PLEASE undo forced high effects

[Sam Harris]

Hi Devs.

PLEASE will you change the forced high effects back to user-selected with the next update. ...Like PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.

People playing on older equipment are screwed now.

In the past I tested all kinds of combinations of settings, and the one thing which ALWAYS screwed me up was effects on high.

The difference it makes is every few seconds my screen locks for a moment, which is really disorientating, and makes flying practically impossible since I will ALWAYS crash sooner or later by being unable to avoid obstacles during the momentary freezes.

I love this game, and I've been playing it since 2008. Basically, with the settings forced on high, my enjoyment from playing it has been massively reduced.

I've spoken to enough players in-game who have experienced exactly the same thing that I can be confident I am by no means alone in this.

Please help devs. Please.

[Acecombatzer0]

Kinda agree, we are alienating a large non-vocal community by not allowing lower grade laptop/PCs to play this game.

Also I think those "individuals" that exploited this mechanic don't play PR anymore.

[fpspromotion]

forced high effects = anticheat measure as explained by a dev , i read this

so you cannot lower effects and cheat

case closed .

Take Notice!

system requirements

Processor: 2.4 Ghz Dual-Core minimum. 3.2 Ghz Recommended
Memory: 3 GB RAM. 4 GB recommended

Graphics Adapter: Graphics Card with 128 MB RAM. 512 MB recommended.
Sound: DirectX 9 compatible sound device. Dedicated sound card with EAX support recommended for best
experience.

Hard Disk: 8 GB free Hard Drive Space
Internet: 128 kbps or faster connection required for online play
Software: .NET Framework 4

Input: Mouse, Keyboard
Optional: Joystick, Headset, microphone (strongly recommended for voice communication

best recommendation date 5 2017:
Also seems to need at least 4GB RAM on a 64bit or unlocked 3.5 + RAM on a 32bit. This seems to be a recent development

[Sam Harris]

forced high effects = anticheat measure as explained by a dev , i read this

so you cannot lower effects and cheat

case closed .

Take Notice!

Your post was patronising and ignorant. It is absurd to claim that people who played on low effects settings were thereby "cheating" merely by selecting an option which existed in the game for over ten years, and which was clearly presented to all players in the video options screen.

In your unhelpful, arrogant, and extremely sweeping statement, you have certainly dragged within your net hundreds of fair-minded legitimate players, the vast majority of whom are vehemently opposed to cheating in all its forms.

In order to make your assertion fit, you have redefined cheating to include the mere act of selecting a game setting.

Your comments represent a poorly thought-through distraction from the point of this thread, although I am taking the time to give your post a thorough response because you are trying to smuggle it in by appealing to a perfectly good and desirable moral sense in most players, who wish neither to cheat nor be seen as cheats.

Back when I was a more serious gamer over ten years ago, I personally shared information that I stumbled across through social interaction with other gamers with the guys at Punkbuster (waves to RodeoBob) and with staff at DICE (waves at Barry Tingle) which I am told in many cases lead directly to the banning of specific cheating players.

I find your words deeply insulting fpspromotion, and I hope that you take MUCH greater care in future before damning large numbers of fair players with your comments.

Take Notice!

Kinda agree, we are alienating a large non-vocal community by not allowing lower grade laptop/PCs to play this game.

Also I think those "individuals" that exploited this mechanic don't play PR anymore.

I believe that I know of the player(s) to whom you are referring, and yes, I am sure that their use of that setting was only a very small part of a systematic attempt to cheat the system and provide an unfair advantage for themselves which went way WAY beyond merely selecting low effects settings. Also, as you say, I believe that they are no longer on the scene (thank you sweet Jesus!).

I am pleased that you can see my point, and I am sure that plenty of other players can too. Some players simply have older gaming equipment and either a low income or standing financial commitments which prevent them from being able to upgrade their hardware. For these players (including me), the low effects setting is simply a way to make the game at all playable.

Thank you to all concerned for the time and effort that reading this has taken.

[Riadh98]

Yes u are right about the older gaming equipment ...ect im one of them always when i play in Maps with many bushes and trees and all this stuff my game laag too much as ex: when someone throw a smoke my game crash some times and i already reported that in the forum no body care of it even they deleted my Thread so i hope they disable The Effect option so we (the people who have old gaming equipments ) can play normal and comfortable playing if u know what i mean (sorry for my bad english )

[ALADE3N]

People mostly abuse the Low effect settings , to gain advantage to others.

[Sam Harris]

People mostly abuse the Low effect settings , to gain advantage to others.

This is a fantasy. You plucked "mostly" out the air without any regard to fair players who select low settings simply so that they can play the game at all.

An advantage becomes unfair only when it is available to some and not to all. If everyone who wishes to select a particular game setting is free to do so, then no one has an unfair advantage over anyone else.

