Update: According to a series of tweets from the Hunt: Showdown account, there appear to be issues with intermittent crashing and high memory usage, likely due to changes made in today's update. Hotfixes are on the way, but servers will stay up for 12 hours to collect data about the problems. That's what alphas are for, after all.
We are aware of the issues that have been encountered since the release of today’s patch. We have decided to keep the servers up for the next 12 hours in order to gather additional information regarding these issues and will release a hot fix asap. Thanks for your patience!February 15, 2018
Original story: Two weeks into Hunt: Showdown's closed alpha and the general consensus seems to be that the concept is great (and we agree), but the performance is rougher than a ride into town on a horse-drawn buggy during winter. See, the dirt freezes and wooden wheels don't have great shock abso—nevermind. Point is, a big patch dropped today that brings performance improvements and adds a few graphics settings, among a couple dozen other changes, thank goodness.
Stable performance is Crytek's priority this week, as creative director Magnus Larbrant stated in today's blog update. "The game itself is getting better and better, and everybody is working hard to get as many features in as possible." he says. "At the same time, every feature you put in has the potential to crash it, so, we have to think about that too, as we are in stabilizing mode currently."
Some of the notable other changes include a reset to the Bloodline, meaning player progress has been wiped so it's time to start over. You can now select your own spawn point, which will let you gamble with where you think the monster will spawn. More spawn points are available too, which should alleviate frustrations with experienced players hunting down new folks by memorizing every place they might appear.
There's a new case file book in the library as well, but we've yet to see exactly what that entails. I'm betting it's spooky. And hey, region-based matchmaking is now available, though this is just the first iteration of the system, so don't expect it to work perfectly.
There are a few dozen other small bug fixes and tweaks to balancing, all of which you can read in the complete patch notes on Hunt's Steam page.
