Fixed Ps5 Shock to the System, Disconnections.

Having horrible lag and crash issues as well. I am on Nintendo Switch. Some examples of lag... Today when fighting the Fearsome Five, it was two minutes before I could even target an enemy. I was getting hit, but couldn't fight back. I tried three times - and finally just gave up. It's very discouraging and frustrating to play. Please take as look, seems I am not alone in this issue.

Not only is my game completely crashing on ps5, but sometimes the entire area will freeze (people, enemies, pets, everything, but I can still move). Everything stops and I’m unable to deal damage, and if I try to leave the area I get an infinite loading screen. Unsure if this is related to the crashing bug in any way.

So I just crashed again, this time during the Jinx bounty, so I guess it just isn't the Fearsome Five fight. Again, I am on a PS5 on the USPC/PS server.

I can confirm that this is happening on my PS5 also and not on a specific boss but has happened up to 3 times per day whilst fighting the bosses.

Well, let´s go and calculate some things(verts first):

We go for 30 players in that specific situation which needs to be rendered:
We give each player model 20.000 vertices x 30 = 600.000 vertices

Now we look at how many pets each player can summon, robot sidekick, henchmen (3), ally, pet trinket, so we say 6
We give each pet model 10.000 vertices x 6, 60.000 x 30 = 1.800.000 vertices

Now we look at the environment and guess that it might be around 200.000 vertices (Only the viewport part)

That makes 2.600.000 vertices, environmental shadows are baked therefore we go -200.000 verts for now but double 2.400.000 vertices which are affected by realtime shadows, which gives us 4.800.000 vertices + 200.000 verts for the environment.

Therefore we ended up with around 5.000.000 vertices in that situation.

Now we do the same for materials/textures:

30 players can have helmet, back, chest, legs, taille, hands, feet, weapon styles + material/aura. which are 10 different textures (could be more)
30 x 10 = 300 textures only for the players

The pets we said 6 for each player therefore 6 x 30 = 180 textures for pets

The environment we again give a low number of different textures, let´s say around 100.

For realtime shadows we also go low and just say 100, technically it should be more.

If we now go and combine those numbers:
5.000.000 vertices in scene will put the GPU core to max frequency
680 Surface/Material changes will put the GPU mem clock to max frequency

And we haven´t calculated vfx yet, or UI textures etc, Boss NPC´s vertices/textures.

Therefore we meet physical limitations and the crashes are likely to be caused by the GPU overheating, crashing as hardware protection.

As you have seen in the calculations, real time shadows will make a huge impact and should be turned off, this might can prevent it from crashing but a real solution might only be to reduce the max players in phase. (On Test-Server we never had the chance to see more than 8 people doing the bountys) But obviously i could have made a similar calculation before, but ey i also didn´t expected 30 players to beat the **** out of them at the same time, while also most people using/summoning all their pets when the battle begins.

Again for now turn of realtime shadows (Low)
Set character detail to (Low)

That might can help.

i am crashed same yes

I crashed three times last night in the middle of combat. I gave up and turned the game off after the third time.

I crashed one more time … I forgot to get the code tho

Since crashing last j no longer focus my view on the bosses and I turn my character so I’m still locked on one but bo longer see then on screen .. haven’t crashed once since

Crashed a few times over the weekend doing the bounties in Dakota City. Noticed that when there are large groups in a full phase that it happened...no issues when smaller groups are in combat with bounties.

Turning down effect quality and fade seems to help with disconnect issue.

Thank you so much to the dev team! I turned down the effects as well and it helped my screen still goes nuts tho but atleast no freezing

Now that the cause has been identified, exactly what was happening?

Thank you for the explanation! There are so many different factors that can affect so many other parts it’s hard to imagine.

Mepps, please thank the people who worked on this to find a solution for us. Please let them know they are appreciated.

Error report question:

When DCUO crashed, and I was prompted to attach a video and send the error report, does that go to Daybreak or is it going to Sony?

Crashed four times this evening while fighting the Fearsome Five bounties. (Disconnected and returned to the Playstation Home Screen) - This was on EU PS5.

On one of those occasions, the game crashed upon loading into gameplay while my character was located where the bounties (and other players) were. So I didn't even load into the game to start attacking the bounties before I got disconnected.

This seems to be becoming more frequent if anything.

Just noticed the hotfix notes.

if anything from my gameplay experience it is worse today than pre-hot fix. If I'm very likely to crash (over 75% chance) upon fighting the Fearsome Five bounties then this will become unplayable.

(and yes, I have tried rebooting my console)

Please look into this.

I believe that helped when people crashed in loading screen, which makes sense if we talk about specific memory buffers. However this time it seem to be to much on screen at once, and a different error. You might mean a different buffer as what i´m thinking about rn maybe polygon, immediategeometry, batch buffer, shader cache, frame buffers (samples)?

You could basicly mention any buffer and we wouldn´t know anything more, even when working in this section.

I also remember a similar post from Feb, 10

Now looking at the Server Hotfix - April 27, 2023

That technically doesn´t make a big difference, while they might be one of the most detailed NPC´s.
Effectively reduced it for about 40-50k verts? And 2-4 materials? For those 2 bosses not beeing there, and obviously the vfx textures/shader. (Guessing numbers, but shouldn´t be far off)

While the cause is more likely about pets in combination with massive texture load from UI, Shader/VFX, Player Textures, Pet Textures, Environment. I´ve made a rough calculation before.

If all pets would share same textures, then sure could be batched but not with this amount of individualism in clothes/auras/materials/pets/powersets/orbital strike/supply drop and so on...i mean you probably reach 1000 different textures in those bounty situations these days. And the more you add the lower size you have to make the phases. And lets not start talking about VFX vertices blowers if they´re made 3D instead of 2D.

Yes, it makes a huge difference if people are standing at one place (which is heavy already) or if they start attacking, summoning at the same time. Make the phases smaller and let people enjoy, there is no way around even if you could tweak it slightly so that it won´t crash anymore, the fps will stay down. Dunno if blocking pet usage could be a thing...maybe someone in your team got an idea there, besides lowering boss amount by 2.


PS: For those who think but we see better graphics on PS5 games etc., hell don´t come around with Co-Op games, there is a huge difference the more players you have in a scene. Or Battle Royale titles whatsoever often share same textures and models(no individual clothes/or just a handful) Environment is easy to create specificly if you go for 3D scan/photogeometry as shown by the overhyped "Unrecord" FPS title. Take real photogeometry scans, bake them on lower mesh (Which i believe they haven´t even done) put it in UE5 and you´ve the same result, that doesn´t make a game.