Digital Foundry: Bloodborne Performance Analysis

Bloodborne is an incredible game, but it's not much in terms of performance. Looking at it, I feel like there's no reason the PS4 couldn't run it at 60fps.

Going forward, it would be great if one of Sony's graphical heavy hitters (SSM, ND, Guerilla, RAD) could work with FROM just on the tech side.

I get the feeling that From's high degree of familiarity with their tools, jank and all, is one of the main reasons for their games coming out at a relatively good pace and (probably) not breaking the bank. Not really sure if there's a realistic scenario that gives us magically high-performing From games without a major change in their workflow.
 
I disagree. It would be an extremely impressive feat for this game to be 1080p/60FPS at its current fidelity. Maybe a more consistent experience at the technical level but 60 FPS? No way.

I'm inclined to agree with you.
I think From should try fix the loading times, then sort out the frame pacing and try to get the game running as close to a smooth 30 fps as possible, including multiplayer. It's already a damn fine game but those issues are the only real blots on its copybook.
 
All these issues don't affect my enjoyment of this masterpiece and seem very patchable. At least they nailed the AF on PS4! I can't seem to ever get a blurry texture at an extremely flat angle.
 
I do hope they come out with the patch soon; I think I'll hold off playing from early next week to April 17th (exam time yay...).
 
How did you play Bloodborne when you don't have a PS4? Just asking... It's funny that you have such an opinion about this game when it appears you haven't even played it....

Why would you subject yourself to such agony and torment when you knew the game was 30fps beforehand? To you suffer for our sins just so you can come here and tell us how horrible a time you had?

There's actually nothing wrong with paying games at 30 fps though. Sure 60 is almost always preferable, but I'd hardly say it's the nwarly unplayable mess you claim it to be.

We are not talking about a game not achieving 60FPS. We are talking about a game not achieving 30FPS with a pretty horrible image output leading to almost consistent motion judder.

It's hard to believe how many apologists there are for a game with a shit framerate. It's almost as you guys WANT these games to perform bad because you are just so used to it that everything else when a stuttery souls games is actually offending you.
 
It's hard to believe how many apologists there are for a game with a shit framerate. It's almost as you guys WANT these games to perform bad because you are just so used to it that everything else when a stuttery souls games is actually offending you.

Actually, it's because the Illuminati doles out booze and hookers to anyone posting anti-60 FPS propaganda. Can't wait to get bumped to tier 1 whores when I meet my quota this quarter!

But speaking of irrational behavior...

Yeah, I guess I just need to shut the fuck up and get used to never buy a console again. I just have to live with that most gamers are fine with (<)30 Performance and go with PC only. That's not an sarcastic comment btw, it is what it is. I'll try to hold my tears from now on and shut up.

And yet, nearly two years later, here you are.
 
You do know the title of this thread, good man, and the topic at hand? And once again, we are not even talking about 60FPS or not. We are talking about a game which doesn't even hit 30FPS and it's still a wildly accepted condition. That's a pretty big difference which you may or may not understand.

If FROM reads this thread, they will jank out their next game in a year with 20FPS. And all of you will be there again.
 
I do hope they come out with the patch soon; I think I'll hold off playing from early next week to April 17th (exam time yay...).

If you aren't already playing the game it's better to wait for patches. It has some nasty glitches which need fixed on top of everything.
 
If you aren't already playing the game it's better to wait for patches. It has some nasty glitches which need fixed on top of everything.

What nasty glitches? Only glitched I know of is the key glitch that they already patched. As for performance, it only slogs through Old Yarhnam because of the smoke.
 
You do know the title of this thread, good man, and the topic at hand? And once again, we are not even talking about 60FPS or not. We are talking about a game which doesn't even hit 30FPS and it's still a wildly accepted condition. That's a pretty big difference which you may or may not understand.

If FROM reads this thread, they will jank out their next game in a year with 20FPS. And all of you will be there again.

How is it you're still having meltdowns about console game performance after years of rallying against them? No matter what, no console game will ever hit your standards of 60fps with absolutely zero drops. Every game on a console will cause you to react this way.
 
How is it you're still having meltdowns about console game performance after years of rallying against them? No matter what, no console game will ever hit your standards of 60fps with absolutely zero drops. Every game on a console will cause you to react this way.

Did you even watch the video and read what I'm saying? We are not talking "not hitting my standards" or "not hitting 60FPS". We are talking about a juddery, sub 30FPS mess. Stop bringing 60FPS to the discussion. Discuss that From Software once again lowered the expectations towards framerate even more and all of you and the gaming press willingly accept shit like that.

