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Digital Foundry: Dragon's Dogma 2: Does The New Patch Fix The Game? All Systems Tested

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?


Dragon's Dogma 2 launched with a range of issues - most notably inconsistent frame-rates, extremely heavy CPU limitations and broken checkerboarding on Xbox Series consoles. A new patch recently arrived that delivers a lot of welcome changes - but key issues still need to be addressed. Oliver Mackenzie reports on this one.


00:00 Overview
00:50 Xbox Series X
05:28 PlayStation 5
07:23 Xbox Series S and PC
09:35 Analysis and Conclusion
 
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Does The New Patch Fix The Game?​


Seth Meyers Lol GIF by Late Night with Seth Meyers

On PC, i've not noticed any significantly improvements that make any real difference to be honest from the patch. There's been a few mods that I've used that have improved more for me than the patched base offering does.
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
- Patch introduces toggles to disable RTGI and Motion Blur and cap FPS to 30
- Disabling RTGI has impact on natural lighting bounce as you'd expect
- Non RT view is harsher and less pleasing than RTGI version.
- Turning RT off brings visuals in line with Series S on both other consoles
- But turning RT off as notable impact on performance.
- DF thinks cut-back resolution with RTGI off can produce a better 60 FPS
- 30 FPS lock has inconsistent frame-pacing
- Oliver likes the games motion blur so in his preference he keeps it on.

Series X
- Series X checker-boarding issue has not been fixed
- One outdoor segment goes from 40 to 60, other areas can see up to 7~10 FPS improved

PS5 specific:
- RT off has worse worse/lower ambient occlusion than SX, difference can be mild to stark in different areas
- IQ is still sharper since there is no checker-boarding issue
- RT off sees improvement to performance but is ~10% behind SX (45 vs 50 FPS in a tested area)

- Patch only has anecdotal improvements in performance with RT on to launch code (original presentation). Oliver thinks there is a very minor improvement when running around the city.

Series S:
- Series S seems to have the same ambient occlusion as PS5, SX runs better AO than both
- In opening areas the performance seems to be a little worse post-patch but later areas are about the same.
- Motion blur and 30 FPS toggle are present and behave the same as the other two
- DF thinks Capcom should really consider cutting resolution

PC:
- Roughly 7% improvement in the same areas which were CPU bound
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I've been playing this with RT off. Upto a 10 FPS advantage paired with 120hz VRR has been working great for me so far.

Quoting myself from another topic where I took some off-screen videos to highlight.

I'm not sure if there's a better way to illustrate this, since direct captures will obviously not show VRR's benefits. And this is one of those games where the tech comes in incredibly handy.

But here's a couple of quick and dirty (excuse my phone quality) off-screen captures taken at 60 FPS which show that it actually looks rather smooth on the display, irrespective of what the FPS is underneath.





 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Literally at the bottom of the patch notes from capcom

  • *These options won't affect frame rate significantly. Improvements to frame rate are planned for future updates.”


Just the act of turning RT off gains up to 10 FPS in traversal.

That's definitely not nothing.


iHjuLji.png




I would not be opposed to them introducing DRS in the next patch to help even more.

But I don't think any RE engine game has had DRS so far, they all operate at static resolutions (?)
 
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All the DF staff love motion blur.
I hate it. 100% of the time.
It's good that Capcom provides the option to turn it off. All games should offer that.
You hate screen space motion blur. Per object motion blur is a good thing and is usually done well and it is sometimes done so well to the point of being unnoticeable.

Examples of Per object motion blur:

PcclEXl.gif


QupuEqe.gif


Screen space motion blur usually sucks because no one implements it correctly, which is why I agree when someone says they would rather not have it. It's what causes dizziness because this happens when you turn a camera in a game:

giphy.gif
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
They need to fix that checkerboard issue on xbox. It's embarrassing games are launching like this.

Then it will be the best version on console until the pro releases.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Motion blur on or off doesnt matter to me. I played Horizon FW with motion blur off to reduce the incessant flickering and it was fairly smooth even at 30 fps. i dont think you NEED motion blur for a smooth 30 fps but it cant hurt.

