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[Scrabble]

I agree that PC gaming is sometimes more of a hassle than console gaming. It goes with the territory since the PC is an open platform, Steam Machines will soon provide an easier route to PC gaming for those people who don't want to deal with proper PC maintenance. That said, your thread's title makes some generalizations that are quite simply wrong since they only apply to your personal experience. You should have avoided phrasing your title like that, that's all I'm saying.

Regardless of it being "my personal experience" the fact remains that many people don't want to put up with any hassle what so ever. And from the amount of responses in this thread, it's not as if pc issues are some once in a blue moon occurrence for people. Not to mention the stigma is still there for people afraid to make the jump.

And again, it doesn't matter that some of you may find these issues to be trivial and not worth discussing, but you don't make up the general gaming public. Not by a long shot. That's what I mean when I say, "the general gaming public will never have the ambition to go out and get involved in pc gaming." PC gaming being miles better than it was 15 years ago means nothing to the eyes of your average gamer. Unless something like a steam box os comes around and solves the janky back end to pc gaming, than yes, pc gaming will not reach the same level of public awareness that console gaming does.

Just because people like me will likely to continue playing pc games, doesn't mean it's as viable a market as consoles. There's a reason microsoft doesn't give two shits about porting its first party games to windows, or care about the fact that titan fall will also be on pc. To play dumb and be oblivious to this just seems silly. And what purpose would there be for valve to specifically address this issue with a gaming os, if there wasn't an issue?

 

[Tabris]

To give you my last experience:

The last time I played a PC game was Civilization 5 through Steam. I would constantly have to deal with the game crashing or slowing down near end game where you had a lot more cities and units. Had to play with the settings constantly. Previous to this, I was having issues with just my general PC reseting due to faulty RAM which had to be investigated which took hours running a battery of tests and finally memtest pointing to the exact issue.

That's when I realized I was officially done with PC gaming.

 

[StevieP]

To give you my last experience:

The last time I played a PC game was Civilization 5 through Steam. I would constantly have to deal with the game crashing or slowing down near end game where you had a lot more cities and units. Had to play with the settings constantly. Previous to this, I was having issues with just my general PC reseting due to faulty RAM which had to be investigated which took hours running a battery of tests and finally memtest pointing to the exact issue.

That's when I realized I was officially done with PC gaming.

Civ slowdowns near the end game are because you need a new CPU. You could, you know, adjust those settings once (lower as they should be just like your end game portion is) and play the game. Civ isn't the most optimized PC title, but when its calculating hundreds or thousands of happenings at once, it might, yknow, stutter a bit.

 

[Leb]

To give you my last experience:

The last time I played a PC game was Civilization 5 through Steam. I would constantly have to deal with the game crashing or slowing down near end game where you had a lot more cities and units. Had to play with the settings constantly. Previous to this, I was having issues with just my general PC reseting due to faulty RAM which had to be investigated which took hours running a battery of tests and finally memtest pointing to the exact issue.

That's when I realized I was officially done with PC gaming.

I couldn't agree more.

The two problems you had were:

1.) Poorly optimized game code

2.) Hardware failures

and fortunately, problems like these simply don't occur on consoles.

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

Yeah back in the day you needed to copy the config.sys and autoexec.bat over to a boot able floppy and configure them specifically for each game. Most of the time himem.sys needed to be loaded to use all of your RAM, and then you had to configure the IRQ and dmas for the sound to work. You also didn't have the net to walk you through it.

But yeah PC gaming hasn't progressed to the point its easy to play. Not at all.

jesus. well i'm glad we are were we are today. would not have been able to fix any of that back in those days (I was a kid anyway and we couldn't afford a PC)

Watch now as people tell you that your complaints are not legitimate and that it isn't difficult so stop being such a wimp.

considering that nonsense he typed about how you can't have Origin and Steam running at the same time, he has no valid points.

 

[CecilRousso]

Those who can't handle PC's and PC gaming even today will continue to be dissapointed - it will never be as easy as you want it to be.

It's rarely as difficult as the horror stories want it to be, but shit can happen and you will just have to ask the question - is it worth the risk? If you want the games that define PC gaming, then the question should be yes.

 

[Tabris]

Civ slowdowns near the end game are because you need a new CPU

You don't get yet how that statement validates the reason why I don't PC game anymore?

