Star Wars: Jedi Survivor

[Homy]

Another broken new AAA PC release in the past few months, alongside Company of Heroes 3, Final Fantasy 7 remake and The Last of Us.

STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor™ on Steam

The story of Cal Kestis continues in STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor™, a galaxy-spanning, third-person, action-adventure game.

store.steampowered.com

- "This now makes like the 6th AAA game to release broken on PC at launch this year alone".
- "Runs like my ass after taco bell".
- "Star Wars CPU Survivor"
- "RTX 4080, i9-13900KF, 32GB 6000 DDR5, latest drivers on Win 11. I can get around 30 fps. Amazing"
- "I'm using a 3090 FE and 5700x and getting a consistent 30 fps in some areas. Other areas give me a mostly consistent 45. This is at 1440p. Lowering the settings and using FSR don't make a tiny bit of difference".

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Steam reviews hit 'mostly negative' as players slam performance issues—'F*** us PC gamers right?'

Even powerful PCs are running into bugs and stutters in Cal Kestis' latest adventure.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[diamond.g]

Another broken new AAA PC release in the past few months, alongside Company of Heroes 3, Final Fantasy 7 remake and The Last of Us.

STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor™ on Steam

The story of Cal Kestis continues in STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor™, a galaxy-spanning, third-person, action-adventure game.

store.steampowered.com

- "This now makes like the 6th AAA game to release broken on PC at launch this year alone".
- "Runs like my ass after taco bell".
- "Star Wars CPU Survivor"
- "RTX 4080, i9-13900KF, 32GB 6000 DDR5, latest drivers on Win 11. I can get around 30 fps. Amazing"
- "I'm using a 3090 FE and 5700x and getting a consistent 30 fps in some areas. Other areas give me a mostly consistent 45. This is at 1440p. Lowering the settings and using FSR don't make a tiny bit of difference".

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Steam reviews hit 'mostly negative' as players slam performance issues—'F*** us PC gamers right?'

Even powerful PCs are running into bugs and stutters in Cal Kestis' latest adventure.

www.pcgamer.com

I’m getting around 40-60 fps: 1440p, Epic settings, RT on, FSR Quality. My GPU usage sits at 100%. I may get a 7900XTX to improve my framerate.
What is more annoying (clearly folks forgot) the game Still has microstutters like the first game, for no apparent reason.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

I’m getting around 40-60 fps: 1440p, Epic settings, RT on, FSR Quality. My GPU usage sits at 100%. I may get a 7900XTX to improve my framerate.
What is more annoying (clearly folks forgot) the game Still has microstutters like the first game, for no apparent reason.

Same business as usual on Steam, butthurt fanboys complaining. 🤷‍♂️

Lirik is playing this right now live, between 80 and 110 fps. And people who don't have a 4090 are complaining now, as usual and that's what the reviews say. To put down numbers, of the first 500 reviews only 21% were positive. After 2000 reviews, 34% were positive. After 6000 reviews 47% were positive, after 8225 reviews 50% were positive. It's pretty common for those that are annoyed for whatever reason to leave negative reviews right away, when the positive ones will show up much slower over time.

Same for CoH3. Many wanted a better version of CoH2 and didn't get it. They made changes and some people didn't like it, so they wrote a negative review on Steam. I had to laugh pretty hard when I read someone complaining about putting up barbed wire and his own troops couldn't walk through it. That was possible in CoH2, enemy was blocked, own troops were not. Maybe should try this in real life. Sure, they don't like that game because it's not what the wanted and that's fine. And while they complain about it on Steam, we get this elsewhere:

And yes, there are microstutters in Jedi: Survivor every now and then with a 12900, 4090 and 128GB. Nothing that breaks gameplay and I wouldn't be surprised if it gets fixed much, much faster than a completely broken gamepad gameplay in RE Village on the Mac.

I've put Survivor on my list of games to play through whenever I find enough time. Too much stuff coming out, nowhere near enough time. Next big thing will probably be Diablo 4 for me.

 

[diamond.g]

Same business as usual on Steam, butthurt fanboys complaining. 🤷‍♂️

Lirik is playing this right now live, between 80 and 110 fps. And people who don't have a 4090 are complaining now, as usual and that's what the reviews say. To put down numbers, of the first 500 reviews only 21% were positive. After 2000 reviews, 34% were positive. After 6000 reviews 47% were positive, after 8225 reviews 50% were positive. It's pretty common for those that are annoyed for whatever reason to leave negative reviews right away, when the positive ones will show up much slower over time.

