Bungie "continuing to work on" Destiny 2's PC performance problems
Frames up, Guardian
For a good half-a-year now, Destiny 2 has run pretty badly for many PC players. Some folks, particularly those with AMD graphics card, have been crippled by issues like big framerate drops and stuttering. I've suffered it myself, and it sucks. Yesterday, Bungie spoke about the problem, explaining what happened, what they've been doing to fix it, and how far they think they've come. Still a way to go, mind.
"Since Beyond Light shipped, players on PC have been experiencing less than ideal performance," Bungie casually understate in their latest This Week At Bungie blogblast. We sure have!
My FPS has tanked severely, making some areas of the game quite unpleasant to visit. And long gone are the days I could pop YouTube or Netflix on my second monitor while running Strikes or playing Gambit - that now brings my FPS low enough to count individual frames. And this is with an Nvidia graphics card. Every PC is a unique combination of innumerable elements waiting to go wrong, and issues could be caused or exacerbated by updates to drivers or other software or goodness knows what else, but Destiny is where I'm having trouble. I'm far from the only one.
Bungie say they've been making improvements to PC performance with "every update", and claim "the game's performance is close to what it was before Beyond Light for some PC configurations." Not all configurations, mind. They say they're "continuing to work on [the problems] and are optimistic about the future." So what happened?
Well, part is down to engine changes made with Beyond Light in November. Bungie say they didn't have access to their PC compatibility lab, because they've been working from home during the pandemic, so they couldn't "do in-depth testing on the performance impacts of our changes." Which didn't help. Trying to fix the performance problems has been hindered by that too, leaving them reliant upon metrics from the live game, feedback from partners like AMD, and feedback from players. But they say they've been quietly working on it, not wanting to promise the moon, and they think it's coming on.
I like their optimism. I am less optimism. But I want to believe, you know? I've just started rewatching The X-Files and it'd go nicely with my weekly powergrind, especially with Savathûn spooking up the game.