I guess the 7% increase in CPU performnace makes sense for PC I no longer see towns dropping below 30 fps. its still 40-55 fps with rare drops to mid 30s but not as bad as launch.

and its the main town only. the desert town and the other small settlements are not this bad.
 

Darsxx82

Member
I can't even play Monster Hunter Rise (Steam) since their January update, doesn't even open.
😬

To those who hope that with upcoming patches the game, in its different versions, will be objectively better than at launch... I would recommend that they lower their expectations.

With Capcom, it is most likely that within several patches the game has improved in some aspects but at the cost of getting worse or creating bugs in others. Even more so in a game as technically delicate as DD2.
 

Fabieter

Member
So if ray tracing makes this much of an difference ( I know it's still cpu bound) than having a beefier gpu with ai scaling and a little bit of extra cpu performance maybe isn't as bad as DF and others framed it. Ian shocked.
 

Lysandros

Member
This week on DF:

XSX version having twice the screen time as PS5. Check

Emphasizing XSX performance advantage and directly attributing it to its hardware/"wider GPU" without mentioning the plausible additional performance cost of PS5's higher image quality. Check

Completely omitting to mention PS5's performance advantage over XSX in city and of course not showing a side by side FPS battle in this occasion. Check

Yep, all good and functioning.
 
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This week on DF:

XSX version having twice the screen time as PS5. Check

Emphasizing XSX performance advantage and directly attributing it to its hardware/"wider GPU" without mentioning the plausible additional performance cost of PS5's higher image quality. Check

Completely omitting to mention PS5's performance advantage over XSX in city and of course not showing a side by side FPS battle in this occasion. Check

Yep, all good and functioning.
Are You Good Joe Biden GIF by GIPHY News


PC got even less "screen time" than the other 2 platforms, and has better/more performance metrics to compare and contrast. It's not some big conspiracy. Truthfully, I just think there aren't any major improvements to compare that have any huge impact on performance and picking 1 platform to "slightly" favor is more of a time-saving measurement for a game that still needs a lot of patches and testing. There's not a lot on the performance side to talk about in any real meaningful way.
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
This week on DF:

XSX version having twice the screen time as PS5. Check

Emphasizing XSX performance advantage and directly attributing it to its hardware/"wider GPU" without mentioning the plausible additional performance cost of PS5's higher image quality. Check

Completely omitting to mention PS5's performance advantage over XSX in city and of course not showing a side by side FPS battle in this occasion. Check

Yep, all good and functioning.


I think you should just boycott DF threads altogether at this point, lol.
 
Lighting looks noticeably worse for me with RTGI turned off. I'd rather take the performance hit given it still doesn't run well enough disabled anyway
 
This week on DF:

XSX version having twice the screen time as PS5. Check

Emphasizing XSX performance advantage and directly attributing it to its hardware/"wider GPU" without mentioning the plausible additional performance cost of PS5's higher image quality. Check

Completely omitting to mention PS5's performance advantage over XSX in city and of course not showing a side by side FPS battle in this occasion. Check

Yep, all good and functioning.
Chill out pal, the games performance is dog shit on all platforms. Oliver didn't need to spend as much time as he did making that video. The objective of the video could have been achieved with a simple 'absolutely fucking not'.

Let's not get your blood pressure going over the PS5 not getting enough screen time...
 

Ev1L AuRoN

Member
All the DF staff love motion blur.
I hate it. 100% of the time.
It's good that Capcom provides the option to turn it off. All games should offer that.
Motion blur is necessary to sell realism in gaming, of course it needs to be well executed, no motion blur creates something strange, a pristine view of movements that isn't real, but can give advantage in shooters for example. I like myself the effect, I think per-object motion blur is amazing, camera based motion blur I don't like as much, but when well executed can make a 30fps game feels very smooth. In HFR scenarios like 120hz and above, I don't see the point in using motion blur.
 

