Game runs horribly. Why?

[Requimatic]

First of all, I'm a returning player from 2009, so there's at least one issue from back then that hasn't changed. More on this below.

Second, the PC I was playing DDO on in '09 contained the following:

1. Single-core Pentium 4 CPU.
2. A much, MUCH lesser GPU than I have now.
3. Much less memory, running at significantly lower clock speeds.

My current PC has the following:

Core i7 950 @ ~3.07GHz
EVGA GTX570 Fermi
6GB G.Skill memory @ 800MHz - 6:8:6:20 timings.

And for whatever reason, DDO likes to lag horribly. The two main issues are this:

1. When logging on to a character, it takes a while for the game to load everything. (ie: UI placement, I'm unable to move my character until it's done, etc.) This takes anywhere from 5-10 seconds to finish. I'm used to this from back in '09, and don't know of any fix at all.

2. The game likes to just randomly freeze at any given point for up to 10 seconds. I was using DX11 at first, then got annoyed and dropped down to DX10 with slightly lower settings in certain areas.

So, what's with this? The game ran better five years ago, with lesser hardware and higher settings. Granted, I was using DX9 then, but there's no reason my hardware can't handle DX11 in this game, as it does every other game that utilizes it. Is this a problem with the game engine, or are there just certain SEVERELY over-tuned settings I'm unaware of and need to turn down or off? (I usually run with shadows off, and only 2x MSAA and 1-2x ASF, as anything higher is an exponential waste of resources in any game with very, very little graphical improvement.)

Running around in the crafting hall just a little bit ago was a very stressful process, as whenever I turned a corner the game froze up for up to the given amount of time above.

Would like everyone's opinions/suggestions on this. If DDO is this badly optimized I would highly suggest the next update comes with a vast amount of code/engine/etc. optimizations.

Edit: These issues are on top of random crashing before getting to the character selection screen, or when exiting the game. Getting tired of having to end-task dndclient.exe when I exit. :/

[sebastianosmith]

Hey Requimatic,

If you are using a mechanical HD, give Wanesa's DDO Preloader a go. It loads the client_gamelogic.dat file into the Windows cache before starting the game which drastically improves load time.

Some users have reported less lag and decreased load time by editing the ConnectionSpeed setting in their userpreferences.ini file.

Freezing in the Crafting Hall is, unfortunately, a normal occurrence. It only runs in one VM instance and gets very laggy at times. As for other lag-inducing locations, well, the reasons for those are numerous, varied and would take more time than I currently have to document.

Best of luck!

[Requimatic]

Hey Requimatic,

If you are using a mechanical HD, give Wanesa's DDO Preloader a go. It loads the client_gamelogic.dat file into the Windows cache before starting the game which drastically improves load time.

Some users have reported less lag and decreased load time by editing the ConnectionSpeed setting in their userpreferences.ini file.

Freezing in the Crafting Hall is, unfortunately, a normal occurrence. It only runs in one VM instance and gets very laggy at times. As for other lag-inducing locations, well, the reasons for those are numerous, varied and would take more time than I currently have to document.

Best of luck!

Hail!

Both options here sound like a good idea. When attempting to get in to the game just now (and having to end-task it three? times due to pre-login crashes and a mass latency issue? after logging on to my Monk), I'm going to give at least the userpreferences.ini edit a try. I'd noticed before in the troubleshooting options that connection preferences cap out at 128.. made me wonder if this was 128Kbps, 128Bps or what. I obviously have far, far more bandwidth available than that, so editing it should improve connectivity drastically.

The downside is not really knowing what value to set it to, since I don't currently know what unit those options represent.

As for that DDO loader, it makes sense. Typically once I'm in the game and past loading up one character the lag issues aren't too terrible. I've noticed, though, that this game does NOT like being alt-tabbed out of numerous times. I don't know if there's a memory leak somewhere in the code or not, but.. it's obvious some optimizations here and there need to be (and could be...) made.

Anyway, thanks for this, I'll be giving them a try.

Edit: Changed the value in my ini file to 3000 and noticed a DRAMATIC decrease in load times. This is after zoning in to the market once, game lagging out and having to be end-tasked, then loading back in, walking around, and changing zones (Market to House K, House K to Crafting Hall, etc.). Neat!

[Mindos]

Hail! Neat!

In the Advanced Graphics settings tab:

The Texture Cache Size slider should be moved all the way to the right.

[Singular]

In the Advanced Graphics settings tab:

The Texture Cache Size slider should be moved all the way to the right.

I often play with this, but am not sure how it affects running the game. So all the way to the right uses more ram, thereby freeing up the gpu?

[Tscheuss]

Hey Requimatic,

If you are using a mechanical HD, give Wanesa's DDO Preloader a go. It loads the client_gamelogic.dat file into the Windows cache before starting the game which drastically improves load time.

Some users have reported less lag and decreased load time by editing the ConnectionSpeed setting in their userpreferences.ini file.

Freezing in the Crafting Hall is, unfortunately, a normal occurrence. It only runs in one VM instance and gets very laggy at times. As for other lag-inducing locations, well, the reasons for those are numerous, varied and would take more time than I currently have to document.

Best of luck!

Thanks for the reminder. I forgot all about the connection speed setting. Something weird with the updates was causing my userpreferences.ini file to be reset to defaults, and I was so annoyed at having to reset my graphics that I thought the Crafting Hall lag was an update bug. Back to 2000 and decon is moving right along.

[Mindos]

I often play with this, but am not sure how it affects running the game. So all the way to the right uses more ram, thereby freeing up the gpu?

This setting addresses your first point, slow loading. With faster connection edited into userpref file, and this slider moved to the right, the game should load much faster. imho

[Missing_Minds]

I often play with this, but am not sure how it affects running the game. So all the way to the right uses more ram, thereby freeing up the gpu?

No.

It uses more RAM to keep textures in memory vs getting paged out. This speeds up load times dramatically.
This means the GPU is waiting less for data so can be in use more often.

If a processor (cpu or gpu) isn't running full tilt all the time you have it powered up, you are not getting the most out of it that you could. The correlating idea also that if it is running full tilt all the time you don't have much room for future growth.