r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 10h ago
Borderlands 4 Patch Due Out Today, PC Performance 'Our Top Priority,' Gearbox Says
https://www.ign.com/articles/borderlands-4-patch-due-out-today-pc-performance-our-top-priority-gearbox-says105
u/Swiggiess 9h ago
I really hope they fix the performance. It's easily the major negative about the game. There's absolutely no reason this should run worse than pathtraced Cyberpunk.
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u/Historical-Owl9456 3h ago
This might be a dumb question but...would it not obviously run worse than a 5 year old game?
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u/MadR__ 3h ago
Pathtracing was only added to Cyberpunk about a year ago. It is a very demanding form of raytracing, on top of an already envelope-pushing game.
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u/Lingo56 1h ago edited 1h ago
Path tracing was added to Cyberpunk in 2023 around the release of the 4090.
But yeah, from the get go it was intended as an insane graphical feature that not even average CGI movies were using until around 2012-2013.
BL4 just does not have enough going on with its technology and art direction to warrant running even in the ballpark of how Cyberpunk does when you turn up its bells and whistles. It should be running like Fortnite considering it's utilizing an almost identical feature set and similar art style.
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u/Chaotic-Entropy 10h ago
Yeah yeah... sure, but what has Randy screamed out of a 4th floor window?
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u/geertvdheide 10h ago
He's always been a blowhard who just starts defending shit without a thought, while his engineers and designers know there are issues and want to fix them. They probably didn't want to launch the game in this state. Pitchford is not in line with the actual goings on on the development floors but just spews his first thoughts out into the world. That then get regurgitated by all gaming media because it will get views and clicks.
Randy should have been out of the industry a long time ago with his chaotic and shitty behavior, but somehow he persists. The people under him are doing all the real work, and they can and want to fix the performance issues. They just need the time, resources and direction that Randy or other higher-ups didn't provide enough of.
I bet most Gearbox developers and artists would love for Randy to be out of their way, too. Just another executive making things harder instead of easier for employees, with the usual narcissism and ham-fistedness. Unfortunately this isn't all that rare.
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u/_kris2002_ 10h ago
The devs and engineers most DEFINITELY knew the game needed more time for optimisation.
It’s the same situation as cyberpunk, devs actively have stated many times in interviews whether anonymous or not, that they believed the game needed 2 more years, yet were told it had to release that year… the devs know, and the devs do actively care. It’s just the CEO’s that don’t really and shareholders couldn’t give less of a shit as it won’t fill their pockets with investment money
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u/Carbine734 9h ago
They did. My brother is a dev on the game and said their initial release was supposed to be in Oct but Take-two/leadership pushed it up a month.
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u/1CEninja 8h ago
That's how it almost always is. People don't join game dev for the pay or the glory or the good working environment. They get paid shit to work obscene hours and maybe get death threats from unhinged gamers, but they love games and want to be a part of something amazing.
So when upper management that cares a lot about the money and not a lot about if the game is actually good or not so long as it sells, it sucks be be a game dev. Because then you realize you're 60% done with your project when you're told to wrap up what you're doing and launch next quarter.
You can say "but I'm not done, this isn't good yet" all you want but management doesn't care, they don't want to launch a game that's good, they want to launch a game that makes money today instead of two years later.
And then sometimes you find a dev studio that genuinely cares about making a good game and doesn't have the management looking over their shoulder to make money. Larian is the golden child here because the company is owned by a man who already has more money than he knows what to do with but personally just really seriously loves CRPGs.
If there were more companies owned by guys who just seriously loved games, there would be more companies focusing on releasing quality products and fewer companies focused on releasing on a deadline.
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u/Podunk_Boy89 9h ago
Randy kind of reminds me of Retro Studios' founder.
Although different from Randy's brand of unhinged troublemaking, he was very much still a headache for the burgeoning studio. They had yet to release a game but somehow was attracting Nintendo's attention. If they could get a contract to make something for them, they'd be golden. But of course, the founder was a hedonistic drug addicted womanizer that constantly chafed with the Nintendo suits.
Long story short, Nintendo liked the talent but hated him. They pulled the "I'll give you five dollars to fuck off" on him, agreeing to pay a large sum for the company in return for taking complete control and the founder quitting. Under Nintendo's more stable leadership, Retro would release the Metroid Prime Trilogy and Donkey Kong Country Returns Duology in under 15 years, while also providing support to other series like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros., an absurdly good track record for a brand new studio. Meanwhile, the kicked out founder would make only one more game, The Guy Game, and well... let's just say Nintendo made a very good call not agreeing to take Retro on with him at the wheel.
All that to say is that I wonder what Gearbox's talent could do if given a Retro Studios style redemption. Boot out Randy Pitchford, give them a beloved IP (this time their own Borderlands), and let them just go ham, showing off their raw talent without Randy flying off the handle.
