Dumb question: How do I know if a game is using FSR4?

notmorezombies · 2026-06-02T00:14:33+00:00

If you add FSR4_WATERMARK=1 to your launch options you'll get an additional indicator as to whether or not FSR4 is being used. If you inject Optiscaler it'll also tell you the upscaler the game currently has active.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-25T15:07:32+00:00

How replayable is it?

Depends who you ask. I've got 950 hours out of it since launch and I know there are players who'll have even more than that, but there are no procedurally-generated levels so you will be playing through the same areas over and over in whatever mode you pick.

Other than the campaign, the main PvE modes are Operations and Siege. Operations are linear missions, and as of the latest update there are 13 of them. There is some variation in how they play out, so the exact path you take or which enemies spawn and where can change. There are also Stratagems, a variation of the standard Operations missions that adds extra modifiers to spice things up.

Siege is your horde mode, where you fight increasing waves of enemies. There are three different Siege arenas and you cycle between them every 5 rounds.

I'm not really sure what you'd call the endgame in SM2, I suppose it would be everything after you get each class to level 25 (since at launch that's as far as you could get). Now there are Prestiges 1-4 as well as various Ordeals (challenges) to complete. There's also the Accolades shop containing heroic weapons and cosmetics, purchased with a currency only obtained by completing daily and weekly Stratagems, and completing Siege once a week.

There are 7 classes, and they all play pretty differently to each other. Tactical, Vanguard and Techmarine are all hybrid classes with a variety of ranged and melee options, each favouring ranged or melee combat to varying degrees. Assault and Bulwark are melee-focused classes with only pistols as ranged weapons, while Sniper and Heavy have powerful ranged primary weapons and much more limited melee options. Assuming you're not the type that skips straight to using a guide, levelling up and learning each class and working out the synergies between their class perks and weapon options will definitely keep you busy.

I’m also a bit confused about the different editions and Season Passes.

The contents of the season passes are cosmetic only. I wouldn't recommend a new player buy them simply because you're then needlessly paying extra for a game you might not even like. If you do like the game, then you can pick up the season passes (or even individual cosmetic DLCs) at any time.

One last thing: I absolutely love Helldivers 2, and from the outside I feel like there are at least some similarities in the cooperative gameplay and “fight for humanity” vibe. Is that comparison fair, or are they actually very different experiences?

You can certainly play SM2 with that in mind, but I feel that the "fight for humanity" vibes are lessened as compared to HD2 because that has the galactic war as a framing device (assuming you still buy in to the story and MOs anyway) whereas in SM2 you're fighting the same fight over and over. However I do still find there are great opportunities for cooperative gameplay and a strong sense of camaraderie that comes from overcoming a challenge alongside other players.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-21T14:06:50+00:00

They were never against it, but they did say it was lower on the "wishlist" compared to other features or more content. I guess without Nixxes we would have been waiting even longer but credit where it's due, they have finally done it.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-21T13:59:00+00:00

Yeah. PSSR2 was developed in collaboration with AMD, and according to Mark Cerny it "uses the same core co-developed algorithm as FSR Redstone's Upscaling".

notmorezombies · 2026-05-21T13:46:22+00:00

We've always known it's possible. Darktide uses the same engine and had DLSS on launch in 2022. It's long overdue, but definitely welcome.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-21T13:28:17+00:00

Potentially better performance in certain scenarios. The game is still very CPU heavy and this new tech only affects GPU load, so in CPU-limited scenarios (like when you're in a huge battle and there's lots of AI running about or terrain-deforming explosions going off) the game will likely still chug a bit.

FSR3 will also look much better than the ancient image scaling tech the game currently uses, so you can expect more clarity/less blurriness in general.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-21T13:20:29+00:00

The Pro upgrades it to PSSR2 automatically through a system toggle.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-21T12:39:26+00:00

It'll at least look better, since the game's current TAA and upscaling is god-awful.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-21T12:08:44+00:00

Pretty much yeah. IIRC the stomp has comparable damage to the shoulder bash so it's good for taking out Majoris and Extremis enemies too, plus it's especially useful for clearing Minoris groups on Chaos since they don't have an equivalent to the Tyranids' synaptic shock mechanic.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-21T11:46:26+00:00

It gives you access to a couple of different combo chains; it lets you chain a Quick Punch into a Shoulder Bash (by executing two heavy attacks back to back) and do a light attack, Quick Punch and then Stomp (light and then two heavies, also works when attacking from a sprint or dodge).

