Performance still the biggest issue with this game

I keep coming back to this game every few months expecting the massive performance issues to be fixed or at least significantly improved at some point. And yet my games still massively slow down once I hit 20-24 Hearthlings, just like they did 6 months ago when I last played this game, and just like they did 6 months before that. I see tiny improvements but there’s obviously something wrong at a basic level here. I’ve never played another game of this type that has these kind of performance problems.

I’ve looked at the roadmap and I don’t see plans to overhaul the AI or the engine or whatever it is that’s causing these issues. How is the performance not the single focus of the development team?

I have to be careful about how many trees I cut down at a time. I have to be careful not to start a second building before the last one finishes. I love the game itself and I think it has massive potential, but that potential doesn’t matter if I have to make my town tiny because the game can’t handle a large town. Nevermind that your Hearthlings spend a quarter of their day having conversations still.

They’ve been saying for a few weeks now that performance is their current main project, after they finish up the new builder.

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I must say, that the performance is getting better and better every update. I used to be able to have only 15 hearthlings without any idling and the game slowed down after 17 hearthlings. Now I can have at least 20 without them going idle all the time. The game has lag, that is a performance issue, but the AI weight has been lowered significantly. The next thing after they improve current performance issues should be the performance of weathers. The lag gets uncomfortable whenever there’s rain or sandstorms.

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Performance is being worked on since weeks ago, but sometimes the changes are small so they’re not easily noticeable. We’re currently looking into improving the performance of restocking, which is one of the major problem areas.

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Are there plans to overhaul the engine or the AI or are you expecting a bunch of small changes to fix performance issues?

No plans to overhaul the engine or the AI.

Rewriting a single loop statement to terminate early can give a huge boost in performance. The team is in constant crunch mode when they’re doing content updates, so content gets churned out quickly, mostly it seems to test the underlying technology. As of two weeks ago or so, they’ve stopped doing that, and are instead polishing what they have. Which means there may very well be lots of little bugs that contribute to the slowness of your games. A21 was remarkably smooth for me, even with 30 hearthlings, when they were through with the optimization round.

It sounds like you’ve had bad luck in picking when to play the game, and I’m sorry to hear that that’s the case. I’d suggest sticking around for the next couple of updates, and see if it solves your speed problems.

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Also depends on your machine of course. I can have ~50 hearthlings in multiplayer and the game still runs decently smooth (With graphics set to the lowest setting). They get caught in idle loops from time to time, but they still build, mine, and fight for the most part. It’s insane how much better the game runs compared to before, and with any luck, it’ll only get better.

System:
Windows 10 64Bit
i7-5700HQ @2.7GHz 2.7 GHz
16 Gigs of Ram
Invidia GTX960m

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