Turbine are you going to ever fix the missing graphics bug

[Asroknight]

Man i just don't get why you do not learn from your mistakes, it really boggles my mind it takes you forever to release a patch to fix xxx and you then break xxxx then it takes you forever to fix xxxx and the cycle continues


With the latest patch you claim you fixed lag with Warsteads, this may be so but my Game was just working fine now your broke my game i have never had i one Single problem with graphics, now i get mountains that dissaper in less im right on top of them, stairs in moria or bridges that are not there. causing me to have to keep restarting my client i cant move around Moria the cause i cant see the floor, Bridges, Mountains, walkways, It also happens not just in Moria its everywhere.

Before this last patch i had ZERO problems!!!! I have updated drivers, i have rollback drivers. I have Very expensive water cooled system so don't even say its on my end go back to the beginning of this sentence.


For crist sake WILL YOU At least address this problem. will you At least communicate with us about this problem.

[Norhog]

This its a very disturbing subject.

For my part ..i have levelled 5 toons, explored all the quest packs and regions. So ...i can take some missing walls and trees around the map.
But think about the first timers ... people who are entering moria for the firsts time(for example), and they look to the map and they see invisble walls, missing brigdes and a all lot of graphic failures . Its a totally inmersion killer ...

As for mounted combat? i never had problems with it , now its just imposible to play my warsteed and do warbands and things like that. To laggy .

it would be a very nice gesture from turbine if they at least gave us and answer about this graphic problem we are having right know .

[Tarlywyn]

I think the missing graphics is due to reduced awareness, which is now a feature not a bug https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...uced-Awareness.
What I don't get tho is why me being on the salamander island in Evendim alone would cause a strain on the server for this to kick in - there seems to be some real problems with the servers at the mo. I've had it kick in in other non populated areas too. It's not like Windfola is bustling with activity in lower level areas.

[Asroknight]

I think the missing graphics is due to reduced awareness, which is now a feature not a bug https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...uced-Awareness.
What I don't get tho is why me being on the salamander island in Evendim alone would cause a strain on the server for this to kick in - there seems to be some real problems with the servers at the mo. I've had it kick in in other non populated areas too. It's not like Windfola is bustling with activity in lower level areas.

the thread seems to discuss the same problems i am having but i do not get the Alert that says reduced awareness. before 11.4 i would get that alert very rarely.

[soltasword]

There are a lot of people experiencing the missing textures in the game. Yes it could be some issue with the servers or something to do with the last patch or it could be that there is an issue with Turbines service provider not being able to keep up with the demand on the traffic. Or, it is a combination of all. As far as the reduced awareness goes, that as well could be an issue with the servers or the internet between Turbine and us.

Although, I have been playing almost 4 years now and do not remember any missing textures in the game before the last couple of months. I haven't seen many but I have seen a few. I experienced some in and around the Trestlebridge area. A section of the bridge there disappeared on me as I was crossing it. Kinda weird looking down to the water and wondering if the game was going to remember that I was on the bridge or not. Thought maybe Gandalf was on the other side of the bridge saying " you shall not pass ".

Not sure if upgrading their servers would help at all. Probably would a bit but the cost I think would be more than WB/Turbine would approve. Even then, we still have the internet connections between the servers and us.

[Viniel]

Also experiencing problems with textures failing to load here. Just yesterday in fact. I was in Ered Luin, in Kheledil docks area, and in the spider den in the back of Rath Teraig. All kinds of textures were failing to load. Trees, bridges, etc.

Fortunately, the issue is rare enough that it hasn't caused me to bang my head into the keyboard. Or play another game. Yet. And I knew what was happening, so I played around it for a bit.

An hour later, no problems whatsoever.

My guess is that there is some lazy loading (software term) going on, and it is failing very consistently at times for some unknown reason.

