I’ve been easily able to replicate this using more than one setup.
When fighting a drowned Visage from a distance it will do a range attack. It shoots a orb that splits into five before they all hit the ground if your character is near this attack you will see your fps drop from 50 to about 44 or at times 34 if using vsync without using vsync i’ve seen drops from 70 go down to the low 50’s.
I was able to crash my game by have 3 Drowned Visages in one area no other creature or boss has had such a impact on my rig. I’m using a 2080 TI, i9-9900K with more than enough memory etc.
I’ve had close to 40 enemies on screen and didn’t loose more than 6 maybe 10 fps at best when effects were going off. I really hope this gets fixed soon.
Thanks for the report… Obviously the game is in Early Access / Beta and has performance related issues - this is not in doubt and there is no argument there…
Certain situations, maps & mobs (especially those with added special effects like Drowned Visages) WILL cause FPS issues depending on in-game settings & general system performance. Compounding these together is almost guaranteed to cause issues.
Two key things to note here are :
that your observations while putting vsync on and off and noticing a change in the FPS spike - this is a common thing that can be noticed in numerous situations in the game.
Causing the game to crash in the situation you describe is 100% an example of the performance instability that the game current suffers with.
People with higher end systems tend to want to run the game at max settings on higher resolutions - which would be a perfectly fine expectation IF the game were optimised and released out of beta, but its not… and this is when issues like you describe happen.
For example - I run a lowly 2016 machine: i5-7500/1060gpu/16gb/NVME setup and through testing I can replicate almost every performance related issue (like yours) and cause crashes simply by changing the in-game settings to levels that my hardware & the game cannot maintain. HOWEVER, if I simply reduce the in-game settings I can do exactly the same test without the same results… I have even done this with Downed Visages when they were first added…
For my hardware with the game as it stands right now, 1080p, 60fps framerate limited (NB: not vsync) everything on very low quality or disabled is VERY STABLE to the point where I have almost 1800h in play and excluding my actual testing, I can count the number of unexpected random crashes on one hand. Big FPS spikes can be dramatically reduced in exactly the same way - they still happen but to a much less annoying or game breaking degree… Sure there are things that even settings cannot help (like high mob density performance issues and frame drops when picking up gold) but it works…
So, until the devs have been able to optimise things far more I recommend the following:
It is VERY important, for stability & FPS spikes, that you make sure that your GPU is not flatlined at or near 90-100% while playing LE… LE is MUCH more stable if it is restricted in some way and if the GPU has headroom available to handle more complex moments. It is VERY important that your do not leave LE unlimited in any way and that you dont assume that a higher limit is actually doing anything. A good rule of thumb, I have found helping out here on the forum, is to aim for about 60% GPU usage while standing around in the End of Time doing nothing… i.e. configuring resolution/fps limit & quality so that your GPU is around that usage value while your character is not casting effects or actively in play. This seems to leave the GPU with enough headroom to spike up to 100% during busy moments without causing big FPS spikes or crashes…
Certain configuration options currently have very big impact on stability/performance vs perceived visual quality… i.e. imho, the visual difference while in the heat of battle between Ultra and High is very little, but the improvement in stability/performance is very noticeable. same between High & Medium…
Vsync as a limiting setting has mixed results with LE right now… It seems to be that implementing an FPS limit in-game produces more reliable results AND it is obviously easier to limit the game incrementally by a few frames vs the fixed Vsync matching your monitor Hz.
Generally by being conservative with the game right now, you can get it to the point of stable play with decent visual quality while maintaining the performance you need… There is not much else you can do until the devs dedicate more to the overall optimisation of the game… something that is important, but arguably less important than actually finishing the game content/3 additional classes right now.
EDIT: Everything above assumes: verified game files, recent gpu drivers, updated OS patches and a generally stable system performing as expected without other apps/things potentially causing secondary issues.
