no game needs to look more realistic than MGSV. we shoulda just stopped there

I look at system requirements now and I have no idea how my current hardware even compares to what's listed. AAA PC gaming has moved beyond me monetarily lol

that one is atrocious but another thing i also find nasty is the amount of disk space new games need. sure, buying more disks is way cheaper than getting more graphical power but downloading +100Gb for a game I might just play once feels like an incredible waste

games should have a lo-fi version where they use lower textures and less graphical features for the people that cannot actually see the difference in graphics after the ps2 era

I want my games to be able to be rendered in software, I want them to be able to run on a potato from the early 2000s and late 90s, is this too much for a girl to ask for

I got a special fucking bone to pick with Cities Skylines 2. I've never had a game look like such vaseline-smeared ass while making my computer sound like it's about to take off. It's a shame because it's definitely come a long way as a game and has some really nice buildings now, but to play it I start to get nervous after like half an hour and have to let my computer cool down, fuck that shit.

I'm finding the latest in visual advancements feels like a downgrade because of image quality. Yeah all these fancy technologies are being used but its no good when my screen is a mess of blur, TAA, artifacting from upscaling or framegen. My PC can actually play cyberpunk with path tracing but i can't even begin to appreciate the traced paths WHEN I CAN'T SEE SHIT ANYWAY.

Currently binging forza horizon 4 which runs at 60fps on high on my steam deck and runs 165fps maxed on my PC with 8x msaa and it looks beautiful. And why is it beautiful? Its because the image is sharp where I can actually see the details the devs put into the game. Also half life alyx another game that is on another level with crisp and clear visuals but also ran on a 1070ti with no issues. Todays UE5 screen vomit can't even compare

All games these days know is stutter, smeary image, dx12 problems and stutter

I just want ps2-level graphics with good art direction (and better hair, we can keep the nice hair) and interesting gameplay and stories. Art direction counts for so much more than graphics when it comes to visuals anyway. There are Playstation 1 games with good art direction that imo are nicer to look at than some "graphically superior" games.

There are some good videos out there that also explain how UE5 is an unoptimised mess. Not every game runs on UE5 but it's the acceptable standard for game engines these days

I'm replaying Half Life 2 and it loads and plays like a song. Try playing some old games, Half Life 2 still plays great.

All of the boomer game devs that had to code games for like a 486 have now retired, replaced with people who nVidia or AMD can jangle shiny keys in front of to make their whole games around graphics tech like cloth physics and now ray tracing.

The new indiana jones is actually pretty decently optimized, like I run it at 1080p all high/ultra settings on my rtx 3060 12gb, with DLAA downscaling enabled at a mostly locked 60fps. Like it is leagues better than any UE5 game, it's just the hard VRAM requirements that suck.

I feel like a lot of the issues game graphics have nowadays is just that GPU prices have been ridiculously inflated over the last two decade because of crypto/ai. Like it is not surprising that devs will follow the newest trends and technologies when it comes to graphics, but the hardware needs of raytracing and global illumination and the likes are just too high for what gpu performance/dollar you can get in 2024. I just recently upgraded from an AMD RX480 to a used Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB (which seemed to be the best bang for the buck, an RTX 4060 would have been much more expensive for not a lot more performance), and that upgrade gets you maybe double performance in your games, for a GPU that is a whole seven years newer (and no VRAM upgrade at all when you get the base model). These cards just simply shouldn't cost as much as they do. If you don't have unlimited money to spend, you are going to have a much worse experience today compared to half a decade or a decade ago.

This is part of why I've pretty much stopped following mainstream releases. Had to return Space Marine 2 because it would not stop crashing and the low settings looked like absolute dogshit

The gamers yearn for Forward+ rendering...

Yeah i think gaming as an industry is becoming 'more specialized' which is not necessarily good. All the engine developers are just working on very generic graphics stuff for like Unreal and Unity, rather than engine devs being a position at a company that makes games themselves, which can greatly optimize them for specific games.

Yeah, I'm getting real fucking tired of struggling to get 60fps in new games even with DLSS cranked to max. They don't even look much better. There's plenty of older games that look better and run better that you don't need to subject yourself to DLSS ghosting and frame gen latency to play. I've been telling my main co-op buddy that I might just stop playing new games (at least larger releases) because this shit is so frustrating.

I am lucky enough that I'm not that interested in high-specs AAA titles to begin with: of the 100+ games I've put on a DIY wishlist, I'd say less than 10 of them fall in this category. It's mostly indie/retro titles, older titles or mid-budget.

if a game can't run on everything people have run Doom on, i don't want to play it

People were saying this about Morrowind

duke nukem: that's a lot of ~~words~~ VRAM. too bad i'm not buyin it.

seriously, i hate this shit. i have a 1080 ti that i got used several years ago when the market had hit a bit of a lull and it's got some firmware bug that stops it from running most modern games, even ones it h as enough vram to run. this is why indie games and old games that people are still making mods or private server sets for like cod4 are so great.