widescreen resolution removed from the game.

"

if they enlarge the activation radius

But nobody is asking for a larger activation radius. It's fine how it was. I'd rather empty map on the sides of my screen than black bars.

I'd be perfectly fine with the same activation radius they have now, or a standard, non-ultrawide one even, if they didn't just straight up disable a third of my screen.

"

vio wrote:

some simple points:

if they enlarge the activation radius, more.data needs to be sent to the client. if you host a server farm with millions of customers, the biggest bill is data transfer fees.

it's important if you send 5kb/s or 15kb/s to every client.
and more data also means more server load.

a bigger activation radius means that the client has to load game assets faster when the char is moving cause there is more to load.

another problem is, that players with smaller monitors would activate monsters left and right they don't even see. which would result in more offscreen oneshots.

wide screen players seeing more game assets is a advantage against players with smaller displays, it's not fair.

there is the option to let the game use the whole monitor and add some fog left and right but i don't think players would like it cause they want that advantage.

and, the old implementation wasn't "working ok", clicking outside the smaller activation radius would not let your char move. it was bugged

---

i think there is a solution out there but just give them some time to figure it out.

Your thechnical point would make sense if they changed how things works server and client side, between 3.18 and 3.19. But it's not the case.
Right now, we just have black bars that hides things that are still processed. It's quite obvious, as performance didn't change at all with the same settings, but we do have 1/3 less pixels to process. This would make noticiable change in game performance and/or GPU usage, but it's exactly the same as before.

Furthermore, there already is a community fix that removes the black bars (which I'm not using for now, as it's against ToS and because I still have hope that it will just be reverted by GGG), with exactly the same behaviour as pre 3.19, so no obvious change server side either, otherwise they would be noticiable when the full 32/9 image is shown.

As for the "fairness" point, it's just doesn't make any sense.

1. PoE is a non competitive centered, PvE game. So if 32/9 gives an advantage, you just removes it from specific competitive content such as PvP or races, not in the entire game

2. Your whole point on competitive advantage can be used against 21/9 too, as most of the playerbase uses 16/9, but it's still supported

3. 21/9 is the sweet spot in term of balancing "larger FoV" and "useless/distracting information being shown". 32/9 is an immersive asset in PoE, not a performance one. Things that are on the edge of the 32/9, in normal viewing distance, are in your peripheral vision, which is very receptive to movement. But thoses things are too far to be a threat yet. So you can often be distracted by things that are meaningless at the moment, getting your eyes out of your life bar, and getting you killed by a bleeding or any other random death that PoE has to offer.
This does not happen in 21/9, that's what I can relate on my game experience this league VS 3.18 in 32/9.

But still, I don't care 21/9 being more effective, I just want my immersion back, even if it means that I die more often.

"

wide screen players seeing more game assets is a advantage against players with smaller displays, it's not fair.

Ban 30-series graphics cards, they get more frames than my 1060, they load faster and can see more, it's unethical!

Bump. Revert this change.

Bump. Revert this change.

Bump. When will it be fixed?

Bump - ridiculous that we're a week into the league and this nonsense pervades.

The servers are clearly still doing the work as are the clients with the black bars, so please, just give us our immersion back, it wasn't an unfair advantage, but it did make the game FEEL better as your field of view is fully encompassed with POE.

Bump!

Fix it, GGG