DT Benchmark Speculation

[Jeeqbit]

And then, by the time they're done updating the graphics for the entire game, they will need to be updated again! LOL

Must be why they said "the first graphical update". They know the truth.

[Heroman3003]

Must be why they said "the first graphical update". They know the truth.

They say it like that because they already said the update will be rolled out in separate 'stages'. 'First update' will only be affecting Dawntrail stuff as well as a bunch of 'fundamental' thing that will apply retroactively, which will include things like grass rendering and character models. And then they will have separate updates to, well, update graphics in earlier expansions, which I imagine will include areas and gear primarily.

[Jeeqbit]

They say it like that because they already said the update will be rolled out in separate 'stages'. 'First update' will only be affecting Dawntrail stuff as well as a bunch of 'fundamental' thing that will apply retroactively, which will include things like grass rendering and character models. And then they will have separate updates to, well, update graphics in earlier expansions, which I imagine will include areas and gear primarily.

I disagree. While the first update will be rolled out over many patches, the way they presented it, they fully expect there to be another graphical update in the future. That could be in 4 years, 8 years, or whenever.

[Yuella]

DT benchmark would fry my current laptop.

[Jade_Tyrant]

1 month before.
(listed timings)

Not to contradict your information - it's accurate to my knowledge (mostly; some of the dates I have are some small number of days off, but I was grabbing info from Googling, so I could've gotten some incorrect dates)

but the pattern I remember noticing is that it's about 2 months after the final Fanfest, starting with Stormblood

Endwalker final (and only named-as-such) Fanfest: 14th May 2021
Endwalker Benchmark: 11th July 2021 (about 2 months)

Shadowbringers Final Fanfest: 22nd March 2019
Shadowbringers Benchmark: 24th May 2019 (about 2 months)

Stormblood Final Fanfest: 18th Feb 2017
Stormblood Benchmark: 1st May 2017 (about 2.5 months)

Heavensward Release: 20th Dec 2014
Heavensward Benchmark: 27th April 2015 (about 4 months)

No clue which pattern is more likely to be what they follow here

My guess would be the 2 months, if only because stretching out the benchmark, job action trailer, and media tour makes sense when we have this longer period of time between final fanfest and expac launch

but as people have said, graphics update could delay it and push it much closer to the expac launch

[Embran]

1 month before.

Endwalker Benchmark: 11th July 2021
Endwalker Release: 7th December, 2021 (5 months)

Shadowbringers Benchmark: 24th May 2019
Shadowbringers Release: 2nd July 2019 (1 month ish)

Stormblood Benchmark: 1st May 2017
Stormblood Release: 20th June 2017 (1 month ish)

Heavensward Benchmark: 27th April 2015
Heavensward Release: 23rd June 2015 (1-2 months ish)

Sheesh, did the Endwalker benchmark really come out 5 months before Endwalker?

[Heroman3003]

Sheesh, did the Endwalker benchmark really come out 5 months before Endwalker?

Endwalker itself was delayed multiple times.

[Jeeqbit]

Sheesh, did the Endwalker benchmark really come out 5 months before Endwalker?

There is clear historical evidence of discussion of the benchmark 5 months before, but that period of time they were still feeling the effects of covid delays on their plans.

[CaptainLagbeard]

The past Benchmarks were all mildly pointless really, as if your PC could run ARR it can still more or less run EW... It was more of just an additional trailer than anything.

But for a change with DT's graphics update, there's an actual technical reason to use the Benchmark so I do hope we get it well before launch so people don't get last minute surprises with a higher system requirements.

[Jeeqbit]

The past Benchmarks were all mildly pointless really, as if your PC could run ARR it can still more or less run EW...

Not true.

Going into Stormblood, they dropped support for PS3. As this occured, they increased the amount of NPCs in the background in dungeons. For example, you had enemies fighting in the background in Doma Castle, Ala Mhigo and Ghimlyt Dark. This was too much for my laptop to handle so I had to buy a PC to handle it. Sure, I could still play the game, but if I entered a Stormblood dungeon the FPS was too low.

Going into Shadowbringers, they ended support for 32-bit computers. It was still possible to play with them, but could potentially run into crashes if it handled something that expected it to be a 64-bit machine. The benchmark probably wouldn't have caught that, but I don't know. They finished this off by dropping support for an older version of TLS more recently.