Same for CoH3. Many wanted a better version of CoH2 and didn't get it. They made changes and some people didn't like it, so they wrote a negative review on Steam. I had to laugh pretty hard when I read someone complaining about putting up barbed wire and his own troops couldn't walk through it. That was possible in CoH2, enemy was blocked, own troops were not. Maybe should try this in real life. Sure, they don't like that game because it's not what the wanted and that's fine. And while they complain about it on Steam, we get this elsewhere:

And yes, there are microstutters in Jedi: Survivor every now and then with a 12900, 4090 and 128GB. Nothing that breaks gameplay and I wouldn't be surprised if it gets fixed much, much faster than a completely broken gamepad gameplay in RE Village on the Mac.

I've put Survivor on my list of games to play through whenever I find enough time. Too much stuff coming out, nowhere near enough time. Next big thing will probably be Diablo 4 for me.

The beginning is pretty cool so far, I am enjoying it.
I can’t wait for the crying over Immortals of Aveum when it comes out.
High System Requirements Ahead

 

[Homy]

I’m getting around 40-60 fps: 1440p, Epic settings, RT on, FSR Quality. My GPU usage sits at 100%. I may get a 7900XTX to improve my framerate.
What is more annoying (clearly folks forgot) the game Still has microstutters like the first game, for no apparent reason.

Not only half the Steam reviewers think the game has horrible performance Digital Foundry calls it "The Worst Triple-A PC Port of 2023... So far", worse than its predescessor. "A terrible effort on every level, plagued with shader compilation stutter, traversal stutter, nonsensical CPU limitations, an impenetrable settings menu with little utility, a terrible FSR2 implementation, no DLSS or XeSS... virtually everything that could go wrong with a PC port is present and correct in this awful release. The tragedy is that the game looks great, but the quality of the code here is unacceptable."

Even people who recommend it on Steam talk about performance issues and "config lottery". EA admits now that "Jedi: Survivor isn’t performing to our standards for a percentage of our PC players" but their explanation has upset people even more:

"For example, players using cutting-edge, multi-threaded chipsets designed for Windows 11 were encountering problems on Windows 10, or high-end GPUs coupled with lower-performing CPUs also saw unexpected frame loss." Someone answered "So apparently 12900K is now a "low-performing CPU", as well as 7800X3D I suppose".

They recommend Windows 10 and a CPU with 4 cores/8 threads like Ryzen 5600X or i5 11600K and a GPU like RX 6700 XT or RTX 2070 but now blame people for using Win 10 and bad CPUs. Digital Foundry found out the game utilizes only 2 threads so on low settings at 4K with i9 12900K and RTX 4090 they get only 53 fps where they should get much more.

It's funny to hear a Naughty Dog dev stating that optimizing games for PC is "really really really difficult" when people complain about the difficulties with porting Mac games, when Macs are more like consoles than PCs:

"When making a game for a console, you're making it for one set of drivers/hardware. When making a game for PC you're making it for like 900+ possible combinations. I promise you it's not laziness. It's just really really really difficult."

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1652151426704097281

 

[salamanderjuice]

Of course users running 12900Ks and 7950X 3Ds on Windows 10 are going to run into trouble. Windows 10 has ZILCH idea the CPUs are heterogeneous. Is EA supposed to implement their own CPU scheduler for the game when the OS can't even tell the difference between performance and efficiency cores or what cores have quick access to the 3D cache for people who can't read the requirements Intel/AMD printed on the box?

 

[diamond.g]

Performance is poor in the game, but the gameplay is actually good. I wonder how much of these issues are UE related (like the shader compilation stutter is a known UE issue, per DF). Forspoken didn’t have (nearly as much) shader or (any at all) traversal stutter, it just performed badly for the visuals. Are there any Unity games that look like either Jedi Survivor or Forspoken, and don’t have performance issues?

 

[diamond.g]

Whelp, looks like the console version is broken as well @Homy so I am not sure a Mac Version would be in a better state.

Console gamers should up their standards instead of console warring

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor runs and looks bad on consoles too. And no, the game's issues are not exclusive to the PC version.

www.dsogaming.com

 

[GrumpyCoder]

The beginning is pretty cool so far, I am enjoying it.

It's not a bad game at all. For me it's a bit of Star Wars fatigue and lack of time. I'll get back to it eventually.

