Producer Letter on the XB1 stability issues

Conan Exiles Xbox Discussion
1

Our Project Director, Scott Junior, would like to address the Xbox community and the current situation with stability issues:

Hello Exiles,

I wanted to update everyone on the current situation with the Xbox One version of the game and what we are doing to fix the issue. I also want to apologize for the current state of the game on XB1 and how long it has taken us to resolve these issues and the lack of updates on the issue.

On August 20th (XB1) and August 24th (PS4) we released update 41 which was a console parity patch to bring the PS4 and XB1 platform to the same code and data version as we had on PC. This build had several bug, exploit, and balance fixes. It also had a major change related to the Funcom Live Services (FLS) system that we released on Steam this summer. FLS is not enabled on either the XB1 or PS4 version of the game, but there are changes that are related to it that mostly impact the server browser and other backend systems.

When this version came out players started experiencing two distinct issues:

  • Out-of-memory (OOM) crashes started happening more frequently and happened over shorter play sessions than they did before the patch.

  • A pop-up error message started appearing that stated there was corrupt files and instructed players to reinstall.

Neither of these issues happened for us internally when we were developing and testing the build in house. They also did not occur with our external testing partners or show up in the certification/compliance process.

When we saw the increase in crashes we started looking for the issue. Since the crash is OOM related it is hard to nail down. Normally when software crashes you get information that shows where in the code it crashed. With an OOM crash it is a bit different, because the client is attempting to allocate memory for an asset, it can’t because there is not enough available, and it crashes. A team of our developers started going through all the changes between Update 40 and Update 41 to see if there was anything that could be contributing to this.

For Isle of Siptah we have had a team working on console optimizations which also includes decreasing memory usage. For the first patch we attempted on Sept 24, several of these fixes from the Isle of Siptah release branch were included in the hope that if we decreased the amount of memory being used it would get us below the threshold that was triggering the crashes. After thorough testing internally and externally we did not see the corrupted file error or any OOM crashes so we released the patch. Unfortunately, this had very minor impact in the amount of crashes and players were still receiving the corrupted file error.

At this point we changed focus and started looking at other solutions to these two problems. We increased the amount of testing on this issue and started looking at issues that could lead to data or memory corruption. A few issues were eventually located, fixed, and we made a new build that went to our external testing team. Internally the version performed without crashes or file corruption errors and our external partners could not reproduce the issue. This update was sent to certification and was scheduled to be released last week on Oct 15th. After the version was approved by Microsoft we ran a retail check and started seeing the issues that players have been reporting so we cancelled the patch.

What we have found so far is that this issue only happens in the retail environment (when you download the game from the marketplace) and can not be reproduced in our development environment even on retail hardware.

Going forward we are doing the following:

  • Dedicating more internal resources to resolving this issue. We have moved two more programmers and several other developers/testers to be 100% focused on this issue. We are also dedicating other developers to be 100% focused on the console version of Conan Exiles/Isle of Siptah to do other optimizations that will try and resolve this issue from a different angle.

  • We are bringing in outsourced developers to start working on this issue with us. This process has been underway for several weeks but it takes time to get new people access to our development environment and catch them up to speed on our development pipeline, how the project is set up, etc.

  • We are in communication with Microsoft about this issue and asking for assistance on their end to help us resolve the issue

  • I or someone on the team will start updating the XB1 community weekly with a status report.

Again, I apologize about the state of the game on Xbox One and want to thank you for your patience and being part of the Conan Exiles community. We are committing as many resources as we can to resolve this issue and will have an update on our progress next week.

-Scott

21 Likes
3

This letter is greatly appreciated but can you also take a look at fixing undermesh spots and banning clans that use them as well? There are several that are currently being abused on Official servers and I am sure that have been reported.

