Potential fix for FPS Drops/Stuttering on High End PC

[Hymeir]

I used to have stutters/fps drops every 30 seconds no matter where I was. But I'm glad to say that my game performance has improved considerably! No longer do I have rhythmic stutters on a beach or in most areas! What did the trick for me was the following:

1. Download https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dmy64BFZ9OS8a__0V7w8mR3r7kUF_sAm
2. Place the files into your save folder and when prompted click replace all files (doing so may affect your achievements so keep that in mind)
3. Start the game from the PoE2.exe , NOT from steam. YOU MUST KEEP STEAM CLOSED. If not, this will not work (at least in my experience)
4. When starting up the game, play around with the save provided in the download file to check if your performance, or just make a new save. This may or may not work on in-progress saves so please keep that in mind.
5. If you see that the performance has not improved with your in-progress save, then you will have to start to a new save

This really saved this game for me. Sadly I can't play it through steam or else the performance issues return. The only performance issues I had after the fix was the following:

1. Stuttering in combat or in menus every once in awhile
2. Low fps/stutter in fort dead light and queens berth.

But these issues are welcomed compared to the alternative stutter-fest that was the alternative performance.

Special thanks to RefridgeratorJP for the download file and helping me out with this! I hope this helps someone with similar performance issues!

Also, for those wondering this is my setup

-GTX 1080 Ti

-i7-7700k

-16GB RAM

-SSD

-Standard Monitor (NO G-Sync)

 

[Torm51]

What are those files you linked, I have the same issues as you and our systems are very similar.

[rockfish42]

It's the save folder from another computer. The contents are saves, global achievements and the AI behavior folder. There might be some sort of bug involving the the global achievements file. As per another discussion, Steam cloud was saving all of these files, so attempts at wiping/reinstalling etc. weren't effective at remedying the stutter until steam cloud was wiped with a known working set of files.
https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/108687-game-running-choppy-suddenly/

[thelee]

maybe someone should go through that save folder and find out what's different.

 

maybe it's telemetry? that's a "sticky" setting between steam cloud resets and 30s might be reporting intervals or something.

[rockfish42]

Supposedly they already turned telemetry off, subsequent saves with the alternate files didn't have a performance issue either.

[Nehm]

maybe it's telemetry? that's a "sticky" setting between steam cloud resets and 30s might be reporting intervals or something.

 

I had this same thought.  I started a game with telemetry on, and while I did experience more stuttering than what I would consider normal, it wasn't game breaking like what I had experienced before.

 

I can confirm that the old broken saves are still broken (on my PC) even though new games are entirely fixed, so it seems whatever is causing the problem is embedded in the old saves prior to the fix.

 

A user on reddit noted that my fixed savegame on their PC ran flawlessly despite the rest of their saves or new games still being broken.  They cleared everything related to POE2 on his PC and apparently the game is running better for them.  I would be interested in seeing more cases of whether purging all local files related to POE2 and clearing the steam cloud backups (or at least preventing steam from redownloading said backups by running the game directly from the directory with steam closed) and starting a new game would yield the same results as using my save folder.

Edited March 25, 2019 by JPraski

[pomenitul]

Thanks for the heads up. Am I right to assume that this issue doesn't occur via GOG?

[rockfish42]

Assuming you're not using cloud saves in GOG Galaxy, probably not.

[pomenitul]

Are devs going to look into this? Seems like a promising lead, and a proper fix is long overdue.

[thelee]

 

maybe it's telemetry? that's a "sticky" setting between steam cloud resets and 30s might be reporting intervals or something.

 

I had this same thought.  I started a game with telemetry on, and while I did experience more stuttering than what I would consider normal, it wasn't game breaking like what I had experienced before.

 

I can confirm that the old broken saves are still broken (on my PC) even though new games are entirely fixed, so it seems whatever is causing the problem is embedded in the old saves prior to the fix.

 

A user on reddit noted that my fixed savegame on their PC ran flawlessly despite the rest of their saves or new games still being broken.  They cleared everything related to POE2 on his PC and apparently the game is running better for them.  I would be interested in seeing more cases of whether purging all local files related to POE2 and clearing the steam cloud backups (or at least preventing steam from redownloading said backups by running the game directly from the directory with steam closed) and starting a new game would yield the same results as using my save folder.

