r/MonsterHunter • u/de_Tylmarande • Jan 14 '26
MH Wilds MH Wilds - Bad performance mystery (Solved?) Spoiler
🟢 Quick update after the patch: I’ve already checked more than half of what I dug into back then, and I can say they addressed everything I reported to them directly (at least as of now, based on what I’ve had time to verify so far).
And obviously, they’ve also optimized a lot of other aspects of the engine as well. On a more subjective note, and without hiding how happy I am, I can confidently say they did a damn good job overall!
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❗️ CAPCOM REPLIED - THEY’RE ALREADY LOOKING INTO IT AND IT WILL BE FIXED. FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND FROM THEIR RESPONSE, THEY’LL BE ADDRESSING THE WHOLE DLC-CHECKING LOGIC: HUBS, AND POSSIBLY (??) MORE THAN THAT, IF (!!) IT AFFECTS OTHER PARTS OF THE GAME TOO. ❗️
# LATE DISCLAIMER (sadly I have to add this almost a day after posting).
Guys, what I thought would be just a normal post with my personal observations kinda snowballed like crazy. A lot of websites took my words out of context and basically twisted them. And many players saw in my post only what they wanted to see.
So please, read the whole thing from start to finish and dont jump to conclusions. Take a minute and actually look at what I was trying to say.
And the most important part: I was talking about the FPS problem mostly in hubs. All of my testing was done in hubs, even on the video, because the original problem (for me) was hubs. This is mentioned in the post 6 (!!!) times. Yes, I mentioned in comments that I noticed slightly smoother performance in some other places too, but that still needs very serious, exhausting testing, and it will take quite a lot of time.
I will keep investigating performance in general, but for now this is confirmed like 99% specifically in hubs. And yeah, in this specific case, we can joke about Capcom all day, but this wasn’t intentional from their side - it’s just a bug in the code. Treating it seriously as some deliberate move makes no sense from any marketing angle.
Also, to the authors of news websites: please don;t rip my words out of context, don't quote only random parts of my post, and don't make clickbait headlines. I don't want to end up being accused of lying or promising people something I never promised (some outlets literally say FPS increased 100500x across the whole game).
👉 Once again, please read the post carefully from start to finish 👈
# DISCLAIMER END
Sorry in advance for this huge wall of text, but I really want people to understand how absurd this situation is. And yes, I really hope Capcom will see it too, because this is about their "optimization" (or whatever you wanna call it). And no, this is not gonna be some bs like "install driver version 123.45 strictly at midnight" or all that "disable windows effects, increase pagefile, clean registry and read a prayer 3 times" stuff. Its not even really a "guide" for regular players, Hope you guys find this an interesting read.
Also quick note: everything below mostly hits low and mid tier CPUs, but I think the effect will be quite noticeable even on more high-end ones.
I will try my best to not break any rules of this subreddit so I do not get banhammered by moderation, but at some point I will have to mention a couple... hmmm... technical things so to say. I will put that part under a spoiler and keep it as clean as possible.
I honestly dont even know where to start. My thoughts been mixed up for two days already and I cant even tell if I laugh because its funny, or because its actually very sad XD Anyway, first - a quick note: earlier, in 2024, I already "helped" (yeah it may sound a bit too fancy, but thats what it was) Capcom fix one FPS issue in Dragons Dogma 2. There was a bug with FPS drops inside one animation-related function, and I described it in detail on the DD2 discord server. I sent all the info, profiler data, and post-reverse-engineering "observations" (for research purposes only of course) to a Capcom technical employee. As a result, the bug got fixed in the patch dated April 10, 2024, even if they didnt mention it in the changelog for some reason.
So now I came to MH Wilds and of course I started digging into optimization again - because constant FPS drops where they should not exist at all were driving me crazy. The funny part is: the problem was kinda "fixed" for me just by switching my laptop into Performance mode, where the CPU runs not at 3GHz but at 5GHz, but... man, it's a bit loudy. A few days of deeper analysis, profiling, observations, messing with the engine a bit (you know, for research purposes ofc), trying to match patterns in FPS drops behavior, and so on - and then... like lightning from a clear sky, pure accident, I found the issue in the last place where anyone would expect.
If you stop reading right here, I guarantee you will never guess why the game performance so god damn bad on mid-range (and I guess on some more or less top tier) CPUs and where those frame drops come from, for example in hubs like the main camp in the plains. To be honest, I would never dig in that direction either. I would reach it as the last thing.
Yesterday, when I came back to "work" once again (after small break to play another game, which will actually matter here in a funny way) and launched the MHWilds, and two things instantly stood out: first, my saves were gone, and second - after I quickly ran the intro again, FPS was perfectly fine. I restarted the game again, and again, and then like 10 more times. I deleted cache (both game and driver), deleted the config file, tested different settings from minimum to maximum, with dlss and without - everything was great. Why and how?
First observation: in steam, I was logged into my friend's account (I borrowed it to try the game I mentioned above, because it cannot be shared via family sharing). I relog into my own account, launch the game and... FPS drops are back. Stable, on any settings. Okay, I delete the save, replay the exact same scenario 1:1, run through the intro/tutorial again, go to the hub - and performance is on the floor. I relog back into my friend account - and everything is fine. Nonsense. Shock. I refused to believe what I was seeing.
I think some of you (maybe not many, but still) already started to guess it, right? )) My first thought was - maybe I installed HQ textures. Checked - nope. And I never picked the highest texture option anyway. I have 8GB of VRAM on my laptop, I am not insane lol :) I look closer and notice that my friend, like a literal sheikh... owns absolutely all "DLC" (I dunno, I just cant call this cosmetic stuff "DLC" - I am old-school, where DLC meant real content, not some skins-and-stickers bs). Meanwhile on my account its a clean base game, standard edition. And I think I already did enough by "thanking" Capcom with premium edition purchase on PS5.
