Baldur’s Gate 3 Has Slowdown Issues Because It Keeps Thinking About All Your Theft and Violence

ign.com:

Baldur’s Gate 3 gets Patch 5 this week, and developer Larian Studios has promised it will fix issues caused by the recently released Patch 4.

Players reported increased performance issues in Act 3 following the release of Patch 4, with some who contacted IGN calling Baldur’s Gate 3 “unplayable” due to crushing lag.

In a statement issued to IGN, Larian explained what had caused the problem. It all boils down to the game refusing to forget unnoticed thefts and acts of vandalism, which eventually bogged down performance in the late game.

"In Patch 4 we introduced a fix that would prevent the Scrying Eyes in Moonrise Towers from immediately calling the guards on you when stealing, even if you were sneaking, or invisible for example," Larian said.

"This fix had the unintended consequence of causing unnoticed thefts and acts of vandalism to remain stuck forever within the ‘did anyone see me’ pipeline, rather than timing out and moving on, as is intended. Essentially, your dungeon master — in a real-world sense — constantly thinks about the acts of theft and violence the player keeps doing, without ever moving on or verbalising them. Mulling on it ad infinitum.

"These unnoticed and eternally-active acts of theft and violence eventually bogged down the game. The more a player commits those acts, the more the game is trying to keep that all up to date and in memory, and so the more slowdowns start happening. Essentially, the dungeon master becomes unable to operate. By Act 3 this caused slowdown issues, which after some sleuthing we’re extremely happy to say we’ve solved in Patch 5, which is in testing and scheduled to release this week."

Larian is currently on a victory lap following the breakout success of Baldur's Gate 3, with seven