Metal for Mojave

Hello! Are there any plans on adding Metal 2 support for Mojave?

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Oh my sweet summer childā€¦ if only you knewā€¦

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They will either have to use metal or drop Macs.

Please Blizzard games run so much better with metal.

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Yeah the way Metal 1 went after the minimap stopped working and such I wouldnā€™t hold out hope.

Guess itā€™s just time for us to buy some cheap Windows on Black Friday or something. Sad because Blizzard was/is one of the last major developers to support Mac.

I wouldnā€™t never use Windows, guess its time for me to stop playing Blizzard games then.

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Absolutely agreed! They have shown us their backā€¦

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It was really strange though. Metal support was done. It worked. Then there was one tiny bug (the minimap clicks) and Blizz was like ā€œwe canā€™t support this anymoreā€ ???

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Itā€™s really so odd. I had huge problems getting a solid frame rate before Metal was introduced. And itā€™s been pretty much unplayable after itā€™s been removed.
Stopped playing waiting for a fix, but doesnā€™t seem to be coming.

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I talked to a HOTS developer about this @ Blizzcon. Hereā€™s the short version: itā€™s not ā€œoff the tableā€ that theyā€™ll bring Metal support back, in the long term. Short-term (next 6-12 months) itā€™s not prioritized. They made the call to pull it out because it ended up being bigger and having more interdependencies than they thought, and when you look at where resourcing can go, it canā€™t go everywhere so theyā€™re taking a sub-optimal (but arguably minimally playable) version for Mac, for now, so they can devote resources to other needed areas, rather than essentially dedicate a large push to a client that is 5% of their base. Sucks but it is what it is.

His major advice was that this community continue to be vocal about our desire to see it happen, they do monitor channels like this, even if their communication is lacking. Hopefully that will improve after the big ā€˜transparencyā€™ talk they gave in the ā€˜whatā€™s nextā€™ panel.

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To be honest, I find this explanation hardly satisfying. If this was an entirely free offer this might be fine but the Mac users spent money on this game just like the Windows users. Instead of ā€œfocusing on other needed areasā€, which might be more profitable (new heroes, skins, events and stuff people can buy), they should fix their offering for the ones who have already spent money on their game. The game is in a worse state than it was pre-Metal. And the newer GL4.1 renderer is also gone. It doesnā€™t appear to be a Metal thing. I am seriously disappointed. Especially, because other companies seem to have absolutely no problem supporting Metal. If there are absolutely no resources, they can still hire people like feral, who port stuff to macOS and Metal all the time.

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Sure, and youā€™re not alone in that feeling. But in the end, I can also respect their position as well; HOTS is F2P and any real money spent is totally optional. I donā€™t recall any promises made on Metal support or even Mac support from Blizzard, so Iā€™m happy to play my free game.

FWIW I get 60+ FPS on my OpenGL2 renderer using a 2015 i7 MBP w/ IRIS 6100 integrated graphics. Of course, with low settings on everything. Am I jealous of my PC friends and their experience? Yeah, sure. But I also like the fact that I can play my fav game on my platform and donā€™t need to buy a ā€œHOTS machineā€ just to play it.

Blizzard is a business, not a charity and theyā€™re going to do whatā€™s right for them. We also have the right to walk away any time for any reason, itā€™s a two way street. Iā€™ll continue to request and poke on this b/c Iā€™d like it personally, but Iā€™m not under any illusion that it would take precedence over most of the other stuff on their roadmap. Even outsourcing the port to Feral costs money, and againā€¦business.

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Well, I admire your patience and serenity concerning this matter. Also, I donā€™t argue that Blizzard shouldnā€™t have business interests. The main difference between our views appears to be that I believe, selling people in game items must entail some kind of commitment concerning their usability. Iā€™ll try to explain with an analogy. Remember the early mp3-days when there was DRM on all major digital music and streaming was not yet available to the majority due to slow internet connections? The current situation is like buying a DRMā€™ed album on iTunes or whatever and then witnessing that after the next update iTunes will hang, crash, and make weird buzzing sounds during playback. You canā€™t play your music with any other software because of the DRM. Should you not complain because iTunes itself was free?

