How are any of you playing this game?

[Converse Lina]

The game crashed over and over for me, so much so that I got a refund, but apparently people are playing it just fine? I couldn't even get it to load correctly, usually missing square portions of the launch screen. I was really looking forward to this game and I don't understand why it just Fatal Errored for me 95% of the time on starting a game while all y'all are having a fine time with it.

[Minneyar]

Runs fine on both my desktop and Deck. If you already refunded it I'm guessing you're not actually trying to solve your problems, but does the demo work for you? What are your system specs? Updated your GPU drivers recently?

[Converse Lina]

Originally posted by Minneyar:

Runs fine on both my desktop and Deck. If you already refunded it I'm guessing you're not actually trying to solve your problems, but does the demo work for you? What are your system specs? Updated your GPU drivers recently?

Well, when the Steam refund page says that refunds are contingent on not having too much "playtime," and the game counted every moment the executable was running as "playtime," whether or not it actually worked, no, I didn't have very much time to troubleshoot the vague "Fatal Error" that I got most of the time when I booted.

I thought I had gotten it stable using full screen instead of windowed and turning the graphics settings down to standard, but that only worked once, crashed in the second dialogue in the starting zone, and then restarting the game crashed again.

How can I test with the demo when the demo hasn't been updated with all of the things they presumably fixed from the demo being broken?

[Converse Lina]

intel i7-14700, 64gb ram (that Visions tried to use *literally all of* on one launch), GeForce RTX 4070 Super with the current version of the drivers available on the nVidia website. It's possible there's "game ready driver" or something that I missed installing, but I didn't see one, whereas I'm pretty sure I did for FF16 (the demo of which ran fine, and I was hoping Visions of Mana would occupy the time while I'm waiting for that to launch).

[Minneyar]

Originally posted by Converse Lina:

How can I test with the demo when the demo hasn't been updated with all of the things they presumably fixed from the demo being broken?

I'm not sure what you're thinking "all of the things" are; the demo is, on a technical level, basically identical to the full game. A few people think the full game performs slightly better for them, but that hasn't been particularly well quantified and is the only change I'm aware of.

Originally posted by Converse Lina:

intel i7-14700

I suspect you are running into issues because Intel's 14th-generation CPUs are, basically, broken: https://www.theverge.com/24216305/intel-13th-14th-gen-raptor-lake-cpu-crash-news-updates-patches-fixes-motherboards

There may be a BIOS update for your motherboard to prevent the issue from happening, but it's possible your CPU is already permanently damaged.

For what it's worth, I've seen people who are having crashing issues with 13th/14th-gen CPUs in other games report that they were able to work around the issue by tuning the CPU's "Performance Core Ratio": https://www.reddit.com/r/GrayZoneWarfare/comments/1chuqke/potential_fix_for_those_getting_the_out_of_video/

[dlux]

Originally posted by Converse Lina:

intel i7-14700

This is most likely your problem. Intel's 13th and 14th generation CPUs are detoriating and causing many games to crash. It sadly can't be fixed, if the CPU already has stability issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVdmK1UGzGs

[MaChao]

Your hardware configuration (which you should have included in your OP) sounds more than sufficient for this game.
Couple of things off the top of my head:
-As already posted, your Intel CPU might just be dying.
-Make sure to not only keep your GPU drivers up to date, but also your chipset drivers and your BIOS
>Check if your RAM is properly configured (Proper mode set in BIOS, check if they run at advertized speeds etc.)
>Check the health of the drive you installed the game to.

[MilkBeard]

Runs fine for me. Not sure what the issue is for you.

[Converse Lina]

Originally posted by Minneyar:

Originally posted by Converse Lina:

How can I test with the demo when the demo hasn't been updated with all of the things they presumably fixed from the demo being broken?

I'm not sure what you're thinking "all of the things" are; the demo is, on a technical level, basically identical to the full game. A few people think the full game performs slightly better for them, but that hasn't been particularly well quantified and is the only change I'm aware of.

