starting a challenge breaks entire UI
By far the most experience ruining bug yet
i've experienced it 2 times before season 1, became more frequent with each of the last 2 updates.
sometimes when you hold the button to start a challenge, every UI element dissappears, the challenge mode doesn't engage and all menu buttons lose function. locking you in bare bones freeskating, forcing you to restart to do anything else, which splits up my party and even waiting in the login queue on top.
Since the last update, it happens at least once every single session and i barely play for 1h at a time.
First noticed it when starting challenges in co-op - now it's started happening with solo challenges and even more frequent in co-op.
Chance of this bug occuring skyrockets when you're in a menu as the challenge start countdown hits 0. especially the social tab. It feels like player count in your party also increases the chance for that bug, playing in a full 4 player party seems to double the risk compared to a party of 3. Crossplay on/off seems to have 0 impact.
I've updated windows and drivers, reinstalled the game and tried a different internet connection.
since early access went public, i've noticed a variety of minor bugs, but they all share a pattern with this big one
i understand getting to the core of these bugs is a hard job, here's some ideas from the surface
- button function > visual feedback
- a detection system which checks for things missing every now and then, maybe a timer waiting for the first trick attempt after the challenge was supposed to start, followed by an attempt trigger the start again or at least abort the challenge, returning to functional free skate and keeping all players in the party
- make the challenge popup more likely to show up and stay! increase trigger radius, max skater speed threshold for appearing, less checks and longer timeout for dissappearing. it's another sign that things in the game logic are communicating way too much in both directions. challenge pop up flickering and inconsitent start button seems to be influenced by ground angle of skater position, animation state and who knows what else, too often per second (would explain some of the unreasonable CPU load)
.
i have low expectations for a game barely weeks into public early access. bugs and glitches are to be expected. but a bug interrupting the whole fun of this game - joining a party to achieve things together - is dissappointing especially by occuring more often throughout 2 individual updates.
To me, this bug is yet another sign of a bigger problem: lack of structure in the game logic, processing power management and too many variables which will become more unpredictable and harder to analyze if adding more content is the focus before optimizing the core features of the game.
there's a challenge with a blank space missing in the german translation of the goals. no big deal. completing it only turns the text in front of the missing blank yellow. it seems the challenge needs all of the text to turn yellow to register as completed.
something has been coded backwards deeply under the hood of this game.