[IGN] Dragon's Dogma 2 NPCs Were Thinking Too Hard

[DarkLordOtaku]

Dragon's Dogma 2 Apparently Had Framerate Troubles Because the NPCs Were Thinking Too Hard - IGN

A new patch for Dragon's Dogma 2 dropped earlier this week, and it should help improve the game's oft-lamented framerate issues, which developer Capcom is now saying were a direct result of Dragon's Dogma 2's many NPCs...thinking too much.

www.ign.com

- Original Source from Famitsu: https://www.famitsu.com/article/202410/20868

"...in sequences where many NPCs appear at the same time, such as in towns, the load on the CPU was very high, which affected the frame rate. Because the CPU was the bottleneck, reducing the load on the GPU side, such as lowering the resolution, had little effect on improving the frame rate."

In response, Capcom has been "reviewing the processing of NPC thoughts and making fine adjustments such as the execution order of each process in updates since the release." As a result, Dragon's Dogma 2 now has graphics quality settings that allow it to be played at "approximately 50 to 60fps' on PS5 and Xbox Series X."

I really enjoyed Dragon's Dogma 2 when I played it on PC back in March. However, for as fun as it was, even I have to admit there were some frame drops in cities. It's fun to see that the theorized solution at launch of murdering all the NPCs in towns was, indeed, a legitimate method of improving framerate.

 

[Bryank75]

 

[DarkLordOtaku]

I'm actually very onboard for a game to come along with "ground breaking" AI. I'm so tired of dumb AI in video games.

 

[Evilnemesis8]

I'm actually very onboard for a game to come along with "ground breaking" AI. I'm so tired of dumb AI in video games.

The issue with NPC AI is that we've seen quite a lot of examples where heavy AI routines are barely noticed by the vast majority of players. Is it actually a worthwhile trade for a city to tank performance for like 5% of players to actually notice and potentially make use of NPCs in a small number of instances? Most of the time, no.

Everything has a cost in video games and certain things are just not worth the performance trade off.

It's why we don't have things like this in game:

 

[rofif]

I found this game to be very physical feeling. The movement, physics, monsters reactiing and navigating, npcs feeling dynamic


TIS A LADDER ARISEN

 

[DarkLordOtaku]

The issue with NPC AI is that we've seen quite a lot of examples where heavy AI routines are barely noticed by the vast majority of players. Is it actually a worthwhile trade for a city to tank performance for like 5% of players to actually notice and potentially make use of NPCs in a small number of instances? Most of the time, no.

Everything has a cost in video games and certain things are just not worth the performance trade off.

It's why we don't have things like this in game:

True, but hardware is always progressing as well. Hopefully, as progress is made on that front, it might be a realistic feature for games in the coming decade.

 

[Old Gamer]

Thread starvation is a b***h.

 

[DarkLordOtaku]

I found this game to be very physical feeling. The movement, physics, monsters reactiing and navigating, npcs feeling dynamic


TIS A LADDER ARISEN

The pawns were definitely hot under the collar for ladders.

 

[Systemshock2023]

Compensating for the developers.

 

[DarkLordOtaku]

Compensating for the developers.

Tbh, I start pulling Dragon's Dogma 2 levels of CPU processing power when someone greets me in a hallway, and I have to remember the correct response to their greeting.

Usually it just ends up as an Oblivion NPC level of interaction. "Hey, ___ how was your weekend?" "Thanks, and to you too!"