Often it’s the players asking whether the game is capable of rendering 60fps. On PC, that’s often the case. But Killer Instinct is flipping that equation around for its PC launch.
If you’re unaware, the third season of Killer Instinct launches this week. But perhaps more important is the season’s simultaneous launch on PC and Xbox One, with cross-play between the two platforms.
It’s not the first fighting game to have cross-play with the PC; Street Fighter 5 did that earlier this year. But as SF5 players will tell you, the quality of play cross-platform can be a little sketchy at times.
To combat that, Iron Galaxy — the team working on KI’s PC build — has set a frame rate cap on ranked play. According to one of the game’s combat designers, Adam Heart, if you want to play ranked matches you’ll have to run a performance benchmark first. And if your computer isn’t capable of maintaining 60fps, you’ll be limited to online casual matches.
If you want to play Ranked on the PC version of KI, you have to pass the performance test to prove you run at 60FPS. Net/Crossplay is safe!
— The NERFinator (@TheKeits) March 27, 2016
The frame rate restriction doesn’t apply to offline/solo play, of course. But it’s a nice move by the developers to ensure some stability and continuity in the online mode. It’s worth noting that you’ll need at least an i5-4670K or an AMD FX-4300 at 3.8GHz paired with a GTX 670/HD 7950, as well as 8GB of RAM, to ensure you can maintain that level of performance. And Windows 10, of course.
Update (8:25 AM): If you’re getting KI on PC today, you might also want to know that the download is 21.7GB.
Comments
3 responses to “Killer Instinct’s PC Version Has An FPS Limit For Ranked Play”
Running a core i3 and GTX 960 and passed the benchmark test at 1080P with all settings maxed. Not too shabby !
Lol frame rate limiter, what next is it going episodic, will it have day one add-on packs, will people be complaining of of day one connected problems that don’t get fixed like every other PC fighting game. Why do people persist on bringing console games to pc then forcing us to conform to ancient specs, hell were moving to 8k soon with new cards on the way.
It’s the other way round. It’s not restricting you to 60fps, it’s just making sure you can achieve that minimum — the frame rate isn’t capped.
If your PC can’t hit a minimum of 60fps, it screws up the rollback netcode and makes for a pretty dodgy experience.