Graphics Quality Drop After Patch (PC)

[Jougal]

My system specs:
I7 6700K OC to 4.6ghz
GTX 1080
32 GB DDR4
Samsung 950 PRO NVMe M.2 SSD

I’m running at 1920 x 1200
With all the graphics settings at Max

When the game was released the graphics were fine. It seems after each patch there are new graphics issues. After the first major patch I started seeing the texture popping where some textures don’t rendering until I’m right on top of them. I could live with that.

After the last patch the graphics took a dive in quality. Some of the textures are blurry and some are not. Like the textures for the edges of the roofs on houses are blurry but the middle part of the roofs are fine. It is so noticeable you can see the seem is between the two. Face textures and a lot of objects like wood logs and furniture are also blurry. After playing 75 hours with the graphics looking amazing I’m having a hard time continuing with them in the current state. The irregularities in textures are to eye catching and break the emersion.

The only thing I can think it might be is that some textures are loading in at the lowest quality while the rest are loading in at the proper quality. I’ve tried changing my graphics settings and it only changes the quality of the textures that are working as intended. The textures that are messed up stay the same.
I’ve tried 3 different driver versions. In case the latest drivers were messing things up.
I have tried completely reinstalling the game.

I have found almost nothing online about the quality drop. The only mention of it seems to be with consoles. Does any one else have this issue on PC? Either way does anyone else have any suggestions on what to do? I am guessing just wait for the next patch to land and hope it gets resolved…

[Dacrimal]

Lifehack: Play on lowest graphics and never Gear Immersion breaking by different qualities. That’s how you really can Enjoy the Immersion of the Game.
Else: write a Bug Report to support@kingdomcomerpg.com

[Jougal]

Nice
But I didn’t spend a bunch of money building a high end PC to play on the lowest graphics quality.
I wanted to wait and see if anyone else had similar issues before I sent a bug report to their email. For all I know its already been reported. This thread is me checking to see if it has. And hoping I have missed something more obvious and there being a fix.

[Holt_Bathgate]

CPU: I9 7980XE @ 4.4ghz
GPU: NVIDIA Quadro P6000 @ 24 GB GDDR5X
RAM: 128 GB @ 3 GHz DDR4
HD: Samsung 850 EVO 4TB M.2 SSD
Running at ultra settings

My rig is adequate for all the CAD/Arc GIS heavy related work it needs to do. Ridiculously overpowered to play this game—and yet same frustrating issues. Massive graphic downgrade to the point where textures during game play look NOTHING like the ones being showcased in the Oscar winning tutorial intro video. That’s before you add an increasingly chronic issue of texture pop out during game play. The increasingly bizarre NPC “falling” from the sky effect. If you quickly look away and then back towards NPCs in the distance, they always show this weird sky falling effect as they re-materialize ahead of you. This weird “bouncing on the road” effect consistently happens since the update.

This doesn’t include other platform optimization and chronically game breaking MQ/side quest issues which still exist post patch update.

Buyer’s remorse is increasingly making me regret wasting my time off in playing this game.
Yes, new releases are rife with technical issues and bugs. But NOT to this extent for a $60 game which, by default, marks KCD as a AAA industry title. Looks like the No Man’s Sky approach WH took (by not releasing KCD for press review before public release, and especially by not delivering on dev promises like modding tools or game performance to date) has returned to bite them in the rear. That’s based on personal experience and increasing number of player bugs/glitch reports since the recent update release.

I’m coming to regret my decision to invest countless free man hours gamma testing this “AAA” Indie dev title.

[Jougal]

Thanks for the reply.
At least I know I’m not alone with this issue.
Its such a shame. I bought the game right at release and the graphics were awesome. WH must have broken something in the patch. Now, people who have just bought the game will think that this is the norm. I am a computer programmer and currently an animation student. I know how tangled code can get. With a Quadro in your system I am guessing you might know this as well. 1 bug squashed 10 more come out of the woodwork. I just hope they sort this out soon. So far it seems like they are trying. Sadly it looks like it was them trying that messed up the textures.

[kbd]

This seems to be an issue on all platforms. I’ve seen reports like this from PS4 and Xbox users.

Hopefully this will be sorted out once I finally get to start playing the game…

[Whitedragem]

This is a tricky one to diagnose and fix, and in order to best help everyone (in case it isnt system specific, and thus possibly affecting everyone…) I would want to recheck a few things…

This is mostly diagnosed by the fact that changing texture sets leaves consistant idiosyncratics.

Most logical for these LOD cache/stream type games is to look at the components here…
I know you said you reinstalled, but twenty years of tech support has shown me we all have different understandings as to what/how a computer workload happens…
In this instance the reinstall we would need would be a fresh download
Explaination:-as RAM or drive errors can make images useless, even backup ones… and file checks wont always detect if the contents are corrupt.
In the posters instance of owning a fast SSD we can eliminate needing to defragment or find a large clean part on a platter to install the game to get ‘easy to read from a linear reading drive head’ fame/texture loading.
-something patches are notorious for botching up.

