Patch Preview: Performance Improvements

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

Subtitle: Six Major Changes to Enhance Performance and Stability

It’s time to optimize! We hope players have been enjoying the first iteration of the Job Board Preview. We are actively reviewing and planning adjustments to the system based on the mountain of feedback provided by all of you. Our next patch will include quite a few job-related fixes and changes, thanks to the community’s help.

As we showcased in our Q1 Roadmap, this patch will primarily focus on optimizations rather than content. We remain committed to securing the foundation of the game, and we’ve heard players loud and clear: you want better performance, fewer disconnects, and a more stable experience. The team’s big hope with this patch is that we’ve made a significant leap forward in terms of the client’s overall responsiveness and stability.

Shader Precompilation:
Upon startup, we will now perform shader precompilation right away, as opposed to when you encounter content. This will significantly reduce hitching, stuttering, and input lag when encountering certain abilities, enemies, and biomes.

Skylight and Highlands Asset Optimization:
Our tech teams have conducted numerous passes of optimization in areas like Skylight and the Highlands, reducing dense amounts of geometry and assets. A major HLOD (Hierarchical Level of Detail) pass was completed to “trim the fat” of excessive assets causing unnecessary processing burdens.

Lighting Overhaul:
We have overhauled the way we process lighting, reduced complexity, minimized overlapping lights, and removed shadows on light sources that were unnecessary. This has resulted in a significantly lower processor burden when rendering illuminated areas.

Quality and Performance Mode Added for PS5:
This highly requested console feature will allow PlayStation 5 players the ability to choose between higher graphical fidelity or an improved frame rate, achieving a near-locked 60 fps.

Improvements to Asset Loading:
We have increased the buffer period for asset streaming regions, which will result in significantly less hitching when traversing large areas with lots of details and players. This will have a greater impact on machines that are closer to our minimum requirements than on higher-end machines.

Backend Inventory Optimizations:
Our netcode has undergone significant improvements to inventory tracking in an effort to reduce server and transaction loads. This includes optimizing the amount of player data sent to the server, cutting instances of required bandwidth in half in some cases. We hope this significantly reduces disconnects for players who have logged many hours into Wayfinder and have very large inventories (long playtime history = lots of histories and logs). We have also performed a major optimization of multiplayer data infrastructure, which will reduce server load, hitches, and potential disconnects when players with excessively large inventories join a server you are on.

As January comes to a close, we want to again thank all of our dedicated fans who have continued to show their love for Wayfinder with all the feedback posted every day, as well as welcome all of the new faces we are seeing around Evenor!

Our next patch preview will focus on some of the exciting UI and gameplay changes you can expect from Patch 0.2.4, coming in early February!