 

[SparkTR]

To give you my last experience:

The last time I played a PC game was Civilization 5 through Steam. I would constantly have to deal with the game crashing or slowing down near end game where you had a lot more cities and units. Had to play with the settings constantly. Previous to this, I was having issues with just my general PC reseting due to faulty RAM which had to be investigated which took hours running a battery of tests and finally memtest pointing to the exact issue.

That's when I realized I was officially done with PC gaming.

I hope you never played Skyrim on PS3, or owned an early gen 360. You may have had top quit console gaming as well then.

 

[Jira]

I couldn't agree more.

The two problems you had were:

1.) Poorly optimized game code

2.) Hardware failures

and fortunately, problems like these simply don't occur on consoles.

You're serious aren't you? I mean did you honestly just say unoptimized code and hardware failure doesn't occur on consoles?

 

[Clawww]

You don't get yet how that statement validates the reason why I don't PC game anymore?

Your PC sucks shit and you tried to play a game that was beyond its capacity.

That's the only fucking point you've made. You can go ahead and quit PC gaming based on that, I guess.

 

[jyoung188]

I'm the furthest thing from a "tech nerd", I just google my issue and I fix it.


It's really not hard.

Same here, Google is a lifesaver. It'm not a crazy tech nerd and I fucking love PC gaming.

 

[MutonCommander]

I'm rarely in a gaming/tinkering mood so needing to mess with anything creates incredible (AKA irrational) rage when I'm super excited to play something.

Totally understandable and I sympathize. As I said, Steam Machines are set to address this issue and deliver a streamlined console-like PC experience to people who want it. It's a pretty exciting prospect.

 

[TheD]

Just because people like me will likely to continue playing pc games, doesn't mean it's as viable a market as consoles. There's a reason microsoft doesn't give two shits about porting its first party games to windows, or care about the fact that titan fall will also be on pc. To play dumb and be oblivious to this just seems silly. And what purpose would there be for valve to specifically address this issue with a gaming os, if there wasn't an issue?

Because they don't take a cut of all PC game's sold and thus do not want to take away advantages of the system that does (the xbox)!

 

[Scrabble]

OP pc gaming sounds too hard for you, you should stick to consoles and enjoy your 720p 30 fps 50 degree fov while fumbling about with a controller in shooters


what are you even talking about
you don't have to do any of these things (disabling keyboard drivers, replacing dlls? what ? do you pirate games because that is the only scenario where you have to replace a dll)
Either you pirate your games or you're making shit up and don't game on PC.

you CAN edit ini files if you want to change stuff like fov or edit game settings beyond what the options menu offers
how the fuck is this a downside? What is the alternative? NO options and play everything with the settings forced on you by the developer?

It will never stop amazing me how people who have a console preorder to rationalise try to spin modding and game settings into a negative, it's mind boggling to imagine the mental gymnastics required.

I never said it was "hard", that's not the issue. Also modding and adjusting game settings is a great thing, again, where are you basing your accusations about me from? Also please don't accuse me of pirating a game, I've replaced dll files from steam games. Sorry that I can't list the last game I had to do that, it's not exactly something I write down. I believe it was with Fallout 3 or The Walking Dead the last game I had to. I know with the Walking Dead I had to run compatibility mode in windows 98 to just to start the damn thing, can't remember if I had to adjust a dll file or not.

 

[Tabris]

Your PC sucks shit and you tried to play a game that was beyond its capacity.

That's the only fucking point you've made. You can go ahead and quit PC gaming based on that, I guess.

My PC met the requirements. It met the recommended requirements actually, not the minimum. It still slowed down at end game. Especially when playing the larger maps / more civilizations. How does the recommended requirements not facilitate a perfect gameplay experience through out the game? How often are you expected to replace your PC? That's me tinkering for my experience.

Can you guys not really see why someone wouldn't want that experience?

 

[StevieP]

You don't get yet how that statement validates the reason why I don't PC game anymore?

Scale your settings properly and you avoid issues like those. Or, leave them on low or medium and drop your resolution to 720p just like the new consoles. No game code is perfect (Civ certainly isn't) but if somethings chugging that means youre over extending your hardware. Civ, if you've ever played it before, will always chug toward the end game because an absolute shit-ton of processing is happening and the game engine gets inundated

 

[justjim89]

I feel like PC gaming gets a lot less easy when you don't have a top of the line machine. When you can't just set everything to max and still get 60 fps, optimizing performance for newer games can be a pain in the ass.

