Determined to improve Dragon's Dogma 2 performance by any means necessary, framerate fiends plot murder spree of RPG's "inconsequential" and CPU-hungry NPCs

Dragon's Dogma 2 is almost upon us, and early review scores have already placed it significantly higher than its predecessor – an enticing thought for fans of the original. While critics have been full of praise for it, however, some concerns have been raised about the RPG's framerate on PC, which is reportedly a bit shaky in places. 

This is something that's already been acknowledged by Capcom in a statement sent to IGN. The developer states that "a large amount of CPU usage is allocated to each character and dynamically calculates the impact of their physical presence in various environments." Because of this, it explains, in situations where a whole bunch of characters are present simultaneously, CPU usage "can be very high," which may, in turn, impact the framerate. 

Although the developer is already investigating ways "to improve performance in the future," Dragon's Dogma 2 players have taken this information and are running with it. How? By gearing up for the RPG's launch by planning the murder of innocent NPCs. It's a rather extreme move, and certainly not one that's been suggested by Capcom, which previously confirmed that dead NPCs will stay dead forever (unless resurrected). But, hungry to boost their framerate by any means necessary, this clearly isn't enough to put some people off the idea. 

Over on the RPG's subreddit, some players are already planning to collaborate on producing a list of "inconsequential NPCs" to kill off without potentially missing out on quests and content, while others have suggested murdering NPCs after completing quests for them. It all sounds very evil if we're being honest, but the concept has inspired plenty of cursed memes as players come to terms with the idea of carrying out a murder spree for the sake of a few more juicy frames per second. 

Me looking at the NPC i have to kill in exchange for +15fps from r/DragonsDogma

Community after finding out NPCs are tied to FPS from r/DragonsDogma

Meanwhile, others are just wondering how far this is going to be taken: "Can't wait for a week to go and someone posts the game running at 60fps after slaughtering everyone," one Reddit user writes. 

"I'm giggling just imagining early Dragon's Dogma 2 speedruns that include killing certain NPCs when you pass them to improve the framerate as the run progresses," adds another. 

At this point, it remains to be seen if killing off the NPCs will actually make a noticeable difference to the game's performance, but as we approach the RPG's release date tomorrow, there's no doubt that someone will test it. Someone might want to warn those NPCs in advance.

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