PoK runs slower now and everything at a distance seems covered in hoarfrost.
In Kod'Taz it's raining from a clear sky. Incidentally when it rains you can't adjust clipping plane at all.
Jumping has had it's time to react delay extended somewhat. Also seems like I have lost my safefall ability or at least a huge chunk of it. Even jumping of small rocks makes me take damage.
Can no longer run into and squeeze into rocks and stones anymore. Lets hope this means mobs also will stop walking through walls as if they weren't there.
EQ no longer respects the gamma settings from my vid drivers. I have to swap out of EQ and jiggle the gamma setting on the vidcard to make EQ inherit the setting. Everytime I zone or call up the options screen EQ insists on reverting to it's own weak video options.
EQ needs to inherit gamma settings from Windows and as far as settings are concerned needs a brightness and a contrast setting too.
As far as the render engine, we need to see alot more options to adjust settings on a player by player basis. Taking a look at the Q3a engine that has been out for ages now, should have long since tought you guys at SONY that the more options you give a player, the more you empower him/her.
Empowered customers are happy customers.
Vendrengha Noble
Strive to achieve excellence Edited by: Vendrengha Noble at: 3/24/04 7:18 am
Well, my only real complaint is that they said they expected improved performance on older machines and now I see reduced performance on my older (second) machine.
Old world zones used to run fine on that computer; now I have a noticable framerate drop. This was the machine that I used to run EQ on back when it first came out.
The raining from clear skies and such I have seen, but I expect it to be addressed. They already mentioned that they have the same default sky in place for all zones. This leads me to believe that they only have one sky even made. gnmish.gearbinder.ring.warden.sullon.zek
'Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest... Honestly.'
I'm faster on all fronts. All the bells and whistles on full power, clip plane 100%. I get a wee bit of lag in super congested areas like in front of the Nexus stone or a Wayfarer camp. What I've found is that before all you had to do was face a congested area from anywhere in the zone for the grinding lag. Now you actually have to be on top of the congestion to feel any pinch (which for me is just some frame skips, nothing major).
The graphics are stunning and the new lighting effects are gorgeous.
My chainmail, however, looks like I work in the sex industry now.
I've had limited problems with the collision parts of the engine. A couple of hills hung up my horse, but other than that, no problems.
Alt-Enter works like a charm (seems EQ is only hogging about 50% resources for me now).
Except for a couple of cosmetic blemishes, this patch has improved the gaming experience for me. Lag reduction is sweet!
Edit: Oh yeah- honest to God snow flakes... nice touch.
For comparison's sake:
AMD Thunderbird 1.2Ghz in a weathered Abit/Via Mobo
1.5 Gig cheapo bottom shelf memory
GeForce 4 Ti 4600 128MB using 5303 drivers (i.e. didn't bother updating)
Windows XP
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To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.
~ Bernadette Devlin McAliskey Edited by: Nocte at: 3/24/04 7:34 am
If i'm not mistaken, they didn't push out the new graphics engine in the patch yesterday, this was just some of the DX9 groundwork to get the machines ready to run it when it's done nad put in.
I didn't play a lot last night but I noticed a definite speed improvement on my machine. Graphics are faster (to the point I was overshooting my movements a lot when I was turning and stuff) and smoother.
However, it reminded me again why I hate ATI. It took me ~30 minutes (including multiple boots and multiple boots into Safe Mode) to get the newest drivers installed. My nVidia machines, however, upgraded without a single hitch.
Cards:
ATI 9600XT
Geforce 5650 (laptop)
Geforce 3
Geforce 4MX 440
Geforce4Ti4600 --------------------
Ingest a flexible container, that may be closed for holding, storing, or carrying something, which contains the nether realm of the devil and the demons in which the damned suffer everlasting punishment!
looks to me like anyone with a geforce 4 or comparable card is having a problem free time with this patch.
Anyone running geforce 1 and 2 or comparable cards are just barely able to play. And if the card is older than a geforce 2, you're not able to play at all.
