PC performance and optimization

  • Onyx Wartooth
    Insider

    Lately, it seems that my pc has been having major issues with SoT ever since around a month after launch, and I have noticed a few others reported issues too.
    Anywhere from Island rendering issues, to ferry load times, to the overall graphics just not looking so well like it did back in beta/alpha, and FPS drops that can ruin certain moments.

    So for those Xbox elitists that believe pc is 100% better blah blah blah, let me tell you, Sea of Thieves has been acting really weird on pc lately.
    Anywhere from just being on or even near a galleon can cause our frames to drop from 60+ to 5, or even 1.
    Which can kill Pvp and make us not aim at all, because framerate.

    Secondly graphics, this game used to look well...more than stunning, now? The water isnt...so good, and some items like docks and such even on mythical (Highest Graphics Setting) look off from what it did in Closed Beta (The earliest when I played to compare it to)

    Lastly Ferry of the Damned Black Screen Loading times.
    This is a big, I'd say misconception, I have 8 gigs of ram, a 1050 GeForce, and a 4 core i7 intel chip, with 2 Tb HD, with 500+ GB left, used to this game ran buttery smooth, and load times from the ferry was super short, I was right back into the game.
    Now? It can be several seconds, to 2 hours, I KID YOU NOT! 2 HOURS! Trying to load back onto a galleon.

    With all these Xbox Vs Pc arguments, Rare has their sights on balancing this game fairly, but the whole aiming and such c**p, I believe PC is a bigger disadvantage because of these issues, I just got back from work playing SoT on my Xbox One S on 30mbs internet over wifi, and i had 0 issues.
    But at home on my pc, with 300mbs Ethernet internet, the game seems to sorta break, and I cant blame lag or such, its simply my pc, and the game not be optimized for PC anymore.

    I dont know, just felt like I needed to see if anyone else really noticed these problems rather than fight over cross play opt out opt in bull

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  • EvilPSYKO
    Founder

    I've noticed the same thing on PC. Normally my PC can handle a game like this easily, and did so in Beta without issues. I turned on the FPS and Ping notifications and when I get the most stuttering is not due to network or graphics card which lead me to one conclusion. It's a problem with processor/memory optimization. After extensive play, the game tends to have a memory/processor leak. I run CoreTemp to keep an eye on my processor's temperature and though I have a liquid cooled system, I keep it clean, and this doesn't happen on very many games it does run the temp up to 65 degrees Celcius. Admittedly it's summer time and I expected it to hit 62 max, but 65 is the cutoff I have programmed in the BIOS. Which means if I didn't, it'd probably hit higher numbers and probably melt during these memory leaks.

    Now it's not to say that it's only happening with extensive play, I've noticed the same thing at random times on the ship, ferry, islands, or just anywhere. So to be sure I lowered the graphics all the way to ease tensions on the proc, memory, and graphics card. There's a huge memory leak in it. It needs better optimization.

  • Ve111a
    Ship Mate

    I 100% agree it seems Rare is catering more to xbox and thats sad..... Why take steps backwards? The game looked amazing before and I get so much weird issues now, Like not being able to run to the bow of the ship but I can to the stern. The LOD and view distance is terrible now and its not like its an advantage.... It's no fair to cater to the weak system and make the rest suffer, I built my 2500$ pc and spend a stupid amount so I can have the nice graphics on all games and its not like that's a privilege of pc m*********e but the age old saying you get what you pay for. If you buy a less powerful xbox you should expect less graphics. I just want them to not view pc as the second rate citizens because that xbox has more players because its a cheaper to get into market.

  • Fantome of Blue
    Ship Mate

    It sounds more like you have a network issue, and not really a hardware issue going on there.

  • WarmedxMints
    Marauder
    Insider

    I've not had any issues with performance on this game. The LOD distance reduction is frustrating. I can understand why all platforms should be the same although it is frustrating that they target 30fps on the consoles when they should just reduce the graphical quality and aim for 60fps. The Xbox X should be running 1080p 60 not 4k almost 30.

    To the OP, not to sound rude but you are running a low end rig. Are you sure you aren't expecting too much from your system? Have you thought about lowering the graphical settings?

  • EvilPSYKO
    Founder

    Trust me, no the OP is not expecting too much from the system. The Xbox runs hardware that is, in effect, lower quality than his hardware. I have roughly the same hardware. This game can run smoothly at times without too much issues but after extensive play or even at random times there's a huge leak in the memory/processor. The Xbox runs hardware equivalent to a $200 computer you can by at Walmart with less productive hardware.

    Before anyone asks, I do have a bit of knowledge in this area being a computer technician. I'll admit the OP's and my hardware isn't top notch and we couldn't expect peak performance out of the new Battlefront 2 game, or equivalent but considering Sea of Thieves' core is designed around Xbox console it is more than capable of handling it. Now running at minimum graphics may up the framerate, it still doesn't solve the problem. When I would have it on "Rare" settings I could expect smooth gameplay. Higher settings and I could expect slower movement due to reduced framerate. This isn't it. This is a processing problem.

  • RealStyli
    Vanguard
    Insider

    There is definitely something going on with the optimisation on PC. Part of it for me used to be the broken Vsync from 1.0.4, but that seems to be fixed now (at least for me). Now it's stable 90% of the time at Legendary settings.

    They've made improvements on some islands, so I think they are working on it, maybe a couple of islands each update. That possibly entails rebuilding some of the objects in the world so they update less frequently, putting less strain on CPU with unnecessary tasks (there was a tech blog posted recently that explained this). Would also explain why lowering the quality doesn't really help with this performance, as objects still exist in the game and still have to update.

    For instance, Crook's Hollow ran awful for me prior to 1.1.1 (THD) but now it seems to be mostly evened out. So I think they did work on that island. However, Plunder Valley remains the worst case scenario for FPS drops for me. Sometimes dropping to the 20s.

    They pushed out the LODs after launch a bit and I think that had a negative impact because of the number of objects updating at once. This was likely to cause even more problems on consoles where there is a much bigger CPU bottleneck due to the integrated GPU.

    I think the game generally ran better during the betas because not everything was in the world. For example, IIRC, snakes weren't a part of the pre-launch tests?

    [Ryzen 7 1700X, Asus Dual GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB 3000MHz DDR4 RAM]

  • Onyx Wartooth
    Insider

    @EvilPSYKO CHEAP RIGS FOR LIFE! Until i drop 2 grand for a RGB filled pc rig for 4k gaming. Jokes aside, I now sorta feel like I have to play the game on cursed and when im on a galleon and we collide or get too close to another galleon, PFFFT framerate drops.
    I was running this game fine, but hopefully they'll reopt it soon, before cursed sails.

    @RealStyli If they are redoing each island making less straining a CPU unit, that will in the long term, pay off so much.
    Hopefully after the islands are done, they'll redo the old graphics and rendering distance.

  • EvilPSYKO
    Founder

    @onyx-wartooth lol mine isn't cheap just old. When I built mine it was top of the line....about 10 years ago. Still competes with the average gaming computer now with a few upgrades over the years. I do hope they fix the leak though.

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