Party banter disappeared with patch 3

I have experience of the two different computer setups and running Dragon Age Inquisition on them. I attempt to be as specific as I can to the misfortune of those who are reading it.

Originally I played with my old computer which ran the game fine even on high and some on ultra settings despite being magnifiently old and creaky (AMD A8-3800 quad, 12GB RAM, Samsung Evo SSD, GTX550Ti, Win7 64bit) .  Gameplay-wise the game was very playable despite being way below ideal (as 3 playthroughs on that setup demonstrate). Cutscenes were occasionally slightly absurd because they resulted to creepy stares between npcs for seconds, however this did not bother me.
The only thing that remained missing was the banter- my first playthrough on that setup was 120 hours of Qunari Female Mage- I had less than twenty banters overall. I assumed at that stage that this was as it was intended. It just did not occur despite changing the team around and playing total of 24 levels in exploring perfectionist- style. Only characters chatting were Blackwall and Dorian.  I got location related commentaries sometimes, but that was all. I did not have Hawke voice bug at that stage as I played female American voice. I did constantly exit war table by using esc on this playthrough which looking back would have been excellent reason for the silence in the world - as Skyhold also was quiet. I had no preferred team on this run. I swapped team around freely.
 
After I completed the almost entirely quiet qunari run, I began playing a dwarf rogue male. Same thing occurred- otherwise game worked fine but banter was missing- however I did get a bit more banter this time around than on the first one (another 120 ish hours run).
This time around I used a lot of workarounds after I heard there was supposed to be banter: wartable travelling, deletion of autosaves and waiting for a new one, wiggled the setting for headphones-tv-home theatre, and all such muppetry save for blood magic. I did pray once or twice.
I installed Realtek drivers only now however it did not make difference- war table travelling seemed to be more crucial in this respect, as I installed these drivers as a last resort and banter did not increase or decrease as a consequence.
Banter occurred once every four or more hours but still went a whole day without it occasionally, but it was there and I was quite happy with this small luxury.  - it was not often but it was more I had been accustomed to. Every time I entered Skyhold I got the ear wrenching drums however. If I left the war table by using esc it removed the drums but killed the banter (sometimes I got it back by deleting autosaves and loading a new autosave after travelling from wartable). I had Hawke voice bug, so had to use custom face on him.

Most chattiest person in this runthrough was Bull (as irony dictates he is also my least favourite companion) who was basically guaranteed banter whenever he was in the team- immediately.  Cole had only few conversations despite being the team a lot of the time. Dorian was present all the time (being the only constant in my team). All personal quests were completed and all was well in the universe.
- What is notable was, that on this run the starting team was incredibly chatty. They chattered throughout Hinterlands and every ten or so minutes (previous run such ethusiastic blabbering did not occur).  After progressing in the story however so did the silence became more constant (curious as was not the banter supposed to happen the other way around, increasing in volume as story progresses?).

After the dwarf run I had began playing a Elven Mage Male, with little more banter present. The same bloody drums of Skyhold were still present after wartable travelling. I played this yet another 110+ hours and got a bit more chatter and I felt relieved. I still used wartable travelling just in case. Banter occurred, not perfectly, but once every two hours or so. After the patch 2 I had more silence than before it. Banter rate dropped to every 3 or so hours. But it was there. And occasionally there was a diahhrea of banter catching up which made me happier than drinking a bottle of wine. After the Patch 2 also the game performance suffered, it seemed to be quite a strain for the computer so I decided to make a radical change and and purchased a new one.

Well this was a lovely idea and worked just fine. My new setup is AMD FX-8350 4000Mhz, 8 cores, 8GB RAM, Radeon R9 280X , Kingston SSD (see DxDiag attached http://www.hastebin.com/memarixino.tex )

Now we get to the even more relevant part of my experience that points towards issues with patch 3.

I played with sub-par computer before, and after moving the saved games to the new computer banter frequency changed so perhaps it was hardware related mostly as I played a bit of the elven mage on my new computer I got banter, lots of it- too bad at that point I was out of things to do so I rerolled a human male warrior. What this would suggest is that saved game is of no fault. However something is wrong with patch 3 as I now have two different experiences with same computer:

