Let’s talk about the GDK update

@d3adst1ck it’s funny, that’s the complete opposite experience for me. Everything worked like a dream and I had no issues.

Im also quite happy with it. (Playing on PC.)

@tesiccl Ah, good. I thought I was seeing things when the S9 loading card popped up.

I'm one of the lucky ones that found the super secret working version of the game download link I guess.

/s

I had a couple of weird disconnects Friday, but had the rejoin session option for each one. I've checked out a couple of complaints for science, but couldn't replicate them.

Xbox Lavenderbeard I found the work around I've been telling people when I was looking to see if maybe MS had changed the licensing rules, but that was happening before GDK?

@needsmokes yeah I’ve 3 crashes right before I even get into the main menu at times. Pretty terrible.

Stability on Xbox has been terrible this weekend. Almost never got crashes before the GDK update. Many, many problems this weekend.

Glad to hear lots of people not having any problems! Please continue posting that you're fine so Rare can continue to not fix their game. Thanks!

I have to ask, Which Xbox are you having issues with.

Series X I have no problems.

@BurnBacon Series X here. Great to hear you have no issues and you're on the case helping to solve the problem.

@purplefiftytwo

Best solution is rooting out the cause. So far, if you have Series X and have issue, but I have Series X and have no issue.
Where is the real issue coming from? Deduct and find the solution. Could be "You" since we have the same machine but also could be something different. Location? Network?

@d3adst1ck said in Let’s talk about the GDK update:

Most of these issues existed before the change to GDK, so I don't think they are related.

Using GDK has provided me with a boost in performance, so I can't really complain about it specifically.

Unfortunately that’s not the case for everyone. My friend @Mace-The-Ace584 keeps experiencing random game crashes. He has an Xbox series X so he is using the latest console.

My personal experience, I have an Xbox One, a PC and the Xbox series X. My Series X doesn’t see any change except I can invite new people to my play sessions. I have to close the game and rejoin my previous session before I can invite anyone. My Xbox One has lost performance and my PC has gained performance. Please know my PC isn’t a gaming system. It’s an 10 year old laptop.

I tried reverting back to dx11 and got lots of fps drops/stutters, fwiw.

@burnbacon series X.

Tonight’s session has been a shambles. Tried Hourglassing and crashed at least 6 times before being able to select High Seas. Every second match I got into crashed right as I went to surface, then when I got back I was stuck underwater and couldn’t leave (had to abandon game). And the kicker, certain areas of the map would straight up cause a massive frame rate drop and crash the game.

I know it’s a known issue to the support team, but I’m just going to uninstall and reinstall to see if that fixes anything. What a waste of a community weekend for so many users.

It seems to be a mixed bag for folks.

I'm on a Windows 10 PC, Steam version, RTX 3070ti, Ryzen 7 7700x, 32GB DDR5 RAM, and installed on an NVMe SSD.

I've not had any crashes so far but the game is just as buggy as before. I had one yesterday after a dive where I couldn't move at all, but rejoining fixed it. Only time I had that issue though.

When interacting with NPCs, I have noticed a bit of lag sometimes. It is almost like the game will crash but doesn't. And loading assets in stores will also lag a bit.

Generally though, I am seeing a noticeable improvement in performance - less LOD culling at close distances, better FPS, and better CPU multithreading. There doesn't appear to be as much traversal stutter apart from the major culprits (The Devil's Thirst, for example).

My crewmate has seen a significant improvement in the game loading to menu and loading into game, but has had a few crashes. But that was always the case on, what she calls, a "potato" PC.

FWIW, I tried the Steam Deck version and it loaded fine, even with DirectX12. I ran around an outpost with no issues for a few minutes. Though I haven't been playing there really to say for sure if it's improved.

Console, from what I've heard, is getting the worst of it. But, as I've been saying since the update came out, let's hope Rare decide to step up the QA and start squashing these bugs ahead of the PS5 release. Because the reception will not be good if it launches there in this state.

I have to admit that the only major problem I've had is the inability to join or invite a friend without either me or my friend pressing Alt+F4.
As for the rest, I won't give my opinion.