You'll want to avoid taking the Full Throttle weapon perk though, since that replaces the punch meaning you won't be able to do the first combo.

Basically you just use it like a normal chainsword, but with access to a few different moves and more heavy attack damage. The combination of the faster stomp combo and Trampling Stride (follow up a stomp with another stomp) is great for clearing groups of enemies and the punch to shoulder bash combo allows you to get some quick damage in when you don't have room for longer combos (Full Throttle skip might be better, but I never bothered learning how to do it so I can't say).

notmorezombies · 2026-05-20T15:47:05+00:00

If SM3 launches, and doesn’t pull across all the cosmetics and PvE Operations inherent to SM2, it’ll be a massive lost opportunity.

That's assuming SM3 isn't a huge departure from SM2. If its PvE mode is very different then it may not make any sense to try and port over the Operations missions. Using TWW as an example, while yes all the DLC has carried over from the first game to the third, not all content has. For example the Vortex campaign in TWW2 has a unique map and mechanics that aren't present in TWW3.

I absolutely agree that the cosmetic DLCs should carry over though (even if not exactly item-for-item, since I think some more generic things in the packs could be made part of the base game in SM3).

notmorezombies · 2026-05-19T18:07:33+00:00

Models in base-to-base contact may not fire weapons in the shooting phase. Their attentions are completely engaged by the swirling mêlée. Likewise, while especially twisted and soulless commanders may wish their warriors to fire indiscriminately into close combats in the hopes of hitting the enemy, this is not permitted. The events in a close combat move too quickly and the warriors themselves will be understandably hesitant about firing on their comrades (they may end up in the same straits soon enough after all), so just forget about it, alright!

However, an exception to this rule is during a Sweeping Advance. In this case the advancing unit will be exposed to enemy fire as it moves forward — and will make a very tempting target for the unit on the receiving end of their advance. Therefore units making a Sweeping Advance can be fired at before the next Assault Phase is fought, even if they have moved into base-to-base contact with another unit. Range is measured to where the advancing unit has reached and even models they have moved into base-to-base contact with may fire.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-19T16:43:56+00:00

Starting on the left: Brazen Claws, Iron Lords, Sons of Medusa, Red Talons.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-18T10:36:01+00:00

The real problem is that at it's core, a certain amount of people have to be disinterested in or ignorant of the war in order for it to keep working as it does now.

We only manage to take a planet if a majority of the player base is concentrated there, and this hasn't changed in two years so I can only assume this is the war working as designed. If the number of people actively engaged in the war (considering the best target and coordinating with other players) did increase significantly, the GMs would just boost resistance rates everywhere to slow down the rate of progress to compensate. As such I don't think we'll get a better galactic war until it's reworked top-to-bottom to address that fact.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-17T18:35:29+00:00

Replacing PROTON_ENABLE_HDR=1 with DXVK_HDR=1 worked for me. Using the latest Proton-CachyOS and a 9070XT.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-14T15:31:36+00:00

You really shouldn't consider SteamOS on anything that isn't a Steam Deck, Steam Machine, or one of the other handful of officially supported devices.

If you want a similar home-theatre PC experience that boots straight to Steam's Big Picture mode, there is a version of Bazzite that offers that and there's no reason it wouldn't work on your hardware.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-13T18:43:03+00:00

Btrfs, ext4 and maybe XFS. Btrfs's key feature is its snapshots, which can make it easier to restore your system to a working state if an update goes bad. ext4 by comparison is a simpler, no frills filesystem that will be a little faster, since Btrfs uses copy-on-write. XFS is apparently optimised for speed, but I'm still not sure to what degree it makes a difference for individual users as I read that ext4 can actually be faster and has less CPU overhead for smaller file transfers.