For me, the more frustrating cases go like this:
1. Boot up game
2. Start up logos and animations are a little laggy, time to go to settings.
3. Set everything to lowest.
4. Game must be restarted, restart game.
5. Go into beginning of game, performance is very rough.
6. Shit! It's still in DX11! Go to settings and set to DX9.
7. Restart game.
8. A little better, playable at least.
9. Big set piece or crowd of enemies, hello slideshow my old friend.
10. It really should be performing better, quit game.
11. Spend half the day Googling and posting in threads looking for help.
12. No solutions found or offered solutions don't work, play game as is.
13. Pretend 12 fps in particularly busy sections is acceptable to play.
14. Take 1200mg of Ibuprofen.
15. ???
16. PC GAMING MASTER RACE!

I'm not saying PC gaming sucks because I have a laptop, but a lot more issues and frustrations manifest themselves when you don't have a high end rig.

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

jesus. well i'm glad we are were we are today. would not have been able to fix any of that back in those days (I was a kid anyway and we couldn't afford a PC)



considering that nonsense he typed about how you can't have Origin and Steam running at the same time, he has no valid points.

You're missing the point. The experience obviously isn't streamlined enough so that users can avoid problems. If a user is confused about something that is 'not a real problem' or has an 'easy' solution, and this keeps them from playing their game, you end up with the same result as if the game was broken from the get-go. It doesn't matter how valid the problems are in your eyes, the result is the same.

 

[StevieP]

You probably should read this very interesting interview: Gaijin Entertainment on why War Thunder isn’t coming to Xbox One

Sony changed their policies which allows for simultaneous updates for PC and PS4. Sony isn't gate-keeping like they did during the last couple of gens. Nevertheless I think that gate-keeping to the right degree is a good think. Take a look at Steam: Valve sells tons of software that is simply broken. It's crap. It doesn't work. If you check the Steam Forums for some games than you'll see that gamers inform Valve that they're selling broken software (they're also warning the community to not buy these games). What is Valve's reaction? Even though the forums are full of complaints, they put this game into the Steam Sale to sell the crap out of it. That's awful and they did it several times already. They don't care at all about quality. Compared to this shit I rather have a moderate gate keeper that ensures a minimum amount of software quality.

You should run Nintendo in the 1980s

 

[Almighty]

I started pc gaming around 2000, so I was finally getting to play older games like QFG and King's Quest finally (minus the nes port of 5 - wow, that was almost as much of a difference as Ultima SNES to PC U7).. The first time I actually got the sound to work on a DOS game was the gaming equivalent to parting the Red Sea.

Now, it is so easy, it's just mindboggling to me that people still want to complain.

It took until 2006 or 7 and DOSbox before I successfully installed a DOS game with sound and everything. To this day I am still not sure if it was me finally figuring out how to do it or if DOSbox is just so fool proof that you can't mess it up. Either way the day I learned that GOG existed was a very good day. When they got Quest For Glory and Darklands were also a good day.

Fun fact I played Darklands for hours and hours with no sound when I was a kid so it wasn't until it was released on GOG that I heard what the game sounded like.

To give you my last experience:

The last time I played a PC game was Civilization 5 through Steam. I would constantly have to deal with the game crashing or slowing down near end game where you had a lot more cities and units. Had to play with the settings constantly. Previous to this, I was having issues with just my general PC reseting due to faulty RAM which had to be investigated which took hours running a battery of tests and finally memtest pointing to the exact issue.

That's when I realized I was officially done with PC gaming.

Yeah software problems suck, but to hit PCs for hardware problems? I mean its not like console are known for having rock solid hardware that never fails. If I quit console gaming when I had a hardware problem the NES would of been my first and last console.

 

[Atomski]

To give you my last experience:

The last time I played a PC game was Civilization 5 through Steam. I would constantly have to deal with the game crashing or slowing down near end game where you had a lot more cities and units. Had to play with the settings constantly. Previous to this, I was having issues with just my general PC reseting due to faulty RAM which had to be investigated which took hours running a battery of tests and finally memtest pointing to the exact issue.

That's when I realized I was officially done with PC gaming.