Also, it is NOT a PC or console discussion. There are games with shit and great framerates on both machines. Don't make it a "system war" which I'm not involved in. And don't make this a "Thrakier" discussion also. Especially with shit like "my standard of zero drops" which isn't even remotely true.

Talk about the topic at hand - the topic this thread is about. The framerate of Bloodborne, nothing else. And it's really pretty shit. There is enough to discuss about this mess and what games which get through quality control with such a low standard of craftsmanship really mean for the gaming industry.
 
You do know the title of this thread, good man, and the topic at hand? And once again, we are not even talking about 60FPS or not. We are talking about a game which doesn't even hit 30FPS and it's still a wildly accepted condition. That's a pretty big difference which you may or may not understand.

If FROM reads this thread, they will jank out their next game in a year with 20FPS. And all of you will be there again.

I envy your persistent passion about all of this, as it seems you've been complaining about this for years.

At some point though, you're gonna have to come to terms with what developers want to prioritize and achieve on consoles.

Predominantly, people don't mind ~30fps.
 
You do know the title of this thread, good man, and the topic at hand? And once again, we are not even talking about 60FPS or not. We are talking about a game which doesn't even hit 30FPS and it's still a wildly accepted condition. That's a pretty big difference which you may or may not understand.

If FROM reads this thread, they will jank out their next game in a year with 20FPS. And all of you will be there again.

I don't believe he's claiming you are off-topic, per se, just kinda freaking out the same way two years later.

The logic is exceedingly simple, and you don't understand it years later: people are willing to accept technical issues (even sub 30fps) to play a masterfully designed game.
 
Did you even watch the video and read what I'm saying? We are not talking "not hitting my standards" or "not hitting 60FPS". We are talking about a juddery, sub 30FPS mess. Stop bringing 60FPS to the discussion. Discuss that From Software once again lowered the expectations towards framerate even more and all of you and the gaming press willingly accept shit like that.

The frame pacing issues are annoying, I've mentioned that myself several times in this thread, but aside from that real frame drops are actually rare outside of co-op (which I've never played) and it's one of the best performing games they've released on consoles. Some devs have different expectations based off of knowing what their strengths and weaknesses are and we all know that From is weak in the tech department.
 
dropped frames...?

I honestly haven't noticed... perhaps i've just been too on-edge, gleeful, scared shitless, & generally enamored by the game to notice trivial performance issues.

Sure, the IQ could be better, and sure, 60 fps would have been nice, but whatever... art direction and atmosphere are stellar, and the gameplay is captivating.

From and Sony hit the ball out of the park with this one.
 
yeah, the framerate sucks.
the drops to below 1 fps in some areas are a joke, but the worst thing are the pop ins.
they are just everywhere.
textures/things popping in left and right.

THAT realy destroys the immersion.
 
You do know the title of this thread, good man, and the topic at hand? And once again, we are not even talking about 60FPS or not. We are talking about a game which doesn't even hit 30FPS and it's still a wildly accepted condition. That's a pretty big difference which you may or may not understand.

If FROM reads this thread, they will jank out their next game in a year with 20FPS. And all of you will be there again.

Of course we will theit games rock

Whats wrong with you
 
The framerate is horrible and oh what a joke this company is for releasing another poor effort.

To all those people defending that shitty framerate: Do you really believe that you feel MORE immersed in Bloodborne than you did in DS or DoS last generation? We looked at these as well and said "wow, looks great, great art, very immersive". Graphical fidelity is a house without roof, you will ALWAYS 1up it and the effect on your enjoyment will always be questionable, it's just relative to it's release timeframe and graphical competetion. However, if you get your game to 60FPS you enhance the gameplay so much and that is something which always be great, today, in a year, in a decade. It'll make the game better for all time and just for a few months. Yet developers decide to put every shitty peformance hog in a game just to have some prettier looking watter puddles and better fog. And they get applauded for that by critics and gamers alike. Please tell me, how foolish is that?

And the worst thing about this, the more often that happens, the more people get used to shit framerates and care even less! It's a whole generation of gamers now who believe that games have to have constant motion judder. It's insane. And Bloodborne is shit just because of that joke of a framerate. Something like that should NEVER pass the quality control.
I sincerely hope that they fix the frame-pacing and framerate issues but the game itself is not shit at all. Not even close.
 
So I got this weird slowdown on the foggate of
Rom,
every time. Also had this slow down on the foggate of
the one reborn
and also on running through an open door in the 2nd floor of the
lecture building

Am I the only one with this problem ? It's like 1fps till he ends the traverse animation.
 
Ah the frame-pacing issue explains what I have been noticing. I thought there was some micro-stutter going on.