Keep in mind that this setting was available to players for TEN YEARS. Somehow during that time PR enjoyed a wide player-base, and people got enormous enjoyment from playing.

By forcing high settings, for some players now the enjoyability of the game no longer depends only on achieving a relatively cheat-free environment, but rather it can no longer be played in an enjoyable manner AT ALL. This amounts to throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to these players' gaming experience.

Yes u are right about the older gaming equipment ...ect im one of them always when i play in Maps with many bushes and trees and all this stuff my game laag too much as ex: when someone throw a smoke my game crash some times and i already reported that in the forum no body care of it even they deleted my Thread so i hope they disable The Effect option so we (the people who have old gaming equipments ) can play normal and comfortable playing if u know what i mean (sorry for my bad english )

Thank you for your post. Please don't apologise for your English. You're doing just fine.

[InfantryGamer42]

This is a fantasy. You plucked the phrase "most people" out the air without any regard to fair players who select low settings simply so that they can play the game at all.

An advantage becomes unfair only when it is available to some and not to all. If everyone who wishes to select a particular game setting is free to do so, then no one has an unfair advantage over anyone else.

Keep in mind that this setting was available to players for TEN YEARS. Somehow during that time PR enjoyed a wide player-base, and people got enormous enjoyment from playing.

By forcing high settings, for some players now the enjoyability of the game no longer depends only on achieving a relatively cheat-free environment, but rather it can no longer be played in an enjoyable manner AT ALL. This amounts to throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to these players' gaming experience./QUOTE]

There were some players who used low settings to cheat. Only way to fight that was to force high settings.

[Sam Harris]

There were some players who used low settings to cheat. Only way to fight that was to force high settings.

People who really want to cheat will always find a way to do so, at least temporarily. Forcing high settings will not prevent cheating. The only way to maintain a fair gaming environment is to have a self-policing community of players with their eyes and ears open, and admins which take action to kick/ban those who cheat (which we actually have already, more or less).

What forcing high settings does "achieve" though is the alienation and ostracisation of a proportion of the player-base which includes perfectly fair honest gamers with older hardware who have grown up with PR, and who have contributed hundreds if not thousands of hours to playing their part in the PR community.

It is a sad day when those players are chucked onto the trash heap and brushed off as unimportant and dispensible.

@ Devs, I hope that some of you can reconsider the decision to force high settings. I understand why the decision was tempting, but I hope that you can see the other side of the argument and that the next update will unlock the effects setting.

[Veterans-Gaming]

Much sympathy for you, but "cheating" is not the same as "exploiting", and it was done with reason to level the battlefield for everyone (not just some). There is your explanation without connotation.

"Some" people were exploiting this factor, others were blissfully unaware they were "exploiting".
Scenario: I take cover behind a bush and even ask my squad mate if I'm poking out too much for good camouflage and he says "no, you are good" -- covering my sector, I get shot from somewhere with no possibility of seeing me. It was the nice gentleman with the older PC with lower settings, hence the bush didn't even draw for him and I was completely exposed like an idiot.

Imagine you're a developer of a game with a heavy focus on balance; you'd have one of two choices to make, either implement change or let the complaints fall on deaf ears. IMO, it was a good idea to force High GFX, because it adds much needed balance that keeps this game in step with more modern titles.

I feel bad for those nice people such as yourself who do not have the ability to continue playing due to this change, it's never the intention to exclude anyone I'm sure, but it does happen and such is life. I had a similar experience in the Arma 2 game way back when everyone decided they loved Lingor Island (a beautiful jungle, turns toaster PC's into a slide show game). I usually turn grass/bushes off for FPS, but the server forced it on Lingor so no one was "without bush".

Hoping you'll be able to get a slightly newer PC/laptop when able, if possible, so you can keep having fun in PR. Best of luck to you, bro! We feel for ya!

[Sam Harris]

it's never the intention to exclude anyone I'm sure, but it does happen and such is life.

Since excluding players is a practical consequence of forcing high effects, it clearly IS the intention to exclude people, although you seem to think this is justified because you want a bush to act as a brilliantly effective defensive position.

"Such is life" is a good thing to say if you have a BBQ and it starts raining. In this case though we are not talking glibly about "life", but rather the conscious decisions and rationale of a team of intelligent game developers, in the case of whom appeals to reason are by no means futile.

It's in their hands now anyway...

[DesertFox284]

You mind posting your PC specs, Sam? I doubt high effects would cause your game to freeze constantly, I ran PR on potato quality PC some time ago and it ran fine low or high settings, only difference being FPS.

[Sam Harris]

You mind posting your PC specs, Sam? I doubt high effects would cause your game to freeze constantly, I ran PR on potato quality PC some time ago and it ran fine low or high settings, only difference being FPS.

I know that the problem I've described goes away when lowering the effects settings because I did a thorough experiment with the game configuration back when we could change that setting.

