I am not normally someone who complains so I'm probably not one of the people this rank is aimed at. I agree with most of your points, however I would like to comment on a couple points.
I think it's a shame when folks complain about "the way it used to be. Oftentimes, "the way it used to be is" the way it still is, you've just gotten older and more resistant to change.
This is not true, PC gaming has changed a lot over the past few years from being a dominant player to being an afterthought.
The other thing that has changed drastically is the length of games and the concept of DLC. You say the way it used to be is still how it is today? I don't see 53 DLC packs for Diablo II. This is one of my biggest issues with games today.
No one is happy with *anything,* which is unfortunate because PC Gaming has never been better.
This is both true and untrue. Steam has done a lot for PC gaming and the number of excellent indie games lately has been heartening.
However the major developers have soured towards the PC and have been releasing a lot of games designed for consoles. In the past this wasn't a problem because developers would create extra content, high detail textures and a different UI for the pc versions. This rarely happens these days.
Unfortunately these are the games that get talked about most which is why these rants are so common.
Why can't we give things a chance? Why can't we offer constructive criticism instead of sounding like raving lunatics? I don't work in the games industry at all and when I read some of the stuff that's out there, I can't imagine anyone wanting to develop PC Games exclusively. In return for your hard work, you get a face full of bile and criticism about the most irrelevant minutiae.
As mentioned above it is usually the large franchises that are commonly criticized and unfortunately their sales are so high that they do not listen to constructive criticism and they do not care about the small PC sector any longer. This is why people have degenerated to raving lunatics.
Yeah, that's actually the version of BG that I'm trying to get right. It doesn't work with my 5970.
Would it be fair to say that the PC gaming industry is suffering the same type of problems that is affecting other sectors in general. More and more corps are consolidating and controlling the entire gaming industry. The types of games are churned out and direction of development are being dictated by bean counters. More emphasis on shareholder value instead of 'gamer value'.
beta is a beta...people are dumb.
absolutely. nobody gives a damn if their game/movie/music/whatever is any good. all that matters is sales. the bigger ripoff it is, the better.
dumb is expecting a day 1 miracle patch. i've played a few betas in my time, and my first reaction is always "how the hell did this problem make it this far?" by the time i'm trying a game, 99.9% of all code will never be changed from that point on.
You know, I rarely complain about most games as they are what they are. Nothing is going to suit everyone, and we all have our preferences. Like everyone else there are things in about any game I could say this should be like this, or that needs to be different, etc.
However, in FPS games there is one single thing I think every developer should focus on and really they have no excuse what so ever to screw this up, yet most all of them do. Movement and mouse look controls! Why oh why can't most seem to get this right? There are three examples that stand out in my head as how controls should feel, and love or hate the games themselves I think most can agree that they've nailed the control/mouselook aspect. The Unreal series, Quake series,and the Call of Duty series. All of these control how a FPS should control, most specifically I'm talking about smoothness and accuracy of mouse look. There is no herky-jerky crap going on in these games.
So why is it so many seem to have problems in this area, even blockbuster titles based on engines from the above games can't seem to get it right. Bioshock for example, I love the game but why does the mouse feel so weird and floaty, not to mention it skips around like crazy. Yes, there are tweaks to make it better, but it never feels just right. Games like this are too numerous to mention, add to that the non adjustable, claustrophobic FOV in a lot of games and the controls alone make quite a few otherwise good games unenjoyable.
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Personally, I don't complain. I'm older. I vote with my wallet. If I like something, I buy it and find others who like it. If not, I move on.
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Quick reply to the huge wall of text from OP : PC gaming sucks now more than ever and almost every genre deviated in a bad way from what it was supposed to be.
Agreed on most of it, though I hate when people try and claim you can get a decent gaming computer for as much as a console... and then try and sway the costs by saying a console includes a TV.
No it doesn't. You pay $300 for the console, and you leave it at that. Can you make a decent modern gaming computer for $300? Ignore the TV or monitor, because you need a display to use either so it's a wash. A semi-decent tower will run at least $500 if you want to run modern games. PC gamers need to admit it costs a decent amount more. Especially when the consoles are as old as they are.
Ok, I gotta agree with you this far.This is a rant.
I think it's a shame when folks complain about "the way it used to be. Oftentimes, "the way it used to be is" the way it still is, you've just gotten older and more resistant to change.
I hate it when large swaths of people are painted with a broad brush. If you go over to P&N right now, you'll see posters there slinging insults and generalizations about groups that comprise thousands if not millions of people. I think on some level, we all know that's not fair but it's easier to put people into boxes to easily identify and label, fairness be damned. .
Your comments here are strangely inconsistent as they cover a LOT of stuff. In the first place, with the advent/proliferation of the Internet, just about anyone can post their opinions. Back in the day, that was not true. Some people posted/complained, but I would bet that most of the complaints you see now existed back then as well, they just weren’t as obvious.That being said, PC Gamers used to be a friendlier, more mature and forgiving community and have become a group of self-entitled whiners. They bounce miserably from game to game, never satisfied with anything, viciously nit-picking each new title into oblivion and waiting for the next big thing, only so they can blow it apart.
This is largely subjective. Yes, hardware has improved dramatically in recent years. This is, however, both a plus and a minus. While technology and improvements (along with proliferation) have lead to higher quality platforms at lower prices has given rise to significant potential for gaming, that potential is largely squandered on developers who are trying to broaden their market through Console ports. This serves to anchor and limit capabilities to the 7 year old hardware of the main consoles out there. And almost no one (publishers/developers) wants a “PC Only” title. So the potential is untouched.No one is happy with *anything,* which is unfortunate because PC Gaming has never been better.
