Blight freezes my screen where I can't do anything but die and lose.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

Try Predictive Mode. Lockstep in Blight with a spammy build is a death sentence.

Network mode only affects how your game deals with latency, things like input delay, rubberbanding, or desync. It has zero influence on FPS, GPU/CPU load, assets, or how many frames your system can push. So any frame drops you see aren’t related to the networking mode at all.

That is confidently very incorrect. Lockstep Mode can completely lock up your game for several minutes under the right conditions, to the point where it looks like the game is nearly frozen. You won't see frame drops, it will look like those still shots GGG do in their promo videos. In fact, the frame rate will be completely fine after a certain point. The server will not be done processing and your frames won't update until it's done.

I've dealt with that issue on a very specific build for several years. And it also very much affects your frame rate much, much sooner, as it's a night and day difference when I run a Blight-ravaged map with and without Lockstep. It cannot be completed on Lockstep, but at least Predictive will give you a better frame rate at the cost of rubberbanding and makes it possible to finish such a map, until you reach a point where things are taking too long to die, then it's just rubberbanding that ends with a destroyed pump. And when it reaches that point, the CPU and GPU graphs will literally have little spikes every few seconds, until it's all done processing and your game gets fast-forwarded at warp speed.

Saying that networking mode has no effect on frame rate is just false and can easily be disproven. We are not talking about processing here, we are talking about how it affects gameplay. It's clear you haven't encountered this before and are just stating things you believe to be true based on technicalities. That is not what happens in the actual game.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

It's clear you haven't encountered this before and are just stating things you believe to be true based on technicalities. That is not what happens in the actual game.

I don’t need to experience these issues firsthand to understand what’s happening, just knowing how the different network modes work and how they affect outcomes is enough. These modes aren’t new or revolutionary, they’re widely used and anyone familiar with code and servers knows how something that simple functions.

The worst-case scenario I’ve seen in Blight is massive frame drops, sometimes from over 200 FPS down to rock bottom, but still above 15 FPS and nowhere near literal freezes. That’s expected under heavy load and is separate from the connection related issues you’re describing.

I haven’t had those issues because my connection is stable. What you’re seeing isn’t directly caused by Blight or by using Lockstep. It comes from connection instability (temporary ping spikes, packet loss, bad routing) or the engine hitting its processing limit, stalling briefly, freezing, and then catching up. Both situations create exactly the symptoms you described.

Switching to Predictive mode won’t fix either of these problems. Predictive doesn’t improve performance or stabilize your connection, it simply stops waiting for server confirmation and guesses your position. That doesn’t remove the freeze, it just replaces it with desync and rubber-banding, which is objectively worse in every meaningful way.

If the engine stalls, Predictive won’t help.
If your routing spikes, Predictive won’t help.
Network mode doesn’t enhance performance or fix connection quality, it only changes how errors present themselves.

And for context, EU routing issues, especially with carriers like Telia/Twelve99 are very common and can easily cause the brief instability you’re experiencing.

And please avoid recommending Predictive as a “fix” for issues it doesn’t influence. Suggesting a strictly worse option for problems it cannot solve just misleads players and hurts their experience. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s better not to present guesses as solutions, especially when they can actively make the game worse for others.

A more helpful direction would be to focus on things that can make a difference, offering constructive feedback on Blight, which has been an engine bottleneck forever regardless of hardware, or addressing what’s causing your connection instability in the first place. In the EU, that’s nothing new, and it might be worth contacting your provider to sort out routing issues. Both of those approaches are far more productive than applying a false “bandage fix” like switching to Predictive, which changes nothing except making the experience worse.

So the underlying cause is connection instability or temporary engine saturation, something Predictive won't fix.

PoE is built on top of, let's be realistic, an outdated engine. Couple that with tons of calculations that have to be made each second and you get freezing.

The best option is to improve your pc. Second best option is to kill the monsters with a ranged skill off-screen before they can be rendered and cause the freezing.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

Predictive doesn’t improve performance or stabilize your connection, it simply stops waiting for server confirmation and guesses your position. That doesn’t remove the freeze, it just replaces it with desync and rubber-banding, which is objectively worse in every meaningful way.

Yes, it does. That whole not waiting part is what prevents the freezing. I'm not talking about ping spikes or anything else you are fishing for here. There's a quite apparent difference in game performance between the two, most notably with spammy builds. Blight causing FPS drops you are referring to is a completely separate issue. Builds that don't shoot out a ton of projectiles or don't apply a dozen debuffs or stacks of Poison will be fine.

