Cloakshire

(For those that don't have an attention span) Tl:dr Since the closing of the JP servers was announced, there's speculation as to whether we're next. As the title states, we are one of the deciding factors in this game's survival. Let's focus on doing our part as a community to prolong this game's life.

Who am I?
I'm a long time player from the closed beta days. I've been playing on and off since 2010, and over the yeas I've seen the good and the bad of this game. However, despite the game's flaws, I still find it fun and enjoyable. I can't think of another mmo out there that matches Vin's combat in terms of feel and execution which is precisely what I love about it. It's what keeps me coming back. The bosses, the environments, the music, the atmosphere, and the combat all meld together perfectly and I just can't help but praise Nexon for creating this unique experience.

Real Talk
Still... we all have to accept that mmo's will inevitably die as it is the nature of the beast. Newer games come out, players leave, and eventually a game shuts down due to the lack of revenue/community. However, when a game dies is partially up to its players.

Ask yourself right now... Why do you play Vindictus? If it's because you truly enjoy the game's for what it is, then you and I are of a like mind. If you don't, then perhaps it's because of friends or the community surrounding the game. Whatever your reason may be, you're here because there's something about this game you like.

Let me ask you another question.... Do you want Vindictus to shut down? I know I don't. Not because of the time/money I've invested nor the people I play with. I don't want it to shut down because I believe that this game is a one of a kind experience and I don't want that experience to end. I want to see what's next. Yeah sure, the game doesn't get new content as often as I'd like and doing the current content over and over again can feel repetitive at times, but I still enjoy the game for what it is at its core.

"Game is dying" mentality
I'm gonna go ahead and say that the "Game is dying," threads were funny at first, but now they've gotten out of hand and created a stigma that the game is actually dying. You know what I say to those people? If the game dies, you're partially to blame. In any mmo, there's at least one person quitting every day. If that's the case, then how do games manage to stay alive? It's because they bring in enough new players to offset the number of people quitting. If the publishers and developers don't advertise their product, then it's up to the community to do so. However, a good chunk of our forum community is doing the exact opposite by posting all these dead game threads. You're one of the reasons new players leave and by extension, you're accelerating the inevitable death of this game.

What can we do?
There is hope. The power and influence of a community is stronger than you may think. I know it sounds cheesy, but let me give you an example. When ESO launched, it didn't live up to the initial hype and had so many issue that it nearly shut down. However, the game bounced back because of its community. This just goes to show what a good community can do for a game, so to those spamming dead game posts, knock it off.

Let me ask another question. Do you talk about Vindictus to your friends or recommend it to others? I personally do. Most people I talk to have never heard of Vindictus, but they always find what I show them interesting and some have even joined the game. I know everyone I show won't be interested enough to try it, but I'm still doing my part to keep this community going. If I can do it, so can you. The next time you're talking about games with a friend, co-worker, or whoever... ask them if they've heard of Vindictus and show them the game. Not only does this help the playerbase, but they'll be joining the game knowing that there will be people they already know. It also gives us veterans the opportunity to mentor newer players so we can create an open and friendly feel for our community. Both of these aspects will boost Vin's retention of newer players.

Some numbers
Two big factors that can influence an mmo's life is revenue and the community. The great thing about these two factors is that they're connected. The bigger the community, the more revenue made by the developers which equates a better experience for us. With more revenue, we not only get to keep enjoying the game, but it allows the developers more resources to improve the game through content updates or bug fixes.

I'm not saying that everyone has to spend hundreds of dollars to keep the game going, but if the community gets small enough, that may become the case. The bigger the community, the less each individual has to spend. One-hundred people spending $10 is better than ten people spending $100. They both equal out to $1000, but in one scenario, a person quitting means a 1% revenue loss while the other equals a 10% loss. This shows how important a community's size means. The only way we can bring the community size up is if we all work together and save the game we enjoy.

I can already see that some of our forum regulars are going to pick this post apart and spew the same old dead game bs. Go ahead and make those posts. All that does is show us that you really don't care about the game. I'm betting that I'll be able to quote this paragraph as a reply to someone that didn't even fully read this thread before posting dead game crap.

We have the power to make a change and keep Vindictus going. Let's keep the game we love alive for as long as we can! I will do my part, but what about you?

~Sincerely,
A passionate player

Here's a quick video showing how Ryzen Second Gen cpu's perform in Vindictus while hosting with multiprocessing enabled.
This video contains two ~30 second clips. The first is at stock ram frequency and the second shows the performance gained from a RAM overclock.



Game Settings Used:



The important computer specs:
Processor: Ryzen 7 2700X (Stock Clock and Cooler)
Graphics: GTX 1070 Ti Founder's Edition
Primary Drive: Samsung 960 EVO M.2 250Gb SSD
Secondary Drive: Seagate 2TB 7200RPM HDD
Motherboard: MSI x470 Gaming Plus
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaw V 3200Mhz 2x8 16Gb


Capture Information:
Recording Program used: Nvidia Shadowplay
Vindictus is stored on the SSD while videos are written to the HDD.


