Operation: Make Faster Game

Nowhere in the physics part does it contradict itself, 'it won’t have much of one unless you have 4 or less cores, -- and anyone with 2-4 cores will see potentially massive increases in frame rate' It's said nowhere in the physics part that 4 cores, 3 cores or 2 cores won't see an improvement.

Physics optimization will have no/little effect on CPU's with more than 4 cores 'it won’t have much of one unless you have 4 or less cores'
Honestly, all your questions have been answered in the Original post, you might want to read it again.

Said no one ever.

OK. Time for reverse rant. *deep breath*

I generally don't open my mouth much within the community, but you know, I just wanted to post some motivation for the devs that are doing this as I see so much negativity on this thread and I am really disappointed by the community at times like these.

I think the SOE team is doing a fantastic job, and I've supported almost every decision you guys have made with the game, including OMFG (I'll admit the lattice was a hard sell, but I saw the light, eventually). Mind you I was a very vocal critic of some of your decisions during the PS1 era. I think my running line was, "There is no company in the world better than SOE at launching games full of amazing potential and then running them into the ground." I still have a bit of a sore spot on how you guys handled MxO, among other titles. But you guys have really proved me wrong this time around. I constantly hear people whining about this, that, or the other. And all I hear is people complaining about not being able to have their cake and eat it, too.

Every time the devs have had a major decision to make in regards to the game, the answer from so many people is to not make a decision and do it all as if SOE was a charity organization with infinite manpower and resources whose sole objective was to make every single human being alive happy at all times, and they weren't out to make any profit at all in the process, as they code the game from their bacon-computers while riding atop unicorns wielding velociraptor-launching jackhammers, lead by Higby, who is secretly a military experiment Chuck Norris clone gone rogue (I know I can't be the only person who hasn't seen the resemblance...).

Is the game and everything about it absolutely perfect? No. Have they made a few mistakes along the way? Maybe, and even then I think those mistakes they have made required the gift of hindsight to see. Unfortunately, all the Oracles and Soothsayers at SOE were on strike at the time, and their time machine is still in pre-alpha development. The team really doesn't get enough credit for the fact that they're making 80% of this up as they go along. The process is going to be a bit bumpy, but I think they are absolutely doing the best they can given how ground-breaking and bleeding-edge so much of the techniques and technologies they're working with happen to be.

Yes the frame rates have sucked compared to many other games. Even then, I still think people are making a bigger deal on them then it actually is. With a little tweaking and optimizing, I've been getting, at worst, 45 fps in the biggest battles since march or april, on a stock i5 3.1 Ghz and an EVGA GTX660 SC, running at 1366x768 and roughly medium settings. Cuz I spent 5 figures to get those mad FPS, right? However I think they've done what they can to improve them along the way and they're definitely much better than they were during most of beta, while balancing a workload of fleshing the game out and doing major and consistent content updates at the same time.

The time to do OMFG was now, and always has been now, not before. To have done it before means we would be playing a game with 15 minute base cap timers, with no harassers, phoenixes/strikers/lancers, EXP optimizations, none of the extra pistols, SMGs, shotties, MAX optimizations, base layout and continent optimzations, lattice implementation, all that the game didn't have from day 1, with a whole buttload of bugs still in place, etc. etc. etc. you know... make the game actually playable... That means we have had to suck it up for the last year and play the game at it's less than mindblowing gfx quality. The argument that "They should have waited to launch the game." is the most paradoxical load of horse manure I've seen from the community. So the answer to all the problems with the game is to not be able to play the game, while we sit here and curse at SOE for not launching the game yet while they keep SOON™ing us 'til we're blue in the face... Brilliant. Why didn't I think of that? You gotta go to school to learn to be that dumb.

I am even shocked that they back tracked on their early ideas for the implants when every body flipped out. To me it made perfect sense, but maybe that's because I also remember that while this is a game development company, it's also a business trying to make a profit and feed mouths and families in a capitalist society. I had long thought that the game wasn't making them anywhere near as much money as it could or should, and that they needed some kind of regularly usable consumables that was purchasable with station cash as opposed to their 1 time transactions that have made up their business model so far. I want this game to succeed financially because that means I can keep playing it and they can keep updating it and it doesn't have to be relegated down to 0 devs and 1 part-time GM. But everyone went on the "OMGPAY2WIN" tirade, and SOE actually renegged on what was a very smart business decision at what may end up being a big loss for them.

People, remember, this is SOE. This is not EA. This is not Blizzard. They don't have hundreds of devs and billions of dollars floating around to toss on a highly experimental sequel to a marginal failure that is 10x more ambitious a project than anything else out on the market right now. Oh, wait. EA and Blizzard wouldn't have gambled on PS2 even if they could afford the loss...

