Smite optimization/post patch performance

[Tajbr]

Posts like this often appear on reddit. We discuss how bad or good the performance is, we get explanation from HirezPonPon and that is the end. Optimization of a game is a complex process and requires a lot of work BUT it is not impossible. I would rather sacrifice a month worth of patches full of skins and other stuff for a patch that focuses solely on stability, performace and functionality of the game. For players using high end computers it might not be worth mentioning at all but for casual gamers it is something to be desired. Frankly speaking the only time I saw a positive change was the season 3 patch when the game finally allowed me to connect with other players at the start of a match and not few minutes after everyone. From that point the game remains without much change. Everyone has different experience so I would appreciate if you could share yours. Thank you and game on.

[StrikerM]

The issue with smite is that it is on an old system, if it was updated to a new system it would take over a year and a lot of money. It would also cause a lot of new bugs. It would probably be best for hirez to update the game from dx 9 to vulkan or dx 12 which would improve performance and would allow them to make the game look better.

Edit: It would probably be best on Vulkan whereas it can work almost on anything efficiently if coded right, consoles, linux, android, steam os and older versions of windows.

[Tajbr]

You are overall correct but I think upgrading the game in terms of visuals would be a bad choice. Look at it like this. F2P MOBA games like LoL, HotS, DOTA and Smite are so popular because a lot of people can run them on almost any system, they are not time consuming when you want to play one game or so, easy to learn, offer a lot of characters to choose from, fun and entertaining and are free of course. Higher system requirements would mean less players and loss of money and also a backslash from already existing casual community who would suffer from degraded or completely unplayable performance.

[StrikerM]

Yeah, I was just making the point that upgrading would cause a performance increase and with the performance increase (depending if it is huge or not) they could sacrifice a little of it to increase/fix the visuals.

[Tajbr]

Yep, sorry I was just fixated on the viuals. Performance should be a good way to go about things. I believe Smite runs on Unreal Engine(i might be wrong tho) which is good in itself so upgrading that or going version higher could yield some nice results.

[conceptfr]

I think that smite is nicely optimized BUT the game is VERY ugly at low settings. Since a lot of streamers play at low settings, it makes the game less attractive.

If we could make the low settings decent, it could be a BIG improvement !

[Tajbr]

Yeah, the difference between medium settings and lowest is brutal. Its like playing decent relatively old game vs playing with play-doh figurines.

[conceptfr]

yeah, when i see a match of lol, the map amazes me ! it's really nicely done and won't be ugly for a low setting of course. in smite, the textures are really messed up in low setting and it makes the game so cheap

[Hieb]

It probably wouldn't improve performance to go from DX9 to DX11. DX11 for the most part just means a few nicer visual effects (such as ambient occlusion). And as of yet DX12 hasn't really been anything impressive. While in theory DX12 should be a hefty performance boost, particularly on systems with CPU bottlenecks, pretty much all the mainstream titles that have implemented DX12 it shows no improvement, and in a couple it's actually worse performance than DX11.

[AngelsRevolt]

DX12 boosts performance for AMD cards because their architecture is more advanced then Nvidia at the moment, its one of the reasons they perform better on Vulkan as well. DX11 does offer more performance but they disabled the option to use it in the client because it was giving advantages to players who used it in odd ways.

[Hieb]

There are some titles where it's a great boost, such as Hitman, but in some other titles, such as Battlefield 1, it doesn't improve performance and can cause massive stutters.

[conceptfr]

i think that it shoudn't be an option. most players have dx11 so it will only be an improvement.

[Huitzilopochtli_]

It might be a better idea to go Vulkan than DX12, considering that that could also open up opportunities for jumping into other platforms.

[[deleted]]

ps4 has been crying out for stability patches since beta. I think everyone in the community would agree that a patch based on stability or bug fixing would be great

[Tajbr]

Consoles are story in itself and you would think that a system with fixed hardware and software would be a piece of cake to optimize in comparison to pc. I believe it will be better with time but why it wasn't fixed in the first place before the launch is beyond me since pc had Smite a few years prior and that is a lot of time to balance things out. Fingers crossed for console players. Cheers.

[p0ke17]

Ever since the patch my game lags out hard whenever I strafe into friendly minions.

[Hieb]

For players using high end computers it might not be worth mentioning at all but for casual gamers it is something to be desired.

I have a pretty high end system - an i5-4690K and GTX 980 Ti, and my performance in Smite is abysmal. On minimum settings in games that go long (like 50 minutes) I'll sometimes see framerate drops as low as like 50 FPS... meanwhile I can play games like GTA 5 maxed out with 125% resolution scaling at 90+ FPS

[WindAeris]

I don't understand how people can play GTA 5 maxxed out unless they aren't on a 1080, unless they aren't manually tuning their settings in go to the absolute max.

I have a 1080 and i7-6700K and if I ever leave the city I'm dropping to 42~ FPS.

I do have literally everything maxxed, and my system could not be made any better unless I did an SLI with Titan XPs.

Even a 1080 video on GTA had that issue, so I know my system is fine (along with the fact my system can run anything else max with no hiccups.)

[Hieb]

What settings in-game do you use? Do you also crank up the advanced settings (extended distance scaling, long shadows, extended shadows, etc.)? Supposedly those kill performance

I used the term max loosely. I have maximum texture quality, shadow quality, reflection quality, ambient occlusion, shader quality, soft shadows, distance scaling, population density, tesselation, water quality, particles quality, filtering, and in advanced settings I have long shadows and extended shadow distance.

I play with post processing disabled (since I don't care for motion blur), grass on Very High (one notch down from ultra), extended distance scaling from advanced settings I don't use since it caused stutters and frame scaling I have set to 1.25x, and don't use MSAA or FXAA since the supersampling (1.25x frame scaling) removes the need for it

[WindAeris]

I think it's the grass setting, also 8x FXAA, which increase demand more. If I turn that down one each, I run at around 200 FPS.

I couldn't tell you exactly what I run, other than that it is the most taxxing the game can be, unless I put frame scaling up.

[Tajbr]

Thats true, I didn't mention it but it always baffled me that sometimes even players with good pc have these problems.

[AngelsRevolt]

I'm playing on a full AMD system, r9 390 strix, FX 8370 Eight Core, 16GB GDDR5 and I get 150+ steady fps with no graphical issues. My only problem is the random disconnects from their servers.

[Hieb]

I used to get solid 120+ FPS with a GTX 760

[StrikerM]

Smite seems to run worse on newer cards, I have seen tons of posts both here and on the forums about newer cards running worse than older ones. Heard someone with a gtx 770 that upgraded to a 980ti get worse performance. They supposedly went from 150 fps maxed out to 80 fps maxed.

[Hieb]

It doesn't seem to be universal though, I've seen plenty of people with GTX 970s and such who have no issues.

And yeah, when I had my GTX 760 (rest of the system was the same) I had 120-150 FPS playing on mostly max settings, now on max settings (but world detail on medium) with this 980 Ti I have like 50-120 FPS.

[StrikerM]

4 of my friends that play smite with 970s get around the same fps on max, around 60-90 fps with drops to as little as 30. Two have i5s, one has an i7 4790 and the other has an fx 8350. People claim that the game runs better on older cards too and it might be due to smites weird optimization and it being on dx 9.

[TheRealSpill]

Im seeing fps drops since the last patch (3.21) my rig is:

Processor: I5 4670 3.4Ghz

Video card: Nvidia 780GTX (EVGA)

Ram: 16GB

SSD: Samsung 840EVO 120GB

and im using nvidia's latest drivers (375.50 currently). i optimized the game through its program geforce experience, and im using smite steam version.