Batman is exactly why I don't PC game

Something Amyss

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Phoenixmgs said:
If I buy a game for a console, it's going to fucking work.
Not necessarily. Consoles have a litany of broken games.

Morgoth780 said:
I would argue it's lazy devs instead of the pc platform itself.
Not sure it matters who's to blame. Crappy ports and games with hardware issues are a valid concern.

Arkham Knight should be a disgrace in 2015.

Ihateregistering1 said:
http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri
I'm going to somewhat echo DoPo here. There's no magic here, and no guarantee that it'll work even if SRL says you pass.

It's a handy cheat sheet if you don't know the specs on your computer and want to compare it to the requirements of a given game, but it doesn't tell you if it'll actually run. Related to this topic specifically, I had trouble running Arkham Asylum and City on my PC, despite well exceeding the system reqs.

MercurySteam said:
but most PC gamers accept this all as par for the course.
Given the tantrums I keep seeing on the Steam forums when something doesn't work, I have trouble believing "most" PC gamers accept this.
 

MercurySteam

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Zachary Amaranth said:
MercurySteam said:
but most PC gamers accept this all as par for the course.
Given the tantrums I keep seeing on the Steam forums when something doesn't work, I have trouble believing "most" PC gamers accept this.
The Steam forums are like the 'Ask Yahoo' of the PC gaming world. Sadly your best bet is to not buy AAA games day one and if you do prepare for things to go wrong. I'm not saying the devs should be excused but it happens so often just no point in getting mad. Report bugs and move on.
 

Joccaren

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Morgoth780 said:
I would argue it's lazy devs instead of the pc platform itself.

It's not like console games don't launch completely broken - ac unity being one of the more high profile examples.
This entirely. AC Unity - exact same problems Batman is having, but on a console.
I guess that's why you don't console game right?

Or the original PS3 Skyrim problems where it'd just stop working after a certain amount of time due to shit optimisation.

Honestly, your argument is "I can fix it on the PC whilst I can't on consoles, so I prefer consoles".

Because this shit happens on both. Only one can easily fix it themselves though. For every Batman, there is an AC Unity.
Seriously, this is the problem with the whole PC vs Console war diehards. This isn't about the advantage of a PC or the advantage of a console - because this shit happens to both, and if anything, PC gets the advantage for being able to fix it.

This is about developers not putting the effort into creating their game, and leaving end users struggling because of it. Nothing to do with PC vs Console. All to do with shitty developers.
 

mysecondlife

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The majority of the industry is why I tend to not buy games on day 1. PC and consoles included.

edit:

By the way..

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.874683-Batman-Arkham-Knight-Season-Pass-Contains-Six-Months-of-Content#comment_form
mysecondlife said:
GOTY edition at $10 - $20 it is!
I still stand by it.
 

CpT_x_Killsteal

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Phoenixmgs said:
Rather than tell you the 800 other reasons why PC out-does console and how that makes your one point irrelevant, I'll stick to the one point you brought up.

1. It's a shitty dev/pub that causes this to happen.
2. You shouldn't be pre-ordering anyway (three cheers for Steam refunds btw).
3. It's still cheaper on PC in most places anyway.
4. Because that's never happened on console amiright? No. It's happened plenty of times on console, so saying you stick to console because of that is, well, a tad stupid.

There might be some small amount of reasons to take console over PC depending on the scenario, this is true, but you should stick to them instead of trying to flimsily argue that this is one of them.
 

lacktheknack

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Phoenixmgs said:
I know the game will work when I buy it, I've never had an instance of a game not working.
I had more to say, but I think this sums it up:

"In short, I simply do not believe you."

Unless you're referring to it straight up not turning on, in which case, why on earth would you bring up Batman? It turns on and functions, albeit poorly. So did Skyrim on the PS3. So did Assassin's Creed: Unity on every platform.
 

kitsunefather

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For my part, I have preferred consoles because of ease of library (I like physical discs over digital copies) and a lack of DRM built into the platform. Also, I don't have to upgrade my console every year in order to play a new release.

That said, the recent issues both Sony and Xbox have been having have turned me away from the now-current gen consoles. I still enjoy my 360 & Wii-U, and still pick up games for it when I see one I like, but for future gaming, I'm saving up to upgrade my PC with the help of a friend.

Now, that last part is important: not every person is tech-savvy or tech-literate enough to fix every bug in console commands or wants to have to adjust go into a console just to make a game work like it's supposed to. I've got a young son to look after, and between him and non-gaming life, I'd rather not have to spend 3 hours fiddling with settings to just play a game. All of that said, I'm still going PC gaming from here out.

The main reason is the revelation with the Gears of War leak that Microsoft is sitting on a "kill switch" to the Xbox One, which allows them to brick the console remotely. Not ban your account, but to brick your console; remotely. Given the console companies issue with hackers, this is a massive red flag for me (though I admit to no small amount of paranoia).

When it comes to Sony, it's more their haphazard way of handling really anything that isn't a straightforward release. There was the PT demo getting pulled, which caused some users to lose access to digitally downloaded games for a time; not to mention the regularity with which Sony users have their information accessed by hackers.