Ev1L AuRoN

Member
Chill out pal, the games performance is dog shit on all platforms. Oliver didn't need to spend as much time as he did making that video. The objective of the video could have been achieved with a simple 'absolutely fucking not'.

Let's not get your blood pressure going over the PS5 not getting enough screen time...
I agree that it is not worth it to give any attention to things like that, but with that said. The only thing that I find interesting is that every advantage Xbox has in comparisons are due to its strengths, fair enough, they have a wider GPU and memory bandwidth advantage, but PS5 also has its own advantages, like higher filtrate and the whole I/O subsystem just to name a few, one can imagine that some workloads might prefer the PS5 advantages, like we often see in PC with AMD and NVIDIA, and those advantages might explain some of the wins for the PS5, but Nooo, it has got to be a bug or something else, it cannot possibly be architecture advantage in that case.
 
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Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
I couldn't give a shit how high the frame-rate gets in low-load scenarios, when the real test comes in worst-case situations.

The thing that people never seem to acknowledge is that stable frame-rates are a product of surplus power. Its why high-end PC always has an advantage; by upgrading the components you can almost always reach a point where the caps of the CPU and GPU are always going to be in excess of whatever workload is required.

Hence even though load fluctuates over time, the peaks never reach the critical threshold where frame-rate buckles and naturally the troughs and "normal" load states are well inside tolerances.

All this talk of "optimization" is mostly bullshit. Because objectively if a piece of code is targetting a fixed spec, the optimal point would be maximal utilization as much of the time as possible, with rare peaks where it exceeds the target causing transient dips in hitting frame-time. You take that same performance profile and aim it a platform which is not closed, and therefore exists in a multitude of configurations and the same well-optimized code might not look nearly as performant because the capability "line" its been optimized to conform to, has been moved.

Most importantly scaling up workloads (like aiming for higher target resolutions, frame-rates, or adding effects) is going to stress different things by different amounts because most of the time the effects of scaling aren't uniform across the system and in fact might expose hitherto unexposed weaknesses and choke points along the pipeline.
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Hope they are able to optimize it even more.
Game's a treat gameplay wise and it's a crime that so many people aren't able to enjoy it's combat and exploration at 60fps at least.
 

Lysandros

Member
I agree that it is not worth it to give any attention to things like that, but with that said. The only thing that I find interesting is that every advantage Xbox has in comparisons are due to its strengths, fair enough, they have a wider GPU and memory bandwidth advantage, but PS5 also has its own advantages, like higher filtrate and the whole I/S subsystem just to name a few, one can imagine that some workloads might prefer the PS5 advantages, like we often see in PC with AMD and NVIDIA, and those advantages might explain some of the wins for the PS5, but Nooo, it has got to be a bug or something else, it cannot possibly be architecture advantage in that case.
So you do think it's worth giving attention to things like objectivity and fairness while assessing a source after all. That's the usual state of affairs for DF by the way, not expecting any better at the slightest. I am just inclined to spot inconsistencies and point them out by nature in general, won't make an exception about DF.
 
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This week on DF:

XSX version having twice the screen time as PS5. Check

Emphasizing XSX performance advantage and directly attributing it to its hardware/"wider GPU" without mentioning the plausible additional performance cost of PS5's higher image quality. Check

Completely omitting to mention PS5's performance advantage over XSX in city and of course not showing a side by side FPS battle in this occasion. Check

Yep, all good and functioning.
 

Ev1L AuRoN

Member
So you do think it's worth giving attention to things like objectivity and fairness while assessing a source after all. That's the usual state of affairs for DF by the way, not expecting any better at the slightest. I am just inclined to spot inconsistencies and point them out by nature in general, won't make an exception about DF.
Not at all. I made my own mind at the end, And I do enjoy the DF coverage, and I don't think they are biased in any significant manner. I do feel that they pull some punches on Xbox, but I find they fair in their analysis of games and SONY and Nintendo products for the most part.
 

