I can't believe this game still runs like garbage after all this time. (Get the new engine already)

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

What is the crux of your argument then? Is this on the user or the developer?

I really don't know.

I just wanted to point out that comments on the state of PoE are very much useless, since it seems that it just behaves erratically performancewise.
I agree that it should NOT give a newer video card trouble if it ran well a few leagues ago on a 970. I'm certainly not saying that the user should have to do tinkering (unless that user is like me and insists on playing PoE on Linux, Gentoo at that) in order to get the game into a playable state and even more so if said game is an exception and the other ones run smoothly.

However, whatever it is, I don't think, and here we're getting more on topic again, that it is the engine as such - or that anyone should make any assumptions about the the engine based on how the game runs for them.

I think what GGG SHOULD actually do is that "maintenance league" that some people have been suggesting for... well, since the original open beta probably. Sort out remaining bugs, find out those weird combinations of hard- and software that make the game unplayable for some people on high end computers while others have no issues on lower end hardware and NOT add unknown variables to the equation by adding an actual new league mechanic with new items and mods and interactions.

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

It absolutely is done with the cryengine and looks gorgeous for it despite how much the devs clearly wrestled with it, and that's why I said to my old pal Therion any conversation about that would have to be in Off-Topic AND would require a lot of fortitude because it's not as if Wolcen has anything approaching a good reputation even with its few remaining players; the discord is full of people happily dumping on the devs and the devs not even making excuses why they can't even do a monthly update anymore.

You are much more dedicated than me lol I actually just started playing it through again to see where they'd got to but it doesn't seem a great deal different to launch. Its a little more polished and less buggy but i've run into issues with both before 1/2 way through the campaign again.

They didn't fix itemisation feeling like the biggest accumulation of Z's ever though, I still don't get the arpgs that think stale rare items with generic dull mods is better than dropping interesting uniques, yeah most uniques are actually bad but they aren't bad until you are intimately familiar with the game.

Its like they need to go back to first principles. Being OP in the campaign is not a problem you want the player to have fun, if itemisation is a chore you may as well not even have it and so far in my 40 levels if itemisation wasn't a think i'd have had slightly more fun.

I'm getting sidetracked here sorry what I meant to say is, is Cryengine responsible for Wolcen's problems or is it inexperience and development debt? Lost Ark is popular enough but is absolutely chock full of both to my eyes so you must be able to succeed in those conditions :p

"

Draegnarrr wrote:

I'm getting sidetracked here sorry what I meant to say is, is Cryengine responsible for Wolcen's problems or is it inexperience and development debt?

As this pertains to the OP's main argument, I feel okay responding (all else really is off-topic I think) -- and the short answer is 'not too much'. They actually did a really good job moulding the cryengine (which was made for first person shooters) into a decent ARPG. BUT it definitely took some brute-forcing and for a long while there, it crashed a lot, no doubt due to the devs pushing shit uphill making an engine do what it doesn't really want to do. A more experienced dev team with far better oversight and management might have done more with it, but alas Wolcen never had any of that. So with their core incompetence in mind, it's kind of a miracle the game runs at all.

Now if we apply the same thinking to GGG, a similar issue arises: how much of the issue is the engine, how much of it is the devs fighting that engine, how much is inexperience, and so on? As Therion pointed out, it's a lot more than simply 'the engine' at fault here. But here is where his expertise and my talent for metaphor collide: of course it's more than just the engine. It's the whole damn vehicle. It's the people driving it. It's the roads it runs on. It's anything and everything related to the operation of the vehicle. Some of that is in the hands of its manufacturers, some comes down to the user, and some even falls to shit out of everyone's hands (i.e. the roads) -- for example, lag.

The fact that the Wolcen bunch used an existing, robust engine and GGG made their own from scratch doesn't really simplify things either. Sure, Cry's robust but you gotta know how to work it; sure, GGG made their own so they'd know it inside out, but it was kind of sketchy to begin with and, again as Therion said, they really need a 'maintenance league' to get in there and clean it all up. Unfortunately that doesn't sell support packs and if they don't sell support packs the Great Elder God of the East doesn't get its sacrifices and all hell breaks loose.

So in a way, no one's to blame. Users have the right to expect a smooth experience; the devs have to keep the bills paid and if that means flying the plane with one engine and dodgy landing gear, so be it. Neither really get what they want: users sometimes run into trouble; the devs are too busy landing the plane every league in some functional state to worry about the finer details of the plane's operations. It flies, it lands, good 'nuff.

I was reading the other day why flying is statistically the safest way to travel. It's basically down to decades of fine-tuning the systems so that if ANYTHING breaks, there are backups, and backups of backups. Redundancy abounds when a single failure might result in lots of dead people, after all. I am sure there are game dev equivalents of this (especially in terms of servers) but we're not really talking about true breakdowns here, just less-than-ideal customer experiences. Again, hard to worry about that when so much of your energy is put towards the essentials.

Which is all to say, thank goodness game devs don't build airplanes.