While it is true that younger gamers are “More likely” to get into consoles than PCs, that is largely due to more “Casual” gamers in the market place, rather than an aging of the PC population. It is significantly easier (and generally cheaper) for a casual gamer to get into the arena by making a single purchase of a console rather than building/identifying a motherboard, CPU, memory, GPU, OS, build, troubleshoot, tweak, etc.. that constitutes a PC that will meet the gaming needs. This does not mean that there aren’t younger PC gamers, although the more that the gaming industry plays to the console market, and the more that they anchor themselves to the console rather than expanding the boundaries of PC Games, it just means that someone getting into gaming is more likely to go console unless they already are PC aficionados.I don't have numbers to back this up but in my experience, PC Gamers have always been an older, more mature bunch than their console counterparts. If I ever talk to any of my friends or peers about gaming, I always have to relate things to the Xbox or Playstation. Maybe it has to do with the cost involved or the amount of technical ability required or even the greater amount of patience you have possess to troubleshoot bugs and what-have-you that come up.
I gotta disagree with you here. While you can build a decent lower end gaming machine these days for $6-700, I think you will find that even the mid range systems are $1200 or more. And the high end can go three grand, easily. Sure with the quality of games coming out today, 6-700 is probably more than enough, but any PC aficionado will tell you that getting the low end just won’t do. We want the best of the best of the best.In the last decade though, several of those barriers to entry have been lowered, if not lifted altogether. Component prices have never been lower. You can easily build a perfectly capable gaming rig for ~$6-700 (which is cheaper than a console if you factor in the cost of a 47 inch LCD). Dealing with Windows 7 and the wealth of easily obtainable 'how-to's' and help information available online is a hell of a lot easier than freeing up IRQ's and mucking around in DOS.
I think you are significantly missing the fact that game development companies are restricting the utility of a good PC in order to conform with the console market. This means that they are artificially skewing the market TOWARDS the consoles, not the other way around. And while more PC owners are entering the market, it is at a significantly lower rate than those entering the Console market. And those that are entering the PC market, aren’t necessarily gamers. I think if you were to do a demographic survey of PC usage, you would find that the most significant usage of PCs today are for email, internet surfing and networking (Facebook, skype, twitter, etc… rather than gaming.I think there are those who would say that that a high barrier to entry was the one thing keeping the more 'elite' PC community a cut above the unwashed masses of console gamers. There's probably a grain of truth in that. But with the removal of those barriers came an influx of new players, new developers (seeking new revenue streams) and new ideas. Love it or hate it, it's those new players who are just discovering this universe are keeping the hobby we all love so much infused with new blood and (more importantly, I guess) new dollars.
I by no means wish to defend companies like Activision or EA, but understand that they are dealing predominantly with the same technology they had 7 years ago. There is only so far that they can go with it unless they expand into the ‘Exclusive’ PC market, or a next generation of consoles comes out. Since as stated before, 90% or more of the revenue streams in the gaming industry are consoles, they are unlikely to make the required shift. In fact, they want to go console, because that is where they perceive the money is.There's lots of blame to go around, though. In the years since gaming became a big business, you've got your Activisions and your EA's churning out sequel after sequel, each successive one barely iterating on the last. The term 'console port' has become an instant negative, connoting less-than-stellar controls, UI and graphics options.
It is true that it is easier on the whole to secure a game against piracy on the console level (due mainly to the limited access to code and the conformity of platform offered in that market). But that is by no means a significant driver in the decision to go console. Nor is it a significant barrier in going PC platform. The vocal minority on this point are in fact VERY vocal. But they are also VERY minor. And I don’t think PC Game development companies give more than token lip service to them.Then there's the piracy angle. Whether or not piracy actually has an effect on sales is a debate for another thread but one this is for sure: the idea that piracy has had an effect on development. Invasive DRM has blown a hole in the landscape of PC Gaming. Personally, it's not a big deal to me but I get why some folks are upset.
Again, I think you are significantly missing the point. We, as PC Gamers, understand the full potential of our systems. We understand that technology has moved on significantly since the advent of this generation of consoles. And we understand that the market leaders are not doing a darned thing about that. So the quality of games coming out for the PC (by and large Console portable games) is significantly poorer than should be the case.That being said, the amount of vitriol surrounding PC Games is reaching critically absurd levels. The internet has given everyone a soap box (see: the unfortunately long missive I'm writing at this very minute) and made every forum and comment thread an echo chamber.
Why can't we give things a chance? Why can't we offer constructive criticism instead of sounding like raving lunatics? I don't work in the games industry at all and when I read some of the stuff that's out there, I can't imagine anyone wanting to develop PC Games exclusively. In return for your hard work, you get a face full of bile and criticism about the most irrelevant minutiae.
I'm rambling. Go play your games. Enjoy them. Criticize but do it reasonably. Everyone involved here are human beings with human feelings. I think it would do everyone a service to remember that.
TL;DR: Shut the fuck up and play
I think it's a shame when folks complain about "the way it used to be. Oftentimes, "the way it used to be is" the way it still is, you've just gotten older and more resistant to change.
...you'll see posters there slinging insults and generalizations about groups ...
... PC Gamers used to be a friendlier, more mature and forgiving community and have become a group of self-entitled whiners. They bounce miserably from game to game, never satisfied with anything, viciously nit-picking each new title into oblivion and waiting for the next big thing, only so they can blow it apart.
No one is happy with *anything,* which is unfortunate because PC Gaming has never been better.
In return for your hard work, you get a face full of bile and criticism about the most irrelevant minutiae.
That was the longest post in forum history I'm pretty sure.
Do I even need to a TL;DR?