Stuttering, Issues, Fixes, Square Enix and what WE can do.

[Red]

Please lock this thread.

Introduction

In my Steam Review of the game, despite my love for it, I could not recommend this version because of the multiple stuttering issues present in the game.

This is just the beginning of the issues present in this version. No matter whether you have experienced any of these issues or not, this concerns you too because the fact is that this new PC version's stability is inferior to a version that was put out on 9 year old console hardware. This is not acceptable.

This thread exists because I am asking one thing. Regardless of whether you experience these issues or not, or are just not aware that you are experiencing them, please consider helping the vast majority of people who do and are.

We can start by Not Recommending this game through steam reviews.
If you want to go a step further, it might help to also raise a ticket here, but please keep it civil. FF7R Support Ticket [support.na.square-enix.com]

Video proof of the most important stuttering issue (DRS Stutter) exists in the first two pages of comments below, or in my review comments if you want to see it.
I specifically recommend checking out both the Digital Foundry Technical Review which you should watch in FULL and Maximilian_DOOD's Stream[www.twitch.tv] which I have tagged as soon as the issues start, and he only elaborates on them further as the video goes on.
Please note: these videos were both made before a hotfix was released, but the issue isn't yet fully resolved and the game has since been abandoned by developers (See below in the Fixes section for more info on this).

Yes, we can love this game despite it's flaws.
Yes, we can continue to enjoy this game despite its flaws.
The first thing we need to accept though, is that this game does in fact have serious flaws.
These serious flaws are technical issues and severe lack of PC features and options for both current and future hardware. The lack of support we have had from Square Enix for fixing these issues is unacceptable.

Leaving a positive review for this game, whether or not you are experiencing these issues is contributing to the problem, not only that, but you are effectively encouraging Square Enix (SE) to continue treating customers like this in future releases.
When will we say enough is enough? When Rebirth comes out capped at 60fps and only offers a maximum resolution of 1440p with no graphics options whatsoever?

The time to act is now. Sure, this may not even lead to anything, but at least we can rest knowing we tried.

Lets make Final Fantasy VII Remake Great Again!

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Fixes

1. Disable DRS
The stuttering issue is at it's worst when selecting 60fps cap or below in game settings due to Dynamic Resolution Scale (DRS) being enabled. DRS is not supported by Unreal Engine 4 on PC and is considered by the developers of UE4 to be "dangerous". It also goes on and states that by using it the game could have "the wrong GPU timings which could unnecessarily drop the resolution or increase the resolution too much and drop frames. Ultimately, it could ruin the gameplay experience. By default, the Engine does not allow you to use non-whitelisted platforms."

Source[docs.unrealengine.com]

A hotfix released several months ago on epic that made the 90 and 120fps options disable DRS, thus minimising the stuttering significantly, however, most people who buy this game will likely use the 60fps option, especially considering it's the default.

These people WILL encounter this issue. The game has no in game indicator at all giving any information about this so having DRS disabled by default SHOULD be patched into the game.

So, in short set your FPS to 90 or 120 within the in game options to turn off the baked in stuttering, regardless of what monitor you have.

Again, this will not solve all issues. There is more than 1 performance issue in the game. This FPS fix only fixes the most common baked in stuttering issue that is found in the video proof I have provided and a link to more information about the DRS hotfix and general info about this port can be found on PCGamingWiki[www.pcgamingwiki.com]

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2. Additional Fixes

• L1ONH3ART has written a fantastic and easy to follow guide that may help with your stuttering, I suggest trying it with this link and only proceed with the steps that I have written below if it doesn't work for you (Probably skip the part about the HD project unless you've got a beast PC and have already eliminated your stutter).
  
  
• You can also try setting Low Latency Mode to ultra in the Nvidia control panel and also force v-sync (or g-sync/freesync) through the Nvidia control panel. This has been successful for some people.
  
  
• You can also set your Shadows and Texture Resolution to low which definitely help minimise stutter, however I only recommend setting Shadows to low as the reduction in graphics quality is minimal in comparison to setting Texture Quality to low, which is a significant downgrade to textures, many of which already don't look great.
  