Best example I could give you is from when before GGG limited the Ignite stack tracking, which has since improved things by a lot, except I don't have those videos anymore. When the CPU gets hammered, network latency spikes and your frame rate drops until it reaches the point where the game is playing catch-up with server, at which point your frames go up, you'll see those update hitches and the forward warp. This behavior is exacerbated on Lockstep and exists with both modes, but Predictive has more headroom and doesn't get nearly as bad freezes (pretty much none), but instead deals with it in the form of rubberbanding. It's not nearly as bad as it used to be when we had to type /oos in chat to sync with the server.

From a technical standpoint, you are not incorrect, however, regarding PoE you are the one who doesn't know what you are talking about. You are not playing those types of builds, so how would you know. You are talking theoretical while I'm basing mine on experience. We have also since then gotten Triple Buffering, which improved things as well. I can't really show this happen anymore as my PC is a lot more powerful than it used to be and at best I get rubberbanding and a lower frame rate now.

However, the internet exists and I do recall a build by a certain someone where this had an impact, just as I told you with Blight-ravaged maps:

https://youtu.be/o0gqmocBJQo?si=UQZP9bEpLY4etwZ_&t=82
https://youtu.be/o0gqmocBJQo?si=OIwAaNBHfCA8xtGx&t=124

Point being, people with no top of the line CPU should use Predictive Mode to avoid freezing. The game supports up to 16 threads and yet the average CPU for consumers ranges from 4 to 6 cores.

I'm aware that my network is the real bottleneck, and yet my build will be bottlenecked by a 9800X3D and RTX 4080. It just hammers everything and becomes unplayable on Lockstep.

Just as you said:

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

Suggesting a strictly worse option for problems it cannot solve just misleads players and hurts their experience. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s better not to present guesses as solutions, especially when they can actively make the game worse for others.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

here's a quite apparent difference in game performance between the two, most notably with spammy builds. Blight causing FPS drops you are referring to is a completely separate issue. Builds that don't shoot out a ton of projectiles or don't apply a dozen debuffs or stacks of Poison will be fine.

Who would have seen this coming? A build that basically farts out particles, hitting enemies repeatedly, spawning spam loads of projectiles, and triggering visual effects, puts far more demand on the engine than a simpler build. More hits, more explosions, more particle vomit only means higher performance cost.
The result? the engine hits its limits faster.

As example this is exactly why Spark builds often use the Void Spark MTX, fewer particles and effects mean your FPS stays higher, even with the same hits per second. What you’re seeing isn’t a bug, it’s just the engine reaching its ceiling. On consoles, as OP demonstrates, this happens even faster than on most PCs. Obvious with the rather low specs on console.

Now, about network hiccups, higher latency causes micro-stutter in lockstep because the server isn’t receiving your inputs in time, or vice versa. This happens regardless of how many particles or hits you’re spamming. Predictive mode doesn’t change this, it just displays it differently. With predictive on, you still get micro-stutters, plus rubberbanding where you might be sent back to a place you’ve already cleared because the client and server disagree on what’s alive.

In short, whether it’s engine limitations or connection issues, the problems aren’t caused by lockstep or predictive mode, those just change how the issue looks. Predictive won’t magically reduce particle effects, nor will it fix ping spikes. Its main effect is to add rubberbanding whenever your latency is too high for the server to reliably track your client. Ironically, it’s one of the settings most responsible for the desyncs and rollbacks people complain about, so much so that GGG has even acknowledged that some issues are not fully unavoidable with predictive mode.

Instead of giving users false advice to switch to an objectively worse-performing and more problematic networking mode, a far more useful approach is to think about how Blight could be reworked to retain its core concept while reducing engine stress. Look at the new Breach design, the old Breach was amazing, but opening multiple breaches at the same time could completely tank performance due to a bazillion particles. The new Breach shows that GGG can keep the core concept, standing in a circle, killing mods, enjoying the chaos while keeping the theme alive and massively improving performance. That’s the kind of thinking that would actually help Blight, retaining the fun and core mechanics while reducing particle and effect load so the game runs smoother.

Submitting suggestions like this through the feedback system is far more useful than spreading misleading advice about predictive mode or other workarounds that don’t address or fix the real problem.

The bottom line out of all of this , particle vomit kills FPS and engine limitations, network hiccups aren’t magically fixed by predictive mode. As someone who’s been around for a while, you should know this.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

The bottom line out of all of this , particle vomit kills FPS and engine limitations, network hiccups aren’t magically fixed by predictive mode. As someone who’s been around for a while, you should know this.

