(specs and settings can be found below.)
part 1:
Spoiler
Greetings,
About two years ago, I made a video documenting how much sacrifice was needed to play MWO on lower end machines. The thread and video are available here for posterity and comparison. A friend compared it to looking like the game was developed ten years ago, and he was not wrong. That video was recorded just before a patch tanked my framerate hard. Heavily tweaked user.cfg (which is mostly obsolete), tweaked video drivers, and harvesting blood for the blood god made it playable. Not pretty, but playable at the most minimal level.
In that two years, MWO has seen a fair share of patches and updates that tweaked the performance both client and server side, balance, mech details and so on. Balance and meta-game are the subjects that get talked about the most in general discussion, but little about performance, and how it affects us all. Depending on how we play and what we do, balance and meta-game affects us in varying amounts; performance is something we all care and feel for, from the soggiest of potatoes to the most extreme of behemoth computers.
So lets have a discussion regarding the fidelity and detail of the game, versus the performance we get and expect. What are the specs of your rig and what is your average framerate? How does it vary across maps? Are you willing to sacrifice FPS if required for a greater visual experience, or would you rather be running as fast as possible?
For people like myself, graphical beauty takes a back seat to performance. On the other side, others want to feel as immersed as possible and bask in the glory of graphics, accepting no less then the best possible. Regardless of personal tastes, what would you like to see a greater focus on? Ignore for a second weapon balance, meta-game, and tournaments for a second; consider how the game looks and plays, versus the overall performance.
Assume that balance is a non-issue: what would you like to see implemented into the game? Higher resolution textures, better effects and details, or more of a focus on tuning and squeezing every last bit of speed from the engine? The major changes since the first video are DX11, 64 bit support, a heavy handicap on the user.cfg, 8 extra players running around and a slew of optimization passes. The absolutely terrible texture quality of the first video was a result of lowering the texture resolution in the user.cfg by a factor of 4. There have also been optimization passes on maps, effects, and mechs. Overall, there has been a perceivable and quantitative improvement in the game, at least as far as performance and quality are concerned.
Personally, I'd like to see a bit more freedom in tinkering the user.cfg file and if a dev has the time, a compiled list of settings that are changeable through it. Maybe more graphics options? If PGI does implement higher resolution textures, have a setting to switch between them, instead of locking us in. I've heard it said that the user base is dwindling[citation needed], and at least one way of retaining players and attracting new players would be to make the game run as smoothly as possible, across as many different systems and specs as possible. With the possibility of the game being released on Steam, performance and stability for lower end machines and quality for higher end ones are arguably among the most important of considerations, alongside an improved new-player experience.
So, considerations and thoughts? I want to know your thoughts on what would better help make the game better, short-term and long-term. Whether performance and quality should be focused on, or balance and meta-game?
If you've come this far, my thanks for hearing me out. I'd appreciate your thoughts. As well, any tips or advice on further performance improvements are welcome and encouraged.
Gooooooooood luck and haaaaaaaaaaaaave fun
Specs and user.cfg
Abridged dxdiag:
Spoiler
user.cfg:
Spoiler
The in-game settings are all set low, and is run in windowed mode at 1024x768, using dx9.
I use a registry tweak found in this thread, which also contains some other user.cfg setups that some of you may find useful. The tweak just makes sure MWO is run at highest priority upon launch. The video was recorded with FRAPS