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The UI Lag Is Getting Ridiculous
rck01
Member Posts: 808 Arc User
What the heck is going on with the UI lag in STO? I've been playing this game for 9 years, on various hardware rigs ranging from a Lenovo 700DS mobile workstation to my current Surface Pro 5 (Core i7, 16GB RAM).
As video games go, STO has never been super responsive. But lately the bottom seems to have dropped out of the FPS counter. Even with all graphics options disabled/set to minimum, and the resolution set to a modest 720p (1280x720 on an HDTV), I see MASSIVE drops in FPS on certain maps and when facing specific types of NPCs, player pets or other objects.
The Draanur Gauntlet map is particularly degrading - I'm lucky to get 30FPS, and frequently drop below that. And when I'm in Ker'rat or some of the older PvE and PvP maps, I see 60FPS one minute and then 40, 30, 20, etc., depending on who's on the map with me and how the action is unfolding.
This was not always the case. With regards to of my current Surface, I've been running STO at minimal settings, without issue, for over two years. But then suddenly in the past couple of weeks it's become nearly unplayable. I know it's related to the UI overlays and not the underlying game engine because, if I hit Alt-F12 and hide the UI elements, the FPS counter zooms back up to 60.
I've tried disabling as much of the UI as possible, hiding the minimap, the endeavor tracker, the mission tracker, even the chat window. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I can fly around for hours without any significant FPS hits, but then something - I'm never entirely sure what - changes and FPS goes into the toilet again.
Note: I was convinced that maybe it was a thermal issued - that perhaps my Surface was overheating (though it never had any problems before). So I slapped the Intel Extreme Tuning utility on it and started monitoring CPU package temps, thermal and voltage throttling, etc. I never noticed anything out of the ordinary - only very rarely would the system think it needed to throttle the CPU/GPU, and the package temps never got above 70-80C peak while averaging in the 50-60 range.
I've spoken with other players, including those with fairly powerful rigs and discrete CPUs (GeForce 1080 or above), and they're also seeing significant UI and FPS lag (though at higher graphics settings). To see this phenomenon for yourself, just type "/showfps 1" into the chat window and then observe the counter values drop as you open the social tab and switch to your friends list.
Bottom Line: Is there any way to mitigate the above? I'm at my wits end with this issue and I'd really like to find a workaround. The fact that even mid-range to high-end systems experience FPS drops in certain scenarios (lots of on screen "spam" or complex effects) makes me believe it's not so much my hardware as it is inefficiencies/lack of optimization in the UI programming.
So, what, if anything, can be done to make STO run smoothly again and not suffer massive FPS drops at minimal graphics settings?
RCK01 - a.k.a. "Evul Jacob/Cuddly Jacob/Jacob Lightener" - Sad Pandas PvP
As video games go, STO has never been super responsive. But lately the bottom seems to have dropped out of the FPS counter. Even with all graphics options disabled/set to minimum, and the resolution set to a modest 720p (1280x720 on an HDTV), I see MASSIVE drops in FPS on certain maps and when facing specific types of NPCs, player pets or other objects.
The Draanur Gauntlet map is particularly degrading - I'm lucky to get 30FPS, and frequently drop below that. And when I'm in Ker'rat or some of the older PvE and PvP maps, I see 60FPS one minute and then 40, 30, 20, etc., depending on who's on the map with me and how the action is unfolding.
This was not always the case. With regards to of my current Surface, I've been running STO at minimal settings, without issue, for over two years. But then suddenly in the past couple of weeks it's become nearly unplayable. I know it's related to the UI overlays and not the underlying game engine because, if I hit Alt-F12 and hide the UI elements, the FPS counter zooms back up to 60.
I've tried disabling as much of the UI as possible, hiding the minimap, the endeavor tracker, the mission tracker, even the chat window. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I can fly around for hours without any significant FPS hits, but then something - I'm never entirely sure what - changes and FPS goes into the toilet again.
