[2024] tier 5 and 6 POI should have different approach

This is a fully 3D Voxel game. A large structure with a lot of spawns is going to be hitting your CPU, RAM, and storage pretty hard.
It is only a lag machine when your system is preventing the client from operating effectively.

IMHO, they need to adjust the min spec, and be more clear about what min-spec CPU's are. Just like a lot of other titles do currently.

Originally posted by jrgd:

Originally posted by SylenThunder: This is a fully 3D Voxel game. A large structure with a lot of spawns is going to be hitting your CPU, RAM, and storage pretty hard.
It is only a lag machine when your system is preventing the client from operating effectively.

IMHO, they need to adjust the min spec, and be more clear about what min-spec CPU's are. Just like a lot of other titles do currently.

If you are suggesting TFP to adjust the minimum requirements to be a Ryzen 7 5800x3d or even 7800x3d, 16GB of RAM, and a relatively high end GPU just to accommodate the poorly thought out tier 5 and tier 6 POIs (as far as performance is concerned), that is obscene.

Even running relatively modern hardware (5600g, 6600xt, 16 GB 3000MHz DDR4, SATA SSD for Game, NVMe SSD for OS, using Vulkan backend), the game stumbles well-below acceptable framerates and can easily drag the framerate from 110 fps down to a steady 6 in a Tier 6 quest-applied POI. No game should be moving the goalpost so significantly just to account for the bad optimization in certain areas. Rather, that bad optimization should be addressed.

No, I would put min spec around an i7-6700, with a GTX 1060 6GB, and an SSD. You can get an acceptably stable 60FPS on that hardware with little dips. Recommended spec would be like an i7-9700k or AMD R7 3700 with an RTX 2070.

What is your configuration that you have such hard drops? It sounds like you are expecting your GPU to lead a CPU-bound game, and are assuming that just because you have a nice GPU that you can just run whatever for graphics. Instead of realizing that this is an incomplete and un-optimized CPU-bound game that requires some caveats to your settings and resolution. Just because you have a 4090 Ti Super doesn't mean you can run 4k Ultra. I don't care what you can do in Cyberpunk, it isn't relative because that game is not un-optimized or bound by the CPU.

Originally posted by hellatze: they are just lag machine. but i think having enviromental hazzard. a lot of hidden bomb traps. rogue turret. is better than countless zombies

Setting the lag machine comment aside and looking at your other comments, I think that while hidden bomb traps, turret emplacements, and environmental hazards sound good on paper, they are not very effective challenges in a voxel game. I just played a game with turret emplacements and it isn't a voxel game and the gameplay was simply peeking around cover to get a few shots at it and then ducking to avoid getting shot and repeating until the turret was destroyed. In a voxel game you could just place building blocks around it to bypass it in seconds or break through a wall to bypass it in minutes. The same would be true of environmental hazards and/or platforming puzzles. All of these challenges can be bypassed due to the voxel nature of the game.

As for hidden bomb traps...that was done and pretty universally hated. Go do the construction site POI of the unfinished skyscraper. There are lots of hidden landmines and when it was brand new the excitement for it pretty much drained away immediately because nobody liked getting blown up by a hidden landmine.

I agree that Tier 5 POIs can be repetitive with massive numbers of zombies and long arduous mazes. But I also know that there are people who do enjoy them and they are great to tackle as a cooperative team. It would be cool to have a turret or environmental hazard here and there but I also think they would be viewed as inconsequential compared to zombie threats in whatever POI they were placed. For now, if you are playing SP then just stick to Tier 4 as your max level quest.

Originally posted by jrgd:

Originally posted by SylenThunder: No, I would put min spec around an i7-6700, with a GTX 1060 6GB, and an SSD. You can get an acceptably stable 60FPS on that hardware with little dips. Recommended spec would be like an i7-9700k or AMD R7 3700 with an RTX 2070.

What is your configuration that you have such hard drops? It sounds like you are expecting your GPU to lead a CPU-bound game, and are assuming that just because you have a nice GPU that you can just run whatever for graphics. Instead of realizing that this is an incomplete and un-optimized CPU-bound game that requires some caveats to your settings and resolution. Just because you have a 4090 Ti Super doesn't mean you can run 4k Ultra. I don't care what you can do in Cyberpunk, it isn't relative because that game is not un-optimized or bound by the CPU.

Hardware already stated above. A Relatively-balanced mid-tier system both CPU and GPU-wise. I don't expect the game to keep 110 fps at all times (I run quite low settings at 1440p), however the nature of CPU-Bound should at least utilize a couple threads of the CPU at full. Your suggested min-spec even then (depending on which processor is picked) sits below my hardware and has zero to some chance (Intel and AMD offering respective) of giving playable late game performance as of Alpha 21. As it stands, this game seemingly needs a top-end processor preferably with a large cache size in order to not completely reach hard engine and/or CPU bottleneck.

Notably, modding the game's boot.config to include:

gfx-enable-gfx-jobs=1 gfx-enable-native-gfx-jobs=1
does drastically bring the FPS in tier 6 POIs up to about 22 fps average from 6, but is still below what I'd consider functionally playable.

