New Player

Hi,

I just started playing yesterday. I figured I would give you my first impressions:

From a game play perspective, I like the game. It has been fun discovering new things. I have mostly been doing quests in and around Soltown. I have been concentrating my skill ups around the concept of an archer/mage wearing leather armor. I have mostly been doing fire magic because I do not know how to quickly switch between two different card sets although I have tried not to completely neglect the archer component.

On the other hand, the frame rate makes it almost unplayable in towns. Even with all graphic setting set to minimums, I get a lot of freeze ups in towns while the game tries to display the town itself. I am running this on a 4 year old iMac. Below are my system hardware specifications. I am running the latest version of the MAC OS. Anybody got any ideas of how to improve the display frame rate? I can dual boot my iMac into Windows 10 using BootCamp. Do you think the graphics display would be better in Windows 10?

Regards,
Cikken

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac14,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i5
Processor Speed: 3.2 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 16 GB

NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M:
Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 1 GB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0fea
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: 3782
Metal: Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily1 v4
Displays:

iMac:
Display Type: LCD
Resolution: 2560 x 1440 (QHD/WQHD - Wide Quad High Definition)
UI Looks like: 2560 x 1440
Framebuffer Depth: 24-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
Automatically Adjust Brightness: No
Connection Type: DisplayPort

 

Hi @cikken

I say that it's worth a try. Hopefully, some of the Mac people here can also help you out.

 

Welcome @cikken to the game. I'm sorry you are having problems with the game. We do have quite a few mac users in the game so I'm sure they will chime in. So I'm not a mac user to help you sorry. This game is pretty graphic intense lots of deco in towns to load. I know all my buildings are very highly deco'd. Like my new building I've been working on below. I wish you the best and hopefully some players will speak up to give you good tips.





This is the roof.

 

Hi Barugon and Majoria,

Thank you for your kind replies.

If I cannot get the graphics to work on my iMac, I will try it on my Bootcamp Windows 10. Even though it is using the same hardware, it may give me a bit more control over the graphics card. I saw a previous post from another Mac user where it was suggested that the Launcher options "-force-glcore" could be used to overcome an OS problem. I am going to try that first since it is an easy fix.

I suspect that you may be right Majoria. My graphics card with only 1MB of graphics memory may be under-powered for all of the housing decoration in some of the towns. It could also be the speed of my SATA drive. I do not have a SSD drive. Upgrading the graphics and/or hard drive would be expensive.

Regards,
Cikken

 

I think your video card (GeForce GT 755M) is a bit below minimum:

 

I definitely get better video performance on my Bootcamp Windows 10. I still need to set all of the video options low but it is now playable in towns. My video card for this game is marginal at best.

Thanks for everyone's assistance.

My character in game is "Cikken". Shoot me a tell if you see me in game.

Cikken

 

I am not a mac user but make sure shadows, cloak simulation and volumetric lighting are turned off It will be the best the game can run on your machine.
Hopefully new improvements to unity will come online in thee game soon to help you.
the games performance is always improving.

 

Welcome to New Britannia!

That's good to hear that you're functional in towns. An additional measure, if you really feel that you need better performance, would be to decrease the resolution to 1080p. For highest performance, you could decrease to 720p (the intended useage resolution for a 7th Gen mobile graphics card with so little graphics memory). This would look much more "zoomed in," though, so perhaps only if necessary.

Good luck!

 

Greetings @cikken, I am a mac user and tech and have been running the game on my 2012 MBPro with an onboard intel chip (definitely does not meet min). First this is when you dbl click the Launcher there is a cog in the top right corner. Click on it and set the Launch Arguments to -force-glcore. this helps a lot in it is not set that way. Second it is necessary for us Mac users to run lowest setting at first. Once you get a feel for it you can up the graphic settings to something better that you can tolerate. An SSD drive is another wonderful addition but if yours is a newer iMac you should not attempt that. If all else fails run in bootcamp, make sure you have all the current windows drivers expecially for your video card). Nvidia has some overclocking program for their cards but it will probably make your fans run to keep up with the heat. Or you can partition your drive and create a game volume and only install system and Sota. Also tun off all the auto update background task you can find. You would be surprised what is going on in the background on a mac. If you have more question or need help with anything contact me here or in game. Name is the same.

