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55 days later, Arkham Knight PC is still hopelessly unplayable

My game started off fine but the closer I got to the end of the campaign the higher the frequency of freezes and stutters with freezes literally lasting upwards of 20 seconds at times now.
 

Qassim

Member
I'd say the Ground Zeroes was a fantastic port, too. It still probably makes sense to hold off a few days at least to buy TPP, since Ground Zeroes is apparently a game that is much smaller in scope.

With steam refunds, there's basically no risk involved.
 
My game started off fine but the closer I got to the end of the campaign the higher the frequency of freezes and stutters with freezes literally lasting upwards of 20 seconds at times now.

Yeah, I had a similar experience. The first half was OK, but performance degraded extremely in the tail end of the game. The last few hours were filled with stuttering and incredibly poor performance all around. I had no outright gamebreaking issues, but it was a decidedly unpleasant experience that couldn't be called "playable."

I'm really curious to see how long it will be before AK is actually finished. I am doubtful the interim patch will be a magic fix-all.

Steam refunds landed right on time for this one. Can't imagine how different things would be without it.
 

Sober

Member
Yeah, I had a similar experience. The first half was OK, but performance degraded extremely in the tail end of the game. The last few hours were filled with stuttering and incredibly poor performance all around. I had no outright gamebreaking issues, but it was a decidedly unpleasant experience that couldn't be called "playable."

I'm really curious to see how long it will be before AK is actually finished. I am doubtful the interim patch will be a magic fix-all.

Steam refunds landed right on time for this one. Can't imagine how different things would be without it.
Well, all that would happen is you add WB to the chorus of "fuck you, got mine" that you see in some of the posts here.
 

Cabal

Member
I would say it's one of the worst ports in a long time, I bought the season pass edition so I feel sort of ripped off because I can't play the content(no matter how mediocre it sounds). For what it's worth I was able to finish the game, but on certain days it would crash every 10-12 minutes or so. There was a week where it just crashed to the desktop upon start until the new nvidia drivers came out.

I didn't request a refund, to be honest, I just wanted to play it. When it works it's an awesome game, but between this and MK X, WB is quickly becoming the publisher to avoid on PC. What's worse is that there hasn't really been a lot of communication about when this patch is dropping.
 
I know that Stream refunds were definitely a factor, but there is no way WB and Rocksteady could ignore the user reviews on Steam AND on Metacritic. One of their biggest games had been tarnished. The backlash was real on a number of different forums.
 

10k

Banned
They said August. They have till the 31st. I know it's probably not right but patience is the key here lol.
 

WillyFive

Member
Beat the game on the PC w/ around 75% completion, other than textures going wonky on 2 occasions and falling through the world in the Batmobile once, I didn't really have any issues to speak of, admittedly my machine is pretty beefy, i7-4790k w/ 970GTX, 24GB of RAM. Shitty for people who had major issues tho.

Screenshotted both issues when they happened, luckily, quitting out and going back in fixed the problem.

What the heck is that stuff at the bottom of the skybox? The Earth's mantle?
 

impact

Banned
Huh? I acknowledged that it's a bad port. I think my framerate dropped below 10 during some of the batmobile segments.

However, this doesn't mean that it's "hopelessly unplayable".

Damn this post is crazy in so many ways. If drops below 10fps isn't unplayable then what is?
 
I was able to run the game nearly at 60 FPS throughout, so I wasn't as affected as most.

However, now that I've beat the game and unlocked the ability to get the 75% ending... It won't activate, now matter how many times I hit the activate button, no waypoint for where to go to end the game. Even when I go where I know I'm supposed to it won't let me see the ending. :/
 

heyf00L

Member
It's playable, at least for me, but it's not enjoyable as is. It's very frustrating, so I'm waiting for the patch.

But NewEgg hooked me up with that free MGSV, so I'm selfishly glad it happened.
 

Harmen

Member
Man, this is terrible. Good to hear Steam has a good refund service though, so it shouldn't be too risky to buy a PC game.

And buying and getting a refund is even better than waiting for others, because many refunds will show the missed sales potential to the publisher.
 

Brannon

Member
I don't know what is so unexpected.

Taking it down is obviously an indication that it will take a long time to resolve. Even more hilarious is that they announced a while ago that in late August there would be an "interim" patch - so it still won't be fixed even by then

I know right, I mean seriously. For the two people that still have expectations of it being fixed any time soon...

Replace Arkham Knight with MCC.

There. That's how long it's going to take more or less. So sit back and grab a Snickers; y'all gonna be here for a while.
 

