Ever since the Halloween update launched (October 19th), there’s been an increased amount of lag within the game.
If you are a member of the DTI Subreddits, you’ll know there are endless posts from players complaining about the lag.
Many people assumed the lag was down to the fancy lobbies, but the DTI team has now explained that is in fact, not the case, and suggested a couple of ideas on how they can reduce the lag for the players.
In the Halloween (and Winter) updates, we got very ornate lobbies, like the ice rink in the winter update.
Whenever you load up Dress To Impress, it feels like ages for the lobby to fully load, and this is why many players assumed it was the lobbies causing the issues.
Umoyae confirmed in the Discord, that it’s not the lobbies causing the issues;
“Hi everyone!
I wanted to take some time to address a few concerns and misconceptions regarding the lag issues in DTI that we are working on fixing!
Firstly, we did want to clarify that our maps are NOT the reason why the game lags.
Detailed lobbies don’t cause severe lag in our game either, as they are fully optimized and images are compressed. The intricate details in our lobbies use images and textures, not high-poly individual meshes.
(See images below for added context: As you can see they’re not 3D models instead they’re low-poly images.
In our upcoming Valentines update, our team is working diligently on reducing item lag, poses lag, and more! Please be patient with us, as this is a lengthy process.
We are committed to continuing to improve our game-play, and reworking old laggy items so they can return in-game later as optimized as possible. We’ll also make sure that any reworked items are as close to the original design as possible! “
People assumed that if the lobbies were less fancy and made smaller, the lag issues would improve within the main game’s dressing room, but it’s clear that isn’t necessarily true.
The Dress To Impress team are working really hard on trying to improve the game, reduce lag and make the game as amazing as possible.
Community Manager (BeaPlays) did an announcement ping in the afternoon, and it had a very negative response on Reddit.
I love that Bea replies to comments on Reddit, and actually has made amendments to the game, from the Reddit conversations.
For example, people were complaining about the placement of two poses (club jump and 360 spin), as they were randomly listed in between pose packs.
Bea listened to the feedback, and within hours, the two random poses had been moved, so it’s important to remember they are listening (and responding) to our feedback – this is rare for many games, so we really should be grateful that DTI are listening.
Back to the original announcement by Bea, she suggested the following idea for reducing lag:
“To deal with the lag issues caused by so many items being added over time, and the fact we know you don’t want old items to be removed, we plan to experiment with a new system for events. The “base game” items will always stay, and we will add more occasionally. However, we think we should try releasing event items only during the event they’re for, then taking them back out of the game after the event to make space for the next event. In other words, we would have the main base game, and a “seasonal items” section for the current event (Winter, Valentines, Halloween etc etc) so that we aren’t just piling more and more items on top of each other and then having to remove old ones to make space. We know you don’t want old items to be removed, so we think seasonal event items may be a good solution for that! (Any reward items, like advent or quests, will always stay in your inventory).“
People were really unhappy with this idea (myself included), as the idea of only having the seasonal update items for a few weeks was really disappointing.
It wouldn’t be fun to items for such a short amount of time, and it did feel like it’d be pointless to do the seasonal big updates, if we could only use the items for such a short time.
Once this suggestion was made, there were many posts done on Reddit, slating the idea, but only 5 hours later, another suggestion was made within the Discord.
Bea posted that the DTI team wanted to write a post about this now, rather than wait because they knew it was a topic we felt very strongly about.
The newest suggestion was described as a potential solution to the cluttered dressing rooms, and lag within the map, which will allow the core gameplay to be the same while still keeping seasonal items after updates too:
“There will be “chests” (or closet, or some other object to interact with) around the map, one for “Valentines Day Collection”, one for “Winter Collection”, one for “Halloween Collection” and so on. After a seasonal update ends, as long as you played at some point during the update, the items will transfer into their chest, rather than being in the map or in the dressing rooms. You would then walk up to the chest, click to open it, and a menu would open with the seasonal items inside. This means they will be organised by holiday/collection, and not be just shoved into the dressing rooms or map. In addition, it also means we will avoid the lag issues caused by masses of items being in the main map.“
This is such an amazing idea, and it actually makes the seasonal collections more fun/accessible.
We wouldn’t lose the new exciting items after a few weeks, but like the Brat Collection, we would still get access to the items, but they’re just not lumbered in with the main inventory of items.
If you don’t play during the seasonal event, you wouldn’t then get access to the chest/closet with that event’s items (like the Brat update items are only available for those that played during the Brat Update last summer).
The chests will also be decorated to match their season, making it clear where those seasonal items are located!
It’ll be exciting to see what kind of chests/closets we might be getting, and how much lag will be reduced by these amendments.
Plus, Bea gave us an exciting sneak peek at the end of her message, to tell us that DTI are planning on putting the reworked granny dress back into the map permanently in the upcoming Valentines update – thanks to feedback, which just shows that they really do listen to our feedback.
