PAtch

[jeffb0]

Thanks for the explanation, medierra. Believe me, it will go a long way towards changing a lot of "sour grapes" attitudes. Now we just have to convince THQ to drop some loot for this patch to go forward.

I doubt you can speak to this, but what would be the best way for us to convince them to move forward with a patch?

[Zenephis]

Not to go off into left field or anything but I have always wondered why the industry has little or no patience with expansion packs for games they produce. Time and time again I am left wondering why some of the bugs did not halt the game and break deadline for just a little while to fix the bad ones. Here is just two reviews that mention it...

Gamespot.com
Titan Quest: Immortal Throne for PC Review - PC Titan Quest: Immortal Throne Review

Voice acting gets annoying quickly; inconsistent performance on pc that exceeds recommended specs.

Worthplaying.com
WorthPlaying - Xbox 360 (X360) , PlayStation 3 (PS3), Nintendo Wii, Xbox, PlayStation 2 (PS2), GameCube (NGC), PSP, Nintendo DS (NDS), GBA, Windows PC - All about games !

Sadly, here I must take a moment out from my effusive praise and point out a couple of drawbacks. One, you'd better hope you have a powerful machine to smoothly run all of these new effects. Titan Quest (and Immortal Throne along with it) doesn't scale down very well to older graphics, memory, and CPU hardware. Also — and this is much more specific — there is one entire area in the expansion that crawls to a stuttering, chopping halt. This was extremely disruptive and even led to one of my two deaths due to lag. Altering the graphical settings didn't have any effect whatsoever, so I can only assume that there's more to this than just too much texture-rendering at once. Beware the Halls of Judgment, at least until there's a patch that optimizes this area to a smoother degree.

Now before I get flamed I must state that I understand the industry very well. Having worked for a publisher/development studio for years I completely understand just how volatile it is. One second everything is fine and the next you are standing outside without a job, (not a joke about the x-Vanguard team.)

So many X-packs get little or no support after they are released. I am beginning to wonder if this is just a new trend. So please, whatever you can mention that can help this situation, just say it. I will gladly send emails or anything to get this game working how it should be. Nobody with system specs like mine should be having performance issues.

Athalon 64 X2 Dual Core 5600
4Gigs Kingston 6400 SLI
Asus Crossfire Mobo
Dual 8800GTX 640 in SLI
Maxtor sata @ Terrabyte

[Diernes]

Thanks alot medierra, that makes perfect sense now. I cant help but wish this decision was not made. As I said I had absolutely no issues with the original game, and although my rubberbanding only seems to occur in the final act and fairly seldom, I do notice it and it is an annoyance.

Surely there is a point where you just have to say, ok we have some hitching problems on some machines, but with powerful enough hardware it isnt an issue, so the consumer base will just have to suck it up... now in an attempt to fix what wasnt realy broken (imo) the issue has been made worse.

Titan quest is one of the most beautiful games I have ever played. With the way the industry is going I think its fair to expect your consumers to be running the game on decent gaming hardware.

[Whisk33]

So I only have issues at two spots, Tower of jugdement and The Crystal passage before whoever is behind it. I rubberband so bad I haven't really seen him lol. But I ONLY have issues there. The rest of the game has (TQ) and does (TQ:IT) relatively smoothly. It studders some when I have Xmax on and take a stroll through the war camp etc. So I guess I assumed my problem was everyones problem, but are most people having a problem throughout the game? or is it limited to only on eor two parts?

I'm gonna hold with Viper, If we work together with the auras we could do some damage... with Study prey and Squall casted ToW and a lovely Sapros would make even MCP seem like a buffalo from the Organ Trail on the Apple II... hopefully I don't get dysentery... (that means poop <giggles like girl>)

I have nothing else to add.

[Asmodeous]

Hey, I still want to hop onto the "bash IL train".

Hurry up and develop another game IL for us to buy or you'll get bashed!!!!

(just make sure it's called TQ2 and don't go to THQ for publishing or you'll get double bashed! )



Seriously.

THQ hating aside, you do realise that Iron lore is somewhat to blame for the games problem then, by your own admission. If you did manage to fix the hitching/rubber banding with your late fix attempt, we would all be happy little customers whose only complaint would be that we are waiting too long for TQ2.

From THQ's point of view, it was up to IR to meet the release date with a perfect game for them to release unto the buying public and together, IR and THQ could then proceed to make money hand over fist from the 10 million copies that will sell. Off course that would be in a perfect world where games take 10 minutes to write and customers are happy to pay $1,000 per copy. It ain't gunna happen.