Thoughts: While there is a performance increase when overclocking the ram to 2933mhz, there is a cost. In both clips the CPU temp hovered around 53-54°C, but the CPU fan was spinning significantly faster with the RAM set to 2933mhz. This is due to the fact that the CPU's memory controller speeds up in tandem with RAM frequency thus causing more heat. It looks like the stock cooler was able to keep up and maintain the same temperature after overclocking the RAM, but the downside was that the CPU fan was spinning fast enough to hear. At stock RAM speeds (2133mhz), the CPU fan is nearly silent.

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UPDATE 12/20/2018
Astera Raid Benchmarks at 2133, 2933, and 3200Mhz RAM speed configurations while hosting. Let me give a disclaimer first that the average fps number does not represent the max. In all tests, I did hit 60fps but it wasn't stable and would drop under certain conditions, but the drops never made the game hitch or become unplayable. For example, when Elchulus was all up in my face, my fps would drop but while he was in the air, I would hit ~60. I opted to not record video clips as it might hinder performance. But without further adieu, here's the results.

Individual Configuration Test Results

https://i.imgur.com/S5eDywv.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Fx9kf6E.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/PDvXD80.jpg


Combined Test Results




Thoughts
Got some surprising results when testing out all three frequencies. As you can see in all the comparison chart, increasing the RAM frequency helped boost the fps in all tests to create a upward staircase effect.

Claire saw a minimal increase on the average since the slowest speed pulled 57fps leaving only ~3fps to gain and this was easily made up after the first step to 2933Mhz. On the minimum though, increased RAM speed gave a nice improvement. Going from stock to 2933Mhz yielded a ~10% gain while boosting it further to 3200Mhz yielded a ~19% gain over stock.

Elchulus is a demanding raid going by the results. My only guess is that it's partially due to the fact that he's a large boss plus his arena has a far draw distance. Anyways, going from stock, I saw an 8% gain on 2933Mhz and a 10% gain on 3200Mhz when comparing the average fps. The minimums tell a similar story with only a ~5% and ~10% gain at 2933 & 3200mhz respectively. Note that out of all the tests, Elchulus bolstered the lowest score at 3200Mhz.

Macha Phase 1 is surprisingly demanding for it being such a small arena to the point of it having the lowest results of the stock 2133 and 2933Mhz tests. However, this raid saw the biggest gains overall when increasing the RAM speed. Going from stock I saw an ~11% gain at 2933mhz, and a ~24% gain at 3200mhz when comparing the averages. The minimums however are strange as the first jump wasn't too big at only 11%, but the second one was huge at a 41% increase over stock. There's something about the first part of Macha that loves fast RAM.

Macha Phase 2 falls into a very similar situation that Claire did. The average framerate was again already near the top leaving little to no room for improvement. Although the minimums have room to grow because increasing the RAM speed pulled me out of the 40's and into the 50's. Only a 1fps gain after bumping the speed up once, but a 6fps or ~12% increase in minimum framerate over stock.

When I get around to Neam and Balor, I will only be doing stock 2133 testing. The reason behind this is similar to what I explained earlier in this post. Increasing the RAM speed causes the memory controller in the CPU to run hotter, thus making the fan spin faster. This is done automatically at the BIOS level as tweaking the RAM above 2750Mhz causes the fan profile to be automatically "optimized." After extended testing at 2933 & 3200Mhz speeds, my fan profile somehow got stuck. After changing my RAM speed back to stock, the fan would still be running absurdly fast as if the RAM speed was still on an OC'd frequency. I could not override and change it back so my only option was to do a CMOS reset which did fix the issue. Due to the possibility of this happening again, and the fact that I don't wanna potentially reset my BIOS again, I'm electing to only post 2133Mhz results. I will however utilize the above benchmarks in order to create educated guesses on how RAM speed will affect hosting Redeemer Raids.

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UPDATE 12/21/2018

Season 3 Raid Performance Results at 2133Mhz RAM Speed




Will rework Astera tests to include all RAM frequencies, average fps, minimum framerates, and percentage gains based on RAM speed increases. Will not be doing video but rather lining up all three screenshots of afterburner's tracked results.

Will do a average/min comparison for all Season 3 raids.

Will update with 8-man raid hosting in Balor/Neam in the future. Will do differing RAM speeds (2133, 2933, and 3200).

Will add Nifl raids

Will condense individual Astera Raid result charts into links and replace with links.

Will add Nifl, Redeemer, and Astera raid results in the form of a chart similar to Season 3 Raid chart.

Will do a repeat of "all" tests when not hosting to show full performance.

I'm in favor because a player's skill should be the biggest factor in dps. It used to be that way a looong time ago and I miss it.

Granted I'm probably one of the few that would love to see the additional damage stat removed from the game but oh well.

You haven't been praying to RNGesus enough.

I find it it's always best to never hope for a drop and expect never to get one. That way when you finally do get one it feels good. If you're always hoping for a job, it'll seem like you never get one.

OceanStar wrote: »

i mean really my computer can run most games on high and ultra but god forbid I try to play this game and I'm getting under 25 fps and lag so bad I cant get 5 steps with out it stoping and taking a while to get going wtf is this game just that fking badly optimized

Define "high end pc."