With effects on low, no sudden freezes. With effects on high, freezes every few seconds. It's totally black & white in that respect.

My machine has 4.00 GB of memory. Intel Core 2 Extreme CPU x7900 @ 2.80GHz

OS is Win 7.

Feel free to laugh at my old machine. The point though is that quite a few players have started experiencing the same issues as me since the setting was forced. I know that because I've heard them bitterly complaining about it in game week after week ...and I understand why they're complaining.

I normally lock my framerate in the low or mid 20s to stop my GTX9800 dual sli card from overheating (it's in a Dell XPS M1730 - basicaly the Dell version of the Alienware gaming laptop for which that gfx card was made). I never complained about that low frame-rate, because I realise that with old crappy equipment I can't expect anything more. That's fine. It always sat on its cooling pad and chugged along well enough. What's really sad is that the game used to be perfectly playable, and I know that it could be again if only that effects setting were put back to user-defined.

That one single change made all the difference in the world to a raft of players, and continues to be a barrier for us.

Kinda agree, we are alienating a large non-vocal community by not allowing lower grade laptop/PCs to play this game.

I think that the "non-vocal" part of that will probably be our downfall.

I know that a sustained attempt to argue one's case is a common way of accidentally making enemies, and most people would probably have rolled over and accepted defeat after seeing a couple of disheartening replies here. I'm fully aware that some people will read this thread and brush me off as statistically irrelevant, but I also know that more players besides myself are affected by this, so I'm putting the best case I can ITT.

[Outlawz7]

Some optimization in BF2 is done by simply removing stuff from ever rendering thereby giving low graphics players a gameplay advantage which is why we disallowed it and instead did optimizations to effects themselves in recent patch.

[Sam Harris]

Some optimization in BF2 is done by simply removing stuff from ever rendering thereby giving low graphics players a gameplay advantage which is why we disallowed it and instead did optimizations to effects themselves in recent patch.

Hi.

Thank you for your response.

I'm sure the new optimisation is done as well as it can be done, but it still leads to a nightmarish outcome for players with old hardware compared to the low effects setting, the harmful effect of which we all somehow managed to cope with for over a decade.

I think I can see where this is going though. The bathwater was apparently so bad for some that the missing baby is going to end up being considered a price worth paying.

Effectively the message to gamers with badly affected hardware is "Thanks for playing, now f*** off till you've upgraded your equipment."

Cheers.

[Veterans-Gaming]

it's never the intention to exclude anyone I'm sure, but it does happen and such is life.

Since excluding players is a practical consequence of forcing high effects, it clearly IS the intention to exclude people, although you seem to think this is justified because you want a bush to act as a brilliantly effective defensive position.

No, it is not. The exclusion of players with very old or underpowered laptops/PCs was a byproduct of a choice that was made with the intention of balancing the PvP issue mentioned in these replies. Their intention was not to directly exclude people with older or less powerful hardware.

On top of your frustrated tone to those who are trying to be nice and sympathetic, your statement above is what is known as 'circular reasoning', or 'circular logic' containing informal fallacies that twist the premise into beginning with the reason that your argument ends with (game had issue + devs fixed it = secondary issue arises of lowered FPS on old/less powerful machines) into a backwards "C = B because A = B" scenario.

This is not the case, and you can either insult us good people who are explaining these things to you with your passive aggressive comments, or you can accept that the decision was not personally intended to exclude you from this game and that fellow PR players like us are sympathetic regardless, and would like to offer help if able.



Players don't expect a bush to be "a brilliantly effective defensive position", they expect it to be a bush - to everyone who sees the same patch of ground. Perhaps you're not familiar with the difference between cover and concealment, but one is just a bit of camo, the other is a physical barrier. Players expect concealment to be concealment just like they expect cover to be cover and protect them from small arms fire. Players enjoy being able to apply these real combat tactics in a video game; take cover when under fire, find concealment when covering/observing a sector.

Another one you may not be familiar with is the 4 S's: Shape, Shine, Shadow, Silhouette - some games with shader options would allow high gfx users to see people's shadows before they come around a corner, where low gfx users do not see shadows - this makes the concept of gfx options for this setting "exploitative", meaning the person with low settings is at a natural disadvantage (by choice, not intention of the developers).



When I say, 'such is life', I am not doing so to be mean, but to remind you to keep a positive attitude towards these things that will most definitely happen many times in your life: A game or software has updated/patched itself past the maximum capabilities of your hardware.

Computers used to last less than a year or two before they were so obsolete they had no chance of running any newly release software/games. These days we can get 2-10 years out of a well built PC or laptop, but there will always be an end to that hardware -- you will always need to upgrade at some point. This is up to you, and you cannot go about blaming others for their work when the result is that it makes things more difficult for YOU and your aging hardware.