You keep reciting the difference of the technical definition between the two, yet never acknowledge the actual problem and disregard it as impossible because you don't actually know the difference of the in-game behavior.

If particles are the problem, which is done client-side, how come the ping spikes extremely quickly on Lockstep, but not on Predictive? Same network, same hardware, same engine limitations. Performance tanks on Lockstep, but not on Predictive?

Even more ironic as a more powerful PC doesn't solve the problem, and both modes still behave the same way, with Predictive having a clear advantage over Lockstep in terms of latency and frame rate.

Even funnier to me that you just insist on this, because particle effects have actually very limited impact overall, except on frame rate.

Don't believe me? Here is an example with literally thousands (!) of projectiles per second, with crazy particle effects, yet my frame rate is all right until it hits large monster packs, and would you look at my ping. Except... this was on Predictive Mode. According to you, this wouldn't make any difference if I switched to Lockstep. Except it was literally unplayable at all.

Wanna know something even crazier? The only thing here that the upgrade to the 9800X3D improved upon is the lowest frame rate. Instead of nearly locking up, it would at least still be playable. This is where engine limitations are met, yet it has fuck all to do with my latency or ping spikes.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

You keep reciting the difference of the technical definition between the two, yet never acknowledge the actual problem and disregard it as impossible because you don't actually know the difference of the in-game behavior.

Oh, I acknowledge the problem. PoE’s engine, while generally stable, wasn’t built for total projectile mayhem, no engine is. Any system starts to crumble once players are handed the keys to endless possibilities, whether it’s entity spam, projectile spam, or just plain chaos. Kind of obvious, really.
I also acknowledge that a lot of connection issues come from bad routing, especially in the EU, and I genuinely feel for you guys, after all these years, network providers still haven’t figured this sort of basic stuff out despite countless customer complaints. But the bottom line is this, you, me, GGG, and most others have known about these issues for years. Switching networking modes doesn’t magically fix either problem, it won’t make your connection more stable, nor will it push the engine or your PC past its limits.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

Even funnier to me that you just insist on this, because particle effects have actually very limited impact overall, except on frame rate.

Well, nice job using your own video as a showcase of exactly what I described. Thanks for confirming it, even if you were trying to deny reality, or maybe just couldn’t resist a little YouTube self-promo.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

Wanna know something even crazier? The only thing here that the upgrade to the 9800X3D improved upon is the lowest frame rate.

If I recall correctly, you initially upgraded from a rather underwhelming CPU, opting for a cheaper alternative because the 7800X3D was too expensive. That choice, however, didn’t quite meet expectations, prompting a subsequent move to the 9800X3D, which ironically, performs similarly to the 7800X3D in 4K, albeit at a higher price. Considering your previous CPU didn’t even come close to the performance of a 7800X3D, let alone a 9800X3D, I’m not quite sure what numbers you were looking at.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

Well, nice job using your own video as a showcase of exactly what I described. Thanks for confirming it, even if you were trying to deny reality, or maybe just couldn’t resist a little YouTube self-promo

Yes, welcome to reality: https://youtu.be/BtgIa_2yBXY

Literally the same build as in the other video, only difference being Lockstep.

Literally take your own advice and stop spreading misinformation. Have a good one.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

Literally take your own advice and stop spreading misinformation. Have a good one.

I think your first link, along with all the additional information you provided, already shows that your assumption, that changing the networking mode affects client-side performance or improves routing/connection issues, is incorrect. Yet here we are, continuing the discussion for the sake of arguing, even after the evidence has been presented.

If you’re unsure about something, it’s better not to spread misinformation, especially when a quick search would clarify it immediately. For fun, I did the quick google search myself, and surprise, someone already explained this 8 years ago. But not exactly a groundbreaking discovery for someone with multiple years of IT experience, this is a fairly basic topic. But for you seeing the same explanation appear across multiple discussions, and even outside the context of PoE, this should be a hint that the original assumption is mistaken, even if it’s hard to admit.

Also, I haven’t clicked your new link, so if you were hoping for more traffic.

That said, I hope you have a great day!

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

If you’re unsure about something, it’s better not to spread misinformation

Like I said: Take your own advice.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

Also, I haven’t clicked your new link, so if you were hoping for more traffic.

Yes, let's ignore direct evidence that invalidates everything you said in this thread and shows exactly what I was telling you. Figures.

We are done here.