Inviusx

Member
This game seems technically embarrassing on console. I was hyped but nothing about the presentation justifies the performance and that awful NPC pop-in in my opinion. The only way I ever see myself buying this is if they optimise it for next gen or pro models in a year or two. What a shame.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Yes! This was one of the worst implementations of screen space motion blur I've ever seen. I legitimately could not play this game on console until they patched in the option to turn it off.
Most people here know I'm not someone who obsess over graphic imperfection but even I was bother by motion blur in this game, it was unplayable for me until patched the game.
 
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Most people here know I'm not some who obsess over graphic imperfection but even I was bother by motion blur in this game, it was unplayable for me until patched the game.
You know it's odd, one of the lost arts in this medium is 'making 30fps look good'. I know that might seem funny to the average gamer today, especially if they play on PC, but there was a time specifically from mid Xbox 360/PS3 to late PS4/XBO where a lot of devs finally figured out how to make 30fps actually feel good, including the usage of light motion blur with little touches like screen shake.

d41arti-13f48508-5516-4636-ba9a-c7bc7c7f73ad.gif



Not many will admit this, but for the most part, it would all feel seamless and smooth. In today's generation if a game hits 30 fps, barely any concessions or efforts are made to ensure that it looks like a smooth 30fps experience, and instead they simply will hope that you like it for how it is or wait until stronger consoles come out. I sometimes wonder if the testers or smaller devs within the team simply never speak up about this problem.
 
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TheShocker

Member
This week on DF:

XSX version having twice the screen time as PS5. Check

Emphasizing XSX performance advantage and directly attributing it to its hardware/"wider GPU" without mentioning the plausible additional performance cost of PS5's higher image quality. Check

Completely omitting to mention PS5's performance advantage over XSX in city and of course not showing a side by side FPS battle in this occasion. Check

Yep, all good and functioning.
I hope your day gets better.

And I refunded the Xbox version for now. When/if they patch the checkerboard issue, I’ll re-buy it. Or if they add system level LFC to PS5, I will get it there.

Either way game seems like a mess on console.
 

Lysandros

Member
I hope your day gets better.

And I refunded the Xbox version for now. When/if they patch the checkerboard issue, I’ll re-buy it. Or if they add system level LFC to PS5, I will get it there.

Either way game seems like a mess on console.
I had a perfectly fine day in fact, thanks. ;) Best wishes to you too. 👍
 

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
So you do think it's worth giving attention to things like objectivity and fairness while assessing a source after all. That's the usual state of affairs for DF by the way, not expecting any better at the slightest. I am just inclined to spot inconsistencies and point them out by nature in general, won't make an exception about DF.
No, you are just inclined to spot inconsistencies going one way.

In the previous video, for instance, Oliver did mention the PS5 had a performance advantage in the city. He also said the Xbox's advantage wasn't like-for-like because of image quality issues. Additionally, those are checkerboard artifacts similar to what RE4R had on PS5 that were cleaned up later and if I remember, this did not affect performance to any significant degree.

Such an innocuous video for a game that runs poorly on every platform, yet here you are thinking DF is attacking your precious PS5.
 
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Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Nah, they are addicted. Hate-watching brings them joy, just waiting to jump on any minor perceived slight. Didn't focus on PS5 enough, focused on it too much, the wording was slightly off, etc, etc, etc...
Last time it was, "Why does DF always pick the PS5 in comparison videos? Now it’s, "The Xbox has too much screen time."

The problem some Gafers have is clinical.
 
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Moochi

Member
My improvement before and post patch is night and day on PC. DLSS didn't seem to do anything before, but now I'm 60 fps or more at all times except some minor drops in the first main city. The other cities, including Batahl, run great.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
This game seems technically embarrassing on console. I was hyped but nothing about the presentation justifies the performance and that awful NPC pop-in in my opinion. The only way I ever see myself buying this is if they optimise it for next gen or pro models in a year or two. What a shame.

It is such a gosh darn good game, tho. Worth it, IMO.
 

sachos

Member
Look at those RTGI On vs Off comparisons, RTGI is crucial to get games to actually look next gen imo, otherwise it just ends up looking "flat" like previous gen games. Hope the PS5 Pro really improves on that front.
 
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