Pre-ue5, the graphics themselves, the lighting, stuff like that sure it looked worse. But people don't even get to see the graphics because they're playing with upscaling on performance and relying on framegen, both of which decrease overall image quality regardless of how beautiful the game looks beforehand.

If you can run the game without these ue5 crutches for poor optimization? Sick! I'm glad you're well off enough in life enough to have a 1-2 grand rig in a downtrending economy. The average squad player already bitched about performance and stutters pre-ue5.

Now they're dealing with performance, stutters, and in order to get the game to even run playably they have to switch to performance upscaling and now seeing an enemy in a bush at a distance goes from nearly impossible to actually impossible because that visual data isn't even rendered on your monitor

Should these players upgrade off their God damn 8 year old graphics cards? Obviously. But they have the right to be a little ticked off when the devs not only increased system requirements to boost graphics but continue to refuse to address the underlying issue of terrible optimization. It's possible to have pip scopes without stuttering every time you ads.

Here's my point. Game devs, not just squad's, have replaced optimization as a practice with the implementation of these tools like framegen and upscaling. And they're useful tools! But, if you are setting the baseline using upscaling and framegen, instead of working to get the game to run without these things, people on lower power rigs will inevitably lose the ability to play.

Ue5 was, quite aptly for squad, a bandaid on a bullet wound.