  
• If you are still experiencing issues or want to try other tweaks as apposed to visual quality loss, you can try this mod which many users have been reporting success with. Check this page here for a post with specifications similar to yours, and use the mod to help fix some of your issues. https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy7remake/mods/98?tab=posts.
  
  
• Some players have reported that their "Documents" folder is located in OneDrive (Cloud) and not on their physical storage. This will definitely cause issues, so make sure that the "Documents/My Games/Final Fantasy VII Remake" folder is stored locally.
  
  
• This is mentioned in L1ONH3ART's guide, but you can set a command line to help with stuttering. To do this, right click on your game in your steam library and select properties. There will be an option for a starting command. Put in "-dx11" or "-d3d11" and the game will run in DirectX 11 mode.
  Warning: Doing this disables HDR, and for me at least, only fixed stuttering that was already fixed in the above steps. (Not Recommended)
  
  
• Some players have reported that lowering all in game audio volumes to 1 can help with performance, then use an audio booster to bring the volume back up (Not Recommended/Further Testing Required).
  
  
• Some players have also reported that following the instructions in This Thread has also resulted in considerably better game and cutscene perfomance (Not Recommended/Further Testing Required).

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Other Confirmed Issues

Here is a more detailed example of other issues that need to be addressed, roughly in order order of importance:

• Remove DRS from being the default option in the game and either add an option to toggle it, or just remove it from the game entirely because its BROKEN
  
• Increased stuttering within the game the longer it's played (This can be avoided temporarily by restarting the game)
  
• An option to toggle or adjust intensity of the bright flashing that occurs during combat (it's unfortunately bad enough to force some people to stop playing entirely).
  
• Bad Frame Pacing.
  
• The game's ability to use resolutions beyond 4k 16:9 without the need of hacks. (This goes hand in hand with official Ultrawide support.)
  
• The game's ability to use framerates beyond 120fps. (This can by solved by adding an option to manually set a specific target framerate or disable framerate limit altogether.)
  
• An option to toggle API selection; dx11,dx12,vulkan.
  
• An option to toggle Film grain.
  
• An option to toggle Depth of Field.
  
• An option to toggle between different types of Antialiasing.
  
• An option to toggle between different types of Ambient Occlusion.
  
• Controller Vibration that actually WORKS (I have seen a few people report that their vibration works, this needs to be working for 100% of people, not just a few).
  
• A walk toggle/rebind on keyboard.
  
• A texture quality setting that actually increases the n64 quality textures that can be found in plain sight in the game, as early as Sector 7 Slums and in some cases even earlier.
  
• An option to enable ray traced reflections on select surfaces such as the mirrors. (in 2022 this should just be a given for a title of this calibre.)
  
• Nvidia gameworks features (such as the ones seen in FFXV.)
  
• An option to toggle Exclusive Fullscreen. (This may or may not help performance, but some people just want easily have the game run in front of all other system and UI elements. This option should be in every game on PC ever.)
  
• Additional general stability fixes and performance optimisations.

If you have any additional issues to report, please let me know

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In Closing

This is just the beginning of what should be in this version. This version doesn't even have close to the same features as the PC version of FF15 despite that versions flaws.
This version of the game should be the best version of the game, and we shouldn't need to hunt for mods or fixes to make it that, so lets continue to vote with our reviews!

Important

Originally posted by Red:

After months of consideration and a roller-coaster of emotions, it's with a heavy heart I have decided that I would like to request to have this thread locked.

I hope that people will still find it helpful as I am confident that as of right now, it's still accurate and it will remain so until a patch is issued, which will likely be never.

I made this thread to help people. I made this thread to use my knowledge and experience in both the IT and gaming industry to try and do something positive. I made this thread to try and help people encourage Square Enix to give us a better port than the one we got.
Despite my best efforts to only provide information and facts that are helpful to people, my love for Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VII Remake, other people believe that it's far better to just spit on those who are trying to make a difference than to take a moment to contribute and potentially save a port.

