Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

To Crank or not to Crank?

    • 2752 posts
    February 5, 2018 11:24 AM PST

    The highest settings I can without encountering any choppy gameplay. We'll see how far I will be able to push Pantheon...probably not very far if video cards continue to be 2x MSRP thanks to crypto miners. 

    • 1921 posts
    February 5, 2018 11:59 AM PST

    Always the minimum, except draw distance.  I hate post processing, bloom, hdr, DoF, all of that gets turned off no matter what.  I -might- be inclined to keep shadows on, but it's unlikely.  I have a GTX 10xx series card, but I would rather the card run cool than see shadows.  Fan noise is my nemesis, and I have a fanless PSU.

    Also, I always run with vsync on but I personally have no need for more than 60fps in any game I've played to date.  I hate it when people say 30fps is enough, or worse yet, design the client so that 30fps is the expected frame rate.  Sadly, I will also do everything possible to turn off all grass or similar visual obstructions to harvesting nodes/items/shinies on the ground.  I get the appeal, and would love to leave them on if there was a reasonable method to see those items withOUT turning off grass.  But I'm not going to run my game zoomed up, face down, running over every square centimeter of ground to find an object.   That's just silly.

    However, there was a great feature I saw in Cities Skylines..  Vsync: Every Second V-Blank. which was awesome.  It reduced GPU load to about half, yet didn't adversely affect visual quality or cause any other problems.  Hopefully Pantheon supports such an option, as it's Unity based as well.

    • 1714 posts
    February 5, 2018 12:18 PM PST

    You play at the level that gets you the FPS that doesn't get you or your team killed. This could vary between indoors and outdoors. As a puller, fast twitching around corners in dangerous dungeons requires high FPS to do your job.

    • 1860 posts
    February 5, 2018 12:21 PM PST

    Kilsin said:

    Do you crank the graphics up to max in the games you play for the best visual experience or are you more of a performance type of player with low to medium settings? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters

    I always have everything turned way down except clip plane.  I don't want the grass or shrubs to make me see the mob hiding there a milisecond later than I otherwise would.  Don't want to risk a random stutter or lag spike no matter how small the chances.

    • 2756 posts
    February 5, 2018 12:36 PM PST

    I've been using a 144Hz G-Sync monitor for quite a while and have gotten used to the silky smoothness of 90-120 FPS in games like Battlefield 1.

    I went back and tried Elder Scrolls Online a while back and the locked 60 FPS was horrible by comparison.

    I really hope there will be the facility to pick your own FPS sweet spot and vary things to get either high FPS or great fidelity or, if you're lucky enough to have a great system, both!

    I would really like to see several settings saveable and loadable.  It would be excellent to be able to easily switch between: "normal", "raid", "screenshots", "streaming", "YouTube footage", etc.


    This post was edited by disposalist at February 5, 2018 12:37 PM PST
    • 363 posts
    February 5, 2018 2:31 PM PST

    Kilsin said:

    Do you crank the graphics up to max in the games you play for the best visual experience or are you more of a performance type of player with low to medium settings? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters

    I find the sweet spot. I have a rig that beats 87% of all scores posted on 3dMark, but that's not all that meaningful to me playing Pantheon. I have to play it first. I will crank all the settings to max and check things out. If I get too much framerate drop, I'll start scaling a few things back and see how it affects performance. If, after having found said sweet spot and I don't like the graphics settings needed for me to still enjoy the game, I'll buy another video card and SLI them. No need for 2 expensive cards if 1 does the job just fine.

    P.S. Hope those beautifully rendered shadows in the game don't look as GPU intensive as they appear. 


    This post was edited by Anistosoles at February 5, 2018 2:33 PM PST
    • 1992 posts
    February 5, 2018 2:58 PM PST

    My history has mostly been to find some balance point where I can get the best views with little or no lag, in the majority of ingame areas I visit, and leave it there for over 95% of my game time. However when I find scenery that I really have to have a screen shot of, I still stop, crank the settings up to max, take the shots and then adjust settings back down. And of course I would periodically get into some intense group event that resulted in major hitching or even lockup. If logging out were then needed to change my settings, the results could be quite devastating to the evening's fun.

     

    So I strongly endorse the idea mentioned a few times here of having a number of graphic 'pre-sets' that can quickly be switched between, and if at all possible they should not require a logout. Three positions would easily suffice for me, my 'middle of the road' setting, a 'maximum eye-candy without freezing solid' setting, and a 'lowest that helps FPS in any way' setting. Functionality like this would enrich my enjoyment of the game enormously.

    • 1281 posts
    February 5, 2018 5:09 PM PST

    Depends on my system.  I build the most "monster" system I can afford at the time and crank it up to as high-resolution as I could without substantially impacting game play.

    • 34 posts
    February 5, 2018 6:28 PM PST

    If it's a twitchy-type game where fractions of a second can count or a very crowded situation like a raid with dozens of players I'll go for performance. Everything else I enable all the eye candy and prettiness I can until either a) I don't notice any more changes or b) I consistently drop under 30fps.

    • 14 posts
    February 6, 2018 4:46 PM PST

    Personally I don't usually care for graphics much. But of course I'll crank it to the highest quality that still gives me at least 60 FPS in busy areas. Which is usually max anyway, I've got a beefy machine.