[Kaynith]

I can't imagine a hardware issue on Turbine's end all of a sudden causing this. This message comes up even when the server is a ghost town. Everything worked mostly well before 11.3 in regards to Reduced Awareness. In fact in 5+ years, most of which has been pretty active since 2011, I never saw that message once prior to then. (Unless it's a newly coded message...)

OTOH it is kind of fun to tool around in Moria and guess where the floors (and the chasms) are.

[Rainith]

I don't think the missing textures issue isn't necessarily connected to the reduced awareness issue. I started noticing missing textures after one of the first post-RoR updates, a patch of wall in Harwick went AWOL at times. The reduced awareness thing seems to be much more recent, but I haven't run across it, so I'm not sure.

[Zoraine]

I think the missing graphics is due to reduced awareness, which is now a feature not a bug https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...uced-Awareness.
What I don't get tho is why me being on the salamander island in Evendim alone would cause a strain on the server for this to kick in - there seems to be some real problems with the servers at the mo. I've had it kick in in other non populated areas too. It's not like Windfola is bustling with activity in lower level areas.

With fabulous features like this for free I guess there's no need for me to pay and re-subscribe I am recently returned and was considering doing so, but I will wait and seeif they get things sorted first. I have found a few missing things in the world, or should I say, I have not found some things - it was a bit scary just walking across nothing into the Cliving Mead hall!

[Khafar]

Reduced Awareness isn't going to have anything to do with most graphics glitches. The former will happen whenever the specific server you're currently on (within a cluster of servers making up each world) is overloaded. That's why it can happen when you're in completely innocuous places (like inside your own house)... your house instance is being run from a server which is overloaded with various other stuff - landblocks, instances, etc.

Most graphics glitches are just bugs - on the client, not on the server (which is what Reduce Awareness is driven by). The only thing Reduced Awareness should affect is how far away certain things can be seen... dynamic objects (MOBs or dynamic structures/items) which can normally seen at 100 feet may not show up until they're closer (because cutting that in half will reduce server loading by a factor of 4, on average).

Khafar

[trancejeremy]

I dunno, I think the missing graphics are server related. It's like they are so overloaded they don't send the client enough info in time for things to be drawn properly when you appear in an area.

Something weird is going on though, the servers that are being hit by the reduced awareness just aren't that crowded. Meanwhile, Landroval, which is pretty crowded, doesn't seem to ever have it happen. I've seen it on several other servers, but not there.

[Kathindi]

The only thing Reduced Awareness should affect is how far away certain things can be seen... dynamic objects (MOBs or dynamic structures/items) which can normally seen at 100 feet may not show up until they're closer....

And that's the problem, of course - dynamic and static structures "which normally can be seen at 100 feet" pop in at one to five feet - just in time for your character go over the edge. Reduced Awareness is not the cause, but it is likely a related synergistic and symptomatic factor.

I'm hoping nobody on this thread will actually claim it's the "client's fault".

[Khafar]

And that's the problem, of course - dynamic and static structures "which normally can be seen at 100 feet" pop in at one to five feet...

If it's static objects, that sounds like a bug. The client should be able to render those without any input whatever from the server - all of those assets are stored on the client. Anybody who can reproduce it reliably should send in a detailed bug report with their dxdiag info, the exact location of where it occurs, etc.

I'd be really surprised if that bug (static landscapes not loading) were related to Reduced Awareness, but I guess anything is possible...

Khafar

[Cambruin]

I think the missing graphics is due to reduced awareness, which is now a feature not a bug https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...uced-Awareness.
What I don't get tho is why me being on the salamander island in Evendim alone would cause a strain on the server for this to kick in - there seems to be some real problems with the servers at the mo. I've had it kick in in other non populated areas too. It's not like Windfola is bustling with activity in lower level areas.

