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Patch 1.53 Graphic tweaks
Golelorn
Member RarePosts: 1,395
If you tried Faxion before and quit due to the graphic performance or disappointment from graphics give it another go. While the graphics are certainly not top notch they are better than previous iterations. The performance is much, much better. Loading times are reduced significantly.
I'm really enjoying this game.
Comments
Then i have to ask...if this what im playing now is the graphics tweak....how bad was it before?
There is no possible way this game was created in this decade, or this millenia...it looks like a game from the 90's. Not just looks, but plays like. The movements are jerky, clunky, and anything but fluid. Im not a wow player, but comparing this game to wow is like comparing wow circa 2004 to crysis 2.
Problem is, they cant fix chraracter modles, mabey reskin them, but they will always be disproportional looking.
I could understand 1990's graphics it the tradeoff was buttery smooth movement and precice animations, something that would enhance pvp. However its quite the opposite in this game....not that any of that matters since its mage vs mage long range pvp.
FYI: Here is how MMO graphics looked in the late 90s.
I may try it again, but earlier it was unplayable on my laptop (not the most powerful, but still has a dedicated vid card and plays every other game fine). Anytime I'd cast an AOE on more than 5 mobs, game would just completely freeze up until I died. Hopefully the optimization has made that better.
Just wanted to drop in and let everyone know that we're currently working on optimizing the game in many different areas. While we have made some changes to improve memory usage, we're not finished yet.
One item of note, especially for you Sage, is the game needs about a 2.8 Ghz processor or better, currently. We're currently working towards optimizing this part of the engine and will hopefully yield results soon. (Resists the urge to drop the trademark logo)
If more of you can post what kind of system specs your machines are, we'll be able to better diagnose why you're experiencing any sort of lag or performance degredation.
Also, if we're slow at responding here in the forums, then please send an email to support@faxiononline.com and we'll be able to respond a lot quicker.
Slay on!
Brian "Xanther" Lucas
Faxion Designer
UTV Ignition Games
So they decided to make the games characters look like crap on purpose?
It was my HOPE that the game was made in the 1990's as that would be a good excuse for releasing a game with graphics 20 years behind the curve.
Check out the screenies posted above me, that game looks like quite an improvement over Faxion...doesnt it now?
Graphics are easily overlooked if the gameplay is stellar, but the game PLAYS like a game did in the 1990's...chunky, sluggish controls, strange jumping animnation, with an inability to jump over knee high obsicals, despite clearly clearing the obsticals hight in jump hight. Also theres no form of balance, i saw one non mage while playing, turns out they are vastly overpowerd.
Another blast from the past is relying on open world boss spawns, was reading forum posts about boss timed campers ect...great way to stop people from getting loot....unless you buy it in the cash shop....hmmm
This game was subpar in just about every way to any game released in the last 5 years, only advantage it has is that there are no spammers, since, well no one really plays the game.
Im always interested in indy developed games, however theres nothing i dislike more than indy developers trying to make a stale and standard issue game mechanically, and using a game engin thats 20 years old and cant support even modeslty decent looking characters.
Feel free to respond with more than just attacking my post this time.
There's nothing wrong with not liking the graphical style - that's your prerogative. Much of what you're spouting is nonsense, however:
Graphics - In regards to the style, it's simply a matter of preference. I think each zone's enviornments are great and I like the cartoonish style of the characters. I think it fits well with the overall absurdity of the game's theme. Regardless of the style, there's some decent tech behind it, including shader technology, bloom, dynamic lighting and shadows, etc.. That being said, the game was specifically designed for DX9 because the developers want players with older systems to be able to play it. The game's graphics haven't been fully optimized yet, so there's mixed success with performance for players with all kinds of systems, even newer systems. I, however, seem to be able to play fine with AA enabled on a 4-year old laptop with a 256MB graphics card... Regardless, comments about "90's graphics" are ludicrous and invalidate any point you may think you have...
Open world bosses - The game does not rely on open world boss spawns. Yes, there are open world boss spawns, but nobody has to fight them and the gear isn't so uber that you can't live without it. The spawns are simply there as a way to gain experience and, possibly, loot. More specifically, however, the mobs are there as a way to create PvP hot spots since both factions can obtain quests for the mobs and the mobs at the higher levels have irregular timers. For now, there's a pretty small player population, so it doesn't quite work as intended, but as the population grows, I can see this becoming a pretty cool feature. As for your inference that the timers are deliberately low so as to encourage players to purchase the loot from the item shop, it's false. You can't buy boss gear from the shop. You can only get it from those mobs. You're either misinformed or maliciously starting pay-to-win rumors.
Class balance - there are plenty of players from all classes and multi-classes, as well. Yes, balance is being worked on. At various stages of development, all classes have been overpowered. It's a work in progress and the game is actively under heavy development. There was a major skill patch just a couple of weeks ago that necessitated a free respec for all characters. More tweaks are definitely in the works.
Controls - the game uses standard WASD, just like other modern games. What's clunky about it? Jump animations are a known issue (there's a missing step to the animation) and I agree that jumping over certain obstacles can be a pain and have noted such in my beta board comments. That being said, what does it have to do with controls? I can move with WASD and with my mouse perfectly fine. So, what's the problem? If you're refering to animations, which ones specifially? Most of them are decent, IMO, especially in comparison to other games released in the last few years, like Alganon and Darkfall (both of their animations at launch were awful).
Engine - a 20 year old engine, really? A 3D MMO graphics engine from 1991? As with the graphics comments, this invalidates any point you may think you have. For the record, Faxion Online is the first game to expose the Hero Engine to the general public in open beta. There aren't ANY released games that use it.
