Plea to someone at Trion - Graphics issues that plague so many players

[Spikeles]

I am writing this plea to any Trion employee that can get this issue the attention it deserves.

The issue revolves around the multiple graphical anomalies that have existed in Rift since at least 2012.

Players have posted screenshots, videos, DXDIAG reports, and no Trion employee or customer service representative has been able to solve this problem.

It manifests as "graphical anomalies" that can have symptoms such as(but not exclusive to) the following:
* Green lips on characters
* Head color swaps
* Blocky leaves on trees - textures becoming opaque
* Pulsing models
* Water and transparent textures disappearing altogether.
* Spell effects going missing, especially annoying when it's effects on the ground that go missing.

Many times, players report that restarting the client solves them for a short time and then they reappear.

These issues are not isolated, as you can see many many people are experiencing these issues, myself included.

All I ask is that someone be tasked to find, identify and fix the cause of these issues for good. If there is no simple fix, then at the very least an acknowledgement of the issue would be a start.

Maybe a public call for people affected to work together to identify common hardware, maybe a small select Beta group to run some debug versions, heck I'll let Trion log onto my computer and run a logger if they want, I even have the debug DirectX libraries installed already if that helps!

Maybe even one of you reading this knows someone at Trion and can get them to at least LOOK at these issues.

The following are some example links of people trying to solve these issues and never getting a satisfactory response from any Trion employee. I'm sure many reading this may have even encountered these issues themselves.

Here is a but a small sample of issues ranging back to at least 2011, most of these threads include screenshots and videos of the issues.

http://forums.riftgame.com/general-d...-glitches.html
http://forums.riftgame.com/technical...os-dxdiag.html
http://forums.riftgame.com/technical...ed-pixels.html
http://forums.riftgame.com/technical...in-glitch.html
http://forums.riftgame.com/general-d...l-illness.html
http://forums.riftgame.com/general-d...ng-issues.html
http://forums.riftgame.com/general-d...-mismatch.html
http://forums.riftgame.com/general-d...ur-glitch.html
http://forums.riftgame.com/technical...-problems.html
http://forums.riftgame.com/technical...reen-lips.html
http://forums.riftgame.com/technical...appearing.html
http://forums.riftgame.com/general-d...lses-head.html

[Taleon]

Many of these ( not all, but many ) have been around since the launch of the game.

I too run into them from time to time, hopping from one shard to another may fix them for a short time ( just like relogging ) and sometimes it does not.
Going stealth itself seems to also trigger putting me in a nice Pink and Purple outfit at times, if my view gets obstructed by a wall or object.

I have gone through entire different computer builds, OS, graphic cards, CPUs, Ram standard Harddrives to Raptors to SSDs and the problem has always been there. It is something that just has been in the coding since Alpha for the game.
Sadly, I have never seen Trion do anything to try and resolve the problem at hand.
( Like many other issues with the game )

Although not as game breaking as some of the current issues ( flat out missing animations on most repeating instant GCD abilities ) you may be able to find some help in the Tech section here,
Best of luck to you, perhaps some different drivers may or may not help, hope the do for ya mate.

Overall though to Trion,
At least admitting you guys know there are some problems, and acknowledging this to your player base, announcing if you are trying to work on the problem, resolve or what have you may go a ways in retaining your player base.
More so to some of the older players that left because of something these problems only to return to see they are still happening.

[WarMonkey]

I've played since launch and don't remember seeing the green lips until halfway through SL. Maybe I was lucky that whole time and never got them! I notice it more now since I have a darker skinned toon I play a lot. It tends to turn her poor head white and lips green. It's like the first Batman movie back in 1989...Smilex beauty products are turning our toons into the Joker. LOVE THAT JOKER!

I also hate how at times, when going into some of my dimensions, FX don't work. Or I see the placeholder for the FX (and yes, I turn off editing mode...still there). Day/night controls don't always work. Or, they work for part of the zone. This doesn't bug me as much since I go on dimension spurts (a few days obsessed, then a month or so ignoring them lol).