In the end of level 24 of my warrior (Played entirely pre-patch 3) :
    - I have had plenty of banter, massive amounts in fact. During the whole playthrough I finally heard it in abundance.
    - What is remarkable however was that the BW response in the forums states that the banter should not fire while fighting, but in my playthrough I had   it fire constantly mid-battle. For example killing the Choice  Demon was far more delightful when Dorian and Cole discussed Winter Palace hats during this fight! If I idled I got banter once every ten-fifteen or so minutes. It was wonderful.
    - I had few hitches of bugs (mentioned below just in case) but nothing that directly related to the banter issue- apart from the drums playing in the    Skyhold they appeared somewhat unrelated to the issue- or now lack of it.
    - Romance (Dorian) was completed, the end scenes launched etc. but romance related banter never launched during those hours of play. Quite interestingly it has been the only banter that has launched in the past (spoken by Sera, Blackwall, Cassandra only during
        Elf, Dwarf playthroughs, and even Blackwall romance in Qunari playthrough was mentioned by Dorian which was otherwise bewitched by silence. I have never heard anyone else than aforementioned trio mentioning the romance in total of 3 Dorian romances- have just now completed the romance on my current playthrough before hitting the sack so cannot attest to this on fourth and case post -patch).

 -Had very enthusiastic Hinterlands chatter by the original trio.

    

After 110+ hours of warrioring I decided to play Human male mage. I played happily hearing banter every now and then,  once say every half and hour or so - not uncomfortably rarely  as I was in the Hinterlands and proceeding in Redcliffe chain (Notably now it really seemed to work as if after the Hinterlands the chatter should increase).
Then the patch came out. I downloaded the patch and haven't gotten any banter since except of three since it was released. I have wandered around the Hinterlands, Exalted Plains, Oasis, Storm Coast and Fallow Mire. This is quite heartwrenching- seeing that prior to patch I lived in banter heaven (Seeing my long struggling history of working and non-working banter I am brave enough to tell I know how it should work- as indeed I had one
playthrough that was magical due to the presence of it and even the elf and dwarf had more banter than this one in my previous steampowered barely electronical computer). At the moment I am lvl 12 (35 hours+) and companion silence is getting quite nerve wrecking after a playthrough with wonderful chatty team.
    - I have not changed a thing in my computer. I play offline, internet disabled. I run F-Secure scanners manually as well so there is no sneaky updating or any other backround jambalaya occurring while I play.
    - I've repaired the game twice.
    - Emptied saved game directories
    - Tried all workarounds that used to work, and no avail.
    - I have reinstalled the game too and the banter remains missing. So I went from working banter to non-existent banter again- this time on the same  computer.


About usage of companions:

What can be said about the team is that there is one constant team member: Dorian (apart from the first time around when I actually left Skyhold without him).
Due to switching of my class there is never otherwise static team. I pick who I like- on the latest playthrough now, I have had members who have never been in the group together
and silence is still deafening post -patch. As I have cleared many areas already I can foresee I need to idle a lot to hear the banter - particularly with 3 banters in 2 days pace. What is curious is, that this sort of pattern has never been present before. I do not play the quests
in any way differently as I have in the previous runs. This time I get even less banter than with the dwarf and elf at this point in game, as most of the companions have never said a thing.
I wish I would have the opportunity of uninstalling the patch 3 and prove myself after a statement like this.


My playstyle can be characterized as obsessive hoarding and snooping. I do not finish a playthrough if my quest log is not empty (or it only contains bugged quests as was case too in previous playthroughs). It is quite sad. Specifically:

- I do not use the mount at all, due to my liking of banter or despair of wanting it.
- On my current playthrough that pretty much proceeds the same as the warrior one I am spending a lot of time doing side quests. I have Skyhold, I have begun the Crestwood chain and talked to Josephine about the ball, but have not embarked on them apart from being in the Crestwood now lifting twigs and rocks to find new stuff. Notable is: that I have now all companions and have travelled in mixed up groups all this time (incorporating most of the combos). I have spent time idling, wandering around questing and there hasn't been any introductory chatter among the members since the patch. In fact only Blackwall and Dorian, Dorian and Cassandra and Dorian and Sera have spoken to each other since the patch.
- I do explore a lot and pollute landscape with flags left, right and centre. Travelling from camp to camp by quicktravel has not in the past had any effect on frequency.
- I love combat and tend to arsepull myself into one whenever  possible so I do not particularly avoid it. Saying that I was in combat regularly every 30 seconds would however definitely be a stretch of great magnitude. But based on the warrior playthrough this should not be an issue since they decided often to start blabbering during the combat itself. Something may have changed in this regard post patch?
- I idle from time to time. During the Warrior playthrough best areas in terms of banter were Emprise, Exalted Plains, Emerald Graves and Storm Coast. Whenever I idled in these areas - or just explored or quested I got consistent banter,  providing I had fresh team (I usually switched either area or team or both after 4 or so banters and it remained quite lovely and constant). Now on this playthrough this does not work: It is not occurring. I cleared the Storm Coast of quests and got no banter at all.
- Apart from Bull I will always end up in the situation where the personal quests are done swiftly when they become available - and still it has been Bull who punishes me by opening his mouth most consistently- even when his personal quest is left hanging. Conversations are always exhausted as soon as they pretty much become available (I'm the type who has only interactive friends- real ones are more trouble).
- I do not travel by using Fade Step
- I always import custom state from the Keep.

