Horizon Zero Dawn (Official Discussion Thread)

LurkerLito said:
Finished the game last night. Now I am eagerly awaiting a the sequel on the PS5 (and maybe also the PC version a few years later :)). Not sure if I'll NG+ it, I really went out and just played nothing else but this game since it's release and I still love the story even though I did finish it on PS4 a while ago. The only thing I still kind of have an issue with is the RNG for drops to get your resources to upgrade your gear. It was a lot of wasted time hunting for skin and bones of various animals and can be horrible if you run a bad luck streak with the RNG. I had better luck than on my PS4 run IIRC. I think I spent way too much time trying to get certain skins and bones on PS4, not sure if they adjusted the RNG or I just had better luck this time round. And the limited inventory uggh... I am a hoarder and always never have enough space in these games, I wish they just give me infinite inventory or stacking of items cause inventory management isn't my kind of thing ;). Still I highly recommend this game. It's one of my favorite games (in my top 10 definitely) for both the story and gameplay.
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Yeah, the grinding for crafting upgrade materials (animal bones / skin) is by far the weakest part of the game. Even worse is that the game never really tells you that you *can* upgrade your pouches, you kinda just run across it while looking through the UI at some point and then realize you could have upgraded them for hours now. Or you already sold all your bones / skins before you find it. :eek:
 
MavericK said:
Yeah, the grinding for crafting upgrade materials (animal bones / skin) is by far the weakest part of the game. Even worse is that the game never really tells you that you *can* upgrade your pouches, you kinda just run across it while looking through the UI at some point and then realize you could have upgraded them for hours now. Or you already sold all your bones / skins before you find it. :eek:
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The game has a really weird combination of letting the player figure things out themselves and also hand-holding. It almost feels like they weren't entirely sure how much they wanted to guide the player.
 
I found the crafting mats ok, I got really tired of grabbing sticks and weeds to make arrows and heal. It was fun at first, but by the end of the game I was so done with that mechanic on the PS4. Already dragging on the PC.
 
Aireoth said:
I found the crafting mats ok, I got really tired of grabbing sticks and weeds to make arrows and heal. It was fun at first, but by the end of the game I was so done with that mechanic on the PS4. Already dragging on the PC.
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I suspect that Cheat Engine might be what you need
 
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I know Guerilla is working on fixing performance issues first but for me the graphical issues are just as important...

"this patch does not unlock the annoying 30fps animations. It also does not resolve the in-game Anisotropic Filtering issues. Furthermore, the snow deformation effects are still not present (though some report that these effects are present when using specific outfits). Patch 1.02 does not also resolve the screen-space reflections issues. For what it’s worth, Guerrilla Games claimed that it is still looking into fixing them"
 
Between the new patch and the new Nvidia drivers released this week, the game did a fresh compile on startup and with a quick test the framerate was WAY, WAY more consistent and it also didn't crash on me. I think it might be stable enough to attempt to play it now, hopefully.
 
I'll probably give it a go this weekend. It's basically going to be a toss up between this and Mortal Shell. If performance sucks I'll bail and come back to this game later.
 
Anyone else using all their shards to craft arrows? I’m perpetually broke.
 
Porter_ said:
Anyone else using all their shards to craft arrows? I’m perpetually broke.
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If you are using that many arrows it might be a good idea to switch up your tactics. Use non-arrow based weapons, use traps, use melee more, take longer to aim, etc. Taking control of enemies and heavily using stealth can be really helpful for resource management.
 
Derangel said:
If you are using that many arrows it might be a good idea to switch up your tactics. Use non-arrow based weapons, use traps, use melee more, take longer to aim, etc. Taking control of enemies and heavily using stealth can be really helpful for resource management.
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yeah all good points. I use all the tools but my default mode is definitely “shoot shit with the bow”. I think I was at a weird spot in the game, mission-wise, when I posted. I had 62 shards when I posted and I’m now at 4,000.
 
After the 1.02 patch I haven't seen another crash. Still some performance issues and stuttering, but the crashes were the big annoyance.
 
Only time I run low on shards is when I buy a bunch of gear which is rare. I find the wood to be a much bigger hassle to keep up, and health plants by far the biggest hassle.

I do play pretty aggressive even on ultra hard, spear stabbing is just so rewarding.
 
Aireoth said:
Only time I run low on shards is when I buy a bunch of gear which is rare. I find the wood to be a much bigger hassle to keep up, and health plants by far the biggest hassle.

I do play pretty aggressive even on ultra hard, spear stabbing is just so rewarding.
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Have you discovered the secret armor underground?
 
