We’ve noticed that the majority of bug reports come from people running the game far below minimum system requirements. Usually on an integrated chip (example: "Intel HD 4000", etc.) instead of a dedicated 3D graphics card (example: an Nvidia or AMD card).
For those running the game at or below minimum system requirements, or just having any performance issues, here is a priority list of things that will improve performance.
(Biggest performance improvers on top)
- Reduce Screen Resolution
- Reduce Quality Presets
- Toggle V-Sync (some setups run better with this off or on; turn on if GPU runs hot or "screen tearing" occurs)
- Reduce shadow distance, or turn off shadows
- Play in windowed mode (can resize manually)
- Reduce LOD Bias to 1
- Turn off anisotropic texturing
- Turn off anti-aliasing
- Turn off real-time reflections
- Change Shadow Projection to "Stable Fit"
Additionally, you will want to reduce other applications/processes running at the same time as the game.
Also, be patient. If your computer is below minimum requirements, the load times will take longer and may even appear to get hung up. Allow your computer enough time to catch up.
If your computer does not meet the memory requirements, then you should not run the game at all. Running out of memory will likely crash the game.