So, this is going to be a journey, and I ask that you're patient with me.
Here's a little backstory so that you understand where I'm coming from.
I mention all of this because I fail to understand why while playing BG3, I can't go above Medium settings with a few of the bells and whistles turned on without bottoming out to about 15 fps, and I'm essentially stuck playing on the Low setting with all additional options either turned off or at their lowest possible setting while still running into a fair bit of chop with the game looking absolutely hideous, approaching N64 levels of detail. This even happens in areas that aren't busy, and places like the goblin camp or busy cutscenes basically turning the game into a slide show.
What are your specs?
Now, I don't know pretty much anything about how engines work, or what the optimization is like, and I understand that my system is getting up there in age, but can anyone please help me understand why it is that I can play such a robustly detailed and busy game, and I'm able to march along at full speed without any issues, but a game like BG3 that's primarily taking place in large open areas where a tiny portion of the world is visible on your screen at any given time due to the isometric view is struggling to run well enough to be legitimately worth playing?
Clearly, a grand majority of people aren't having issues with this since the technical section of the forums aren't exactly flooded with complaints about problems with performance, so I'm either forced to assume that everyone has a monster PC, or that they just happen to be lucky to have a setup where it's not enough of an issue to matter.
Can a game (or I guess engine in this case) be optimized dramatically between the EA process and a retail release? Can I expect this to not just get "kinda" better but substantially better? Or did I just pay $60 for a set of files to sit on my computer?
Optimization is always an ongoing process in EA games. I am also playing Valheim, and while my rig has no problem with this game - everyone gets stuttering on that one which is a known optimization issue. So short answer yes, but honestly your specs make a huge difference. There are particular weaknesses that are easy to correct which may be causing the problem.