None of it is game breaking, though. It just looks silly.

[Paradoxian]

I would rather then spend their time and resources on other more important things then slight graphic issues. All of those look harmless. Including the invisible wall in marble palace near the portal that is sometimes there for me. But it's barely worth the hassle.

They will probably break more things trying to fix these little glitchs then it's worth.

They should and I'm sure are fixing the water crashes andoasong animations plaguing a lot of players since disabling the lifter sounds ( which caused the water crashing). Unfortunately also caused animation issues.

[zartosht]

The weirdest one is when parts of the scenery start "breathing," expanding and contracting like a lung. Used to happen in the matriarch's lair back in EE all the time but rarely other places too. Like this:

[Seshatar]

Those should be fixed ofc, but microlags, bad fps, multicore support, DX11, 64bit etc. should have priority

[Maeloda]

I don't go to Dendrome just for this reason.

Serious.

[Shouku]

Things such as green lips, distorted textures etc. are not gamebreaking.

However, the ground effects are. in particular "red" in raids. I occasionally glitch out and I am unable to see red, just the outline of it and thats barely, not visible enough to be properly distinguished all the time.

Also other effects, for example: I am unable to see bubbles on Finric (ROF 4/4 fight). This is a huge problem for me. I work around it by stacking with other players but that is not always reliable and impacts my personal performance due to the extra attention/work I have to do in order not to wipe the raid.

Another is an example of poor design:

If I turn up my graphics settings to where I can see these reliably, then they get completely obstructed by things such as lava fields and orchestra. Again, back to square 1. I would like to be able to play the game as its supposed to, not having to jump through extra hoops and do twice the work of other players. For example, on Ungolok.

Its getting tiresome. Really tiresome.

Really do hope some devs take a look at these things.

Thanks

[Wonk]

Not to mention being attacked by a passing seaweed in Margle Palace as it screams by out of the wall.

[Spikeles]

you may be able to find some help in the Tech section here

Tech support mostly runs you through the standard checklist, which is fine, but for most people it doesn't help because it's not a problem with our machines, it's an issue with the Rift game engine.

In one of the threads I participated in we had a GM respond:

Thanks very much for these reports! I have to admit, I have never seen these odd graphics behaviors before, so they should be very helpful.
...
Anyone experiencing odd behavior like this should definitely report them as bugs in the game, as those reports go right to the dev team.

I am going to pass these reports over to them, including your links, so I really appreciate you including those.

And we never heard anything back. I reported them as bugs for a while but it just got tiresome, should I report it every second? Or only the first instance each session? After zoning?

It also doesn't help that it the issue can cause MISSING effects. If I am unfamiliar with an area I may not even realize there is something to report. One time while doing an instant adventure in City Core I apparently had to run over these glowing spots on the ground to get a speed boost, but for me they never even appeared, so I was wondering why everyone else was running so fast. I only realized something was off because my friend told me over Skype he could see them.

Those should be fixed ofc, but microlags, bad fps, multicore support, DX11, 64bit etc. should have priority

Moving to DX11 may even fix these issues entirely, so they are not exclusive goals!

The weirdest one is when parts of the scenery start "breathing," expanding and contracting like a lung. Used to happen in the matriarch's lair back in EE all the time but rarely other places too.

If it is the same, then I saw "breathing" while questing in the Pus Swamp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMakQLy6mzY
And others have seen it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPG2t3y9dAg

[Wonk]

Here's an example of what I was ranting about.

http://youtu.be/p3RLp8ILT0I

[dead2soon]

I've gotten the green lips. My wardrobe periodically turns black and red and the guardian side floor in whitefall is sometimes missing.

[Jaguarundi]

I used to get that all the time, but I kind of liked the pink and blue and purple look. It was a nice change from my black red and white . Never bothered reporting it as the colors really were not bad.

[Methadras]

This has been happening since day one. Trion needs to seriously transform this game from a graphics point of view from the bottom up. I don't know how they could do that without starting over.

[Xamot]

Deja vu FTL. I know this same thread was created not too long ago.