 

 

you know what, i've been sitting on the bug forums occasionally trying to chime in and troubleshoot on posts where people have stutter problems, and even when our systems are near-identical i don't have the same kind of stutter problems they do. and this post brings to mind that i don't have steam cloud sync enabled. (i use dropbox+symlinks to sync saves so that I can play across platforms). i wonder if something about steam cloud sync is messing with save data and/or having an expensive extra process in the engine.

 

this seems like a promising lead/root cause here.

Edited March 26, 2019 by thelee

[Hymeir]

Hey everyone. I'm glad to see that people have been checking out my post and I hope this has helped at least a few people. With that being said, is there anyway we can get the devs attention to this? 

 

Because it is my hope that this will lead to a proper fix for the all the people suffering from fps drops/stuttering on high end PC's.

[Nehm]

this post brings to mind that i don't have steam cloud sync enabled. (i use dropbox+symlinks to sync saves so that I can play across platforms). i wonder if something about steam cloud sync is messing with save data and/or having an expensive extra process in the engine.

 

this seems like a promising lead/root cause here.

 

Interesting.  My wife's save folder is what fixed my game and what lead us down this path to begin with, and she also plays without steam cloud sync. 

Her achievements, legacygamehistory, and customAIbehavior folders overwrote mine on steam cloud. Steam then replaced those files on my PC, and any new game since has ran flawlessly -- all of my backed up broken saves are still dropping frames and basically unplayble. 

 

She uses an AMD GPU and the stuttering problem was still present on my broken saves when I moved them to her PC, so it seems the issue is embedded within the saves themselves and not specifically hardware related.

 

I'd like to note that when steam overwrote my files with hers, the number of Berath's Blessing points available went from 60 to 51.  When I manually replace her files with my broken backups, the number does not go back to 60.  Nevermind, I was able to get that number to change using my new achievements folder (number went from 51 to 55).  Steam must have synced the achievement folder before I backed up my broken files.  Crud.

Edited March 26, 2019 by Nehm

[Torm51]

We have to make sure the mods see this post.

Edited March 29, 2019 by Torm51

[pomenitul]

I'm more than a little ruffled that they haven't acknowledged this yet. After not delivering a fix for almost a full year.

[Nehm]

I don't think we have to worry.  Original thread, sent them my output log and save folders.  They responded via email, they confirmed that they read the last post with my solution:  https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/108687-game-running-choppy-suddenly/

 

I'm really interested in finding out what is causing the issue, so hopefully they can shed some light when they release a proper fix in a future patch.

Edited March 31, 2019 by Nehm

[Archaven]

I'm more than a little ruffled that they haven't acknowledged this yet. After not delivering a fix for almost a full year.

They mostly abandoned the game already. If I'm them I probably do the same focusing on outer worlds now. Most fanboys are keen on defending them.

 

They often forgot they are not doing charity. They are a business. Obsidian games are really quality in terms of content and gameplay.

 

The biggest issues are bugs. Obsidian games are really buggy and they seems to not have any quality and standards in resolving them. Often recurring bugs. And not only that. Critical bugs even reintroduced in a game that released more than a year.

 

The more they fix or change it the worst it becomes. It's really disappointing for me as a gamer.

[Insolentius]

Obsidian games are really buggy and they seems to not have any quality and standards in resolving them.

It's not about quality & standards; it's about saving money by way of maintaining a bare-bones QA team.

Edited March 31, 2019 by Insolentius

[pomenitul]

While we wait for a sign, does anyone know how to thoroughly delete Steam cloud saves?

[rockfish42]

If you delete the save game folder with the game running and then quit it should delete the cloud files, or at least that's the way it worked with POE1.

[Adam Brennecke]

If someone has a save game with this problem, can you please upload it so we can take a look at it? You may need to zip up your achievements into this as well since it sounds like it might be tied to the achievement system.

Thank you very much! We are aware of some of these performance issues and looking into if we can fix them.

[Nehm]

@Adam Brennecke I responded to your reddit post with a download link containing my original 'busted' files that I was able to restore using shadow explorer.  The stuttering issues did not return when I restored the files, but maybe there will be something that can help.  I'll post the link here as well.  These are the saves I was playing when I recorded this video https://streamable.com/qpca3.

[Torm51]

Hey!  The saves game fix posted Hymeir, may have worked for me.  Stuttering seems to be much much improved almost non-existant.  Further testing needed.  Can I delete his the "fixed" saves that I uploaded from his file after I have placed them in my saved folder file?