Ever since S9 came out I have been adjusting every setting in the game trying to make it run more smoothly. But nothing works, before S9 I could run the most missions perfectly on high settings, now I have almost everything turned down an it still runs like TRIBBLE.
Also, im using a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 card.
There is already a couple of threads on this subject, most notably the CPU/GPU one, it's quite large already and a lot of people have reported issues in there.
But you are not the only one as you'll have seen in this thread and the others if read.
If you've come to the forums to complain about the AFK system, it's known to be bugged at the moment.
I hope everyone else is reporting this too. It's clearly a huge problem, affecting numerous players, and we can't rely solely on a thread in the forums to get this issue the attention it requires.
As I said in an earlier post, pre-season 9 my laptop had NO problem with any aspect of the game on high settings.
Laptop is about two years old;
Acer V3-57G
i7 processor
Nvidia GeForce GT640m with 2gm RAM
I don't want to come across as one of the 'great entitled', who thinks they should get something for nothing, but I don't think it's unreasonable to want to be able to actually play a game that I/we have invested so much time and money into. :mad:
As I said, please bug report if you're experiencing this, ink this thread into the report; it's a major problem for those of us experiencing it and, to date, the Dev's haven't even acknowledged that it's a problem.
I think it's been bugged a lot already, but you'll probably want to link the more prominent thread as well as there is a lot more detail in that.
If you've come to the forums to complain about the AFK system, it's known to be bugged at the moment.
I have figured out that if I lower the resolutions rate, my fps increases...I know none of us want to play in half resolution, but it should keep you playing until it is fixed...I found that if I run 60 res, I can breeze through any STF at normal speed.
This may not be a great solution, but it has allowed me to continue playing, as I almost gave up on the game...I still run my graphics settings medium...just alter the res on the display page.
I am also having the missing weapons/shields and lower frame rates in space combat since season 9. Hopefully they will get around to fixing this sometime soon.
Well, received a reply which implies that they don't really care, so.....
So? Difficult to say anything to that without knowing what they said to you, but if as you say it reads as though they don't care then it brings into question whether it's worth persisting or not.
The only other notification I've seen is through a Twitter reply I had which said they were looking into it, but nothing since.
If you've come to the forums to complain about the AFK system, it's known to be bugged at the moment.
Not just Nvidia, I have an Ati 7900 series card and I experienced a notable loss of performance after S9 in some areas, notably the dyson space zones. Disabling dynamic lightning solved it for me. Sadly it doesn't help with the missing weapons gfxs in busy areas like the new Undine BZ.
EXACT same problem here, same video hardware series, too.
There's 2 major things you can do to improve frame rates in STO (the first for sure, the second is a big IMHO, but it really helped me, so...):
1) Turn off ANYTHING that involves showing names and numbers (Options - HUD - Show X Damage Floaters and Show Player Names). The Cryptic Engine is absolute utter and total bunk when it comes to displaying text and and numbers everything else on the HUD itself for some really weird reason. This is also a go-to for all three Cryptic games when FPS is an issue.
2) Turn off Soft Particles (Options - Graphics - Soft Particles). Even on the biggest of systems, whatever the Cryptic Engine uses to render the balls of yellow snot, among many other things, is a killer FPS drop (especially with whatever they did to Season 9). Flipping this to off for me gave a large FPS boost, and frankly I haven't seen the difference in visuals yet.
#1 for sure will be a boost in large engagements. #2 has helped me, where otherwise STO runs on absolute utter max settings (and has done so since I started playing it). Hopefully it works for you.
There's 2 major things you can do to improve frame rates in STO (the first for sure, the second is a big IMHO, but it really helped me, so...):
1) Turn off ANYTHING that involves showing names and numbers (Options - HUD - Show X Damage Floaters and Show Player Names). The Cryptic Engine is absolute utter and total bunk when it comes to displaying text and and numbers everything else on the HUD itself for some really weird reason. This is also a go-to for all three Cryptic games when FPS is an issue.
2) Turn off Soft Particles (Options - Graphics - Soft Particles). Even on the biggest of systems, whatever the Cryptic Engine uses to render the balls of yellow snot, among many other things, is a killer FPS drop (especially with whatever they did to Season 9). Flipping this to off for me gave a large FPS boost, and frankly I haven't seen the difference in visuals yet.
#1 for sure will be a boost in large engagements. #2 has helped me, where otherwise STO runs on absolute utter max settings (and has done so since I started playing it). Hopefully it works for you.
