Rather rare animation/framerate bug?

[Lord Fool]

So, this has happened a few times now, before and after the first balance patch, but I only got a better look at it recently.

The latest time, I was running a solo mission, and I think I was going up a bit of terrain by a crashed Helldiver dropship. (A decorative one that was part of the map, not a bot one that was shot down.) Suddenly, my framerate tanked, which I had noticed before, but this time I noticed something odd. When this bug occurs, it seems to be permanent until you get out of the mission, which I had noticed before. (Note - the framerate seems to be the most obvious effect when this bug happens, but it also affects game input and makes it very difficult to play.) This time however, I got a better look at something strange - it seemed like my character's walking speed was at least halved, and when sprinting, the character seemed to freeze into a single animation state (sort of mid-step - one foot in the air , the other on the ground.) This was particularly noteworthy, because I tried to get into an exosuit to see if that would fix it, and as far as I could tell, the bug applied to the mech as well - the walk speed was halved, and the framerate was still noticeably reduced.

The bug went away only when I loaded back onto the Super Destroyer.

I have only encountered this bug a few times, and it does seem to be rather rare, so I don't really have a good idea what might cause it.

[Lord Fool]

UPDATE: Encountered the bug twice again today. Really strange to have found it again so soon. Anyway, the first time, I was in a match with another player, and for some reason, eventually the bug disappeared. I had died and was waiting to be called in again, when for some reason my framerate was restored.

The second time, I was playing alone. (I had placed down a beacon and was waiting for others to join.) All I can say is that I had been going up a hill in desert terrain, sprinting, when suddenly the bug appeared. The same animation errors from my first post seemed to be present (frozen frame when sprinting, halved movement speed.) This time, I abandoned the mission, but the bug persisted even when I got back to the ship.

Unfortunately, I still don't have a good idea what triggers it - maybe something about when a player is going up a steep slope and the game doesn't recognize how to go between some walking/sprinting frames at a particularly steep angle?

[Lord Fool]

UPDATE 2: Since the original posts, I have encountered this on multiple occasions. However, there is one point I would like to note - In one instance, I encountered the sprint speed bug WITHOUT a drop in framerate, but in that instance, I was playing with others and the bug disappeared after they killed me.

[Lord Fool]

UPDATE 3: While infrequent, I have now seen this bug once or twice more. In particular, I recently was on my ship, alone, browsing through my weapon selection in the armory, when the bug suddenly appeared. I have no idea why it would have shown up on the ship. At this point, I admit I don't have a particularly powerful computer, but usually it runs the game at an acceptable level. However, I am wondering if there is some sort of graphical interaction somewhere that overloads something... I know I don't know enough about the code of the game to say anything definitive, but given the instances where I've encountered these two seemingly persistent, overlapping bugs, I am struggling to find any common trigger for when it happens.

[Lord Fool]

UPDATE 4: Despite the new updates, I encountered the bug again. I was in a level-2 solo mission trying out the HMG. The good news is, there was a concrete moment that triggered the bug this time. I was attacking a light bot outpost, and since I didn't have eagle strikes up, I was going to have to take out the bots one-by-one. (I had the Dominator equipped, if that's relevant.) I fired a shot at a jetpack bot, and I think what happened is THAT bot detonated and blew up another jetpack bot, and possibly an explosive barrel. At any rate, the two bugs then appeared together- tanked framerate coupled with halved movement speed. I managed to beat the mission, but even during the post-mission results, the bug persisted, and the bug was still in effect when I got back aboard the ship.

It's still nearly impossible for me to tell what causes it... but in this instance, it seemed tied to some hard-to-generate particle effect or interaction caused b those entities all exploding in close proximity. I know it's not much to go on, but hope this is at least a more testable insight into this issue.

[Lord Fool]

UPDATE 5: Once again, despite the new update/bug-fix patch, I encountered this particular bug again. I had played through multiple missions with others before winding down with a lower-difficulty solo mission when the bug appeared.

[Wolfiez589]

My friend got the same bug in the tutorial right now hoping it'll fix lol

[Lord Fool]

UPDATE 6: Just encountered the bug again today, and with a new feature. I was in a lobby and we were about to drop when a fourth member joined, and the bug appeared. However, when I exited the game and then started it up again, THE BUG WAS STILL THERE. Lately I have been using the 'verify integrity of game files' option on steam and it usually comes up with one or two things that 'need to be reacquired'. I do wonder if they are the same issues, but I don't know what other tools I could use to say for sure.

(Responding to post above.) Glad someone noticed this thread...I just figured this bug wasn't quite common enough for it to make Arrowhead's top priorities for now, and I'm not part of the Discord or anywhere else it might be more noticeable. All I can say is that using Steam's 'verify integrity of game files' might help put off the bug. Sorry this thread isn't more useful - I've just been trying to document my interactions with this rare, but effectively game-breaking bug. (Though not game-crashing.)

