What's going on with character settings storage?

OK, I just don't get this. Since I21 launched, something weird has been going on with my characters and some of their settings.

Problem #1: Every time I start the game, my UI colours get reset to the default for the side I'm on - blue for heroes, red for villains. This only happens on NEW characters I made since I21. It also gets if I log in an older, pre-I21 character and then log in the new one, as the new one will inherit whatever the old one had for window colours.

Loading the default window file does not work. If I do, some windows change colour, but some do not, and my window colour sliders remain where they were. Before, I could just exit the options menu without saving, reopen it and hit apply, but not any more. As soon as I hit apply, the previous colours get reset. The only way to fix my window colours is to painstakingly set them up by hand EVERY SINGLE TIME I run the game or play a character with a different window colour setup.

It seems like my current character's settings are not being stored right so the character inherits whatever's in the game's memory at the time, or default if nothing is present.

Problem #2: The map's fog of war retention is really weird. I'll log in, reveal a portion of the map, quit the game, then start it again later and come to a completely covered-up map, like I never even visited it. Then I'll play for a while, quit the game, come back and I'll see my map from the FIRST session, but without anything from the second session uncovered.

Then this happened to me: All of a sudden, all the maps I visit are uncovered, even maps I haven't visited. I thought the fog was just gone, but it wasn't. I step into Boomtown and I see that that's partially uncovered, exactly like it would be for some of my older characters. So the game borrowed the fog from one character and loaded it on another. But WHICH other character? The only other character I've loaded up is Samuel Tow to transfer some INF, and his Boomtown map is completely revealed. I know that it is, because I revealed it.

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None of these problems are big, but what they imply concerns me. Aspects of my character's settings are not being saved properly and aspects of the settings of some of my characters are bleeding into the settings of others. Only new characters made AFTER I21 are affected. Sure, it's fog and window colours, but if some aspects are not being saved, who's to say I won't log into my character one day to find him four levels back from where he was last week?

And this isn't just from today. It's been going on since the day I21 launched. And, yes, I've reported it as a bug. I have, however, spoken with people who say they're not seeing these problems, so I suggest we compare notes and try to see who's getting this and what's causing it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I haven't had the second problem so far, but I have heard others reporting it. For the first, I have been using the Options load button to get some setting across all of my characters as I have played them since I21 launched. After I have loaded the chat, windows, and options files, my UI is blue or red, depending on the side.

Without changing anything else, the first time I zone it goes back to what I had on that character before. The options and other stuff stays the same, just the window color changes, and only to what I had it set at for that character. And I don't have a problem with it from then on. Something in the options set up is doing it, no idea why.

Numerous bug threads about these issues.

I get resets to default for UI color settings. Also get one character carrying their UO over to the next, but not consistently.

I get the fog of war resets. And sometimes the reset undoes and I get an explored city zone. Only to have it reset again later.

Lastly, not listed here, there are inconsistent but frequent enough resets of power customization (color AND animations selections) to default original settings. These can be only the primary set, only the secondary set, or sometimes both. As far as I can tell this is only happening on purchased costume slots. Dying while monkeyed then hospitaling is the ONLY way I've found to reliably repeat the reset. Hospitaling sometimes seems involved. But not always.

But yes, something hinky is happening. Assuming it is backend data management issues and new hardware issues. But I've yet to see a redname (dev or community rep) validate or acknowledge the existence of any of these issues, much less give any sense of where in the priority queue fixes for these certainly-not-game-breaking-but-all-too-homely bugs might lie.

I have gotten the UI colors resetting. I have gotten the fog of war issue. Reveal part of the map, come back and it's like I am there for the first time. Also had it where I enter a map and there is no fog of war.

I use all 4 of the additional chat windows and have most of all the windows on my UI moved around. Usually once a play session, I will zone and it will all be reset to the standard UI.

I like my windows at 100% opacity so I can actually read the chat. The game wants me to have them at 53% opacity, because that's what it resets to every time I zone. And. I. Hate. It.

You know you can use /wdwsavefile [name] and /wdwloadfile [name] to save and load both window layout and colour/opacity settings?

I know it's not a fix, but it is a workaround that avoids you having to set everything manually every time it resets itself.

I've noticed the UI and fog of war issues...
Also, the mini map's options have been acting weird (but I've seen many people commenting about that). It's just strange to log into a character and have nothing selected to be shown on my mini map!

I do find these and the issues people are having with costume slots, costume gender models and now power customizations as well... rather disturbing.

I do hope the fixes for these issues are found sooner rather than later.

Settings not sticking can sometimes be solved by saving your settings to the default file (/optionsave, /wdwsave, /chatsave) and, without zoning, exit the game the long way: countdown to login screen and exit buttons. This sometimes forces the server to remember the settings.

Otherwise, this workaround for the non-saveable opacity setting will work.

I never had the colour problem.
Fog of war is a different issue entirely that's been discussed plenty before.

I have noticed on some characters I always get a couple power trays right on the middle of my screen when I log in that I always close.
Relogging always brings them back.

Another little annoyance, but I'm not sure if that's a recent issue or has been around forever (I only just recently set up my UI in a way I started to notice) is that when you set a power tray to horizontal or vertical and then you push it towards the edge of the screen so it runs two ways, if you save that window setting and load it again it will force the default shape on it again and move the tray away from the edge of the screen again until it fits.
Has anyone ever noticed that and / or is there a workaround for that?