Wouldn't you love..( Open Letter to Relic)

[hjohnso2]

if this game didn't crash and burn so often?

Let me Secondly say, I love this game despite that it won't run on my PC. Kudos Relic and GameWorks, this is a work of art. Brilliant and everything I ever wanted in a RTS. Which makes the fact that it pretty crashes everytime I play it especially sad.

I have searched the tech forums and been down that road of despair to no avail. I even thought, hey it must be something I did wrong that it wont work on my pc? But then the other part of me thinks of the dozen or so High end games currently on my PC that run flawlessly like Half Life 2, Farcry, Doom 3, Empire Earth..etc and then I say maybe its not me? If these other guys can figure the mystery of getting a pc game to run on my rig..maybe the mistake is not with me or my pc after all?

What I want from Relic I think is quite simple, all these bug reports we submit, let us know what the top problems your seeing are and let us know what if anything your doing to resolve them? A time frame would be great too!

A lot of us sit around uninstalling windows, drivers..hardware..buying new hardware..installing new drivers
in a hopeless attempt to fix a software problem that we are NEVER going to be able to resolve! Please end the misery and enlighten us on what bug fixes your currently working on and you will have a devoted fan in myself and customer for life!

Good Luck again..this game could be a "game of the year" if you support it and treat it as such..fix the bugs and I will be there with green/plastic in hand on any half @$$ expansion pack you put out for Dawn of War as long as it works!!

[TheThunderer]

Hey there.... Enjoy and have fun

[Shinova]

It's a hardware or system problem.



Trust me. For some time, my DoW used to crash every single time I play, after a certain number of minutes.


I tried leaving my case open to make it cooler and the problem went away.


The second time it started crashing was before I went home for winter break. Home was chillier than where I usually live so the comp played DoW without a hitch.


Check your system first before pointing fingers.

[LarkinVB]

@Shinova

Read his post carefully and you will notice he checked his system and can run the latest of technology like HalfLife2 or Doom3.
Also note he is not pointing fingers.

[hangar-8]

I could play Doom3 etc fine.. DoW would crash to the desk after x amount of minutes. I had 1.5 gig of ram filling all 4 slots (2x512, 2x256). Any combination of the sticks I had (512 + 2x256, 1 512 and 1 256, 2x512 + 1 x 256 etc) and DoW would run, just so long as I didn't fill all the available memory slots.

I traded in the 2 x 256 sticks, got 1 512 (resulting in 3 x 512 sticks).. DoW ran and continues to run fine. Seems my board didn't like all the slots filled.. odd huh?

[hate_me]

wierd, its the opposite for me. I had a shit load of problems with some games, unreal 2004, and painkiller to name a couple, but DOW is actually one of few games that has worked fine out of the box for me, and its only ever crashed once after about 8 hours of 3v3 gaming one night.

[Moe]

OK, first off, DoW isn't Doom3. For example, Doom is an openGL game, whereas DoW is not. Next, in Doom there are only a few monsters at any given time, and in DoW you have dozens, sometimes hundreds of units, each one with the polygon count of a Half-Life 1 character if I recall correctly running and shooting. The game is very hard on your system. Saying "DoW should run because Doom did" doesn't make sense, you're comparing apples to oranges.

Next, as the people at Relic have explained quite a few times, it is impossible for them to test all hardware combinations. Look at how many CPUs, RAMs, graphic cards and boards there are, and calculate the number of possible combinations. Add to that other hardware that might interfere, sound cards, network cards, etc... It's simply impossible to try everything out.
Then there's software and drivers - in some cases the weirdest conflicts arise.

It's not always the user's fault, sometimes the game just refuses to work with a system, but in many cases it was a problem on the user side - faulty hardware, insufficient PSU, outdated drivers, a spyware infestation...

Just some things you might want to consider.

[Drachenfels]

I used to have the same problem with older versions of DoW, especially when I even slightly overclocked my system. Maybe you should try to underclock your system a few hundret mhz and see how the stability with those setting is.

[TBS]

Dawn of war has never crashed on my computer which rules out simple bad coding. That means the problem is either an issue that you can fix such as spyware or overheating hardware (DoW is very hard on your system, just because doom doesnt overheat doesnt mean this wont) or, as Moe said, due to a hardware conflict that wasnt tested prior to release. That isnt relics fault - the number of possible system configurations that fall within the minimum specs to run this game is huge, theres no way they can test every one.

[hjohnso2]

Hi, Thanks all for your reply.

The main point of my post and something that seems to have now been overlooked was not that DOW is buggy..we all know that. It's a hope that Relic will post the systematic problems its seeing somewhere and let us as users know what they are so we can stop beating our heads against a wall trying to fix a problem that we will never be able to fix without buying almost a brand new pc. They have collested by no terrabytes of data and should be able to see the trends and troublespots. Don't keep them a secret..let us know whats going on! I would respect that.