So devs, and even Smed, thank you. You guys are doing the best job you possibly can, and a few of us can actually see it for what it is. And I have faith that OMFG will make the game run awesome relatively SOON™.

P.S.: If I could ask you guys to fix one thing, can you do something about Maggie's hair? It needs less... purple... and more blue and gold. =P

You seem to forget one VERY important thing, Codeforge posted the initial 'We are doing optimization' thread nearly a year ago, nobody asked him to do it, nobody knew what he was working on, it all came from SOE/Codeforge themselves and for nearly a year nothing much was said or done to get a stable FPS in this game.

So please don't sit there and say ' A few of us can see it for what it is', the rest of us have been sitting here watching/waiting for them to deliver the goods on what THEY THEMSELVES posted and not what we created a thread about.

If you want to see if for what it really is then it's to do with potential sales on the PS4 and not anything to do with sorting out the PC.

Honestly, and I've said it before. I don't blame anyone's impatience one bit.

Any frustration you have, believe that I am right there with ya.

But we are trying to tell you what we're doing as we're doing it, being as open about the process as we can, rather than remain silent and just throw it out there as a surprise.

In the end, there is one essential truth. You need the game to be faster, and we need to make it faster, as soon as possible.

Everything else is academic.

Regular updates on the the level of progress you all are making, and any breakthroughs you might be making, would be most helpful. Not only does informing the Planetside 2 community strengthen our faith in the developers, it also gives us something to look forward to.

A side note to this thread in order to maximize the potential of Warpgate captures we need this to happen. All the players from one faction on a continent in one small area. We are talking 1000+ in one spot for home continent defenses. If you want to make the Meta game work THIS UPDATE HAS TO HAPPEN FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also the new COD and BF4 launch in November. I think the optimization trend is a bit late now, imo, but you know what they say, better late then never ...

Yes, please.

We (or at least the majority) appreciate the candor and your efforts. I think if we all take a step back and look at the big picture, PS2 is a great piece of work. I haven't really played a game (online or otherwise) since the original PlanetSide because after that everything else was boring in comparison, except PlanetSide 2. You've managed to create something really unique, and it's still in its very early stages, I think the best is yet to come in terms of player population and content. We all agree it has its flaws and they are recognized and being worked on. As a fan and customer, I can't ask for any more than that. Good luck, and may Vanu smile upon you.

Actually yes they do, The Keyword in that acronym is SONY. While these people may be a subsidiary or sideline project they could probably grab whatever extra resources they needed if they had a good whine at head office.

I don't share your faith. Sony is a company well known for charging twice the going rate for electronics just for their name being plastered on the front. I have no direct problem with this, but that's because they usually sell you a product that's upper-tier with a very good lifespan and very few problems....

I'm not sure what i'm ranting about. I just want SoE to know their playerbase is still pretty pissed, the buzz has mostly gone from this announcement and it's all back to "SORT OUT POPULATION" and "NERF [Insert thing] NOW!"

I've got to agree with the randoms. Sort it out SoE.

Just a suggestion...
This thread is fine, but I don't think the majority of players are going to filter through the hundreds of responses looking for regular updates from official sources.
I really think this game is going to continue to hemorrhage players unless we get a weekly (at least weekly) stickied post from SOE explaining what's brewing. I need to be able to log into the official forums and find that update quickly.
Thanks

Couple of questions:

• Would culling the number of on-screen elements in the 'world interface' (like terminal icons) be of decent benefit? I've always wanted the option to set attenuation to the opacity of these elements based on distance: hopefully people could then set a 0% opacity range of, say, 50m and stop non-threat icons (like terminals) appearing?

• Are these performance improvements centred on PS2 or Forgelight on the whole? I can understand that you wish to make PS2 run faster, but is this work also building a stronger base for future projects? (Like EQ:N?)

Appreciate the transparent way in which SOE is going about these changes (and development in general)

yeah!
i love having my entire vehicle drift whenever i come to a root of pebble

******* finally I can actually play PS2 and go right in to the battles and at least be able to fight

Ok, just a few problems I have.

I make no illusions that this is a PS4 optimization, not a PS2. The AMD chip in the PS4 is a major reason to devote this big push of personnel. If this Sony developed game doesn't work well on the Sony developed console it will be a huge embarrassment and they will lose a whole bunch of potential revenue. I can't blame them for doing this optimization now.

