hey all,

Is anyone getting responses from Beth tech support? I need to get a response from them so I can get a refund. It's been 3 days, and not even a form acknowledgement on two attempts.

Would appreciate a response, especially from a company person. Maybe they'll accept a bloody message board thread as proof that I tried to go through "proper channels" to request support. That's all I need to get out of this mess.

thank you.

someone is bitter.

someone doesn't blame him ..

This is not the venue for that question, I don't believe. I imagine that there is some backlog of incident reports to go through, and someone on their end will want to confirm that you aren't a mere hothead (no insult intended) who hasn't performed at least a minimal amount of system diagnosis, so they would want some basic information, and from what you wrote, I have no idea whether you have even gotten a service identification number yet.

And someone is being an a&&hole. It's a reasonable and simple question. I'm not bitter at all, I want to get a refund, and this is the requirement by the retailer to do so. But I want to know if the problem is on my end with tech support or if anyone else is having a response issue with them. That's why I asked.

This is a company sponsored board, yes? So, assuming you're representing the company, where *is* the proper venue? I'd be happy to go to whatever venue is necessary to contact the proper folks. I'm not really interested in getting into a personal battle with people over what for me is a simple business issue. As for what my job is or isn't regarding my liaiblities for labor, that's not your decision to make.

Where in what I wrote do you get any indication that I am anyone other than a citizen with ordinary preferences for right and wrong? This forum is for TECHNICAL questions, from gamers asking for any helpful suggestions from other gamers on Tech matters. The Community Forum here is as close to off topic as there is, and the FNV General Subjects Forum is closer to being the right place than this is, for the kind of discussion you want to pursue.

I do not moderate any forum here at Bethesda.

IMO, you'll have faster response overall through escalating up the hierarchy of supervision at the retailer end, and greater longevity with this thread, through ignoring the obvious Trolls.

If I was in your situation I'd PM http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/user/365941-gstaff/. He's always been receptive to my PM inquiries.

They are all a little busy right now, heheh...
But seriously, a big patch will come out in 1week or 10days.
This ALWAYS happens when a new game is first released.
We should none of us be playing - if smart we'd all wait a coupla weeks, until the dust settles!
Personally I first experienced the savegame losses; then my game was corrupted by the (very evil) playing cards...
But now, I'm cookin' right along @ 60 fps minimum.
So what's your beef, TCP?
I could possibly help you?
Regards

Thanks for the civil response.. I know passions are running high right now. As far as beefs go, if you asked me that three days ago, I could have told you. I'm no longer sure. I had played relatively safely for almost 40 hours, and then I got hit with the blackscreen crashes after every reload (5 minutes or so playing time, 100% occurrence), So I do the usual. Reinstall, driver updates, you name it. But it's very rare to hit a wall like that so far into a program. On the other hand, I'm very new to the world of Steam (this was only my second game thorugh this system), so it made it harder for me to isolate exactly where my problems were.

In any event, all the usual tactics didn't work. I tried a new game, and that fell apart as well (same blackscreen crashes), which eliminated the save game issue. Then the kicker: I figured like you did, that, okay, wait for a few weeks and the patch might come out. And so I play Civ 5--my other Steam game--one in which I have over 75 hours on with minimal problems (a small number of CTD's). Same thing: blackscreen crashes and hard reboots. Now I'm twitchy, as you can imagine. Whatever happened is either in Steam or in my system, and at that point I'm in over my head.

So I take the opportunity to do a nice reformat of hard drive seeng as my rig needed an enema anyway.

Now my systems fresh, I reload FONV last night while sleeping just to try out on a fresh system.

Now I can't even load the game at all--getting the lock up after the intro video. Couldn't fix using the .dll fix OR the .ini fixes.

My next step when I have time is to isolate Steam or Bethesda issues by loading a heavy game that doesn't require the services of either and that I have a history with to see if I get these kinds of issues there. I'll do that later.

Honestly, I've never seen anything like this, and I've been doing this a very long time. But in my view, this really isn't my job or the job of volunteers. That's why I pay people to make these things, as other people pay me to do what I do.

Btw, do you happen to know about why files don't validate on Steam? I tried doing that, and I get the error message that file isn't able to validate and will be "reacquired" (whatever tha means), and then nothing else happens. Wondering if that's a problem as well.