So a clean install to avoid any chance that a random memory glitch in either the short term systems (RAM) or longer term storage (SSD) has left a reinstall from backups unable to help…

The game is beautiful. One of the few I have ever felt a want to overclock my system to remove any bottlenecks to experiencing it ‘faster/better’.

My rig is three and a half years old upper midrange and I just ran it out the gate at ultra.
Then I noticed Ultra plus (I hadnt noticed draw distances/vegetation distance etc were not set to full)… so I toyed with PC settings until I could make it all as fast as possible.

I noticed when overclocking my system RAM tight timings/not enough voltage could lead to shimmers and vastly longer loads. (Though to be fair the game has always loaded in ten seconds and conversations, bar a memory overclock issue, always in three, mostly two seconds.
With command rate 1 timings I made my whole memory subsystem as quick as it could go, and voila, instant conversations. (Screen fades out and in with nary a third of a second blanking)

Anyhow this game has been a perfect gem for me.
My two biggest issues was watching a villager dump a bucket at the well, and then needlessly lower it/raise it. I wanted to just pluck it out for them…
And the frame rate lows around twenty in the alley and the castle wall and entering town… usually identifiable by having a lot of rooms next to me, which the game identified as a 5 fps hit per dwelling. (After the raid on hometown there are less dwelings so I can estimate some numbers…

Remember this is older hardware and ultra plus settings- on 21:9.
Most impressive game in a long while and best RPG ever. (Over ultima underworld, might and magic, dungeon master, the elder scrolls etc)
The team give me faith in their product (still working after having gone gold), so I am happy to give them my full support.

Bte get back to me…
If it is a fresh install from new master files (internet) then downclock any overclocks (might be causing data errors) and/or install to a different drive (in case of storage/streaming errors with the nvme.

I know this sounds silly, but if win 10, maybe we need to ‘reinstall’ storage contoller and mainboard drivers. Anyhow, I will try to monitor this thread for a bit… lets discuss more…

[213]

i don’t know which patch, but it seems to also degrade npc pathfinding. i almost never encounter pathfinding issues after the day one patch, but now there’s some more. i think they should postpone the next update, it’ll be worth it.

[Whitedragem]

Actually sounds like they are doing a ‘Forza horizon 3’ and downgrading it to make it work better for more people.

I am new to these forums- I am seeing a few posts about downgrading graphics from alpha to beta to retail.

They kinda have to as lots of angry internet ‘gamers’ who dont always understand their PCs and who believe every game should run on their rig on ultra at a specific framerate number (that only they know)… or else the game is trash.

Anyone who has a slight understanding of the games industry would understand that their are many different game engines and studios can modify exising frameworks in ways that can change expected performance vs years olders games on the same engine…

As well all complain when ultra isnt quick sometimes settings get yanked.

At the moment this game has a mountain of talk about bugs that are no worse than hundreds of other rpg games. Its just that this game is sooooo pretty that more than just die hard rpgers are playing it.

I wouldnt seriously worry about this game performance- the devs are too dedicated.
Biggest threat would be microsoft janking them on Win 10, which is highly likely due to the commercial threat this game poses to xbox x sales (it reveals the consoles lack of 4k power that every pc tech enthusiast has laughed about for yonks)…

[Jougal]

Heya Whitedragem,
I re installed twice. Both times to different drives. The 1st installation was on a 7200 rpm HDD. the 1st re install was onto an old crucial M4 and the final install was to the M.2. I can say 1 thing for certain, installing to an SSD does improve the loading screens and especially the transitions between dialogues. I always install to the 7200rpm drive 1st, to save space on my SSDs, then move the install to one of the SSDs if it needs it. KCD needs it
I don’t think playing with my overclocking settings any more than I have will effect anything atm. I would have gone down that route if I had any problems like this before. I’ve had my system tuned to these overclocking setting for nearly a year. I never run my overclock at the max. When I build a new system I stress test the system in a slow creep all the way up to when my asshole puckers and I chicken out, then step it back a step or two.

I think your second post hits then nail on the head. I think once WH gets the game optimized better and sorts out the majority of the graphics bugs they will put the graphics back the way it was at release.

I have also seen more AI issues between release and now. Some more humorous than others. Luckily for me none of them were game breaking like important NPCs not being where they should be. Although I have seen Sir Radzig get stuck on some stairs. That actually made me smile a bit. I also get stuck in that same place on those stairs and thought at least it isn’t just me.

About people getting overly bent on the forums… Some of it makes me laugh and some of it makes me scratch my head and say WTF. Being upset about your 60 dollar game not working is fine, but some people go over the top and need to get some perspective. The game has issues. However, with over a million copies sold there is fewer people with problems then I would expect from a new game studio. I see people talking about it being a AAA title and that somehow means that it should be flawless or at least not as buggy as it is. I don’t know of any AAA title that had not had serious issues at release. Maybe that says more about the game industry as a whole. One might assume that because they did not have problems with XYZ AAA title before now that this isn’t the case. But not having any issues with a game is the very reason they don’t know about it. As soon as people have issues the first thing they do is try and figure it out, and that usually leads to here. Once they are here and see all the forum posts about bugs and how people are having issues. they immediately assume it must be widespread and rampant. That everyone has massive game breaking issues like them. Its easy to get sucked into the bubble get confused and lose perspective. If people would take a step back and look at the numbers. Over a million copies sold and how many people are on the developers own bug forums viewing posts? Of course even keeping it all in perspective it doesn’t solve any of the problems we few are having.
Arr get off my lawn.

