Performance Improvements

Hello, thanks for the great work and this great game.
In matters of performance i always wondered why you cant disable certian graphic effects, remove the light or just scale it down to somthing different, i can understand that some kind of visibilty of stuff is needed by game/player.
Its for some players just impossible to play in groups, the whole game warps around.
I stopped to play in groups and do all solo, its just not worth to have that stress.
Making tree builds for groups would be just awsome, also there are items and gems for that,
still its not playable as it should be.

Thank you very much for the update and the efforts you are making in informing the community. Some may think it is a given, but in my opinion the interaction between developers and community in this game is something that other developers should look up to.
I've played this game on and off for several years now (since the first open beta) and I can safely say that the improvement is something that you must be proud of, especially as a newly founded company. Not just for the specifics of the content or the stability or even the performance (I would not even complain for desync). But mostly for the fact that the years that passed you focused in game quality and balance in the community when others would only be interested in profit. Congrats on your priorities and the dedication of the team.

Keep up the good work!

Greetings from Greece

As nice as these things are, they don't seem to address the FPS issues. Stuttering, freezing from stuff having to load on the fly, SOME draw calls due to lighting... but what about all of the other stuff?

* Why does every zone with rain take so much longer to load?

* Why does FPS go from 144+ to 30-40 in many scenarios when there isn't that much going on? Why do simple particle effects just eat your FPS? Discharge (fakener) for example doesn't look like that detailed of a particle effect (its something you would see in other games all the time) but it drains your FPS by a ton. There's a lot of skills like this (Icestorm, etc).

* Why is load speed "capped" (SSD vs Ramdisk produces little to no difference, and often is as fast as friend with HDD)?

* Slightly unrelated, but why were real AA options removed?

Just a few points.

Glad to read about asynchronous loading and DX11 client

Dear Chris,

about the problem with Exile-loading on strongboxes which bugs me since ever. Maybe it got mentioned already but i wont read through every relating post on it.

I mean there are like 20 different exiles or so ? Just let your system pick 3 or 4 different exile-files BEFORE a players enteres a map or a zone. You said loading screens are a way to stuff the ram with probably necessary files, so wouldnt it be ideal to let those critical files be already loaded before you even open a box ?

No one would be harmed in any way, its random in anyway, just the point of loading is better for everyone.

Lets say i open a Tropical Island map, and then the system picks 4 different exiles like igna-phoenix, greyfur, magnus and that leapslammer while loading. How long can this take, 4 extr seconds?

If there is a strongboxe and it happens that i roll the exile mod on it, it will randomly pick the files of 1 of the 4 exiles to spawn before i even open it. And when i open it there is no loading required anymore, just instant spawn - kill - get loot - no danger.

Sry for bad englando.

"

Crevox wrote:

As nice as these things are, they don't seem to address the FPS issues. Stuttering, freezing from stuff having to load on the fly, SOME draw calls due to lighting... but what about all of the other stuff?

* Why does every zone with rain take so much longer to load?

* Why does FPS go from 144+ to 30-40 in many scenarios when there isn't that much going on? Why do simple particle effects just eat your FPS? Discharge (fakener) for example doesn't look like that detailed of a particle effect (its something you would see in other games all the time) but it drains your FPS by a ton. There's a lot of skills like this (Icestorm, etc).

* Why is load speed "capped" (SSD vs Ramdisk produces little to no difference, and often is as fast as friend with HDD)?

* Slightly unrelated, but why were real AA options removed?

Just a few points.

I think most of issues are because of synchronized assets loading, I think assets are loaded in main game thread so it stalls (freezes) game until asset is loaded.
FPS issues I think is because main thread it too bloated with work and is eating you whole CPU core - no time left for doing things = stall. Reducing Draw Calls will reduce CPU overhead and "fix" that, but real fix is deferred rendering (read: D3D11+).
So async assets loading and DX11 should fix all your problems.

I get same amount of FPS on maxed out details and lowest one, only stutters less on low details because some assets are not used.
Also for me loading speed on SSD is quite good after latest patch on Windows 10.

that's awesome to hear. i know a few of my friends who play with the -nosound bc it causes game crashes on loading screans during gameplay, but overall this is an awesome post and gives us an idea of what you are doing how the game is progressing and such.

but can we get the option to turn off some of the extra effects that can load late.like the mtx on exiles or perandus and make them look normal or put just like a special certain aura around there feet, but also to turn off water effects. rain and watermoving effects increase my loading time and can cause me to crash.

also im on a 64 bit dualcore processor. with 8 gigs of ram and i do max out alot on cpu when loading screens.

Just allow people to reduce/remove particle effects...

Im gonna freeze myself till 2017 and 64bit cliet release \0/

Have an option to disable allied particles. Would help people with Cast on crit/summoner etc finding groups since it will not be bleeding there computer of resources rendering the discharge/minion vfx.