I hear you - it’s crazy, and yes, I’m sure it will be vastly improved. I 100% agree with you!
There’s a general thing with Unreal that a wise developer said to me recently - treat the latest release as bleeding-edge. It’s there for the people who want to jump in and learn the newest features. Game/Movie dev studios in 99% of cases have not made the switch yet. You’re an early adopter, you’re going to find bugs, you’re going to find things that need to be improved. The people who immediately adopt 5.4 are expected to work with what they’ve got, and find solutions to the issues until 5.4.2 or 5.4.3 comes along. Like or not, this is a deeply technical, complex engine - using it does require you to learn constantly.
3 questions, I don’t want answers, just have a think:
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Do I really need 5.4? Is something like motion matching so great today that I can no longer bear to be in 5.3?
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I don’t know what you’re doing, but do you need to be using cinematic quality in the Editor? Best practice suggests that’s a “use to check out a specific view, then switch back to Epic or lower for routine work”. Likely doesn’t matter cos I’m getting the message on Epic too.
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Do you really need to use Virtual Textures? If you’re build out a game landscape, sure, they’re great, but it’s something to enable when you’re nearly done and heading towards shipping.
Again, like everything, it depends on your needs - if you need the RVTs, if you need to be using 5.4, then you have your choices - disable the auto-grow, or spend 10 minutes setting up a fixed pool.
Whatever you decide, I wish you well and good luck!