SHIFT Issues update and workaround suggestions - message from the game team

First; I wanted to thank everyone who have taken the time to write down the various issues you've been having with the game. As promised, I've collated all the issues and sent them to the game team for them to review. Overnight they went through the list and gave me some feedback about the issues and some workarounds which might help you. The workarounds might not work for everyone so we can't guarantee they've work for everyone but we hope they do. I know a lot of gamers on here are PS3 but I've kept the PC ones in the thread in case anyone needs them

Need for Speed Shift FAQ

• My car bounces around the track during certain events.
We are looking into a potential fix as you read this; we will keep you updated when we have more info.

• My car won’t move from the Start Line!!!!!!
There is a workaround for this: if you are experiencing the issue in the Ford GT VS Viper SRT10 race then go into your garage and return any of your cars that you have tuned usin g the Advanced Tuning options back to their default states. Once you have done this turn off advanced tuning and perform a manual save. You should then be able to use the Viper in the invitational event. If you have bought either the Corvette or Viper and they fail to start then reset the advanced tuning options you have applied to that vehicle to default, then turn off advanced tuning and then perform a manual save.
We will find a better solution ASAP!

• My game hitches or “Microstutters” at regular intervals when I play the game on PC.
We are currently looking into this, however there are some steps you can take to attempt to reduce this. Firstly try changing your V-Sync setting (available by going into the Options menu, then going to Graphics then toggling the V-Sync issue) and seeing if that has an effect. Also try stopping as many background processes as possible and if you are using software that alters your desktop then you should disable this.

• My game hangs on the first corner of the first event!!
Rest assured we are looking into fixing this. In the meantime please try the following as this has been known to fix the issue for some players:
Try changing the Shadow Detail settings, if you have the shadow detail setting set to high, try dropping it down to medium or low, conversely if you have it set to low and are experiencing the issue then try bumping it up to medium or high.
Locate your save game directory which is located in My Documents\NFS SHIFT and delete the file called graphicsconfig.xml.
Windows XP/Vista users can attempt to run the game in Win 98 compatibility mode, to do this locate the games installation directory and right click the file called “shift.exe”. On the menu that pops up click on “Properties” then click on the “Compatibility” tab. In the “Compatibility Mode” pane tick the check box that reads “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and in the drop down menu select “Win98 / WinME”.

• My game hangs on the Driver Safety screen when I boot up the game.
If you are running an older version of PhysX to what is installed on the disk either update to the version that comes on the game’s DVD or download the latest PhysX drivers from Nvidia’s website.

Try running the game in Win 98/ME compatibility mode in XP or if you are using Vista run the game in XP compatibility mode. We have found that this will fix the issue for the majority of players, however we are still investigating this issue and will update the thread when we have more news.

• My frame rate is very poor!
We are looking into this and will update the thread when we have more news, please keep the stickied ATI thread (http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/304149.page) updated with your system spec’s as this can help us determine what hardware is affected. In the mean time trying the following may help increase your frame rate:
Ensure the Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic filtering settings in your graphics driver control panel are set to “Application Controlled”. For Nvidia users right click on the Nvidia icon in your system tray and select “Nvidia Control Panel” from the popup menu or run the nvcplui.exe file located in /WINDOWS/system32/. Click on “Manage 3D settings” in the left hand pane and in the right hand pane ensure Anisotropic filtering is set to “Application-controlled” and Antialiasing is also set to “Application-controlled”.
ATI users should right click the ATI icon in their system tray and select “Catalyst Control Centre” from the popup menu. When in the control centre click the “Graphics” button in the top left of the screen then select 3D from the drop down window. In the 3D window select the AA tab and ensure the “Use application settings” check box is ticked, then click on the AF tab and again ensure the “Use application settings” check box is ticked.
There are also some options in game that can be tweaked that can help increase the frame-rate. Below are the options that will have the greatest impact on performance.
You can lower the FSAA setting to 2x or 4x which should be adequate at higher PC resolutions.
Try setting the Filtering option to “Trilinear”, this will still use anisotropic filtering on the in-game objects that need it most and is an excellent quality/performance compromise setting.
Lowering the motion blur setting, medium should look fine on most systems.
Lowering the car detail setting.

