Painful hitching in certain very complex instances such as Shadow Crypt/Subterran

[Shade]

Another annoying new performance issue that I know many players suffer from.

Every 2-3 seconds, the game will completely lock up, for just a millisecond or so, then resume. It's as if the game is trying to run some very complex script every few seconds that causes an overload that my system just cant keep up with.

It only happens in these very large/complex instances:
Shadowcrypt (not that big ,but somthing to do with the overlapping layers)
The Subtteran
Was 1 more i can't recall..

I don't think everyone suffers this issue, but many playrs I spoke with ingame do. It kinda of makes me nautious.. Hate runnig those areas because of it.

Any ideas whats causing it?

System specs:
Core2 Duo E8400 @ 3ghz ( I know a bit dated, but ran ddo flawless in the past on less)
4GB DDR2-800
EVGA 680i SLI Board
Gigabyte GTX470 SOC Video card
Auzentech X-FI Bravura soundcard (EAX + Hardware enabled)
OCZ Vertex 2 SSD (DDO installed to this)
Windows 7 x64

This is also a new issue that appeared sometime in the last 6 months, as previously when I ran these areas, performance was flawless.

[slimkj]

I have this and it's a massive annoyance. Running Shadow Crypt makes my brain hurt with that incessant, regular stutter. It also ruins any sense of direction I might have had (not my strongest point anyway) in the maze elements of the quest;

Ok left, PAUSE wait... did I go left? Why am I PAUSE facing this way? Ok next time I'll just PAUSE pause when the pause happens. PAUSE oh balls, now I'm pausing just after it pauses and still PAUSE gone too far round to the left PAUSE Aha! I paused at right time. Ohthey'vefinishedthequest.

It's possibly the most annoying performance issue I've ever seen in a game, just because of it's regularity. It's like water torture... drip. drip. drip.

Core i7 860, 4gb DDR3, DX11, ATI Radeon 5800, W7 Pro x64.

It was the same on XP. Can't remember the other details off the top of my head but could dig it up if needed.

[Sarisa]

May not be your exact issue, but for a lot of people, disabling 'Stencil Shadows' in the Advanced Graphics tab will reduce or eliminate the stutter in the Subterrane.

Additionally, when update 7 came out, my work PC (lunch breaks) started doing a minor "jump", where it would skip a few frames every five seconds or so. This PC was also one of the ones affected by the DirectX 10 blank screen issue, so I had to set it back to DX9. What finally fixed the frame skip was (non-intuitively...) lowering the engine speed.

[Tomalon]

May not be your exact issue, but for a lot of people, disabling 'Stencil Shadows' in the Advanced Graphics tab will reduce or eliminate the stutter in the Subterrane.

Yep this is a very common thing i hear all the time. I never had an issue with it till about 3 months ago, then it got so bad i too had to turn it off to make it playable again in the Sub.

[ckorik]

I played with the settings - specifically it is not stencil shadows - but "Environment Stencil Shadows' which is a checkbox.

Everything else turned on set ultra high no problems - that checkbox on in three quests cause *major* issues.

Shadow Crypt
Sub
Rit Sacrifice.

[Lithic]

I played with the settings - specifically it is not stencil shadows - but "Environment Stencil Shadows' which is a checkbox.

Everything else turned on set ultra high no problems - that checkbox on in three quests cause *major* issues.

Shadow Crypt
Sub
Rit Sacrifice.

That worked for me too, though I never had a problem in ritual sacrifice. It made shadowcrypt farming so much better, and I didn't notice a difference in the graphics with it on or off.

[Jybwee]

that place ****es me off so much. I'm on a i7-930 @ 3.9ghz (for 24/7), 6gb ddr3, and a 5970. It was still insanely annoying in there, and i'm one of those people that can take some choppy fps for sweet lookin graphics but in there it didnt' seem i was getting anything extra and paying such a high price in performance . I tried to play with some settings in my last run and nothing seemed to make that much of a difference, i'm out of town now but i'll have ta try that "Environment Stencil Shadows' thing when i get back

[Shade]

awesome. Thanks guys, unchecking the enviromental stencil checkbox worked.. Asked a lot of ppl in game and they didnt know this hint.

DDO Community ftw.

[slimkj]

I've only tested Subt so far but same here - that checkbox worked wonders. So thanks from me too!

But... y'know devs, this still needs a fix - players shouldn't have to find and turn off an option to be able to play comfortably. Not everyone reads the forums.