The screen freeze when opening chests has to go!

I agree with the loading times. One would figure it would preload all of the game assets with such horrible loading times.

Strange. I alt most boxes until I get exile mod. Never experience freeze.... At least no PC freezes. Freeze on open mod, well that's just working as advertised. :)

I run the game in a ramdrive. It still takes time to access PoE data. However it is processing resources is slow. Shaders are a particular bug bear for me. I do wish there were fallback shaders (like the Unreal ones a previous poster mentioned) so I didn't have zones like Docks and Battlefront lag spiking constantly (even though I am running entirely out of ram so its a cpu optimisation issue with the shaders).

Died today when an ice nova one shot me. However it was instant and the timer sound was still playing after I had died. I clicked, clicked to move but never moved and instantly was gibbed.

Nobody knows more than GGG that this engine needs optimising. It may take the community to be left in the lurch for 6 months to a year for full optimisation to occur. A lot of people would ditch the company in that time. Especially the hardcore long term players who would get sick of no new league, no new items, no new buig fixes, no new expansions and no new reason to re-roll.

It could happen that some larger company buys GGG shares or the IP but that would probably be the worst decision for the game considering the amazing support the game has from its developers. I have played thousands of games in my time (im kinda old) and never have I seen some loving support than this game. I would hate to see that go but I really do want to see GGG get the money/staff/resources to improve this game and it's engine.

As it is... there are things in this game that make Hardcore leagues/races a real bitch to play and likely an investment that will waste your time. I am on my 4th character this league and 2 of them were performance based deaths. Not simply my PC and it's specs but core issues with the engine.

I only wish they would let me code some fixes. I would do it for free (or maybe a fancy title like "Chaos Engine Supporter" or something nice).

There's been a few complaints about ice nova 1 shots lately. When I played yesterday I took note of the strongboxes that I opened with the ice nova mod. I couldn't remember having a problem with it before.

And now I know why it's not a problem for me after paying attention yesterday.

- I click the box to open it.
- I walk away.
- When the ice nova goes off, I'm well out of range and don't get hit by it.

So..... why are you guys freezing in place when you open and I am not?

My pc is getting close to 4 years old.

Everything "new" that was "added to the game" in what we could refer as "recently" lags when loaded.
This, for some reason, includes the Undying Barricade, which I assume is the first "laggy addition" to the game.

This happens:
- When loading the Undiying Barricade.
- When loading the Decanter Spiritus.
- When loading a Rogue Exile.
- When loading a Lockbox.
- When loading a Shrine.
- When loading a Master.
- When loading any kind of visual microtransaction.
- When loading the freaking sparkles added to Merveil's freaking piles of gold.

All this needs to be fixed/improved/optimized.
I do have a quite good quite new computer, is not about people using 4+ years old computers, is about poor optimization. If necessary, make everyone download the full game again or something, but do something to fix it, as its freaking ridiculous.

Sometimes it can be "useful" (as I can always tell that there is a Rogue, Lockbox, Master or Shrine near by because of the mini-freeze I get 1 screen away), but its ridiculous that so many core elements to the game suffer from this... The Undying Barricade? Okay... One exception... The Rogue Exiles? Okay, they have microtransaction and where poorly added or something... BUT EVERY FREAKING THING THAT GETS ADDED?
Specially bad if you get a longer than average freeze by opening a lockbox with a Rogue Exile on it that uses Microtransactions, the Witch that summons Statues seems particularly bad for that matter, as she lags a second time when summoning the first statue (ridiculous!).

Is like the game has to look in a different folder/whatever for anything added after the Beta stages and freezes/lags while doing so.
Seriously, the freaking sparkles in Merveil's gold piles are freaking doing this! Thats how I knew/noticed they were new, because they do freeze/lag you when you get close now... Freaking sparkles, on gold, freezing the game...

Bump.

As soon as I open a box I whirling blade out of there!

this is a free-to-play game that requires very good hardware to play it optimally lol

I can run metro: last light with everything maxed and never go below 60 fps.
PoE runs at around 40 fps. Freezes and fps drops have been getting worse with each update.
I'd love for GGG to stop pumping out mtxs and optimise the game a bit. It sucks having a 144hz monitor and not be able to use it for a game that should run much smoother.

I have identical hardware specs to the OP; the game runs fine for me on a 7200rpm drive but only if I do a full defragment on my path of exile directory after every patch, as files are re-fragmented at that point. Periodical defragging is also a good idea as there is a cache in the directory that is frequently modified.

The reason it happens on opening chests and strongboxes is to do with the fact that the assets are being loaded at the point you open the chest (i.e. not preloaded). I imagine it is done this way because if the assets were pre-loaded it would be very easy to snoop your network connection and determine the contents of the chest/strongbox before opening, thus gaining unfair advantage. I get a freeze on strongboxes if I don't defragment, as the on-demand loading + fragmented files is too much for my poor old 7200 to handle. Preloading all possible strongbox/chest assets would make the level loading times too long (again bad on a 7200 and horrific if you don't defrag). So I doubt it will change. If you're on middle-age hardware like me you have to get used to defragging games, or upgrade to an SSD.

If file fragmentation isn't the issue, I'd suggest you check your overclock, the Q6600 runs at 2.4 normally and an overclock gone wrong might slow things down a bit. Mine runs ok at 3.3 but degrades at higher clocks until crapping out.

Hope either of those suggestions helps. Might just be one of those things, some things just refuse to work properly even on seemingly identical machines. It's definitely not because your hardware is too old (though like me you're getting close ;o).