Cause consoles never have faulty hardware.. right? I had a memory issue once to years ago to, replaced the memory and wallah it ran great afterwards. Which was great cause memory is relatively cheap.

I mean I did go through 4 360s.. but then again just like you I said fuck it but instead gave up console gaming. Id much rather have a device where I can open it up and keep it clean unlike a console where id void the warranty. Also if a small part like memory or a drive goes bad I can replace it without having to buy the device all over again.

 

[Daouzin]

Totally understandable and I sympathize. As I said, Steam Machines are set to address this issue and deliver a streamlined console-like PC experience to people who want it. It's a pretty exciting prospect.

Totally. I'm actually super super super stoked for it. Steam got me to play PC games again and as someone that's too impatient to tinker, I can't wait for them to come out.

I actually regret not playing PC games when L4D2 came out, I would have loved all the mods. When Steam Machines come out I wouldn't be surprised to play exclusively on them, with exception to whatever Nintendo console is out since I'm a sucker for all Nintendo franchises.

Genuinely more excited for Steam Machines than Xbox 1 or PS4.

 

[Tabris]

Scale your settings properly and you avoid issues like those. Or, leave them on low or medium and drop your resolution to 720p just like the new consoles. No game code is perfect (Civ certainly isn't) but if somethings chugging that means youre over extending your hardware. Civ, if you've ever played it before, will always chug toward the end game because an absolute shit-ton of processing is happening and the game engine gets inundated

Let's take a comparable game (in terms of genre and the whole more units / computation at end game). Romance of the Three Kingdoms on PS2 (from 7 to 10). When I reach end game, my experience is the same as when I started in terms of performance and graphic fidelity.

 

[MutonCommander]

I'm not saying PC gaming sucks because I have a laptop, but a lot more issues and frustrations manifest themselves when you don't have a high end rig.

I've never had a high-end PC in my life, the most I've ever paid for a graphics card is $200. The problem with your case is that most laptops are not simply "not high-end" but decidedly ultra low-end. If you need mobility but you also want to game you'd be much better off spending your money on a moderate desktop and a cheap, light laptop instead of trying to do everything with one machine.

 

[Scrabble]

Because they don't take a cut of all PC game's sold and thus do not want to take away advantages of the system that does (the xbox)!

Microsoft wouldn't get a cut from their published games? That's news to me.

 

[SparkTR]

I'm not saying PC gaming sucks because I have a laptop, but a lot more issues and frustrations manifest themselves when you don't have a high end rig.

Maybe that accounts for the disparity between peoples experiences here. Still, complaining about PC gaming when you're using a pre-built OEM PC or laptop is like complaining about why cross-gen games run like shit on PS3 compared to PS4, you get what you pay for. In the end that should be Valve's goal to fix. My transition from a 360 to a high-end rig was fantastic to me back in 2008.

 

[SneakyStephan]

I think PC gamers just have more time/value their time less/value learning about their .

It's the opposite, I rarely use my ps3 anymore because I value my time.
I get into a game much faster, spend much (much) less time waiting for loading screens and can multitask.

the supposedly amazing ps+ is a miserable experience
catherine (8GB game size) took 4 hours to download and an hour to install... I have all these ps+ games but I don't install any of them since it takes forever.
Had a friend in the UK bemoan the terribleness of trying to play a ps+ game on skype as well, when they tried to play catherine and uncharted 3
I bought gt5 and the installation took 40 minutes, I played the game for a few weeks then stopped, then when I returned to the game 3 months later it took another half hour to patch the damned game. All I wanted to do was play a few quick races...

Meanwhile steam keeps my games autopatched in the background at all times.
Sony has recently added autopatching too.... IF you pay for ps+ ,( otherwise fuck you give me money consumer sheep)
Installing a game takes less than a few minutes and downloading saturates my 100mb/sec connection (while for some stupid reason on the ps3 it only downloads at 5-10mb/sec, pay for online-> get shitty download servers)

console gaming WAS fast and convenient yes, back in the 80s and 90s , before game installs, xbox live/psn enabling patches and while cartridges provided fast loading times.
Now they've gone online it has ruined everything that was good about it.

You know what people who value their time do? they don't stare at a 15 second loading screen in skyrim every time they enter or leave a house and they don't wait for half a day (literally) while a ps+game is downloading and installing.

