing, and better results, including an MC event for solo players.  Expect two more main events in April as we continue to refine our scoring system!  We plan to roll out team events in the coming months after we allow player to officially band together in units.

Performance
Host State Rewind (HSR) for ballistics will be going live on the 19th.  Players with high pings will see a dramatic improvement in ballistic hit detection, similar to last month's HSR beam weapon fixes.

Behind the Scenes
A lot of work is going into UI 2.0, Community Warfare, and 12 V 12.  Expect to see more details and feature rollouts over during the month of May, June, July.  A signifcant portion of the team is dedicated to making these features happen.  First up will be 12 V 12!

Host State Rewind for ballistics confuses me, you have to calculate flight time on the fly anyway so this could easily make things harder for me to hit anything at range.

[Ironwood]

I suspect with the Jager being out there and the HSR for Ballistics, the day of the Raven is over.

[Arthur_Parker]

Looks like knockdown is coming back soon, so that's going to put a lot of people off playing lights, as such, assuming they want some lights in each game I'd expect a little bit of tinkering to come yet.  Ravens might get less common but the average skill of those playing them might go up.

[Falconeer]

Champion BattleMechs

We’ve decided to add a new style of Hero BattleMech, one that represents the community – the Champion.  Similar in nature to the Founder's BattleMechs, a Champion `Mech is based of an existing variant with a special permanent 5% XP boost and lower [MC] price point.  Our first Champion BattleMech will be revealed on April 12th.

I wonder how can a 'mech represent the community. Player submitted paintjobs, eventually? What else?

[Ironwood]

Well, that Dragon that won the competition is a dragon (C) which I guess was champion or community.  I guess letting them pick hardpoints and whatnot in attempt to get a new variation and then slapping an MC cost to it is the idea.

Personally, I think the idea fucking sucks, but hey ho.

[Merusk]

They said similar to the Founder's Mechs. Those are just standard chassis with a permanent C-Bill boost.  I'd imagine rather than custom hardpoints it will be a standard variant that comes with the same paint job, colors and loadout as the Community Champion.

 "Own the mech that won Catassathon 2013!"  The Rusty Trebuchet by "UR Mom Sux PPC"

[Arthur_Parker]

THE STATE OF GUARDIAN ECM

As I stated earlier, that I couldn't comment on the state of ECM in the game until I had 2 additional counter measures implemented into the game. This was to avoid frustration in the community without having all features in place before I discussed the situation.

What is the official stance on the Guardian ECM?

Guardian ECM, like all features in the game, is very close to where we want it to be.

ECM brought a whole new level of strategy and skill to the battlefield and is something that we've been striving to achieve instead of flat plane, long range combat. It brought the need to be aware of your surroundings and assist team mates in a way that previous MechWarrior titles didn't have. Teams will now have to work together to counter the effects of ECM and as of February 15th, the new counters allow for multiple attack vectors against the system.

With the increase of projectile speeds and reduction in hit-detection issues, you will notice that a lot more ballistic/laser shots are on target. There are even more and bigger improvments coming down the pipe very soon in terms of hit-detection. These aspects combined with the actual ECM counters (PPC/Advanced Sensor Range) implemented put ECM VERY close to where we want it to be; a very frightful piece of equipment that is powerful and versitle while at the same time has its weaknesses (3 health and soon to be hardpoint limited, see below).


Why was it implemented without the current counter measures?

The Guardian ECM was released at the same time as the Raven Light Mech. The Raven 3L required the ECM/BAP systems as they were the main functionality of the variant. As mentioned above, the ECM really only affects 2 weapon systems. We measured the gameplay consequences against the gameplay benefits and it became clear to us that the benefits that it brought to the table would help stagger the ranges in which combat takes place. It was at this time that we decided to go ahead with the Raven/ECM launch. During this time through Beta, we knew that this would become a hot topic, but at the same time, we wanted to make sure players got used to and adapted to ECM being used in the game.


Are there any plans in the near future to nerf ECM?

Before I go into any planned changes, I’d like to state two things:

First, hit detection on all Mechs was off quite a bit. This was exasperated by high speed Mechs with ping related issues causing the visual targeting and hit results to be highly inconsistent. This has been reduced significantly and with an upcoming patch, you will notice an even more drastic fix to the problem (state rewinding as addressed by Bryan and Matt C. in another Command Chair post). What does this have to do with ECM? With state rewind going into the game, it is VERY possible to take down any high-speed Mech as long as you have the aim because where you aim is going to be where you hit. ECM or not, high-speed Mechs are in for a world of hurt that they are currently not used to.

Second, ECM counters were needed to bring it in line with where we wanted it to be. It took us some time to get these systems online because 1) We had some higher priority pressure items to deal with first and 2) we needed to make sure that all counters (especially modules) work correctly across the network. Now that they are in, you will notice that ECM is not as big of an issue as it was before. Putting a PPC shot on an ECM equipped Mech makes them very vulnerable for 4 seconds... but not only that, you have also put a lot of damage into that Mech. The “Advanced Sensor Range” module allows you to get a lock on an ECM Mech at a longer distance and S-SRMs/LRMs can be fired in a larger window than before.

That said, there are two things suggested by the community that struck a chord and we will be looking into implementing soon:
ECM should have a dedicated hardpoint (tonnage/space does not change). That way ECM will always be in a known location on a Mech and can be directly targeted by attackers.
ECM should not cut out friendly signatures on the battlefield. Friendly Mechs should always be identifiable and not obscure team play.

I kinda liked team mates disappearing from the hud as I knew an enemy ecm mech was there, will have to see how it plays.

[Falconeer]

Catassathon 2013!

That made me chuckle.

[Ironwood]

This Raven 4x is utter shit.

I can't even theorycraft anything that makes it better.

[Arthur_Parker]

DHS and dual ppc's, I found the secret to playing that and similar mechs is to stop caring how shit it is and just see how many people I can kill with it.

[Arthur_Parker]

Lances Sneak Peek.

[Ironwood]

Interesting.

Possibly only really useful on the bigger maps with more mechs.

But Interesting.

[Shannow]

howabout just different coloured icons for my groupmates.

please.




seriously..please?

[Goreschach]

How can you not like having cyan hud markers on a cyan minimap?

[Ironwood]

Currently reading the rumbling regarding Paid Community Warfare.  I'm finding the whole thing troubling.  Stems from THIS article.

If that is what gets enacted, fuck that.

The lone wolf play style is what players currently have in the game today; the NPC factions will be free-to-play; the Merc Corps, on the other hand, will be monetized. "We're looking at possibly charging a one-time setup fee," Ekman said. "This is just to make sure there's not a flood of one-player corps.

"We really want people who participate in this to be as engaged as possible. And we'll probably require them to have a premium time account, as a kind of dedication level." That premium time account can be purchased in quantities ranging from daily to monthly to bi-annually, with the 30-day pack costing $10.

[Shannow]

 

[Pennilenko]

I won't spend one additional cent on this game if they try to charge me to be in a merc corp.