Pretty sure this has come up before and has been reported to work for some to a degree. Unfortunately it was one of the things I had tried and it gave no real boost although from what I've read on other forums I can see why there is the potential there.
If you've come to the forums to complain about the AFK system, it's known to be bugged at the moment.
Yeah, and you can even change all the graphics option to OFF / MINIMUM. And i guarantee you that your FPS will increase A LOT. lol
And still, you will have big issues in some zones, like ESD, undine battlezone, tau dewa sector patrol, and a huge etc.
The question is, are we willing to play in really bad crappy graphic settings in a 4-years old game that should not even require a 3-4 years old computer???? , so, i should go return to play mario bross then.
I want to play this game at maximum settings without burning my videocard, because i have a computer more than enough capable for it. And i want to play at 60-70 fps, as i said without listening my videocard fan working at 200%. Because i can. If they messed up the game engine, its as easy as revert it to its previous state. Because soon or later, the effects will be even worst. And i am talking about 1-2 months from now, when the Summer heat comes. You will see what i am talking about. If now some of you can play at 25 fps, you will not be able to play even at 10 fps.
Is there a fix? I've tired putting stuff on low but that for some reason makes it worse. Also tired stuff the P1 talked about in P1 podcast. And still nothing.
I can't play any Rep at all.
And this is a bran new computer as well. State of the art.
Yeah, and you can even change all the graphics option to OFF / MINIMUM. And i guarantee you that your FPS will increase A LOT. lol
And still, you will have big issues in some zones, like ESD, undine battlezone, tau dewa sector patrol, and a huge etc.
The question is, are we willing to play in really bad crappy graphic settings in a 4-years old game that should not even require a 3-4 years old computer???? , so, i should go return to play mario bross then.
I'm not listing my experience for my own benefit, and barely that of the other people here (if it helps, all the better)...
I'm trying to give the devs details on where to look for the problem... assuming they have no idea where it is yet. Since they haven't acknowledged it yet, they probably can't repro it (hard to believe), and more than likely have no idea where to look (other than the entire modified codebase). As a developer, I know how these things work, to some degree at least.
Perhaps they made some drastic changes in the shadow/lighting code. The fact I can toggle it on and off and trigger the bug could be new information for them.
I'm not excusing them. They should say something at least. Like, "we hear you guys have graphics issues, we're looking into it."
Anyway, I agree with you, I can play at highest quality settings at around 40fps. Or at least, I used to.
I, too, want to play it again at those settings.
Perhaps they made some drastic changes in the shadow/lighting code. The fact I can toggle it on and off and trigger the bug could be new information for them.
This is good if it works for you, but it doesn't cover everyone so it wouldn't appear to be something exclusive to the shadow/lighting part of the code.
If you've come to the forums to complain about the AFK system, it's known to be bugged at the moment.
Just jumping in to confirm the post-Season9 problem. I have a system with Core I5-2400 CPU, 8 GB RAM and a GTX-750 VGA. Many areas are unplayable, and practically all areas are highly fluctuating and tend to lag heavily. Even bringing down the settings to medium does not help. Hiding the HUD sometimes improves FPS considerably, but I obviously need the HUD for playing.
Just to note, recently I tried Path of Exile, and it's butter smooth in full HD with max settings, no matter how many monsters are coming on me and how many auras, effects, etc. are on screen.
Something is evidently broken in the graphics engine. I really hope that the devs will be able to sort out this problem, because it's breaking the immersion and the perceived quality of the game.
(But frankly I don't understand the delay. Maybe I'm naive when it comes to the graphics engines of video games, but isn't it a simple process to find slow portions of the code with counters, logs, etc.?)
(But frankly I don't understand the delay. Maybe I'm naive when it comes to the graphics engines of video games, but isn't it a simple process to find slow portions of the code with counters, logs, etc.?)
Because obviously they dont consider this a game bug or something that is broken in the game engine. Maybe they think it is a end-user configuration problem. But after all the evidence and reports from the players i really dont have a clue. They obviously did something after season 9 but they dont want to invest efforts and time fixing it. This is bad, since it will be a motive for a lot of people to stop playing STO. But it looks like this doesnt matter to cryptic.. as we can see. And of course, even if i can play well, i only have lag in all the zones everybody does (esd, voth space battlezone, undine space battlezon, CE, etc) but im not going to play in that state for too long, since i am not willing to accept this. A game with almost 5 years in its back should not have so many problems running in computers with 2-3 years in their backs. We all know STO is really bad optimized, but even knowing that, its not acceptable that this game lags so badly, specially after season 9.