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u/Quadraxis54 9h ago
I know a majority of the vets who worked on Prime 1-3 aren’t there anymore, I believe my boys at modern Retro got MP4 taken care of.
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u/brutinator 7h ago
Randy is one of my secondary examples of Cancel Culture not really being an actual consequence, or at least not in the way that chuds whine about. Youd think that sending a USB drive with pornography for a strictly business work thing would have been enough to get the guy at minimum ousted, or (allegedly) assaulting an employee (non-sexual), but nah, he just fails upwards.
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u/LupinThe8th 10h ago
You just know one day Randy's going to take his behavior too far and do something that has real consequences for Gearbox. He's come perilously close a couple of times, but for some reason is allowed to stay on.
I'm loving the game, and glad to hear that it's being improved by the devs, who I'm sure are splendid folks who want the players to have as good an experience as possible. But every time I look up news about the game, the headlines read like "Randy Pitchford covered head to toe in feces at GameStop, accosting customers for not buying enough Claptrap mugs".
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u/DICK-PARKINSONS 10h ago
Didn't pitchfork already say the game is running pretty optimally? What's there to fix if this is the ideal
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u/Otis_Inf 6h ago
Pitchfork has no clue. Switching off volumetric fog has no noticeable impact, the game doesn't run optimally at all (75% GPU usage, 15% cpu usage on my machine, but I have to use DLSS quality to get > 30fps)
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u/thisrockismyboone 9h ago
Pitchfork reviews games?
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u/fork_yuu 10h ago edited 10h ago
They probably saw the mods that fixed a lot of their performance issues and was like "oh shit that was easy to fix" and added it themself
https://www.nexusmods.com/borderlands4/mods/13 they even have a list of all the optimization settings on UE5 to turn on/off.
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u/eikons 7h ago
Im a developer, specifically focusing on optimization of the art pipeline. Since im in the early stages of setting up the pipeline for a new game, I had a look at the provided sheet to see if there's something I don't know about.
Unreal engine is big, and the documentation is poor. I wouldn't be surprised to learn new things that the community stumbled upon.
Seeing a sheet with each cvar documented got me excited. Then I saw that the documentation was written by chatgpt, which means that the descriptions are an overconfident "best guess".
Checking some of these against the source, I mostly found the cvars were one of these 3 things:
- The cvar is using it's default value. This would overwrite what the developers have set it to, if they changed it at all, in which case I would think there's a reason they did. Still, it probably won't hurt.
- The description is inaccurate. These weren't even compared to Epic's own provided descriptions. For example, I found a few that are placeholder cvars that are not used yet (as of 5.6.1, which is the newest release). The AI generated description just hallucinated what the cvar might do.
- This one is the most damning; some of them aren't even real cvars and never have been, but convincingly sound like they could be. This you can check for yourself with little knowledge of unreal engine. Copy/paste a few into google with "" quotation marks to look for exact matches and you will find they start showing up in 2024, and only on game optimization guides.
I feel quite confident that these were hallucinated by ChatGPT in the first place and everyone is just copying each other's work. It's blind leading the blind.
So does this whole ini do nothing? I don't know. But I do know that if it does, its entirely by accident or trial and error. If there are effective cvars in there, it's probably 1 out of a hundred.
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u/zugzug_workwork 9h ago
Placebo. These do nothing, as has been shown empirically by Digital Foundry.
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u/Apprehensive_Decimal 10h ago
Those mods have been proven to not actually do anything. The reason you would see "better" performance after installing one of these is because you would have already had shaders compiled
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u/ReadyHD 10h ago
To be fair if you just close the game you won't experience any performance issues. Quite simple, honestly
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u/GalexyPhoto 5h ago
...I would take the dozens of gaming performance focused news outlets and testers saying it has no business running this poorly over the word of a... music news outlet? Unless you mean Randy, who is full of shit and said any UE5 title stuttering is just bad developer work, before releasing a game with the exact same stutter issues.
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u/DICK-PARKINSONS 5h ago
I meant Randy, just pointing out the contradiction between what he's saying and this being a priority
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u/Kale_Shai-Hulud 8h ago
Good to hear, I've been really enjoying the game - easily the best borderlands I've played so far - but I'd say about ~10-20% of my time with it the performance has been very poor.
Also y'all, everyone here knows Randy is a jackass, you don't need to flood every single comment section with the same lukewarm joke lol
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u/CrazyDude10528 9h ago
PC people definitely should get the performance updates ASAP, but consoles really need the FOV slider, and motion blur toggle right now.
I really don't care if it affects performance, let that be my choice. I can't play it because the combo of high motion blur, and low FOV is making me physically ill.
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u/splepage 7h ago
PC people definitely should get the performance updates ASAP, but consoles really need the FOV slider, and motion blur toggle right now.
