Performance Improvements

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cipher_nemo wrote:

It is free only for "qualified" Windows 7 and 8.1 systems. And after a certain date Windows 10 will no longer be free. And future versions of Windows (eg: Windows 10.1) will NOT be free.

Windows 7 is more stable than Windows 10. But that's not because of the kernel, it's due to drivers. Drivers for Windows 10 are still VERY immature when compared to Windows 7.

Agreed that current business is DX9, and will remain that way for some time. But asking for DX11 or DX12 from an indie developer?

DX10 is fluff, DX11 is a worthwhile upgrade for performance, and DX12 is Windows 10 only (and XBox One). DX11 is good to target, but not everyone has a DX11 capable video card. And DX112 is worthless to the majority of gamers out there. Windows 7 has more than 50% market share, while Windows 10 is a meager 14%. Source: https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0

It's not industry standard. Just because the big name developers adopt the latest and greatest bleeding edge libraries and technologies doesn't mean indie developers have to do the same. If the market is there and the developer can make a successful product, it doesn't really matter if the latest DirectX version was used or not.

Now if you want to blame someone like Blizzard, EA, or WB for not using DX11 in their big name titles, then I'd support you. But blaming GGG for not having it in PoE? No sympathy from me for that crusade of yours.

I have far less driver problems on W10 than W7. Some drivers are even straight up compatible.
http://www.howtogeek.com/219782/is-windows-10-backwards-compatible-with-your-existing-software/

Drivers for W10 are not immature. If they were I would be on W7 and I'm not. It's simple as that, if you wanna keep living in the past with xp-era drivers, fine for me. But the game has hit a wall now just because of that kinda of mentality.

I mean if you have to worry about people getting a Dx11 gpu than I think that whole viewpoint is just bad. The marketshare I will disregard, there is no information on how it's actually gathered. For instance steam already shows a market share of 40%, http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey, now again we can start argueing about how these results are obtained and so on and I do agree the steam numbers are not a correct depiction of the market. But still it was fairly easy to go from 14% to 40% which means both are pretty much unreliable.

What I'm saying is simple, I think GGG should invest in 2 things. A) New engine bottom up. B) Dx12 future-proofing.

The Dx12 performance gain is huge. Although I agree the switching to Dx11 is a first step, it feels like it's really late move for some reason. Dx11 is where the game is at now, but in 1-2 years it's all going to be Dx12 and then still we will only have Dx11.

Aside from that I really hope these changes will entail a real performance increase.

I'm going to refer to an old review of WoW; http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-directx-11-performance,2793-7.html

Switching did entail performance increased but never really big performance changes, like the first Dx12 benchmarks for instance;

http://media.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2015/game-bench/api-overhead-4790k-titan-x.jpg

So ok they are indie devs and they have a pretty big team right now, they pushed us pay-to-win trade tabs and currency tabs. How much more money do they need to fix this shit is all I'm asking?

I don't think this is a post that shows things are looking up. It reminds me of similar lengthy posts by Diablo 3 staff trying to explain why their product was failing and why the timeframe for fixing it would be so long. This manifesto was nice and detailed about the issues players are having, but besides a few load adjustments, we don't even have a guess as to when they'll be deployed or how much they'll help. Migrating game servers was also mentioned, which, based on the frequency of full-server crashes, I would think is likely and not an easy process. Then the idea of looking at updated graphic engines while core stability is still an issue...I don't know. It seems there is a lot to be tackled with few concrete plans of getting there.

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Meridin wrote:

What I wanna know is why the game will render skills and play audio sounds that are no longer there.

Like say I'm in Sarn arena, and there's this guy offscreen chain-casting some laggy skill like Ice Storm over and over again. I never see/hear it yet because I'm not near him, but if I revive over there, the game will suddenly try to load EVERYTHING that has happened in that area since I entered the instance. Sometimes it's tried to load so many things at once my game crashed.

Another example is in maps, if I'm following someone far ahead of me, I can still hear the leap slams/bladefall sounds as I walk through the area, even though those skills happened long ago. It's really wierd.

well i dont have sounds since i use the no sound but the lag with loading the skills is there omg its horrible with firestorm and sadly its the skill my friend uses. so if we get to far apart and he is killing things when i try to go near him i lag very hard and usually dc especially in maps like ground effects or perandus. i never really had this problem before till ascendancy but i also didnt have alot of problems only running sound or loading screen time. but now its so bad maybe its my comp bc its low end but omg its sad. i have to stay back and let him kill or vise versa. unless were on the same screen so it can load everything but if we seperate a screen apart then my frame time goes through the roof.

Hi Chris,

For those of us with large amount of ram, what is the possibility of allowing path to dynamically increase the RAM allocation beyond the normal (even as an optional thing) to cache areas CONNECTED to the ones you are in (maybe weighted towards the most commonly progressed to zone?), even partially loading some assets would be a large boon.

TL;DR with 6GB+ RAM being more mainstream now, and 8GB being pretty common, What i'm getting at is the huge benefit mounting Path onto a Ramdrive gives those with large amounts of RAM. It highlights the possibility of better memory management improving performance for higher spec machines.

You guys are awesome and doing a great job. I always come back to POE when I get bored with other games.

Love you guys!

SO I'm going to ask you GGG, the same question I have asked since alpha:

"Why can I play current 2014-2016 high def, highly graphical games at FULL graphics and have zero problems with it, whether it comes to how much is on screen at once, or however many parrticals are on the screen moving at the same time?

How come I can run battle field 4 at max FPS and graphics and the game doesnt slow down or simply pause? Like ever?

How come when I play path of exile, and JUST A FEW partical effects are happening at the same time, my game slows to a halt and almost freezes?

Why can every other game company push out games in ALPHA that can handle the graphics that the game puts out but YEARS after POE's release, we are still dealing with the same problems?

What are other companies doing that you are not?

This is good to know. All that I see are the crashes and issues, and with radio silence on the how and why, it leaves me hanging.

And it's nice to know what I can expect in the future, like a ETA for 2.2.2 and 64-bit client.

Truly appreciate the transparency as usual, Chris! You and the team are the standard by which all other developers should be judged!

None if this seems like it will decrease party lag though, still good that loading times might shrink I guess.

Looooooove it!