It is still impossible to get 60 fps gameplay end game [SOLVED]

Update: 4-17-2017 All fps issues were solved by going from DX11 to DX9EX

After years and years of performance optimizations it is still an impossibility to get consistent 60 fps with a high clear speed end game build. I have a GTX 970 and i2500k.

I have ran likely over 600 T16 forge of the phoenix maps and not a single time did it feel like a smooth gaming experience. While idle in hideout I have 120 true FPS - my monitor is a 120 mhz refresh so I actually do see the additional 60 frames and it is extremely noticeable going from 60 to 120. But I am not even asking for that. My fps dips as low as 15 and as at best it's 40-50 but tends to hover noticeably lower and is always jagged and uneven.

Is this the sad realty of PoE and it's a case of take it or leave it? Maybe stop playing a ranged aoe build and start heavy striking things to death in order to preserve frame rate? I have spent likely over 800 dollars on the game so far on MTX with the faint hope the game will one day feel smooth but I feel like that day will never come. A smooth game play is literally the only thing I care about in poe.

For reference this is what game play feels like, a sharp FPS drop after every pack that shatters. Youtube's framerate is about 30 so it's harder to notice the hard drop from 120 to 30 but it's better than not showing any examples:


https://youtu.be/x-FSYxyjPHk

"

Nephalim wrote:

After years and years of performance optimizations it is still an impossibility to get consistent 60 fps with a high clear speed end game build. I have a GTX 970 and i2500k.

I have ran likely over 600 T16 forge of the phoenix maps and not a single time did it feel like a smooth gaming experience. While idle in hideout I have 120 true FPS - my monitor is a 120 mhz refresh so I actually do see the additional 60 frames and it is extremely noticeable going from 60 to 120. But I am not even asking for that. My fps dips as low as 15 and as at best it's 40-50 but tends to hover noticeably lower and is always jagged and uneven.

Is this the sad realty of PoE and it's a case of take it or leave it? Maybe stop playing a ranged aoe build and start heavy striking things to death in order to preserve frame rate? I have spent likely over 800 dollars on the game so far on MTX with the faint hope the game will one day feel smooth but I feel like that day will never come.

For reference this is what game play feels like, a sharp FPS drop after every pack that shatters. Youtube's framerate is about 30 so it's harder to notice the hard drop from 120 to 30 but it's better than not showing any examples:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PPyv0NYUcU

Is that video after today's patch?People claiming it did wonders with buffs and shatters

PS,I am at work can't test or see video

"

elwindakos wrote:

Is that video after today's patch?People claiming it did wonders with buffs and shatters

PS,I am at work can't test or see video

I saw the comment about today's patch and gleefully logged on to repeat the run to find utter disappointment. I will try to record a new video with the latest patch with the FPS graph active to show how jagged it is.

Back then when we mapped I had a semi-mediocre laptop with which I've managed solid 50+ FPS with no drops below 50 in D3 (just named the most similar game type, most other games were smooth too with proper settings management) on medium settings, switched to high settings when solo.

Smooth as hell while PoE was a slideshow in parties and also a slideshow against a double Megaera in Crematorium back then, for example.

Now I have a GTX 960 and an i5-6500, and to be honest, the lag is pretty much the same in parties, maybe even worse (maybe not, since I'm used to stable 60 FPS on max settings in every game I've played so far on this PC).

The thing is, even with my laptop back in the day, I experienced almost no lag before Merciless (this was before Malachai, that dude is the lag itself).

Bigger monster packs in Merciless and maps just trashed my FPS. The situation is similar now too.
No issues until Merciless. After my longer break and when I bought this PC I went to see how PoE will work. And while I was slowly progressing trough Normal and Cruel, I thought to myself "fucking finally I'll be able to enjoy this game without fucking slideshows".
And then the Merciless and maps came, pretty much same shit.

