STALKER 2 Craves VRAM. 8GB+ of it.

[TS2]

4GB GPUs are what lead to single-digit FPS and audio stuttering here, combined with HDDs that lack sufficient cache sizes or space on them.

A user contact of mine with an 8GB variant of the RX 580 reported a better experience, albeit with Low settings and a few config file edits thrown in there as added measure. My 4GB version of the RX 580 directly replicates the problems described in the Curation at Low Settings, Native 1080p scaling, and no config file edits, but not in every place; the Environment sound channel does not stutter, but Dialogue and Music channels do.

NVIDIA and AMD users will still be needing that game-ready or targeting driver either way. For one NVIDIA user witnessed, the 566.11 GRD may have mitigated the sudden frame rate dropping when entering a building area from the outside.

[Coe⁧⁧✔️[Quality Control]]

The game being horribly unoptimized and using the dumpsterfire known as Unreal Engine 5 is what the problem is. People with 4060's can spike down to like 10-15 fps in towns. 4070 or equivalent GPU's literally cannot get 60 FPS without DLSS / frame generation.

[TS2]

Originally posted by Coe⁧⁧✔️Quality Control:

The game being horribly unoptimized and using the dumpsterfire known as Unreal Engine 5 is what the problem is. People with 4060's can spike down to like 10-15 fps in towns. 4070 or equivalent GPU's literally cannot get 60 FPS without DLSS / frame generation.

Noted, but I am currently attempting to see if lesser hardware than that (i.e. RTX 30 Series GPUs and older) can mitigate some of it. Including making sure they are on the correct Game Ready Driver for it, as some NVIDIA users, like some AMD ones, may sometimes have a habit of ignoring and putting off driver updates out of fear of driver breakage, or just inexperience in doing it manually as soon as things get released. May update later if I hear about success in this field, but no promises.

Something else of note in looking up Steam Discussions posts is that the game is triggering Out Of Memory crashes on any system with an Intel 13th Gen (13000 Series) CPU and up. This appears to be due to having not updated the motherboard BIOS/UEFI Firmware to account for the microcode updates to stabilize those CPU architectures. Be mindful of that when looking through these; Or at least add it to the list of game causing problems on already unstable and plagued systems.
———
Additional notes specific to UE5:

It should also be known that the exact version of UE5 parked on by the game also is a factor. It still uses version 5.1.1, which is missing a few shader compilation and internal performance benefits implemented in later versions (5.2.x and up). This tracks with parking the game on a set core engine version and just leaving it there as part of making it "Gold.". Developers are fond of this due to the fear of breaking changes in future versions, and the extra work needed to deal with them on top of the extra work and time cost spent migrating projects. So the decision to stay on an engine build no matter what is final, potential overhead reductions be damned.

Also, I have heard that Nanite is evil and not responsible tech compared to the standard using HISMs (Hierarchical Instanced Static Meshes) and LODs for them. Add that to the list of UE5 problems in imposing this underdeveloped solution over other, existing instancing methods for worse handling and perf overall.

[Big Sneeze]

Do AMD/Intel/Nvidia profit from these stupid new inefficient ways to calculate graphics or has the industry lost it's mind completely?

[Coe⁧⁧✔️[Quality Control]]

Originally posted by Big Sneeze:

Do AMD/Intel/Nvidia profit from these stupid new inefficient ways to calculate graphics or has the industry lost it's mind completely?

AMD and Nvidia has a history of colluding with each other to avoid having to compete and innovate. Nvidia in particular has artificially put almost a complete stop in producing GPU's in order to inflate the prices.

On the software side of things, consumers keep gobbling up literal shit and praising it as the second coming of Christ. As a result, "Software as a Service" or SAAS has become the industry norm where companies fart out complete garbage but still see large sales because the average PC gamer has been trained to accept failure and mediocrity as the best thing ever.

Many CEO's of gaming companies are openly wary of releasing an actual good & not broken game these days because it would completely disrupt the established norm.

[Big Sneeze]

Right but do the big 3 hardware companies pay off devs to use Unreal 5 and ray tracing to sell recent hardware?

