In 823 i get 5-9 fps unless i'm looking down, which then gives around 25 fps. Changing settings does nothing but cause a crash. It just seems the more tribes build up their estate, the worse the game performance becomes, the world is literally coming to a standstill.
I'm having none of these issues on a GForce 8800 GT...runs flawlessly in every zone, I'm pretty sure I was in 740 yesterday with no problems. I trust you guys are posting hardware specs and the zone info in tech support or somewhere? It does sound like they're on the right track looking at dx issues. Anyways, here's hoping they figure it out soon as it's totally game-breaking for many players. Like we needed one more thing...
I only lag when I'm changing zones so far, and my system is pretty mediocre. $500 budget system with 4G ram, two or three year old fussy ATI video card, meh quad core.
Well, they need to figure out how to scale back the detail in heavy pop/heavily modified zones, or else they're going to lose a big chunk of the playerbase.
Having patience with an indie game dev is one thing, but being unable to play due to unacceptable system performance is not something people will tolerate for long.
It's definitely zone based. I went on a trip, across many zones, found that I would get FPS spikes occasionally when getting closer to a new area.
Try cutting down trees in your area and store the logs. I am betting a huge portion of the lag comes from overall trees, as that's the only thing in the areas where I had large FPS spikes had, lots of trees.
My tribe is in a tree free area and I have zero FPS spikes. Of course, if I need branches I need to go on a walkabout. :P
So you're saying there was some kind of overnight explosion of forest growth that suddenly made zones unplayable? And this just happens to be in zones that are packed to the gills with players and terraforming? Kinda doubt it.
On top of that, somebody came by and deforested our whole surrounding area recently (<3) and things are still terrible.