Lockstep? Constant micro stutters, but since it's so tightly connected to users internet I'm willing to acknowledge it as my own problem with internet. ~40-60 ping with no packet loss 99%+ of the time, occasional disconnects, learned to live with it.
Been playing other online games and experienced no issues because of my poor connection, no effect on FPS and the connection is stable pretty much always.
I have thousands of hours in other online games, which were PvP based and I never had issues with my internet.

Predictive? Sure it feels so much smoother but the lag is still here in a weird form, like my client is catching up on the server. Especially bad in breaches, which caused me to have numerous near-death situations because I stop Cycloning in the breaches when the game is having a really bad time catching up.
Short stops of Cycloning even though I'm Cycloning in an area without anti-Cyclone environment. Tested that because at first I thought I was hitting rocks and shit so that caused my Cyclone to stop.
Predictive also brought new issues. Such as flat out latency spikes to 150+ ping when there is shocked ground on the screen and I'm hitting monsters.

So I stuck to Lockstep as I'd take a more reliable but choppy as fuck over completely unpredictive Predictive (lol).

And I never party up, not only does it bring the slideshow but the whole screen is cluttered with absolute shit to the point where I can't even see bearers effects on the ground and dying to it.



Fuck these huge monster packs and AoE-above-all. Get rid of it and you fix melee and most performance issues.
(inb4 clairvoyants claiming that small monster packs would make PoE lose playerbase, lmao)

Ah, it feels so good to see Power Siphon again. It's been years since, I think I have to make a wander soon. :) I've always found PS really satisfying to use, it's a great-looking skill.

Yeah, Herald of Ice has always been laggy I think. It could probably use some targeted optimization by GGG.

Did you try to play on Predictive? Sometimes that does help a lot with stuttering, even when you have a decent connection that could easily support Lockstep. If you haven't tried that - check it out for a map or two and report back. :)

Yeah, they are improving, but performance is still shit compared to other games... I really hope big things will happen with 3.0. Because XBox is in no way stronger than those 970 i7 rigs. Also, its pretty obvious that true reason why xbox wont get party play is because it would be powerpoint presentation not a smooth gameplay.

Meanwhile, my PoE launcher is checking fucking resources for 10 min already.. *uck this.

"

Nathaniell123 wrote:

Yeah, they are improving, but performance is still shit compared to other games... I really hope big things will happen with 3.0. Because XBox is in no way stronger than those 970 i7 rigs. Also, its pretty obvious that true reason why xbox wont get party play is because it would be powerpoint presentation not a smooth gameplay.

Meanwhile, my PoE launcher is checking fucking resources for 10 min already.. *uck this.

it will have party,not couch co-op

"Yeah, they are improving, but performance is still shit compared to other games..."

I can show you myriad more less graphic intensive games you would think thats crawling on my pc,yet poe is good compared to those,so apples and oranges

"Because XBox is in no way stronger than those 970 i7 rigs."

No its not.But if they are developing for that exact system,performance would be better.Thing is,on pc's we have a wide variety of hardware,its bound sometimes that not all systems will perform top notch and also they cant test ALL different setups to find faults.Here things will be different.

performance is a joke..my client crashes more and more with every league

It's related to the particle effects. They need to completely redo the particle effects in this game. They probably got some sorta crazy physics associated with them that doesn't need to be there in a game like this. This could be rag doll physics causing this as well. I've seen videos where people removed dead bodies, and it was a considerable FPS improvement. If someone can toggle bodies off with a 3rd party program, then GGG could put a setting in that does the same thing.

I have tried using predictive mode as well as cycled through the DX9 EX and DX11 versions to see if it made any difference. So far nothing has managed to keep a steady 60 fps or even remotely close to it. Below is a video with the fps enabled so you can see how choppy game play is.



https://youtu.be/0dWsl4zIll0



I've idenfied the things that cripple PoE:
-multi hitting skills like kinetic blast and vaal power siphon
-Herald of ice
-any type of ground effect
-dogs that explode and make burning ground effect
-can not die mobs
-necrovigil
-beyond fissures
-excessive loot on the ground
-certain map tilesets seem to have worse static fps