henke on 14/9/2021 at 16:42
Alrighty, I played the first couple hours on PS5. Runs smooth, tho I did have one crash (just after leaving my appartment for the first time). Died quite fast on my first attempt but on my second I made it to the end of the day (and the loop). I'm following the story and not exploring too much. I figure I'm gonna end up exploring these same environments a lot anyway before this story is over. I am intrigued by the mysteries of this island. The gameplay is very much what you'd expect from an Arkane immsim, but with some nice improvements on the formula. I like the tagging system, for instance. Just like in lots of stealth/action games you can tag enemies, but here if you keep the tagging button pressed the camera zooms in and follows the enemy and also shows info about them. It's kinda like the Heart in Dishonored 2 has been rolled into this feature. Which is cool. I never really used the Heart is D2 since it was a separate object you had to switch to, but here it's nicely streamlined into a function you'll use all the time.
So far it's feeling a lot like Prey, which is a very good thing.
heywood on 14/9/2021 at 17:15
Quote Posted by WingedKagouti
I would guess they selected the targeted GPUs at the start of development with an expectation that it would be the standard minimum at the time of release. Also, they probably didn't expect the GPU shortage we've been having for quite a while now, or at least not that it would last this long.
I don't think it's reasonable for developers to assume gamers will continue to upgrade like they used to. Every time there is a bull market in crypto currencies, GPUs become scarce. It's been that way for the last 5 years, which is probably why a 5 year old card is still the most common card in the Steam survey.
Quote:
From a quick scan of the latest Steam HW Survey, ~61% of users have a GTX 10
50 or better (including the AMD cards I can see should also fit). So if my guess is correct, they weren't too far off (at least if they consider roughly half of PC gamers an acceptable target audience). It's worth noting that the GTX 1060 accounts for a whopping 10.14% in that survey, that's a sizeable chunk of players lost if they can't play reasonably well.
Dishonored 2 ran like crap on release. D2 sales also fizzled out early, perhaps because of the performance problems and negative Steam reviews. It could be the same for Deathloop.
To me, it seems like a disaster to release a game that only half of PC gamers can play, especially if it plays poorly at low resolution & low settings on the most common card out there. Is there something special about the game's graphics that requires more GPU power than other recent AAA games?
I think we've reached a point of diminishing returns where hardware requirements keep getting steeper, but we're not seeing the big improvements in graphics that used to justify the upgrade cycle.
Malf on 15/9/2021 at 14:43
Quick question: does Deathloop use the Bethesda launcher, even when launched through Steam?
Thirith on 16/9/2021 at 06:16
If you're talking about a big, intrusive launcher like the Rockstar one, then no. It's possible the game launches something in the background, and I did have to create a Bethesda account, but other than that launching the game seemed pretty seamless.
Malf on 16/9/2021 at 06:24
Good to know, thanks Thirith.
Thirith on 16/9/2021 at 09:20
@heywood
While I've not really followed the big releases in 2020 and 2021 apart from the occasional game, I've not really had the impression that hardware requirements have become all that much steeper - unless you want to use raytracing and similar features, but these are not compulsory. Other than that, my impression has been that the hardware requirement spiral has been slowing down over the last half-dozen years, especially compared to 10-15 years ago.
heywood on 16/9/2021 at 13:14
Cyberpunk 2077 was the first to catch me by surprise this year with its steep requirements, now Deathloop. I did upgrade from a GTX 1060 to a 5700 XT last year at the beginning of the pandemic before prices went up. I didn't really need to, but wanted to take advantage of the temporarily reasonable prices when the crypto markets were down. It's a good thing I did, because CP2077 doesn't run that great on my 5700 XT. If I had stuck with the GTX 1060 I'd be feeling screwed right now.
I guess I don't understand why some games have gotten so GPU hungry when aside from ray tracing, today's graphics don't really look appreciably better to me than 2015. Even ray tracing isn't all that.
nicked on 16/9/2021 at 15:54
It especially doesn't make sense for a stylised game like this which isn't trying to be ultra-realistic.
Jason Moyer on 17/9/2021 at 05:14
It especially doesn't make sense when it's been impossible to buy a GPU for 2 years and wasn't much easier for like 2-3 years before that. I don't understand who studios are releasing games for right now.
Jashin on 17/9/2021 at 06:04
The trick to upgrading is to buy a prebuild.
I'd likely be playing Deathloop now if my prebuild didn't come with a defective gpu though. Bad luck of the draw.