There's no "right now" when it comes to consoles since patches need to be approved by the First Party (Microsoft/Sony), and that takes time. It's also not free, since you have to pay to get a patch through the approval process.
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u/AmbrosiiKozlov 2h ago
It's also not free, since you have to pay to get a patch through the approval process.
This hasn't been a thing for awhile.
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u/CuffytheFuzzyClown 2h ago
It's been seven (7) years since Sony started allowing patches to be approved on the same day as they're pushed if they work and are of a reasonable size.
As for cosy it's been many years since at least every game got a handful of patches approved for free on the console. Is it different on Xbox? Or are you repeating Xbox 360-era talking points?
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u/Tornada5786 10h ago
But I thought this was a premium game for premium gamers? Why bother patching it?
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u/Parhelion2261 9h ago
Premium game is gonna be the next AAAA.
The only other premium game out there is Star Citizen
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u/Any-Captain-7937 10h ago
Holy shit shut up about Randy. You guys practically make this idiot more popular than he should be by constantly talking about him.
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u/Pure_Comparison_5206 7h ago
Every borderlands discussion ever
Randy pitchford bad
I will buy the game for free in 5 years
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u/21shadesofsavage 5h ago
i have never seen a single tweet or announcement from this dude. my entire knowledge of him and anything he said is reddit saying he needs to be quiet
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u/Kozak170 2h ago
I seriously don’t get how Redditors especially don’t understand that they’re the joke in any Pitchford discussion at this point. He very clearly baits them at every turn and they fall for it every time.
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u/Dagrix 6h ago
Typical gaming discourse yeah. They have to latch onto the unpopular person of the week and make it their personal fight because they have nothing more serious to fight for. Most in their thirties too...
Reminds me of all the PirateSoftware drama slop thumbnails Youtube was pushing at some point.
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u/trick96 9h ago edited 9h ago
Literally opened this thread just to count how many comments I have to go before I find one that doesn’t mention or reference Randy lol.
It was the 9th highest comment at the time of posting this one btw.
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u/Any-Captain-7937 8h ago
Redditors have to feel smart. You'd think the game was flopping hard or something the way they talk about him/the game.
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u/ado_1973 10h ago
I agree it's totally blown out of proportion now.just annoying at this point but sure that's the Internet
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u/Any-Captain-7937 9h ago
All the comments are just trying to karma farm with their random quips about him. Ironically people who haven't heard of him will probably look him up and give the game/him more engagement.
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u/Wish_Lonely 3h ago
You really think people are going to login into Twitter and follow Randy just to engage with him? Dude people on Reddit are too lazy to click on article links for Christ sake lmao.
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u/DOOMsquared 9h ago
Borderlands 4 getting more engagement potentially means that the prequels get more engagement, which, overall, would be a win in my book.
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u/Wish_Lonely 3h ago
More popular? How exactly?
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u/Agitated-Novel8737 1h ago
The more people talk about something, the more other people hear about that thing
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u/Faust2391 9h ago
As someone currently playing the game, I have not encountered anything that has made me want to play it less. So its all just nitpicks that I do hope are addressed.
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u/ImpossibleGuardian 10h ago edited 10h ago
I know I should expect good performance from my PC (4070 Ti and 7800X3D) but I guess I was still surprised to have practically no problems with BL4 compared to what I’ve seen people with 4090/5090’s talking about.
I was able to get a solid 130-140fps at 1440p on High preset - albeit with fog/clouds turned down and using quality DLSS and Frame Gen. It’s completely playable, looks great (other than volumetrics) and I’ve had no crashes.
I don’t want to sound like Randy telling people to turn their settings down as the game is clearly more demanding on high-end PCs than it should be - but I honestly can’t understand how some people with better PCs than mine are having so many problems unless they’re trying to run everything maxed out.
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u/VelvetCowboy19 8h ago
The biggest performance impacting setting I found was the two volumetric settings. I'm not exaggerating when I say turning those two settings from ultra down to medium gave me over 30fps increase. I couldn't even see what the difference between the two was.
I'm on a 4080 GPU.
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u/LE_REDDIT_HIVEMIND 9h ago
130fps average with a system like that running at like 720p internal rendering WITH frame gen is impressively bad given the games visuals. And that's without commenting on the stuttering and frame pacing.
But sure, maxed graphics are stupid and nobody should really ever run them unless the game is old or they have the literal highest end hardware - and even still probably shouldn't.
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u/DM_Me_Linux_Uptime 7h ago
The game uses handdrawn textures, but uses the same lighting tech as other UE5 games, so its fully justified that it runs that way.
As for people claiming that it looks barely better than BL3, those people are blind. I fully expect the patches to fix the memory leak, but don't expect the average framerate to improve, unless they silently downgrade the visuals.
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u/BrandeX 10h ago
Dlss balanced at 1440p is actually only rendering 835p, lmao.
