Bug Report: Game Performance Tanks When NPCs Speak
yfnspider
Posts: 33 ✭
Emphasizing this here for clarity: Changing graphics settings has NO impact on this issue at all. I currently have everything as low as it will possibly go, with shadows being disabled every time I log in, and it's equally as disruptive as when I have everything set to high.
I didn't see this covered in the known issues, but every time an NPC speaks and their nameplate appears in the center of the screen, performance drops to as low as 10 FPS sometimes until the nameplate finally disappears. This is the single most annoying bug I've encountered, and I can't find a way around it, as it happens no matter what graphics preset I have selected, and whether or not shadows are enabled. I've also tried updating my GPU drivers, but that had no impact either. Ideally, it would be nice to have the option to just disable these captions entirely. This issue's impact on the game is pretty severe as it stands, and I've heard from numerous other people that they're seeing it too, but it doesn't seem to be impacting everyone. Is there any known workaround or fix for this?
EDIT: It's also worth noting that aside from the problem of NPCs being WAY too talkative in general and spamming you with messages, this issue gets exponentially worse in the planar instability boss rifts of each realm. Not only does the framerate drop to the speed of a slideshow, but for some reason, the game spams you with messages from NPCs in overworld skirmishes that are nowhere near your location. These messages appear back to back, so there's no relief from the bugs for almost a full minute, all while you're trying to fight a world boss.
UPDATE 4/15: No change to this issue after the patch - for the sake of easy replication, the mission "Rise of the Cabal" can reliably be used to recreate this problem.
UPDATE 4/16: Something I noticed today - I happened to start the Rise of the Cabal mission, but left my computer for an extended period of time after defeating the very first group of undead you encounter, just after meeting the lieutenant (Leobard) for the first time. When I returned, which was probably 15-20 minutes later, I did not notice the issue happening for the remainder of the mission. Once I completed it and returned to the overworld, however, the issue resumed.
Update 4/19: Issue persists, regardless of whether it's in the overworld or in rifts/missions. Any NPC dialogue that prompts a nameplate to be displayed causes the framerate to drop significantly. There has still been no response whatsoever from anyone here on the forums, on any kind of workaround or even to acknowledge the issue is being worked on, which has been in effect since launch.
Update 4/21: No change - if anything, the issue has actually gotten worse, as the framerate drop in overworld events has increased to match the severe levels it reached before in boss rifts.
I also can't help but notice that the known issues have not been updated since March 24. If we could at least get some kind of acknowledgement there that this is being recognized by the development team and addressed, it'd be a lot easier to just wait it out until the next patch or two when it hopefully gets fixed. As long as that forum remains idle and stagnant, people can't really be blamed for worrying that the issues reported here are being overlooked.
Comments
unfortunately i do not know of there being an workarounds or fixes on our end. i have had this issue happen as well, rather consistently. hopefully more people will report so that it can be looked into.
Same problem here. This exist for me since alpha.
(Can't delete this comment for some reason after editing the original post to add the information that was in it, so just ignore it)
Thanks for the edit.
You describe the problems with the frame drops perfectly.
Is this problem known and will it, be fixed soon?
experiencing this problem as well on a consistent basis. extremely annoying.
yeah this is really frustrating... <_<
but really why can you hear the random npc encounters from everywhere on the plane? even in reliquaries and such? it's annoying even without the performance issues
Exactly. And NPCs do tend to talk a bit too frequently anyway, in my opinion. There needs to be a longer delay between when you hear from them.
Not sure, I have yet to see an official response to this problem, and I haven't seen any other posts about it yet.
Does anyone at Cryptic even look at this forum?
Just in case someone is paying attention to this thread, this issue was again NOT resolved in today's patch. If you want a reliable way of replicating this issue, the mission "Rise of the Cabal" in Benalia is a perfect candidate, as the issue starts as soon as the lieutenant at the beginning starts talking.
Well explained.
Updated original post with observations from today
I've been having this issue since launch as well. As far as the ability to recreate goes, that's real simple, NPCs talk to me all the time, and every time my framerate drops. Changing settings does nothing for me as well.
