Massive stutters with DF client

No, it wouldn’t be the processor lol. IDK about the GPU, could cause stutters depending on settings, maybe, but I do know that Pawg is a troll either way, so don’t feed it. Wait for Blizzard to respond again or discuss it with the rest of us who actually acknowledge this problem is your best bet with this I think. The stutter from processor, I can’t say. I would say that the heaviest pop areas might tank even if wow was operating as it should but it’s not right now, and the stutter clearly has something to do with the asset pop that EVERYONE is having as you can even plainly see in any streamer’s videos. And top streamers typically have the best computers. This is not so much your hardware as it is some weird problem with wow, and possibly microsoft and nvidia. Don’t know. Blizzard will ofc not name themselves as a culprit but goes without saying that they’re involved in SOMETHING I mean. It’s impossible that they wouldn’t be. Once patch 10.0 went live, day and night. Asset pop, stutters, the works. It’s obvious what Blizzard is really saying is that they were trying to do something with dragonflight that relied on microsoft and nvidia doing something together, and things were not together but they were probably already too deep in to back out and decided to ship it anyway. What’s on the surface shows them passing blame, under the surface is them saying oh yeah, maybe we should have all been a bit more coordinated… OOPS.

but yeah I agree. the white knighting from people like pawg is, at this point, cringe at best.

The engine is making CPUs max out briefly every time some player gets loaded in. Some also experience that the hard drive maxes out as well. It could be writing multiple times of the same information. Whatever it truly is, it even cripples 7950X. Not sure if Blizz Devs is actually looking for the root of it, but instead shifts the problem over to OS/Hardware brands.

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It’s pretty obvious this this stuttering issue is Blizzard’s fault.

The stuttering I am experiencing (audio related) happens whether my processor is running at 4.2 GHz or 2.6 GHz with the same intensity and frequency, no matter the graphics settings.

It doesn’t seem to be related to dragonriding as well, as it happens with the same intensity and frequency while dragonriding or while running on a ground mount

It seems to be somehow connected to the Dragon Isles however, as it almost never happens while I’m in the Shadowlands. I ran a couple of tests in Ardenweald (one of the most graphically intensive zones on WoW) with my Evoker and didn’t get a single audio-related stutter while soaring around. Despite the constant audio-related stuttering, my average FPS in the Dragon Isles is slightly better than in Ardenweald.

If the audio stuttering in the Dragon Isles is a result of a quality improvement (whether there was any), then Blizzard should rethink what they are doing, because the gains in quality simply do not justify the drop in performance from Shadowlands to Dragonflight.

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Anecdotal, I initially noticed the stuttering in Torghast, and thought it might have been a Torghast specific problem at first, so may be worth running a couple tests there too.

Twitch clip from Method channel, showing stutters in Valdrakken (can’t post links apparently).

https:// clips.twitch. tv/EnchantingHelplessCourgetteThunBeast-68Vv_MpMKhAfk_-2

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Anyone else have like 4 second freeze when logging on? Also would anyone find SET LowLatencyMode “0” in Config.wtf, and set it to 1 if Intel/AMD GPU or 2 if Nvidia GPU?

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yep, same here…!

Why do you ask? Did that help you?

Not the stutters sadly, but the frametime is more stable when players aren’t loading in and a little reduction in input lag (2 in the setting is Nvidia Reflex). My hope was that it would load in players faster and possibly eliminate the stutters!

What about the broken draw distance? Cause that’s the main thing keeping me from renewing my sub.

That’s a different problem entirely. I suspect with dragon riding and imo failed immersiveness in the huge Dragon Isles zones, they had to make performance compromises that resulted in terrible terrain/object pop-ins.

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I doubt it because it affects gameplay if enemies don’t pop in until 15yards away including enemy players.

Plus, the stutters, my second concern, is most noticeable when larger patches of the assets abruptly load in.

But you know if everyone’s just gonna be a bunch of pawgwalkers about the asset pop then I don’t think I wanna play a game with people like that anyway. Glad I didn’t resub. RIP wow.

Plus, that typical pawg theory doesn’t explain all the other graphics problems happening at exactly the same time as the stutter and asset pop. But yeah, whatever. I’m done with this community.

Oh hold on now, I’m sure we can be civil about this. I can’t make excuses for all the different issues, just that the stuttering bother me the most, and I try to think as a developer. On the systems I’ve tested asset/NPCs pop-ins act more like “phasing”, while players suddenly appear and causes stuttering.

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Unless players are going into a different phase every single time the largest groupings of assets pop in then I don’t see how they’re the cause, since I play in a lot of areas where there’s no one in the zone.

I run into this a lot with people and it’s funny to me because I’m like, you know I play video games just as much for the video part as I do the game. If I wanted to just play a game I could go play a board game. I think that’s part of the problem with this new wow team too, is it’s run by ion the spreadsheet raider. That is, if we were to go with the pawg theory. Which really just further solidies this company’s death status in my opinion.