 

[TAJ]

maybe next time you should just ask the good folks in the PC build thread how to fix a problem. also, why are you editing .ini and .dll files? you shouldn't mess with those if you don't know what you're doing. no reason to really.

It's absolutely necessary sometimes, unless you're happy say, playing at 800x600.
For example, some games see newer cards that weren't around when the game was made as junk that can't run the game. GRID will freak out and assume your card is shit if you have 2GB or more VRAM. I have 3GB. (same with Prototype and a bunch more of my games.)
Saint's Row 2 actually becomes unplayable without mods if your PC is too powerful.

 

[en0s]

It's not about being on team pc or team console, it's about wanting what's right for games as a whole.

having the pc remain open and therefore bringing all these issues you have with it is what's right for gaming as a whole.

you can't have an open environment that works flawlessly

 

[TheD]

Microsoft wouldn't get a cut from their published games? That's news to me.

No, it is because putting them on PC gives people less reason to by an Xbox.
If people buy an xbox for a first party game they are likely to also buy other games on it, so it would be first party game $ + cut from third party games (on xbox) vs first party game $ and no cut from other games (on PC).

 

[SneakyStephan]

To give you my last experience:

The last time I played a PC game was Civilization 5 through Steam. I would constantly have to deal with the game crashing or slowing down near end game where you had a lot more cities and units. Had to play with the settings constantly. Previous to this, I was having issues with just my general PC reseting due to faulty RAM which had to be investigated which took hours running a battery of tests and finally memtest pointing to the exact issue.

That's when I realized I was officially done with PC gaming.

Faulty memory in your new xbox would mean you send the system back for RMA and get it back 2-4 weeks later, if warranty had ended you also paid 150 euros for the privilege of getting it back fixed.

How is that better than running memtest , buying a new stick of ram for 30 euros and replacing it yourself the same day

Again people somehow spinning one of the biggest advantages of pc gaming (modular hardware!) into a negative.

You don't get yet how that statement validates the reason why I don't PC game anymore?

So did you buy civ on the 360 or ps3?
Oh wait that's right the console cpus are much too weak to run the game.
How about planetside 2? or arma 3? or total war games? maybe starcraft 2? or ns2? guild wars 2? tera? hm no all those cpu demanding that you probably couldn't play well on your old cpu don't exist on the consoles. (because the hardware isn't capable of running them)
Can't run more demanding game on low end hardware -> instead buy even lower end hardware that can't run those games either.
Any (seriously any) pc built after 2007 with a dedicated gpu outperforms the consoles, if performance is your issue then your only valid option is to upgrade, not switch to weaker hardware...
logical fallacies as far as the eye can see.

 

[TheLegendOfMart]

I feel like PC gaming gets a lot less easy when you don't have a top of the line machine. When you can't just set everything to max and still get 60 fps, optimizing performance for newer games can be a pain in the ass.

I'm not saying PC gaming sucks because I have a laptop, but a lot more issues and frustrations manifest themselves when you don't have a high end rig.

You don't need a high end rig?

You can build an 8 Core AMD with 8GB RAM and R9 270x for around £500-600 that will be more than capable for high to max detail settings at 1080p60.

That would be a pretty decent SteamOS machine.

 

[Clawww]

I feel like PC gaming gets a lot less easy when you don't have a top of the line machine. When you can't just set everything to max and still get 60 fps, optimizing performance for newer games can be a pain in the ass.

For me, the more frustrating cases go like this:
1. Boot up game
2. Start up logos and animations are a little laggy, time to go to settings.
3. Set everything to lowest.
4. Game must be restarted, restart game.
5. Go into beginning of game, performance is very rough.
6. Shit! It's still in DX11! Go to settings and set to DX9.
7. Restart game.
8. A little better, playable at least.
9. Big set piece or crowd of enemies, hello slideshow my old friend.
10. It really should be performing better, quit game.
11. Spend half the day Googling and posting in threads looking for help.
12. No solutions found or offered solutions don't work, play game as is.
13. Pretend 12 fps in particularly busy sections is acceptable to play.
14. Take 1200mg of Ibuprofen.
15. ???
16. PC GAMING MASTER RACE!

I'm not saying PC gaming sucks because I have a laptop, but a lot more issues and frustrations manifest themselves when you don't have a high end rig.