Same problem here since tutorial with Ral. Ral talks -> fps drop -> finally the nameplate disappear -> but after 0 seconds Ral talks again WITH THE SAME PHRASE -> repeat this in loop. I bet he did this on purpose
Update 4/19: Issue persists, regardless of whether it's in the overworld or in rifts/missions. Any NPC dialogue that prompts a nameplate to be displayed causes the framerate to drop significantly. There has still been no response whatsoever from anyone here on the forum, on any kind of workaround or even to acknowledge the issue is being worked on, which has been in effect since launch.
It would be enough to give player an option to enable the use of a static image of a portrayed talking NPC, considering that the drastic drop in FPS seems related to that. Having animated portraits of the NPCs speaking adds nothing to the game and lowers a lot the gameplay experience to anyone who has this issue.
Right, or the option to just disable it altogether, and just have a caption appear in the chat box.
Update 4/21: No change - if anything, the issue has actually gotten worse, as the framerate drop in overworld events has increased to match the severe levels it reached before in boss rifts.
I also can't help but notice that the known issues have not been updated since March 22. If we could at least get some kind of acknowledgement there that this is being recognized by the development team and addressed, it'd be a lot easier to just wait it out until the next patch or two when it hopefully gets fixed. As long as that forum remains idle and stagnant, people can't really be blamed for worrying that the issues reported here are being overlooked.
Update: May 6 - Still not even so much as an acknowledgment by the dev team that they're aware and working on this. What's the point of continuing to play if the team is just going to ignore major game performance issues?
It's worth noting that it isn't all NPCs and all NPCs don't degrade performance to the same degree either. For example, while Rise of the Cabal constantly suffers anytime the lieutenant talks, it does not when Whisper talks in the same mission.
Totally agree with you.
Another annoying thing about this is that, in certain scenarios, NPC's are talking almost constantly, and even worse is when they're just randomly repeating the same lines over and over, like in the end of the mission when you're saving Danitha, and the angel (Rael, I think?) just keeps cycling through the same 3 or 4 lines, killing the framerate for pretty much the entire duration of the battle.
Why does displaying a character's portrait and subtitles cause this drop, anyway? I would honestly rather have that not display if it's going to be such a huge issue. The slowdown doesn't happen when it's just audio.
Precisely. I specifically avoid doing story missions as often as possible, for that exact reason, even if it means I'm not getting the bonus rewards for the day, because it's THAT painful to complete most of them due to this bug. And yet the community team at Cryptic is conspicuously silent on this entire issue, making me wonder if anyone is even checking this forum that's supposedly dedicated to bug reporting.
May 11, and still not so much as a peep out of support/community managers/devs. Known Issues forum still hasn't been updated since March.
You have to realize how bad of a look this is, Cryptic.
It can't be overstated how huge of an issue it is. I have friends whom were excited about this game that, upon showing gameplay to and experienced the frame rate drop in front of, were no longer interested.
This bug is LITERALLY pushing players away from your game.
I have just downloaded and and played today and noticed this issue in the starting mission and is really annoying. It makes you wonder what the hell the game is doing when it struggles with this, especially when you have a system that shouldn't have any problems with this game at all (3700x @ 4.3GHz, 64GB 3600mhz C18 Ram, 2070 Super and game installed on SSD). CPU usage didn't go above 50% so really don't know why it lags like hell when the NPC speaks.
Edit: This appears to have been resolved with today's patch.
I can confirm that it has definitely not been resolved. Had to do Rise of the Cabal today for a daily, and it's still torturously slow.
BONUS FACT: In this mission, only Leobald's lines slow things down. Whisper doesn't have this effect, for some reason.
Just posting to echo this - the issue is most certainly still ongoing. Like nath, though, I did notice that when Whisper's nameplate appears during the encounter where she executes the archers, the lag doesn't happen. It DOES, however, continue to happen when her nameplate appears during her voice lines in the fight at the end of the mission.
It does look like I spoke to soon as I went to create a new planes walker today and it was still present in the starting missing whenever Val talks to you.
I've had this issue since alpha. This topic doesn't even get recognized by officials here.