• My screen has gone black/funny colours!!!!
If you see this issue change your graphics settings so that the Shadow Detail setting is set to off. Also try running the game in Win 98/ME compatibility mode in XP or if you are using Vista attempt to use XP compatibility mode. We will attempt to find a better solution.

• My game hangs during the NFS Championship.
This will be fixed in an upcoming PS3 update. In the mean time not using the Zonda R in this competition will work round this issue.

• The high score tables aren’t working!
We are working with our online guys to get these back up and running as soon as we can.

• Why does PhysX give me an error when I install the game?
This is most likely because you have an older version of PhysX installed. Using the Add or Remove Programs feature in Control Panel ensure there are no instances of PhysX appearing in your list of installed applications. If there is an old version present then please remove it and re-run the installer. If you do not have any PhysX software installed and you are still seeing an error then install the latest version of the software available from the Nvidia website and re-run the installer.

• What’s up with tuning?
We are currently looking into this issue and hope to have a resolution soon. Please keep an eye on this thread for further updates.

• My steering wheel feels unresponsive
It is recommend that you set the wheel to 360 degrees of turning lock and 0% speed sensitivity. We also recommend that you do not set the steering lock to anything higher than 450 degrees without then also adjusting the lock settings for your car in the advanced setup screens. Using the Logitech control panel set the steering lock to 360 degrees, then in-game select the appropriate preset for the wheel. Also using the in-game options set the speed sensitivity to 0% and ensure the steering deadzone is set to 0%. We recommend this as a good starting point however you may want to spend some time tweaking these values to better suit your driving style.

Thanks Blade!!! Not to be mean but I think it would be a good idea to split PS3 from PC issues so that every one is on the same page, nonetheless this is a great start. Keep us posted bud. Thank you very much.

Vancouver Blade

• What’s up with tuning?
We are currently looking into this issue and hope to have a resolution soon. Please keep an eye on this thread for further updates.

Click to expand...

What is wrong with the tuning? I haven't noticed any problems with it.. Is this a PC issue?

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to collect the data and report it! 👍

Yeah great to see the team is working to sort out the bugs quickly AND taking the time to keep all the various forum comunities informed, nice to see some workarounds while the patch is being worked on. I do feel Shift isn't recieving the praise it's deserving of, the usual EA hate seems to be as insane as ever LOL For me Shift brings that old school feeling of racing last seen in the original TOCA series absaloutly fantastic, the bugs? though evident are not realy spoiling the enjoyment of the game for me though the PS3 damage fix has added a lot! I noticed however there is absaloutly no damage in online races, I take it this is to keep the servers at a solid speed?

Good looking out getting these bugs fixed. Shift is a fantastic game underneath the bugs. Get them sorted out and it will be a solid racer!

Thanks for communicating our issues with them. I showed them yesterday on Facebook what the Carrera GT is doing at Spa. I really want to enjoy this game, but the defects make that not possible at the moment.

I'd like to buy this game, but I won't until some things are ironed out. Mostly, the bouncing and the lack of online room lists forcing you to be dumped into random rooms. Yeah, the workaround for that is to host your own races, that's besides the point and does not resolve the terrible feature.

Great Start to getting the game updated, I have been a huge fan of the NFS series since 3DO but sadly have been disappointed in the last few titles. Shift has definitely won me back and I have been enjoying the game. I think it is great that you have found this Forum as there are some great individuals and gamers participating in these threads. On the same note I appreciate that someone from the NFS Shift team has taken notice to the issues seen by many of these serious driving simulator gamers. Keep up the good work and keep the updates coming.