I still find it hard dealing with the loading times though, having to wait such a long time everytime I die or just to travel back and from the hunters dream is an annoyance. It does feel like they reload the world everytime a load occurs.
 
What nasty glitches? Only glitched I know of is the key glitch that they already patched. As for performance, it only slogs through Old Yarhnam because of the smoke.

The boss patterns frequently bug out and make them only do one or two moves the entire time, there are multiple elevator glitches where they don't work(makes an optional boss inaccessible), some stuff with blood stains vanishing and lanterns not working, inventory glitches that wipe out your stock of bullets and vials are a few off hand. The performance also dies on a few fog doors, the Forest boss being the most common one where the boss fight starts yet you're dealing with what feels like 1 frame per second framerate for a pretty big chunk of time. Also some sound crackling all around the game, most common in the forest. Online also barely works as well.

The boss one is the huge one for me, on multiple playthroughs my friend still has yet to really fight one of the hardest in the game as the pattern glitched both times, but from my playing I hit a ton of really bad issues.
 
So I got this weird slowdown on the foggate of
Rom,
every time. Also had this slow down on the foggate of
the one reborn
and also on running through an open door in the 2nd floor of the
lecture building

Am I the only one with this problem ? It's like 1fps till he ends the traverse animation.

nope.
had that too.
several time.
foggate of the forbiggen woods boss and during levels too a couple of times.

From and Sony hit the ball out of the park with this one.

not technical.
technical it is the worst "souls" game yet.
 
So I got this weird slowdown on the foggate of
Rom,
every time. Also had this slow down on the foggate of
the one reborn
and also on running through an open door in the 2nd floor of the
lecture building

Am I the only one with this problem ? It's like 1fps till he ends the traverse animation.

You are not alone. I get it in the woods and sometimes going to Rom.
 
3.bmpteu6m.jpg

i actually like CA but this looks horrendous.
 
all i care about are the loading times. the performance is exceptable for me...could just be coming from dark souls 360 though :)

the compressed images definitely don't help the screenshots/ca but the ca doesn't bother me at all when playing the game
 
ya i was in the middle of rehosting the image.

yeah, edited my post.

so, what am I looking at in your pic?
what is CA?

Not in my experience with console Souls games. On that score it is technically the least bothersome imo.

what?

except for bligthtown there was nothing wrong with dark souls 1.

and I never noticed any pop ins in the souls games.
not to mention framedrops below 1 fps and even sound-studdering.

I agree, even though it has issues, this is by far the most polished souls game on a console.

They just need to fix the frame pacing issue.

am I the only one, with pop ins almost 100% of the time?

should I check my console?
 
yeah, edited my post.

so, what am I looking at in your pic?
what is CA?

chromatic aberration basically the color separation look at the fence when the image is full sized. rather than giving a particular look it just looks like color artifacting.

also in terms of technical issues i'd say bloodborne is about the same as DS I/II. DS1 had blight town and many sections of slowdown. DS2 wildly fluctuating framerates https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YJPVIA8nmM
 
The frame pacing issues are annoying, I've mentioned that myself several times in this thread, but aside from that real frame drops are actually rare outside of co-op (which I've never played) and it's one of the best performing games they've released on consoles. Some devs have different expectations based off of knowing what their strengths and weaknesses are and we all know that From is weak in the tech department.

Judging from the Eurogamer video the game isn't able to hold 30FPS 90% of the time. It's constantly dropping frames. Just seeing it in motion in that video, it's hard to see any fluidity in motion. It seems like there is pretty much constant judder and it's horrible.

I sincerely hope that they fix the frame-pacing and framerate issues but the game itself is not shit at all. Not even close.

I called the game shit for it's performance, not for it's content. The content may be brilliant, but what is it worth if even the bare minium regarding playability can't be achieved. It's like the most beautiful sportscar you have ever seen in front of you - and then it can't go faster than 30MPH because of tiny horsepower. Accpeting From Softwares approach to designing games with low framerates, even applauding it or down talking it like so many people do in this thread will only lead to more devs shitting on the framerate and more people care even less because they don't know it any better. Where is this supposed to end? At some point, we may just watch an interactive slideshow as long as the slides look pretty. It's a bad trend and it's bad enough that people aren't talking nearly enough about that, because it's a trend compromising the most important part about videogames: Interaction. If now non-tech people come into tech-threads to downtalk tech-issues where are we supposed to talk about it all?
 
I haven't noticed any of the pop in you've mentioned at all.

