Rendering distance (roadmap intentions)

So here's the underlying question that I think everybody is wondering about I think.
I've seen your plans to do something about a priority system for rendering, and while this may be a step in the right direction (although a pretty shallow one) is there any STRONG INTENTION and PLANNED DEVELOPMENT DIRECTION into fixing the rendering distance permanently, even if it will take more time? (especially for infantry vs infantry fights)

I don't think I'm alone here but I think what most of us love about this game is the fact that the term "epic battles" is brought to a whole new meaning by planetside, but.. when people start to basically teleport in front of you 15-20 meters at the most exciting fights it just kills the feeling so bad.

Also, because of how it works, you might be able to shoot players that cannot see you and vice versa and people (including myself) are starting to learn how to abuse this and position themselves in crowded battles so that they are never shot but can still fire away and decimate enemies without dying, when it's very crowded.

The game is insanely engaging, and it will only become better with time, but this is something that really needs adressing, so is a full time fix being worked on? Partial ones can only stall what most of us can probably say is the biggest downer effect to the big battles.

With regards to rendering, I hit my whit's end tonight. There was a massive VS zerg hitting Xroads and TI alloys at the same time. Between the two tank columns a massive infantry fight erupted at the end of the bridge in the field on the south side of TI. I managed to sneak around a boulder and saw a massive crowd of infantry unaware to my location. I jump tossed a nade that rolled, bounced and landed right in the middle of them. Just as I was about to taste sweet victory, EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN ONE OF THE VS DERENDERED OFF MY SCREEN. Grenade explodes and not even a single hit reg. Get too many infantry fighting in one spot and nothing renders outside 50m, if that. It's utter garbage.

I will add my support to this. If anything is making me quit this game it's this freaking render distance issue.

Now - what most people don't understand about that roadmap. The "fix" where the example they give is that if you are a pilot, then AA infantry will render farther for you. That's already been added in a hotfix last week or the week before. There's nothing new in the roadmap regarding render distance.

SOE should not have released a game with such a fundamental bug. The entire playing field is upset once you create a situation where you can see some guys and they can't see you (and vice versa). All statistics in this game mean nothing, because the game is fundamentally unfair and RANDOM.

As it is right now, I don't think SOE will ever be able to truly fix this problem. Nothing they've said or done leads me to believe that. In fact it's the opposite. So basically I'm in some kind of semi-limbo state where I'm already not spending any more money on the game, and basically it'll take just one more thing to tick me off and make me give up for good.

Too bad. This game has soo much potential - that's the only thing keeping me holding on.

Also as a quick follow up to this, which I forgot to mention in my initial post is that, I SWEAR TO GOD, after launch and a week or 2 after it (not sure but approx that timeframe) the render distance was not as close to as bad as it is now. I remember sniping HUGE distances in pretty crowded fights without having people disappearing, I'm sure many of you have noticed this as well?

I'm assuming it was what was causing the servers to crash in the huge events? (those crashes are now gone btw) so I'm assuming the server choked due to the mass rendering of people and you had to lower it because it crashed the server? This is just my guess but I'm pretty sure it's quite accurate, at least I'm SURE that the render distance was better at launch and shortly after launch.

Anyway, bottom line - is a permanent fix being worked on ? (even if it will take a month, 2.. 3... ) If this will never prmanently be adressed, it's a real shame

I agree that this should be a priority fix.

The whole rendering issue is becoming something for a joke. Every time I play an infiltrator, people in my crosshairs just disapear without any good reason to. It is starting to make sniping from 150+ meters fairly pointless, as too many targets just disappear or perhaps are never rendered at all.

The funny thing is that once they disappear, they also become invulnerable to my bullets/grenades, only to show up again a few seconds later in the exact same spot they were before.
(No, it's not infiltrators, nor is it people who get killed and then rezzed by medics.. I can tell the difference

This makes me wonder though: When being artillery support for your attacking faction buddies, how many kills/assists are you cheated out of, simply because the enemy did not render and thusly became invulnerable to your attacks?

I'm not sure if the reason for culling enemies is due to the server or client, but the current "dynamic" rendering system was introduced in late beta as I recall. Possibly the week right before release even. And I don't remember having any particular problem that it solved... Then again I have a pretty beefy PC.