I mean at this point there's so many gorgeous looking games that are over a decade old. Nothing new is being brought to the table with any of these graphical processes. Nothing is shinier in a better way. Ray tracing just makes things shine DIFFERENTLY at a cost of $500.

If devs don't get paid off by hardware companies to use ray tracing, then they have absolutely lost their minds.

[The Zyklon Don]

I've never seen so much copium for one game than stalker 2. The ultimate proof that these fucking companies can release trash and unwashed masses will eat it up and be happy about it.

Originally posted by Big Sneeze:

Right but do the big 3 hardware companies pay off devs to use Unreal 5 and ray tracing to sell recent hardware?

Ofc they got a cash infusion to use their engine and include all kinds of telemetry to gather your data. Such an overhyped and anticipated game, they would be dumb not to.

You know I've been thinking about this before. Not only these fucking games cost an arm and a leg, then they sell 50 DLC's and season passes but they go and steal your fucking data too for more profit on top of everything else.

All sorts of crummy deals are made behind close doors. Look no further than "buy the RTX 6999 and get this game key for free!", as if you're not actually paying for that game through the purchase of hardware. These are tactics and scams as old as time, that dumb fucks for whatever reason cannot see through. Just put the word free in it and idiots will buy it, don't matter what it is. Then brag about it later how they got such a good deal

There is a lot to say on this subject however people don't want to accept reality because living in the wasteland of the real hurts their fannies too much. Sure af you can't talk about these things openly because morons will take it as personal insult if god forbid you tarnish the reputation of their favorite corporation.

[TS2]

Originally posted by Big Sneeze:

Right but do the big 3 hardware companies pay off devs to use Unreal 5 and ray tracing to sell recent hardware?

I mean at this point there's so many gorgeous looking games that are over a decade old. Nothing new is being brought to the table with any of these graphical processes. Nothing is shinier in a better way. Ray tracing just makes things shine DIFFERENTLY at a cost of $500.

If devs don't get paid off by hardware companies to use ray tracing, then they have absolutely lost their minds.

The main incentive for RT use, global illumination, and other real-time effects may usually be the following, though there are obviously more reasons than that:
1. Ability to have even more scene-consistent lighting and shading.
2. Most importantly, the absolute hatred of the up-front development time and resource cost that is baking lighting to do similar or less (See Unity), or use of "cheaper" effects that compromise too much with along with that. They'd rather just make a Shader Binding Table to use with the shader pipeline and go, and/or leave the building overhead to general project builds, cooking, and fronting the rendering cost onto the end-user machines. Not having their own machines spend hours to days baking just to test a single map, or ultimately find a new problem to rebake and recook for over and over again.

Unity still relying on baking for general projects and purportedly still being unable to be as expansive as UE4 and UE5 is a technical reason for avoiding it in favor of UE4/5 or other engines. The stint of Runtime Fee imposition leading to developer trust severance and being notorious for things noticeably breaking between build versions aside.

[Colector de Ban Comunitară]

But buying the game is supporting the current thing, the war and shit y'a know, 2021-release game made in Prague that got delayed because a 2022 war in some eastern provinces of bumfuckstan

[Weidenwiesel]

You know, I was kind of looking forward to this game.
Then I saw "Ultimate Edition" for almost twice the price of the "cut content" base game.
And by then I knew, FUCK THIS GAME.

Remember, cut content and [Whatever] Edition is always a red flag.

[TS2]

Originally posted by Weidenwiesel:

You know, I was kind of looking forward to this game.
Then I saw "Ultimate Edition" for almost twice the price of the "cut content" base game.
And by then I knew, FUCK THIS GAME.

Remember, cut content and [Whatever] Edition is always a red flag.

The Ultimate Edition is just extra weapons and armor, and a Season Pass guarantee on future content to be developed and released as cut, anyway. And it includes the Deluxe's Cut Questline and cut weapons and armor variants with it, which is its own $20+ markup. Ultimate is +$40 USD, whereas Deluxe is +$20 USD, for reference.

And since it launched, the Pre-Order Cut Content is now not available. It included two Clear Sky-themed items and, most importantly, in-game campfire soundtracks and dialogue that were cut otherwise.