What was the write up about helping older machines play EQ better?
you all are talking about your armor looking like fishnets and stuff, i think what the did was turn /dopropertinting on for everyone which was off by default before... what this does is actully dye the armor and not the skin.. if you were to look at a wood elf wearing chainmail with /dopropertinting off the skin on his neck would be the same tint as his armor.. this was before the patch.. /dopropertinting on looks better..
EDIT: Siggy too biggy! Please familiarize yourself with our Forum Rules and keep your signature and avatar under 15K combined.
And thanks for the tip. I didn't even think about half of those old INI settings. I'll try it out tonight.
Thanks. ~NocteEdited by: Nocte at: 3/24/04 9:27 am
I have a fairly good machine with a Radeon 9800 and I found it was worse for me. In places like PoK I find I would freeze for like a quarter of a second now where it used to be fluid. The bazaar was pretty good, even on a 447 trader load, I was impressed there.
I can no longer just walk my trader onto the box I normally sit on now, I have to jump him onto it.
I noticed better movement in zones, and colors were vibrant, but during battles it was choppy. If a mob ran it would appear to be still then would blink out and come up in a another location. Also, most of the old world zones were full of fog. One could not find their way around Everfrost with out using the map. It was insane. I am running:
I was finally able to turn on Envrorment Particles and see that EVERYONE in the guild has a glowing weapon of some sort Except me!! Now I have severe Particle Envy.
Ignorance is bliss I tell you.. Bliss
I did see a significant Framerate increase. No lag in PoTimeA inder the big purple dounut even with some particles and player names on.... I was impressed.
AXIAN (Axe/ee/N)* noun. Your worst nightmare, see also: 'Whoopin' your ass'
Order of the Phoenix - Saryrn
I would have to agree with Rjfras that the patch was basically the dx9 setup but did not include the Tunare engine or else we would have seen more fanfaire saying as much. Hunter Sarkaukar Half`Ear
Forest Stalker
Quote:you all are talking about your armor looking like fishnets and stuff, i think what the did was turn /dopropertinting on for everyone which was off by default before... what this does is actully dye the armor and not the skin.. if you were to look at a wood elf wearing chainmail with /dopropertinting off the skin on his neck would be the same tint as his armor.. this was before the patch.. /dopropertinting on looks better..
Incorrect. I've always had dopropertinting on to fix a number of issues like "colored neck". However, after yesterday's patch, my fungi has some new spots that show through to the skin on both male barbarian and female wood elf models. /shrug
Quote:I would have to agree with Rjfras that the patch was basically the dx9 setup but did not include the Tunare engine or else we would have seen more fanfaire saying as much.
You can both agree, but you're both wrong. The new engine includes a reworked (and very buggy atm) collision detection system, new skies, new particle effect handling, etc. What were you expecting? New models and animations? They have already publicly stated that the 'graphics revamp' would occur in stages... with the new engine being launched first and serving as a foundation for whatever changes they wanted to make (be it impressive new graphics in expansions or another reworking of existing textures/models/animations).
For me, the game actually runs noticeably smoother on my Radeon 9600 Pro. My GeForce 4 Ti4200 had issues with the new drivers, so I had to roll back a few iterations before I could play.... the skies are gorgeous, but I am definitely having some framerate issues with an Athlon 3000, 512MB RAM, GeForce 4 Ti4200, all models on, textures at medium. "Classes are not that out of balance" -AbsorEQ
I had the some problem with getting stuck on guildies. It pissed me off to no end, so i got a lev and broke out my bow. Jais Rassiter Deciver of Rodcet Nife. Ring Warden of Rodcet Nife.
"The day destorys the night, night divides the day".
Sky: I actually sat on the shore of PoT and watched the sunset before I camped. I was impressed.
PoK: Actually had nice crisp night time sounds and the fogging and sunrise was awesome.
Both of my systems have Geforce 2 era cards.
The only things I noticed, like others I found my horse getting hung up on geometry a lot. I ran through the mephid caves in PoN and where I used to just hop over every rock, now they stopped me dead. A pain in the butt.