I can’t wait for the crying over Immortals of Aveum when it comes out.
High System Requirements Ahead

Kids these days always have to nag about something. Back in the day (no I'm not going back as far as C64 or Amiga) we had our 2D cards and added 3D Monster or Voodoo cards for loop through and when full GPUs arrived later we had to buy a new GPU every year to play games. And when we skipped a year, then new games ran poorly or were simply unplayable. We've gone full circle and are at a similar point right now. Setting options in games used to be a PC thing in the past, but it's moved to consoles as well. The xbox is essentially a PC now with limited hardware selection. And while the PS is different, the PS3 was a pain to develop for and with the PS4 we got the option to select different hardware with the Pro option and software had to utilize it in a similar way as a PC.

Are there any Unity games that look like either Jedi Survivor or Forspoken, and don’t have performance issues?

Unity is even more broken than UE. I'm currently developing some stuff in Unity on my MBP16 Max, because I need to be somewhat mobile and have some iPad apps to take care of as well + it's my daily driver for non-developing related stuff. I surely won't carry around another laptop to run an engine. Not that UE is working flawlessly, but they have one thing in common. They work best, by far, on a Windows system above Linux and macOS. And then there are questionable dev choices... who was the genius to not allow non-convex colliders? (That's been around for years)
Why do colliders for objects created in Unity not work properly with prefabs imported from Blender? I mean, d'oh! Colliders work for all prefabs imported from Blender though. I have not tried if this is a Unity issue in general or macOS related. Only tried the latter. I could go on and on, but feel my blood pressure spiking.

Whelp, looks like the console version is broken as well @Homy so I am not sure a Mac Version would be in a better state.

The console version suffers pretty much the same issue as the PC version, which is CPU and scheduling related. The Quality mode is running at a stable 30 fps without hitting CPU related bottlenecks and the Performance mode allows higher fps, but hits a bottle neck which is CPU related and causes issues. The quality is strictly GPU bound in Quality mode. They could have easily prevented those issues on a console by only allowing Quality mode, but then people would complain about the fps limit. There's no way to prevent this on a PC with the mix of Win 10/11 and P-/E-cores in CPUs. Just look at Linux and how much trouble Kernel developers had to get Linux running properly on CPUs that feature P-/E-cores (they're still not fully supported).

And then bring Survivor to the Mac? On the pro side there's no worrying about SMP vs AMP in the locked down eco system, Apple is taking care of it. On the con side, porting this over to Metal would likely be the same time consuming task as with other games. Sure, Apple could pay them for it as they did with Resident Evil. See where that got both Apple and Capcom. We're back to number of sales vs cost.

Plus it's not like Mac versions run any more stable than PC versions. I keep an eye on some Mac versions every now and then and there are games, years old, with massive graphic errors and performance issues on the Mac, while they run much better on PCs. And that is when the Mac version receives regular updates as well.

There is this one thing however... stuff will eventually be fixed. Last of Us got an update (not tried it), Jedi: Survivor will get an update eventually, so things will be ok. And then there's a lack of these games on the Mac. Ultimately we all want stable a bug-free games (no such thing really), but when I have to make the choice between a game that has bugs early on which are fixed later or no game at all, then the choice is clear. It's kinda like releasing a system, but no software for it at all and then marketing claims "The only true system without any bugs!"... yeah, because there's no software... 🤦‍♂️

 

[Homy]

Of course users running 12900Ks and 7950X 3Ds on Windows 10 are going to run into trouble. Windows 10 has ZILCH idea the CPUs are heterogeneous. Is EA supposed to implement their own CPU scheduler for the game when the OS can't even tell the difference between performance and efficiency cores or what cores have quick access to the 3D cache for people who can't read the requirements Intel/AMD printed on the box?

Well if it's that obvious then EA should simply have recommended Win 11 instead of 10 to keep critics off their back, but they didn't. The problem is that even people with high-end $4000 systems with Win 11, i9 12900K and RTX 4090 like Digital Foundry have problems.

 

[Homy]

Performance is poor in the game, but the gameplay is actually good.

Whelp, looks like the console version is broken as well @Homy so I am not sure a Mac Version would be in a better state.

Yeah, same problem on all platforms it seems. I was not even thinking of or hoping for a Mac port 😄 but another funny thing is when other people try to justify the problems like the constant stuttering on high-end $4000 systems with Win 11, i9 12900K and RTX 4090 by saying it doesn't break the gameplay and immersion when that's literally the first thing PC gamers laugh at loudly when they see some stuttering on low-end Macs like MBA M1 in gaming videos. Talk about double standards. Also people saying those complaining on Steam are the ones without RTX 4090 as if a $2000 card is the new low-end standard on Steam when 99.75% don't even have that. So gamers should blame themselves for not being rich and having 4090 for a video game, when EA itself recommends 6700 XT or RTX 2070? 😆

 

[GrumpyCoder]

12100 (P-Cores, no issues with scheduling), 580 GPU, Medium Settings with FSR (but hey, Apple is doing the same and advertising FX as a plus) and it's running at 40-60 fps. There's always room for improvements, as always, but I guess that's ok for such a cheap system.