"

JoeUtopia wrote:

You just ignored my second sentence. None of us knows (those of us here) and that was my point. So asking for proof is unrealistic. Also, reading more of the responses, there are many things that we, as consumers, can point to that are sub par in comparison to other titles. And, I am tired of hearing about the complexity of this title….because if that is the limiting factor, then maybe GGG should do better with optimization.

Of course there are many sub par elements to PoE. Every game in existence has sub par elements that developers can't or won't fix. I'm not saying we - as consumers - shouldn't critique the game, because we absolutely should.

My point is that people go straight for the engine when they are critiquing, without having the slightest idea if that's the problem. They go on and on about "other titles", but when asked about other games with so many AI/NPC elements, each with thousands of calculations going on at the same time to and from the player, they can't name a single one.

I think GGG's obsession with mob density is the problem, and how far you as a player can scale that density. I don't think any engine could handle a seriously juiced deli map with sextants, scarabs and juiced triple Beyond. So don't blame the engine; blame the obscure amount of pressure GGG is putting on it.

DX12 without the Steam overlay runs buttery smooth, Windows 11 (Insider Preview Build: Beta, 22620+) - runs like absolute crap with the Standalone client.
DX11 is just as good. Not better. Runs fine with standalone.

Vulkan straight up crashes, doesn't matter.

They day they will optimize this game enough for people to not bitch about it will be the day when entire "zoom zoom" mode will be deleted. You cant have both. You either have butter smooth gameplay or you move at lightning speed atacking 50 times a second sapwning bilion projectiles.

Pick one.

Since exiling myself from Exile again I have played a variety of ARPGs and ARPG-adjacent games and I want to say I 100% agree with Phrazz: PoE has a far higher density of mobs than any of them. Not only that, but many of them are quite fast and aggressive which is why the game really does feel a little bit like a shoot em up sometimes. Most ARPGs temper a smaller group density with tougher individual enemies and far less potent user skills. In many ARPGs, a weapon swing that can take out three enemies at once might be considered very effective, if the group size is barely in the double digits. I am not sure why GGG opted to make their enemy groups act like an early zerg rush but that is how it felt to me. And naturally the means of dealing with that will also be more of a strain on the system than the aforementioned three enemy cleave.

That is not to say those other ARPGs ran much better; they all have their problems. But as Aynix also noted, this high speed high enemy count design comes with a cost, and that cost is likely smooth, low demand performance.

Despite PoE ostensibly being funded by optional aesthetics, I do have to wonder if at this point dramatically reducing the complexity of an average mob's design might be part of the solution, or at least a compromise. I play another game which clearly had low experience devs and lacked oversight in which a small enemy that typically isn't meant to last very long has a higher poly count than some of the biggest, most visually striking bosses in Monster Hunter World. As you would expect, this game looks pretty bad even on a ps5 or a well-built PC rig (although it manages to maintain a decent framerate somehow). I believe no amount of hardware can make up for truly poor optimisation. Or, in the case of PoE, a shift in design from pure ARPG to ARPG/shoot em up hybrid up with which the game engine has not kept...or as Phrazz might say, cannot keep at all.

Argument about logical complexity of PoE gameplay compared to most other games is questionable, because (assuming proper design) all that logic should run server-side only, with client being responsible only for rendering and networking. So imo "fps/quality" ratio comparison of different engines could be valid here, and its results are not in PoE engine favor: almost flat locations (except newest content), fixed camera position (this alone allows significant optimizations), relatively simple mob models and FX (not counting some skill MTX, these can be a mess), yet client-side fps does not really reflect that.

However (pure speculation), it is possible that GGG have "cheated", and are doing parts of combat mechanics client-side, to reduce server hardware requirements (since that logic should indeed be uber complex). That would also explain their ruthless policy with auto-bans and 3rd party software witch hunts.

I bought a gtx 1060 recently, i had giga fps for like a patch, and for 2 patches now ive dropped to the same fps as before, and i even lag sometimes because they fucked up something

The argument that PoE is high density and therefore heavy is a bit questionable.
https://youtu.be/goh69ThO2w8?t=458


I've run GR's with at least 40% more density than this video shows, I always run at 1440p with absolutely everything on and at 4p.

In poe, if I can't kill everything in front of me quickly and have half this density, even with everything on low @720p my FPS drops below 30.


Even though in Poe there is some additional hidden element (that no one sees) that causes this absurd lag, the point is that, it's absurd when a computer with a 3090 and a core i9 has a performance problem, it's absurd that most players need to lower the graphics quality and virtually throw their MTX in the trash.
I can't be satisfied that even in the worst and most chaotic scenario, Lost Ark still delivers more FPS than PoE in its Hideout.

See, PoE is GGG's ONLY game, GGG is PoE. GGG still earns good money every 3 months just by changing her game already created and called "new", so what does it take for her to invest heavily in the quality of her only game?

I have high expectations for poe2, I hope all the money accumulated is being put to good use.