Implying that it was their direct intention to exclude you and others with older hardware is akin to saying that Microsoft is intentionally excluding people with only a maximum 20GB of total HDD space.



A byproduct of a developer's choice is not intentional nor a primary reason for the choice. You won't get far with that sort of reasoning, and attacking those who are trying to be nice is unproductive and unnecessary. If your intention is to vent your frustration on us with your posts, fine - go ahead, we are strong and we can take it.

Just know that nothing was personal, you're a good person, and we're all hoping you'll be able to get a laptop/PC that can allow you to play PR again, when able (or hopefully find a configuration that will improve your current setup). Cheers, bro!

Peace

[Mats391]

It is true that cheater gonna find a way to cheat even with locked settings, but most players in PR are no cheaters. A lot of players will take any low hanging fruit in order to gain an advantage tho and low effects settings certainly was one. That is why we wont go back to allowing it.
There is an ongoing effort to improve performance and effects certainly are on our list, but it is a long and boring task to do, so I dont think anyone is working actively on it. Feel free to help out on this front We mostly aim at making smaller, less important effects (muzzle flashes, bullet impacts, ...) more optimized (culling sooner, not staying as long, ...) which we think the most impact is coming from. There usually are not that many big effects happening at once.
Another thing we could try, but probably never will cause it is a lot of work, would be to make a custom low effects settings that lowers quality on a lot of effects, but leaves smoke and other important big effects untouched. Again this probably wont happen

[InfantryGamer42]

In my experience smoke is biggest reason for FPS drops. Not only smoke grenades, but smoke when you are firing gunnes, rounds hitting walles and other smoke effect.

[Sam Harris]

No, it is not. The exclusion of players with very old or underpowered laptops/PCs was a byproduct of a choice that was made with the intention of balancing the PvP issue mentioned in these replies. Their intention was not to directly exclude people with older or less powerful hardware.

On top of your frustrated tone to those who are trying to be nice and sympathetic, your statement above is what is known as 'circular reasoning', or 'circular logic' containing informal fallacies that twist the premise into beginning with the reason that your argument ends with (game had issue + devs fixed it = secondary issue arises of lowered FPS on old/less powerful machines) into a backwards "C = B because A = B" scenario.

I am familiar with the fallacy of circular reasoning, thank you.

I am using the word "intentional" to contrast it with "accidental". Of course, I do not think that from the beginning someone somewhere wanted to screw up the gaming experience of people with older hardware. I'm sure the negative consequences of forcing high effects began life as accidental, but now that the consequences have been brought to the attention of the devs, it doesn't seem crazy to hope that such an accident can be remedied. If it is not, then in a court of law the harm becomes intentional, since the action is taken in the full knowledge that the harm will follow. In this case the message is apparently that the harm is worth it. I just want everyone to be clear about that.

Each time a patch is released without reverting to the effects being user defined, a conscious decision is being taken to render the game practically unplayable for some players who would otherwise be able to play it.

This is not the case, and you can either insult us good people who are explaining these things to you with your passive aggressive comments, or you can accept that the decision was not personally intended to exclude you from this game and that fellow PR players like us are sympathetic regardless, and would like to offer help if able.

I believe you are misusing the term passive agressive to insult me in revenge for misplaced personal feelings of insult.

To continue using this fix after learning that it has negatively impacted part of the player-base sucks for some players. Sympathy and friendliness are great things, and I don't undervalue them, but they are no substitute for changing lines of code.

Perhaps you're not familiar with the difference between cover and concealment

I am.

Computers used to last less than a year or two before they were so obsolete they had no chance of running any newly release software/games. These days we can get 2-10 years out of a well built PC or laptop, but there will always be an end to that hardware -- you will always need to upgrade at some point. This is up to you, and you cannot go about blaming others for their work when the result is that it makes things more difficult for YOU and your aging hardware.

One of the reasons that PR kept going as long did till this point is that people could continue to play it on their existing hardware, in contrast to the current releases which often required some sort of upgrade. This was one of the hallmarks of PR, and it is sad to see this being done away with.

[Sam Harris]

It is true that cheater gonna find a way to cheat even with locked settings, but most players in PR are no cheaters. A lot of players will take any low hanging fruit in order to gain an advantage tho and low effects settings certainly was one. That is why we wont go back to allowing it.
There is an ongoing effort to improve performance and effects certainly are on our list, but it is a long and boring task to do, so I dont think anyone is working actively on it. Feel free to help out on this front We mostly aim at making smaller, less important effects (muzzle flashes, bullet impacts, ...) more optimized (culling sooner, not staying as long, ...) which we think the most impact is coming from. There usually are not that many big effects happening at once.
Another thing we could try, but probably never will cause it is a lot of work, would be to make a custom low effects settings that lowers quality on a lot of effects, but leaves smoke and other important big effects untouched. Again this probably wont happen

Thank you for your honest and straightforward response.