I agree that Faxion has plenty of things that need fixing, polish, tweaking, etc... and the devs seem absolutely commited to doing so. I've rarely seen this level of interaction between the development team and testers in any game. Dungeon Runners was the only other game I can think of, but due to issues with NCSoft management never got to realize it's full potential.
If you don't like the game, fine. You're welcome to post your opinions and feedback on the development boards and obviously here on the mmorpg.com forums - there's nothing stopping you and even negatrive feedback can be valuable. You don't like the graphical style, the performance or the animations? Nothing wrong with that. You're welcome to your opinion. Spouting hyperbole, however, discredits you.
~Ripper
It is a graphics style. Let me repeat that. It is a graphic STYLE. A STYLE! The never ending complaining about how this game's graphics are out of date holds about as much logic as saying Pixar films are complete garbage because their graphics aren't like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Did I mention it is a completely different style? For the style they went for I think they did a brilliant job. It is light and spirited, fun and comical. It takes a subject, religion, and handles it in a way that is neither offensive, nor disrespectful.
Here is the thing with art. I think Picassos look like a 4 year old on Meth got into a set of finger paints. That doesn't stop people around the world paying millions of dollars for them or them being significant accomplishments within the art world. I don't like it, so what. I would never be so self-righteous to think that because I simply do not care for them that they must be crap. If you do not like the style swell, MOVE ON! Thank you. We now return you to your regularly scheduled browsing.
I've been playing Faxion for the last week or two, and I really like the game. I am a sucker for the +5 / +10 stats per level to spend however you want games. (Diablo / T4C / Dungeon Runners / Slayers(Taewool)) However, it boggles my mind that you guys have advertisements for Faxion running yet there are some very simple steps you can take to make your game have more customers. I am dead serious, you are losing customers because you haven't done these things:
1. There is a config file in the Faxion folder. It has an "Anti Aliasing" and "Clip Plane (Far)" settings. Yet these settings do not appear in the in-game settings window. Why? Don't say its because the client needs to restart for the setting to take effect, because plenty of games give that prompt when changing graphics settings. I am pretty anal about optimizing my graphics/performance. Thats why I searched for the config file to see if there was anything I could do to make this game playable. (I have a 3.0 ghz quad core, GTX460, and 4GB ram, and my system still struggles greatly with the game.) I would have quit if I hadn't of discovered that you guys set the default Clip Plane to 400.000. I set it to 50.000 or so. And to my surprise my FPS nearly doubled. So why in the world would you set 400.000 as the default and not add this setting in the game? I told my guild in game about the config fileand the clip plane setting and it doubled some of their FPS. Why would you keep that hidden? In most zones the atmopsheric fog won't even let you see beyond 40.000 range or so.
2. Get rid of the 'Bloom Effect On' default setting, or add in an option to disable it in graphic settings window. sdfsd Many players don't like Bloom or it cripples there performance without giving a worthy boost in visuals. However, the main reason you should get rid of the Bloom option is because the game is producing a indefinite after glow burnt into my screen. Here is a quote from wikipedia to better describe it:
"Afterimage is a computer graphics effect used by computer games. The effect takes the bright parts of a rendered image of the scene, and then fades in a motion blur style fashion as the scene progresses. The result is that bright areas leave a fading trail when the camera is moving. Afterimage can be used to enhance blooming. In some games, the process is named light trail."
I am sure thats what you guys might of been intending to do to your Bloom effect. But whats happening is your 'bloom motion-blur fading-trail' is staying there, stuck on screen, until I alt tab to refresh the screen or die, or change zones. I will supply some screenshots if you'd like.
3. Fix the memory sink issues. My FPS shouldn't start at 70 upon logging in, and then drop to 30 after switching zones 2 times. I've played many different games in the past and in almost every one the FPS will slowly drop lower than it is when first starting the game. Usually that FPS drop is down to 75% or so after zoning a few times. And if I keep playing for a 8 hour period or so, maybe it could drop down to 50%. But on Faxion all I have to do is play for an hour or so and upon switching some zones my FPS drops way too low, and I've even gotten "out of memory" crashes.
I understand you guys are working on #3, the memory leak issue. But there is no reason for not addressing the first two issues. They wouldn't take much time to address at all. I posted some stuff on the Faxion official forum about Bloom etc but it seems to have been ignored. I was excited to see Patch 1.54 come out, I thought to myself "sweet maybe they addressed some lag or bloom issue," but it was just quest fixes.
Listen, quest fixes make veteran players happy who have already given you their money and who are already playing the game. Graphic Engine / Client issues keep new players around. Especially since the game is free to play. There are so many F2P games out right now that I will just install one after the other trying them out, and if I notice a little thing like too much bloom or a bad client performance within the first 5 minutes. Ill log off and probably uninstall it. I actually logged off the first time in Faxion because the heaven starting area was SO OVERBLOOMED that it made the game look like complete garbage. Theres a youtube video of a guy doing a first impression of Faxion and he even comments on the bad overblooming of the starting area.
Luckily I gave the game a second try and fell in love with the Toy Story / Buzz Lightyear / Pixar graphics style. I sound like im bitching and ranting but in all honestly I like this game and I'm only typing this all out to help it succeed. Please, please address issues #1 and #2 that I've posted here. Your advertisements are bringing players in, but the clients fixable issues are shunning them away.
Developer reply...
FYI - patch 1.55 this week is supposed to boost optimization in the starting city.
~Ripper