Mifec

Member
I am interested that everyone has so happily jumped on to the MGSV PC Day One bandwagon for Sept 1st

So many issues that suggest that might not go well

Really seems that it would be worth waiting a while (a few days at least) to see how that one plays out.

This makes zero sense. GZ was an amazing port, the same guys are doing it. They even asked us what options we want in the game. Then after that they pushed the release up two weeks and implemented the options most requested by us ( not all of them, but the ones they could).

So where do you get the idea that it will be bad?

Not to mentions steam refunds are a thing now.
 

d00d3n

Member
One thing I can't figure out is: why no details about the compensation package for those who stayed with the game/dlc from WB? What do they gain from this? Are they seriously thinking about giving us nothing but the fixed game? ("Congratulations for the alpha access the last couple of months, hope you enjoyed your reward!"?) Or are they waiting for Mad Max (which they seem to have faith in) to be released to not slaughter sales by giving it away as a freebie?
 

Pudge

Member
I finished the game near launch with minimal issues, and I'm not even on a super high video card. As long as you tweak the settings just so you can get a good experience out of it. The game obviously does need to be fixed because you shouldn't have to tweak the settings, but saying it's unplayable is not truthful.

I do wish the DLC would come out though, I bought the Season Pass and have almost nothing to show from it. Even if the DLC all kind of sucks, I'd like access, I want to spend 15 minutes as Harley.
 

Ephemeris

Member
I finished the game near launch with minimal issues, and I'm not even on a super high video card. As long as you tweak the settings just so you can get a good experience out of it. The game obviously does need to be fixed because you shouldn't have to tweak the settings, but saying it's unplayable is not truthful.

I do wish the DLC would come out though, I bought the Season Pass and have almost nothing to show from it. Even if the DLC all kind of sucks, I'd like access, I want to spend 15 minutes as Harley.

I'm in the same boat; especially on the Season Pass. Usually I'm the one where my hardware holds me back, so it's funny to me as I run through this "hopelessly unplayable" title on my humble PC haha
 

scitek

Member
I finished the game near launch with minimal issues, and I'm not even on a super high video card. As long as you tweak the settings just so you can get a good experience out of it. The game obviously does need to be fixed because you shouldn't have to tweak the settings, but saying it's unplayable is not truthful.

I do wish the DLC would come out though, I bought the Season Pass and have almost nothing to show from it. Even if the DLC all kind of sucks, I'd like access, I want to spend 15 minutes as Harley.

Yes, it is.
 
It really is insane that two months later they haven't improved it at all, and still no official word on when the patches might start coming. What a fucking mess.
 

tariniel

Member
I played about 3 hours of it on Saturday using the settings recommended by Geforce Experience. It had some visible fps drops in some parts (lots of fog mostly) but overall I still was able to play and have fun with it. Based on that experience I wouldn't say it is unplayable, but I just read it gets worse as the game goes on, so perhaps that's why I haven't seen anything too terrible yet.

Either way the recommended settings from Geforce Experience has everything on low and res at 1080. Hopefully the patch will let me run it with some higher settings, or at 1400p, or something.
 

pahamrick

Member
Yes, it is.

At this point everyone is wasting their time responding to those posts. "It runs fine for me, ergo it runs fine for everyone else, people are just hyperbolic!"

The game runs perfect for me from my SSD, less perfect from my gaming HDD. I've also seen how it runs for a friend of mine, which is pretty similar to how it runs for SalsaShark, going by the video he posted.

Plus when someone brings up a comment about some kind of freebie or compensation, the general response is "Well, they let you refund it." When the new SimCity launched broken, it took some pushing but EA started to accept refunds for it. It may not be as wide spread as Arkham Knight (Pushing retail stores for recall, but that shows how fucked the port was. Plus the retail copies were screwed up too. Would only install around 8GB then require people to download the rest unless they copied the discs to their HDD and fixed it themselves.) but refunds were allowed.

And they still offered a free game as compensation.
 

Layell

Member
Plus the retail copies were screwed up too. Would only install around 8GB then require people to download the rest unless they copied the discs to their HDD and fixed it themselves.) but refunds were allowed.

I did not know this dang it, now I'm even angrier.

How do they even mess up disc installs?
 

scitek

Member
Bit of an exaggeration. It plays just fine at 30fps.

Yeah no. It'll run "fine" at times without hitching for like 30 minutes if I'm lucky, then it'll devolve to looking like Salsa's video after a while. Sometimes it just loads up acting like that, it's really unpredictable. I've shelved my play-through until it's fixed, but it was pulled from sale for a reason.
 

pahamrick

Member
I did not know this dang it, now I'm even angrier.

How do they even mess up disc installs?

