Dev team I have observed a bug or exploit.

[Rummybum]

There is one player who is invisible at all times to me, apparently without duration. I have fairly good spot, true seeing, see invis etc have no affect and he does not become visible even after repeated attacks. This is annoying but, about 1/2 the time when he comes on screen my whole system crashes. I had 3 of these crashes tonight alone, outside of his presence I have had no crashes in a long time. (yes he does repeatedly pk, even people of his own faction, always when your busy fighting something else) he is obviously exploiting something and it is wildly unbalanced.

The system crashes are driving me nuts.

[Mr. O'Dearly]

perhaps hes using a custom animation. As we have often seen people running around without heads, this may be something similar to that. I presume that if you press tab his name is highlighted. Are you able to target him?

[kingfatzo]

if you are holding tab and rotating the camoera at the same time, or attempting to target a potential pc or npc enemy....or if somthing or someone suddenly pops into your range of view.... now yes that was a babble -- but if you put a few of those items together in the right order, CRASH ! ragardelss of your CPU, it will still crash....i have had this happen to me multiple times on certian people's toons...but for all i know, i cause it as well.....so try to avoid combining too much crap at once as i men tined above....but as i said i have seen and experienced this before.


-i wouldnt jump to conclusions about exploits...more likley crappy software design thanks to bioware

[CrazyJ]

It wouldn't happen to be a shadowdancer wielding storm kamas would it? I've had that problem against someone with that build before.

[Yonwe]

Shadowdancers in a manner Fatzo described are one of the few things able to crash my rock o' a computer still, myself. Neverwinter likes to always calculate things in order of occurrence whenever it can; ergo, if you have a buffed SD with several visual effects going on at the same time, and he suddenly becomes visible when you're already engaged in combat or doing some other such thing that is occupying your NWN engine, it will suddenly attempt to "create" those visuals in the order they were cast while still computing combat, your actions, you movements, the fact that the bird you can't see but is still in the area is moving right... poor NWN just can't handle that sort of pressure and tends to pop, no matter how good of a system you have.

I tell you, all they need to do to sell me on NWN2 is pack it in a box that says "NOW WITH: STABILITY!"

[Lokey]

Search the Bioware forums for something like "coming out of stealth crash." There's something in the leave stealth animation I think, it can crash you with no visible effects.

What do you have in your override folder? What processor, memory, OS, video and audio does your comp use, and what do you have the visual and audio set to generally in game? There is an occasional bug where an object isn't drawn on screen as well, I think that's much better than it was.

[Celorn]

My computer is rock-solid as well, but I had a crash last night!! It happened last night when 5 people came to join me through a rift portal all at once.

I tell you, all they need to do to sell me on NWN2 is pack it in a box that says "NOW WITH: STABILITY!"

I wouldn't get your hopes up, if it's anything like KotoR2, it'll crash to the desktop every 10 minutes without any error message.

[Charles I]

Based on comments of Yonwe and Lokey this is and has been a KNOWN bug. If it is known and used, then it is an exploit. Not too hard to figure out. The next question is: What will be done about it?

[Mr. O'Dearly]

A shadowdancer hiding is not an exploit.
The crash upon coming out of hiding is an unfortunate side effect and probably not intended by the shadowdancer.

[Lokey]

Based on comments of Yonwe and Lokey this is and has been a KNOWN bug. If it is known and used, then it is an exploit. Not too hard to figure out. The next question is: What will be done about it?

Only option for you then is to pull the plug and go to a more stable game.

Some things we have to live with, the question is how widespread and reproducable is the problem? I'd expect nothing from Bio, but there may be something we can do, but we'll do absolutely nothing without feedback.

[Mr. O'Dearly]

If you are buffed when you log in the graphics for your buffs do not show up. Is there a way to duplicate this effect for shadowdancers coming out of hiding?

[Rummybum]

Wow thanks all of those are good and informative answers. i appreciate the help. Actually was level 1 shadow dancer.

Seems a little rediculous that he can kill two buffed opponents of higher (SLIGHTLY) level with absolute impunity and I not only cant target him I can almost never see him, despite as I said true seeing and a high spot. I bet it is a defect in the software or animation with that particular build. No head somewhat sounds familiar too.

I noticed that he was far better against us than against the monsters around us, no wonder he pks all the time. He's been the same level, maybe 1 different while Ive built 3 epic characters from the ground up.

I have had problems seeing shadow dancers before maybe the developers will be able to fix this, to me if it throws off the balance or believability it's a bug.

[kingfatzo]

heheh like celorn was mentioning above, i think its impossable for any company to produce a crash free game -- take TES4 - Oblivion for example - will crash every once and a while for no blasted reason, and i know its not my cpu , guess bioware was eating too many donuts when they were working out the bugs !

[Yonwe]

Donughts are for cops, man; Bioware huffs ammonia and has contests to see who can hold their tongue against a fanless CPU at 80% capacity the longest

[kingfatzo]

lol !