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[benicillin]

Hopefully it gets resolved for everyone that is having problems. I'm about 2-3 hours in on PS4 and haven't had any bugs or crashes but have noticed some somewhat annoying framerate dips - nothing I would call gamebreaking or terrible, but still unfortunate for a game that is so great.

From what I've seen of Sean's comments on the matter I'm sure they're working their asses off to get things resolved for everyone the best way they can.

 

[Bruce Springsteen]

Glad I saw this thread, was just about to buy this game

 

[tuxfool]

I also don't have a confirmation that it's actually Unity 4 but, considering when it started development, I cannot imagine it's using Unity 5. I can't really say with any certainty, though, that's pure guesswork.

Sean Vanaman said on Reddit it was Unity 5.

 

[dark10x]

Sean Vanaman said on Reddit it was Unity 5.

That's...actually bad news. Was really hoping we'd see faster performance in Unity 5 titles. My dislike of the engine continues.

 

[Pyramid head]

Firewatch's performance, while sub-par, isn't game-breaking.

Never said it was, I haven't played it. Just saying that, at one point, platform holders did bug this sort of stuff during certification. Judging by the videos in this thread I would have thrown a bug in for that, I did for the Jax trilogy for the Vita and that didn't result in any less of that game.

 

[GinoFelino]

That's...actually bad news. Was really hoping we'd see faster performance in Unity 5 titles. My dislike of the engine continues.

But it's good news for the probability of this being fixed somewhat, right?

 

[tuxfool]

That's...actually bad news. Was really hoping we'd see faster performance in Unity 5 titles. My dislike of the engine continues.

Yeah, probably. Judging from my experience in Dreamfall Chapters, Unity 5 is a substantial improvement over 4. The same scenes in the 4 to 5 transition got much higher minimum framerates and better lighting (which isn't being used here due to the TOD requirements), but ultimately the performance is still bad considering what is being rendered.

 

[dan2026]

Why do developers continue to use this crappy Unity engine if it continually gives subpar results?

 

[JRW]

Unity doesn't seem to fare well on PS4.. Even a simple looking game such as Grow Home (unity based) had performance issues on PS4 yet runs 60fps on PC's with older graphic cards.

 

[GinoFelino]

Why do developers continue to use this crappy Unity engine if it continually gives subpar results?

This has been explained quite well a page or so back.

 

[border]

How bad was Grow Home on PS4? Digital Foundry never did an analysis on that game, did they?

 

[uomoartificiale]

I read this thread and I thought the problems were overstated (as it may usually happens on GAF). I have to say this game really runs like shit. It's great, don't get me wrong, I'm hooked. But the framerate is really distracting, especially when standing still and panning the camera. I really wished I bought it on PC.

 

[NotTheGuyYouKill]

How long before a fix/patch is out?

 

[Parham]

Something else to keep in mind, with regards to their engine choice: Campo Santo was working on Firewatch well before UE4 was released. The only other competitive solution would have been UDK (lol).

 

[swearing-circle]

The technical issues haven't affected my enjoyment of the game so far thankfully but there's no denying how awful the framerate is. I have no idea why they decided to release it in this state.

 

[notaskwid]

This kind of entitlement is a lot worse for the industry than a game that needs optimization getting released for $18-20.

"For now, M3Freak is on my (blocked) list."

God forgive a paying customer who values his money above the "industry".
If a game doesn't ship up to your standards, I don't see the problem on passing on it due to it.

 

[Danlord]

How bad was Grow Home on PS4? Digital Foundry never did an analysis on that game, did they?

I played a fair bit of that, it had terrible screen-tearing until they introduced a patch to add v-sync. It does have issue staying solid 60FPS, especially when you get higher up, but even then when looking towards the level at which you're at it still doesn't feel smooth 60fps.

 

[aka_bueno]

I went in to this game thinking the issues were totally overblown, but after playing it last night to Day 3...the performance is BAD.

It doesn't make the game unplayable, because you don't really do much (at least so far) and your input in the game isn't anywhere near as critical as other genres, however...the constant stuttering and split second freezing and stuttery framerate very much can be distracting. I experienced a few of the issues on Day 1 and thought ok well this isn't toooo bad, but after Day 1 it's gotten like way worse to the point where the game seems to run stuttery just as often as it runs smoothly.

All that said though, at least for me it doesn't make it unplayable. Just highly distracting. If this was a competitive FPS or racing game, it'd be unplayable. But it's not, so I'm still able to enjoy it.

 

[LoveCake]

Aw fuck I just bought it, wish I had seen this.

Same here

Have Campo Santo came out & said anything about this yet?

 

[plasmawave]

I will say this tho and it's probably not specific to only the PS4 version.
In this game sometimes the events don't trigger.