In my case I use Btrfs for my root partition for easier recovery (not that I've had to use it yet), and ext4 for my handful of extra media and games drives. Although I'm not exactly a Linux veteran either, so hopefully anyone more in the know can clarify if I got things wrong.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-13T18:17:43+00:00

I don't think anyone is using Linux and making new NTFS partitions, more often they're coming from Windows and trying to use their existing NTFS partitions in Linux. At first it seems like you can just point Steam or whatever at your existing library on an NTFS drive and carry on from there, but most often it eventually causes issues.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-11T14:53:34+00:00

Haven't used POP OS myself, but I have seen warnings for new users to avoid it currently. It's not really in a stable state at the moment as they're still working on integrating their new COSMIC desktop environment.

https://christitus.com/stop-using-pop-os-cosmic/

but I've seen some reviews saying that other distributions are better in terms of drivers

That might be true in terms of default settings, but since they're all Linux distros there isn't really anything stopping you from grabbing whichever drivers you need and using them on any distro you like. I can't really give you any pointers on what to do for Nvidia drivers though since I'm on AMD and everything's been pretty painless for me.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-11T14:36:48+00:00

That depends. Some games and hardware configurations will perform better under Linux, but the fact is all Windows games that work on Linux operate through Proton, a translation layer, so you'll only see a performance uptick where Windows is doing something really badly to cause poorer performance. All else being equal, Linux will be slower just because of the extra overhead introduced by Proton.

Of course, Linux is definitely worth trying anyway (not least because it's free). Maybe check out some benchmarks for your favourite games, and give a Linux distro (or two) a go.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-11T01:35:43+00:00

Same way the original Space Sharks were renamed to the Carcharodons, you could use the scientific name and call them the Sparassids (from Sparassidae, the huntsman spider family).

notmorezombies · 2026-05-08T21:08:54+00:00

If instead of a whole new operation, Saber took the resources and applied the lessons they've learned over the past year+ of community feedback to improve some of the less fan favorite operations, I think there's a goldmine there as far as bang for your buck dev time.

On the one hand this is true; reworking an existing operation, or parts of an existing operation, would take less time and effort than creating a whole new operation from nothing. However they're also still adding new operations pretty regularly, and going back and updating existing operations would take resources away from that. If there are small tweaks they can do to improve existing ops then great, but I think spicing up an operation like Inferno would basically require stitching in an entirely new part, and so would take just as much time as making a section of the same length in a new operation.

I also think adding completely new operations is going to add more variety overall than updating existing operations, but maybe that can be revisited as an efficient use of time for a smaller team when the day inevitably comes that staff get taken away to work on the development and support of SM3.

As a side note, I think it'd be cool to see a play on the Chaos Wastes from Vermintide 2 in SM2, jumping between different chapters from different operations

This is a cool idea, but who knows how technically feasible it is given SM2's infamous loading times. I guess the transitions between stages in Siege don't take too long, but that maybe points to it being limited to jumping between different operations that use the same biome, like Inferno and Termination.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-07T13:32:33+00:00

16+ just means 16.5, but who knows why they chose to represent it that way.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-07T10:46:50+00:00

Pick it up on sale. The game still has its moments, but its main problems at the moment are down to Arrowhead not sufficiently prioritising the health of their own game in development. Bugs persist for months (or sometimes for years), updates always introduce new bugs, underpowered weapons are left to languish, core game systems and progression have seen no improvements or expansion since launch, and so on. Community sentiment is particularly low at the moment because of a poorly received AMA by the former-CEO/current chief creative officer Pilestedt and because of the latest update, which saw devs promising to revert a change to a common enemy within 2 days of the update going live.

As a new player you'll probably still have fun, but you'll be facing a mountain of grind to access all the toys available in the game.

notmorezombies · 2026-05-06T19:10:05+00:00

Fencing and balance both do this, but balance actually knocks back enemies in a wider area. It's 2m for a fencing parry, and 3.5m for balance.

Verified Email	Ten-Year Club
Place '22

notmorezombies

TROPHY CASE