Those who want more, just buy a better system. But that's true for the Mac as well when the argument was made that entry level systems can game with a M1 now and when a years old similarly priced PC was discussed somewhere on this board and offered better performance, that switched to "just buy a Studio with Ultra SoC". But that's always the case, more expensive usually means better performance. There's a reason why we buy $50k Mac Pros or PCs costing much more than that.

One lesson to learn though, just don't randomly mix hardware. Modern systems with modern OS' and their schedulers and a mix of CPUs and GPUs might not work very well. They have to be matched to avoid problems. That's the price to pay for an open platform and why consoles used to be so much more stable in the past. What I'd really like to see how a Win10 system with mismatched CPU/GPU but with E-Cores handles the game when E-Cores are disabled and processor affinity for the application is set to P-cores. With all the advances we make in this, suddenly we have to understand how systems work again. Feels like 30 years ago, which isn't a bad thing. That being said, tinkering around in a BIOS can be a real pain, especially when used to Macs and the "turn it on and it (mostly) works" approach.

EDIT: positive reviews on Steam up +1%. Curious what it would look like when hitting 100k reviews. Doubt that will happen, as most people happy with the game usually don't leave reviews. So, not a good metric scientifically, but would still be interesting.

EDIT 2: Recommended CPU from EA doesn't feature P-/E-cores. They recommend "regular" CPUs with SMT. So now I'm really curious what happens when disabling E-cores and set affinity right.

 

[diamond.g]

Yeah, same problem on all platforms it seems. I was not even thinking of or hoping for a Mac port 😄 but another funny thing is when other people try to justify the problems like the constant stuttering on high-end $4000 systems with Win 11, i9 12900K and RTX 4090 by saying it doesn't break the gameplay and immersion when that's literally the first thing PC gamers laugh at loudly when they see some stuttering on low-end Macs like MBA M1 in gaming videos. Talk about double standards. Also people saying those complaining on Steam are the ones without RTX 4090 as if a $2000 card is the new low-end standard on Steam when 99.75% don't even have that. So gamers should blame themselves for not being rich and having 4090 for a video game, when EA itself recommends 6700 XT or RTX 2070? 😆

Maybe you are right that it is all just double speak. The game for sure has issues, as do a lot of Console ports, that doesn't 100% detract from the intention behind the game (in my opinion).

 

[Homy]

Maybe you are right that it is all just double speak. The game for sure has issues, as do a lot of Console ports, that doesn't 100% detract from the intention behind the game (in my opinion).

Then there is this Denuvo thing but that's another story.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor PC Controversy Continues As Fan Discovers Baffling DRM Issue

EA and Denuvo are under fire again.

www.dualshockers.com

 

[thenewperson]

Then there is this Denuvo thing but that's another story.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor PC Controversy Continues As Fan Discovers Baffling DRM Issue

EA and Denuvo are under fire again.

www.dualshockers.com

Hopefully any ports don't use this thing going forward. DeviceCheck already exists.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Hopefully any ports don't use this thing going forward. DeviceCheck already exists.

Doesn't matter if they'd use Denuvo or something else. This was done intentionally, to prevent multiple people on multiple PCs playing the game with only one license. They could do it with any DRM software.

 

[thenewperson]

Doesn't matter if they'd use Denuvo or something else. This was done intentionally, to prevent multiple people on multiple PCs playing the game with only one license. They could do it with any DRM software.

Yeah I get that, I guess I was referring to any of them really. My point is I hope they use the system-standard stuff to verify this.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Patch is out for Survivor within a few days after release. Performance improvements for all platforms. Saw a vid (not enough time, too much other stuff) with 4080 and 12900k running 4k max settings between 80-100 fps. Probably running Win 11 or they were smart enough to read a simple system requirement and turn off E-cores. Perfect? Probably not, always room for improvement. Question of time to optimize vs cost, as usual.

Rumor has it, Capcom want's to team up with EA instead of Apple so they can issue a patch within a few days instead of months. 😜 (and yes that was a joke and no, no-joking, Capcom still pissed off, it's become a running gag in the industry).

 

[diamond.g]

Patch is out for Survivor within a few days after release. Performance improvements for all platforms. Saw a vid (not enough time, too much other stuff) with 4080 and 12900k running 4k max settings between 80-100 fps. Probably running Win 11 or they were smart enough to read a simple system requirement and turn off E-cores. Perfect? Probably not, always room for improvement. Question of time to optimize vs cost, as usual.