[Tripod]

NVIDIA Quadro P6000 is a terrible video card for playing games. It is a work station GPU that is designed to do completely different tasks. So your rig is definitely not adequate for playing the game. Or any game for that matter… A NVIDIA 970 has a better effective 3D speed compared to that card.
http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-Quadro-K6000-vs-Nvidia-GTX-970/2837vs2577

You should be tankful the game even starts on with that card. Some games dont even start since they dont support a workstation GPU.

[Jougal]

His is a P6000 not a K6000

NVIDIA Quadro P6000 outperforms TITAN X Pascal in gaming benchmarks |...

Normally I would have agreed with you. I’ve built a few workstations with older Quadros in the past. But these newer workstation GPUs seem to be different. I have not looked into it much but if I had to guess its probably down to the new Pascal architecture.

[Holt_Bathgate]

1.My card is a P6000 and not K6000 which you linked.

2.I also use this advanced card for non gaming, high resource engineering software (like Arc GIS/AutoCAD etc).

3.Yes, the Quadro P6000 is far superior in graphics to the GTX-1080 (which is what my older Win7 OS system had). I’ve had zero issues playing other high resource graphic games to date. Except apparently, where KCD is concerned. Texture rendering is worst where the multiple layers of NPC clothing is concerned in the game. Especially smaller clothing items viewed from a distance. Like hats on NPC heads as you approach them. Or shirt buttons on the likes of this failed womanizer/sexual harassment perp at a whopping frame rate of 25.4fps:

A lot of male NPCs (even priests for some baffling reason) have this texture glitch as well.

And then there are unfortunate NPCs like this poor peasant in Joanna’s infirmary. Who – in addition to his existing health maladies–is also afflicted with a chronic case of magical Apparating/Dis-apperating leggins:

smart phone copy of above screenshot:

These are on top of building/fall NPC pop outs being reported in bugs section. So yes, it’s very likely the game wasn’t optimized for my specific card. But it also wasn’t optimized for typical higher end, popular gaming cards like Nvidia 1080/1070 either. So I’m considering these glitches an optimization issue until the 1.3 update gets released.

[ouideer]

It was interesting to read all these comments . At Whitedragem’s comment I stopped reading, and asked loudly: Who’s got time for these comments? Anyway: I updated the Nvidia driver. Now the game is back to normal.

[frelmedieval]

Wow, that’s quite the malady. Hope I never get it.

[bloodysod]

Methinks Robard only pays for ears…

[Flashfire]

Go ahead - reach into his purse.

[Whitedragem]

I like your methodology for choosing which games get migrated onto SSD.

The micron m4 controller and being older could lead to all sorts of data corruption, but ceases being relevant knowing you have tried two other drives.

Which location are you reinstalling from? A backup or master game CD or fresh internet download…?
(You didnt mention; and the master files being corrupted is the most logical issue for the textures remaining low res/not scaling).

I will assume they are fresh net downloaded (you seem pretty tech savvy), which would make thought number two to do with Nvidia having not perfected quadro drivers for gaming with the newer architecture…
(Since fermi they went with a mix of shader sizes and ever since have had to optimise their card(s) for each game. Possibly why we see last gen cards always bench worse vs latest gen, for a few product cycles now)
Anyhow quadro are designed for work with gaming second and their drivers might also be a few weeks behind for some game titles…
Having used/switched three sets of drivers and having had the game working well previously kinda eliminates this option, but, y’know ‘win 10’ changing how things work at an underlying level means we will not know why things that work previously well stop magically.

I know microsoft use so many dodgy tactics to kill of pc gaming and force gamers onto consoles where they HOPE we would all be so stupid as to invest in THEIR option- but hey; each to their own. (I cannot insist consumers shop ethically)

I did find that tightening my ram settings (and any overclock in general) started to cause pop and shimmers that never happened at default clocks.

I have now set my machine to mostly defaults, and even downclock my video card (i drop power to it by 70mv and set fans speeds low- I now have a quiet computer that runs KCD at Ultra+ (except shadows which I vary by need).

RAM timings seemed to be the worst for introducing glitches…

Anyhow, my framerates arent boosted by adding 1000mhz to my 6core/12 thread (5920k), and my old Fury (non X) with quad channel ddr4@ low speed spit this game out soooo beautifully at typical gaming resolution. (60fps mostly, but acceptable lows in high forties.
My 21:9 is freesync so I have to keep my framerate above 40 for smoothness unbroken/perfect immersion.

Missus and I could count on ine hand all the erros we have (not) had with this game in our days of playing.
Admittedly I am an old school rpg gamer and I would never be so silly as to expect ANY rpg game with a non linear path to be perfect out the gate, so we are just generally taking in the whole fame world and are not quest focused presently. …

Loving this game.
Fresh download a new version when the new patch rolls out is definately my recommendation. (Dont download the patch; delete installed game and then download full ‘new’ game…)