Blade-Runner said:
Took down a thunderjaw the other day....one tough mofo on very hard difficulty.
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My strategy for those, IIRC, is to tear off the disc launcher, freeze it, and then nail it with its own weapon. Takes 'em down pretty fast from what I remember.
 
GDQ has a run of the expansion on Ultra Hard coming up in about 45 minutes for those interested.
 
Tinkering with the benchmark this morning. TAA vs. SMAA seemed to make a huge difference in smoothness for me. I got hitching galore with TAA, but SMAA is mostly butter smooth. I left most everything at Ultra and turned the resolution render to 90%. I put clouds at shadows at High and that gives me an average FPS of 59 (which I think is actually 59.9...aka 60FPS) for the benchmark. In the game itself, things seem mostly really smooth. I think some of those quick fly bys in the bench might not represent real world gameplay. An hour in I have no crashes or issues. I think I'm going to go ahead and play through this one rather than wait for more updates. Seems good enough for me.
 
Domingo said:
Tinkering with the benchmark this morning. TAA vs. SMAA seemed to make a huge difference in smoothness for me. I got hitching galore with TAA, but SMAA is mostly butter smooth. I left most everything at Ultra and turned the resolution render to 90%. I put clouds at shadows at High and that gives me an average FPS of 59 (which I think is actually 59.9...aka 60FPS) for the benchmark. In the game itself, things seem mostly really smooth. I think some of those quick fly bys in the bench might not represent real world gameplay. An hour in I have no crashes or issues. I think I'm going to go ahead and play through this one rather than wait for more updates. Seems good enough for me.
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I have not had a single issue in 30 hours of play so it’s working great for some of us. I dropped my settings down to everything on Medium, aside from model quality which I have at High. So essentially PS4 equivalent settings. With the Digital Foundry recommended settings it would drop down to high 40’s in some of the particularly intensive areas, which is no good.
 
How's everyone's gpu temp when playing this? Playing at 4k on my 2080ti (overclocked) my gpu hits 75-80c, no other game does this - I'm usually in the 60s for other games
 
pandora's box said:
How's everyone's gpu temp when playing this? Playing at 4k on my 2080ti (overclocked) my gpu hits 75-80c, no other game does this - I'm usually in the 60s for other games
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Mine is water cooled, but it gets up to about 50. One thing I noticed is that I have a hard time staying above 2000 MHz in this game, I usually don't in other games. Edit: 50 is maybe a little higher than I'd see in most other games, but not like, dramatically so.

I've not played a lot of other games at 4K, though, so maybe that has to do with it.
 
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I've been playing around with some settings this morning. Seems that the weird hitching I was getting in the benchmark only happened the first time I ran it? Haven't seen it since. I've swapped back to TAA and performance is roughly the same as SMAA now. I also noticed that the game occasionally opens in 1080p in spite of what the menu says. My TV reports it as 1080p and it clearly doesn't look like 4K.

The game pushes the GPU pretty hard. Using Precision X1, simply boosting the target and memory speed makes this game run super smooth...but damn does that fan rev up. RDR2 is the only other game that does that.

In terms of the game, it's a good looking game that plays well. Some of the colors look a little weird to me (both with/without HDR), but I think that's the look they're going for.
 
Yeah, it's strange when a games art style doesn't work with your eye... I remember Borderlands 1 being like that for me. Needed a mod or two before I didn't find a couple of style choices annoying.
 
Domingo said:
I also noticed that the game occasionally opens in 1080p in spite of what the menu says. My TV reports it as 1080p and it clearly doesn't look like 4K.
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That happens to me every time I start the game, and it’s immediately clear if you have an OSD running like Afterburner etc. (OSD is extremely blurry). Swapping to borderless full screen and then back to full screen solves it. I do it as a matter of habit now when starting the game.
 
Had my first crash in awhile tonight, didn't even play that long either. I think certain parts of the game just drive the engine crazy for some reason and it crashes.
 
Considering getting this now that there doesn't look to be much I'm interested in over the next month or so, maybe Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Recknong, Baldurs Gate 3 at end of Sept. Game playing relatively well now? I want something that actually takes advantage of, and looks good on my new OLED.
 
delita said:
Considering getting this now that there doesn't look to be much I'm interested in over the next month or so, maybe Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Recknong, Baldurs Gate 3 at end of Sept. Game playing relatively well now? I want something that actually takes advantage of, and looks good on my new OLED.
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Short answer is yes, it's fine.
 
Yeah, I put
Flogger23m said:
Any notable patches yet? Did they fix the AF and animation issues?
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There were two patches, however I finished the game and DLC with 65 hours logged and wasn't aware of those issues you mentioned.
 
They fixed the 30 FPS animation thing if that's what you mean. Don't think they fixed the AF.
 
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