I run a GeForce GTX 480 card and I still experience low FPS. I also experience missing effects (like invisible weapons fire during crystal entity). I strongly suspect that STO's graphics engine is insufficient to run the game with proper graphics.
Yes, the game engine is very limited, but thats not the problem. Everybody knew that the missing weapon graphics bug is happening because the game engine cant hold so many graphics. But thats not all. Because before season 9, this bug already existed, but only sometimes and in rarely ocassions.
AFTER season 9, cryptic did something to the game engine, and that was the start of the avalanch of performance issues. I dont know why they keep doing new content if the game engine cant hold it. I just dont have a clue. And if the game engine obviously cant hold after season 9, they should revert the changes prior to season 9. Unfortunately, as i said, its like they really dont care at all. So, i guess the guys with those problems will need to start thinking on find another game, because seeing how this issue is ignored by the devs since it appeared, i dont think we will ever see it fixed.
Because that is the other BIG problem. The only other option to fix it, without reverting the changes is to upgrade the game engine. And i dont think cryptic will waste resources and money on that.. they will prefer to see their customers unhappy and frustrated, and stop playing. That is what it seems. And its really sad, i must say.
Actually now that you mention it. Frame rate seems to drop with less enemies on screen, weapon animations will sometimes disappear more frequently. I get a ton of frame rate issues while doing dyson sphere ground mission and aiming down site. There seems to be a lot more redrawing.
Be aware, a comment by a community manager does not constitute acknowledgement, they have absolutely nothing to do with the software end of the game and they can be as much in the dark about ongoing issues as the rest of us if developers aren't communicating.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
Be aware, a comment by a community manager does not constitute acknowledgement, they have absolutely nothing to do with the software end of the game and they can be as much in the dark about ongoing issues as the rest of us if developers aren't communicating.
I can run Crysis, FarCry, Company of Heroes 2, and probably Star Citizen without much problems on Full HD with a good amount of gfx details ... But STO makes my card burn .......
STO Display, AA turned on/off ... no difference whatsoever in FPS
STO Graphics , Both sliders to max ... VCE framerate drops to 4fps , Both Sliders to med, VCE framerate drops to 10fps
Hardware
Binary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1600 Release Mar 7 2012
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1) 64bit
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
CPU flags: 2672MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model: AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series 8.982.0.0 2048Mb
So Devs, please check out these Unigine benches on DX11 and really tell me what settings are required to play STO with an average FPS of 30+
Unigine - Heaven Benchmark v3.0 Basic
FPS: 65.8
Scores: 1658
Min FPS: 29.7
Max FPS: 119.5
STO Display, AA turned on/off ... no difference whatsoever in FPS
Same here.
(What seem to make a considerable difference is turning off shadows and hiding the HUD (ALT+F12).)
Also, I don't understand the relationship between the number of players (or player behavior) and performance, but when the Horga'hn event starts on Risa the game goes into slideshow. Usually there ain't that many players on my screen; maybe 2 or 3...
(What seem to make a considerable difference is turning off shadows and hiding the HUD (ALT+F12).)
Also, I don't understand the relationship between the number of players (or player behavior) and performance, but when the Horga'hn event starts on Risa the game goes into slideshow. Usually there ain't that many players on my screen; maybe 2 or 3...
Risa is not actually a laggy map. Not more than any of the regular ones. If you have so many fps issues there, something wrong is with your videocard besides the low performance of the game itself.
But i agree. Shadows (in any game, anyways) are the first resource that drains the performance of a videocard. But in any case, again, in the case of STO it should not matter to use the maximum settings on shadows, the performance should be good still. Hell, i can even play the games of the last generation at maximum settings including shadows, and i dont have any performance issue at all.. lol, that says it all. :P
And yes, the UI (commented in millions of posts) is the other big drainder of the performance. But since cryptic never did anything about that i dont think we will ever see the UI redesigned.
So Devs, please check out these Unigine benches on DX11 and really tell me what settings are required to play STO with an average FPS of 30+
I should ask why are you using DX11 in first place...