My Ornate that I died black (Stanos is that darp blood purple by default) now all look line a very very very very dark green. More elvish, but not what I had originally wanted.
My DE necro's BLACK robe of enshoudment is now WHITE. Yuk.
And I noticed that when running from the druid rings in Butchblock, when I got half way to the wayfarers camp, I got a noticible drop in frame rate even though the camp was not in LoS. (UMBRA broken?)
Other than that I like it so far.
Patofnaud
Redeemed Epic Shadow Dweller and Marauder of the 65th Season
Member of the Elven Elite - Morell-Thule
Warden of something or other. (We work in shadows, we dress in black.)
Patofwaan Griffonbate
59th Season Friend Of Wolves and bane of Griffons
Member of the Elven Elite - Morell-Thule
Patofnaud Mourningwood
56th Season Druid protector of the Treants
Member of Faeduath Eldaren - Tarrew Marr
More on the gamma issue. EQ actually exports it's own settings back to windows, meaning if you swap out of EQ to browse or such, windows gamma settings will have been moved to the settings of EQ.
pre-patch:
With everything off and old models, I barely lagged anywhere at all.
post patch:
A few things:
LDoN in Mir (Everfrost) EVERYTHING i ran into forced me to "duck" and therefore stop attacking. huge HUGE PITA!
Laggy everywhere to varying degrees.
Something interesting though:
In WW (Klandi Kill) I had Sky set to off, someone said ooh turn it on night sky is cool.
I did, set to complex, (Night sky did look neat) and spun around in a circle looking up and noticed, hey I spun pretty fast ... /ponder.
Switched sky back to off, looked up and spun around, jerky turning movement ... wtf? am i high? tried the experiment again ...
It's true, I experienced Less lagg with sky set to complex rather than off... go figure.
Someone said it might be less laggy with new character models so i'll try that tonight, but indeed I experiened no different to less lag with more features set to /on.
Tried necro kiting in tactics today. Interesting mob pathing. Agro mob, run cast, get oor message, cast again, oor still, stand there casting, oor, oor, oor.. then suddenly i'm taking melee damage.
Pulled several more mobs thinking "just a random hang up", seems mobs would get stuck on geometery or something 50% of the time. One kite would go smooth, the next would be a mess, the next would be half smooth have mess and etc.
Lotta mobs getting stuck in doors or just appearing to not move when they were in actuallity pounding a path to my doorstep to give me a beating.
The above system runs great with all graphics/spells on. Still choppy (really choppy) in bazaar/pok when over 200 people.
P2 400
512 ram
geforce 2 64 meg
The above system has become totally unplayable with all graphics off standing in an empty room all alone in any zone. All drivers are updated. Been hunting around for different driver configurations hopefully will find a software (driver) solution and not have to upgrade hardware.
FYI I played around a bit today with nvidia drivers. I have 2 eq puters one with a GF2 64 meg card the other with a GF2 32 meg mx card. both where unplayable using the latest nvidia driver. Both are now running EQ fine using the nvidia 45.23 driver.
You will still get the your not using the latest driver window just ignore it.
Hope this helps ppl like me that dont have the money to spend to upgrade there vid card atm.
Lomis do you find that (using the older driver) the new upgrades are better than what you were running at? i mean forgeting that you tryed it with the new graphics driver, would you say you had better performance post patch?
Last night after work I logged on to EQ to see the changes (grats me on nerfboots!)
AthlonXP 2400
512 ddr ram
Radeon 9X00 ($50 a few months ago)
After being prompted by EQ to update my drivers, I did so.
Everquest ran the smoothest it ever has! I went to an AoW raid (crashed it for faction actually) and didn't chop up at all, even though some guild of 50+ was onscreen at once. Btw, they were using a shrunken Half Elf war to R-pin Aow and it was working fine. I heard somebody say that cornering mobs wasn't working too well.
I then went on a raid with my regular chaps to kill MB in the factory. This raid used bring my system to it's knees, but once again my pc ran EQ perfectly with no noticeable slowdown at a big raid (too bad we failed).