My thoughts exactly. I'm getting reduced awareness in Trestlebridge, not a soul in sight. During Farmer's Faire, when it was near impossible to even target the mayor or the table with the ingredients on it due to the sheer amount of people packed together, I wasn't getting the reduced awareness once. Funny thing the reduced awareness. anyway, for the first time I ever I decided to do the earth-kin quests east of Esteldin. Apparently there's trees around that area as well as some barricades. Why is it I only first spotted them after having run back and forth a dozen times? Why did they never show up before? Same thing with the graverobbers in Evendim. That ruin you have to visit 3-4 times? Half the time half the walls aren't showing up. That rooftop where one has to pick up a vase? Not showing up either.
Luckily I am a veteran player and have learnt to deal which such aggrevating bugs, but for a first-timer, these are dealbreakers.

Has there been anything official about this yet?

[Kaynith]

And that's the problem, of course - dynamic and static structures "which normally can be seen at 100 feet" pop in at one to five feet - just in time for your character go over the edge. Reduced Awareness is not the cause, but it is likely a related synergistic and symptomatic factor.

I'm hoping nobody on this thread will actually claim it's the "client's fault".

Well yes. Everyone knows that, for sake of example, my laptop has been rendering things fine for 5+ years and just one day decided to stop rendering things like boulders in the middle of Eregion, and walls in Angmar. It's totally, and completely circumstantial that these errors were seemingly introduced with patch 11.3 and the mounted combat fixes. It must be your computer and/or the client. Can't POSSIBLY be related to the mounted combat fixes that were only fixes because they changed the way and speed at which things rendered to 'smooth' out mounted combat. :P

[Cambruin]

Sorry, but these things are unrelated. I've been experiencing these many graphical errors for months now.

[Kaynith]

If it's static objects, that sounds like a bug. The client should be able to render those without any input whatever from the server - all of those assets are stored on the client.

SHOULD be able to render, yes. But doesn't. In fact my client should be able to almost instantly render such things considering the set up I have now.

The last total fresh reinstall I did was a few weeks before 11.3. I put the whole client on a 32 GB flash drive. You have no idea how much that totally improved both character and zone load time and performance.

I also took screenshots and manually wrote down all my graphics settings so I could be 100% sure that they'd stay that way, as several patches ago I noticed that sometimes when Turbine patches those things reset to default and frell things over.

Anyway, prior to 11.3 my render speed was amazing. I could go into the original vanilla SoA areas and have zero lag. And I've never, EVER, had rendering problems before 11.3. So don't tell me that one day my client decided of it's own accord to not draw walls.

And it's related to the Mounted Combat fix because in order to 'fix' the lag, they admitted that they changed how and when, and the speed at which things rendered. This appears to have fixed some of the lag and rubberbanding for some folks. But at the cost of breaking vanilla content for others. I had very little problems with MC lag and rubberbanding. Mostly because I can't stand MC and tend to avoid it, and Rohan, like the plague most of the time.

So yea, let's get soup to nuts here. The 11.3 patch for Mounted Combat broke the static rendering of the vanilla SoA areas, and some other areas as well. It changed how the client renders and talks to the server in some fashion. Exactly how? I don't know. It's not my job to know, it's Turbines.

But after working in Information Technology for a lifetime, including a stint at software QA, no one is going to sit there and tell me that something which worked fine the day PRIOR to a patch, and which was severely mucked up the day AFTER a patch has anything whatsoever to do with MY computer and not the changes that were made by the patch. It's pure nonsense.

[Kaynith]

Sorry, but these things are unrelated. I've been experiencing these many graphical errors for months now.

Define 'many graphical errors', if you would please. That was a bit vague.

Roads and floors missing? All of Moria being unplayable due to not knowing where the floors end and the chasms start?

Yea, things like that won't work if you have your graphics settings too low. It has to do with the differences between the way the original SoA content was structured and rendered, and the way they put together things post-Moria. You can always tell the original content. It'll be there no matter how low you put your graphics. Later tack-on additions are more 'picky' and in some cases, won't render at all unless you have certain graphics options checked.

But as for instantly appearing boulders in overland areas, and no walls in Angmar? Being able to 'pan' your camera and it appears, and pan again and it vanishes? And the constant 'Reduced Awareness' error messages? That's new.

