Technical Report on Loading and Performance Issues in Path of Exile
1. Problem Overview
The game experiences excessively long loading times, especially when entering towns or areas with high player density. Loading times can range from 5 to 10 minutes, and performance degrades proportionally with the number of players visible in the instance.
During this process, the game exhibits very high disk activity (up to 500 MB/s according to internal game metrics with F1 enabled). The apparent cause is related to the generation and loading of shaders by both the game engine and the graphics driver (NVIDIA).
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2. Observed System Behavior
The game constantly reprocesses and regenerates shaders, without any apparent effective reuse of those already compiled.
The NVIDIA driver's shader cache folder can reach sizes of up to 30 GB, while the game also maintains its own independent cache system, resulting in double loading of shaders (one from the GGG engine and another from the GPU driver).
This behavior persists even after hundreds of hours of gameplay, with no evidence of stabilization or efficient reuse of the existing cache.
RAM consumption reaches values close to 10 GB, even in repetitive scenarios or with previously used resources (e.g., recurring maps or areas).
The heaviest load occurs when the game processes MTX (Microtransactions/Skins) from other players in public areas or cities, which exacerbates loading times and disk usage.
3. Specific Problems Detected
Excessive shader loading: Continuous and inefficient generation of new shaders without effective reuse.
High disk and memory consumption: Uncontrolled caching processes that saturate system resources.
Forced rendering of external content (other players' MTX): The client processes all visible cosmetic objects, including those of other players, negatively impacting initial load times and frame latency.
Lack of visual optimization mechanisms: There are no options to hide players or their MTX in crowded areas.
Poor graphics cache management: Lack of consistency between the GGG cache system and the NVIDIA driver, resulting in redundancy and performance loss.
4. Additional Issues in Priority Management and Rendering
1. Loss of Process Priority When Switching Windows
When the game is running in borderless windowed mode, anomalous behavior is observed when switching focus to another application or monitor.
Under normal circumstances, when the game moves to the background, it is expected to temporarily reduce the loading of textures and shaders to optimize resource usage. However, in Path of Exile, this mechanism does not function correctly.
When the game is brought back to the foreground, the system does not properly restore the unloaded resources, causing:
Sudden performance drops (falling to 10–15 FPS).
Delays in texture and model remapping.
A prolonged "freezing" or stuttering experience that only resolves after several minutes or when changing areas.
In some cases, it appears that the graphics engine enters a degraded priority state, as if it continues to run in the background, affecting responsiveness even when returning to the main focus.
2. Dynamic Degradation of Texture and Model Quality
During gameplay, the graphics engine dynamically adjusts the quality of visual assets, reducing texture resolution, level of detail (LOD), and lighting effects.
This behavior, which could be related to an adaptive streaming system, does not correctly reset when the triggering situation changes.
For example:
When opening the inventory or a complex interface (such as the season tree), the game reduces the background visual quality to prioritize the interface.
However, once the interface is closed, the visual assets are not immediately restored, and the game maintains reduced quality and abnormal performance for several minutes.
The longer the player remains in these interfaces (for example, the season creation tree), the more the overall performance degrades, even without any visible movement or additional load.
3. Impact on Frame Time Stability
This poor handling of process priority changes and resource allocation causes extreme frame time fluctuations, resulting in:
Constant micro-stutters.
Loss of synchronization between CPU and GPU.
Unnecessary shader recompilation after returning to primary focus.
Delays in the reactivation of textures and effects, directly impacting the gameplay experience.
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Closing Remarks and Personal Clarification
I'm not an expert in hardware, graphics engines, or game development, but I'm trying to explain, based on my direct experience, how these problems affect gameplay and the game's actual performance.
Even using all available performance options—low graphics settings, optimization settings from the NVIDIA Control Panel, and manually reducing quality—the problems persist.
I understand that many other people are experiencing the same issues, as similar cases have been reported in various forums and communities. I'm leaving this message with the intention of providing useful information and helping to better understand what's happening, at least from my perspective as a regular player.
If the staff sends me a private message, I can provide them with more information, images, or videos of how the game works and when this effect occurs.