In this case, you're tinkering because you want to squeeze the best performance out of your rig. You could simply tone everything down and getting it running, but you seem intent on over-extending your hardware. I mean, for fuck's sake, you're complaining about games not running well on a goddamn laptop.

I don't fucking get it; do people expect their hardware to run everything maxed out forever? You're going to have either upgrade or tone graphics down at some point, you know. It shouldn't be hard to maintain console level visuals and performance for the next decade if you were willing to stick to lower framerates and resolutions, though.

 

[Atomski]

Microsoft wouldn't get a cut from their published games? That's news to me.

Hes confused but clearly MS dosnt because they want key exclusives on their device so that people will buy their console over PC. Where they will get money for all games released on that system, even games not published by them. Where as on PC they dont.

But they still release some stuff.. so meh.

Anyways it sucks you are having issues with Arkham City. Not to ask dumb questions but did you check the integrity of the cache?

 

[charlequin]

Watch now as people tell you that your complaints are not legitimate and that it isn't difficult so stop being such a wimp.

Some of the complaints are certainly legitimate (and even today, PC gaming is noticeably less convenient than console plug-and-play stuff -- one of the big reasons Valve is working so hard to make it moreso) but the overall complaint is just kind of overblown. I had experiences like this that made me want to stay away from PC gaming too -- but they were in the middle of last decade. These days, building a PC is much easier than it used to be, games are much less crash-prone, and in general there are just a ton more conveniences than there used to be. For an increasingly large number of people the problems with PC gaming just aren't as serious as they used to be.

 

[hlhbk]

In this case, you're tinkering because you want to squeeze the best performance out of your rig. You could simply tone everything down and getting it running, but you seem intent on over-extending your hardware.

I don't fucking get it; do people expect their hardware to run everything maxed out forever? You're going to have either upgrade or tone graphics down at some point, you know. It shouldn't be hard to maintain console level visuals and performance for the next decade if you were willing to stick to lower framerates and resolutions, though.

Unfortunately that is exactly what they want.

 

[Clawww]

having the pc remain open and therefore bringing all these issues you have with it is what's right for gaming as a whole.

you can't have an open environment that works flawlessly

According to some GAFers, their laptops (of all different makes and varieties) should be running all games perfectly; anything less and, well, PC gaming is a fucking joke!

 

[TheD]

Hes confused but clearly MS dosnt because they want key exclusives on their device so that people will buy their console over PC. Where they will get money for all games released on that system, even games not published by them. Where as on PC they dont.

But they still release some stuff.. so meh.

Anyways it sucks you are having issues with Arkham City. Not to ask dumb questions but did you check the integrity of the cache?

I am not confused, he just does not understand what "all PC games" means.
I never said MS does not get $ from selling it's game's on PC, just that they want to support a platform that gives them a cut of all game's sold, not just their's.

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

Some of the complaints are certainly legitimate (and even today, PC gaming is noticeably less convenient than console plug-and-play stuff -- one of the big reasons Valve is working so hard to make it moreso) but the overall complaint is just kind of overblown. I had experiences like this that made me want to stay away from PC gaming too -- but they were in the middle of last decade. These days, building a PC is much easier than it used to be, games are much less crash-prone, and in general there are just a ton more conveniences than there used to be. For an increasingly large number of people the problems with PC gaming just aren't as serious as they used to be.

For the general consumer, they're still real problems. As I stated before, my roommate, who isn't a huge gamer, was immediately turned off by some of the random BS that he had to go through to get his game to work. If it wasn't for me he may have just said 'screw it'.

It doesn't really put me off, but it's definitely a bottleneck on the potential player base. People want things to work without any hassle.

(I know you're not saying otherwise, just trying to make my point more clear)

 

[Arksy]

I'm a PC gamer. I'm not a tech nerd. The only game I could never ever get to run on PC was Mortal Kombat Trilogy.

Every other issue has been solved by a quick (or sometimes long) google....

I've got every one of the current gen consoles and if there's a choice between console and PC I ALWAYS go PC.

 

[CmdBash]

google is a very powerful tool.

 

[Persona7]

I hate tinkering. I also hate messing with buggy software like steam.

