Hello Guys; I have read a few posts around, where some players play on minimal Graphics settings to ensure the best Performance not only from their rig but also from themselves. Ie. low graphics will eliminate trees, and smoke etc etc. My Question is this: IS being competative more important to you than beautiful graphics? would you turn you settings off if it allowed you to get that shot through the woods? would you crank up your Brightness to allow that 1000+ meter shot in river city? Etc. Etc. or are you about the Max Graphics because you are more into the Cannon, look and feel of the game?
It's a good question, and for myself, the answer is generally to choose graphics over competitiveness. Fact is, when I first started playing this game, all I had was a laptop with an Intel i3 and the cheap integrated graphics that came loaded on the CPU; so, yeah, no GPU. Which meant that my frame-rate, on the lowest possible graphics settings, was 8-10 FPS at best (I was sitting at 4-6 for a few months until they hot-fixed the servers). So yeah, that was painful. When I finally bought parts for and put together my new desktop, I was totally pumped to run this game at 60 FPS at MAXED settings (everything graphically intensive I could turn on, I did! ) So when I heard about this whole lowering-your-graphics-settings-to-increase-your-range-of-view-and-to-make-trees-buildings-and-other-objects-disappear . . . I was like: "Are you kidding? I just got a desktop that could run this thing at Ultra-Max settings, and now you want me to drop them back down? Forget it!" And I've stood by that. I don't need to go all THAT competitive that I'm gonna view the game in poor graphics. Standard stuff is good enough for me. However, (and here's the catch/exception), I DO (should say "did") tend to change my Brightness and Gamma on River City Night when I was running a sniper. Simple reason (which I'm sure most have heard before): with Night Vision on normal settings, you can't see distance well enough to actually put the extra range of your weapons to good use. So when I'm running a dual-Gauss Phract and I drop onto River City Night, I tend to bump the Brightness and Gamma to the max and simply ignore night vision, as I can then snipe under those conditions. (But of course, now with the Brightness and Gamma options doing absolutely nothing, there's no reason to change; I'm forced to use Night Vision instead, and to satisfy myself with only seeing 500 meters in any direction.) So yeah, that's my 2 cents on this topic. I refuse to drop my graphics settings just so I can take advantage of what I consider to be bugs (should any game really have that big a problem with draw distance . . . seriously?) But I do (did) make use of the Brightness and Gamma option, though only when I happened to drop with a sniper on the RCN map. After those matches, my settings always went right back to normal maximum.
I know to be competitive you have to take advantage of this bug that most Comp Drops use. However, I still feel a little dirty doing this. I am not at all trying to call this a "cheat" or disrespect the players who do this (as I know there are a lot of players who are a hell of a lot better than me taking advantage of this quirk) However, I don't like to use this personally. Moreover, I'm with Falc. The pretties are too nice. Chatt.
I haven't fiddled with my brightness or gamma. Last I checked I have a losing record on river city night, so maybe I should. I am fully about winning the game though. The eye candy I can see somewhere else. My computer isn't great, but I play on max resolution yet lowest visual effects settings.
Didn't even realise that exploit existed but there was a similar one in Planetside 2 where at very high or very low graphics settings you could see cloaked infiltrator's. I take it one step further and play on a Dell 3011 powered by SLI Titans. Very immersive but the display input lag isn't good and you just have to learn to cope with it. I'm used to that playing overseas though and correcting for ping. PS: It really helps spotting hidden lights it has to be said.
I lower the graphics as much as it takes to get smooth performances, so I guess you might want to count me on the "competitive" side. But only because I really don't care about good graphics. Honestly I can't even appreciated the difference. But I sure can appreciate a consistent framerate, and that's the only thing I'm interested about (more than low graphic exploit). It might be my long experience of fast-FPS games (lot of Quake, some Tribes too) that makes me prefer gameplay over graphics. But I actually hate the competitive spirit, so please don't call me competitive.
During PUG matches I dial my graphics up to full ultra super sexiness. I bought a 780 Ti might as well use it (although MWO doesn't make that card even break a sweat). During 12 man comp drops? I dial it down... a LOT. Hey, I'm using the mechanics of the game. If PGI doesn't want people having access to those variables then fix the game so that it doesn't allow it.
well thanks to my great and mighty pc i never had that question. I'm always playing with everything on low to get atleast around 22fps, since last patch more around 14 -_- Still suprised that thanks to that i have less sightblockers
Well the thing is. You need a strong enough, good enough, computer to rock a good FPS. THEN you turn all of the graphics down so that you don't have to see terrain right away and can track mechs through see through features. So in essence it's a hack based off of a poorly implemented coding system. High end players will look for any excuse though to try to prove they are 'better' than the next guy though in the game of stompy robots that really doesn't mean anything. I'm not calling anyone out, or slinging any names around, or anything like that. Everyone plays this game for their own reasons, and it's none of my business why anyone does what they do. I personally do not do it, and never will. I don't have any problem playing with high end players and getting beat by them or killing them. After all, it's just a game, when I turn it off I'm not instantly rich or my kids suddenly super successful. So I just don't care what anyone else does, just how the game feels to me.
No to mention, if you do not use it, you're at a pretty severe disadvantage. You know the enemy will be using this advantage, why neuter yourself for pretties? I used it last week for 12-mans, but, still am not a huge fan. I would honestly be happier if PGI made the draw distance universal and found another way to boost CPU/GPU performance with their engine.
Wow I had no idea this was going on, that's complete garbage. It explains a few matches on Forest Colony that's for sure. Hopefully its addressed soon in an upcoming patch. I would hate to have to give in and turn down my graphics to level the playing field if it becomes to wide spread.
In my opinion there should be a minimum graphic setting for competitive play to stop the graphic exploits, if your machine is not up to snuff..well tough, that's competition, beef up your computer to compete. You would not bring a Nissan Datsun to compete in a Nascar race no matter how tricked out it is...I would hope, but would be funny to see.
I started playing MWO in January 2013......and I could usually play decent with Everything in HIGH... but over a year'2 worth of patches and now I have to have everything in LOW detail just to play.... especially last patch really killed my frames per second... Depth of Field in SEpt added a smog layer to the entire game = more processing needed to draw that crap Cockpit Glass means another layer,ect DX11 horribly coded means less frames per second even though I"m using DX9,ect.. Every Patch makes this game worse in my opinion... I will not pay extra money to upgrade JUST for MWO...
