Ok, so frame pacing is clearly not what I thought it was so I decided to look further into it and saw this video graphing framerate and frame timing in real time during gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-WN2jLEVYI
What I'm gathering is that this is a fairly constant thing that happens during gameplay, and yet I've never noticed any ill-effects while playing, and even when I'm looking for it in the video I'm not seeing anything that stands out and correlates with the dips and spikes on the graph.
Is this just a placebo effect for the people noticing it, or am I just not particularly sensitive to the effect this has on gameplay? If it's the latter, can somebody actually describe in detail what the impact is on play and the smoothness of the game? I've always been pretty sensitive to actual framerate dips, and Bloodborne has its share of moments where it chugs, but I'm way less familiar with these frame pacing issues people have been talking about for the longest time.