Empyrean Mission Performance Poor

[(NSW)ohgodzilla]

This is maybe more feedback than a bug report, so I apologize for that. There isn't a place to post Switch specific feedback (that I can see).  

My testing so far has been limited since the update is new, but I'll add to this as more things come up. 

I'm sure the Switch team is already aware of this, but in general the frame-rate and performance of Empyrean / proxima missions is very low on the switch. As others have mentioned, Switch players are used to lower performance, but it often times dips to the point where it isn't fun to play. Which is unfortunate, because it very much feels like there is a very fun game mode here, but the poor performance combined with the Railjack bugs makes it very difficult to play it (but certainly not impossible). 

I imagine a large part of this is just the inherent limitations of the switch, but I'm hoping that as the next few rounds of patches comes through, things will be improved. We saw substantial performance improvements between the original launch of Jovian Concord > Old Blood, even in the open world areas like Orb Vallis / PoE so here's hoping. 

Main observations:

- On Grineer Crewships, Gallions, and on the Railjack itself when a boarding party arrives, performance drops substantially, often times into the low single digits. I have often times been skipping opening caches when on the away crew to get away from the lag. In two missions, attacking the boarding party was just spamming the melee attack button because I couldn't see what was going on as we dipped into 3-8 FPS. (edit: it seems that this is a bit variable. Some missions it was just a bit of a fps drop, and some were like I'm describing here)

- Customizing the Railjack I worked so hard for was a buzzkill, as the ship is being rendered as a low quality object in the customization view. It is very very blurry and blocky. I'm not sure if it has to do with Camera placement? It also appears to "jitter" for lack of a better word while you're on that screen. Almost like the ship is going in an out of rendering as a close / far object or something. 

- Textures on the outside of the Railjack in the Dry Dock look very blocky and "messy". It looked great pre-Empyrean Take Flight. 

- Explosions in general and fire effects are blocky and low quality, but I think the biggest issue with them visually is they run at a very low framerate. 

- There can be severe slowdowns when large numbers of fighters spawn in, and are around the railjack. 

- Not a graphical performance issue, and one I already know the team is working on, but as Motion Controls have not yet been completed for the Railjack fixtures, aiming the side guns is very difficult and frustrating. I've talked with multiple players who have no interest in using them until they are able to control them normally (via Motion Controls). Unfortunately the switch joysticks are not very good on their own, and trying to hit fast moving fighters is near impossible. Since piloting moves slower (for now), it was easier to aim then the side guns and felt ok-ish.

 

 

Thanks for bringing this expansion to the Switch, and I am really looking forward to where things go from here

Edited January 16, 2020 by (NSW)ohgodzilla
clarifications

[(NSW)MasterRJ]

one of the only issues I have is that opening the arsenal appearance tab causes a script error and insta crashes the game

[(NSW)BubbaJ]

I was going to post this here but since there’s already a topic which details it succinctly, I’ll add my own two cents.

The periods I experience the most frame drops and performance problems involves dynamic spawns.  When the ship is boarded and a bunch of greener spawn it’s like the whole system is playing catch-up.  This also happens on Crew Ships after your on them for a few moments and the large group of Grineer spawn in to defend the ship.

I don’t see this when I’m dealing with static enemies and after getting rid of these spawns, everything starts smoothing out.  I also don’t see this problem on static objectives like defense platforms and satellites which run a lot better than other Railjack interior areas.

[(NSW)ohgodzilla]

1 hour ago, (NSW)BubbaJ said:

I was going to post this here but since there’s already a topic which details it succinctly, I’ll add my own two cents.

The periods I experience the most frame drops and performance problems involves dynamic spawns.  When the ship is boarded and a bunch of greener spawn it’s like the whole system is playing catch-up.  This also happens on Crew Ships after your on them for a few moments and the large group of Grineer spawn in to defend the ship.

I don’t see this when I’m dealing with static enemies and after getting rid of these spawns, everything starts smoothing out.  I also don’t see this problem on static objectives like defense platforms and satellites which run a lot better than other Railjack interior areas.

I would agree with this observation