Horizon Zero Dawn (Official Discussion Thread)

Nice to see more games supporting AMD features, sadly this likely means that the chances of it ever supporting DLSS 2.0 are slim however.
I find it so bizarre for Death Stranding to be given DLSS support but not Horizon.
I get that they’re competitors but you’d think a historically console only Dev wouldn’t be quite so beholden to one or the other and games have supported features from both before.
 
I find it so bizarre for Death Stranding to be given DLSS support but not Horizon.
I get that they’re competitors but you’d think a historically console only Dev wouldn’t be quite so beholden to one or the other and games have supported features from both before.
HZD was already massively successful on console. It recouped its development costs multiple times over years ago. This is just a bonus for them, so they don't seem to care. They can afford a shitty port.
Death Stranding however barely broke even on console, if it even did. (despite the official line that funds are secured for the next title which can mean anything). So they needed a good PC port to maximize profits.
Well and then there is the thing about them running versions of the engine that are about 2-3 years apart. Plus different developers handling the port. So really the differences aren't surprising at all.
 
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HZD was already massively successful on console. It recouped its development costs multiple times over years ago. This is just a bonus for them, so they don't seem to care. They can afford a shitty port.
Death Stranding however barely broke even on console, if it even did. (despite the official line that funds are secured for the next title which can mean anything). So they needed a good PC port to maximize profits.
Well and then there is the thing about them running versions of the engine that are about 2-3 years apart. Plus different developers handling the port. So really the differences aren't surprising at all.
Ah so you subscribe to the “damn lazy developers” philosophy. Neato.
 
Ah so you subscribe to the “damn lazy developers” philosophy. Neato.
It's not a philosophy, it's what the facts suggest. When you have experience in development you can see the telltale signs of a lazy hackjob. And that's not a diss, I'm the master of lazy hackjobs. They do work. Case in point the PS4 version. Until you have to go back and modify the code to extend the features, or perhaps move to another platform.

Why what do you subscribe to? Nothing to see here, everything is fine?

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It's not a philosophy, it's what the facts suggest. When you have experience in development you can see the telltale signs of a lazy hackjob. And that's not a diss, I'm the master of lazy hackjobs. They do work. Case in point the PS4 version. Until you have to go back and modify the code to extend the features, or perhaps move to another platform.

Why what do you subscribe to? Nothing to see here, everything is fine?

View attachment 268428
Apparently he thinks all devs are equal and interchangeable.
 
TressFX?...haven't heard of that in awhile...I was impressed with it in Tomb Raider...Lara's hair was silky smooth...
 
Alright, the game has crashed like 3 times for me since getting to the Proving. Definitely needs some work on stability and performance.
 
why are people in such a rush to play the game, even after hearing about the performance/bugs/stability issues...
 
Because it's out and available?

so people would rather play a buggy, broken game just to play it on Day 1 versus waiting for a few patches??...these aren't your everyday normal release bugs...these are more severe...I'll never understand humans
 
I find it so bizarre for Death Stranding to be given DLSS support but not Horizon.
I get that they’re competitors but you’d think a historically console only Dev wouldn’t be quite so beholden to one or the other and games have supported features from both before.

Isn't that usually the case when a developer partners with either GPU maker? Since when do they incorporate features of the competitor GPU maker which isn't providing any support to development/porting process? Apart from the fact that AMD has probably paid to incorporate its proprietary features into the game, I wouldn't be surprised to see contractual terms forbidding the inclusion of Nvidia features.
 
so people would rather play a buggy, broken game just to play it on Day 1 versus waiting for a few patches??...these aren't your everyday normal release bugs...these are more severe...I'll never understand humans

Yes.

Do you not realize how profoundly bored most people are? Take that and throw COVID insanity into the mix.
 
Who here is playing it now? Are you having any real issues?

It sounds to me like most people aren't having serious issues, but I'd love some local data points.
 
I’ve played about 6 hours. All maxes out at 4k at 60hz. Hit a stable 58fps, no stuttering. Some drops with snow/rain but nothin below 48fps. Feels smooth and fine for this single player game.
2080ti/9900k.
 
For those that played through this on PS4, how engaging was the story? Just background stuff to carry the game, or something more involved like Mass Effect, Witcher, Max Payne or Metal Gear?
 
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For those that played through this on PC, how engaging was the story? Just background stuff to carry the game, or something more involved like Mass Effect, Witcher, Max Payne or Metal Gear?
Why would you have to play it on PC to talk about the story? I played it on PS4 Pro, the story is involved, but not always in the foreground. It's more like you get one or two story quests, then nothing for hours, then again a few involved story quests, then again nothing for hours story wise. It definitely has some pacing issues. THere is no exposition then suddenly you get a ton of info dumped on you when you reach the faro headquarters. It becomes overwhelming with tens of minutes of audio logs. I love audio logs but even I started skipping them after a while because it was too much at once.
 
why are people in such a rush to play the game, even after hearing about the performance/bugs/stability issues...
So it's people's fault that they want to play a released game after release?

Anyhow as I see it the issues are big, but not game breaking. If you have a hiend gaming PC you can play through the game right now and will have a much better experience than on console. If you have a 1060 you are royally fucked.
 
Who here is playing it now? Are you having any real issues?

It sounds to me like most people aren't having serious issues, but I'd love some local data points.
I played it all day yesterday and I didn't have any major issues or performance problems. I play at 2560x1600 at 60 w/ a 1080Ti (vsync on) specs in sig.