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I can empathize with your POV. Maybe if I had more real money invested in the game Iā€™d feel similar. I think Iā€™ve probably spent maybe $150 over the yearsā€¦worth it to me for the hours of entertainment provided. Iā€™m also not to a spot where lack of Metal makes the game totally broken for me; sub optimal yes but I can still play it, although itā€™s not as beautiful or smooth as my PC friends. Iā€™ve accepted some of that as the ā€œMac tax,ā€ and while Iā€™m frustrated that Blizzard hasnā€™t pushed faster/further on Metal support, I also place some blame at the feet of Apple.

OpenGL is fine and widely supported - why invent their own gfx API? Oh, b/c itā€™s Apple and they want to own everything. Also, Apple is proud to talk about how quality their machines are (true) and what a great experience they offer (also true), and how their market share of the PC market has grown over the years (also true), but theyā€™ve never truly embraced gaming outside of mobile. Everything is hard, everything is a kludge - whether we are talking about OpenGL support, Metal, or Metal 2, driver support from Nvidia or AMD, or eGPU support - which was kludged for YEARS before Apple is now finally supporting it. Iā€™m not sure if thatā€™s because they have so many priorities, or because the Mac gaming market is a sub-market of the PC market (which is a chicken/egg problem) which is smaller than console which is smaller than mobile, because Apple wants Mac to position for ā€œprosā€ and ā€œcreativesā€ and gaming is counter to that positioning, their executive team doesnā€™t understand it, etc. Iā€™d love to know - they obviously have the horsepower in design and engineering to make it happen. The updated modular Mac Pro will tell us a lot, if/when it ever comes out.

Iā€™ve been holding out on a new MBP for awhile due to the keyboard issues, but when I finally get it, I was planning on investing in an eGPU so I can run some higher settings on games like HOTS. But wow, Iā€™d really like to be able to play Overwatch, Destiny, or some of these other titles. Eventually Iā€™ll have to make a call - get a Windows machine just for gaming or continue to live with the tradeoffs of my Mac.

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I think, we have quite similar views. One quick note so I donā€™t drift off regarding the criticisms and benefits with Appleā€™s software strategy: While I agree that deprecating OpenGL is painful at the very least, the entire computer graphics industry is moving towards low level APIs. Apple did not look at Vulkan or DX12 and say: Hey, letā€™s introduce something entirely different! (Which wouldnā€™t have surprised me either, btw) Metal was there first because it was more or less required for mobile devices with low power CPUs. It was production ready when the rest of the industry was still experimenting with AMDā€™s Mantle, which hadnā€™t become Vulkan yet, and there was no DX12. So yeah, having their own API is annoying but this time, there is a reason for this at least. Also: Why not simply implement a Vulkan renderer and use MoltenVK on macOS and iOS? All platforms would benefit greatly.

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Apple does not care about Blizzard games on mac. They are not in on the revenue stream and they donā€™t sell mac hardware either. They want everyone to play games sold in the mac app store (not important) or ios devices. They couldnā€™t care less about vulkan. In 3 years you will play ios games on mac. All powered by metal. And more and more people will have moved entirely to android/ios devices and away from traditional computers anyway.

You are misunderstanding the technical details. MoltenVK lets application and game developers code in Vulkan and run it on macOS and iOS over Metal by translating the Vulkan function calls. Apple doesnā€™t have to do anything for it to work. From the outside, it looks just like a game natively using Metal. This has already been proven to work at near native performance (withing a few percent) with Dota 2. Therefore, Blizzard could develop one modern renderer in Vulkan and deploy it on PCs and Macs instead of maintaining multiple platform-dependent versions.

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Just want to throw my hat in this ring too. Play on Mac, have spent hundreds of Ā£s. I totally understand the business case but Iā€™m still really sad that I have to turn all the graphics to potato mode to play now.

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This is the real takeaway, by the way. Donā€™t spend any money on a game unless you have to.

Hell, Iā€™ve had a WoW subscription since 2004 and they just up and removed fullscreen, so maybe even that doesnā€™t work.

I think I literally read that in Tyrandeā€™s voice.

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