- Qunari used normal difficulty, rogue was played on hard and all rest have been nightmare difficulty runs so unlike someone has suggested elsewhere the difficulty is not a factor in banter frequency in my playthroughs
- For some reason 24 seems to be my magic number. I use no mods, no cheats or exploits. Just obsessive questing and all playthroughs have ended up to the same level - with varying degrees of banter as demonstrated above.

- In all combinations and playthroughs Sera and Varric have spoken once. Varric and Cole never. (Notable: latter did not happen even with the warrior who had constant mixture of chatting people)

- I use subtitles generally if there are noisy parts in the game with overlapping sounds and even when exploring so I can tell it has not been firing either on non-vocal form.
- Changing headset-tv-night-etc mode does not have any effect.
- I play offline at all times, internet disabled
- All settings in maximum (save for multisample), v-sync enabled

Behavioural differences pre- and post- patch:

    Pre-patch:
    - Some cutscenes were cutting off (all lines were not delivered, I would know as I have seen them before, example Cassandra writing an account of the events in Adamant, lines were skipped),
    - Music worked at all times everywhere (save for drums)
    - Some combat sounds were slightly delayed from time to time
    - When entering Storm Coast only one of the followers expressed their take on sea air
    
    
    
    Post- patch:
    - no cutscene breakage and cutscenes are more fluid
    - Music occasionally entirely missing, even in Val Royeaux, which was never lacking in Warrior run
    - All followers blurt out their take on the Storm coast air one after another, environmental commentary seems more stabile and chatter around seems more versatile. I've heard lines from npcs in Val Royeaux I've never heard before.

  

There are  tens of banters I have never gotten during the playthroughs based on Wiki, so I have not exhausted the banter (I did not exhaust it all in constant banter warrior run - how could have I exhaust it on the others when it was less frequent or even non-existent?).
I do not dare to load my warrior as it may break my heart to run around in silence and I am afraid it would break my saved game.



Other problems that some of which I have not been able to confirm post patch, that may be entirely unrelated but still I mention them just in case. As such some of them are totally inconsequential and have little interest to me:
- Winter Palace masks have never displayed on any setup (does not matter when the hide helmet is turned off- prior or during embarking on the mission)
  neither is the mage cowl in the Bull's Skyhold intro visible (pre- and post patch).
- Inquisitor ends up in his pyjamas to the quest location from time to time (has happened both pre-and  post - patch so no change there)
- Tooltips often stuck in UI preventing clicking the skills (good thing I use Razer Naga, otherwise there may be a computer bonfire in my backyard)
- Solas What lies Dormant has triggered once (on Qunari Female runthrough i.e. the first one) - approval maxed and prereqs have been completed to extremes- all friend conversation has
  triggered normally too with cutscenes. All new, Faded for Her does not display among completed quests when completed - nor in current quests. Window expressing completion pops up. Never triggered since.
- No issues with Dorian's quests, even when siding with templars (however I visited Redcliffe prior embarking on the templar path).
- Red Jenny and the Trail (Tantervale) unavailable 5/5 times
- On warrior playthrough : Travelyan quest Deal with an Unexpected Gift never becoming available.
- Better Courtyard keeps counting blood lotuses even after the completion leading to irritating quest popup loop when blood lotus is picked up and its < 20
- Rifts remaining dormant- they never start. Requires re-entering to the area.

- after patch 3:  A hole in Cassandra's shoulder, you can see inside her torso - she must feel hollow now. Also few other little visual bugs (npc with barrels around  her body (obviously indicative of a drinking problem?)- even more stranger than the two headed dwarf in Emprise du Lion) nothing major, but interesting nonethless. As I said - not really crucial to my experience. I just rather see the banter fixed as it is really immersion breaking when I would only know my companions through excessive metagaming- little other things do not bother me at the slightest.

I do not know if this long description is of any use, but I decided to give it a go since the switch between pre- and post- patch game is so painfully clear on my setup.