A Wayfinder performance and optimization patch is coming the new minted MMO.
Airship Syndicate has just confirmed that Early Access MMO Wayfinder is about to get a bunch of improvements that will make battling back the Gloom a better experience for everyone. Patch 0.2.4.0 is part of the Q1 2024 roadmap for this Early Access adventure and is set to land in early February. Shunning new jobs and big boss battles, this will focus on upping the frame rate, slaying the stutters, and improving overall quality of life.
Shader changes, asset optimization, lighting updates, inventory systems, and PlayStation 5 upgrades are all featured. Players loading into game might not notice that shader precompilation occurs right away right away, as opposed to when you encounter content, but this new timeline should significantly reduce hitching, stuttering, and input lag when encountering certain abilities, enemies, and biomes. No more falling off a transport or finding walls simply appearing. Similarly, Airship has increased the buffer period for asset streaming regions. The tweak is intended to reduce hitching when traversing large areas with lots of details and players.
This is likely to make the most difference in open world scenarios, but Skylight and the Highlands have had some special attention. Acting as the primary player hub and main exploration area in Wayfinder, these two regions get plenty of player attention, so a significant HLOD (Hierarchical Level of Detail) pass was carried out on these resource intensive areas. While the average player shouldn’t notice any difference, it’s hoped this will dispense with the need to load an excessive number of assets and speed thigs up.
Performance improvements aren’t strictly limited to what’s on screen either. The netcode and back end gubbins has also had a shakedown. The developers confirmed that they have spent time improving inventory tracking and optimizing the amount of player data sent to the server, cutting instances of required bandwidth in half in some cases. As you can imagine, this is huge for an online game and especially so for anybody that’s got a ton of playtime logged. This isn’t the first time that Airship has implemented major backend improvements. Last year’s initial launch period caused huge queues, disconnects, and other issues that likely served as a learning experience for these more controlled changes.
PlayStation Love
Finally, PlayStation 5 owners get some extra love next month too. A highly requested console feature will allow anybody on team blue to choose between higher graphical fidelity or an improved frame rate, achieving a near-locked 60 fps.
This Wayfinder performance patch might not be as loot laden as the recent Eventide festivities, but it is critical is the riads are going to go off without a hitch. If you haven’t had a chance to jump in on this impressive ne MMO, then you can still pick up Wayfinder in Early Access for less than a fancy pizza over on steam. Find out what we thought of it and why I still think this one is going to be big by the end of 2024.
