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How difficult is it, realistically, to create a 60fps patch for a last-gen game [e.g. Ghost Recon Wildlands]

SJRB

Gold Member
So Ghost Recon Wildlands released on PS Plus Extra and I love that game so I downloaded it on my PS5.

Needless to say the performance is questionable at best. Pretty poor resolution and 30 fps makes the entire experience play like my character is in molasses. It's still a beautiful game but unfortunately held back by last-gen performance making the moment-to-moment gameplay borderline unbearable. There's no reason the PS5 can't technically run this at 4k 60 fps.

So that made me wonder what's stopping a company like Ubi from releasing a performance patch. I don't really need upressed textures, just a patch that unlocks 60fps and higher resolution would be fine. But how much work is that, really? I know we're not game devs but as expert armchair analysts surely our collective genius can figure out if it's really adjusting some ini settings or if it's way more difficult and complex than I can possibly fathom.

I know there's a certification process to releasing patches and that shit costs money, but what is the cost/benefit balance? All I see are 60fps requests on Ubi's Twitter, youtube page, subreddits. So there's definitely a demand from players.
 
So Ghost Recon Wildlands released on PS Plus Extra and I love that game so I downloaded it on my PS5.

Needless to say the performance is questionable at best. Pretty poor resolution and 30 fps makes the entire experience play like my character is in molasses. It's still a beautiful game but unfortunately held back by last-gen performance making the moment-to-moment gameplay borderline unbearable. There's no reason the PS5 can't technically run this at 4k 60 fps.

So that made me wonder what's stopping a company like Ubi from releasing a performance patch. I don't really need upressed textures, just a patch that unlocks 60fps and higher resolution would be fine. But how much work is that, really? I know we're not game devs but as expert armchair analysts surely our collective genius can figure out if it's really adjusting some ini settings or if it's way more difficult and complex than I can possibly fathom.

I know there's a certification process to releasing patches and that shit costs money, but what is the cost/benefit balance? All I see are 60fps requests on Ubi's Twitter, youtube page, subreddits. So there's definitely a demand from players.
Ubi likely sees zero ROI on releasing a patch, so they simply won't do it. It would be very easy, of course. Maybe a couple of days of work for a handful of devs at most.
 

Doczu

Member
Depends. Is it a flick of a switch (change 1 line of code from tick(30) to tick(60)) or is the whole game logic, scripting and physics hard coded to 30fps? Cause that aint so easy and takes some work to do.
I'm afraid brute forcing something isn't always the answer.
 
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mrcroket

Member
Probably the problem is not the patch itself, but the testing requiered to ensure that it doesn't broke anything (so time consumption and money cost), also I think that companies (MS, Sony) charge developers to upload patches.
 

Nankatsu

Member
Most probably is not worthy for Ubi, the player base must be too low, because they did it for Division 2.

But I would definitely try the game if it had a 60 fps mode.
 
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winjer

Gold Member
Depends. Is it a flick of a switch (change 1 line of code from tick(30) to tick(60)) or is the whole game logic, scripting and physics hard coded to 30fps? Cause that aint so easy and takes some work to do.
I'm afraid brute forcing something isn't always the answer.

Only the most incompetent of devs continue to lock game logic and physics to frame rate.
Consoles have internal precision clocks to avoid screw ups like that.
 

Doczu

Member
Only the most incompetent of devs continue to lock game logic and physics to frame rate.
Consoles have internal precision clocks to avoid screw ups like that.
True, but you never know who codes. I'm no expert on coding, but what about third party plugins and engines used? Could be they also have an impact when porting and unlocking the framerate?
Probably the problem is not the patch itself, but the testing requiered to ensure that it doesn't broke anything (so time consumption and money cost), also I think that companies (MS, Sony) charge developers to upload patches.
I think they stoped during the PS3/X360 era. People where bitching sbout it as a lot of games had delayed or cancelled patches and support because of it.
 

winjer

Gold Member
True, but you never know who codes. I'm no expert on coding, but what about third party plugins and engines used? Could be they also have an impact when porting and unlocking the framerate?

Consider that most games are also on PC, with unlocked frame rates.
Very few games are coded with locks to frame rate, in the last decade.
Ghost Recon Wildlands runs very well with unlocked frame rate on PC.
But it's an old game, and there is a sequel on the market, that has micro-transactions and NFTs. So Ubisoft has no reason to upgrade the old game, undermining the newest.
 

01011001

Banned
if these games had modding support similar to Bethesda games on console, you can bet your ass almost all last gen games would have had a 60fps or even 120fps mod out within a few days of the new consoles releasing
 
So Ghost Recon Wildlands released on PS Plus Extra and I love that game so I downloaded it on my PS5.