Rumor has it, Capcom want's to team up with EA instead of Apple so they can issue a patch within a few days instead of months. 😜 (and yes that was a joke and no, no-joking, Capcom still pissed off, it's become a running gag in the industry).

A co-worker of mine has a 4090 and 13900k and is getting something like 80 frames 4K native/epic + RT. I am seeing around 60-80 frames 3440x1440 native/high with no RT, with the new patch.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

A co-worker of mine has a 4090 and 13900k and is getting something like 80 frames 4K native + RT. I am seeing around 60-80 frames 3440x1440 with no RT, with the new patch.

Interesting. This isn't the video I stumbled across before, but they're also using 4080+12900:

Also running 4090, but haven't tried the latest patch. Is that 80 fps average, low or high? I had more on average and certainly peak when I originally tried for a little and watched Lirik play it a little on Twitch with more, but I think he's running 1440p. I'd have to check to be certain.

Maybe we'll get another patch on May, 4th... (happy early Star Wars day! just in case I won't make a post tomorrow)

 

[diamond.g]

Interesting. This isn't the video I stumbled across before, but they're also using 4080+12900:

Also running 4090, but haven't tried the latest patch. Is that 80 fps average, low or high? I had more on average and certainly peak when I originally tried for a little and watched Lirik play it a little on Twitch with more, but I think he's running 1440p. I'd have to check to be certain.

Maybe we'll get another patch on May, 4th... (happy early Star Wars day! just in case I won't make a post tomorrow)

He said average, though the game has decided he doesn't need more than 22 fps (or maybe the steam overlay frame counter is messed up).

 

[Homy]

A co-worker of mine has a 4090 and 13900k and is getting something like 80 frames 4K native/epic + RT. I am seeing around 60-80 frames 3440x1440 native/high with no RT, with the new patch.

Most improvement at lower resolutions without Ray Tracing, otherwise not much difference. Some stuttering still there. 4080 at 4K Epic gets around 59 fps, no improvement with the patch. In some places +6 fps and higher lows with 4080 at 4K Epic.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

He said average, though the game has decided he doesn't need more than 22 fps (or maybe the steam overlay frame counter is messed up).

Well, with 22 fps something is certainly very wrong and it should be very choppy. If it's smooth, then the frame counter is messed up. In any case, 80 fps should be enough for single player non-competitive first person shooter. And your 60-80 fps certainly isn't problematic either. In the end, the patch brought around 60-70% improvements, which should work for most. Maybe they'll release another patch with further improvements.

I would be happy if I could get anywhere near that for PoE on the Mac (M1 Max). The game is years old, regularly patched and it still suffers major graphical and performance issues, while the Windows version doesn't have these issues.

 

[diamond.g]

Most improvement at lower resolutions without Ray Tracing, otherwise not much difference. Some stuttering still there. 4080 at 4K Epic gets around 59 fps, no improvement with the patch. In some places +6 fps and higher lows with 4080 at 4K Epic.

Yeah traversal stutter is still present. I've had it drop my framerate to the 20's sometimes. I am not tracking VRAM utilization, so I am not sure if some of it is the game swapping resources at the same time (or maybe it is shader compilation stutter for that specific area because I don't see a hit when I go back and forth).

Well, with 22 fps something is certainly very wrong and it should be very choppy. If it's smooth, then the frame counter is messed up. In any case, 80 fps should be enough for single player non-competitive first person shooter. And your 60-80 fps certainly isn't problematic either. In the end, the patch brought around 60-70% improvements, which should work for most. Maybe they'll release another patch with further improvements.

I would be happy if I could get anywhere near that for PoE on the Mac (M1 Max). The game is years old, regularly patched and it still suffers major graphical and performance issues, while the Windows version doesn't have these issues.

Yeah he had to quit the game for it to go back to normal. So no the game isn't 100% fixed (performance wise) yet.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Yeah he had to quit the game for it to go back to normal. So no the game isn't 100% fixed (performance wise) yet.

Yes, I mean general performance. Running into bugs unfortunately happens with many games. I get the same issues with PoE and Diablo 3 on the Mac. And also have the problem occasionally with CS:GO in Windows. As long as it's a quick restart of the game, it's annoying, but I can live with it. PoE (which I probably play more than any other games) keeps freezing for a few seconds and crashes sometimes on the Mac, which is annoying when I only want to quickly play a map or two. I usually don't boot the PC then. Gave up hope after a few years. 🤷‍♂️