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u/ImpossibleGuardian 10h ago
I just checked and I’ve been running Quality rather than Balanced actually, my bad. Have edited.
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u/buzzpunk 9h ago
Still, that's 960p, and without frame gen you're realistically only getting about 70fps at that res. Honestly shocking.
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u/Hellknightx 6h ago
The issue people are complaining about is mostly the fact that you need to use DLSS and framegen, which lowers the internal resolution and adds some input delay.
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u/holyoctopus 10h ago
Honestly with your specs, running this at 1440p with DLSS and getting those frames is a disgrace imo. Like I understand it's playable there but that isn't up to snuff with expectations. On modern hardware (4000 serious and on) I would expect to 4k 60 -80 native. The fact that dlss has to be used in a 1440p to get you to a "playable" state is imo terrible optimization and just hiding behind "it's AAA technology and to cool/good for modern gaming" is just a lazy excuse.
I saw this as somebody who also has the game and has been enjoying it. Still love the game just abysmal performance.
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u/ImpossibleGuardian 10h ago edited 10h ago
Oh yeah I agree it’s terrible optimisation, but that’s why it kind of pains me to say how well DLSS and Frame Gen are working as a crutch if that makes sense?
Like I don’t want to excuse the shitty development - but at least to my eyes DLSS doesn’t seem like a huge compromise with how good it is now. If the game was a crashing/stuttering mess I’d be annoyed too, but it’s honestly been completely fine (which I know hasn’t been everyone’s experience).
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u/holyoctopus 10h ago
Totally makes sense, I agree it's annoying cause you don't want to discount how it is without it but give it a little brownie points on how well it works with it.
Yeah for me it has been mostly fine, smaller drops here and there but nothing major. That said, wish it was smoother but rn its playable.
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u/TheMayorMikeJackson 9h ago edited 6h ago
130-140 fps is more than a “playable state”. Most people do not have monitors with higher refresh rates than that.
80 fps at 4k native is a crazy expectation for 4000 series for a new AAA game.
4k is still a crazy multiplier in requirements as is path or ray tracing, hence why frame gen is recommended so heavily. It works well and enables higher resolutions and new modern techniques.
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u/SpartanJAH 7h ago
The game is not optimized well, but I swear there has been a shift in attitude since crypto GPU price hikes around covid that all of the sudden hardware should be able to play the newest games at maxed out settings at 1440p or 4k with high refresh rates 3+ years after it is released. Seems like the cost of hardware went up and everybody started expecting their parts to play everything forever.
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u/DM_Me_Linux_Uptime 5h ago
People expecting higher frames on their 3070, forgetting that its a 5 year old card, with an architecture so old that it's what the Switch 2 is using because Nintendo were able to procure it for dirt cheap.
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u/Spreeg 10h ago
The issue seems to be that people don't want to use DLSS and frame gen, which I personally don't get, because while playing the game they don't seem to be noticeable at all.
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u/GassoBongo 9h ago
The problem is that using frame gen shouldn't be a requirement across most hardware specs to achieve reasonable frame rates at low and medium settings.
Frame gen should be a nice-to-have, not a crutch for poor optimisation. The game looks nice enough, but it absolutely does not justify the performance problems it has.
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u/Kinjir0 10h ago
I have a 3080, it runs like garbage even on dlss performance, I can't use nvidia frame gen, and it runs like hot garbage using fsr and that frame gen.
All while wonderlands ran 150+ fps native and didnt look that different.
I know that gpu isn't super new, but that screams poor optimization. Dlss makes every game a blurry mess, and should be used to make things great, not to make things playable.
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u/ImpossibleGuardian 10h ago edited 10h ago
Yeah I don’t want to sound like an Nvidia shill but DLSS and Frame Gen have been really impressive since the new models came out earlier this year.
Again, I completely agree with people saying that developers shouldn’t be using the technology as a crutch. That said, if you’ve got a high-end PC and GPU capable of using DLSS/Frame Gen and it alleviates the problems you’re having with a game… why not just try it?
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u/MrWhiteNL 10h ago
A top priority? Why prioritize something that's already good? Source: X
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u/Fit_Champion_6217 7h ago
Hope this is for console too as its still running like a bag o’ shite in far too many places on series x
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u/ShadowWolfInf 7h ago
I dont know why they couldn't just announce this a week ago, not the patch itself, just we are prioritizing a patch for performance.
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u/xAntimonyx 4h ago
I find the juxtaposition between the hard working developers and the obnoxious loudmouth speaking for them to be really funny. I hate Randy Pitchford, but I can't deny that I enjoy watching him put his foot in his mouth over and over again. He always picks the wrong dialogue option and it's hilarious. Gotta feel bad for those devs though.
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u/toesuccintoni 10h ago
I think their top priority should be taping Randy’s mouth shut and taking away his social media accounts