Mass Effect 3 and Origin 9.5.1.571

2014/11/05 in bugs, gaming

Today Origin received an update, that (I was quite astonished to learn that this wasn’t how it worked in the first place) added the ability to its verify/repair game option, to actually include all the DLC and not just work on the original/non-DLC game files.
To try it out and because my Mass Effect 3 installation is 2.5 years old at this point, I thought it might not hurt to test it before starting to play a few ME3MP matches (yes, I’m still playing this, don’t laugh). It indeed showed that it was including all the DLC packs in this process and happy with this, I finally started playing MP. Now, I have 2.5 years of experience with this game, I’m extremely familiar with almost every characteristic, so I noticed right away something was off when the game now started to sometimes freeze for a second during gameplay (lags due to a bad connection are different). Part of the reason why I still play this game, is this super-smooth flow that seemingly starts to happen after a while (supported by the fact that my PC always delivered 60+ FPS without the slightest twitch), even before charging from one point of the map to the next (I usually play one of the Vanguard characters).
Obviously unpredictable freezes every now and then completely take me out of the game. I repeated the verify, due to a lack of better ideas, but of course this didn’t change anything. “Hitting” something twice to restore the original state only works in movies. I only noticed that this new lag/freeze, that was introduced by using the “repair game” option today, also/even happens in the menu, outside of actual gameplay. Perfect.
My sole hope is now, that maybe Origin will receive yet another update that might improve… something, but sadly I don’t feel optimistic enough to hold my breath.

PS: Alt-Tab doesn’t work anymore when Mass Effect 3 is running…

PPS: I’ve found some other people who have this problem as well, even with other games such as Battlefield, so I’m suspecting maybe something like the overlay is responsible after all (sadly only EA knows for sure if they changed the overlay in this Origin version) and not the verify. The next time I play ME3, I’ll try it without the overlay and see if the problem persists.

//Update

Okay I just verified it. The cause of this is the Origin-overlay. They somehow fucked it up in this latest Origin client update. If the overlay / Origin in-game is disabled, the game works again completely normal. No problems whatsoever, like before. No freezes, alt-tab works again. That’s really shitty regardless, they could at least play a game with a client update before releasing it.