From what i see now that I can turn on the 3d sky and have my clip pane to 100% agian. the sky looks great and the over all graphics look sharper. I noticed a lil drop in frame rate but not much compared to pre patch.
Also I am getting less lag in the Bazaar but still turn my clip pane all the way down there.
My system specs are:
system 1
Athlon 2000xp
1 gig ram
80 gig hd
win xp pro
gf2 64 meg (my gf ti4200 craped out on me)
system 2
1.2 Athlon
756 ram
60 gig hd
win xp pro
gf2 32 meg mx card
Both systems are running eq fine using the nvidia 45.23 driver dont notice much drop off in eq from pre patch.
AMD2400 1.2 gig of ram ti4800 and EQ has never run better.
Havent seen graphics lag of any kind yet, eq used to run smoothly before but there is a noticable difference now, everything is more crisp and in areas of low fps before are now all running much smoother.
Only thing thats bad about the new engine is the ducking issue, which will prolly be fixed.
If your still on a really bad pc isnt it about time to upgrade? Running on p3 400 isnt really cutting it in any games nowadays. Axire, Rogue of Mortalis
My Stuff!
Quote:If your still on a really bad pc isnt it about time to upgrade? Running on p3 400 isnt really cutting it in any games nowadays.
EQ is also 5 years old, which makes it nearly unique among games still actively played, and has a large contingent of non-gamers involved. Both of these factors combine to give EQ a fair number of users with aging hardware.
I'm of two minds about this... One, as someone with decent hardware, I don't want to have to go to a new MMORPG to get good graphics. On the other hand, I can understand that people who bought EQ are going to understandably be unhappy if the core game is suddenly closed to them without upgrading their systems.
All that said, the issues people have encountered do not seem to necessarily skew along high-end/low-end demographics. There have been numerous low-end machines that experienced improvement, and numerous high-end machines that have found EQ to be unplayable.
As ever, this is a combination of outright bugs in the various components of EQ's engine, and compatibility issues exposed by the thousands of different user system configurations. "Classes are not that out of balance" -AbsorEQ
Nobody should have noticed changes to game play. Nobody should have noticed cant heal tanks in the wall. Nobody should have noticed stoping for no reason. Nobodies horse should have been hiccupee. Nobody should be autoducking for no apparent reason. These are all game play issues that a player isnt responsible for.
This thing should have never went live with those issues because they are a hastle that make people expect more benefits from your engine.
The only benefit right now to players is in theory some of them can run more models then they could before. I think in practice most of us had them off because at raids you want everything smooth as silk. Most of us could run the models for group encounters anyway. If it turns out down the line there is more benefit to this new engine then the good might out weight the bad.
BTW if they REALLY wanted to impress me you should be able to change the model settings from options and then the next time you zone they go live. I would get alot more use out of the models then.
Aside from that flamingly lame collision issues, this patch is gold, I cannot produce lag in EQ currently, even with all of their crappy luclin models on and such I get 0 lag, even on raids, so me = mostly happy, just need to watch out for mobs vanishing into walls
Anyone else notice that the fog in all zones (even underground dungeons) is now stark white during the day and pitch black during the night? Or is it just me?
Seriously, it's disturbing. I run through Innothule or Misty Thicket, zones with heavy fog that is normally green, and everything around me is bright white. Gamma adjustments do nothing, as that only tunes the brightness of the game, not the in-game colors.
I have much better performance in Raidsituations. Looking towards the raid doesn't actually lockup anymore.
BUT
Almost impossible to zone into PoW
Almost impossible to zone out of PoF
Very weird respons on the mouse. I had to click twice on buttons a lot yesterday. Not talking game objects here but the inventory, gui.
Athlon XP2600
1GB RAM (Dual Channel mode)
ATI Radeon 9700PRO
Quote:EQ is also 5 years old, which makes it nearly unique among games still actively played, and has a large contingent of non-gamers involved. Both of these factors combine to give EQ a fair number of users with aging hardware.
