MWLL Performance Guide

While MWLL is built off of a relatively dated engine, intense teamfights ingame can even bog down modern computers, if unoptimized. However, with the gamut of customization options available, its no difficult task getting your game running just the way you want.
Here we go over some of the options available to you in meeting your performance needs. There are plenty of stories circulating the community about how users managed to get surprising FPS on hardware old enough to be your grandpa. If you're willing to make compromises to visual effects, you'd be hard pressed to find a machine that won't play at 30+ frames on minimum settings.

The Settings Menu

It is strongly suggested that you allow CryEngine itself to establish baseline settings for you, based on your system's hardware. The AUTODETECT feature in the settings menu is a one-click solution for many players, that auto-calibrates the settings to find a mix of good performance while sacrificing as little detail as possible. This alone is sufficient for most players, however, may be inadequate in the cases of extremely dated, or extremely powerful machines.

The AUTODETECT feature can be found under OPTIONS / SYSTEM SETTINGS / GRAPHICS. Click it once, press apply, and you're good to go!

Sound

It is advised that on your first launch, that you reduce the ingame sound to a minimum and bring it up to a comfortable level afterwards, MWLL is notorious for having an uncomfortably high default volume. Performance wise, there is functionally no gains to be made by playing with settings in the Sound menu. Similarly, Contrast, Gamma and Brightness in the following Graphics menu seem to have little effect.

Graphics

The quickest way to reclaim FPS is to reduce your in-game resolution and disabling any multi-GPU setups (Nvidia SLI, AMD CrossFire, or Nvidia Optimus). After finding your monitors native resolution, try to reduce your resolution to some lower setting of the same ratio. Anecdotally, some users find a performance spike by selecting a resolution that's a half multiple of their native resolution (for example; 1920 x 1080 -> 960 x 540). The FPS gains made by lowering your resolution will only be more pronounced if your machine lacks a discrete graphics card. While some players enjoy pumping their graphics to the max, others find the reduced resolution gives the game a retro, nostalgic feel, similar to older Mechwarrior titles.
Anti-Aliasing is a setting to make straight lines appear more crisp when at an angle ingame. Leaving Anti-Aliasing disabled will net you some FPS, while enabling it will make the game look less pixelated. The effect can be seen most clearly at an extremely reduced resolution.

While some may be struggling to reach higher graphics, for those who can routinely pump out more than 60+ FPS at their preferred ingame settings; consider opening your graphics card settings to add a frame limit to match your screens refresh rate. This may serve to reduce stuttering, fan noise, and a more consistent experience by telling your machine not to waste time rendering frames that won't be seen.

Advanced Settings

Obviously, the first place to start will be the ingame settings menu. This option requires a little bit of trial and error, but should be sufficient for most users.
Some settings hold more 'weight' against your computers performance. While each system will vary depending on Graphics card and CPU, reducing the following settings will increase your FPS, in general.

• POSTPROCESSING QUALITY
• VOLUMETRIC EFFECTS QUALITY
• PARTICLES QUALITY
• SHADERS QUALITY
• WATER QUALITY

If you've already reduced each setting to Low you're still struggling to get the FPS you want during intense teamfights, or if you're interested in a more fine tuned approach to meeting your performance goals, while choosing which visual features to sacrifice, you'll need to utilize the user.cfg.

User.cfg

User.cfg is a file that provides instructions to the game on how to run, such as the resolution of the game window, properties of various game graphical and performance settings. Many tweaks can be made to this file to either cut out unnecessary features for extra performance, or to unlock the best visuals possible within Cryengine 2.

It is placed in the C:\Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Crysis Wars directory. (Replace username and/or drive name with your current Windows username / Windows installation drive.)

Alternatively, you can browse to the correct folder by cut/pasting this into your Explorer window: %USERPROFILE%/Documents/My Games/Crysis Wars/Profiles/

NOTE: Consider disabling Crysis's in-game anti-aliasing (set to 0x/disabled) in the graphics settings unless you have a powerful GPU as it can be quite a FPS drain.