Note: I was convinced that maybe it was a thermal issued - that perhaps my Surface was overheating (though it never had any problems before). So I slapped the Intel Extreme Tuning utility on it and started monitoring CPU package temps, thermal and voltage throttling, etc. I never noticed anything out of the ordinary - only very rarely would the system think it needed to throttle the CPU/GPU, and the package temps never got above 70-80C peak while averaging in the 50-60 range.
I've spoken with other players, including those with fairly powerful rigs and discrete CPUs (GeForce 1080 or above), and they're also seeing significant UI and FPS lag (though at higher graphics settings). To see this phenomenon for yourself, just type "/showfps 1" into the chat window and then observe the counter values drop as you open the social tab and switch to your friends list.
Bottom Line: Is there any way to mitigate the above? I'm at my wits end with this issue and I'd really like to find a workaround. The fact that even mid-range to high-end systems experience FPS drops in certain scenarios (lots of on screen "spam" or complex effects) makes me believe it's not so much my hardware as it is inefficiencies/lack of optimization in the UI programming.
So, what, if anything, can be done to make STO run smoothly again and not suffer massive FPS drops at minimal graphics settings?
RCK01 - a.k.a. "Evul Jacob/Cuddly Jacob/Jacob Lightener" - Sad Pandas PvP
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Just because they don't tell you everything that's going on behind the scenes or don't acknowledge every single complaint about Akamai personally doesn't mean they're not aware of the issue. If they responded to every single complaint personally they would need to hire full time staff just to do that alone.
Akamai is a security company contracted by Cryptic's ISP. So to have changes made, Cryptic generally will have to go through their ISP who will then talk to Akamai. Even if you get all 3 companies to the table it's still not as simple as you're thinking. Akamai's system is meant to protect against DDoS attacks and similar against Cryptic and others. legitimate MMO traffic can mimic a DDoS and appear very similar to one, especially during peak hours or if alot of folks are trying to log in at once. Each time a person tries to log in a request is sent to the server and essentially pings the server. The two devices communicate the various credentials needed to log the player in and establish a connection. If everything checks out, the server establishes connection and logs you in. A server can only handle so many requests at once before it bogs down and simply quits. A DDoS takes advantage of this by pinging a server with a ton of data at once and sending more than the server can handle and attempts to bog it down. Unless you know what to look for it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between a legitimate bit of traffic, and a full blown DDoS. The problem Akamai faces is that they must come up with a solution that opens up more traffic for STO without opening them up to a DDoS attack.
Furthermore even if Cryptic wants to jump ship to another ISP, they must make sure that the new ISP isn't using Akamai either, and that the new ISP has the proper security in place to prevent DDoS and other issues that they would need. They would also need to make sure their ducks are in a row before making the jump so the game isn't down for too long, because then folks would complain about it being down for too long. Then there's also the issue of potential contracts and so on. I wish it was as simple as folks make it out to be but it's really not. Knowing what the problem is and how to fix it are often different.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Agreed, enough is enough. Enough defending Cryptic as they take surveys that go nowhere and the game gets more and more laggy. They want us to put money into this game, they need to fix these issues.. period. I don't care what it takes and not interested in the excuses.. just fix it. I'm done playing 'Lag Roulette,' and I'm not interested in the excuses as to why it hasn't been addressed.
Do other similarly old games also have bad framerates? One suggestion is to just consider building your own desktop PC so you can be sure the hardware checks out on your end.
Another suggestion, find other games to play. Cryptic is ...unable to fix neither the core game code nor network related problems, that much as been demonstrated over months and years.
It's a common problem with online games nowadays sadly, as the original coders are no longer around, and new programmers cannot make sense of sometimes various proprietary components (as admitted by coders themselves elsewhere) resulting in increasing core game bugs, all forms of lag, and outright complete game failures. It's just STO is a peak example of such failure, and anything else would be a significant improvement.