There's a pretty noticeable graphics downgrade since 1.0.1 patch, especially in the LOD distance, quality/number of dynamic lights and the rendering distance of players/creatures and interactable items.
I do understand that the game is meant to be runnable on a potato, but what was the point of impacting higher settings such as Legendary or Mythical aswell?
I have a 5yo mid-range PC, the game was already running great before the patch, these tweaks brought ZERO framerate improvements but now the visuals are overall just duller and unlit, with anything at mid-far distance appearing low poly and devoid of any detail. As a side result of these tweaks, some gameplay mechanics are now half-broken or way less immersive than before: using the spyglass to scout a far island for goodies is borderline useless and so is trying to understand if the crew is on a distant ship or on the island next to it, since they won't be rendered at all until one is way, way too close.
I understand most of these changes were meant as a form of optimization for xbox, but there's no acceptable reason they had to carry over on PC aswell, certainly not for balance or equal-grounds reasons, since the draw distance has been and still is exactly the same on both platforms. Moreover, on PC there are already several sliders to adjust visual quality and -if anything- it's the lower ones that should have been tweaked, not the highest. The irony here is that even console players are complaining about the quality degradation these tweaks brought, while not really benefiting from improved performance either.
Please @Rare-Employee (maybe @Deckhands could reach them?) let owners of a decent PC enjoy the fancy graphics, instead of dumbing everything down for everybody. Please reconsider tweaking at least Mythical to how it was before the patch and keep the rest of these changes for lower settings, as it should be.
Thank you.
Update after 1.0.2 patch: Although lighting quality seem improved compared to 1.0.1, LOD/players/items rendering distance is still the same as 1.0.1.