I'm actually fine with this decision since it will potentially benefit me (AMD user who according to the tests on Planetside's own website should be running ultra everything is currently getting 10-15 fps average on low while every other game I play is ultra settings and runs beautifully). Right now there are glaring issues with the game that should be addressed. Optimization should have been the single biggest issue PRE-release. Once the game runs well, then balance it, then add new content to keep the game fresh. Right now we have a game pushed out before it was ready and a team trying to play catch up while problems snowball with the culmination of frustrated users and declining players. With the release it seems to have been a jumble of "which direction should we go". Released guns, vehicles, boosts, memberships, camos, decals, ornaments, helmets for a year. All of those make money... Coming onto the forum and copy/pasting a daily reminder about recertification isn't going to do anything.

I appreciate the effort now but it's a little late. I have not renewed my membership, I stopped buying SC. I don't expect any SOE employee to read this and print it off for their boss saying "Oh no, we lost WesleyGibson as a customer!" because they are out to make more money than I could provide them. They will make more money off all the potential customers from PS4 than if they currently tried to fix the game for the PC folks. Until the time that the PC player base makes Sony take notice by huge declining revenue, one of two things will happen. Sony will either take notice of the issues important to the player base regardless of the revenue a new gun or camo could make them and fix the problems OR this game will be scrapped.

I'm hoping its the former, I fear it's the latter.

PS4 couldn't run the game smoothly either, hence optimization .

If PS2 fails to perform on the PS4, expect more 'cutbacks' of staff assigned to PS2.

look, I haven't heard a single person say that the PS4 launch isn't influencing the timing of OMFG, and i didn't say that either. Of course the PS4 launch has something to do with the fact that they're doing OMFG now as opposed to another two to three months from now. But, you have to admit, that the game wasn't really starting to shape up until about GU10/GU11. If I was Smed, and I had to choose between having a semi-incomplete game, and having a game that can't be run on max settings by most hardware because of performance issues, it's a simple choice which one I would focus on first. So, to be so cynical and say they are only doing this so the PS4 doesn't look like an epic fail is highly unrealistic. In reality it's a little bit of column A and a little bit of Column B.

LOL, if I were a man who made assumptions, I would say you work in the public sector. That's not how it goes in the world of business. If you don't have a product that is not absolutely guaranteed to both work properly AND dominate it's market, and if you, being a subsidiary, have consistently been losing market share for over a decade, you don't get to go up to the head office and ask for a budget increase, it's the other way around. Head office is going to drag you up there, cut your head off, dismantle your project, fire or reassign everyone, and sell the left overs for parts to the highest bidder, if you go over certain risk thresholds in your budget.

I highly disagree with this statement, there has been some progress. Frame rates have improved over time, just not as well as they could have or we expected they would. The worst thing that can be realistically said is that Codeforge was overly enthusiastic in his declaration. He over promised and under delivered, and we had an unrealistic expectation as a result. To say nothing was done is very unfair. There were threads all over the forums as late as January were devs were openly admitting that they didn't actually know why the game was under performing yet. The reality is that before they could even have a concrete plan like the one laid out in OMFG, large quantities of player data had to be accumulated so as to have an idea as to exactly what was going on. That takes time. As they went discovering things, they addressed what they could within their current workload, and everything else got relegated to a long term priority while the team focused on content which was a more important priority.

If I didn't know anything about hardware and I read your post, I would infer that SOE is the only company in the world that did not properly support AMD. I love AMD/ATI as much as you do, and for many years I bought their stuff exclusively, but I'm 32 now, maybe too old, and I'm kind of tired of it, even though it's no fault of AMD or ATI, cuz their stuff really is great. But, I want to go on newegg/amazon, buy a CPU, a MoBo, a GPU, a couple sticks of ram and a PSU and slap it together and play my games without having to play pin the tail on the driver. I don't have time for that anymore, so I gave in and now I buy Intel/nVidia and just avoid that hassle. This is an industry wide phenomenon and has been for years. As human beings, we love to assign the blame, but the reality is this is really not any one entities fault. Some companies have the time and resources to implement proper AMD/ATI support, some don't. If AMD users are going to blame anyone, they have to blame themselves. They know the headaches and hassles that come with AMD and many popular games out there, but they still buy AMD anyway and hope they will get to play their game with it.

PS2 isn't going anywhere and no one is going to dismantle it. This company has proven to me that they are committed to this franchise and any PS1 veteran would know that. If you had told me 5 years ago that they were going to make a sequel to PS1 I would have spent a good week laughing cynically at the thought. It was a beautiful dream, and thank God they were actually crazy enough to attempt this gamble a 2nd time. Game companies don't make these kinds of gamble's unless there is a certain passion and love in what you are trying to accomplish above and beyond profits.