4

Thank you. Being in touch and giving updates on progress more than every few months, or a canned answer of " we know, be patient" would be great. We just want to feel as if we are not forgotten or pushed aside for the pc player base which gets such hype from you on you live streams. We are loyal players too. We can not make mods or claim to be the best, but we love your game and want to feel the love too. DLCs are amazing and new stats and game content is as well, but xboxers have felt like outcasts for so long it has hurt our player base. I wanted to quit, but I stayed. Even when crashing many times per hour, I signed back in. Please give incentive for more Xbox players to return. Please stick to informing us often. Let us have Shot at in ea before full release to get perks of white rhino, etc. Treat us like you did 3 years ago and let us help you with bugs too. We started out together, lets continue on together. Thank you for listening.

6 Likes
5

Thankyou for the update, hope the communication keeps coming as it is literally all we have been asking for. That aside results need to happen eventually as well since its been 2 months already but am very happy to see your willingness to use outside resources to get a fresh perspective on the problems.

Cheers.

2 Likes
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Out of curiosity any chance you could clarify/speculate what the differences between the retail and development environments are?

7

Thank you for letting us know what is going on with the Xbox version of the game and I hope you are able to solve all of the problems people are having.

8

Thank you Scott. Your attention is appreciated. We needed to hear this. 1000% better than the patience requests. This is the type of communication that creates a community.

2 Likes
9

In most cases that is easy but basically the dev team in almost every game has a version of the game that we cannot get or have access to where as retailers version is what we have except on pc where they have dev kit but there’s gives them access to everything where as ours keeps some things out like dlc which cannot be mods where base game can but there’s more to it but hopefully that helps you understand

10

Thank you! It’s about time!

11

Thank you for updating us and addressing this appropriately!
I have not been able to play the game at all since the last patch as it crashes on single player before it even fully loads. I’m excited to play it again and this message actually gave me some hope. I also hope you guys are able to solve the issue with textures not loading fully.
Looking forward to more info and hopefully a patch that allows me to play this awesome game again.

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On XBox especially as far as I remember - you can load software on your xbox without beeing forced to use the shop. As developer you need to test your software before publishing in the shop.

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What we have found so far is that this issue only happens in the retail environment (when you download the game from the marketplace) and can not be reproduced in our development environment even on retail hardware.

Cut from the post that opened this thread.

14

Glad this is finally being addressed. Another issue to be looked at is thrall “porking” buff. Using pork rinds in a thrall gives them +25% damage buff on top of 10% from gruel. Also there is an exploit to stack the 25% every so often. Im Still being nearly 1 shotted by buffed thralls after their nerf. This makes PvP fights extremely stupid and unfun. Please remove the pork rind buff all together.

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Just an obvious theory im sure you guys have already eliminated as the problem but in the letter you mention FLS as part of the update that caused the issues at hand but Xbox and PS4 dont have access to that. Could the problem be that somewhere in that backend line of coding its telling the console to access a browser too look for updates and the xbox cant find said browser. IF that be the case whats the chances of altering the code to instead access xbox live system or the Microsoft Edge app to bypass the problem? Just an odd thought feel free to ignore if im wayyyy of the mark. Thanks again for actively showing Xbox some much needed love hope that doesnt end when this issue is corrected.

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Just wanted to take a moment and point out that the xbox community on this forum seems to have calmed, considerably, myself included. Providing us with information was the best decision that could have been made. We can display patience much easier when we dont feel ignored. Thanks again Scott.

17

Any update on this?

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They said they would do weekly updates or even more if progress was made, we will see if they keep their word today or blow us off on the very first week after the letter was posted.

Any wagers being taken?

Edit: When I say weekly updates keep in mind I mean news not a physical update to game. Don’t want to get people hopes up unintentionally there.

1 Like
19

i am looking forward to it, i hope update will be today.

20

8 days?

21

Let FC have a few days grace. This is knida new for them, communicating with us i mean… Prehaps they have momentarily forgotten us. I’m willing to “play nice” till prolly monday.

1 Like