As a side note, I've not got a single Reduced Awareness message in two days. However, I don't think anything has been fixed. I think the notification has just been turned off. (Which I'm not complaining about, by any stretch, mind ye. If Turbine turned off the notification, thank you! It reduces the constant in game spam!)

I found a related thread:

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...nce-11-4-patch

[Kaynith]

I'm playing in Carreglyn today, trying to finish the zone with my elf Hunter.

First off, I noticed no lag and no Reduced Awareness. This made me very happy.

Then all of a sudden as I approached the mine area, I ran into an invisible wall. Ok, not so happy. Then the closer I got the more walls started popping up out of nowhere again.



Pan the camera closer and... POOF! Walls.



This only ever happened before with Reduced Awareness. So, I'm operating under the assumption that they've turned off the notifications. Fine, great job on that front. Seriously. I appreciate not being notified 50 times an hour.

I get this sinking feeling that the 'fix' is going to be new minimal system/video card requirements, as was noted in the 40 questions thing, here:

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...persized-to-40

Q39: Eyeslayer600: I heard you guys would possibly update the System Requirements of LotRO. If you are, what are the new requirements?
A39: You heard right! This is an ongoing discussion and has been for some time. I will say that we have a proposal on the table for new computer min specs, but until we make a decision on whether or not to pursue this proposal it would be premature to publish any specifics.

What concerns me is that it's about a month out from HD going live and they STILL don't have the minimal system requirements? This makes no logical sense to me whatsoever. How could those specs possibly change a month out from live launch? They couldn't. Unless... it's tied into this whole Reduced Awareness thing. In other words, they're TRYING to hastily cobble together a fix it, but may not be able to do so in time for the HD launch. And they can't possibly let HD launch with this issue still being a problem under 'supported' systems and video cards. And if they can't, well, you know what comes next. Plan B.

In other words, they'll say that, sorry, your system and/or video card is no longer supported and is below our minimal requirements. You'll still be able to play the game, but certain things may be less than ideal, such as invisible objects, etc. We can't help you. Buy a new computer or 'supported' video card, or play at your own risk.

Normally, I would not care about that at all. HD is a new expansion, and I expect new expansion content to be more graphically demanding than prior content. Fine.

But don't you DARE think that it's OK to make existing content that I've PAID FOR, all of a sudden unplayable. In other words, all of SoA, Moria, Mirkwood, Rise of Isengard, and Riders of Rohan was playable yesterday and better darn well be tomorrow unless there is a global, game wide, total graphic update and overhaul to every single zone and every single rendered element, including characters, such as what WoW did when they went from Lich King to Cataclysm.

Anything short of that, and you are cutting us off from totally unchanged content that we've paid for. Why? Because if you can't get your house in order the players will have to suffer for it.

Now, the following isn't a 'threat' nor is it trolling. It's a simple fact.

IF, and I stress, IF, your 'fix' for this problem turns out to be new 'minimal system requirements' that make EXISTING paid for content either virtually unplayable, or totally unfixed, (in other words walls and rendered objects in Pre-HD content are still invisible post HD launch with no intent on your part to ever fix it beyond telling me I need a new system...) I will never, ever, purchase anything from you or your parent company WB, ever again. And I do mean EVER. No games, no movies, no music, nothing. For the rest of my life. Nor, if I can help it, will anyone in my family, extended family, friends, or anyone else I can reach. Why? Because taking something that someone has already paid for, and denying them access to it is utterly unacceptable, and in my mind, darn near criminal, that's why.

Whether it's something you can legally get away with or not, would not make it morally right. The right thing to do, is own up to and fix this problem YOU created sometime after the 11.3 patch. Not to make the customer suffer for your mistakes, as seems to be your favorite modus operandi lately. I know darn well I'm not alone in this feeling.