Needless to say the performance is questionable at best. Pretty poor resolution and 30 fps makes the entire experience play like my character is in molasses. It's still a beautiful game but unfortunately held back by last-gen performance making the moment-to-moment gameplay borderline unbearable. There's no reason the PS5 can't technically run this at 4k 60 fps.

So that made me wonder what's stopping a company like Ubi from releasing a performance patch. I don't really need upressed textures, just a patch that unlocks 60fps and higher resolution would be fine. But how much work is that, really? I know we're not game devs but as expert armchair analysts surely our collective genius can figure out if it's really adjusting some ini settings or if it's way more difficult and complex than I can possibly fathom.

I know there's a certification process to releasing patches and that shit costs money, but what is the cost/benefit balance? All I see are 60fps requests on Ubi's Twitter, youtube page, subreddits. So there's definitely a demand from players.
Mildly off topic but did you co-op Wildlands originally?
 

Shifty1897

Member
Difficulty depends on the game, as some games have things like the physics engine tied to the frame rate. This was more of an issue for the seventh console generation and below, as most modern games account for a PC version with variable frame rate options during development. In terms of Ghost Recon Wildlands, it wouldn't be hard to do, the cost of putting a next gen version of the game out and recertifying it is likely higher than the development cost. As others have mentioned, it's likely not happening due to ROI. Wildlands flopped by Ubisoft standards and damaged the franchise's reputation. On top of that, Ubisoft is a dumpster fire right now and all dev work is likely strictly focusing on salvaging any of their in-flight projects.
 
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Three

Member
Only the most incompetent of devs continue to lock game logic and physics to frame rate.
Consoles have internal precision clocks to avoid screw ups like that.
Bethesda looking at your post:

dd0.jpg


Physics tied to framerate
 
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Filben

Member
Some people ignore the fact that so many titles are coded so things like physics, timing or other stuff is linked to frames and these games literally break (in some scenarios) when running faster than the original shit code.

Then of course, when your whole game logic isn't tied to the FPS, you'll still need proper testing because otherwise you run into areas where the fps dips may dip below 58 and you gonna have a DF video all over your game because of this and people will whine about the game having good locked fps. Slightly exaggerated, of course, but hence the need of testing, creating costs for the company for no additional income because they can't sell you a patch if it's not distributed by Sony's inconsistent PS5 upgrade path. And because most companies love money so much, this isn't going to happen for a lot of games.

I still wait for a 60fps patch for Mafia, but knowing that publisher, this isn't going to happen any time soon if not at all.
 

Dane

Member
Depends on each game, some games were coded on 30 FPS for console versions and could be a bitch to hack around to 60 FPS which is the case of Dark Souls 3 on FPS boost according to Jason Ronald, plus the engine is known for being wonky with framerates. Rockstar games are also a historical issue since the renderware days which made PC ports to be at 30 FPS or even 25 in case of San Andreas by standard, uncapping them causes physics issues. GTA IV on Xbox One X has QTE issue at the final mission when trying to climb to the helicopter because the game actually ran at uncapped framerate but hardly above 28-30 on 360, the extra power made it ran at 38-45 FPS and you need to mash the button faster.

Other games were coded for all kinds of higher than 30 FPS for the PC version, if they still kept the coding on the console build then you can even switch that with debug menus.
 
Ubi likely sees zero ROI on releasing a patch, so they simply won't do it. It would be very easy, of course. Maybe a couple of days of work for a handful of devs at most.
I mean that's not entirely true. I feel like with attention it's getting with Xbox Game Pass and PS Plus there is a decent chance that they will do it. Especially after patching AC Origins which I actually can't believe they did.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Ubi likely sees zero ROI on releasing a patch, so they simply won't do it. It would be very easy, of course. Maybe a couple of days of work for a handful of devs at most.
This is it. Difficulty could be a factor, but it's more that if the effort to make the change doesn't result in new revenue in some form to offset the expense, it's not worth the effort. They probably don't just have development and QA resources sitting around waiting for something to do and putting them on a patch like this impacts other project schedules. They should do it for fanservice and customer goodwill but not many companies really seem to care about that stuff any more.
 

Paasei

Member
Runs on 60fps on PC since its release. Can’t be difficult at all, it was just hardware limitation.
 

Fbh

Member
For most games it shouldn't be a problem. I guess it could be an issue if the a game was specifically designed for 30fps and everything is tied to that framerate. But these days with more powerful console iterations and PC getting the vast majority of third party releases I doubt many games are still made that way.

Depends. Is it a flick of a switch (change 1 line of code from tick(30) to tick(60)) or is the whole game logic, scripting and physics hard coded to 30fps? Cause that aint so easy and takes some work to do.
I'm afraid brute forcing something isn't always the answer.