The decision to have this thread locked was made because I refuse to let people bully me. It was made because bullying has a huge impact on my mental health. It was made because I am already going through enough in my life and to be able to keep myself going and continue providing for those I love, it's become very clear to me that I need to do what I have been spending my whole life doing to stay safe and avoid being bullied, and that is to remain silent when there is an issue instead of speaking up and trying to make a change.

To everyone who was helpful and supportive, you know who you are and thank you from the bottom of my heart, you are the reason why this thread continued as long as it did. You helped me find the courage to try my best to ignore the haters and the information and research you provided was instrumental to helping others and will hopefully still go to good use to people who search online and possibly find this thread.

To everyone that harassed and bullied me, refusing to provide any helpful information by posting facts and sources and instead judged and humiliated me by talking down to me and making assumptions about my taste in gaming, my hardware and most importantly my life, you should probably consider the consequences of the way you treat people in the future and also consider that maybe, just maybe the person knew something that you might not have, and that their information might have been important.

There is a reason why people like me have depression, there is a reason why people like me have anxiety, there is a reason why people like me want to not be a part of this earth.

I am strong, I will continue to survive, but I will not let people bully me. If that means locking this thread despite my every intention to continue trying to provide the most accurate information I can while helping and providing people with fixes that other people have tried and having the odd discussion about our passions, then I hope you understand why I had to request to do it.

Remember, YOU are important, YOU are special and YOU are unique. Behind every face is a story, and some are more brutal than others so please be kind to one another and just because I need to do what I need to do to keep myself safe, doesn't mean that YOU can't make a difference.

Peace and love,
-Matt.

[Red]

Originally posted by Dome:

i get zero stutters on my 3080ti and 11700k on max settings 120fps

Read the original post. I am starting to get sick of repeating myself.

[Dome]

Originally posted by Red:

Originally posted by Dome:

i get zero stutters on my 3080ti and 11700k on max settings 120fps

Read the original post. I am starting to get sick of repeating myself.

Okay, i've read it, I'm not going to not share my experience though. I'm letting people know that if you have a top of the line system you wont stutter.

[Red]

Originally posted by Dome:

Originally posted by Red:

Read the original post. I am starting to get sick of repeating myself.

Okay, i've read it, I'm not going to not share my experience though. I'm letting people know that if you have a top of the line system you wont stutter.

I have a top of the line system. I get stutter. Digital Foundry has a 3090, They get stutter. Your "if you have a top of the line system you wont stutter" post is factually incorrect, but thank you for your opinion.

[Sm0k3f47h3r]

easy: put your review to negative and write a ticket to square enix

[Red]

Originally posted by Druidsaint:

Originally posted by Red:

I'm not sure exactly why it stutters, I have decent technical knowledge but I am no means a developer. All I can say is that before setting my FPS cap to 90, I could replicate the stutters in the exact same place every single time by simply walking backwards and forwards. This was 100% factually caused by DRS being enabled, this setting is only enabled in the 30 and 60 fps options and was patched out for anything higher.

Now, I can confirm that it's no where near as bad as before, especially now that they audio doesn't skip.

Just out of curiosity, do you happen to have your FPS cap set to either 90 or 120?

FPS set to 120 in game, capped 120 in nvidia control panel using fast sync

Yeah that makes complete sense, I think the hiccups that you mentioned you got a few times were closer to being more because of your hardware coping with the demands of pushing that much detail at a framerate that high, that and just the cache doing it's thing as you mentioned before.

Just for an experiment, it might be worth setting your fps in game to 60 just to see if you can replicate the stutter that I am specifically referring to, and possibly even see if it made any difference to the other performance hiccups you were getting.

Nevertheless, I hope you might consider supporting the cause. We really need all the help we can get.

[Red]

Originally posted by Sm0k3f47h3r:

easy: put your review to negative and write a ticket to square enix

You didn't read my original post, did you?