 

[NotUS]

Maybe its just me, but I love that I can tweak the shit out of my games. Use mods to improve textures, lighting, atmosphere, resolutions etc. Install driver updates to increase speeds or enable new effects, ini adjustments to make things look better and run smoother, and even tweak settings in game to hit that balance of gfx vs framerate. I can choose the control input, k/m or wireless controller and even configure they keys I want to use.

I have a 360, PS3 and PS4 on pre-order, and in all instances the PC versions have been the far superior versions, even if the PC versions have been console ports, just look at Dark Souls or Skyrim.

You know what else is cool, most games these days rely on GPU over CPU, so every 2-3 years upgrade your video card and Bob's your uncle.

 

[NinjaCatfish]

I do get what you mean OP, and these issues are why I'm focusing less on PC gaming these days as the new console generation looms.
I definitely don't think PC gaming is without merit though, being able to play late multiplatform releases at a higher frame rate/resolution has been fantastic.

One of the biggest issues for me is the expense. I can buy a console and play everything, with graphical effects/resolution that the developer has tailored exactly for my machine, for 6 or more years. To play a PC game 'as intended', PC hardware won't keep up for 6 years.

Between multiple DRM layers, driver issues, and many game specific technical issues, I've become a little more accepting of how easy consoles are to use. No changing monitor setting to output to TV, no changing audio outputs and dealing with HDMI audio devices not working (I have an AMD card, so this might be my own fault). I just like turning on the box and playing games.

I think I'm gonna try focusing on console gaming for a while now that we have new consoles that are less obviously outdated. The ease of turning on the box and just playing is just so appealing.

 

[Clawww]

For the general consumer, they're still real problems. As I stated before, my roommate, who isn't a huge gamer, was immediately turned off by some of the random BS that he had to go through to get his game to work. If it wasn't for me he may have just said 'screw it'.

It doesn't really put me off, but it's definitely a bottleneck on the potential player base. People want things to work without any hassle.

(I know you're not saying otherwise, just trying to make my point more clear)

So what? Why does PC gaming have to be for 'average consumer'? (Who, if you ask me, already knows that PC gaming is complicated; and who is satisfied with their consoles anyways).

Seems like so many people in here have some unrealistic, dumb expectation of a zero effort experience on PC. That would be nice, but it's not the reality; the reality is there are occasional, very workable issues that come with all the massive benefits and customization of PC gaming.

If you don't care for the hassle, so be it; but claiming doom and gloom about PC gaming or overstating the issues because your shit rig or inability to troubleshoot is whack. No one is saying there aren't problems; we're saying the problems are manageable and that PC gaming is thriving in spite of them.

 

[StevieP]

The ease of turning on the box and just playing is just so appealing.

That hasn't really been the case for a while now, and it wont be with the new platforms either

 

[TheLegendOfMart]

You're serious aren't you? I mean did you honestly just say unoptimized code and hardware failure doesn't occur on consoles?

I think you missed the sarcasm.

Personally I think the pros far outweigh the cons. The reason I am still a PC gamer is mods. When I come to play a game the second time round I almost always seek out HD textures, soundpacks, higher resolution character models, mission addons, etc..

Something consoles can only dream of, unless you buy DLC.

 

[Clawww]

One of the biggest issues for me is the expense. I can buy a console and play everything, with graphical effects/resolution that the developer has tailored exactly for my machine, for 6 or more years. To play a PC game 'as intended', PC hardware won't keep up for 6 years.

Why do you, and others, feel entitled to play games at the best possible settings for years without upgrading? That's an expensive and unnecessary prospect. You could buy a solid GPU today and be matching next-gen console performance and graphics for the duration of those systems.

 

[SparkTR]

So what? Why does PC gaming have to be for 'average consumer'? (Who, if you ask me, already knows that PC gaming is complicated; and who is satisfied with their consoles anyways).

Though going by numbers, the average consumer would still likely be playing LoL. People seem to forget that.

 

[TheLegendOfMart]

One of the biggest issues for me is the expense. I can buy a console and play everything, with graphical effects/resolution that the developer has tailored exactly for my machine, for 6 or more years. To play a PC game 'as intended', PC hardware won't keep up for 6 years.

No but you can buy a new GPU for a fraction of the cost of a console a few years down the line to give your machine a graphics boost, you can't do that with consoles and while I adore The Last of Us and GTA5 the jaggies, low res textures and frame rate problems were nearly a deal breaker for me.