Xbox one S while my Series X is unavailable, and it all worked fine (or at the very least, on par for that system) during the entire week-end, except for two dashboard crashes, one while emerging from a dive (to raid an Ashen Lord) with the options menu open, one while transfering the content of one storage crate into the other.

Uninstalled and redownloaded hoping this would fix it. The moment I come into the main menu, stutter stutter stutter, crashes to dashboard. Didn’t fix a thing. Oh well.

I too experienced several hard crashes (Xbox dashboard) when transitions occurred (diving, etc.)

Even more concerning, I had several freezes.the two most memorable: Game froze once in a loading screen trying to join a game where the ship had not even left the dock yet. Another time, below deck while repairing, the game froze again. There is a piece of wood covering the hole, the interact wheel on the button is a quarter completex and the game has no audio or reaction to anything I do.

Bote, I was in Xbox party chat the whole time so it wasn't network drops. In these instances, I hard to use the Xbox menu to hard quit the game then rejoin the session.

Xbox series X.

The game stability this weekend was definitely worse that I've seen it in a lllooonnnggg time.

During the year 2023 I will have suffered approximately 4-5 crashes.

This weekend I suffered more than 20, on several Xbox Series X barely 3 months old.

It crashes randomly, when I dive for HG, when a meg spawns, when a skeleton ship spawns, even when I die and go to the ferry.

I don't know where the almost 90Gb patch is, because the bugs are still the same, HG is even more broken than before and the constant console crashes have been added.

@burnbacon As helpful as always. Thanks for your input!

@mrestiercol said in Let’s talk about the GDK update:

During the year 2023 I will have suffered approximately 4-5 crashes.

This weekend I suffered more than 20[…]

I agree. I think in all of 2023 I crashed less than a handful of times, but since the GDK update I crash every hour or two. I also get FlameBeard often when trying to join a friend when they can manage to invite me, and sometimes when I start a fresh session. I submitted a bug report and followed all the steps and the flamebeard happens less, but it still happens.

Tonight it got so bad I just played on my PC, which is not a gaming laptop and so only runs the game on lowest settings with 720p and resolution scaling to 80. But then I just get nauseous from the visuals after the update, not sure why, maybe it’s too grainy or something.

I play on an Xbox series X, hardwired, with nothing running but the game and only 47% of storage space used.

Aside from all the crashes and other issues, for some reason this GDK update has made my game quite choppy when i get near Port Merrick, i had never had any issues there on my series x until now.

@burnbacon Could also be the drive it is installed on. If it is an external it is definitely slower than the internal drive.

At first I gained improved performance but I updated my graphics driver yesterday to latest one (nvidia) and now I get the game freezing randomly. Now community weekend has finished I'll try again. I've heard others saying they have textures missing after the GDK update.

@tesiccl
I would get almost 20 crashes and then I would give up and play something else for the night and I missed out on a great community weekend and some pop up plunder opportunities. Thanks to this update making it hard for me to play this game with the crashing and makes me want to quit

I have a question... so GDK is M$'s new devkit? Could they reach out for help from M$? Genuinely not in the "gotcha" sort of it, but it's M$'s Devkit for xbox? A little help from. Those that designed it maybe?

@pithyrumble probably, but these things are gonna take time too. Just annoying when community weekend is when a lot of players will want to get on.

I'm saying now they better compensate us well for this Garbage update with something different not gold or etc

We had a great community weekend, despite some crashes. On Sunday, we played for a looooong time. Racked up 4 million gold hunting exploiters. At the end of the day, my game crashed and each time I would reload it would crash again. Did this about ten times before I gave up. As the captain of the ship it created some problems for us. Not ideal, but I hope some fixes are in the works. I’ve never been more excited for the future of SoT. This is the first time I’ve encountered a truly game breaking, no-way-to-endure bug.

I crashed 38 times during community weekend.
It's really frustrating to have the whole crew on a Galleon crashing multiple times in a single chase while we all have roles to carry out while chasing a Sloops and Brigs that can run into the wind, every second counts and spending time waiting for someone to relog every 10 minutes is a pain.

I'm just thankful that you keep your inventory now.

@mace-the-ace584 compensation is complex. I was super duper angry about having 9 levels of Arena rep added about a data loss weekend. And then Arena went away and now I have my fave hull because of malarkey.
Can't swear here. But there were drunk expltiv3s.