TsukubaTrueno

What is wrong with the tuning? I haven't noticed any problems with it..

Click to expand...

You can't select the rightmost values of any slider. Also, several sliders are mislabeled and some of the descriptions are wrong.

Once the bouncing issue is fixed the game will improve ten fold, that's my major issue and I hope it is one of the first fixed.

Thanks for the posting this list Blade... Very much appreciated... Hope they get the tuning sorted out soon...

Paulie

Once the bouncing issue is fixed the game will improve ten fold, that's my major issue and I hope it is one of the first fixed.

Click to expand...

I honestly haven't come across this myself, only very slightly in the Porsche and that's only because the engine's in the back and the weight balance is off.

80Y 2C2

I honestly haven't come across this myself, only very slightly in the Porsche and that's only because the engine's in the back and the weight balance is off.

Click to expand...

It's more pronounced in certain cars. Other cars do not appear to suffer as much (thankfully). Example: drive an R8 tuned to level 3 around Spa for a lap or three: sharp as a katana. Then do the same in a Shelby GT500 tuned to level 3: boing, boing, boing.

Try a Porsche Carrera GT at Spa, that's the worst one I've come across I think. A level 3 Camaro or Works Camaro is also amazingly bad.

Paulie

Try a Porsche Carrera GT at Spa, that's the worst one I've come across I think. A level 3 Camaro or Works Camaro is also amazingly bad.

Click to expand...

Agreed, I did the invitational event for the Carrera GT @ Spa and noticed a large amount of bouncing on the first turn. Similarly, there was a heap of bouncing from the McLaren F1 in it's own manufacturer event in the Tier 4 events category.

My question for you Vancouver Blade: aside from the various technical glitches, there's a lot that is excellent about Shift. However, we "sim-oriented" racers would like a game with more rigorous physics. I can't help feeling that those physics are buried somewhere under the current physics in Shift. I understand that EA was probably hedging its bets by creating a semi-sim game, but given the positive response to the more realistic bias of this NFS title, is there any prospect that a future update might increase the sim aspect of Shift? We would be eternally grateful!

So you're looking to fix the ''bouncing'' ? Nice I hope you'll succeed. 👍

The bouncing issue could also be labeled "cars with lower ride heights respond unrealistically to bumps on the road". Even if your car doesn't start bouncing all over the place (so far that happened to me in 2 events including the Carreras at Spa), little bumps on the track upset the car hugely, particularly on the faster tuned cars with lower ride heights or firm suspension. It makes running cars like the BMW M3 GT2 frustrating.

I wanted to add that quite a bit of the upgrade menus are wrong. For example, the Civic Si's "turbo upgrade" (stage 1) description is read as being an ECU reflash and that sort of thing...And the "race upgrade" option to "Increase boost" does not show any effect in the stats for horsepower or torque, though it might have had the 0-60 drop or something.

I ran my Audi TT down the long back straight at the Ring and found top speed to show 161mph and about 2000 rpm shy of redline. I adjusted the gearing in quick tune towards "acceleration" (from 50 to 45) and found the car now on the rev limiter at the same 161 mph. I set the gearing back where it was and decreased the downforce from 50 to 0 and top speed still stayed at 161 mph with the tach 2000 rpm shy of redline as before. I tried all sorts of gearing and downforce combinations and absolutely nothing I did ever changed the car's top speed from 161 mph.

That to me is a problem with the tuning.

ANFD

I ran my Audi TT down the long back straight at the Ring and found top speed to show 161mph and about 2000 rpm shy of redline. I adjusted the gearing in quick tune towards "acceleration" (from 50 to 45) and found the car now on the rev limiter at the same 161 mph. I set the gearing back where it was and decreased the downforce from 50 to 0 and top speed still stayed at 161 mph with the tach 2000 rpm shy of redline as before. I tried all sorts of gearing and downforce combinations and absolutely nothing I did ever changed the car's top speed from 161 mph.

