This week, Capcom revealed that the PC version of Dragon’s Dogma 2 may have performance issues possibly related to intense processing demand (CPU) required by the game’s NPCs. In response, players are planning an NPC assassination spree in an attempt to increase the game’s frame rate.
“In Dragon’s Dogma 2, a large amount of CPU usage is allocated to each character and dynamically calculates the impact of their physical presence in various environments,” a Capcom spokesperson said of the issue. “In certain situations where numerous characters appear simultaneously, CPU usage may be very high and affect frame rate. We are aware that in such situations, settings that reduce GPU load may currently have a limited effect; however , we are looking for ways to improve performance in the future.”
With the game’s release scheduled for this Friday, the 22nd, the game’s community is coming together to identify NPCs that can be killed with the certainty that their premature deaths are inconsequential.
A post on the Dragon’s Dogma subreddit proposes: “Idea: a community-made list of inconsequential NPCs you can kill to increase FPS. Since the way NPCs are treated is theorized to be too taxing on your CPU, killing NPCs should increase your performance. However, what’s the point of killing NPCs to increase framerate if you’re also killing content? I suggest a list of useless NPCs made by the community we are free to murder.”
In response, one user suggested killing any non-shopkeeper NPC, and potentially even guards. Another suggested completing a quest before assassinating its related NPC, although as others have pointed out, this strategy is fraught with risk.
