Our PW is loving the updates you've done to NWN so far. The creature and placeable scaling in particular has been an enormous boon for us. However, our players have recently started to encounter more performance and stability issues, to the point where they're becoming a problem in regular play. Many are reporting 3-4 hard crashes per play session, as well as heavy lag spikes in our more traveled areas. Personal experience is that these have gotten a lot worse over the course of the last few EE patches. And it's reaching the point where it's becoming a problem for regular play.
Some of the biggest crash and slowdown issues my players have reported are:
-Frequent hard crashes and major slowdowns that seem to be tied to the Castle Exterior and Rural Exterior areas. These are definitely worse in some areas than others, but we haven't isolated a specific cause. Multiple players have reported crashes in these areas, and it seems to happen most with heavy fog. Some of the symptoms seems to be either gradual framedrops into a hard crash when transitioning, crashes on the first attack, or just long periods not receiving any server updates. We've also seen a much increased number of "Just standing around talking" hard crashes that seem to occur in every area about equally.
-Heavier lag and hard crashes around AoE spells. This seems especially bad with fog effects, but also is a factor around large AoEs like Evard's. This always caused some lag, but seems much more pronounced over the last few patches.
-Long wait times on server updates in general. Enemy positions or models not appearing to the player yet, even when they're attacking you, only to lag back into place at some later point.
Both of these seem much more pronounced in the last EE patch. I mention them here since I'm not sure if other servers are seeing the same. And it's hard to get a sense of such things through the bug tracker alone.
If there's anything I can do, or have my players do, to help track down crashing or stability issues, let us know! They're not as glamorous as new features, but still hugely important to the player experience.
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