Happy New Year! A 2016 Retrospective

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Chris shaved his beard.

...in 3.0 Chris' beard will be available as MTX ingame.

Happy new year everybody!
...and GGG you guys are simply awesome!

Happy new Year

Happy New Years GGG well done so hyped for this coming year! Keep up the great work SUCK IT BLIZZARD

Happy New Year everyone - and thanks for the great work in 2016!

(I'll definitly link this post to any person still playing diablo 3 and trying to tell me, that blizzard still provides it's community with sufficient new content)

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Chris wrote:

Massively increased average game performance (by triple for many users).

And yet here I am with consistently WORSE performance than ever across 3 different machines. Not even one of the three machines saw any performance improvement at all. Any. AT ALL! Please stop completely ignoring ATI, AMD, and not-latest-gen hardware. The hardware most needing optimization is the hardware only getting 20-60 FPS in combat. The game seems to dip closer towards unplayable every month. I want to like this game, and I'd like to support it, but I just can't as long as the game becoming spontaneously unplayable is a very real hazard. For over 2 weeks around Breach launch the game was completely unplayable on 2 of my 3 machines and GGG hardly even addressed the matter the whole time. How can I have any trust or faith in GGG with things like that happening? How could buying points be anything but a foolish proposition when I may very well get little or nothing for my money? If the game's going to eventually become consistently completely unplayable on business and/or slightly old hardware it's not going to be an option in many situations where I'd otherwise want to play it. This is a third-person Diablo clone, not Farcry. It shouldn't require top-end-recent-gaming-machine specs.

Also, please be more realistic with particle usage, at the very least provide a low-spec option that dials particle density and the rest of the non-gameplay-affecting eyecandy way down, or off completely where the game remains playable with the graphical effect gone, just as with shadows. Situations like Malachai are just ridiculous and there's no good reason to spew that many particles. Personally, I would suggest dropping the DX9ex client entirely, and focusing solely on the core DX9 client and the new DX11 client, optimizing the DX11 client for cutting-edge hardware (both nvidia AND ATI please!,) and the DX9 client for older hardware, especially machines in the 2-10 years old range, ideally keeping it playable on integrated graphics. The more of my machines I can actually run PoE on, and continue to run PoE on, the more use I have for it. The more of my friends who can run PoE, the more use I have for it. Not all of them are serious gamers.

At the very least, if you're only going to target Nvidia, please make it official so people with AMD cards know not to waste their time with Path of Exile at all. It is VERY frustrating to see you continue to crow about performance improvements on a narrow band of hardware while the rest continues to get worse and you continue to completely ignore it.

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TheLastZica wrote:

optimizing the DX11 client for cutting-edge hardware (both nvidia AND ATI please!,) and the DX9 client for older hardware

Unfortunatly, AMD did a bad job with DX11, they didn't implement all the optimizations that NVidia had. Only DX9 and DX12 are well supported by AMD's drivers.

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bejarid wrote:

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TheLastZica wrote:

optimizing the DX11 client for cutting-edge hardware (both nvidia AND ATI please!,) and the DX9 client for older hardware

Unfortunatly, AMD did a bad job with DX11, they didn't implement all the optimizations that NVidia had. Only DX9 and DX12 are well supported by AMD's drivers.

Then perhaps the DX9 client should be optimized for all AMD hardware, old and new, and the DX11 client should be optimized exclusively for nvidia, while the DX9 client completely ignores new nvidia hardware. Though I question why we HAVE a DX11 client and not a DX12 client instead if this is the case... is there some good reason for that? I know I certainly have no use for it.

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TheLastZica wrote:

Then perhaps the DX9 client should be optimized for all AMD hardware, old and new, and the DX11 client should be optimized exclusively for nvidia, while the DX9 client completely ignores new nvidia hardware. Though I question why we HAVE a DX11 client and not a DX12 client instead if this is the case... is there some good reason for that? I know I certainly have no use for it.

Yes, they have several good reasons to choose that solution (DX9 -> DX12 is a largely unknow port, they don't have dev with DX12 experience, DX12 have yet to show its value in real game, ect.).

But in the end, if the port to DX11 have successfully give more performance, it's not nearly enough because the original engine have major flaws (like the bad AMD performance), and they don't want to slow down new content to fix them, nor can/want hire a whole new team for this.

It's quite the usual dilemma that a lot of software company have, how many resources should they put in "new content" VS "technical rework"? It's always a struggle, but I do think they delayed way to much the technical part and should put even more effort on this than what they already do this year.

"There were 40% more hours played of Path of Exile on our realm in 2016 than 2015. This is a buff."

Wait till the new Act comes out. this will be fixed for "Balance Issues".

On another note, like previous posters have suggested/complained about, we need a low-spec or adjustable particle setting for those of us who don't have the latest/most powerful computers. I'm tired of getting low (1-30) fps on areas and playing a powerpoint presentation, especially w/ Malachai and other High-vis attack bosses.

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We launched more purple leagues than any previous year.
Chris shaved his beard.
Grinding Gear Games celebrated its 10 year anniversary!

I love when a good indy game doesn't take itself too serious and can have some fun with posts like this.

And 10 years is a serious number! Congrats and thank you for such a great game!