So yea, having a friend who is (or being yourself) competent with computers is preferable, if just because the companies distributing your software to you are still actually competing for your custom. Steam's new refund policy, though in need of some work, is an excellent example, as is the launch of Galaxy. Consoles are convenient, but the console companies know that, and once they've got you they really aren't trying to keep you as a customer. PC may take some fiddling and a bit of learning, but 4 times out 5 the problems get fixed; if not by the dev, then by the community. For Console games, problems rarely get fixed unless it gets a lot of negative press.
 

Joccaren

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Phoenixmgs said:
Calm Sands said:
Well unfortunately that is your problem. You need to have a realist way of thinking and stop having expectations of something working. In the real world you have to dig and research things. History in the gaming industry should've taught you this. Look at the plethora of horrible launches that have happened in the past 5 years alone. Expecting something to work out of the gate like a PC game or even any Triple A game release these days is just wishful thinking.
Bloodborne, Witcher 3, and Batman have all worked perfectly fine on Day 1 for me just like every other game I've ever bought for a console. Why wouldn't I expect something that has always worked before to continue working? Just put in the disc and it works.
Know what, all the game's I've bought recently have worked like a dream. Witcher 3 on recommended settings was fine [Upper settings only had the low FPS due to hardware], Galactic Civ III was fine, Kerbal Space Program is like a dream.

Why would I expect a PC game not to just work when they all have until now?
Personal experience ain't everything I'm afraid. You might not have been burned, but a lot of console users have been.
 

RikuoAmero

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Phoenixmgs said:
If I buy a game for a console, it's going to fucking work. I don't have to search forums looking for a fix for an issue instead of actually playing the game. I put in the disc and in a couple minutes (at most), I'm playing the game. Time is very important to me as I try to spend as much time enjoying myself as I can as time is limited regardless if it's gaming or anything else I enjoy doing. I'm sure after the game is officially or unofficially patched to fix the issues, Batman would be a better experience on PC but by then, I will have already played and beat Batman. I realize that Batman is not the norm but several games (and big releases) do have such issues that cause many gamers to not be able to use a product they purchased. The pro to having set hardware is shit will work whereas having any hardware configuration imaginable means there's potential for a better experience, but that's not guaranteed either because shit may not work.
Au contraire, OP. I got Elder Scrolls Online for PS4 and it has some serious bugs. Some of the quest NPCs are invisible (thus meaning I can't talk to them and hand in my quests), I STILL don't have my Explorer's Pack that I paid for. Console games do come buggy, just like PC games. I prefer PC games because generally, on PC, at least you have the potential to be able to fix the problem yourself. I can't do anything with my ESO game, since the PS4 is a locked down system.
 

stroopwafel

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Well, I think objectively its fair to say a high-end PC is superior to either PS4 or XBone, but technical superiority doesn't necessarily make for a better game(or, better functioning one). Sony and MS are probably paying top dolla to have titles optimised that are important to them(Arkham Knight obviously included) and most likely lending their expertise as well. For PC there isn't really any kind of quality insurance, as the platform itself is owned by no one leaving developers to fend for themselves. Espescially with developers that are inexperienced with PC you get issues like this. Because what you have is basically a port of a console game.
 

Hairless Mammoth

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I would sort of agree with OP around 2006-7, before I really saw how online connected, HDD equiped "consoles" would evolve to enable games that barely work to be rushed to meet release dates and could be patched a few weeks later with a (possible) fix. Publishers had to make sure their console games worked if they wanted returning customers for their next release. Even before then, there were cases where pretty game breaking bugs have slipped past the QA teams. With those, there was no way to patch (not counting the few games of the 6th gen designed to be patched, like FFXI) a cartridge or CD-ROM, short of releasing a new full retail version and maybe exchanging the old copies.

Now it's very different. Games have gotten expensive to make and publishers are trying all sorts of (often dirty) tricks to minimize costs. It doesn't matter what kind of machine you chose to play your games on, issues like glitches and poor coding for a certain platform can pop up all the time, even on a first party console game. Your best bet is to wait a few weeks for other buyers to test a game just released on the market, no matter what system you wish to play it on, before buying it yourself. The only time you should feel confident in breaking that rule is when you wish to buy a game that is made by a publisher and developer that both have good track records you can trust. (I even hear, despite Ubisoft's utter lack of compassion for their PC customers, the Far Cry titles are always top notch on PC.) I use both PC and consoles, and I've held off on many titles to be safe. It might not look good for the sales numbers, but it's a situation that publishers, and the consumers that blindly obey them, have put us all in.

One thing that PC games do have over (unmodded) consoles is many games can be easily patched by fans with the technical knowledge to do so, and then that patch can be distributed to others. (Bethesda games get it a lot.) It is especially great when a bug is found for a game that the dev has stopped supporting or a title that an official patch either hasn't come out for yet or the patch removes/affects desired features, in addition to the fixes.
 

