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[Chazore]

Captain_Yuri said:

The recent trend of games really makes it feel like 7th gen all over again. I remember how awful GTA IV was where you couldn't stop those stutters regardless of how beast of a PC you had. These days it feels the same but the problems that PC is having is also leaking into consoles to some extent. Least those days, people can be like, well PC doesn't have market share or consoles architecture was wildy different so you had poor port jobs. These days it's all effectively the same. Sure there are some custom SoCs in consoles but like 90% of console hardware is the same as pc.

And what really gets me is this shader comp and UE4 stutter nonsense. Like why is it that a ton of games including Cyberpunk or Spiderman doesn't need shader compilation pass and haven't needed them in the past yet in modern gaming, they all effectively need it. And even when games have shader compilation, it doesn't fix the traversal stutters like with Jedi Survivor is having on every platform. Does no one test games anymore or are publishers/developers so contend with ship now fix later stupidity?

It does feel that way for real, but at the same time, with UE just throwing this new tech outta nowhere, and DX 12 still not being fully grasped by devs, the usual console curveball has us with 2 being thrown at us at the same time, which means we're now likely to suffer this compounded issue for a few years more, instead of an issue that can be resolved within like 2 yrs tops?.

We'll still have devs scratching heads at DX 12 for sure, but now we'll have devs trying to figure out the latest UE, and how that works with consoles, and then we'll have them having to figure how that works with PC, then raytracing stacked on top of it, then path tracing, and you likely get what I'm trying to say here (basically we're seeing convoluted dev cycles, and little time being given to resolve the issues piling up). 

Console for the time being have their own semi-band aid to this PC leaking over thing, and it's perf/quality modes, instead of "console has specific hw=always stuck at singular perf level", but even then, from what we've been seeing recently, even that isn't saving them from our issues we've been having (though ppl on here and twitter seem to love pinning this all on Series S as the big main culprit, when that's not how this fucking works). 

Yeah we're past the days of marketshare being lopsided, even to a point where pubs like Capcom and Sega are saying "PC is our market now", which is so wild to see being said today, compared to how they were with PC 2 decades ago. 

See I've yet to encounter the shader issue properly, as I bought HZD at a later date, instead of when it was first sold on PC, so mine loaded pretty quickly while I was busy fiddling in the options menu at the time I first played it, but from what I hear around the net and here, it's dire as all hell, and honestly sounds as bad as the time we got one of the worst ports of all time (Arkham Knight).

I do somewhat feel like this shader compilation passing is another short term band-aid, even though it's not a band-aid and just introduces more issues, but it's like a stop gap we now need to realise and overcome (Alex at DF is losing his shit at any of these and it shows, so if he's mad/bored/fed up with shader comps, then chances are most of us will be, yourself included). 

The one biggest issue I'm seeing atm, is there is no one, and I mean this, no one is talking about Q&A testers anymore, no one is talking about being hired to stress test much these days, and no one is talking about job listings in greater numbers than 5 (as in 5 testers for an entire game, that's it). I feel like modern Q&A testing, mostly for AAA games, is in the absolute shitter, and this is why we're constantly seeing bad port jobs more often and games coming out busted to shit (besides the mobile app design influence being there). 

We do need to stop pre-ordering these though and just wait out the first 2 weeks to a month. We know now these days that the publishers see the first 2 weeks to first month as absolutely fucking vital to their records, so if we aren't buying in those first two windows, they won't meet their records on time, be disappointed, likely shocked and then realise "shit guys, we might actually have to make our games better and delay them more often!".

Like I don't buy any game that's gone EGS exclusive for example, even when they hit Steam, that's my principle and I've been fine, hell it got me to buy Cult of the Lamb instead. Ppl just need some restraint, instead of the gimme, gimme, now,now,now" that the industry has been training them to do over time (Fomo also comes to mind as well).