I didn’t ask for 900% speed dragons. Don’t think anyone else did either. Seems pretty dumb that something no one even asked for is the reason the entire game’s graphics were absolutely gutted and now looks like something I’d never want to touch again but, if that’s the reality then I’m done with this company and going to try to get a refund for this garbage. Not like it’ll affect their sales with every streamer blindly praising Blizzard for curling a turd all over this game but, at least I’d have my money back and be done with these people once and for all.

Not paying for a game that’s gonna look like this from now on and forever haha.

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Can you provide screenshots and videos of how it actually looks on your end? The more awareness of the problem we document, the higher chance things will be done.

I can but I never thought draw distance would have been so severely lowered like this so I have limited footage and screenshots from before 10.0. However, and there’s no guarantee that people were playing with max texture settings and 10/10 settings for all 3 view distance settings like I was/am but, it’s so bad on everyone’s client end compared to how it looked in shadowlands that you could probably take any video recorded from before patch 10.0 released and compare it to any video footage taken now, even streamers, and see all kinds of crap popping in. Actors, objects, ground clutter, textures. NPCs and enemies tend to pop in a little further away in dragon isles than the rest of the game as far as I can tell, probably in effort to try and make streamer videos look better to sell more copies of DF, but they still pop in closer and more ubruptly/jarringly than what I remember from shadowlands and every expansion prior to that unless they were phasing in. This also doesn’t extend to players. Which makes world pvp really horrible to engage in, esp with dracthyr and demonhunters zipping around. Which is interesting, on that last bit, about the phasing, because you mentioned it could be phasing issues. And actually it’s interesting that I remember players having some of the furthest draw distance of any actor prior to 10.0, and now they seem to have the least.

But either way, I have an open ticket for a refund asking for either assurance that the draw distance is either a problem they’re looking into, or my money back if this was some hairbrained scheme intended to get their precious dragon riding no one asked for working without “performance problems”, which the game ironically now has either way.

I also find it interesting that the point at which things pop in and out in the game world are inconsistent. Like if you do tests, the same object or npc can stay into view further than the last time it blipped out of view, and vise versa. Sometimes these same things will pop in way closer than they popped in during a previous test. That just seems way too broken to me to actually be an intended feature.

Like I can be walking in the barrens and a hyena and terror bird and cheetah family pop in my maybe 50 yards away, and then a random giraffe pops in 15 yards away to jump scare me. Then I’ll move back far enough and only the giraffe is visible at about 70 yards away. Or I’ll walk in and the giraffe pops in at 60, and the rest will render at 30yards.

And you could say that’s because they’re moving, but it’s for static assets as well. NPCs or enemies who just stand there. Objects, etc.

Usually in games when I see something pop in, the only “inconsistency” I see is that it’ll pop in closer but stay in view way longer after it’s rendered in. That seems normal. But for this, that’s not the case.

Like, I can be in the vale of eternal blossoms for nzoth stuff. And that gigantic beam of light in the middle of that lake will pop in maybe 80 yards away now, and then if I back out and see it blip out at 140 maybe. Then go back in, see it pop in at 60 yards, and move back to see it blip out at 90 yards. Try it again, and it’ll maybe blip in at 100, and blip out at 120 yards. That is incredibly inconsistent. Seems odd.

On the other hand, ground clutter like tiny rocks that react to the ground clutter distance setting, draw consistently, and ridiculously, close to where your camera is. It’s so bad that it noticeably reacts to fov settings and camera point. At full zoom, wow’s “first person view” lol, it’ll be about maybe 20 yards away from your player character. At 25 camera zoom, half point of where camera looks to be at 50, the rocks will be like 15 yards away from toon mybe. At 50, it looks like 7 yards away maybe. You set you FOV further than 50, like 90, you’re not even going to see little ground clutter like that anywhere close to your character.

So things like foliage and ground clutter, you know I don’t remember having the highest draw distance of any game I’ve played in general? But when 10.0 dropped, I immediately recognized it as having a much lower quality as in it rendering in much closer and popping in abruptly rather than having that fade effect that assets have when they render in.

I have footage from maybe a month before 10.0 dropped where I’m running down the hill road of mount hyjal, in that area where the fire elementals and human, tauren, and troll twilight guys are fighting druids. I’m moving towards that little shrine where malfurion shows up next to that tauren lady and gives you quests. I use that for a lot of my reference to asset pop in, since it’s one of the only videos I have. If I go through the same road, it looks a looot different. Assets like actors, foliage, ground clutter, left and right popping in much closer. Malfurion and the tauren seem to render in at about the same point as before but, that I think that is also a phase point. Regardless of their particular distance, they seem to abruptly pop in like everything else does. It’s jarring.

But yeah I can take videos of how it is now at least. Got a day and a half left of sub about. Might as well. It’s about the same as everyone else, though. I’ve looked at friend’s games on their computers. I’ve compared with streamer videos. Mostly the same unless someone has draw distance settings turned down to maybe 5 or 4, or lower.