VERY GOOD Feedback

[mindcontroler]

Look, I’ve been complaining about performance issues since I started, which was around 0.6.8 I think, but GOD DAMN. I gotta give praise when it’s deserved as well.

I was hoping I could hold myself back from the curiosity of playing until at least 0.8.0, so I would have A LOT of content to go through, but I read the patch notes for 0.7.4 and saw the performance improvement part, and I said to myself “hey, I should test this new version and see how it’s going”, and DAMN performance has improved A LOT.

My FPS prior to it, playing with everything on either minimum or off was never a fixed number, and never went above 40-45ish, which was ATROCIOUS given my PC isn’t even close to a potato. (I’m more on the medium-high end of things.)

I can now run the game on Ultra on a steady, STEADY, 50fps. Not my ideal number, but I did try it just to see how it would look/work. This is a MASSIVE improvement.

EHG, congratulations are very much in order here. Whoever you guys hired to help solve the performance issues, please shake their hands for me. This is beyond incredible.

Edit: Quick side note, after I played a lot more, I still notice slight (note, really slight, but they are there, although not anywhere near how it was) FPS drops in areas with a lot of light sources. Not well lit areas, the outside areas have been a breeze, but areas with a lot of torches/foundries/whatnot. The lighting artefacts emanating of those objects are acting weird, usually causing some lag, but as soon as you leave them behind, or even just move a little further from them, not even completely out of their sight, everything goes back to normal. And since I’m already here, the re-spec dude(tte) is not working.

[lazaro]

What is your PC configuration?

[mindcontroler]

I5-3330 3.2Ghz (very outdated, my biggest problem and I know it)
16gb memory
GTX 970 4gb OCed for better clock speeds

You still having crappy fps mate?

[lazaro]

i7 3770k, 8gb 2133 MHz DDR3, gtx 970 OC, 1tb SSD. everything is ultra ultra with 50 to 60 FPS… perfect, I loved this patch.

[mindcontroler]

This looks like a good sign to me. Aside from your processor being better, this looks like a decent point to measure the current performance, given how close our systems are.

P.S.: I’m very much in the same boat, loving the current patch.

[bustar4o]

The performance in arena is still as awful as it could possibly be.

[Irrelevant]

Yeah it looks like LE is heaviely CPU dependend. With my I5 most troubbles seem to be related to it even when it shouldn’t be a problem system requirement wise. It suxx to be poor :D.

[mindcontroler]

That’s the case with all ARPGs, pretty much. The games are more “math based” than “graphics based”. Gotta run them scripts.

[Irrelevant]

Sure but it never felt like this ;). On top of it when I look at the system requirements I think they need another pass.

[Telzen]

Man why does the game hate me? I’ve got a i7-6700k, gtx 970, and 16 gb of ram and yet the game is still basically unplayable even on low settings.

Edit: Actually its weird. Since 0.7.4 reset settings to medium once I got in game after the update I changed them around between the different settings to see how it affected my fps. It seemed I had to run it on a mix of mostly low to get at least 35-45 fps. Now I just tried setting it to ultra from the main menu instead and I can still get the same fps and even a few of the zones that had drops doesn’t have them as badly. Is there maybe some performance degradation that goes on when changing the settings around from in game?

Wait that still doesn’t explain it all because I opened the game today and didn’t mess with the settings at all, played on mostly low for hours and some zones tanked hard. Now with it on ultra the fps is basically the same and those zones tank even less. The settings are just still really weird.

[mindcontroler]

Oh yes, they are far from having the performance issues completely fixed yet. It’s remarkable how it is right now from how it was prior to the current patch, and that needed to be said.

Lighting artefacts causing lag, spawning objects also lag the game a lot (Act 2, the spawning fire/lightning skeletons)… One thing I noticed running a Primalist now is that they are unnecessarily overloading the graphics interface by having everything your character do interact with the whole world, instead of a top layer and the rest just being sprites in the background.

I don’t know if other classes have a way of checking this out, but try out the Fury Leap from the Primalist near a ledge, or on a bridge or something. The game actually has vectors for all the map , and the “crash” effect from the leap, which leaves a mark, shows extending itself all the way to the bottom. While nice, it is completely frivolous and could very easily be removed in favor of improving performance. Because what this means is, while you can’t see it on other skills, because they are plane fixed, they are still interacting with the “bottom” of the map, even when said bottom can’t be seen. (When you are walking on a flat area it doesn’t mean there is nothing below that, with how it is right now. So while you see the skill exclusively on the plane you’re on, the game checks everytime time if it should connect down there, or even worse, it actually connects and leaves behind graphic artefacts, which bogs down performance even more.)

One simple fix for this would be making everything that’s not directly interactable for the player (read: areas where your character can’t touch while walking, like however high the PCs are in pixels in relation to a wall, and everything below the walking plane) a sprite. Layer what you see more, essentially. But when I say simple, from the way they currently implemented the graphical design of the game, this would pretty much mean a complete reboot of the graphics engine. So yeah, simple but a massive amount of work.

Edit: one of their bigger problems for the performance though will be working with Unity. Which is currently the same problem GGG is having. Unity is a good, but simple engine. It can be used to make these complex games, as PoE very clearly proves, but running a lot of calculations on it all the time is very intensive. PoE suffers from pretty much the same performance issues, engine wise, as LE.