Poor performance

[Sam84]

Recently my wife who I bought this game for has noticed big drops in FPS. To around 15-20, specs are AMD Ryzen 7 5800x3d, 32 GB ddr4 3200mhz and Nvidia 3080, all latest drivers. I've tried all the graphics settings with no change in performance. I dropped everything to low and borderless full screen etc. still 20 FPS. Convinced something is up with this game or certain elements. Or I have something the game doesn't like? Win11?

[Sam84]

To add a bit more, so she goes back into a house 144 FPS, goes outside 144 FPS for about 10 seconds, then 15 FPS. Recording performance in background hardware not being pushed to 100%. Turned off steam overlay and geforce overlay. Still the same

[ThanatosX]

Could try lowering the number of active characters, on the left side in the map you can turn them on/off. They just keep taping new stuff onto the game and I don't think nicely optimised is a priority. Performance hasn't seemed great on mine either, not unplayable but definitely noticeable.

[thegalv]

Poor performance has been a mainstay of this game from pre-release. It's so bizarre. I can be fine in one biome and then drop FPS by 50% in the next biome and then walk into my house and look like I'm the 6 Million Dollar Man running in slow motion and have to quit the game due to the 2-4 FPS I'm getting. Sometimes exiting the house fixes it...sometimes it doesn't do anything. I'm running on a high-end PC (I9) with RTX 4090 and 64GB fast memory (and, SSDs) and this game destroys my PC (but, every other AAA game runs fine). God help you if it starts raining, in game, as that also kills FPS (for me). All because of a game with cartoony graphics that shouldn't be pushing a PC hard. Good luck!

[wesnef]

That's very odd, I rarely have any performance issues - once in blue moon when entering the game in the first place there'll be some hitches (like it's trying to load/think about something) which then go away. Or if it gets very foggy, there might be a small drop.

Other than that, it's a pretty steady 60fps. And I don't have an uber system - Ryzen 5 3600 no OC, 16GB 3200 ram, RX6650xt 8GB, SATA SSD, Win 10.

edit: actually, no - I've got it installed on my HDD.

[KylaMcLane]

Ist hier jemand schon einer Lösung nahe gekommen oder hat über den Support etwas erreicht? Ich habe die gleichen Probleme. Ich habe mir nach über 1 Jahr Pause gestern das 1. DLC gekauft und bin heute auf der Insel der Ewigkeit angekommen, aber diese Ebene ist unspielbar. 11-13 FPS. Im Haus gehts bis auf 140 FPS hoch, kurz vor der Tür bleibt es für ein paar Sekunden auch so, dann fällt es wieder auf die 11-13 FPS. Wie oben schon beschrieben. Das geht gar nicht. Gibt es hier vllt. schon eine Lösung????

[thegalv]

I definitely won't be buying the new DLC if they aren't even going to fix the base game. My performance in game is now consistently bad. I drop down to 10 FPS, go in my house and I'm up to 140+ FPS. Leave and I'm back down to 10. Bounce to another map or biome and I'm still at 10 FPS or less. It's so bad that I sometimes don't even see the white rings when fishing!

I'm running the latest nvidia drivers. I've verified the game files. I bounce out to Task Manager, while running the game, and it shows that the game is using <10 CPU, 2GB memory and <15 GPU.

So...why the horrible frame rates?? And, why just recently did it get worse (the last 2 weeks)? I've always hit performance issues, in the past, but never did I get them EVERY TIME I attempt to play the game.

It's almost like the Beta/pre-release was better than the year old release, for me. :(

[thegalv]

Hmm. I may have resolved it.

Vsync was ON when I always keep it off (with my GSYNC monitor). Turning off vsync gave me 30 FPS.

I then set the Preset from PC ULTRA VERY HIGH to PC VERY LOW (might be off on the naming, but basically took it from highest to lowest) and FPS got better.

Then, I just kept upping the preset higher and higher. By the time I got back to where I had started from (ULTRA VERY HIGH), the FPS was back where it should be...silky smooth. I had never exited the game during the changes, so it was instant gratification on performance.

Anyway, I'll see if that sticks and if performance is back to normal the next time I fire up the game. It's possible that the nvidia app may have changed my game settings when optimizing my game library? Not sure...as Dreamlight Valley doesn't even show in my list of games, on the nvidia app, now (it used to).