Going in, I do fully expect 7 Days to Die to be more bound by the CPU. I do not however think that the extent of badly optimized zombie AI and spawning combined with building stability physics should drop what can be 50-80 fps in large cities down to 6 when actually interacting with a late-game POI. One should not simply state to just buy a $300-400 USD CPU just to reach the bare minimum for framerates.

Sorry, I missed your specs in the mess of other hardware you were dropping in the post.

From what you stated, this is your hardware.
CPU: 5600g
RAM: 16 GB 3000MHz DDR4
GPU: 6600xt
SATA SSD for Game
NVMe SSD for OS

And then you state you are using Vulkan??? on a system that should clearly be using DirectX.

You are aware that Vulkan is not fully supported, and has a number of issues? That by using it you are causing exactly the kind of issues you are attempting to avoid? Vulkan can help when you have a low-end GPU that is struggling, but for yours you should absolutely be using DirectX for optimal performance.

Originally posted by jrgd:

Originally posted by SylenThunder: Sorry, I missed your specs in the mess of other hardware you were dropping in the post.

From what you stated, this is your hardware.
CPU: 5600g
RAM: 16 GB 3000MHz DDR4
GPU: 6600xt
SATA SSD for Game
NVMe SSD for OS

And then you state you are using Vulkan??? on a system that should clearly be using DirectX.

You are aware that Vulkan is not fully supported, and has a number of issues? That by using it you are causing exactly the kind of issues you are attempting to avoid? Vulkan can help when you have a low-end GPU that is struggling, but for yours you should absolutely be using DirectX for optimal performance.

I play the game on Linux. The alternative is OpenGL, not DirectX 11. The performance all-around on the OpenGL backend is abysmal. Vulkan is generally acceptable in framerate for as long as the game isn't being otherwise bottlenecked.

If we wanted to adjust minimum requirements around supporting the OpenGL backend, there'd be significantly more expensive and potentially exotic hardware setups suggested to reach acceptable performance. Though I feel that would be quite unfair given that the marginally less reliable, but vastly more performant Vulkan backend is a better target.

See, now we are getting some real information. You are on a non-standard setup, and though Linux is supported, I doubt it will see serious optimization until a22/23. Even then Vulkan still doesn't have 100% full support in Unity yet. Maybe the next version will, but it isn't there currently.

Now let us take a look at some differences.
I run the game on the following hardware.

CPU: 3900X
RAM: 32 GB 3200MHz DDR4
GPU: 6800xt
SATA SSD for OS
NVMe SSD for game
Separate SATA SSD for Game save data

Now in raw benchmarks there is only like a 2% difference between our CPU's. Sure I've got a better GPU, but that really only matters when we compare other titles like Starfield or Cyberpunk.
With Windows 11 and DirectX I average 140 FPS out in the country. It drops to 90-110 when I am in the cities, and doing those T5/6 POI's I do have the occasional drops into the 40-60FPS range. It isn't constant though, and has little impact on overall gameplay. I could swap back to my old 1070 Ti, and the only real difference is going to be where my max numbers hit because I was getting the same dips in the same places with it.

And just for reference, these are my settings.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3157245754
I run at 1440p with FoV maxed.

Originally posted by jrgd:

Originally posted by SylenThunder: See, now we are getting some real information. You are on a non-standard setup, and though Linux is supported, I doubt it will see serious optimization until a22/23. Even then Vulkan still doesn't have 100% full support in Unity yet. Maybe the next version will, but it isn't there currently.

Now let us take a look at some differences.
I run the game on the following hardware.

CPU: 3900X
RAM: 32 GB 3200MHz DDR4
GPU: 6800xt
SATA SSD for OS
NVMe SSD for game
Separate SATA SSD for Game save data

Now in raw benchmarks there is only like a 2% difference between our CPU's. Sure I've got a better GPU, but that really only matters when we compare other titles like Starfield or Cyberpunk.
With Windows 11 and DirectX I average 140 FPS out in the country. It drops to 90-110 when I am in the cities, and doing those T5/6 POI's I do have the occasional drops into the 40-60FPS range. It isn't constant though, and has little impact on overall gameplay. I could swap back to my old 1070 Ti, and the only real difference is going to be where my max numbers hit because I was getting the same dips in the same places with it.

And just for reference, these are my settings.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3157245754
I run at 1440p with FoV maxed.

Out of curiosity, what results do you get running the Vulkan backend on Windows? How much worse can one reasonably expect performance to be when running through T6 POIs compared to DX11?

Initially it was crap. On my usual 10k testing world it looked like this.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3181073523
Floating trees and partial POI's because the terrain wasn't loaded in past 2-3 chunks away.

Eventually it did sort itself out, and then the FPS settled in at about 30 less on average than DirectX. I did not get as far as doing quests though. Soon as I headed to go pick one up the client would crash. Doesn't like the city I suppose. Will need to do some more testing, but this has been a very busy day.