Spoiler

When you enter the locked door in the cave, supposedly a guy shuts the door behind you and locks you in the cave except this never happened to me. I was like huh? Is Henry delusional or something? Is this part of his character now??

Or maybe that's how it's supposed to be I dunno.

 

[PBY]

I read this thread and I thought the problems were overstated (as it may usually happens on GAF). I have to say this game really runs like shit. It's great, don't get me wrong, I'm hooked. But the framerate is really distracting, especially when standing still and panning the camera. I really wished I bought it on PC.

They're not. I don't even notice most framerate issues - for example, I thought Just Cause was fine.


This is super noticeable.

 

[Humdinger]

Played about an hour, haven't noticed any performance issues yet, although I tend to be less sensitive to that stuff than most people on forums. Enjoying the game so far.

 

[masq]

yup, its awful
We're waiting for the patch

 

[evi]

Finished the game earlier tonight. The bad performance was distracting, and the game froze twice. Stuttering and uneven fps happened rather frequently.

That being said I really enjoyed the game. I think it is really worth playing.

But maybe wait for a patch if you are really sensitive to performance issues.

 

[TalonJH]

I'm just going to wait for the promised patch.

 

[InsaneTiger]

I am going to guess you are in your late teens/early 20s.

You never disappoint racer.

 

[JaseC]

Never said it was, I haven't played it. Just saying that, at one point, platform holders did bug this sort of stuff during certification. Judging by the videos in this thread I would have thrown a bug in for that, I did for the Jax trilogy for the Vita and that didn't result in any less of that game.

Not "game-breaking" as in "literally breaks the game" but rather "overly harmful to the desired user experience". But the point is moot at as we're at cross-purposes here. QA testers making note of poor performance and an arbitrary performance goal being a certification requirement are not one and the same.

 

[element]

Not sure how they are going to fix this. This is an issue as other have stated with how garbage collection works in Unity and this is an issue with EVERY Unity game. You either have to design your content around the failures/limitations of the engine or spend major time refactoring how garbage collection works or just accept it.

This isn't an overnight fix and could potentially take weeks to really 'solve', if they can.

 

[woen]

So

We'll definitely be patching all platforms with every little content and performance fix we can find so folks can rest assured we're doing everything we can (and WILL for a long time. We want the game that's on Steam/PS4/anywhere to be the best possible version even after we're out out of the excitement of the launch window).

And they said they need to speak with Sony and Unity so it's going to take some time.

Well I think I'll get it in 1 month or so when it'll be fixed (or not fixed but on sale).

also lol@"we didn't test the game on real PS4" what about certification ?

 

[hesido]

Not sure how they are going to fix this. This is an issue as other have stated with how garbage collection works in Unity and this is an issue with EVERY Unity game. You either have to design your content around the failures/limitations of the engine or spend major time refactoring how garbage collection works or just accept it.

This isn't an overnight fix and could potentially take weeks to really 'solve', if they can.

The PS4 Dev Unit is better at garbage collection, confirmed!

Spoiler

(Garbage collecting programming languages suck for game development.)

 

[RageWaffles]

Bought the game even after seeing this thread (confirmed part of the problem) because I was still so interested in it. Right away I noticed stuttering whenever I panned the camera around, and when moving while also moving the camera, it will frequently freeze for up to 2 seconds. The acceleration when moving the camera horizontally is just awful; I always end up overshooting because of it. I feel like I'm being punished whenever I touch the right stick.

I've also noticed some, I think, graphical glitches. Just a some minor things like rocks in the middle of nowhere seeming to have bright red lights shining on them, rocks in a cave emitting a red glow when I shined my flashlight on them, and, in the same cave, a corner of it was just pitch black.

(However, still enjoying the game despite the literal headaches.)

 

[holygeesus]

So



And they said they need to speak with Sony and Unity so it's going to take some time.

Well I think I'll get it in 1 month or so when it'll be fixed (or not fixed but on sale).

also lol@"we didn't test the game on real PS4" what about certification ?

You can't run unsigned code on a retail PS4 so all testing was done on the dev kits, which are different in spec. Given the obvious care they have put into the title, I can't see them happily releasing a game with such problems knowingly.

 

[Trojan]

I agree with this. As someone who uses Unity without issues (unless we update and some systems move or are deprecated) - its a very GOOD engine if you use it within its means. Garbage collection is my biggest beef but you can work with it with some optimization.

Now - to the issues.

-Its an all-in-one type of solution. Its not amazing at any one thing, rather, good at a whole bunch of stuff. Devs need to keep this in mind. It can't do everything and is poorly suited for several jobs.

-Extensibility through asset packages sounds good on paper, but again they are developed by third parties with the constraints of Unity and live in the same box. If the engine isn't capable of doing X - creating an extension or asset that tries to do X isn't going to be 100% flawless because that asset lives inside of Unity's constraints.

