New Games Suck... Or Is It Just Me?

The short answer is that the 'Ultimate Engine Tweak' thing isn't actually an improvement for many people in many situations. It's something thrown together by an idiot who has no idea what he's doing for donations from other idiots who don't realize it's a placebo.

The video I linked goes over quite a bit starting around 43:00 if you're actually interested.

I'll check it out when I get some time later. These are definitely subjects I need more education on. Thanks

That guy has over 3k people giving him money on patreon for ini file tweaks. It never ceases to amaze me how people will throw money away for effectively nothing.

This is the same kind of people who complain about a sub for a video game, then give some doofus money for changing a few numbers in an ini file and making the game look worse.

Some of the settings do effect performance. Someone who actually understands what each of them does and compatibility with the game could definitely release a tailored file that will help people with weak PCs maintain decent framerates. This will cost some graphical quality (turning down lumen settings is a good example of this). To be clear, this can help with low framerates by reducing the load on GPU. In most cases, the devs have already evaluated it and determined optimal settings; turning down graphics settings ingame will have a greater effect on improving framerates and may even result in the same engine variables being changed.

However, the 'Ultimate Engine Tweak' is just a massive list of settings, 80% of which won't actually change anything for a given game. The person releasing it doesn't thoroughly understand the other 20% and has admitted that he uses ChatGPT to decide what to edit. He just keeps releasing it with small changes hoping it does what he wants. People who want their config screen to still say 'Ultra' without buying a PC that can handle it are probably thrilled, but they aren't actually getting the 'Ultra' experience.

Stuttering, which is a seperate problem, is usually caused by CPU calculations that aren't balanced well. The GPU can't render the next frame until the CPU finishes everything it has to do. This code is often not part of the engine itself, and is usually the fault of the developer. It's correct to blame them for stuttering, unless your CPU is particularly weak compared to your GPU. Unfortunately, no amount of settings tweaks can solve this in most cases, because the calculations are happening outside of the graphics engine. Occasionally, talented reverse engineers locate the cause of stuttering and create an assembly patch or hook that can create real solutions for it. This would be an actual example of third party community doing the devs work for them; the ini mods are just nonsense.

Ahhh good to know that there are some potential fixes. Mine is a top-line PC so it shouldn’t be anything hardware related so probably an optimization tweak or three. I would prefer to not lose any quality though so I’ll poke around with it and see if there isn’t a good fix somewhere.

It’s the damndest thing too, it’s only happening on this title, FF16 and FF7 Remake were just fine. Games are weird sometimes

In this thread, they just suck all the time

I have a 7800 X3D and a 3090 and gone are the days of just setting to Ultra on stuff now. Games are very demanding these days and I definitely can see where the DLSS framegen stuff is helping keep fps high. I just dropped Expedition 33 from high to mid with a few things kept high, runs so much better.

Did I mention how happy I am for another GPU shortage and scalper market? Will us gamers ever get to purchase GPUs at MSRP again?

I also have a 3090 and I'm gonna wait it out. I think a 6070 will replace it... maybe not be 24GB but 18GB but we will see.

new doom has a mount and flying exploration stuff. not gonna say it sucks, but feels out of place.

A high refresh rate monitor can help smooth over mild issues, if you don't already have one. 120+ It seems to fool the eye, so you notice mild problems far less.

That's not my Doom.

Aorus FO32U2P is the monitor, 240hz

It just stutters to bajesus sometimes and it’s aggravating.
FF7 Rebirth specifically. Edit: I mean HARD Stuttering, the game runs at 120 because it won’t go any faster with default settings but in certain locations it hitches out like an epileptic at a rave party. I’ll mess around with it when I get home and try some of the mentioned suggestions and see if that doesn’t fix the issue.

I think Doom has started to overcomplicate itself ever since Eternal. I really enjoyed 2016 and thought it was well done, I played through all the difficulties (except permadeath) and thought it was generally well balanced, a good intro to Doom for modern day.

Eternal just overcomplicated it. Too many jumping mechanics, too many new things, and too much going on. Platforming shouldn't be in a Doom game IMO. Dark Ages looks like they just heaped more on top of it and made it worse. I feel like Doom should be about big guns, blood, and effects - not a ton of different mechanics.