That to me is a problem with the tuning.

Click to expand...

The Veyron Manufacturer race has the Veyron topping out at like 190 and we all know that car can go over 250!!!

Problems with Tuning

Yesterday afternoon, I sent a message to 5 friends informing them of a tournament I had put together for 10pm EST that evening. I would be creating a private room for us and we would run 4 events, a 6 pt. car, a 10 pt. car, a 14 pt. car and an unlimited event.

I spent the next 6 hours dialing in 4 cars, one for each of the events. Using "Advanced Tuning" I perfected handling and gearing for each event. The cars handled bumps exceptionaly well and gearing produced redline just at the moment of braking at the end of the longest straight. I was quite satisfied that I would be more than competitive

I had to quit the game in order to join one of the competitors in a standard XMB voice chat to discuss the tournament. I reloaded the game just prior to the 10pm start and did not have time to again pre-run the cars. Imagine my surprise when I discovered in the races that all the tune settings had somehow reverted to some ridiculous default.

Cars were now reaching redline before 1/2 down the straights and one car wouldn't even come close to redline in 5th gear let alone the 6th gear where it had been before. I had tested each car on the scheduled track and had perfectly smooth runs down the straights with really good suspension settings. The cars now bounced everywhere and one car in one event suddenly seemed to have no brakes at all ! Also had one event where my car refused to leave the line and we started over in vain 3 times in an effort to get it to go. Finally, one of the other drivers created a new room, and the car then took off as normal 👎

EA claims to have "patched" 25 of the known glitches with their recent update. The update was only 34Mb so I'm convinced they're just blowing more smoke, you know where 👎

The only appeal this game had to me was in private room online play. If one is not able to drive the car from one mode to the other, then there is no point in owning this game other than generating frustration and angst.

I will be returning this game tomorrow for a store credit hopefully and doubt I will ever buy another EA fiasco again 👎

I can confirm ANFD's story.

Gearing appears to be a problem since the latest patch. Usually it's fine in quick race, but take it online and the gear ratios sometimes go haywire. The gears appear to be shortened somehow. Getting out of the room and restarting usually makes it go away. Not cool if you have a race and you can't keep up because your 6.0 car revs out at 201 kmh, halfway down the straight.

I'm cool with changes in tuning and settings in a patch, but bugs like this are annoying as hell.

NLxAROSA

I can confirm ANFD's story.

Gearing appears to be a problem since the latest patch. Usually it's fine in quick race, but take it online and the gear ratios sometimes go haywire. The gears appear to be shortened somehow. Getting out of the room and restarting usually makes it go away. Not cool if you have a race and you can't keep up because your 6.0 car revs out at 201 kmh, halfway down the straight.

Click to expand...

Yep... or like I had two times yesterday. My ratios suddenly were way longer, and I was forced to use only 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in Spa. Fourth was banging against limiter, and 5th was so long that speed started to fall down.

Quite frustrating cause I had nice company to race against.

AutoAki

Quite frustrating cause I had nice company to race against.

Click to expand...

I think it was the same race, actually. Your gears too long, mine too short. It was so frustrating to see you guys accelerating away while my car reached the limiter in 6th.

Guys I added the Official Need for Speed in my Facebook and watched a video blog from Drew at NFS. I emailed Drew since he gave his email in the blog video requesting any issues that needed to be addressed with the game. I told him I thought a member of his team may have found these threads within gtplanet if not to check them out. He sits in the cube next to Vancouver Blade and he has heard about the threads/issues. In all my gaming years I have never seen any team from a game actively and openly participate in a forum like this to make improvements to a product after a release. I am honestly waiting patiently to see what patches come out in the next few weeks/months to correct some of the issues we have been experiencing.👍

All PS3 related issues:

So excited for the International Event, Viper SRT10 vs FordGT, on the start, the car won't move at all.

Tuning in the game is totally screwed, pretty much the values have been changed and you can't carry the tune for whatever reason.