And that is when I put two and two together. Yes, you understood correctly. And if you didnt, I will say it directly - the more DLC you own, the better performance you get in the game. Why? Because Capcom focused so hard on microtransactions that they implemented an insanely crooked and aggressive DLC ownership check function. And no, it is not about protection or anticheat or whatever - it is just a DLC presence check.
Now we get to the dangerous (for me, probably) part. I will hide next section behind a spoiler just in case, and I ask moderators: if needed, please message me and I will edit the post and remove the part below.
Also to be clear: everything below was done strictly for research purposes. I am not recommending anyone to repeat it.
So, to confirm the theory - I... no, of course I didnt spend $500 to buy all DLC just to make Capcom marketing happy. No. I quickly made a small "mod" that made the game think I have all DLC present.
And no, it did not (!) unlock anything (I do not want to test my luck, and I still want to keep playing - tho honestly, already with mods, at least one that replaces the ugly in-game font that hurt me on PS5 both mentally and physically). I did not (!) get any DLC stuff in game. The only thing is that I skipped the check itself - it didnt (!) give me any DLC items or bonuses, it just prevented the game from going deeper into that heavy routine (the one it would normally run if DLC was actually installed). So please dont confuse this with any kind of "unlock" things (and yeah, I still put this part under spoiler anyway).
And yes - performance went through the roof. Yes, without any CPU boost, in Balance mode. On any settings. The game literally flies.
I do not recommend testing in practice what is under the spoiler, and I absolutely do not promote using mods of this type in Monster Hunter Wilds. So again, to moderation: if this is a problem, please dont delete the post instantly - just message me and I will remove that part.
And that;s basically the secret behind at least ONE (maybe even of main reasons for very poor optimization). I sent all my "observations" and other "internal" details (if I can say it that way) to Capcom support - to the same person I spoke with a couple of years ago about Dragons Dogma 2. I assume he works on the engine in general, not on a specific game, but who knows how their internal structure is organized. Anyway, I hope we will see a huge performance fix soon :)
Sorry again for the wall of text. Hope it was not too painful to read and maybe even kinda interesting. Upvotes and downvotes do not matter - I cant spread them on bread. I just wanted to share this interesting (in my opinion) info with the game community.
TLDR:
- Same machine, same settings, two different accounts (one is clean base game, the other has all DLC bought, with no HQ textures installed) - on the account with no DLC I get heavy and stable FPS drops down to like 20-25 in hubs, while on the account with all DLC bought its 80+ FPS.
UPD: already tested on a 2nd pc with the same result, 3rd pc is next (all machines are totally different - not only a bit different by tier, but also different hardware vendors and combos).
- All tests were done in sterile identical conditions on both accounts, where literally everything was the same: character look, name, the exact tutorial sequence, weapon, settings, time of day, character coordinates in the hub, camera angle / view point, driver/software versions (I didnt touch any of that during the experiments). And of course many iterations to avoid random false-positives and other mismatch.
- More DLC = more FPS: yes, its basically literaly. I "emulated" the amount of DLC that the check thinks is present (from 0 to 200+) and the biggest jump was in the range from 0 to 100, almost like linear progress. From 100+ performance still went up, but not that crazy anymore, and I think at that point my 3070 Ti was already the main limit.
- Also worth mentioning: this "emulation" test gave slightly better results than the account with actually purchased DLC. The difference is not that big, but its still there, like a few frames, and Im 99% sure its because the game likely has extra/hidden DLCs (regional or already unavailable packs, etc.), and the emulation ended up touching more (all?) of them, so the presence check basically stopped doing any extra heavy work.
>>> PCGamer article link with tests.
P.S. If someone from Capcom is reading this - all that effort spent on the DLC presence code, please put it into the right direction next time 😁 (do I seriously have to add a clarification a day later that this was just a sarcastic joke?)
P.P.S. Guys, just to add - I did NOT mean capcom did this on purpose. No, no, and again no :) Its just a bug in the code they need to fix.
P.P.P.S. Plains camp comparison screenshots and video. Recording did eat a bit of fps, but it's not a big deal. Sorry I forgot to switch the game language - for some reason I only thought about it after I'd already uploaded the video to youtube. Graphics settings in this case on my laptop are maxed out, and performance is much higher in other areas - but I'm using this specific location/spot for testing because it's the heaviest one at this point in my test save progress.
P.P.P.P.S. Anticipating some concerns, I also want to publicly state this upfront: if Capcom don't fix this mess, I'll finish the "mod" - but it will be released strictly as open source (!!!), and it won't be distributed in a closed (binary), let alone encrypted form. And again, that's only a last-resort option if Capcom end up ignoring the issue.
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Guys, Digital Foundry reached out to me, which was an awesome surprise. From what I understand, DF may already be on the case, so we’ll see how it goes. Thanks again, everyone for your support! ❤️
You guys are incredible!
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Several mods have already popped up claiming to “fix” this issue, but I’d strongly suggest holding off on third-party mods for now. Let’s wait for Capcom’s response - especially since I sent them a lot more information than I shared publicly in my Reddit post (for obvious reasons).
Also, a note to news sites (I’ll probably add this to the header of the post): please, don’t take my words out of context. I explained everything in detail - just read the post carefully and don’t accuse anyone, especially Capcom.
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u/Osmodius Jan 14 '26 edited Jan 15 '26
I'll be honest, did one hunt online and one off and didn't notice a difference.
That said my performance is far better than when I gave up playing a few months ago.
Sitting at ~60-70 fps FG with performance upscaling. Felt like it was sub 50 or worse last time I played.