P.S. Back 5 years ago now, Blizzard made a mistake akin to the one you seem about to make. They haven't gotten any of my money since then, and they never will ever again. I'm not even going to see the upcoming Warcraft movie when it comes out. I'll wait until it comes out on disc and borrow if from a friend. But they'll never see a red cent from me. I WANT to give you my money. I WANT to buy HD and continue on to Mordor and beyond. Please, please, please, don't flub this up.

DO the right thing, please. This is YOUR problem that YOU created. Fix it.

[Viniel]

Hit it again today in Moria while running from Durin's threshold to dolven view. Just shy of dolven view, many textures for structures, like bridges and ramps, failed to load.

Moria is unplayable with this happening. JMO.

Also had it happen today by the Dunlanding camp SE of Gwingris. At least on outside landscape, when trees don't render, you just bump off the invisible objects.

I agree with Khafar; this is a client side issue. Specifically in the Lotro client. I think render attempts are made, are failing for some reason, and are not retried. It's all about the error handling :-)

[Khafar]

SHOULD be able to render, yes. But doesn't. In fact my client should be able to almost instantly render such things considering the set up I have now.

Well, I went and took a look in Moria, and sure enough... I found an assortment of textures which weren't rendering - columns, stairs, etc. No "reduced awareness" at all.

I logged out, checked my nVidia graphics driver, and discovered that I was running an old one (314.something). So I upgraded to the latest, logged back in, and all of the textures that kept coming and going based on distance and viewing angle were now rock solid. Which is awesome.

Unfortunately, it may not be very useful to a lot of people on laptops. Most people using those don't want to upgrade outside of official OEM driver releases, because if they do... certain functions of their laptops may not function at all. That's actually the #1 reason I dumped my laptop last year and switched back to using a desktop... I want to be able to upgrade components and drivers at will, and my OEM (HP, in that case) would only release new drivers at most once a year. My second reason of course was that you can just get a lot more power for the money in a desktop.

It's quite likely that Turbine made some change which exposed an existing defect in my previous driver. That happened once before to me several years ago, where my PC would freeze up entirely for 45 seconds (randomly) while playing LOTRO, and rarely... in some other game. Once I was finally able to upgrade my graphics driver, that all went away.

Khafar

[Kaynith]

Well, I went and took a look in Moria, and sure enough... I found an assortment of textures which weren't rendering - columns, stairs, etc. No "reduced awareness" at all.

I logged out, checked my nVidia graphics driver, and discovered that I was running an old one (314.something). So I upgraded to the latest, logged back in, and all of the textures that kept coming and going based on distance and viewing angle were now rock solid. Which is awesome.

Unfortunately, it may not be very useful to a lot of people on laptops. Most people using those don't want to upgrade outside of official OEM driver releases, because if they do... certain functions of their laptops may not function at all. That's actually the #1 reason I dumped my laptop last year and switched back to using a desktop... I want to be able to upgrade components and drivers at will, and my OEM (HP, in that case) would only release new drivers at most once a year. My second reason of course was that you can just get a lot more power for the money in a desktop.

It's quite likely that Turbine made some change which exposed an existing defect in my previous driver. That happened once before to me several years ago, where my PC would freeze up entirely for 45 seconds (randomly) while playing LOTRO, and rarely... in some other game. Once I was finally able to upgrade my graphics driver, that all went away.

Khafar

I looked for updated drivers for my laptop when this first started happening in regards to Moria over two years ago. Updated (newer) drivers exist for my chipset, but not for my particular laptop. In short, my Dell laptop refuses to accept the chipset drivers as they are generic chipset drivers and not Dell drivers. I've researched, checked and double checked this with Dell, and they have stated that the drivers I have installed are the most updated that will ever be released for my laptop. In short, if something 'forces' me to update drivers, I'm totally hosed, as the drivers cannot be updated with OEM drivers for the chipset. I suspect many people with laptops will have this exact same issue.

I was able to get Moria to work back then by fiddling around with various graphic options and find a middle ground that I could live with between performance and video quality.