But anyways, why you asking to the devs, if there is nothing they can do?? did you read the previous posts?? it doesnt matter what configuration you use, the fps issues are going to be there anyways. Unless cryptic improves the engine, or revert the changes made prior season 9, there is nothing we can do. And since there is no aknowledge from em about this.. i will not hope this to be fixed at all.
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There is already a couple of threads on this subject, most notably the CPU/GPU one, it's quite large already and a lot of people have reported issues in there.
But you are not the only one as you'll have seen in this thread and the others if read.
I think it's been bugged a lot already, but you'll probably want to link the more prominent thread as well as there is a lot more detail in that.
This may not be a great solution, but it has allowed me to continue playing, as I almost gave up on the game...I still run my graphics settings medium...just alter the res on the display page.
Hope this helps someone....
So? Difficult to say anything to that without knowing what they said to you, but if as you say it reads as though they don't care then it brings into question whether it's worth persisting or not.
The only other notification I've seen is through a Twitter reply I had which said they were looking into it, but nothing since.
1) Turn off ANYTHING that involves showing names and numbers (Options - HUD - Show X Damage Floaters and Show Player Names). The Cryptic Engine is absolute utter and total bunk when it comes to displaying text and and numbers everything else on the HUD itself for some really weird reason. This is also a go-to for all three Cryptic games when FPS is an issue.
2) Turn off Soft Particles (Options - Graphics - Soft Particles). Even on the biggest of systems, whatever the Cryptic Engine uses to render the balls of yellow snot, among many other things, is a killer FPS drop (especially with whatever they did to Season 9). Flipping this to off for me gave a large FPS boost, and frankly I haven't seen the difference in visuals yet.
#1 for sure will be a boost in large engagements. #2 has helped me, where otherwise STO runs on absolute utter max settings (and has done so since I started playing it). Hopefully it works for you.
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Pretty sure this has come up before and has been reported to work for some to a degree. Unfortunately it was one of the things I had tried and it gave no real boost although from what I've read on other forums I can see why there is the potential there.
Noticed decrease in performance on my desktop and laptop. Both with Radeon GPUs.
It was so bad, even Windows wanted to disable Aero.
Turning off shadows helped immensely. Took me from 2.7fps to 17fps.
Still not good, but playable at least now.
Note: when I don't hit the bug, I can get 35fps with shadows on high, 45fps with shadows off.
Also, just toggling the option on and off several times while in orbit of Qo'nos has triggered the bug, now down to <4fps.
Also, the /fpsgraph has spikes of yellow/green when that happens. See: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ink8qzb9vwy2li/lag.png
EDIT: It seems shadows on anything BUT high work fine.
Yeah, and you can even change all the graphics option to OFF / MINIMUM. And i guarantee you that your FPS will increase A LOT. lol
And still, you will have big issues in some zones, like ESD, undine battlezone, tau dewa sector patrol, and a huge etc.
The question is, are we willing to play in really bad crappy graphic settings in a 4-years old game that should not even require a 3-4 years old computer????
I want to play this game at maximum settings without burning my videocard, because i have a computer more than enough capable for it. And i want to play at 60-70 fps, as i said without listening my videocard fan working at 200%. Because i can. If they messed up the game engine, its as easy as revert it to its previous state. Because soon or later, the effects will be even worst. And i am talking about 1-2 months from now, when the Summer heat comes. You will see what i am talking about. If now some of you can play at 25 fps, you will not be able to play even at 10 fps.
I can't play any Rep at all.
And this is a bran new computer as well. State of the art.
slide show on line
at least ever sense season 9 hit
I'm not listing my experience for my own benefit, and barely that of the other people here (if it helps, all the better)...
I'm trying to give the devs details on where to look for the problem... assuming they have no idea where it is yet. Since they haven't acknowledged it yet, they probably can't repro it (hard to believe), and more than likely have no idea where to look (other than the entire modified codebase). As a developer, I know how these things work, to some degree at least.
Perhaps they made some drastic changes in the shadow/lighting code. The fact I can toggle it on and off and trigger the bug could be new information for them.
I'm not excusing them. They should say something at least. Like, "we hear you guys have graphics issues, we're looking into it."
Anyway, I agree with you, I can play at highest quality settings at around 40fps. Or at least, I used to.
I, too, want to play it again at those settings.
It has been acknowledged - check this post.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=17078321&postcount=74
This is good if it works for you, but it doesn't cover everyone so it wouldn't appear to be something exclusive to the shadow/lighting part of the code.