Thanks for chiming in!

“How could I hope to evaluate the worth of Fallout: New Vegas, a full-price game that’s practically identical, both graphically and mechanically, to another game that was released two years ago? How could I tell you whether or not it’s an insult that you’re being asked to pay $60 for a game that’s so technically deficient that it scarcely feels past the beta stage?” - Justin McElroy


Most of us understand that each and every game released will have some bugs. That is not the issue. What needs to be addressed is whether or not this game was released subpar. And in my opinion (And that of many others on this forum) it was.

You see, if we do not hold the game creators and distributors responsible for such actions - They (And Others) will continue releasing subpar merchandise.

We need to hold them accountable for their politics, profit mongering, and quality assurance standards. We the consumer put money into their pockets.

Believe me, if they start getting bad press and loosings funds - they will listen. If not, perhaps the fallout franchise should move unto those who are willing to go the extra mile.

Well, seeing as you got the blackscreen issue in two different games, then after a complete system reinstall, my guess would be that it is a system issue. Video card perhaps.



Edit: Digital Justice, I cannot figure out for the life of me what your anti-Bethesda propaganda has to do with his problem. Perhaps you neglected to read that he is now having the same issue with Civ 5?

I'm inclined to agree at this point that something happened to my system. The hard part is why it happened *when* it happened and whether or not it was a problem generated from FONV and then cascaded elsewhere via Steam. I simply don't know. Which is why I started looking at getting the rare refund and coming back to this game in a few months. I'll know more after I test my system against other non-online required games with heavy system requirements.

Wow.
Serious stuff here...
Suppose your vidcard cooler, for whatever reason, was not working very well.
Maybe it's clogged full of lint, your case has poor airflow, and you have chosen unfortunate video settings?
These factors can cook your vidcard.
The .dll fix is evil, don't mess with it, nobody needs it (I sure don't).
The one ini fix I have heard about adds the 2 lines to the [general] section, to disable use of more than 2 cores...
But I suspect your vidcard. What is it?
The new nVidia drivers (260.99) are a godsend, very good improvement.
Also, my Steam verify thing says 'one file unverified' and then - very quickly - the Steam update thing pops up, saying file acquired.
But it's like it downloads 500KB or something; it's very brief.
If you have overclock settings in your rig's BIOS, disable.
If pushing system memory very hard, disable.
Set your vidcard controls (nVidia Control Panel or ATI CCC) to all high-performance settings, and don't force AA, AF or vsync.
Tell me about your vidcard. Is your power supply up to the job?
The total collapse of your vidcard is not OS or Steam related, I'm afraid.
I suspect your vidcard itself - its cooling and its power supply.
The only damaging contribution that could come from you would be unfortunate game settings...
In this scenario, if your vidcard is marginal, you must try no AA, no AF, no vsync and minimum settings to see if it will begin to run.
Vidcard coolers (the ones that come stock) svck. They usually pooch out within ~1 year.
You can buy a big, nasty Arctic Cooling copper heatpipe vidcard cooler for like $39 bucks.
Beautiful.
So again, there are methodical ways we can determine precisely what's going on.
Don't worry, your rig will work again!
It's just kinda unpleasant for the moment...
L8R

Greetings,

To answer your question - nothing.

My response was generic and directed towards the post title, " Tech Support Response ". Hoping that some DEVs might happen to look at this post.

I am not anti-Bethesda.

I have been a fallout fan since the release of fallout 1.

In that regards, I have a visted interest in the fallout games. In addition I paided monetary funds for Fallout New Vegas.

I have been a PC gammer since 1976 and I have seen my share of buggy and subpar games.

I will retain my experiences and opinions concerning the issues (bugs) with Fallout New Vegas.

And I will be sure to give praise, where do - should the bugs get fixed.

Your responce is quite well and i have seen it a lot. Maby thats part of the problem. These companys keep selling games based on an agenda and not integrity or quality. We as gamers are somthing more than we realise. We are consumers. This game is currently a trainwreck where many many customers cannot even play the game they have purchased. Now you got the provider who has shut them self off from the genral (and genrally pissed off) public. Offering NO hope and a vague responce "eah, well fix it in a week or so...."