[Lord Fool]

UPDATE 7: Encountered the bug again today - seemed to be the fewest frames I can ever recall seeing. I didn't interact with it much this time though. I had played for only a short while (under an hour or so total for the day), when I encountered the bug almost as soon as I joined a fresh match. It was an eradicate mission too, which are normally a little kinder to my computer since they generate a much smaller map... at any rate, I didn't want to drag the others down, so ended up quitting the mission as soon as I could after the bug appeared. It was even annoying just to make it bring up the pause screen to I could quit the game - any worse, and I may have had to use ALT-F4. For the record, I am making these posts to document the bug's persistence across patches, though as I have noted before, it is relatively rare.

[Lord Fool]

UPDATE 8: Can confirm that this bug survived the latest update. Just encountered it today. So far, I'd actually thought the latest update made the game run a bit smoother. I've been playing for a number of days now without verifying my game files. and I was on my second match with a group when the bug appeared in an 'eradicate' mission.

[Lord Fool]

UPDATE 9: Been a while. Liking the new update (finally added toggle-chat option, reduced orbital railcannon cooldown, etc.) Unfortunately, the bug survived. I was playing a match on the jungle biome, and when the game was loading in, there were moments when my game looked like it was freezing on the loading screen, but I could still hear audio from the team I was joining. When I landed, the bug was present - same symptoms as usual. However, this time, it did behave differently (in this case, an improvement.) If I recall correctly, I dropped in, died, the bug seemed to go away while I was spectating, then at one point I had caught up to the team and was going to explain I was going to leave so I didn't waste their lives due to the bug. However, right in the middle of this very message, my framerate came back, and the bug disappeared. I wish I had more concrete news to share, but unfortunately it boils down to: I'm still seeing the bug, but it wasn't as bad this time.

[Lord Fool]

Update 10: Took a long break. Illuminate brought me back. So far, been having fun aside from not having enough super credits.

Played a number of matches, but the bug finally appeared again. We extracted from a mission, and when we got back on the ship, the bug took effect for me. Not much to really add - we dropped stratagems on the landing pad as we left, but the bug was only apparent AFTER I was in the 'mission complete' piece after it loaded our characters back into the ship. So, bug's still there, but fortunately still rare.

[la_r4nger]

Everytime I play a mission this bug happens to me, hopefully it gets patched soon

[Magikarp]

I have the same issue since the second to last update of the game when playing on my laptop, its running quite fine on my older and weaker pc. Only the character animations seem affected, framerate is fine. Never seen anything like that before. This game never ceases to amaze me.

[Lord Fool]

Update 11:
Yes, sadly, the bug returned.

(Actually there was another prior instance, but I didn't get around to logging that - call it Note 10.5.)

With under a minute to extraction, there weren't really many enemies around. Everything seemed fine. Then, BAM, something a teammate called dropped in and the bug kicked in. Seemed it was even a bit worse than usual - legitimately could have been 1 frame every 2 to 5 seconds. It was so bad, even the other players noticed. The bug persisted for the entire 'mission complete' screen. (Evidently, did NOT affect other players - for me, it also affected the timer display. When the others extracted, it still said I had 16 seconds or so left.) Eventually, the game snapped - it DID NOT completely crash, but I think I disconnected from the session and then the bug was gone when I loaded back into the ship alone, after it struggled through the mission result screen

Also, new error - in a later mission, it told me something like 'could not maintain connection' and kicked me out of a mission. No prior warning, but it did seem like some other people who were trying to join failed to mid-mission, so maybe that was a genuine bad host connection.

Again, at this point, this thread is mostly to record the bug's persistence across patches. I understand why it might persist, since it seems to be a rarely-triggered thing, and since it doesn't totally crash the game, built-in error reporting that kicks in when the game crashes is irrelevant here. I guess I need to explore the discord server. If anyone else has encountered this bug and already participates in that, feel free to link them to this thread. (Though, without any hard data, I don't know how useful it will be.)

[Lord Fool]

Update 12: Back again, though with somewhat different behavior.
Bot mission, operating roughly in teams of 2, and I had just throw a stun grenade. When it went off, the bug kicked. Curiously, it did not seem as strong as the last incident - the framerate was obviously choppy, but might have been (barely) playable. However, it also completely stopped updating every few seconds, so the net result was still miserable. I left the match after saying I had a bug, and it was still present when I returned to the ship.

So, yeah - highlights were that the bug appeared after a stun grenade this time, for some arcane reason it lost fewer frames than usual, and was still present when I left the match and returned to the ship.