While BioWare’s second patch for Dragon Age: inquisition tackled a number of problems the sprawling RPG suffered, it did also upset a few things for PC gamers. Now a hotfix has been released.
New problems included ‘plastic hair’, as well as other bizarre events like customised characters being altered. BioWare’s hotfix specifically targets graphics settings and the binding of mesh and shaders.
It’ll sound Greek to most but basically two settings were tied together, which was causing some severe performance hits, particularly those with lower settings. The hotfix corrects the problem so now those with lower settings should have shaders forced to a higher level.
”We have implemented a hotfix for Patch 2 on PC to address graphical issues our players have been experiencing. This fix ensures that the graphics settings are working correctly for everyone; however, players who are using lower graphics settings will notice changes to the visuals they are used to.”
”Before Patch 2, released December 9, shader quality for all PC users was being forced to run at Ultra. This impacted the performance of low-end machines and caused some unintended visual artifacts for users whose mesh quality was set lower than Ultra. As a result, users with Low or Medium mesh settings saw hair that was shinier than expected.”
”We attempted to address this in Patch 2 by binding the two settings so that mesh and shader quality were always the same. However, this fix wasn’t properly implemented, and it forced shader quality to Low. We provided a command-line workaround Tuesday, but that still required players to ensure that the new shader quality matched their mesh settings.”
They continued with their post on EA’s Answer HQ: ”This hotfix will correctly bind the mesh and shader settings and eliminate this issue. However, now that shader quality is being set correctly for everyone, players using lower settings will notice a decrease in the quality of visuals. This includes the removal of some features such as scars and freckles.”
”Most notably, the lower settings do not support blending of the age layer, so some users may notice that their Inquisitor (or custom Hawke) has aged considerably. And while this change is how it was originally intended to work, it could be understandably frustrating for people who created their characters before Patch 2.”
So, Inquisitors didn’t get sucked into a time vortex but were actually already shuffling on in their years - they just didn’t know it. ”If you would like to correct this change, you can set your mesh quality to High or Ultra,” they explained, but this will impact performance.
”We’re sorry for any stress or confusion this may have caused, and we thank the community for helping us quickly identify and address this issue.”
Check out the full explanation on the Answer HQ support website.