I think for people looking for that type of thing, it'll be great and I don't fault them for that at all, but for me Doom was always a simpler formula and Eternal missed that for me, Dark Ages looks like it's even more off.

That doesn't sound right at all. I had some weird artifacting with the foilage during my playthrough, but nothing like what you're describing. What's your system like?

Is there a reason for it? Like in game reason?

R9 9950x + 420mm AIO
64GB DDR5 RAM, CL30, 6600 MT/s (32 x2, AMD’s memory controller doesn’t presently support XMP with 4 DIMMs)
Aorus X870E Master MOBO
Crucial 700 GEN5 4TB ROM
MSI Vanguard 5090
1200W ATX3.1 PSU
2x Aorus FO32U2P Monitors but only one used for the game.
Windows 11

Yeah, it shouldn’t be behaving like this at all. FF16? Smooth. FF7: Remake? Smooth (played it to get the little bonus summons), Call of Duty, Wukong, Elden Ring? All smooth. FF7 Rebirth is the only one throwing a fit.

As I mentioned earlier, I googled it and it’s apparently a known issue so I just chalked it up as a quirk until you guys mentioned some ways that might fix it. For me, dialing the FPS down to 60 helped ameliorate it but it still has hiccups here and there.

Smooth smooth smooth

Act now and get more smoothness with an overpriced GPU

And when you're done gaming, you can cook an egg with it. PRICE TO PERFORMANCE HELLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Remember, with every 5090 sold Jensens leather jacket gets shinier

Act now to get no free game with your purchase

So smooth

You okay over there? O_o; you seem a little bent out of shape for some reason. Something about “Price to performance”? Whatever that is. It’s my hobby, I’ll enjoy it as I see fit :D Except for scalpers, screw them. Had to become a stalker to get my GPU at market price and no one should ever have to deal with that. But that whole thing was covered in a different thread so I digress.

Drayco asked the question. I answered. May we move on?

More on the fact its just not gaming atm that sucks - GPU department sucks as well - wasn't directly directed at you

If it helps, I also have a smooth smooth smooth GPU

Haha fair statements. Smooth indeed.

Any level of outrage at the current GPU market is completely acceptable. I remember buying a 980ti for $600 and thinking "I can't believe I just dumped $600 out on a GPU" and that was only like 10 years ago.

There's no reason for Rebirth to run like crap with a 5090. I've heard of 5000 series drivers having issues. Then again, this is the level of polish Rebirth has.

That just looks like a bug, does it only do that on collapsible ground like that? Even Tifa is bugged out.

5090 oc tuf w/ 9800x3d - running 2x sticks for the same reason you mentioned on a 870x tuf board


Honestly alot of good games now - I still need to beat stalker2 but exp:33 is so *** good.

BROOOO monster hunter just started working again after the yesterday's drivers.... ***would just crash after loading into town

What part of FF7 is that supposed to be?

Yeah those engine overrides are really only useful in edge cases, done by people who know what they are doing. Getting a particular game running "well" on low end hardware for example, usually because the developers never bothered making a profile for it in the first place.

9800X3D with 7900 XTX, both OC'd on water and this game definitely demands a lot of GPU cycles. It's due to all the lighting and shadow effects, they make the game look gorgeous and give ambience but eats GPUs alive. Thankfully there are to levels of settings, first is the usual gneric Medium/High/Ultra, but then they have a built in XeSS/DLSS/FSR setting that lets you pick how much of native you want to render at. Setting it to 50% means you are rending at half resolution and upscaling, basically what consoles do, setting to 100% means you are rendering native with anti-aliasing. Knock it down to 66~75% and you should get a good frame rate boost.

Rebirth? That’s supposedly everything after Midgar and a little bit after the original 1st disc. I got curious and googled the trajectory but nothing else; didn’t want to be spoiled in case of plot changes/twists.

It’s been awhile since I’ve actually cared about a story plot haha. The power of nostalgia

I think he means the video I posted. Not gonna spoil anything here. FF7 Remake/Rebirth do have good story telling.

If I could redo my first Rebirth playthrough, I would skip every single side quest. Not a single one of them has anything to do with the main story. FF16 did side quest right, everything is tied to the main story.