[Sm0k3f47h3r]

Originally posted by Red:

Originally posted by Sm0k3f47h3r:

easy: put your review to negative and write a ticket to square enix

You didn't read my original post, did you?

nope, did you suggest to do just that? then consider my post a "+1" =)

Edit:
after disabling DSR i almost have no frame drops. where is a link to square enix in your post?

[Red]

Originally posted by Sm0k3f47h3r:

Originally posted by Red:

You didn't read my original post, did you?

nope, did you suggest to do just that? then consider my post a "+1" =)

Yeah, my review is negative and was before making this thread despite my love for the game. Thanks for doing the same. I really hope they will eventually do something about all the issues exclusive to PC version that hold back this otherwise fantastic game.

[Sm0k3f47h3r]

Originally posted by Red:

Originally posted by Sm0k3f47h3r:

nope, did you suggest to do just that? then consider my post a "+1" =)

Yeah, my review is negative and was before making this thread despite my love for the game. Thanks for doing the same. I really hope they will eventually do something about all the issues exclusive to PC version that hold back this otherwise fantastic game.

this should be standard for the gaming community on steam to put everything on negative that gets released in this state.

nier automata got review bombed. guess what? a fix came three years after release.

the evil within was review bombed. guess what? they fixed the game.

i think it would be good to trim down your post and add a link to the ticket system of sqaure enix and maybe even write a example down, so that the really lazy can just copy your suggestion and send it to them.

i'll go and up vote your review on your profile! let's fight the power

[Random]

Well the Steam release version is still on version 1.0.0.0 when it should be version 1.0.0.1 which fixes majority of the stutters that people are having right now.

[Sm0k3f47h3r]

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡.:

Well the Steam release version is still on version 1.0.0.0 when it should be version 1.0.0.1 which fixes majority of the stutters that people are having right now.

well, what's your point? i paid yesterday full price so i have to wait? maybe i give them 10€ now and the rest when they fixed the issue. will they do that?

[Pilda]

If there is anyone without stuttering, please post a video from slums, where you are for the first time (it means the data are not cached). Show also frametime in the video. Then we can talk about how you don't have stuttering.

[Sm0k3f47h3r]

Originally posted by Pilda:

If there is anyone without stuttering, please post a video from slums, where you are for the first time (it means the data are not cached). Show also frametime in the video. Then we can talk about how you don't have stuttering.

who are you talking to? =)

[Random]

Originally posted by Sm0k3f47h3r:

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡.:

Well the Steam release version is still on version 1.0.0.0 when it should be version 1.0.0.1 which fixes majority of the stutters that people are having right now.

well, what's your point? i paid yesterday full price so i have to wait? maybe i give them 10€ now and the rest when they fixed the issue. will they do that?

Full price of what? It's 30% off on Steam or 40% off with Green Man Gaming. You're literally paying €38.11 or €47.64....

People from EU will throw out their entire life saving for egregious and predatory loot box heavy garbage game like Fifa but complain about a game that's being sold on sale right now....

[Sm0k3f47h3r]

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡.:

Originally posted by Sm0k3f47h3r:

well, what's your point? i paid yesterday full price so i have to wait? maybe i give them 10€ now and the rest when they fixed the issue. will they do that?

Full price of what? It's 30% off on Steam or 40% off with Green Man Gaming. You're literally paying €38.11 or €47.64....

bruh, i know you might not be capable of understanding that a product needs to be finished and bug free when you purchase it but that's your problem. i gave them the full price they asked when this thing hit steam and i want an experience that is worth my money.

am i only allowed to voice my criticism if i was being retarded enough to give them 70-80€ for this? are you high?

because of simple minded individuals like yourself the gaming industry can screw customers over however they want without any consequences and the quality of every new product suffers greatly for that.

i make it very easy for you: i bought the game and expect it to be in a bug free state. that's the same with every other product: i buy a car, i want it to have all four wheels at the time of buying the damn thing. can you follow? is this something you might want, too?