[thegalv]

Update: I cranked up the game, the next morning, and it started with very poor performance! Not even 1 minute into the game, I was down to 20 FPS.

I checked settings and Vsync was still set to OFF.

I switched presets from ULTRA VERY HIGH down to VERY LOW...exited the settings menu...went back into settings and set it back to ULTRA VERY HIGH and performance was now back to normal.

Not sure why this is a thing, now, but that's going to be a PITA to deal with every time I play the game. :(

[KylaMcLane]

Vielen Dank für Deine Rückmeldung. Ich habe das mit der Grafikänderung ausprobiert. Im Tal der Ewigkeit angekommen fielen die FPS gleich wieder ab von 140 auf 10-12. Leider hat der Trick nicht funktioniert. Spiel beenden und neu starten hilft dagegen. Aber wer hat Lust ständig das Spiel neu zu starten? Ich jedenfalls nicht. Es nervt ungemein. Die Einbrüche sind jetzt aber nicht nur dort. Auch im Hauptspiel passiert das irgendwann einfach so. Warum auch immer.
Das neue DLC kaufe ich daher nicht. 30 Euro für solche Probleme? Nein. Da muss erst mal nachgebessert werden.
Danke nochmal. Ich werde es aber weiter mit diesem Trick ausprobieren.

[thegalv]

Originally posted by KylaMcLane:

Vielen Dank für Deine Rückmeldung. Ich habe das mit der Grafikänderung ausprobiert. Im Tal der Ewigkeit angekommen fielen die FPS gleich wieder ab von 140 auf 10-12. Leider hat der Trick nicht funktioniert. Spiel beenden und neu starten hilft dagegen. Aber wer hat Lust ständig das Spiel neu zu starten? Ich jedenfalls nicht. Es nervt ungemein. Die Einbrüche sind jetzt aber nicht nur dort. Auch im Hauptspiel passiert das irgendwann einfach so. Warum auch immer.
Das neue DLC kaufe ich daher nicht. 30 Euro für solche Probleme? Nein. Da muss erst mal nachgebessert werden.
Danke nochmal. Ich werde es aber weiter mit diesem Trick ausprobieren.

Don't feel bad. The fix also stopped working for me! It worked 2 days in a row, but on day 3 it only mildly improved performance.

My current performance issues are not the same as they were in the past. Now, I start the game and it runs great, but a few minutes (2-5) into playing, the performance just switches from great to horrible. It can happen if I'm moving into a new biome, or if it starts raining, or if I'm just standing still. It's like a memory leak-type event....it just happens no matter what I'm doing.

[KylaMcLane]

Ja genau. Das ist mir auch aufgefallen. Aber ich bin kein Experte. Ich habe heute Vormittag den Support angeschrieben und hoffe auf eine Antwort. Bei Discord wartet man jedenfalls vergebens auf eine Rückmeldung. Ich werde berichten sobald ich eine Antwort habe.

[KylaMcLane]

Antwort vom Support: das Problem wurde weitergeleitet. Ansonsten keine weiteren Infos. Hm...

[thegalv]

Originally posted by KylaMcLane:

Antwort vom Support: das Problem wurde weitergeleitet. Ansonsten keine weiteren Infos. Hm...

Thanks! Keep us posted!

PS - This may be coincidence, but I tried something and I have gone 3 days in a row without the performance issue (and, if I do hit a lag, it usually just lasts 1-2 seconds and resolves itself).

Right-Clicking the game and under PROPERTIES/PRIVACY/IN-GAME OVERLAY DATA, I hit the delete button.

That is the only change I made and the performance issue stopped happening on my next play of the game (and, the next 3 plays as well).

As I said, it might just be coincidence, but it seems to have worked for me. Give it a try....it can't hurt.

[Branch Off Bush]

im on win 11. It could be a drive issue. Playing the game on max on an hdd or a slow ssd may not be up to what the game is asking for in hardware demand. If the game is on an m.2 then I have no idea what the issue could be. im on a similar pc with i7 11700kf and a 3080ti. havnt had too many issues. None like you described.

[thegalv]

Yes. I'm also on Win 11 (since it was released) and have no issues with other games (other than D4 with the crashes from their new DLC!). I'm running an i9, 4090 RTX, 64GB RAM and M.2's for system/games. I doubt that my rig is the problem as the DDV issues seem to change based on their updates.