But at least your man enough to come out and stand up and say something about the situation. Any dodgy developer could easily stay shut up and running away from the back fence they just hopped over. You deserve a pat on the back.

So what happens now then? Is the latest posts about fixing this game a solution then? (fixing swap file size) is there anything else us customers can do to our machine's settings to help run TQ/IT in it's current state?

[Dobster]

Originally Posted by Whisk33

So I only have issues at two spots, Tower of jugdement and The Crystal passage before whoever is behind it. I rubberband so bad I haven't really seen him lol. But I ONLY have issues there. The rest of the game has (TQ) and does (TQ:IT) relatively smoothly. It studders some when I have Xmax on and take a stroll through the war camp etc. So I guess I assumed my problem was everyones problem, but are most people having a problem throughout the game? or is it limited to only on eor two parts?

Almost the same here. I can run the game pretty much flawlessly on maximum settings until about 2 thirds though the final act and then at some point(not exactly sure where) it all starts to lag/rubber band. I only play SP but it feels like i'm getting online lag just like when playing Sacred online

Havent checked this thread for a while but it's nice to see IL have now acknowledged the problem and i can't wait for a fix. I tried the swap file thingy but it had no affect for me

[subster]

Good to hear that the developer who has done the changes to the loading system and thus introduced the rubberbanding has left the company. You don't need a non-skilled noob anyway.

So now we have rubberbanding plus the same performance issues that were there with the original TQ... great job.. I also understand we will never have any patches? LOL....

Thanks THQ: you killed of a perfectly nice game.... thank god I learned my lesson after the first Tq.

[medierra]

Originally Posted by Zenephis

So many X-packs get little or no support after they are released. I am beginning to wonder if this is just a new trend. So please, whatever you can mention that can help this situation, just say it.

I believe the attitude toward x-packs is similar to the attitude you see towards many movie liscenced products. I'm just speculating but, from what I can figure, it seems that publishers anticipate that based on the popularity of a movie a certain number of people are going to go out and buy a game based on it regardless of quality. This is most true for intellectual properties that are probably going to be a one-shot thing like a disney movie or something like Terminator 3 or Eragon. Properties like LOTR are generally handled more carefully because there is a greater vested interest by their holders in maintaining the future integrity of the liscence and because game publishers realise they are big liscences that could spawn a new franchise instead of a single product. Xpacks are sort of similar I think... Often they are treated as a way to get a better return on the original investment since it leverages existing content and technology. So there is probably also that assumption that you have a certain number of almost guaranteed sales based on the popularity of the original title. This is less true of popular established franchises than it is of new games like TQ. Publishers want to protect the reputation of their successful franchises, so it is worth making a greater investment in that case. Publishers aren't all just greedy villains though, they're large companies trying to stay alive and compete in a very competitive market. To some extent they are like investers that have to maintain a decent public image but also need to manage risk with their investments - the investments obviously being games. Of course, I have no idea if any of this is true but it seems to fit my observations working in the industry.

THQ signed us up for an expansion before they knew what the sales would be like for TQ, so I don't know if they would have made that same decision in retrospect. I think the expansion will help them get closer to breaking even or even make a profit off their investment in TQ though if sales don't drop off. If that happens I think they will be more interested in patching. Of course, as I mentioned in another post - its a "chicken or the egg" scenario.

[medierra]

Originally Posted by Diernes

Surely there is a point where you just have to say, ok we have some hitching problems on some machines, but with powerful enough hardware it isnt an issue, so the consumer base will just have to suck it up... now in an attempt to fix what wasnt realy broken (imo) the issue has been made worse.

There is, and perhaps we crossed that point. Of course, if everything worked out it would then have seemed like the right decision... It is difficult to ignore the complaints of the audience, especially for a new development studio working on its first product. On the other hand there are developers out there that seem to have been burnt too many times trying to cater to their customers and wind up becoming bitter and unresponsive to the other extreme. I hope we never end up going down that road! It seems like you can never make everyone happy and sometimes you end up making no one happy. This is where risk management becomes important. We're a new developer and I think we probably erred on the side of taking on too much risk. I believe this is an area were we will do better in the future having learned some hard lessons on TQ.

[Xander Mageslayer]

Originally Posted by medierra

I believe this is an area were we will do better in the future having learned some hard lessons on TQ.

Glad to hear there will be a future. I for one am looking forward to the next product whatever it may be...

As long as it isn't a MMORPG or FPS that is.