I'm of two minds about this... One, as someone with decent hardware, I don't want to have to go to a new MMORPG to get good graphics. On the other hand, I can understand that people who bought EQ are going to understandably be unhappy if the core game is suddenly closed to them without upgrading their systems.
The way to solve this benefitting all parties, is to add more options to how the render engine works.
Sliders for Gamma, brightness, contrast, vertex shading, transform and lighting, lightsourcing/raytraycing etc.
Doing this would allow SONY to pour into EQ all the spiffy new things 3D engines and vidcards can do today and still give users of older systems the possiblity to scale back the engine to suit their needs.
Playing in an XP group you could up the render quality and playing in a raid you could lower the render quality, all for the sake of the most important thing: smooth rendering speed.
Last night was probably the first time since I left old-world zones where I could actually play a smooth game of EQ. Raided TZ, had over 60 peeps there, which normally would slow my quick system to a crawl graphically. Last night, however, was pure BLISS.
Things I noticed last night:
> Much improved and consistent FPS in all zones, including PoK where there were 217 peeps in zone, about 90% of which were at Nexus rock for some MGB rounds. Not a single tick of lag. Was BEEEEEAUTIFUL.
> Parsed DPS last night. Not too much to go on, but initial analysis showed about a 20% jump, simply because I was able to control my toon more effortlessly. I'm used to peeps being in the way, so I can maneuver around them, however when the FPS is insanely slow, that takes way too long. These DX9 revisions seem to have really fit the bill.
> Finally...stars in the sky. Took them 5 years, but hey. Skies look much much more realistic now.
> Mobs *seem* to not turn on a dime quite as much anymore, but still too quick to be realistic.
> Mob pathing *seemed* to be a bit more realistic. No wild goose-chases on the way back to camp.
> Dark elves actually look even more evil, as if that was even possible.
> That hoarfrost/fog is constant in any zone, which is annoying.
> Many (all?) classes, when just standing still, have some revised movements...looks more real now.
> Several new implementations of light-effects. ie: If you helm is a light-source, your head glows a little bit more. Same with weps, legs, etc. Also, light effect is now a noticable elliptical/spherical aura.
> Sun/moon move in smooth motion now, not blocky movements. (So I notice those types of things...kay? I'm a rogue, I pay attention to details...)
> Chain mail needs smaller links...very large classes really look...well...kinky.
> Mob movement, when slowed, is actually slower. Before, it seemed that the mob just would attack less often if slowed. Now, every movement on the mob is smoothly graduated to a slower extent.
> Nametags on tall mobs were really, really tiny.
Now, suggestions (and keep in mind I've only briefly looked at the 3/25 patch message):
1.) Mobs still need to not be able to pick an angle and immediately turn to it.
2.) While I didn't see it myself as a halfling, some other classes noted that going up stairs was a pain. That needs to be solved.
3.) Z-Axis for CR's is insanely small. Granted, I know I shouldn't be able to pluck a corpse from 20,000 leagues down, but come on...going down a slight hill shouldn't cause an out of range error.
My system:
AMD XP2500+
1 GB RAM
ATI (Sapphire) Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB
1280x1024x16bpp Edited by: Trebax Shadowstealer at: 3/25/04 7:46 am
The graffics are alot sharper, but, Im loosing fps in places where it was fine, while kite'n mobs almost seem to be jumping at me, ghosting if you will. I was realy hoping this improvement would be more dramatic and improve FPS but honestly its no better or no worse. they just made it prettier.
Quote:I havent been able to play EQ due to my crappy SiS graphics card.. anyone tell me the cheapest graphics card that i can buy and still run EQ?
You can get a Geforce FX 5200 pretty cheap and they are dx9 compatible. Thats what I run in both of my computers.
was playing in com last night with my mage and pathing was positively scary. Felt like nurga before they changed pathing the first time. Then went up and killed neh ashiir at the very top, he fell to the ground, fell through the ground to water, then ported back to the ground again, all over the place.
Raiding in water, everything got stuck in the wall at least once and was untouchable till it came out.
Horse doesnt move near as fast anymore, you get stuck on everything. In short, this sucks bad Fransisco Darkbow