Also if you reset the tune (advanced tune) on any particular car to default even when you haven't even touched the tune, it will change the values and what I found out was that when you do this, the car becomes more drivable than before, whatttaa??!?

Grip issues:
Oversteer/Understeer issue please have it fixed, cause it's a mess even if you set to oversteer, it's totally not real and it doesn't work for all cars, AWD and FWD is horrible.

Please tune down the tire grip, 120% is way too much.

Solution: Patch with a new mode, Simulation Mode for US, SIM guys. If you guys fix the issues that has been posted and put a new SIM MODE, man this game is going to sell even more. Look at this, people are responding and buying the game regardless of the issues and that's something to be proud. Are we asking too much?? I don't think so, it's up to you guys to make your customers happy. I am sure a lot people will agree that by creating a new mode, SIM mode will bring this game up there in a heart beat, Forza and GT move over.

A couple of bits of info. With the Title Update that we released last week it was mainly focused on the back-end features which aren't particularly noticeable in general use. Other than the damage feature these weren't things which you would notice on a day to day basis; they're more like things which make the overall experience smoother.

The list of issues I've been collecting are for the game team to evaluate and fix where possible. I'll speak to them about the pre-tuned race settings to see if it's some in-game setting which strips the tuning and to see what they can do about it.

ANFD - if you could email me with any more details you think would help us review the issue please send it to Andrew@NeedforSpeed.com and i'll forward it internally. That goes for anyone; I'll help where I can.

jswilli1 - Thanks for you post; it's good to hear we're being useful. Drew and I are gamers too so we'll always help where we can.

Thanks Blade we appreciate all the hard work.

One thing I wish, the PC game, the mods are already unlocking some cool stuff and making this great game even better. Don't know if you have seen it yet, but they are adding and fixing issues that we have with the console version. Maybe you guys could take a look at that and see what you guys could do for us stock with the PS3/Xbox360 version you know.

Just to show you some stuff they have done:
Tire Settings
Grip have more realism to them
Wheel Settings, Change controller layout
Paint Editor included Letters
Look Left/Right option
Blur Effect

Gosh there are so much already which it makes us on the console side a bit sad when we too could get that maybe from a patch.

Vancouver Blade

A couple of bits of info. With the Title Update that we released last week it was mainly focused on the back-end features which aren't particularly noticeable in general use. Other than the damage feature these weren't things which you would notice on a day to day basis; they're more like things which make the overall experience smoother.

The list of issues I've been collecting are for the game team to evaluate and fix where possible. I'll speak to them about the pre-tuned race settings to see if it's some in-game setting which strips the tuning and to see what they can do about it.

ANFD - if you could email me with any more details you think would help us review the issue please send it to Andrew@NeedforSpeed.com and i'll forward it internally. That goes for anyone; I'll help where I can.

jswilli1 - Thanks for you post; it's good to hear we're being useful. Drew and I are gamers too so we'll always help where we can.

Click to expand...

YAY for interaction with your fanbase!!!!

I suppose it's been brought up already, concerning when the handling goes sour on Stage 2/3 and full Works mods?

From a different thread: Renown Tuning - Now Open For Business

DaveTheStalker
Is there a general rule of thumb for the Works cars (or Stage 2/3) to get them to handle like they should? It seems the general consensus, once you throw on the full mods the cars just become garbage. What is causing it, is it a glitch, or do they just set the setup to be junk so you have to wrench on the car?

Click to expand...

Terronium-12 said,

From all the tuning I've done it seems just that - once you outfit the vehicle with Stage 3 upgrades or Works Convert it it's susceptible to bump-jumping (what I call it) it's mostly due to the suspension being far too soft, not enough downforce being present or there doesn't seem to be any torque shift present. So the vehicle either bump-jumps or the rear wheels are just excessively overpowered.

Click to expand...

PD should do this. I love how developers get in-touch with their fans first hand. 👍