And here we all are! Sitting in forums looking for hope not playing the game..... Are we pre-order customers or are we "team pre-order: Beta testers"

Maby this thread is correct by its author. maby we as consumers should have a mass refund movement. Let this company and all providers know that this kind of buisness practice is wrong!

I had just recently installed a GT 220 card, but that card ran through Assassin's Creed 2 like a hot knife through butter, then ran through Civ 5 the same way, and I also installed the temp monitoring app from NVIDIA and for the most part, nothing out of normal, although in fairness, when I first hit the wall in FONV I didn't have it running after, say, 8 hours of gameplay, so this is a very real possibility.

I have the new nvidia drivers as well, and they came in fresh off the reformat so there were no older drivers that could interfere to my knowledge.

I would prefer not to change the card itself unless I *know* it's the card, and so far, the evidence is mixed. Nvidia tech support says it isn't, of course, though they obviously acknowledge the driver problems with FONV which is why they released that update.

My plan right now is to load ME 2 and run it for awhile to test the card itself against. I still haven't tried a non-Steam game yet, and I'll do that later.

If no one's told you recently, Gryphon, you're a heck of a guy in a sea of occasional savagery.. Thanks for everything!

I'll get back later and let you know how my experiment goes. Hopefully it'll be useful either way for other players.

Keep this topic civil please, other topics of this type deteriorate into name calling and rude posts over opposing views - as this has already done so. Any discussion of arranging mass protests via email or anything else is considered a petition on these boards. If you want this topic to stay open stay away from those. Thanks.

No offense friend, but a GT220 is not a vidcard.
It costs about as much as the vidcard cooler I was describing (above), and is similar to the onboard video found on so many mainstream rigs these days.
Even a GT240 1GB, a far superior vidcard, is available for only $99 bucks here in Canada.
So if your video has died, you are fortunate indeed!
I can recommend either the GT240 or AMD HD5670 for you, both with 1GB, both $99, neither requiring big power supply.
(For a bit more performance, you'd need to spend more money and also maybe $60-75 bucks on a compatible PSU.)
I'd be surprised if Oblivion, Fallout3 or FalloutNV would even run on a GT220.
L8R

Ah yeah- windows update does not seem to automatically grab:

Visual C++ redistribuitable
Latest DirectX

I had to manually install those- that fixed my identical problem.

It did for me, I assume it was built in to do so for everyone. I still get crashes every 10 min (not heat related at all, did all tweaks, no response from tech support, yes I posted my dxdiag, yes I tried every fix/workaround on the net).

Damn that evil dll file and it's fixing my FPS issues. So much evil in one little package.

Seriously, feel free not to use it but it is no way shape or form "evil". For those of us who do use it, it's been a freaking blessing!

I second that, after having jerks like gorath blabber about things they know nothing of, this little devil of a .dll has been my lifeline for playing new vegas. heck every now and then i delete it and try to see if theres and other fix, but in the end i just comeback to it.

Our friend Gorath has politely reminded me of the GDDR3 scam.
These vidcards work well only because of the GDDR5 memory used.
But it seems that is the 512MB version...
If you buy 1GB you get GDDR3 - Yikes! That's no good.
So the 1GB GDDR5 versions I am recommending don't exist.
And I don't know if I can recommend a 512MB vidcard or not...
Probably not.
But there are vidcards using 1GB DDR2!
One would much rather have 512MB GDDR5 (four times faster).
But still, it's not big enough...
For 1920x1080 and high settings you need at least a GTX460 1GB like me (or better).
But as far as little vidcards that don't need power-hookups goes...
I guess GT240 and HD5670 are still tops - but you can only get the good ones with 512MB memory!
Well I suppose if you have a feeble PSU, then that's all you get.
Anyway, our thanks to Gorath and sorry for bad info...
Regards

Have none of you guys considered any other, more traditional methods of fixing your FPS issues?
(I mean, it's kind of like cheating at solitare, what you're doing...)
I chose the word 'evil' because it's about as far opposite from 'fix' as I could come up with.
But you're right and I will call it something else.
I have the 'full-strength' Fallout NewVegas running properly, and I think this should still be everyone's goal...
L8R