Either way have fun and in the words of the great Spartacus "Kill them, Kill then all!"

 

That 16GB of RAM will tend to slow things down, and as you said the graphics card will also.
Most lags are not the result of connection speeds any more.
I would go with the "Simple" setting on your gaming, to see if you still have issues.

 

One thing I always recommend is that new Sota gamers do all three starting points and their associated Outskirts - Blood River, Highvale, and Solace Bridge.
That will get you started, build experience, give good training, build gp, gain materials.

 

I'm curious to hear your logic for this. How could 16 gigabytes of ram possibly "slow things down"?

 

Hi,

Thanks for all of the Mac suggestions! For now, I am going to run it on Bootcamp. The performance, although not ideal, is workable.

CrandalltheFool,

I have completed Solace Outskirts and Solace Bridge. I did most of Ardoris (that is the zone that prompted me to work on the graphics performance). I put that zone's quests on hold because I am not yet strong enough to handle "Tower of the Shuttered Eye". That one quest from Soltown which took me to Ardoris was a big surprise. It mushroomed into 6 or 7 sub-quests concerning the division between the two rulers. I tried to do the siege for the OWC. That was a mistake. I had to run and barely survived. I have not started Blood River. I did a lot of the Soltown quests but not all. I am currently in the Highvale zone doing the multi-step tower investigation quest (step 3) from Esmerelda.

I have managed to buy upgrades for most of my visible armour pieces. I am currently wearing leather with all pieces either +2 or +3. I have a +4 cape that some shop in Owl Head sold for 100 gold (that was a surprising find). I have not yet gotten any jewelry yet. All of the enhanced jewelry (+1 or better) seems to go for 1000+ gps. I am sitting on 6k gps which I am carefully using for upgrades. I ended up doing more exploring that I had originally planned. I used the Rift in Solace Bridge as per a quest to deliver something to Highvale recommended. Imagine my surprise when it did not ask which zone I wanted to so to, but ported me way up in the Northern portion of the map. As I wandered back down south, I checked out some of the player owned towns. I found many cheap armour upgrades. I still need to figure out if there is a way to control the port location other than waiting for it to cycle through its destinations.

I started out as an archer/mage. That has morphed into me being predominantly a mage. (If I can figure out how to quickly switch between card sets and their associated equipment during battle, I may try to train up a fighter or archer also. I am using the trainer staff as my main weapon. I have not been able to find an upgrade for it. I want to keep the leather armour for the additional protection (I have found that it is not unusual to sometimes get jumped by 2 or 3 mobs which necessitates some in close brawling . So I need the -30% fizzle bonus that it gives to offset the leather's fizzle penalties.

That is a synopsis of my progress so far. I have probably logged 12+ hours so far.

Again, thank for everyone's help.

Regards,
Cikken

 

Hello Cikken,

In the options menu, you can see an area called CONTROLS, and in there you can create hotkeys for EQUIP DECK #.

I use my number pad for it - easy access to 9 decks.

Habe fun out there.

 

If the graphics are being shared, this can give problems.
Back in the old bad lag days, the game would take all 16 very quickly, especially if you were going from place to place.
My normal game play uses about 10 gb. I have had it peak to 20 when really active. My highest RAM leak was quite a while ago, but I hit 38 gb. (I have 48)

 

Screen resolution beyond 1920x1080 can really hurt your frame rate without an awesome GPU.

Somewhat anemic by modern standards. Apple has been bad about not putting really good GPUs into their computers, especially if you don't have your screen glued to the computer. I've been using Macs since 1985, but I don't expect to play 3D heavy games on them. So far it's been 2012-era Dells with Windows 7, but soon I'll have to look into Linux since I don't want to run Windows 10.

That part is good. 8 GB is absolute minimum, 12 GB is realistic minimum, 16 GB is a good idea.
It's also important to have the game installed to SSD.