The following files are hosted on Discord. For more information on how to install, customize, or write your own User.cfg file, see the page on Console Variables.

The three updated 2021 user.cfg files below all feature mapped function keys that toggle a few key settings:

• F4 toggles HDR rendering (disabling HDR may help FPS at the cost of blown out / overbright colors on some maps)
• F9 toggles Shader post processing (slightly increases FPS but some maps look dull / desaturated with it disabled, removes depth of field effect while zooming)
• F10 toggles Crysis's FPS counter
• F11 toggles net_channelstats - use to diagnose red-x/lossy connection to servers. Details how to use it are found here: Net_channelstats
• PAUSE toggles HUD - for screenshots

• Recommended excellent visuals and performance Preset - Updated June 2021
  • Set for high visuals by default, easily adjustable for better performance and stability.
    • Features better FPS than stock Crysis High settings.
    • Longer shadow draw distances with more real-time shadows cast from terrain and objects.
    • Edge anti-aliasing enabled for less jaggies.
    • Screen Space Ambient Occlusion disabled as it can be a FPS drain. Consider using ReShade MXAO as an alternative.
    • Optimized particle and texture settings - balanced for visuals and FPS.

• Best performance oriented preset with good visuals - Updated June 2021
  • Set for med-high visuals by default, easily adjustable for better performance and stability.
    • Features similar FPS as stock Crysis Medium settings but with improved visuals.
    • Medium shadow draw distances.
    • Edge anti-aliasing enabled for less jaggies.
    • Screen Space Ambient Occlusion disabled as it can be a FPS drain.
    • Optimized particle and texture settings - leans towards better performance.

• Best performance optimized preset with decent visuals - Updated June 2021
  • Set for med visuals by default, easily adjustable for better performance and stability.
    • Features better FPS as stock Crysis Medium settings.
    • Very low shadow draw distances.
    • Edge anti-aliasing disabled.
    • Screen Space Ambient Occlusion disabled.
    • Performance optimized particle, decal and texture settings.

Here's some slightly older screenshots showing the differences between the configs and how they compare to the stock Crysis settings: Screenshots Comparison

The following user.cfg files are out of date and have a couple bugs. Only use them if you are willing to edit the file yourself to fix the bugs and change/experiment with the necessary config settings at your discretion to meet your preferences.

• (Outdated) Low Visuals/High Performance Preset
  • (There are two bugs that affect some users within this file, which can be amended by deleting the line e_particles_quality = 9, or ingame projectiles will become invisible- and the line d3d9_forcesoftware = 1, or the ingame Console and Cbill Transfer Menu will be unusable due to invisible text.)

• (Outdated) Low Visuals/High Performance Preset
  • (There are two bugs that affect some users within this file, which can be amended by deleting the line e_particles_quality = 9, or ingame projectiles will become invisible- and the line d3d9_forcesoftware = 1, or the ingame Console and Cbill Transfer Menu will be unusable due to invisible text.)

• (OLD) High Visuals Preset

Shader Cache cleanup

If you normally have adequate performance, but lose it seemingly out of the blue: use the Clear Shaders option from the MWLL Launcher. MWLL Shaders have a gamut of interesting bugs tied to them, from hidden performance sinks to rainbow clouds and pink hovercraft dust- but it's easily fixed in the click of a button.

Other Options

If you are still having trouble getting the performance you're looking for, consider joining the MWLL Discord and inquiring in the #tech_support channel for more assistance.

Besides that, the following are a few more options that can increase stability and performance, but have to be approached with a trial-and-error mindset, considering each player's mix and match of these settings may not work for another player's system.

• Running the game in DX9, 10 mode from the launcher
• Running the game in fullscreen, or windowed mode
• Running the game in Windows Compatibility mode for Windows 8, Windows 7.1 (Can be found by right-clicking the launcher, and opening 'Properties')

These, and a few more steps can be found in the Troubleshooting Guide