True but the majority of last gen games were designed with a PC release in mind so they probably accounted for 60fps and above from the beginning
 

MetalRain

Member
Wildlands doesn't run great even at very high end PCs when running 4K and Ultra settings. It mostly is above 60FPS with RTX 3090


I think they use some kind of graphics wizardry that scales really poorly when resolution increases, but of course you can lower resolution and settings and get quite decent 60FPS mode for PS5.
 
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The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Games are hard coded to the platform. As long they are that, it's fixed what it can run with, and adding additional settings takes long to do, and you do it for free.

Console gamers don't need to worry about settings, games are just plug and play without the hassle of use twenty minutes in the settings each game.

At least, I remember that has been an very common "advantage" many people has used in here as to why consoles are better than pc.

PC has always been made in mind with different settings, where consoles always have had the same hardware.

It was only in previous gen we got mid gen refreshes as the first gen, and this gen is the first that fully accepts previous generations of games.

I don't know if Microsoft and Sony could go past it by force code it, like Microsoft has done by boosting a lot of x360 games. But I wouldnt hold my breath.
 
Ubi likely sees zero ROI on releasing a patch, so they simply won't do it. It would be very easy, of course. Maybe a couple of days of work for a handful of devs at most.

The thing is they don't know unless they release a patch. There's multiple games I've been interested from last gen and before that I've been tempted to buy but as soon as I see no 60fps patch I don't buy.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Time and Money.

Why should Ubi spend the resources to patch an old game just to give PS5 better performance? It’s a waste.

Publishers aren’t going to go back and patch everything every time a new console releases.
 

Zug

Member
Some games have their physic tied to framerate. Fromsoft games, Gamebryo engine games (Fallout3/NV/4, Oblivion, Skyrim...)
In this case, it's not an easy fix.
 
it depends on the game. it can be easy as changing a small piece of code as in literally changing “30” to ”60”.

the problem is making sure it doesnt break the game. as already said there are games where physics are tied to framerate. for example, in the original Dark Souls PC version if you mod to 60fps you could go through the ground when going down a ladder or not being able to jump far enough. i remember having to toggle back to 30fps to jump onto something.

i would say that for most games it would be a simple patch but most studios/publishers dont want to bother having someone do it and spending the money on it.
 

DAHGAMING

Gold Member
I have no idea myself, I guess its abit of work though and not just a quick change. I think it depends on if its worth doing it for the company, it wouldnt surprise me if they still do a patch for Wildlands depending on there plans for future GR games. If they anounce a new big GR (not some free to play shit) then bringing out a 60fps patch brings back players and new who want to try the games on PSplus and Gamepass and maybe more intrest for the new game.
 

DragonNCM

Member
So Ghost Recon Wildlands released on PS Plus Extra and I love that game so I downloaded it on my PS5.

Needless to say the performance is questionable at best. Pretty poor resolution and 30 fps makes the entire experience play like my character is in molasses. It's still a beautiful game but unfortunately held back by last-gen performance making the moment-to-moment gameplay borderline unbearable. There's no reason the PS5 can't technically run this at 4k 60 fps.

So that made me wonder what's stopping a company like Ubi from releasing a performance patch. I don't really need upressed textures, just a patch that unlocks 60fps and higher resolution would be fine. But how much work is that, really? I know we're not game devs but as expert armchair analysts surely our collective genius can figure out if it's really adjusting some ini settings or if it's way more difficult and complex than I can possibly fathom.

I know there's a certification process to releasing patches and that shit costs money, but what is the cost/benefit balance? All I see are 60fps requests on Ubi's Twitter, youtube page, subreddits. So there's definitely a demand from players.
Optimized for PS5 + 10$
Very easy......
 

xrnzaaas

Member
Personally I don't buy the explanation that stuff like physics might be tied to 30fps. What about the PC versions then? They aren't that different from consoles since last gen. It's all about time & money required for playtesting. It's just better for the publisher to sell a remaster a few years later.
 

mrcroket

Member
top hardcorest gaf technologists know it's a single line of code those millenial devs are too lazy to add
Because in some cases it is the case, in fact there is some games like bloodborne that if you have a hacked ps4 pro you can play it at 60 fps thanks to a simple patch made it with a single one person.
 
Literally all they have to do is either go into the ini files or the base game code and just turn stuff off or down could take all but 10-30 mins ps plus isnt about giving you games at the best quality possible its about giving you a demo for the "cheapest on there end" as possible if they made the game render at base ps4 resolutions and fps 720p 30 fps on the ps5 i wouldn't be surprise.
 

TheMan

Member
I doubt many people here can answer this authoritatively, devs don’t post here much anymore. My guess is it depends on whether the dev pre planned for that kind of flexibility.
 
Some code for actions / physics/ sleep objects etc are based in time/delta time of frame.
There is not one fps for all game but different for each logic and visual. So depends of the game is a big deal.
 
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