I think it is time, to finally consider stability

I appreciate most of the new content you guys have been constantly putting out in the 2 years I've been here, GGG.
I like some of it more, some of it less, and you had quite a bit of both brilliant successes and epic blunders in this long journey - but as a coder I know just how much effort and long nights it takes, to keep doing those constant updates and upgrades you do, and do them on schedule.
thank you.

however, it seems the technical stability of the game never really was a top priority for you. it never was #1, or #2... or high enough to do something highly noticeable about it.
I'm sure you are doing something behind the scenes and away from the patch notes' spot light, but I'm also sure you aren't doing enough.

and I'm not even talking about complex issues like synchronization/packet-loss-handling or server-DC a.k.a "failed to join instances", which typically require taking care of both net code AND server quality/quantity itself.

I'm talking about loading times. log-in-screen crashes. graphics. particles. Strongboxes. weather effects. ground effects...
sure, I'm playing on a potato that could only handle this game during Open Beta and started to choke towards release, but I see threads of people with hardware systems exponentially stronger than mine, and they are facing the exact same issues.
this leads me to a grim conclusion, not only did Client-side stability not get better over time - it got worse.

and what's even worse than that, is you aren't even creating work-arounds, like giving players a menu option to tone-down/disable FPS-killing, game-freezing effects.
manually editing the settings file to produce various stages of "mud quality" global graphics - is literally all we players ever had.

I hereby request... no beg of you: the game is popular. the content is in good enough quality. there are players like myself who find this game good enough and additctive enough to play for literally thousands of hours.
please, make technical stability priority #1. right now.

Why not get a new computer? you can build a nice gaming machine for like $800 if you follow a guide like at anandtech.

I never crash, strong box lag or any of that crap. Yes I have desync but that network/internet problem or limitation. Things I can fix I do.

"

johnKeys wrote:

... no beg of you: the game is popular. the content is in good enough quality. there are players like myself who find this game good enough and additctive enough to play for literally thousands of hours.
please, make technical stability priority #1. right now.

Signed.
I have a pretty good PC, but other games just feel sooooo much more fluid that one can only conclude implementation incompetence at GGG. You have such great ideas and concepts, but the implementation really ruins quite a few of them. This would be hands down the best game around if you just polished the performance a bit.
I've lead several teams of developers in the past and I can honestly say that none of my programmers would have felt OK about releasing code with such poor performance.

He still hasn't upgraded his potato lol

PoE is hardcore, having fast loading times would be too instant gratification and smooth FPS would make the game too easy :P

No, but seriously... I don't see it happening anytime soon. The priority in the next half year is Act 4, unless GGG wants to really loose their last faithful players.

This post gets my VOTE +1,

My son and myself were discussing this very issue, and we both appreciate the little additions to the game. Graphics is one thing but playing the game is another.

We both have reasonable machines, and we both play many hours, but we are both frustrated and annoyed when we get a crash and get pissed off via it.

We both are dying to play Hardcore but can't due to the constant DIEsync and/or crashes.

Yes we have noticed all the nice new creature throughout the game and the cosmetic changes to the game, but what is the use of all this, if one can't play the game without a crash happening?

Edit:

We also agree on the fact that, we would prefer a stability improvement any-day over a content update.

"

morbo wrote:

The priority in the next half year is Act 4, unless GGG wants to really loose their last faithful players.

it has come to a point, where if I had to choose between Act 4 and a patch the size of an "Act 4" patch, which mostly focuses on performance and stability - I'd choose the latter.

@Aim_Deep and Xav,

your off-topic, did-not-read-lel, didn't-even-attempt-to-get-the-point posts annoy me, but they did bump this thread, hopefully into GGG's line of sight.

so here's an answer I will not repeat: I could go visit the same shop Slayer does, and come out with the same NASA-grade super-computer he did, which can probably run PoE AND calculate a trajectory to Jupiter in parallel, on the same core.
that would not change the fact, GGG really do need to greatly optimize their code, or at the very least give the option to customize settings, so people who don't own a "Slayer PC" can keep Path Of Exile from making their system bleed.

I have been able to verify what is the problem with this game regarding graphics.

At my hometown, I have a 12 core, GTX 660 16 RAM SSD computer and I can't feel anything, ovbiously.

But now I am abroad and I have an old laptop, and trying to play PoE with it has become the most frustrating experience ever.

The other day, while just runnning around catacombs testing a char, I realized why this game is damn slow.

I was trying to lower as much as possible the graphics so I could at least try to play decently, while I realized that if I turned off the MTX's from my char, the game run MUCH faster.

That left me intrigued and I decided to do other tests. Later on, I went again to catacombs and I realized that just past the entrance, the game runs SUPER FLUID, even on this laptop with a Intel graphics card. I zoomed in, and the FPS were exactly as fast as on my super computer.

Then I started to think ... how can this be ? The game is running super smooth here, I will try to go a bit further and analize what happens. I started walking and suddenly there was a crazy framedrop and from there I got sustained at 10 fps. There were no monsters, nothing around yet.

Well it turned out to be the fire torches. You can easily do that yourself and you will see what I am saying.

As soon as there is one little object with a particle on the screen, it does not matter how big it is, the WHOLE game goes down.

This is because the particle system they use it is just not working properly on the game.

Maybe it is a free OpenGL library that sucks ? Maybe they created the particle system themselves and IT SUCKS ? I don't really know, but I bet is something like that.

The game would run just fine in almost ANY computer, even on 6 year, Intel graphics card computers if the particle system they are using was properly implemented on the game or they were just using a proper particle system.

Try that in catacombs yourselves and you will see what I am saying. It's pretty lame to realize that the game would actually run smooth on your shit computer but what is making it so shitty is that terrible particle system they are using.

So the question is ... GGG, is it possible to replace the particle system ? For what I have discovered, seems that the engine is fine but what is making this game unplayable is the particle system. Can you spend some time replacing it entirely ?

They don't have an engine programmer guy afaik. :(

"

chromafunk wrote:

So the question is ... GGG, is it possible to replace the particle system ? For what I have discovered, seems that the engine is fine but what is making this game unplayable is the particle system. Can you spend some time replacing it entirely ?

Yes, the particle system is the culprit of most if not all FPS slowdowns (rain, burning grounds, mass explosions, rampage mods....

There was one manifesto post, where Chris mentioned a new faster implementation of particles (something called "ribbons"), but it looks like it falls in the same vaporware category as "new trading system"...

Client Performance (Updated June 16)