Just to note, recently I tried Path of Exile, and it's butter smooth in full HD with max settings, no matter how many monsters are coming on me and how many auras, effects, etc. are on screen.
Something is evidently broken in the graphics engine. I really hope that the devs will be able to sort out this problem, because it's breaking the immersion and the perceived quality of the game.
(But frankly I don't understand the delay. Maybe I'm naive when it comes to the graphics engines of video games, but isn't it a simple process to find slow portions of the code with counters, logs, etc.?)
Because obviously they dont consider this a game bug or something that is broken in the game engine. Maybe they think it is a end-user configuration problem. But after all the evidence and reports from the players i really dont have a clue. They obviously did something after season 9 but they dont want to invest efforts and time fixing it. This is bad, since it will be a motive for a lot of people to stop playing STO. But it looks like this doesnt matter to cryptic.. as we can see. And of course, even if i can play well, i only have lag in all the zones everybody does (esd, voth space battlezone, undine space battlezon, CE, etc) but im not going to play in that state for too long, since i am not willing to accept this. A game with almost 5 years in its back should not have so many problems running in computers with 2-3 years in their backs. We all know STO is really bad optimized, but even knowing that, its not acceptable that this game lags so badly, specially after season 9.
AFTER season 9, cryptic did something to the game engine, and that was the start of the avalanch of performance issues. I dont know why they keep doing new content if the game engine cant hold it. I just dont have a clue. And if the game engine obviously cant hold after season 9, they should revert the changes prior to season 9. Unfortunately, as i said, its like they really dont care at all. So, i guess the guys with those problems will need to start thinking on find another game, because seeing how this issue is ignored by the devs since it appeared, i dont think we will ever see it fixed.
Because that is the other BIG problem. The only other option to fix it, without reverting the changes is to upgrade the game engine. And i dont think cryptic will waste resources and money on that.. they will prefer to see their customers unhappy and frustrated, and stop playing. That is what it seems. And its really sad, i must say.
This. But people dont understand, unfortunately.
STO Display, AA turned on/off ... no difference whatsoever in FPS
STO Graphics , Both sliders to max ... VCE framerate drops to 4fps , Both Sliders to med, VCE framerate drops to 10fps
Hardware
Binary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1600 Release Mar 7 2012
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1) 64bit
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
CPU flags: 2672MHz MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE41 SSE42 HTT
GPU model: AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series 8.982.0.0 2048Mb
So Devs, please check out these Unigine benches on DX11 and really tell me what settings are required to play STO with an average FPS of 30+
Unigine - Heaven Benchmark v3.0 Basic
FPS: 65.8
Scores: 1658
Min FPS: 29.7
Max FPS: 119.5
Settings
Render: direct3d11
Mode: 1920x1080 fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 4x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Tessellation: disabled
Unigine Sanctuary demo - benchmark edition v2.3
FPS: 130.3
Scores: 5523
Min FPS: 81.8
Max FPS: 168.1
Settings
Render: direct3d11
Mode: 1920x1080 fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 4x
Translucence: enabled
Parallax: enabled
Reflection: enabled
DOF: disabled
HDR: disabled
Same here.
(What seem to make a considerable difference is turning off shadows and hiding the HUD (ALT+F12).)
Also, I don't understand the relationship between the number of players (or player behavior) and performance, but when the Horga'hn event starts on Risa the game goes into slideshow. Usually there ain't that many players on my screen; maybe 2 or 3...
Risa is not actually a laggy map. Not more than any of the regular ones. If you have so many fps issues there, something wrong is with your videocard besides the low performance of the game itself.
But i agree. Shadows (in any game, anyways) are the first resource that drains the performance of a videocard. But in any case, again, in the case of STO it should not matter to use the maximum settings on shadows, the performance should be good still. Hell, i can even play the games of the last generation at maximum settings including shadows, and i dont have any performance issue at all.. lol, that says it all. :P
And yes, the UI (commented in millions of posts) is the other big drainder of the performance. But since cryptic never did anything about that i dont think we will ever see the UI redesigned.
I should ask why are you using DX11 in first place...
But anyways, why you asking to the devs, if there is nothing they can do?? did you read the previous posts?? it doesnt matter what configuration you use, the fps issues are going to be there anyways. Unless cryptic improves the engine, or revert the changes made prior season 9, there is nothing we can do. And since there is no aknowledge from em about this.. i will not hope this to be fixed at all.