Csikszent Mihalyi
DUST University
Ivy League
7
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Posted - 2013.08.02 00:45:00 -
[1] - Quote
TL/DR: Only Manus Peak and Harvest Line appear to actually run at (close to) 30 FPS. Low FPS can easily be the cause for the majority if not all of the hit detection and aiming issues people complain about. Please investigate!
I have observed this now for a while, and there is no more doubt. I just don't know if this started happening / got worse with 1.3, or if I just haven't paid enough attention before.
It isn't very hard to tell when a game's framerate falls below 30 FPS, but it's even easier to tell the differences within Dust itself.
So this is what it's like for me:
Manus Peak and Line Harvest are fine. While dips are possible, the overall experience is smooth and clearly running at 30 FPS or close enough.
Ashland is noticeably worse, but barely acceptable. It can get pretty bad though.
The other three maps on the other hand, are just horrible. And I am not talking about the usual dips that happen when a lot is going on at once at the screen. I am getting consistently low FPS, almost anywhere on those maps, wherever I look, and whatever is going on. The game very clearly can't handle the complexity of these maps while maintaining 30 FPS (with a full set of players at least). The obvious pattern here is that those are all huge maps with a large socket in the middle.
This is all happening for me with the detail settings set to low, on a PS3 slim with a standard 300 GB (or something) hard disk. And before somebody mentions it, I did this disk defragmentation thing and it did not make any difference.
So I'd like to know, is everyone else noticing the same thing? And is this something we are willing to accept, for the sake of larger maps?
If you have difficulties telling what your framerates are like, just observe how smoothly you can look around. Do you notice any jumpiness? 30 FPS is not perfect, but when you are used to 30 FPS (e.g. from the merc quarters or the better performing maps), it should feel smooth. When you then play a map which does not manage 30 FPS, it should be pretty obvious to anybody.
Aside from ugliness, low FPS lead to all kinds of issues, amongst them:
- Input lag
- Fast enemies visually jumping around, making them hard to hit (not to be confused with the warping caused by network lag)
- All kinds of hit detection oddities
- "Jerky" crosshair, jumping all over the place while trying to make fine adjustments
I see issues such as these mentioned all the time, but so far nobody seems to have directly linked it to framerates and compared performance of the various maps.
To CCP: Can you tell us if all the maps are tested to run at 30 FPS with 32 players, or is this a known problem that we just have to accept for now? If these issues really exist for everyone, I think it would be only fair to get something like an FPS counter, so we can be better informed about it. If this only happens to me for some reason, then of course I'd really love to find out what is going on... I don't see any reason why my PS3 should perform worse than any other at this point.
AND TO BE CLEAR: This is not a complaint about CCP's programming abilities. Unreal Engine can only do so much on PS3, and CCP can't be expected to fix all of its problems so late in the PS3s lifecycle. But if this issue is real, I feel that we need to talk about it and think about possible short term solutions. This is not a PC where we can just upgrade the hardware, and I think that if a game is supposed to run at 30 FPS (which isn't a high target to begin with), then it needs to be dedicated to make it happen no matter what. Even if it means cutting out some detail. |