-Updating extensions sucks - you are at the discretion of the developer of "SUPER AWESOME CONTROLLER INPUT ASSET" or "STREAM ANYTHING ANYTIME FOEVER AND EVER ASSET" to update their software to work for whatever hardware you need. There is no guarantee that the developer of the extension will be around, will ever update, etc

-Garbage collection is very much so abused due to it being automatic. When you make a big game damn near everything should be pooled. Design the nuances of your game with this in mind and you will be one step ahead. Don't and you will have hiccups as memory is freed to make room for more streaming.

-Manually calling that garbage collection is typical of streaming extensions and assets. Its what causes the most stutters, quick pauses, hiccups, etc.

It's a very workable engine if you use it within its constraints and then some. The minute you try to push against its walls it begins to shake a bit. You CAN and you can do it without issues but it usually requires you to roll your own middleware for what YOU need, not something else that was designed as a "catch all" solution. Case in point: I don't like Unity's particle system so I wrote my own that works the way I need it to without bloat and is built with Unity's constraints. Do I have issues? Nope. Did it take time? Yep.

Its very easy to try and take things beyond what an engine can do. Its very capable when working within its constraints and becomes unruly when you try to move past them.

Thanks for explaining this. Really interesting and sheds a lot of light on what might have gone awry with the performance of Firewatch.

 

[Dash Kappei]

It's a shame because the game would've been really good but right now if you care even a bit about performance it borders on being unplayable, not cause of the crashes but because it's harder getting immersed in a world that stutters and hiccups at every turn of the mc's head and just enjoying the story and the world they've built. Unity's def a culprit but they should've not released the game as is, sucks the PSN isn't like Steam for refunds because it's good to send a clear message to pubs/devs in these cases.

I think I'll be fine tonight. I rarely take GAF performance impressions seriously after things like The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 being described as "unplayable" and Bloodborne as having "shit" framerates on here.

How much performance can affect one's enjoyment of a game varies from person to person. I'll always choose "hyperbolic" warnings over people here steering folks towards (possibly) busted games, at least if I'm warned I can then carefully investigate if it's up to my standards and want to spend money on a gams instead of regretting a purchase later. It's obvious you don't care about such things, I'd say it's way more hyperbolic calling TW3 at its launch's state "perfectly fine" like you did that saying it was "unplayable": it tooks many many months for TW3 to get its performance up to standards on consoles and CDP busted their asses to do so, if it were for you none of those improvements would have been made. It's this kind of lax attitude which gets pubs to release games in a state like that of Firewatch, which is much worse than TW3 and currently unplayable for many of us here. Unplayable doesn't necessarily means "totally broken" ie not functioning, but in a state which doesn't make it an enjoyable experience solely based on its technical performance.

I wouldn't have a problem with your own personal stance if you didn't always take it further to take the piss out of people that care and acting all superior.

Exactly. Thank you for being a voice of reason here.

Having way different standards and not giving a shit about performance = being a voice of reason.

Oh yes "thank you"... yes, for being part of the problem that lets Bethesda keep launching their games in the messy state they are.

 

[DeepEnigma]

It's a shame because the game would've been really good but right now if you care even a bit about performance it borders on being unplayable, not cause of the crashes but because it's harder getting immersed in a world that stutters and hiccups at every turn of the mc's head and just enjoying the story and the world they've built. Unity's def a culprit but they should've not released the game as is, sucks the PSN isn't like Steam for refunds because it's good to send a clear message to pubs/devs in these cases.



How much performance can affect one's enjoyment of a game varies from person to person. I'll always choose "hyperbolic" warnings over people here steering folks towards (possibly) busted games, at least if I'm warned I can then carefully investigate if it's up to my standards and want to spend money on a gams instead of regretting a purchase later. It's obvious you don't care about such things, I'd say it's way more hyperbolic calling TW3 at its launch's state "perfectly fine" like you did that saying it was "unplayable": it tooks many many months for TW3 to get its performance up to standards on consoles and CDP busted their asses to do so, if it were for you none of those improvements would have been made. It's this kind of lax attitude which gets pubs to release games in a state like that of Firewatch, which is much worse than TW3 and currently unplayable for many of us here. Unplayable doesn't necessarily means "totally broken" ie not functioning, but in a state which doesn't make it an enjoyable experience solely based on its technical performance.

I wouldn't have a problem with your own personal stance if you didn't always take it further to take the piss out of people that care and acting all superior.



Having way different standards and not giving a shit about performance = being a voice of reason.

Oh yes "thank you"... yes, for being part of the problem that lets Bethesda keep launching their games in the messy state they are.

Agreed.

To me, nothing worse than performance that breaks immersion.

One of the many reasons I did not enjoy that many N64 games with that 15fps compared to Playstation and Dreamcast at the time.

NFL Quarterback club shows breath and better detail, yippee, it runs sub 20fps, feels slow motion. I will stick with lower detail GameDay for 60fps.