I only had 4 noticeable things happen.
1) A weird bug that didn't change the dialog wheel option to grey out after I selected it the first time. Only happened a couple of times it's like the game forgot to grey it out after it played.
2) A weird antialiasing or texture alpha bug with hair on some closeup shots while talking with one NPC. It didn't happen often, I think it had something to do with what the backdrop it was showing at the time of the dialog scene.
3) A bug where during a dialog scene someone was suppose to be sweeping the floor in the background, but only the dust from the sweep was showing up. The character sweeping was not rendered.
4) an rare texture flicker. It only happened like 3 to 5 times at most.

Performance wise, it was pretty stable, but unlike some, I don't notice a loss of FPS unless it is major drop without a fps counter overlay on the screen. If I am running at around 60fps I probably won't notice unless it drops to below 50fps.
 
Wow, you guys have done a great job in this thread tracking all of this. Many thanks. I think this will end up being just fine but a bit of a shaky start here.
 
Who here is playing it now? Are you having any real issues?

It sounds to me like most people aren't having serious issues, but I'd love some local data points.

Win 10
i7-2700K, 16 GB RAM, SSD, 1080ti on 451.67 drivers
X34 monitor with G-Sync enabled

Have played 3 hours with no crashes or noticeable performance issues at maximum details, 3440x1440.
 
For those that played through this on PC, how engaging was the story? Just background stuff to carry the game, or something more involved like Mass Effect, Witcher, Max Payne or Metal Gear?

Its a story heavy game with a map and some gameplay elements heavily borrowed from Ubisoft titles.

I posted the hotfix to steams discussion and got immediately burried 3-4 pages back by everyone else complaining. People don't want a fix, they just want to bitch.
 
I am running 451.67 without stutter, its obviously a system specific issue.
Likewise with 451.85. I'm using the Digital Foundry settings at 2560x1440. I've been playing hardcore for the past 2 days with no stutter and runs and looks great.

Edit: FoV is set to 90.
 
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For those that played through this on PC, how engaging was the story? Just background stuff to carry the game, or something more involved like Mass Effect, Witcher, Max Payne or Metal Gear?
The closest example I can think of is Tomb Raider. There are occasional dialog options you get to pick, but I don't think they really affect the story beyond the conversation they happen in. The story is way better than it has any real need to be, though. It's sort of an oddball in that the real heroine of the story isn't the player character, but it's really good anyway.

I have both the PC and PS4 versions (this is one of my favorite games ever), and I noticed a bit of hitching in the PC version that I don't remember from the PS4 version. Going to the 451.85 driver doesn't seem to fix it (seems like it made it worse, actually). One thing I noticed is that if I run the built-in benchmark twice, I get the hitching the first time, and then it mostly goes away the second time. So, if I had to guess, I'd say it's probably related to the way that the engine loads parts of the world into memory. I seem to recall seeing an article a couple of years ago about how this engine is supposed to be really efficient about that, and I wonder if they didn't quite get it tuned right for some quirk of the way that access to the disk gets scheduled on Windows.

I think the Digital Foundry guy got the settings spot on, except I get distracting texture corruption on a few specific textures if I try to force anisotropic filtering on in the driver.

Still, as console ports go, this isn't anywhere near as terrible as all the Youtubers seem to be whinging about.
 
A big graphical feature added in the Frozen Wilds DLC, was snow deformation. And according to some user reports---appears to be missing from the PC port of The Frozen Wilds DLC areas.
 
Quick Update regarding Player Reports

Thank you for supporting us yesterday as we launched Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition on PC! We have been enjoying a whole new wave of screenshots with the in-game Photo Mode, live streams and videos from content creators, and seeing so many new players start their journey with Aloy.

We have been monitoring all of our channels and are aware that some players have been experiencing crashes and other technical issues. Please know that we are investigating your reports as our highest priority.

We appreciate those who have already taken the time to report their issues on Steam, Reddit, or via our website. If you are still encountering crashes or bugs, please continue to use those spaces, or refer to our FAQ if you are unsure of how to proceed. Your reports are, and have already been, incredibly helpful for our teams.

Thank you for your patience as we continue to investigate issues; we will update you all as soon as we have more news.

–Guerrilla
https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1151640/view/2753341279118859814
 
Horizon Zero Dawn PC Patch 1.01 Release Notes
Crash/Hang Fixes
  • Fixed an issue where the game would crash if the SteamUI didn’t initialize properly on startup.
Functionality Issue Fixes
  • Fixed an issue where Concentration and other slowdown mechanics wouldn’t work for everyone.
  • Fixed an issue where Windows/Steam profile names containing special characters would prevent some players from saving the game. We are still investigating other saved game issues as well.
  • Fixed an issue where Windows/Steam profile names containing special characters would prevent some players from saving screenshots in Photo Mode.
Other Fixes
  • Added improved diagnostic data collection when submitting a crash report.
  • Fixed several backend issues.
  • Fixed a video corruption issue for specific hardware. We’re continuing to look at other hardware configurations as well.
KNOWN ISSUES
In addition to the issues identified previously, we’re working on a number of high-priority issues:
  • Some players are experiencing startup crashes. Patch 1.01 fixes a few, but not all, of these crashes.
  • Some players are experiencing GPU-related hangs during gameplay. The improved diagnostic data collection added in Patch 1.01 is aimed at making it easier to track these down.
  • Some players are experiencing graphical settings issues, such as Anisotropic Filtering not working, 4K not displaying correctly, or HDR not working correctly.
  • Some players are experiencing performance issues on specific GPUs or hardware combinations.
  • We’re aware of and continue to investigate all issues in this list on Reddit as well.
 
Funny update because it sounds like basically an update that adds the logging needed to fix problems in a future update.
 
Funny update because it sounds like basically an update that adds the logging needed to fix problems in a future update.
At least they're trying. Maybe?

Speaking as a software developer myself, I can only imagine how frustrating this situation probably is for their programmers. A situation where I release to production and the product doesn't work like it does in the lab, despite all of the testing I did is one of my worst nightmares.
 
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