Feedback [Solved] Massive framerate drops in dungeons

[Deleted member 32699]

Embers Adrift generally runs pretty well on my MacBook.

Yes, there is the "camera twitch bug", but otherwise I can't complain.
The game runs at a stable frame rate, no problems - at least in the outside world.

In dungeons, however, it's a different story.

The first dungeons were no problem - Central Veins South ran absolutely smoothly, and some later dungeons like Emberflies EV were no problem either.

The first time I struggled with framerate drops was Bats EV - but that was nothing compared to my visit to the new Mires EV solo loop last night.

Performance was abysmal - I had such severe framerate drops that my character actually died (against a blue mob):
I had cast my big heal (First Aid) at 40 life - and the heal just wasn't getting through.
I could only watch as the game processed various previously cast attacks - and almost half a minute later my character was dead.

The crazy thing is that the framerate wasn't consistently bad - it fluctuated drastically, even in the same location.

I would have thought that the outside world would be a bigger resource hog than a confined dungeon - and yet it seems to be the other way round.

Something isn't right here.

 

[Deleted member 32699]

I wanted to add (on a positive note) that, aside from the awful performance, I enjoyed the new solo loop.

Fighting mires was an interesting new experience - the fact that they move relatively slowly meant that it was often possible to fight at range.

I also had some good loot.

In that respect: Well done, thank you.

 

[Deleted member 32699]

I've finally found the reason for the performance issues - and it's so banal that it makes me want to sink into the ground.

Please delete this thread, because the last thing I want to do is paint Embers Adrift in a bad light.

I'm sorry.

 

[Undone]

I've finally found the reason for the performance issues - and it's so banal that it makes me want to sink into the ground.

Please delete this thread, because the last thing I want to do is paint Embers Adrift in a bad light.

I'm sorry.

But now I have to know what it was! Tell me and your post shall be deleted!

 

[Deleted member 32699]

Alright...

So I returned to the Derelict Sanctuary (Mires) EV - this time with a group.

Performance was normal, but as soon as we started engaging mobs in the EV, the framerate plummeted.

As the others in the group had no such issues, this was a major clue that it couldn't be a general problem, but either the Mac client - or just me.

Fortunately, my group was very understanding and encouraged me to try different graphics settings.

I then gradually turned down or disabled almost all the graphics sliders and toggles, but nothing helped - as soon as we engaged mobs, there were significant performance issues.

After a bad pull (several mires plus rats "ratting out" the healers), we were sitting near the Ember Ring.

I was so desperate that I thought to myself, "That's it for Embers Adrift. There's no point in continuing to play a game whose main content (group dungeons) is unplayable."

And then I had the ultimate idea: a complete restart of my MacBook.

I know - "Hey, that's one of the very first things you think of when you have issues with a game".

In my defence, I would like to say that I hardly ever shut down my MacBook, I just close it - even at night - and leave it on standby.

And it simply works.

When I was still playing WoW SoD, I did it for weeks and months without any problems.

But Unity seems to be a whole different beast...

After the restart, the game suddenly ran smoothly during mob fights, even after I reset the graphics settings to default.

There were a few minor framerate drops here and there, but nothing like before.

I suspect some mob cache (?) was causing the issue, but I'm sure you have a better understanding of this.

I'll leave it up to you whether you leave this thread up or delete it.

My first thought was to have it deleted because I don't want people to get the wrong impression that Embers Adrift is struggling with such performance issues.

On the other hand, you could leave the thread up to help others in a similar situation (although they are probably smarter than me).

 

[Undone]

In my defence, I would like to say that I hardly ever shut down my MacBook, I just close it - even at night - and leave it on standby.

And it simply works.

When I was still playing WoW SoD, I did it for weeks and months without any problems.

But Unity seems to be a whole different beast...

I typically restart my mbp once a week for this very reason. I'm not sure what the cause is but at some point the system can start to become super sluggish and unresponsive. This carries over to the game client for me. For your case it may just be due to the fact that Embers Adrift uses a lot more GPU than WoW ever will due to the different rendering techniques used (we also don't have billions of dollars for an engineering team to optimize every last detail in our own custom engine).

After the restart, the game suddenly ran smoothly during mob fights, even after I reset the graphics settings to default.

There were a few minor framerate drops here and there, but nothing like before.

I suspect some mob cache (?) was causing the issue, but I'm sure you have a better understanding of this.

I'm honestly not sure what could be the cause. Next time this happens I would certainly take a look at Activity Monitor to see if there was anything chewing up tasks/memory in the background.

I'll leave it up to you whether you leave this thread up or delete it.

My first thought was to have it deleted because I don't want people to get the wrong impression that Embers Adrift is struggling with such performance issues.

On the other hand, you could leave the thread up to help others in a similar situation (although they are probably smarter than me).

lols