 

[Ninja Scooter]

I pickd it up last night. It's definitely hitchier than we are used to playing. Reminds me of games on 360/PS3 and that's super disappointing, but for me at least, it's not a deal breaker where I can't play the game or consider it broken. The bigger issue isn't just the frame rate gripe, but the fact that sometimes it feels like it makes the game have a bit of input lag. Shame because the art style is pretty damn good and the hitching doesn't let you appreciate it the way it deserves sometimes.

 

[Snkfanatic]

They're not. I don't even notice most framerate issues - for example, I thought Just Cause was fine.


This is super noticeable.

Man and I thought I was blind to this kind of thing. How did you think Just Cause was fine? lol

It would go into slow-mo when you blew things up in most locations.

 

[VicDaMoan03]

Put about 4 or 5 hours in and think I'm close to the end. Overall I think the performance is fine. Yeah it has some slowdowns and it did freeze on me once, but it didn't affect my overall impression of the game. Really enjoying it so far.

 

[lastflowers]

glad I bought it on PC then, was debating between a console purchase but my steam-buckz swayed me towards PC. Looking forward to playing this once Xcom loses interest.

 

[Oneself]

I pickd it up last night. It's definitely hitchier than we are used to playing. Reminds me of games on 360/PS3 and that's super disappointing, but for me at least, it's not a deal breaker where I can't play the game or consider it broken...

Definitely, I'm having a great time with the game so far. Performance ain't good but I've played much worse. It would help if the frame rate was capped to 30fps, drops would definitely be less distracting.

 

[GinoFelino]

Man and I thought I was blind to this kind of thing. How did you think Just Cause was fine? lol

It would go into slow-mo when you blew things up in most locations.

Sounds cool to me!

Glad to see this thread is rid of the accusatory tone that permeated the first 10 pages. The posts explaining the issues with Unity in general were great.

Considering the Campo Santo comments about only now starting to talk to Sony about tech support, I doubt we can expect this to be (even slightly) fixed within the month. I think we're talking end of March, at least.

That is, if anything can be done about the framerate at all.

 

[AyaisMUsikWhore]

Any update from the dev regarding the issues?

 

[LoveCake]

I got this the other day on release, when I saw that there was a discount as a PNS+ member I jumped on it, I'm upset now & wish I had waited, I don't want to play it now until it's fixed though

I am really getting fed up with this now, PSN should be offering people refunds for this for people who want one imo.

 

[Sporran]

yep the issues are there but not game breaking for me tbh

 

[crusnik]

Played through the entire game last night on PS4. I loved the game, but couldn't help but feel like I didn't have the best experience with it because the stuttering is constant. It's bad. It doesn't "ruin" the game, but I know that I didn't have the best experience. And the game is so good, I WANT to have the best experience with it.

 

[Auctopus]

The frame rate is driving me nuts. I've never played a game with such constant dips and stuttering.

 

[JMZ555]

Im in no rush to play this so will wait for Patch and then pick it up.

 

[Dragnet]

I'm uncomfortable that nobody brought this up in previews. I know it's liable to change, but it is surely something worth mentioning. Happens at E3 all the time? Would be nice to get a heads up from our trusty press.

Also, ex-press like Nick Suttner who spent a lot of their careers picking up and calling out this kind of thing now not mentioning at all due to work relations/friendship relations to the game. Kinda weird. Not a targeted attack on Nick, love the dude (everyone needs to read his SotC book!), he was just the first that came to mind. Not totally comfortable on the 'elephant in the room' kinda vibe it gives off.

 

[Hahs]

Im in no rush to play this so will wait for Patch and then pick it up.

Same here - already picked it up, but was going to backlog anyway once all the AAA/future-release(s) hype lulls a bit; I hear it's 1886'ish in terms of plot-length.

 

[boredJonathan]

I'm uncomfortable that nobody brought this up in previews. I know it's liable to change, but it is surely something worth mentioning. Happens at E3 all the time? Would be nice to get a heads up from our trusty press.

Also, ex-press like Nick Suttner who spent a lot of their careers picking up and calling out this kind of thing now not mentioning at all due to work relations/friendship relations to the game. Kinda weird. Not a targeted attack on Nick, love the dude (everyone needs to read his SotC book!), he was just the first that came to mind. Not totally comfortable on the 'elephant in the room' kinda vibe it gives off.

Agreed, I couldn't think of a single person to highlight such as you - but the silence by the normal outlets on the issues Firewatch is having seemed to be extremely odd for them, till I thought about the team behind the project.

I'd agree that these issues are not gamebreaking the same way like SimCity's launch was, or the Arkham Knight issues on PC, but they still seem significant enough to warrant mentioning. The fact that they haven't been, either in reviews, or in a follow up post - is really not sitting well with me.