Test Update 02/16/2024 - Patch Notes and Discussions

Will there be a writeup on preferred memory.ini settings made based on the setup being used? Since directx 11 implementation my main PC performs horridly. It's a 5800x3d with 6900xt GPU. My other PC's with 1600af +r590 and Intel 3570k+1050ti run circles around my main. Make it make sense. The load/zoning times are so bad and pok on BB is like a slide show.

Even setting the memory usage to the most memory option, the late texture rendering effect is still observed. Procedure and observations:

Logged in, observed delayed texture draw in the lobby.
Zoned out to PoK, observed delayed texture draw in PoK.
Moved to the Freeport stone, changed the setting to most memory usage (from the medium setting).
Clicked through to Freeport. Some delayed drawing of skeleton textures observed. Verified that the setting was still "most".
Camped to desktop, and logged the character back in. Delayed drawing of skeleton textures, verified that the setting was still "most".
Zoned into PoK. Slow drawing of textures observed.
Zoned into the Lobby. Slow drawing of textures observed.

Bottom line... While I assume most people are not having this issue, it's not dependent for me on the setting in question, though it certainly might be worse if I was indeed using low memory usage as a setting. I do not observe this behavior on live at this time, though prior to the DX11 patch it was a perpetual annoyance. I assume I'll be seeing it on live again after tomorrow's patch.

Randomly fiddling around with ini files is not going to make much difference, probably 99% of the player base won't have any idea what to do anyway.

The issue is simple, you can get rid of most of the frame lag by turning all models off, so that means the code is massively inefficient at rendering characters. Until that is rewritten the game is going to be in an unplayable state. I mean, if you have to turn off all models to be able to play at all then there is a serious problem.

I understand that future graphics cards might not support the game, but those cards are going to have a bad player experience anyway. So you might as well revert back to the old rendering engine, otherwise you are probably going to lose a large number of players since the game currently has serious playability issues now.

One more thing, channels have become incredibly flaky over the last few weeks, to the point that the chat server drops after a few minutes. If you zone it *might* come back, but then drops a few minutes later. Apparently not everyone is having this problem, so there seems to be some other problem after the patch as well (network related maybe?)

The tower reward vendor opens up 2 masks when you complete the 2nd mission, unparalleled guardian mask of distant echoes and unparalleled mask of distant echoes. Usually guardian masks have more AC and stamina but these are exactly the same in all stats. Only difference is guardian mask has anger (aka hate) and class restriction. I suspect this is an oversight.

Test server update is looking good for me so far Can Alt-Tab out of Fullscreen mode now and a few other bugs that I was experiencing are gone.

Please god let this be true

They changed something today?

It was worse for me a couple of days ago?

Ah I see. Thanks for explaining what you mean by "doesn't make it look better".

The Memory.ini tunings on Test are conservatively aimed at improving frame rate and reducing stuttering. You should notice that while the textures are still loading your frame rate is smoother. After all the textures are loaded, the frame rate should be steadier moving around the zone. You might also notice that your zone times are shorter.

Regarding your point about seeing untextured geometry, I suggest that you force high quality textures to pre-load and remain loaded. This will use more graphics memory so I associate this with "Most memory" option. Please try setting these values in a copy of Resources\Memory.ini (the instructions for how to make modifications are in the file).

[MemoryMode2]
MaxTextureQuality=0
MinTextureQuality=0

Memory.ini will be further tuned in the future and player feedback is welcome.

Very odd, I have a 5800x3D with a 6900XT and if anything the DX11 changes have improved performance when I box 5 clients. Though still have aspect issues with ultrawide (3440x1440), it is playable, it was not playable before.

I have 32gb(4x8gb) of 3600Mhz ram set to XMP 3600 matching profile to my Corsair ram. I run this on a x570 Gigabyte AORUS Master mobo, which does support PCIE 4. I also run off a WD 4TB NVMe black drive.

I did experience the funky rainbow of colors the other day in PoK, but that has been a one time event, we will see after todays patch on live.

I am posting this as it is odd we have exact same CPU/GPU combo but obviously entirely different experiences.

Side note, I am running latest BIOS on mobo and very AMD recent drivers, I am away from home so can't check but I updated them in Jan 2024.

It could be something else you run? or I run in background?

For comparison when away from home I box 5 clients on my Legion 5 Pro, Mobile Ryzen 5800H with a mobile 3070 and 32gb ram. The DX11 changes do not seem to have had any effect for me either way on my lappie, but perhaps a little better since I notice nothing. I run games on the 2560x1440 screen or same resolution on a monitor at my GFs.

Again so weird that we are seeing such a range of experiences, even on very similar hardware. Both share Logitech Ghub for my keyboard/mouse/headset, both run bitdefender, both are Windows 10.

I thought I had explained it pretty well in the first post. I'm going to quote that here because I also want to draw attention to the timeline involved. I'm concerned that you may be focusing on configuration as the culprit at the expense of observing that changes between patches have been having an effect without me going wild tweaking graphical settings (which I have never previously adjusted through editing configuration files):

So the key point here is that I had this issue prior to the January patch, then the problem was resolved by the January patch, and as of the February patch--first on Test, now on Live--the problem is back.

I made the configuration changes you suggested. Well, there was really only one--the MinTextureQuality setting needed to be adjusted, MaxTextureQuality was already zero. I made a copy of the Memory.ini file in the Resources directory called MemoryCustom.ini, and following the instructions in that file added an entry (there was no prior entry) to the Default section of eqclient.ini that points to it.

This change had no effect (on Live, since the problem now exists there, again). It's not exactly clear that the change was used, though, as I can't see anything in dbg.txt that suggests that the copied memory.ini was loaded instead of the original, and don't know of a way to see if the client even saw the new setting.

I'm starting to wonder if part of the problem is when tabbing out it is treating EQ the same as it does when you log in and ignores your choice to be in full screen.

I wonder if they find a solution to not being able to log in full screen will fix the issues we are seeing with tabbing out.

Excellent reasoning and I agree on all points,,, I'm not sure if they can grasp the idea the old rendering engine was tweaked to perfection and the new one just isn't going to work,..... REVERT, leave the game alone and create EQ3 with the new engine..

One more point. I think you are correct in the massive number of peeps that are not paying or playing anymore because of this. Maybe they knew this and that was the reasoning for selling off Plantside to hedge against the massive losses from this patch debacle... Hmmm