    This post was edited by leozaur at February 6, 2018 4:48 PM PST
    • 624 posts
    February 6, 2018 5:26 PM PST

    If I don’t crank the handle on the side of my computer all my screens stay dark. I have to really get it up to speed for a good thirty seconds or more just to boot. If I don’t keep cranking it during raids my buffs weaken, I slow down, and the big bad boss wins. Nobody wants to see that...

    I am pro cranking! It helps the music keep flowing.

    • 793 posts
    February 7, 2018 4:53 AM PST

    best of both worlds. I put my settings right at the edge of my system can handle, I like a long view distance so I can see some interesting location far off.

     

    There have been games where I just turned off all the flora, because it was distracting (It all sways in unison in 1 direction at all times, it's like the ground was sliding back and forth under your feet).

     

    • 83 posts
    February 8, 2018 10:03 AM PST

    Aw... they worked so hard on that grass guys. They made a whole post about it!

    https://www.pantheonmmo.com/newsletter/2017_december_grasstech/

    • 769 posts
    February 8, 2018 11:31 AM PST

    In my entire life, I have never had a computer good enough to crank the graphics of an MMO up to full - not until playing P99 in 2017 was I finally able to see EQ as it was intended. 

    Would I, given the capability? Absolutely. Unfortunately, my usual routine is to turn it down all the way and tweak it just a little bit to the point just before it becomes unplayable. Best I can hope for. 

    • 363 posts
    February 8, 2018 2:09 PM PST

    Darchias said:

    Aw... they worked so hard on that grass guys. They made a whole post about it!

    https://www.pantheonmmo.com/newsletter/2017_december_grasstech/

     

    Yeah, they did, and it looks good. Will have to wait and see how much of a performance hit that grass actually kicks in at max settings. 

    • 1281 posts
    February 8, 2018 7:12 PM PST

    I'll run the highest settings I can as long as I'm getting 40-50 FPS or more. I don't care what a game looks like, I won't play at 30FPS so the graphics are being turned down.

    • 1714 posts
    February 8, 2018 9:22 PM PST

    bigdogchris said:

    I'll run the highest settings I can as long as I'm getting 40-50 FPS or more. I don't care what a game looks like, I won't play at 30FPS so the graphics are being turned down.

    At what resolution? 40-50 at 1920x1080 is garbage.

    • 249 posts
    February 9, 2018 2:11 AM PST
    I'll be building (or maybe a prebuilt at this point seeing as they're cheaper right now) a computer when pantheon gets close to launch so you can bet I'll be maxing things out.
    • 12 posts
    February 22, 2018 7:02 PM PST

    I figure out how much I can squeeze out of my graphics settings before dropping below 60fps. Usually there is one or two settings that makes the biggest difference (flora and/or shadows - unfortunate, I know) and I either turn it off completely or down considerable, then crank everything else up. Hopefully the devs see what consumes the most power and figures out a way to give us the best bang for our visual and performance buck.

    • 36 posts
    February 23, 2018 3:57 AM PST

    Good performance and then the best graphics out of it. IF i am not happy with it = New System will be ordered :P

    • 801 posts
    February 23, 2018 8:49 AM PST

    The parsing information being sent to the client sometimes forced us to reduce our high quality settings. I didnt buy the 1070ti sc card for nothing. So if i could turn everything up i would but half the time you have to reduce somewhere. I also can not handle too many spell spams effects, i get headaches or dizzy. Too much of that movement can cause me to log off.

    • 43 posts
    February 23, 2018 10:38 AM PST

    Bazgrim said:

    It just depends on how much your comp can handle. Max graphics mean nothing if there's hitching. So you just have to determine the highest your comp can consistently handle without it looking more like a slideshow than a game.

    Yup.  I adjust to that middle-ground where I can get the best performance with the best grapics.  If performance laggs, time to get rid of grass and whatnot, *just* to that piont where I'm running good again.  If I'm running around like mad and can spam abilities without breaking frames, turn up the landscape and let the water features shine!

    • 57 posts
    February 25, 2018 3:06 PM PST
    I play as high graphics as my computer can handle. I love the pretty pretties. But if that ish ain't playable, I'll turn it down to Minecraft graphics if I need to in order to win.
    • 30 posts
    February 26, 2018 8:42 AM PST

    I crank graphics up as high as I can. If it's a game I really love, I'll buy new hardware to accommodate the load. I love immersing myself as much as I can into the game. Graphics and the sounds are so key to this. I don't play too many games any more (family life keeps me busy) so the few games I do play, I want the absolute best I can get.


    Long ago my first x86 computer had to be a 486-33 DX as it needed to have the math co-processor to enable the realistic flight mode for Falcon 3.0. Later I bought a 3D accelerator card just to get better graphics out of Quake and eventually upgraded to two for SLI. 

    I always hated having to dial back detail for EQ raids due to the lag which resulted from so much going on.

    • 217 posts
    February 26, 2018 7:41 PM PST

    Aarpoch said:

    kaeolin said:

    I also set my graphics settings at max.  If my computer can't handle it, then it's time for an upgrade.  

     

    My thoughts exactly.  Games are about my only hobby so they get the bulk of my disposable cash.  If an upgrade is needed then it is done :)

    IM TOTALLY A GRAPHICS WHORE, lololol

    But if performance is lacking then I slowly drop some settings.. but as others said, time for an upgrade... I would hate to have an artists time wasted making a beautiful game, that Im not actually seeing, by lowering settings.