Clive Howlitzer

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I like how you are pretending this kind of shit doesn't happen on consoles as well, especially nowadays. This has more to do with lazy developers than the platform.
 

ForumSafari

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Phoenixmgs said:
I'm a PC tech, I build my own computers too. I even tweak Windows as well, disabling a bunch of services and programs, doing some registry edits, etc. I really use no other Microsoft software other than Windows itself like I don't use Windows Media Player, Firewall, Defender, even automatics updates are disabled. I don't even have an anti-virus install as there's no point because on the extreme rarity that I get one, restoring an image is faster than running the anti-virus. I game on a console primarily (I do play some PC games) not because it's pre-built but because it allows me to spend more time gaming instead of trying to fix shit.
Oh Christ, you're one of those. You know, the tweaks and registry hacks are probably contributing to the issues you face right? That and the fact you're not pulling updates that patch issues newer software is built around having fixed.
 

Elementary - Dear Watson

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Last time I was on Ops with the military I tried playing Battlefield II. I had pre installed it before I left because I know the internet is not very good when we are away. It's good enough to open pages (eventually) but drops in and out a lot and cannot stream (not even YouTube).

I started the game... all well and good... then had the issue. No sound. Nothing. I had just finished Dust, and from the high that left me this sound issue left me broken. What is a Star Wars game without the trademark wooshes and pews?

I trawled the net looking for fixes. Not many had my issue. Most people had said to re install... but I was sure it wouldn't need that. I moved drivers. Changed some text files. Copied the game into a different place... tried everything that I barely understood written by people who either speak in special techie language, or badly google translated engrish. My rage eventually boiled over, and left me a sobbing deflated wreck.

I took off my headphones, expecting to hear the hum of the Air Con flood back into the eerily silent void I had just been sitting in, to find it didn't. Air Con wasn't on. I looked at the headphones - pressed the button to show me the battery levels and... well... you know the rest.

It must have ran out between switching games... and it makes no noise when it does. With no ability to stream I had been using websites with no noise... Bastard things.

This is why I don't like PC games. If I had been playing my 3DS I would have known it was the headphones straight away!

Oh well... I won't stop playing PC games, but I will always play AAA games on my PS4 when I am at my home station, and keep my indie games/ Strategy/ RTS/ Older FPS and Point and Click games for my laptop when I go away.
 

Alarien

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As said above, a lot of the arguments for consoles over PC made here are valid, a while back. Even as late as the first half of the Xbox360/PS3 generation, there were a lot of solid reasons to pick up a console version over the PC version, but most of those have evaporated.

I have hundreds of games on Steam, about a dozen on Origin, and about 2 dozen on GoG. I can count on one hand the number that gave me trouble playing and actually required adjusting settings/.ini files or patches to become truly playable. (Shadow of Mordor had stability issues in DX11; Batman: Arkham City crashed in DX11 (surprise, it's Rocksteady!); Dark Souls 1 initial PC release was a joke; and that's all that immediately really come to mind).

That said, the PC still has major advantages over the consoles, particularly in regards to computing power and mod-ability. Would Skyrim even still be relevent (or Oblivion/Morrowind, for that matter) without the modding community that have extended the life of those games by years? Dark Souls 1 PC may have initially been a complete piece of trash as a port, but a single person managed to entirely fix it with a single unofficial patch (slowdown in Blighttown? Not on my computer). Hell, if you have performance issues on your PC, you can choose to reduce the resolution to the console level. Can you increase the resolution with the console version? Nope. Hopefully, though, the game dev isn't so bad that reducing the resolution is actually necessary.

I am not against consoles. I owned the last generation and most of the machines from every generation back to the initial Atari. However, the current generation of consoles is just a complete mess. They lack the things that make them competitive platforms and those are compelling first party/exclusive titles and comparable performance to PC at a reasonable price point and investment level. I have completely skipped the XboxOne this time around and probably never will get it and I own a PS4 solely for one game (Bloodborne) and as an overpriced Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/Blu-ray player.
 

TallanKhan

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I would agree PC gaming tends to be more of a pain in the backside than it used to be, but for me the big barrier is steam, if I buy a game on a disc, why the hell should I need to download a ton of bloatware and sign in to an online service to play it?

That said, even with consoles you don't get quite the plug-and-play experience you used to get, the installing, setting up, downloading updates etc you usually have to do prior to getting to the title screen for the first time all eats into that precious time.
 

happyninja42

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Phoenixmgs said:
If I buy a game for a console, it's going to fucking work.
Really? Clearly you didn't play the Skyrim I did on Xbox 360, that shit itself every 5 minutes and couldn't even get through the opening cinematic cart ride without glitching out entirely, forcing me to reload. Or apparently played Unity, which ran like shit on every platform it came out on. Or any number of other games that are simply poorly designed, regardless of the platform.
 

Something Amyss

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MercurySteam said:
The Steam forums are like the 'Ask Yahoo' of the PC gaming world.

"Ask Yahoo" being a popular site that is comprised of a large body of users.

Were you trying to agree with me? Because you seem to be making my point for me.