The Mac OS X Client's absymal performance is a joke.

[Mardel]

Well, there a few things people needed to pre-consider prior to even purchasing a MAC port. So in a sense this is partially a consumer error as much as it is an error on Square Enix not releasing details on how the mac client was being handled.


1. Non-Native Mac games are often ported using a 3rd party. Which in turn will use a wrapper of sorts.

2. Even people on Windows have been having some issues with Nvidia drivers recently; causing game crashes etc...

3. The newer updates, graphically were done with dx11 in mind, not opengl.

4. Marketshare of MAC is still relatively low in comparison to all other platforms. Windows has been on a surge again recently and with Windows 10 on the horizon expect MAC share to take another hit (it didn't do so well past quarters iirc)

4a. This means corners will be cut in order to minimize risk and make profit.

5. As others stated Transgaming didn't do a good job with another somewhat popular game, look it up.

Now, I'm not white knighting SE as they should have told people outright that this was going to be ported by Transgaming and that it wasn't going to be Native OpenGL. However, MAC costumers should have made a more informed decision. Why would you purchase something that could potentially have so many issues from the start? Currently drivers from nvidia have been shoddy, dx11 client sometimes acts funky (for some people; not me), and it is a 3rd party port. What combination of that does not spell disaster?

Finally, people may get mad at me for this, the logic of MAC is for ___ and Windows PC is for ____ is just outright bs. Both can be just as good at video editing and what have you. It's not like Adobe products are only native to one and not the other. (I switch between premiere/after effects on a mac and pc depending on where I am working)

The only difference is that people who purchase a "top of the line mac book" get slightly more price gauging for cherry picked parts than some windows pc companies, and I guess better look design? (I don't like aluminium unibodies etc and I don't like laptops)

Needless to say "whoops" on both parties ask for a refund if you need it and move on.

[Sakei]

Well, there a few things people needed to pre-consider prior to even purchasing a MAC port. So in a sense this is partially a consumer error as much as it is an error on Square Enix not releasing details on how the mac client was being handled.


1. Non-Native Mac games are often ported using a 3rd party. Which in turn will use a wrapper of sorts.

2. Even people on Windows have been having some issues with Nvidia drivers recently; causing game crashes etc...

3. The newer updates, graphically were done with dx11 in mind, not opengl.

4. Marketshare of MAC is still relatively low in comparison to all other platforms. Windows has been on a surge again recently and with Windows 10 on the horizon expect MAC share to take another hit (it didn't do so well past quarters iirc)

4a. This means corners will be cut in order to minimize risk and make profit.

5. As others stated Transgaming didn't do a good job with another somewhat popular game, look it up.

Now, I'm not white knighting SE as they should have told people outright that this was going to be ported by Transgaming and that it wasn't going to be Native OpenGL. However, MAC costumers should have made a more informed decision. Why would you purchase something that could potentially have so many issues from the start? Currently drivers from nvidia have been shoddy, dx11 client sometimes acts funky (for some people; not me), and it is a 3rd party port. What combination of that does not spell disaster?

Finally, people may get mad at me for this, the logic of MAC is for ___ and Windows PC is for ____ is just outright bs. Both can be just as good at video editing and what have you. It's not like Adobe products are only native to one and not the other. (I switch between premiere/after effects on a mac and pc depending on where I am working)

The only difference is that people who purchase a "top of the line mac book" get slightly more price gauging for cherry picked parts than some windows pc companies, and I guess better look design? (I don't like aluminium unibodies etc and I don't like laptops)

Needless to say "whoops" on both parties ask for a refund if you need it and move on.

So, you are saying that people should have known the Mac port would have been half-assed? How does this excuse SE for anything? Go back and review the prices for each of these clients, they're all the same. So, why should it be acceptable for only one client to be unplayable and unable to even maintain a consistent framerate? There is a bad job, and ooh we royally screwed over our customers bad. This was the latter.

[Vespar]

According to an article I read, they are offering refunds on the mac client through the SE store and have entirely stopped the sale of the Mac software.

[Mardel]

So, you are saying that people should have known the Mac port would have been half-assed? How does this excuse SE for anything? Go back and review the prices for each of these clients, they're all the same. So, why should it be acceptable for only one client to be unplayable and unable to even maintain a consistent framerate? There is a bad job, and ooh we royally screwed over our customers bad. This was the latter.

If you read everything I said no it doesn't excuse SE, but yes they should have known it would be half assed. In fact it was 0 ass, SE had a 3rd party do it; thus they took very little part in the creation of the MAC client. Plus like I said they did offer refunds, take it, unbunch panties, and move on.

[Blayde]

Patch notes say performance has been improved on mac. Any one notice improvement?

[AvathAlThor]

Patch notes say performance has been improved on mac. Any one notice improvement?

I'll check it out tonight and report back. I felt as though there was some improvement following hot fixes the other week too. Although before you get too enthusiastic, it was more a case of being less awful than it was being better.

I'm running a 2012 MBP Retina though, so those of us with more recent kit may get more optimistic results......

[Laraul]

While I have a Mac, I have not yet tried the Mac version of the game. I run it currently via Windows. I've seen SE's previous Windows and iOS ports, and they we're never very good. And I don't believe in miracles.

I do have Starcraft II from Blizzard, and the Mac version runs very well. Not quite as good as the PC version (but close). Ditto for the Mac version of WoW. Clearly decent Mac Ports exist. The only fault is SE not putting the same amount of effort as the other games into the Mac version of the game.

[sarahnight]

After last nights patch, i noticed about the same performance full screen ie 23 fps @ 2560x1440 (27 inch iMac, 3.5 ghz i7, 16 gb ram, Nvidia GTx 780m 4gb video card). I noticed in the patch notes that default full screen has been switched to windowed. So i tried some of the 1280x900 and 1290x700 something windowed. In Windowed mode, i was getting high 30s to low 40s fps, and much less stutter. I did roulette as a healer, and got Sastasha. The client worked well for 90% of the dungeon. Only a couple of times did it do the graphical garble dance on the mini map and peoples health bars, but cleared up quickly. While startling, it did not affect gameplay at all and we cleared the dungeon normally.

[sarahnight]

Also i notice the vegetation is much more shimmery in the Mac client than that Windows one. It is especially so in sunlight while moving, the trees and shrubs have that weird sparkly shimmer that is distracting and headache inducing, and somehow its more pronounced.

Anyway, you might want to try Window-ed instead of Full screen, and see if that helps your fps.

[Naylia]

Very basic test of FPS on title screen where the FPS is crazy high so I figured it'd be easier to identify variation. FPS fluctuated in the following ranges:

Window 1280x720: 128-145 FPS
Full Screen 1280x720: 111-133 FPS

So maybe a 10-15% performance difference between the two, which means the my game 20 FPS might now be 22...