I noticed the past day or two that lag has increased really significantly. I run 5 clients–one at minimum graphics, and the other 4 with graphics disabled (control-shift-F9) and sound disabled. Trying to select items to drag between cargoholds was very difficult. I had restarted the computer beforehand to kill other processes.
My hardware is old, I wish it were otherwise, but it’s what I have: Late 2012 iMac, Catalina 10.15.7, 32 GB memory.
Also for the past week or so it’s been more difficult to launch the game. The Launcher no longer notices when a client has closed, so to reopen a client I need to restart the launcher first. It also sometimes says that it can’t launch the game because files may be corrupted. I’ve found that deleting SharedCache/index_tranquility.txt and SharedCache/tq/EVE.app and trying again eventually helps after I do it a few times.
I know this is vague. I got the courage to post today when someone else in my alliance said the same thing about their 8-year old Macbook Pro. Maybe others here have noticed something similar with the last patch or two?
This all started with Equinox last summer and the new “volumetrics” setting. The past 6 months I saw degraded performance with various updates such that I went from a 4096x2304 window on my main plus 2x clients at 1440x810 down to 3200x1800 on my main and 2x clients down to a single client at 3200x1800. This was on an older iMac i7 Retina 5k (late 2014).
Last week I started getting various launcher errors including “damaged files” (though I was able to keep clicking and eventually launch all clients). A clean install unfortunately didn’t resolve the situation.
I upgraded to a MacMini M4 last weekend and was getting 60fps+ on all 3 clients - but since the “EVE Evolved” patch a few days ago has again severely impacted performance (probably by half). CPU, GPU and heat are all way up. I’m not even sure if I could run a single client at 3200x1800 on my old iMac i7 now.
I’m also experiencing graphical artifacts that remind me of a few years ago when the native Mac client was new (I think). They are flashes of lines/triangles/quadrilaterals of a solid color–often red or bright blue.
Thank you for the comments, Arthur. Next time my clients won’t start I’ll try a few more times without touching SharedCache–maybe it’s just a superstition I formed.
I’ve had the issue of launching the game through the launcher and it taking a while and getting the error about it being corrupted or missing, and this is what has worked for me (I play through Steam).
Click the cogwheel in the top right of the launcher to open settings.
Select “EVE Online” from the options on the left.
At the bottom of the screen under the heading “Game Files” there is a “BROWSE GAME FILES” button, click that.
This opens a Finder window.
In Finder double click the “tq” directory to open it.
Then there should be the EVE package, double click that to start the client proper.
For me, playing through Steam, this is not the end goal, because I am greeted by the login page, so I simply quit by left clicking the X in the top right corner.
Then, once I’ve done this, all with the launcher open still, I can then start the game first time from the launcher.
I also have the problem that when I quit out of EVE Online, the launcher thinks the client is still running, when it is not, so I have to quit the launcher process.
Hope this information helps you or anyone searching for it.
I have the same problem, I play 2 clients at the same time, but since the last update it get’s laggy when I undock from a station, or when I use a gate…
My computer doesn’t have a dedicated graphic card, so I think that the “graphics improvements” in the last update aren’t working for me, It just make the game unplayable…
While it’s not really possible to extend the lifespan of this machine, it may be possible to temporarily reinvigorate it with the replacement of the hard disk drive with an SSD. It may even be the case that it already has an SSD, in which case a more modern one will still noticeably improve the responsiveness of the system.
If the storage media inside the machine currently is from 2012, then it will be somewhat degraded 13 years in, regardless of if it’s an SSD or an HDD. The average warranty on these things is like 2-3 years and I know from personal experience that these things often don’t even make it to the end of their warranty period (especially SSDs), given that yours is 13 years old and still booting I’m inclined to assume HDD as these, while slower, do tend to last longer.
It will probably be a SATA interface (though it’s worth double checking).
The Crucial MX500 SSD is a good option for a low price point; it’s discontinued now but has been legendary and there’s still stock floating around.
Do not buy a Kingston SSD under any circumstances.
I agree with this. I upgraded to a base MacMini M4 because I wanted a higher resolution display, but the 24" iMac M4s offer a lot of value for the price - and you’ll probably be able to run 3+ clients easily in mostly high settings and still get 35-40+ FPS.
Thank you for the advice. I do have an old SSD, and I do look forward to upgrading when I can afford to. Though from what others have said I think the performance reduction I’ve experienced in EVE Online the past couple of weeks is caused primarily by the patch rather than hardware failure.