Click play - nothing happens

[Vendrette]

So, I click play and the game doesn't start.

I think it thinks it's starting, but it fails to start and then closes itself. I can tell because Steam gives me closing-of-game advertisements.

Last time I played this, it didn't do this. What's going on?

[Eno]

Hello,

It seems something is broken on your PC and something is missing.

First thing to try is to just reboot your PC.
Second thing to try is to uninstall Uplay and reinstall Uplay. (if you need help to know how to do this, let me know)
Third thing to try is to reinstall the game itself.

If none of this works, you can contact the customer support:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/245490/discussions/0/558752449329766387/

Let me know if you're unblocked.

Cheers,

[pli]

I have the same problem. Clicking Play makes the mouse hourglass rotate and trials_fusion.exe appear for a few seconds in Task Manager and then disappear, nothing else happens.

Came back to check the new DLC. I've completed the base game + season pack on this machine a few months ago and have not turned it on since. After turning the the machine (and since last playing the game successfully) I let Steam update the game, itself and GeForce Experience update the graphics drivers. Otherwise things should be the same.

I'll try reinstalling the game. And if anyone is reading this, why did you sell your soul to uplay? While completing the game 100% I could not connect to uplay one in every 3-5 times I opened up the game, meaning the leaderboards could not be accessed. I wish I was kidding about the downtime percentage... maybe I just had bad luck, but still! Trying to play the game on release was also impossible because of it, same with a couple of the DLC releases. How can a production ready service be down with such a high percentage? uplay adds absolutely nothing in my experience and only causes issues. Try to fight back a bit instead of rolling on your back and letting your publisher dictate something like this to you. I know you can't have a single developer in-house who actually thinks it was a good idea.

(Also, regarding this issue: considering even the uplay launcher does not show up at the beginning, I would not be surprised if, once again, this issue was purely because of uplay.)


EDIT: Yep, opening up the uplay executable separately outside of steam and updating it solves the issue. Nothing but trouble again. Don't you think that when steam updates the game it should be ready to play when you click on Play? And if there is a man in the middle like uplay that it should be in working condition too? Not "hmm, I wonder what bs secondary launcher this game in particular might have used that I could try to find in my programs and launch separately and try to debug and update in case this mysterious problem has something to do with it."

I'm sorry to sound like a broken record but please make it stop.


EDIT2: The DLC purchase process was not too impressive either because of, once again, uplay. Buying the DLC in-game opens up the steam store page, but the purchase does not actually activate it in game, not even after a restart. Instead you have to figure out by yourself that you need to make steam show you a CD key from a submenu which you need to manually give to uplay by using "redeem code" from inside the game (which sounds more like a coupon thing). This opens up an uplay layer that disables the steam in-game layer, which means you can't see the code you need to input, resulting in having to write it down on paper. None of this is prompted or guided, you just need to figure it out by yourself by thinking "if I was trying to make things really hard for the player, or had to have made massive workarounds as a developer to support an extra uplay-layer, what would I do" and follow your instincts.

How many people will figure something like this out without help? Don't you think purchasing the levels in the steam store should be enough? I know this is now very much off-topic but man, it would have been nice to spend my 2 hours of free time this morning doing something else than fighting with uplay issues, since now I won't have much time to play the game itself! You clearly need constantly repeated feedback about this.

[Eno]

Hello Pli,

Thanks for the feedback and communicating your frustration, that's useful.

For the explanation about Uplay, you can read my posts there:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/245490/discussions/0/620712364020261107/

The problem with reinstalling Uplay that time was due to an incompatibility between a Steam update and a Uplay update that occur roughly at the same time. We reupdated the package a few days after and everything should be back to normal.

The downtime is not related to Uplay itself and even without Uplay, we would still have connection to a server for the leaderboards, and the problem would remain the same. I don't have the figures for downtime and uptime but I think you may have been particularly unlucky as I am not encountering such issues and if I look at the connection of players, it seems fine.

I agree with you the way to redeem the key from Steam to Uplay is not optimal and should be improved but there are technical limitation that prevent us to do so. As long as it remains like that, we make sure we help when the problem arises. I will pin a thread with the information too. It could help.

Regards,

[HeinziDerHeld]

Hi there, I've just experienced exactly the same problem. After pressing the Start-button, nothing happens except of the mouse doing the usual loading icons, etc.
I haven't played the game for a while but it's still quite unpleasant seeing it won't work now.
Please let me know whether the game works properly after reinstalling or not!

[Eno]

Hello HeinziDerHeld,

Please try to start Uplay on its own and then start the game. Uplay may just need an update he didn't receive for some reasons.

Cheers,

[pli]

Originally posted by Eno:

Hello Pli,

Thanks for the feedback and communicating your frustration, that's useful.

[...]

Alright, thanks for replying. Very good of you to tackle the frustrations.

I pre-ordered the original game + season pass and most of my problems have been last year when they happened very frequently. However, essentially all of my problems with the game have had to do with uplay, and some of them have been game-stopping or have required me to separately force uplay into offline mode before starting the game on steam, etc. The issues are more than a leaderboards server would cause. That said, the post was not supposed to be an uplay rant. It was just the first time I've interacted on the forums since the game's launch, so I thought I'd bring up the frustrations I've had with it over the year and a half since a dev was reading the thread. But when even this issue was because of the same service, it just slid into that territory one edit at a time.


Regarding the explanation in the other thread which is pretty much "no different from steam" and "we can bring more content":

You must realize a big part of the problem is that steam + uplay don't work together, just like pretty much with other stacked "service". Having to create user accounts twice and copy over CD keys for all purchases and hope both services are online does not result in a good experience. That said, steam is much less intrusive. Uplay seems to be all about "adding value" and promo points and purchases and costumes and cross-promotion and everything that feels so blatantly obvious is there just for marketing reasons.

This brings me to the second point, which is that I feel it's quite a strech to think uplay adds to the experience, for the reasons listed above. PC gamers are not stupid, they can usually see when a hook has been forced -- the whole "try another game and spend points and it's almost free" and so on mentality might work on the mobile crowd. It just pains to hear the dev say "no no this really is for added value" instead of "ok, look, our publisher demands this integration because the marketing team thinks cross-promotion and permanent user aquisition and service tie-ins are the hottest hot right now."


I noticed on the store page that the otherwise great game has received so many negative reviews because of uplay that the overall rating is "mixed", so I probably don't have to drive the point home by myself.

The sad thing is, Ubisoft will probably look at all this and simply be discouraged about future PC releases.