I've noticed the frame pacing problem but it's not the 'end of the world' catastrophe some of the lunatic, hyperbole cry-babies would seem to want everyone to believe.
The framerate in single player is pretty reasonable apart from the frame pacing.

The loading times aren't great, especially for a game that can involve a lot of dying and reloading. To me that is the most pressing issue that needs addressing. Still, it doesn't make the game 'shit' like some people are claiming.

I can't comment on the multiplayer frame rate because I haven't tried it.
 
The framerate in single player is pretty reasonable apart from the frame pacing.

This sentence alone makes me shudder. It makes no sense at all. How can a framerate be "pretty reasonable" (whatever that means!) and at the same time it has frame pacing issues? Can you not see your own double standards? It's fine to like a game and all, but why not be upfront of the issues it has? The framrate is shit. It would be a significant better game at stable 30FPS and a much better game at 60FPS. Just name it, it doesn't feel bad.
 
Judging from the Eurogamer video the game isn't able to hold 30FPS 90% of the time. It's constantly dropping frames. Just seeing it in motion in that video, it's hard to see any fluidity in motion. It seems like there is pretty much constant judder and it's horrible.



I called the game shit for it's performance, not for it's content. The content may be brilliant, but what is it worth if even the bare minium regarding playability can't be achieved. It's like the most beautiful sportscar you have ever seen in front of you - and then it can't go faster than 30MPH because of tiny horsepower. Accpeting From Softwares approach to designing games with low framerates, even applauding it or down talking it like so many people do in this thread will only lead to more devs shitting on the framerate and more people care even less because they don't know it any better. Where is this supposed to end? At some point, we may just watch an interactive slideshow as long as the slides look pretty. It's a bad trend and it's bad enough that people aren't talking nearly enough about that, because it's a trend compromising the most important part about videogames: Interaction. If now non-tech people come into tech-threads to downtalk tech-issues where are we supposed to talk about it all?

Video games are designed by humans.
They have flaws.

Even despite these flaws, the gaming media and gamers alike overwhelmingly love this game. The game isn't shit.

And that's why you need to take a step back. The game is 100% playable.
We all see the issues. We all experience them. They are far from ideal, but you're just being far too dramatic.
 
I only had one noticeable framerate issue and it's in the very same spot in my three playthroughs. The part where you start seeing the
crazy old ladies
, there is one part where you attack off the cliff and it always lags there lol.
 
Judging from the Eurogamer video the game isn't able to hold 30FPS 90% of the time. It's constantly dropping frames. Just seeing it in motion in that video, it's hard to see any fluidity in motion. It seems like there is pretty much constant judder and it's horrible.



I called the game shit for it's performance, not for it's content. The content may be brilliant, but what is it worth if even the bare minium regarding playability can't be achieved.

You are talking drivel. I think that's the problem.

But hey, you've reviewed the playability by watching videos (Something that seems to be a growing trend amongst the hype-baby crowd) so I suppose all the people who have played the game and who are telling you it is very playable should shut up. Because you know better.
 
i actually like CA but this looks horrendous.

I was playing for the first real session last night, and it could be my imagination, but this effect was actually disorienting. I don't want to go as far as saying it made me actually naseous, but it was very bothersome and difficult to focus. It's kinda like watching a 3D movie without glasses. It seems like in his game you're doing a lot of looking around for enemies, and it was way more noticeable than I expected it to be. It's completely unnecessary. They need to remove this asap.
 
This sentence alone makes me shudder. It makes no sense at all. How can a framerate be "pretty reasonable" (whatever that means!) and at the same time it has frame pacing issues? Can you not see your own double standards? It's fine to like a game and all, but why not be upfront of the issues it has? The framrate is shit. It would be a significant better game at stable 30FPS and a much better game at 60FPS. Just name it, it doesn't feel bad.

No, it does make sense.

The frame pacing issues can be separated from the frame rate issues in an observational standpoint.

The game tends to flutter between 28 to 32 fps and that's causing judder. But that's not necessarily indicative of the game pushing the hardware too much. It's likely an engine issue.

Other than that, the actual drops of the game not being able to render 30 fps (the frame pacing issues are still an average of 30 fps, just the time rendering them is inconsistent) are not all that severe.

If they just fixed the frame pacing and didn't fix any frame rate issues, the game would be a much much better experience.

Even as is, the game is still a joy to play.
 
I only had one noticeable framerate issue and it's in the very same spot in my three playthroughs. The part where you start seeing the
crazy old ladies
, there is one part where you attack off the cliff and it always lags there lol.

I think I know the place you are talking about lol
it happened to me where the troll/ogre thing is and the old woman throwing crap. It dipped after I pushed her down then dived at her and sliced her.
 
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