However, I didn't create this new problem. Turbine did. Very, very recently. They didn't pluck a few feathers out of the goose this time, with whatever they did. They shot it.

Problem overview: Due to changes in the last patch or two, static objects within the game, such as walls, and certain landscape objects which rendered perfectly fine yesterday (so to speak) prior to the patch, but will not render properly today.

Note that nothing changed on the customer's end on their laptop, which has been running this game flawlessly for 5+ years. Note this is not new HD EXPANSION content we are talking about, but old content, which is unchanged and worked just fine prior to the last two patches. The customer did nothing wrong. The customer is not at fault.

Solution suggested to paying customer: Spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a new desktop in order to continue the privilege of giving Turbine more of my money and to play the same EXACT, existing, unchanged, and non-updated content today, that I've already paid for, and were able to play 'yesterday'.

Conclusion: Absolutely, totally, and unequivocally unacceptable.

[Kaynith]

Imagine this fictional conversation if you will...

Customer: "Hi, I'm contacting you to let you know that my phone doesn't work properly. It worked fine yesterday, but today there's all this static and buzzing on the line, and I get disconnected at random times. It's just not working right. Is there an outage going on?"

Phone company: "Thank you for your concern. No, there is no outage current occuring. We've recently updated our communication software, however. Although your existing phone may still work with our system, on a substandard level, it is highly recommended that you upgrade your phone hardware.

Customer: "But... uh... it was working just fine yesterday. It's worked just fine for years. I don't understand why this was necessary at all"

Phone company: "We understand that, but since we 'upgraded' our communication software, you are required to upgrade your phone on your end in order to take advantage of all our new and great features."

Customer: I don't want any new and great features. My phone was working just fine. In fact, my phone was working better than it ever did before! I just want it back to the way it was working yesterday.

Phone company: "We understand, but unfortunately existing service has been effectively discontinued with your phone model. You will have to get a new phone if you would like to use your phone today to call the same numbers that you did yesterday."

Customer: "WHAT?!? How much does this new phone cost?"

Phone company: "Well we don't make the phones, and there are various vendors and manufacturers available, but they typically run between $600 to $1200 and up for a model that meets our new minimum requirements."

Customer: "What? That's insane! I've already PAID you people for this service! I paid to be able to call those numbers!"

Phone company: "We understand that, but again, since we changed OUR software on our end, YOU will now need new hardware on YOUR end, to access existing services that you've already paid for.

Customer: (Insert various things that I can't type here that the customer would be saying right about now.)

Phone company: "I'm sorry you feel that way, but unfortunately our software upgrade is not backwards compatible with your system. If you would like to access capabilities that you could access yesterday, you WILL have to upgrade your phone hardware. Thank you for calling, and have a nice day!"

So, would you tolerate this for one minute? Would you pay happily $600 to $1200 for a new phone just to call the SAME people that you could call yesterday, in the same exact coverage zone? Or would you tell the phone company to get their act together? Or would you simply change phone companies? What if you couldn't change phone companies. What if they had a monopoly on the lines? (Or in this case, the IP?)

[Feadel]

Sometimes these problems can be "fixed" by switching off the DX11 or DX10 settings. I run on my laptop with Win7 and had to make sure all the DX settings were for DX9. Some patches have allowed me to change this, but in general i stick with DX9 settings. A friend also had this sort of problem and had to set his video settings to very high (or some thing like that) so that the textures in Moria would load properly.
These are just suggestions, your actual solutions may vary. I hope things get straightened out.

[CookieArtisan]

Well, I went and took a look in Moria, and sure enough... I found an assortment of textures which weren't rendering - columns, stairs, etc. No "reduced awareness" at all.

I haven't updated my Nvidia drivers since January (!) i'm doing that now. I've also had the missing texture and wall problem. I'd run into invisible walls that were actually objects, and one night the entire smallest, uppermost area of Gondomon was missing.