I see everyone asking for more transparency from SOE, and absolutely more transparency is a good thing. But many people are going about it the wrong way and are encouraging less transparency. You don't ask for more transparency and then take a dump on their parade when they offer a mea culpa and layout a concrete plan on how they are going to go about fixing their shortcomings. I remember how poorly this company interacted with it's fanbase just a few years ago (BFRs anyone? or caves? I'm surprised they didn't put BFR's IN THE CAVES.). Many people who keep asking for more transparency seem to forget the herculean improvements this company has made in comparison to how they used to do things. PS2 is a game of which a solid 80% has been designed by popular consent from the fan base. That is a far cry from the SOE of yesteryear. So yes, stuff isn't perfect, no stuff isn't ever going to be perfect, but this company and this game have been and continue to be moving in the right direction and all I'm saying is to give them at least a modicum of credit for that while you constructively offer feedback on where they need to improve. Before you guys criticize them for the direction you think they're taking, I ask you to look at the direction from which they came.

I can admit that most of the features that have been added since launch have lead to a better game than at release. To argue otherwise would be naive and I don't think anyone is saying strip everything away from the game and just optimize it. The problem is the car came off the line with 2 wheels. I can appreciate the new paint job, the flames on the hood look sweet, the tinted windows are nifty and my new deck and speakers are great while only costing me a modest price. The problem I have is the car came off the line with 2 wheels. If my car came off the line maybe 2-3 months later but it had 4 wheels... Maybe no flames at this point, certainly no tinting, I would still love my car and I can get those later on when I'm able to use my car the way it's meant to be used.

That ties in nicely to my final point in my post. I hope management would take notice if memberships dropped dramatically (say 50%), no one bought boosts, weapons or decoration (they would be poor management to ignore such a problem with a revenue stream). There comes a point though when a company changes from "We can fix it" to "We can't recoup our investment". When that point is reached, the project will be scrapped.

I wouldn't say nothing has been done and I am appreciate of the effort and time of all the individuals who brought us this game (if I didn't enjoy it and want it to succeed, why would I even bother posting on here). No plan will ever be perfect, I don't believe for a second every machine and every person should be running high with >60 fps, but that's why you beta. That's why you take machines with varying specs and capabilities and you take that data and go back and see just what problems, bugs, performance issues, balance issues, etc you have that you might not have caught during alpha. The perception is that data was ignored by management/developers/both in order to get a game out that wasn't quite ready so they could start trying to cash in early on an investment. When finally, roughly a year later OMFG is announced with the impending PS4 market looming you will understandably have PC users who have invested their time and money for a year questioning SOE's motives.

This may be true. The problem I have is even according to the hardware test on this site I should be getting way better performance than I do. For reasons I hope will be addressed in OMFG. I'm not blaming SOE but I'm also not going to financially support a game that is not going to deliver what is says it will for me. I hope in the future I might and I hope that if enough people take similar actions SOE will be forced to take notice. Like I said before, a daily copy/paste in a thread is absolutely meaningless.

For the record this is the recommended hardware:

• OS - Windows 7
• Processor - Intel i5 processor or higher / AMD Phenom II X6 or higher
• Memory - 8 GB RAM
• Hard Drive - 15 GB free
• Video Memory - 1,024 MB RAM
• Video Card - nVidia GeForce GTX 560 series or higher / AMD HD 6870 or higher
• Sound Card - DirectX compatible

All of which I have, or higher. I still run around like last night for example (during a Tech Lab alert) we had roughly 24 vs 24, inside, no vehicles and fighting on or near A. I was bouncing between 5 and 13 FPS. I can really use optimization and would gladly welcome it tomorrow if it fixes my (and many other people's) issues. It still should have been pre-release. I honestly had my worst (consistent) framerate ever for this game last night to the point where I had to shut it off. When the game is free to play for me as it is now, no big deal. If I'm paying into the game, big deal.

I said there will be two options and your scenario fits: Head office is going to drag you up there, cut your head off, dismantle your project, fire or reassign everyone, and sell the left overs for parts to the highest bidder, if you go over certain risk thresholds in your budget. If sales deline so badly that PS2 is no longer profitable, this is the most likely scenario. I hope they call the team up to the head office, hand out big checks and say "Give them all recertification, give them global lattice, give them metagame, and you get a car, and you get a car!"

I completely agree. I like that we can have an open channel directly to those involved. I like that developers actually take the time to respond to people without condescension or disdain. While I believe the backlash is a small but vocal crowd it is real and it should be addressed. Not for one second do I believe that the people involved in this project don't care or don't take pride in trying to do the best job they can, there are always going to be questions that will need answers.

When you finish it, the game will be totally optimized? Or only partially optimized? You'll end in late September?