Friday Patch -- Back to unplayable

[Numtini]

Well, the other night I was insanely impressed with the performance gains from the open beta. This morning I patched and got in and in the last hour I've had to restart the client three times, twice for crushing lag, and once for graphic glitching (that or someone slipped my character acid).

[Signe]

Strangely, my settings were on default and not on the low and fiddly bits I had done before.  I had to put it on low, readjust the sliders, turn off grass and shadows, but my controls were as I left them.  I also noticed the lag and sharp decreases in fps even after I changed my settings.  Although, my fps does return to normal (40 - 55 mostly) it will suddenly drop, especially when stuff is going on around me, and then return.  It does it a lot, even in night mode.  I have also experienced several freezes, especially today.  It makes me nervous about what my performance will be like during a siege.

[Lantyssa]

The reverse-miracle patch!

[Engels]

It makes me wonder if there was some critical maintenance code enabled during beta that provided server-side stability but hosed client performance that they removed for launch, and now that the game's out the door, they're putting it back in. 

[Sir T]

YOu mean stuck on an unsustainable performance boost for the first week to cynically get tons of initial audiance reaction and sales and then sneak it back to tolerable once that has passed? Damn your cynical about game developers.

[Rasix]

I really haven't noticed any difference. Tiny bit more chop around Tortage, but that could just be coincidental.

[Moaner]

I hope they get this stupid client optimized soon.  I dip into the 20s in some areas and it drives me nuts.

I love the game so far (level 22) but it's bringing my 8800gtx to it's knees which is very frustraiting.  It's times like this I wish I wasn't so picky about how many frames per second I'm getting.

EDIT:  Just being able to turn off the grass would rock.  The little check box doesn't seem to work and setting shaders to 2.0 causes my computer to crash.

[schild]

My performance increased after the patch today.

[Engels]

Aha, so my conspiracy theory is gaining evidence. Key figures in the gaming critique community get the ultra miracle patch, while the hoi poloi suffer at the hands of their new Norwegian Masters.

[Ratman_tf]

Aha, so my conspiracy theory is gaining evidence. Key figures in the gaming critique community get the ultra miracle patch, while the hoi poloi suffer at the hands of their new Norwegian Masters.

Shild a Key Figure in the community? God help us all. 

[tmp]

It makes me wonder if there was some critical maintenance code enabled during beta that provided server-side stability but hosed client performance that they removed for launch, and now that the game's out the door, they're putting it back in. 

I'd suspect it has more to do with their gfx shader code/caching -- perhaps something was changed that invalidated the shader cache content, and so the game is doing its normal "freeze while i make shader for something new you saw" routine every few steps, that'll keep you hitching until the most common stuff gets rebuilt?

[Engels]

yes, that's far more likely, but not near as fun as making schild out to be an establishment figurehead 

[Moaner]

I went from running mostly 45-60fps with occasional drops in the 20s (mostly in cities), to running constantly in the 20s after today's patch.  It’s playable, but watching my 6 month old computer hiccup and chug on low settings has pissed me off tonight.  This is with current drivers, a fresh and updated windows xp install, and a every tweak I could think of.

I’m going to finish The World Ends with You and GTA4 while they attempt to sort this shit out.  I will be back though because I love the game, I just hate the client.

[Slayerik]

My system is running better now.

[Numtini]

After a day of playing on and off since the patch, what it seems to be is that once any 3d game runs, I need to reboot in order to get Conan at any sort of decent framerates. That could be EQ2 or COX, but it also applies to Conan. If I log out, I need to reboot. Even at that, I have had one bluescreen and a few other issues and my record on playtime is around 70 minutes.

[Engels]

One thing that I noticed is that my texture cache was slid down to zero when I logged into yesterday. It even reset to zero any time I selected a default performance profile, like 'low', 'medium' or 'high'. Sliding this cache up to max did absolute wonders for my system's performance. No hitching, and more importantly, the graphic's card fan didn't go into overdrive trying to cool itself. YMMV

[Moaner]

I set the "view quality distance" or whatever it's called to 99% and my framerate jumped up to 40-60 again.  I'll try the texture cache next.  Weeeee!

[Signe]

One thing that I noticed is that my texture cache was slid down to zero when I logged into yesterday. It even reset to zero any time I selected a default performance profile, like 'low', 'medium' or 'high'. Sliding this cache up to max did absolute wonders for my system's performance. No hitching, and more importantly, the graphic's card fan didn't go into overdrive trying to cool itself. YMMV

This raised my fps significantly in daytime and in towns and doubled it in dungeons and at night.

[Numtini]

I got about another 10 fps off of it, thank you!

And since I figured out I had to reboot if I played COX or EQ2, it seems pretty stable.

[Sir T]

It smurfs up any 3d game you play after it as well.