Path of Exile 2 has received a significant technical update addressing two long-standing issues that have caused frustration for players. Director Jonathan Rogers announced the fixes in a video from developer Grinding Gear Games, celebrating the milestone with a bottle of champagne.
The latest Nvidia Game Ready driver (version 680.88), in conjunction with the new Path of Exile 2 patch, is set to alleviate problems related to shaders and device removal. These issues have impacted the game for months, particularly affecting players in the endgame.
The device removal problem was a crash associated with the player's graphics driver, leading to temporary game freezes, black screens, and performance degradation for some users. This bug was reportedly confirmed to be influenced by Nvidia drivers, a fact that Grinding Gear Games had to actively demonstrate to Nvidia, which initially underestimated the issue's prevalence. The developer ultimately provided Nvidia with a PC setup exhibiting the bug to prove its validity after a year and a half of investigation.
Regarding shader compilation, the process had become excessively lengthy. Rogers explained that visual effects for assets were not being cached correctly due to another Nvidia driver issue, which caused shader cache folders to fill up rapidly. This resulted in visual glitches and extended load times. While Grinding Gear Games cannot fully resolve this on its own, the studio has reduced the size of its shaders, aiming to slow down the rate at which the shader cache folder fills.
With these technical hurdles overcome, the engine optimization team can now return to their regular development tasks. The successful resolution of these persistent problems has been met with evident relief from the development team.