Dead by Daylight is known for expanding upon its original cast of Killers and Survivors by licensing horror and slasher archetypes that players can purchase as DLC. To date, the Entity, a mysterious, spidery, and otherworldly Eldridge god, has already summoned killers from such realms as Halloween, Scream, Saw, and Silent Hill to participate in demented trials against Survivors.
The latest series to find itself pulled into the Entity’s foggy realm is Resident Evil, and the whole gang is here: Nemesis, Leon Kennedy, Jill Valentine, and siblings Claire and Chris Redfield, and even the Raccoon City Police Department building. But the Entity pulled something unexpected through as well, and it’s haunting both Killers and Survivors alike in the real world...
Immediately following the Resident Evil release, players on last generation hardware such as the Xbox One and PS4 began experiencing short, momentary freezes during gameplay. Although the hitches last only a second or two, they present a serious issue for the game. Dead by Daylight requires both calm and strategic planning as well as frantic and quick reflexes. These hitches temporarily disorient players: causing Killers to miss attacks or lose line of sight and Survivors to miss vaults and palettes. It’s not unlike when a family member crosses in front of your TV screen at that oh-so-critical moment causing you to miss a critical jump in Super Mario.
The timing of this bug couldn’t be any worse. The game’s developer, Behavior Interactive, is hosting a fifth anniversary celebration that is chock-full of special items, offerings, and plenty of in-game currencies. This event, combined with new interest from Resident Evil fans, brought a huge bump in attendance from returning, existing, and new players alike. But, in order to participate in the event and try out the new DLC, gamers on older hardware have no choice but to suffer through the freezes until the its eliminated in the next patch, which won’t arrive until July 27.
The community quickly deduced that the issue is related to the seek times of the PS4 and Xbox one’s hard disk drives. Since I’ve been unable to obtain a PS5 since launch, and I have been meaning to upgrade my PS4 Pro to an SSD, I decided to take the plunge and perform the upgrade now, and share my findings whether this would solve this issue.
Did my upgrade from the bone stock Toshiba 5400 rpm HDD to a Crucial MX550 1TB SSD solve the issue?
Yes!
After a quick test, the SSD upgrade eliminated the hitching for me on the PS4 Pro but also provided some other benefits:
1) From starting DBD from PS4 menu until the splash screen fades to black:
- HDD: 18.4 Seconds
- SDD: 12.28 Seconds
2) From “Press X to Continue” to fade to black:
- HDD: 43 Seconds
- SDD: 32 Seconds
3) From post-Offering loading screen to in-game:
- HDD: 1M 17 Seconds
- SDD: 1M 5 Seconds
So, what’s the takeaway from all this? Well, if you’re strictly a PS4 or Xbox One gamer, don’t plan on buying a next generation console or a PC, and can’t wait until the 27th for the patch, an SSD should work for you, and it should get you into games faster and just make things snappier overall. However, it won’t prevent your cat from walking across your screen during a chase.
See you in the fog!