Originally posted by Converse Lina:

intel i7-14700

I suspect you are running into issues because Intel's 14th-generation CPUs are, basically, broken: https://www.theverge.com/24216305/intel-13th-14th-gen-raptor-lake-cpu-crash-news-updates-patches-fixes-motherboards

There may be a BIOS update for your motherboard to prevent the issue from happening, but it's possible your CPU is already permanently damaged.

For what it's worth, I've seen people who are having crashing issues with 13th/14th-gen CPUs in other games report that they were able to work around the issue by tuning the CPU's "Performance Core Ratio": https://www.reddit.com/r/GrayZoneWarfare/comments/1chuqke/potential_fix_for_those_getting_the_out_of_video/

oh gosh, thank you so much! I found complaints about the demo not working and so had gotten the impression that part of getting it ready for release was fixing bugs, and when I wasn't getting "Fatal Error" on launching a new game, I was getting unique error messages each time.

Reducing the "Performance Core Ratio" from what it was set at, 54, down to 50, has made it such that the demo (which I hadn't wanted to use since I wanted to come to the game with fresh eyes, rather than playing an out-of-context bit of the story), seems to be running smoothly.

I built my first computer in 2000, and told myself "sure, the parts have gotten more advanced, but putting it together is still fundamentally the same operation" and yeah, it mostly was the same, but in 2000 there wasn't all this auto-configure nonsense that leaves me not knowing that my processor is a pile of garbage. It doesn't seem like there's a recall or anything on them, so I have no idea how to go about getting one that isn't a pile of garbage, but that's not really the game's fault.

Thank the rest of y'all, yes, I'd checked all the drivers and such, it just didn't occur to me to download an overclocking tool to (apparently?) underclock my CPU to make it more stable, because I am an old millennial and remember when things were built to last (that AMD K6-2 from 2000 /still runs/, as does plenty of my Intel gear).

[MaChao]

Originally posted by Converse Lina:

Thank the rest of y'all, yes, I'd checked all the drivers and such, it just didn't occur to me to download an overclocking tool to (apparently?) underclock my CPU to make it more stable, because I am an old millennial and remember when things were built to last (that AMD K6-2 from 2000 /still runs/, as does plenty of my Intel gear).

Heh, well, what happened with Intel CPU's lately is an edge case, far from the norm ^^
Fingers crossed that this made your system a lot more stable!

[Converse Lina]

Originally posted by Converse Lina:

Originally posted by Minneyar:

I'm not sure what you're thinking "all of the things" are; the demo is, on a technical level, basically identical to the full game. A few people think the full game performs slightly better for them, but that hasn't been particularly well quantified and is the only change I'm aware of.

I suspect you are running into issues because Intel's 14th-generation CPUs are, basically, broken: https://www.theverge.com/24216305/intel-13th-14th-gen-raptor-lake-cpu-crash-news-updates-patches-fixes-motherboards

There may be a BIOS update for your motherboard to prevent the issue from happening, but it's possible your CPU is already permanently damaged.

For what it's worth, I've seen people who are having crashing issues with 13th/14th-gen CPUs in other games report that they were able to work around the issue by tuning the CPU's "Performance Core Ratio": https://www.reddit.com/r/GrayZoneWarfare/comments/1chuqke/potential_fix_for_those_getting_the_out_of_video/

oh gosh, thank you so much! I found complaints about the demo not working and so had gotten the impression that part of getting it ready for release was fixing bugs, and when I wasn't getting "Fatal Error" on launching a new game, I was getting unique error messages each time.

Reducing the "Performance Core Ratio" from what it was set at, 54, down to 50, has made it such that the demo (which I hadn't wanted to use since I wanted to come to the game with fresh eyes, rather than playing an out-of-context bit of the story), seems to be running smoothly.

I built my first computer in 2000, and told myself "sure, the parts have gotten more advanced, but putting it together is still fundamentally the same operation" and yeah, it mostly was the same, but in 2000 there wasn't all this auto-configure nonsense that leaves me not knowing that my processor is a pile of garbage. It doesn't seem like there's a recall or anything on them, so I have no idea how to go about getting one that isn't a pile of garbage, but that's not really the game's fault.