Bottom line, SOE designed a game that they couldn't properly execute. If they can't fix this, then they should cut the continent population limit from 2,000 to ~600 (or whatever Planetside 1 was) so that we can have proper battles without ghost enemies popping in and out of existance in front of our very eyes (and only 20 meters away).

i don't know anything about programming in PC games, but i do know the difference between knowing what information is stored client side vs server side. As far as the trees, bushes and other world objects (static vs dynamic items in an online game), how much of that is stored on your computer as a client side rendered item? Does this have anything to do with what does or doesn't render off in the distance? Cause i'm more than willing so give more HDD space to store more static items in the world to help.

I'm pretty sure that terrain is stored as map data on the client side, but obviously anything else (players, vehicles, aircraft, projectiles) is first of all information from the player sent to the server (about his location, heading, speed, hp etc etc) and then that information is then relayed to everyone else through the server, giving you what you see on the screen (all the people and vehicles) so you can imagine there is A LOT of information being relayed in REAL TIME at any given time especially in huge battles, but still the rendering limitation shouldn't be an excuse for making the game run bad, especially not on high end PC's, it's probably a server side limitation that they need to optimize/improve, that's what I think.

I get this much. As a long time vet of the BF series (all the way back to 1942) I've learned to tell apart the static from dynamic (map objects vs player objects) and how to tweak settings to benefit me. Anyone who plays battlefield knows that the lower you have your settings that control flora and other map bases objects, the better off you are. This is what I was trying to get at.

Yeah, but you see, there's no details that you can turn on and off your screen that will make the server have to relay less data. Obviously they cant handle a higher render distance and that's why it's dynamic atm and it drops the more people are in one area. It's a server side limitation, one that cannot be fixed by client side stuff no matter which way you put it. The coding is too stuffy and it probably takes too much memory/requires too much processing power so it's a lot of work to be done, but the point is, will it EVER be permanently fixed, even if it's a drawn out process?

This is a huge problem. Ive found myself simply leaving areas with epic fights when it starts happening. Except The Crown. I will defend The Crown even if we lost every single other territory on the entire planets.

In many aspects of this game they have pushed the boundaries expected in mmo's, they even proudly use the "if you find another game that matches the epic size and battles of ps2 let me know" argument on the social media sites and interviews, yet they sweep the fact this game has game breaking render distance under the mat...

It's not just the fact it's got amazingly poor draw distance but when someone was in your target 1 second as you pull the trigger there's a good chance he'll vanish before the hit detection kicks in.

Who here is a vet of SWG, and was there the night the DWB went live? What happened that night? Theed overrun by a Droid army (3 way fight between the countless AI, empire and rebels), 2nd only to that fought by the clones in the battle of Geonosis. Were there rendering issues then? no. lag yes, but at least our hits registered. By god what an epic night that was.

I must agree that any increase to the infantry render distance would be more than welcome. I'm hoping the Devs will eventually get round to fixing this.

You do know that grenades and explosions are one of the few things that hit/kill unrendered enemies, your grenade must of bounced off at a bad angle or something.

no i did not know that, however i've thrown enough nades in PS2 to know how to watch where they land, and i KNOW it landed in the middle of that crowd. Again not even a hit marker was shown. So ya just not sure what to make of it anymore

I hear you. And The Crown is where I've noticed this problem the most. Imagine you are defending The Crown from attackers from Ti. Alloys. They cross their bridge and have a sunderer parked there. That corner they need to turn - the chokepoint. THEY AREN'T VISIBLE THERE. They litterally can walk around the corner and I can't see them.

When they walk 5 meters more - ta dum. They are suddenly visible in the middle of the road. I shoot at them, they step back - ta dum. They vanish.

It's ******* unbelievably stupid.

what's more stupid is that you render to them. I've been noticing this **** where i'm getting shot from areas around the crown where not a single thing is rendering on my screen

IMO a quick fix would be to add a simple slider allowing you to choose how much render distance you want to sacrifice for increased fps.

Have it default to the current setting so people can choose to alter it if they wish.

current setting? what current setting LOL

Ive also noticed in huge battles that the hit indicator doesnt show, but that doesnt always mean Im not getting hits. During the event on Amerish, at The Bastion, I was on top of a tower firing my Warden down into groups of VS. Id get a kill every so often but the little red X never showed up.