[Misha]

I originally followed shitlisting service to keep me away from objectively bad games, but all you people do on this page is bitch & whine about literally nothing. Go touch some grass; is the gameplay good? oh but it isnt 144FPS 4K constant? yeah tough shit. is the game fun? you never tell me if it's fun, you just bitch and whine and moan about stupid shit.

[TS2]

Originally posted by Misha:

I originally followed shitlisting service to keep me away from objectively bad games, but all you people do on this page is bitch & whine about literally nothing. Go touch some grass; is the gameplay good? oh but it isnt 144FPS 4K constant? yeah tough shit. is the game fun? you never tell me if it's fun, you just bitch and whine and moan about stupid shit.

Pretty much what the curations are. Noting any black marks in product history, and specifically the game as a product. Sometimes gets into mechanics of the game, but will tend to compile reviews from elsewhere as part of forming the curation summary, and as support of it. Gameplay portions are either too subjective, dependent on product, or generally treated as underwhelming.

For the performance bit, to pass that part of the curation, a game has to be a relatively and consistently scalable in performance across almost all machines played with it. Namely 4GB GPUs being able to achieve 1080p60 consistently with minimal drops at low-medium settings, and ideally high.

If games are known to target higher hardware than, say, a RX 460 and Ryzen 5 1600, or cannot reach a consistent 1080p60 on that, Shitlist. Similarly, if Coe finds enough reviews, Discussions posts, and so on that show user complaints about the game not explainably performing well on hardware at its spec target or higher, Shitlist. A game had better perform well without many issues on most machines, or else.

Bonus Shitlist if it uses DirectX 12, as its pushing of the hardware requirements and use of more custom rendering pipelines opens up more chances for a game or engine to be unstable at the API level.

[Coe⁧⁧✔️[Quality Control]]

Originally posted by Misha:

I originally followed shitlisting service to keep me away from objectively bad games, but all you people do on this page is bitch & whine about literally nothing. Go touch some grass; is the gameplay good? oh but it isnt 144FPS 4K constant? yeah tough shit. is the game fun? you never tell me if it's fun, you just bitch and whine and moan about stupid shit.

The STALKER 2 curation literally brings up bulletsponge enemies and how the AI, quests and other shit is breaking constantly on top of the absolutely horrible performance which is brought up with specifics in the very first post in this thread that has nothing to do with 144FPS or 4K you whining dyslexic retard.

Gameplay wise, it's STALKER but heavily casualized (which was also brought up prior to release) and it recommends everyone to go play the GAMMA mod instead.

[Fenrir Warsong]

Originally posted by Misha:

I originally followed shitlisting service to keep me away from objectively bad games, but all you people do on this page is bitch & whine about literally nothing. Go touch some grass; is the gameplay good? oh but it isnt 144FPS 4K constant? yeah tough shit. is the game fun? you never tell me if it's fun, you just bitch and whine and moan about stupid shit.

Sounds like another post once and leave guy. Or angry because if you don't buy SHITALKER 2 you aren't supporting a taxpayer sinkhole war in bumfuckistan apparently.

[The Zyklon Don]

Originally posted by Coe⁧⁧✔️Quality Control:

Originally posted by Misha:

I originally followed shitlisting service to keep me away from objectively bad games, but all you people do on this page is bitch & whine about literally nothing. Go touch some grass; is the gameplay good? oh but it isnt 144FPS 4K constant? yeah tough shit. is the game fun? you never tell me if it's fun, you just bitch and whine and moan about stupid shit.

The STALKER 2 curation literally brings up bulletsponge enemies and how the AI, quests and other shit is breaking constantly on top of the absolutely horrible performance which is brought up with specifics in the very first post in this thread that has nothing to do with 144FPS or 4K you whining dyslexic retard.

Gameplay wise, it's STALKER but heavily casualized (which was also brought up prior to release) and it recommends everyone to go play the GAMMA mod instead.

Even the gamma mod author said he is not enjoying STALKER 2 lmao and that fucking guy is dedicated.

https://i.imgur.com/RPhCAvi.png