No idea, but there were a lot of angry posts from people who were being forced to download the rest of the game when they had strict data caps. That was before someone found out how to get the rest of it to install by copying the discs to a HDD and fixing it.
 
Played and beat the game to probably 85% on PC. The only thing I didn't finish were the tiddler trophies because we'll screw that. I wouldn't call it unplayable, but it's definitely not preferred.
 

Pudge

Member
Yeah no. It'll run "fine" at times without hitching for like 30 minutes if I'm lucky, then it'll devolve to looking like Salsa's video after a while. Sometimes it just loads up acting like that, it's really unpredictable. I've shelved my play-through until it's fixed, but it was pulled from sale for a reason.

It sounds like your specific setup is causing those problems, I never experienced a hitch in the entire campaign. That totally might be the fault of the broken game, but you can't just generally say the game is unplayable when some people have played through it even before the first patch came out.
 
This is why when PC gamers act superior and shit on consoles, I don't take them seriously.

All the power in the world means nothing when matched up to poor optimisation and bad porting.
 

pahamrick

Member
It sounds like your specific setup is causing those problems, I never experienced a hitch in the entire campaign. That totally might be the fault of the broken game, but you can't just generally say the game is unplayable when some people have played through it even before the first patch came out.

If the game wasn't so unplayable for a large majority of people it wouldn't be taking this long to fix it. WB wouldn't have pulled all digital and retail copies, causing loss of income. They wouldn't be withholding Season Pass content, pissing off the people who didn't refund and kept the game + season pass.
 

scitek

Member
It sounds like your specific setup is causing those problems, I never experienced a hitch in the entire campaign. That totally might be the fault of the broken game, but you can't just generally say the game is unplayable when some people have played through it even before the first patch came out.

You're right. It's probably just me having these problems. Carry on.
 
My game was not as bad as salsa sharks but I'd still call it unplayable

Even if it "worked good enough" after "tweaking a bunch of settings and an ini file" that shit is at minimum unacceptable and I don't see why you'd argue against that


I'm just bummed that it was the game I got with my brand new 980 ti and it's an absolute shit version

Would fight a person to get mgs instead of Batman






But NewEgg hooked me up with that free MGSV, so I'm selfishly glad it happened.

Wait what
 

pahamrick

Member
Would fight a person to get mgs instead of Batman


Wait what

When the free MGS deal was announced, a lot of people were able to get a free MGS code from NewEgg by contacting support. Hell, when I contacted them I was originally told I wasn't eligible due to when I purchased the card and I'd already gotten 2 games free (Witcher 3 + Batman) but they ended up sending me a free code anyway.
 

RiccochetJ

Gold Member
I'm interested in seeing how it performs when they make it available to buy again. Even then, I'm just going to hold out for their goty edition with all the dlc packed in.
 

Spirited

Mine is pretty and pink
Anyone here know how long it will take for GMG to remove the game after the refunding?

I seem to still have it almost 1 and a half month later.
 

Layell

Member
This is why when PC gamers act superior and shit on consoles, I don't take them seriously.

All the power in the world means nothing when matched up to poor optimisation and bad porting.

As PC gamers we have at least had the luxury of fan modifications and steam refunds to get the game we deserve. Bad ports happen on every system lets not kid ourselves here.
 
It sounds like your specific setup is causing those problems, I never experienced a hitch in the entire campaign. That totally might be the fault of the broken game, but you can't just generally say the game is unplayable when some people have played through it even before the first patch came out.

LOL. It's not his system. It's that the game is a busted pile of shit. I don't see how you can think otherwise after the company stops selling the product, and two months later we've had no updates as to when it might reappear.

This is why when PC gamers act superior and shit on consoles, I don't take them seriously.

All the power in the world means nothing when matched up to poor optimisation and bad porting.

Yeah, 'cause this type of mess happens all the time on PC. And there have been no broken ass games on the PS4 or XOne this generation. Totally.
 
This is why when PC gamers act superior and shit on consoles, I don't take them seriously.

All the power in the world means nothing when matched up to poor optimisation and bad porting.

This has nothing to do with the platform and everything to do with the publisher and developer. Let's not start a fight where there isn't one.
 

DieH@rd

Banned
I never found AK hopelessly unplayable on PC, and I have FX8350 + 270x which is much less than Rocksteady recommends for now [i5 & 970].
 

WarpathDC

Junior Member
I got it to run somewhat okay while looking decent after a lot of work (gtx 970, i5 3570k @ 4.2 8gb ram) but decided to stop playing it until they fixed it. I really think that fucking season pass better be free or a free game for those who already spent money on the pass.

And no I don't think that is too much to ask for releasing this pile of shit. I will never buy another WB game on PC at launch, even from a key reseller on the cheap.
 
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