Moe I think your letting them off the hook a bit. D3 and HL2 and FarCry are some of the latest games I have that I brought up to make a point. I have a few other more DOW like games where the publishers have figured out the how to make it run on just about everyones rig like Mideval Total War, Empire Earth, Age of Empires. I really love this game is why I am writing, I just want Relic to show more support for its customers who are having trouble and give me some incline that the bug reports I spend time sending are actually being looked at and done something with!

[hjohnso2]

Also, Thank you Larkin,

I REALLY was trying to avoid whining too much or pointing fingers which is boring by now. I hope that came across.

[Moe]

That communication issue has been discussed before. And while I agree that feedback in the bug forum would be nice, you'll have to consider that every minute they spend replying to threads is one less minute they are working on bugfixing.

By the way, could you please use the edit button instead of double-posting if you want to add something and nobody else has posted since? Thanks.

[Tacit]

It's a hope that Relic will post the systematic problems its seeing somewhere and let us as users know what they are so we can stop beating our heads against a wall trying to fix a problem that we will never be able to fix without buying almost a brand new pc.

THQ, not Relic, provides technical support for its products. If you run into hardware issues, we encourage you to contact THQ Support (as outlined in the DoW Readme). They have access to info on the most common issues and ways to fix them.

Here's a link to THQ's online support system:

http://info.thq.com/support/

[The GreyKnights]

I have never has a problem on my system. Plus as the Relic man notes they are not the ones providing support. Over at THQ they should have like every other company a list of all the common problems and how to fix them. Have you called tech support?

[hjohnso2]

this is great..i see this post was moved to tech assitance..yet again proving some people are missing the point! I typed this letter up before seeing this post was moved..I am not going to edit it because it just proves my point more clearly.

Are they teaching reading comprehension in school anymore? To the person from Relic and others who have missed the point of my post, I am not trying to solve my specific DOW problem but to offer a suggestion! If I had been I would be posting in the technical assistance area of this forum! What I am pleading for is some feedback on the error reports we users have been dutifully sending back to Relic each time this game crashes and burns again! I know not all of you are experiencing problems. Congratulations, your all brilliant people and masters of the universe but some of us are having problems and would like to know what is going on to resolve them? Some of use want to know why all of a sudden we are suspect or our systems when apart from this one application, DOW, it runs flawlessly?

Again, Just a list on your official site and not buried in a forum somewhere, what are the vast majority of errors like you have received to date? What hardware/software configurations seem most problematic? What is the game plan and time frame if any to resolve these issues? I actually work in IT and Quality assurance for over 5 years now so I know what these guys could be doing now. What I am asking for is not outrageous. I am guessing they have a database collecting these reports which they can query upon to see where the hotspots are and where there efforts would help the most people. If they aren’t total loser/slackers they are developing project plans and thus time frames to deal with them. All I want is for some transparency into that process and more communication. If I had this, I would almost be okay with them saying, we F’d up, despite the fact that your PC more than exceeds our min requirements we outline on the product, we aren’t going to be able to realistically solve your specific problems without your buying new hardware or doing whatever etc. I have already purchased new ram, hobbled my Geforce 6800 performance by downgrading every bios/video setting it has and done just about every half witted suggestion out there short of killing a chicken and performing a voodoo ceremony over my PC. There is absolutely nothing fundamentally flawed with it. I know its difficult to make every configuration out there work but you know, some game developers out there are better at solving and testing ( few people like to do this much anymore. trust me! ) software than others. As consumers, lets support the ones who are professionals and act like it.

Let me try to end on a postive note because this has started to sound more negative than I intended. I love this game, I will most assuredly be on it tonight loving the few precious moments I can spend with it each day before it crashes again. I think my words were..”..work of art”..”..game of the year”..just for the love of all that is good..let us in on what your doing to truly bring this game into the elite upper echlon of games and game designers who strive to not only deliver a fun and engaging product..but one that runs with almost zero defects. One you actually get to play more of than spending time trying to fix. Thank you and good luck!

[General Blaze]

Hey, hijohnson2.

I may not be able to help you much, but you could try sending a PM (Private message) to one of the moderators (Example: Moe) to get your point across. Give it a try. They'll reply you back eventually. Should'nt take too long.

I hoped that helped.

[Moe]

You accuse others of being incapable of reading, yet you seem to ignore their posts as well. In your first post, you wrote:

What I want from Relic I think is quite simple, all these bug reports we submit, let us know what the top problems your seeing are and let us know what if anything your doing to resolve them? A time frame would be great too!

To which Tacit from Relic replied:

THQ, not Relic, provides technical support for its products.

The developers do log the bugs reported here. However, their task is to fix bugs and write patches, not to jump into every bug thread and discuss it with the user.

You say that DoW doesn't run properly, have you tried contacting THQ tech support?