144 Hz and 30 FPS animations... WHY?

General Discussion
#1

Blizzard… why did you do that?

I know you wanted to make the game compatible with the “old Warcraft III”, but WHY in the name of the LORD did you do it like this?

A modern game usually runs at more than 60 FPS and more than 60 Hz.

To make the game compatible with the “old Warcraft” by improving the engine there would have been a very easy way:

“offer a copy of Warcraft III to all owners of the classic WITHOUT the upgraded graphics”.

It would have been compatible with more than 30 FPS unit and spell animation and everyone would be happy.

But no, you adapted the NEW engine to the restriction of the old engine and did something in between that made no sense.

When moving the units over the battlefield it really looks annoying to have smooth 144 Hz and then 30 FPS animation.

Sorry Blizzard, but this time it didn’t work out as it should had.

29 Likes
#2

the old animations are affected by this aswell. even old models would benefit from an updated animation playback.

5 Likes
#3

The old models were running with 30 FPS. But they could have updated the engine so that they show fluid animations… But they didn’t think as far as to just replace Warcraft III with the reforge version for everyone with updated animations… as mentioned, it would have been very easy:

The classic style free for everyone with a War 3 license, the reforged only for those who bought the new version, but both with some updates in the engines itself (animations, fps).

#4

To allow people to play together with different graphics settings. And no it will never be fixed.

#5

I have to add that I am immensely disappointed with this as well. The game looks terrible as a result with smooth scrolling high frame rates, and poor model movement/animations (due to the 30fps limit). It kind of makes me ill when playing.

Long time fan here, all the way back to Orcs and Humans, first Warcraft product disappointment - ever. I must also add that one of the reasons I’ve always been a day one Blizzard fan is polish - this does not look or play polished. Shocked by this really.

3 Likes
#6

That makes no sense. Your visuals bear no relevance to your opponents gameplay.

1 Like
#7

how do you show fps? and ping if possible

#8

Even the editor allows the models to animate at whatever FPS you’re capable of. It’s so much smoother than the slow motion we see in-game. At 100+ FPS this just looks shocking!

1 Like
#9

Maybe your computer just sucks? Mine looks great at max setting

#10

Its not the graphics its the animations of moving physical objects in the game. If those werent synced up properly it could easily break the unit itself or the whole game.

1 Like
#11

Yes - Frame Rates are high with a decent rig, no issue there. I specifically referring to Dewo’s point - about ‘in game’ animations. In simple terms, they are not smooth, while the scrolling, etc, is very smooth. I know they had reasons, but it doesn’t work and distracts significantly (for me).

1 Like
#12

Its worse than a distraction for some people. This actually triggers my motion sickness.

#13

Agreed - makes me ill. Uncomfortable to play.

2 Likes
#14

It might be, I believe that there’s animation locks for attacks in this game engine. It’s a core concept in Dota.

?? Is that even a thing? I’ve played between different FPS’s for years (Console 30 PC 60 and only recently moving to 144) and I’ve never felt motion sickness despite experiencing it before. Isn’t that more of a Virtual Reality thing?

#15

Type /ping or /fps into the chat box while in a game

#16

The problems are unique to this game. The models render at 30fps but the rest of the game renders at the refresh rate of your monitor (or your current FPS). The smooth background juxtaposed to the choppy animations really messes me up.

2 Likes
#17

why I don’t understand is that very strange mix of elements:

  1. they say they wanted to keep it as classic as possible
    —> they changed the voice actors (in the German version at least), which has a strong impact on how you will re experience the game.

  2. they do a remake with Hd graphics (which have a good quality, even if I don’t like all models, I could love with that).
    —> they keep the low FPS on animations (even on environment, just look at background water animation, waterfalls, rain)
    —> the portraits themselves seem to run at a higher framerate (why?!).

  3. they didn’t adapt extend the campaign
    —> could live with that as well. But it seems that they did it because they didn’t want to invest more resources in the game.

  4. capped the unit limit with 12 at once and didn’t fix the hot keys.
    —> a no go in my eyes. This is a Limitation that they might have needed to add back in time, but progress has shown that it’s something stupid to do. If people want to only have 12 units selected at once, why not give them this option in the menu?

To conclude:

If you reforge a game, why do you need to keep it super classic but then add new sounds? Why don’t just people who want to play the pure classic Warcraft 3 just keep playing the classic Warcraft 3 and use the reforged to have an even more epic experience of the game that will change, but mostly enhance the game and especially attract NEW PLAYERS who Heard- about that epic game but never played it and never will because of the low scores and the outdated controls?

I think blizzard won’t change much. They will concentrate on these (for some people) “important features” of adding clans (minimal development effort).

They will keep quiet and wait until the anger of fans has calmed and the game gets forgotten.

Why did you ruin the most epic RTS game ever made Blizzard? Just… why?

To conclude:

They want to keep a game “classic”, but

1 Like
#18

mhhh. its maybe not just animation playback, but the underlaying tech to sync up events on the map, like an internal tick rate at 30hz.

you could probably go with a 60hz or 120hz tickrate for the whole game (like cs server tickrate), but it should come at a significant increase in cpu tax. but modern cpus probably can cope with it.

maybe its not as easy to fix this issue, but it sure is worth a try.

1 Like
#19

They are people who don’t see the difference between 60 and 144 FPS.

You have to know that it’s also related to the refresh rate of your display. If you have 144 FPS but only 60 Hz, you’ll more likely not see any difference.

They are also people who even so not see the difference between a 60 Hz and 144 Hz, even if for me it’s super obvious (Even in Windows 2D mode see it).

So if you have a 144 Hz display and play it at high frame rate, try to scroll around (you should notice how super smooooooth it is).

Then watch the animation of the units when they’re moving. It’s obvious that they’re moving like it’s “lagging” and this does not fit with my expectations of modern games nor is it nice to watch…

They can do that because the engine itself runs on a different layer than the pure scrolling ingame.

I can’t understand how the producers weren’t able to spot this…

They could at least have added it for the SP campaign.

Just imagine if they didn’t adapt the unit movement to the FPS the game is running at in SCII or D3… it would have looked terrible. And yet they didn’t care.

#20

This has nothing to do with netcode or server tick. The models render at a lower framerate than the rest of the game. If these werent synced they would desync and break. They also wont bump up the old animations to 60fps because they want to keep a “classic experience” even though there wasnt a no changes crowd for this game like there was in WoW. Its a mess.