Thank the rest of y'all, yes, I'd checked all the drivers and such, it just didn't occur to me to download an overclocking tool to (apparently?) underclock my CPU to make it more stable, because I am an old millennial and remember when things were built to last (that AMD K6-2 from 2000 /still runs/, as does plenty of my Intel gear).

The demo ran fine so I repurchased the full game.

And immediately ran headlong into the same issues. It also corrupted the demo to start having the same problems as the full game.

😭

[MaChao]

Originally posted by Converse Lina:

The demo ran fine so I repurchased the full game.

And immediately ran headlong into the same issues. It also corrupted the demo to start having the same problems as the full game.

😭

Refund policy is:
2 weeks after purchase
2h of playtime

Also, they are not set in stone. Steam's customer service is pretty pro-customer. Getting in touch with them may get you a refund even if you're slightly past the thresold.

I'd say update everything you can, chipsets, BIOS, drivers, you name it.
There have been BIOS updates that further mitigate the issues caused by dying Intel CPU's.
Keep us updated if things improve.

[Ilitsa]

I had to disable discord's experimental features for capturing audio/video to make the game stop crashing on my pc

[Converse Lina]

Originally posted by MaChao:

Originally posted by Converse Lina:

The demo ran fine so I repurchased the full game.

And immediately ran headlong into the same issues. It also corrupted the demo to start having the same problems as the full game.

😭

Refund policy is:
2 weeks after purchase
2h of playtime

Also, they are not set in stone. Steam's customer service is pretty pro-customer. Getting in touch with them may get you a refund even if you're slightly past the thresold.

I'd say update everything you can, chipsets, BIOS, drivers, you name it.
There have been BIOS updates that further mitigate the issues caused by dying Intel CPU's.
Keep us updated if things improve.

I already updated all of the drivers before I tried playing the game, the only thing that has had new software installed is that I used the Intel "Extreme Tuning" tool to do something I don't entirely understand to my CPU to make it less crash-happy.

I downloaded the demo and it launched just fine and playing it was fine and I wasn't running into any issues, so I repurchased the game.

As soon as I launched the full game, I was back to having missing pieces of the launch screen and it quickly crashed. I still had the demo installed, so I went back to the demo, but now the demo was having the missing tiles on the launch screen and crashing on load.

so now I've turned off the Discord "features" that are maybe setting off the DRM on this game so that it will run, starting with the demo first again.

I'm beginning to see why people who aren't comfortable with computers would rather game on a console, because I've been putting computers together since 2000 and I still can't get this game to run and there's literally no support for it other than begging others for (greatly appreciated) help.

I've loved the Mana series since a kid and Seiken Densetsu 3 meant so much to me (the fan translation waaay back when) and I just want to be able to enjoy this new game that was already feeling like it was bringing out the good pieces of the Trials of Mana remake and every step of the way is another hurdle to get over.

I would have been happier with something that ran on Switch than this nonsense.

[MaChao]

"I already updated all of the drivers before I tried playing the game" does that include the BIOS?

But the missing graphic pieces are worrying...
Another thing you could try is using Windows "Event Viewer". Your said the game fatally crashes. If you can locate these crashes in the event viewer, there might be hints as to what may cause these issues and maybe narrow it down to specific hardware components.

We know that recent Intel CPU's are broken by default. But missing random pieces of graphics...there *may* be something wrong with your GPU as well...

Try to find something in the event viewer regarding the games crashes. Maybe that will shed some light on it.

[Converse Lina]

Originally posted by MaChao:

"I already updated all of the drivers before I tried playing the game" does that include the BIOS?

But the missing graphic pieces are worrying...
Another thing you could try is using Windows "Event Viewer". Your said the game fatally crashes. If you can locate these crashes in the event viewer, there might be hints as to what may cause these issues and maybe narrow it down to specific hardware components.

We know that recent Intel CPU's are broken by default. But missing random pieces of graphics...there *may* be something wrong with your GPU as well...

Try to find something in the event viewer regarding the games crashes. Maybe that will shed some light on it.

It seems like I have the most recent BIOS from what I can find from the vendor (ASUS), and I don't see anything in Event Viewer from the application crashing.
edit: literally the moment I said that I found a bios update from a few weeks ago.