Dark Souls Port Brings Console Problems to PC

[runic knight]

Entitled? Gonna go with "no" there.

I really couldn't care much about the framerate or the resolution myself. An ugly game can still be fun. No, my concerns is rest with what happened with the last ported game I got: Skyrim. Up until it got patched, the controls were terrible, mouse was nuts and the game was unplayable. Granted I was the rare occurrence of this sort of issue, but it was still there. But this is from a company that has no clue what they are doing with pc, and has already shown that the port is barest of bones. I have to wonder if it will even be playable without a lot of patches.


Honestly, given the variety in monitors and the issues framerate might have on a pc, I think asking for some effort there is not asking too much. It is part of what a lot of pc gamers are after (myself not included, but I can understand their desires there). Entitled though, that is not the case. After all, none of us are demanding anything in this, merely exercising our rights to not buy a product we feel is not worth the money. And what may well be an ugly, buggy, unplayable game does fit the bill there.

 

[Sandjube]

Oh God, this is atrocious! This game needs to die in a pit of flames and death, I just... I won't be able to play this game at all, in fact, I should just reject the terms of service of Steam and have my account terminated. THIRTY FPS?! That's... Who can ever play a game at 30FPS?! Even though that's the standard FPS of many things and the human eye can't see much more.

AND CONSOLE RESOLUTION?! OH GOD PLEASE STOP NO MORE! God forbid, you'd think that i'd buy the game for the gameplay... which is why any normal human being would buy the game. But I buy games exclusively on my PC because I only play them for graphics, I hope the developers die for this. This game is probably worse than those shitty busts like Super Meat Boy and League of Legends. Who the hell would play those? The graphics are terrible. At least I still have Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, what an amazing, brilliant game that is.

I was playing Borderlands before, dropped down to 40 frames and though "Dammnit this is annoying and laggy, hopefully it will go back up to 60".

Then it did, and I was happy. Ipso facto, you're completely wrong about the framerate thing. Also try reading about the fact that monitors and televisions aren't the same thing (weird I know).

 

[RicoADF]

Pfft, might as well not release it on PC at all then. Given the fact the game is locked at 720p and 30FPS since they can't take the time to fix that, I doubt the bug testing is going to be that great either. The port is probably going to be a buggy mess that crashes every 5 minutes.

Hell, we might even have a contender for a worse port than GTA IV here.

Seriously that's such a big deal to you? Get over it. If it turns out to be crashing constantly, got bad controls and doesn't work, then yes its a shoddy port. But having it the same resolution as the console (esp 720p which most games now a days run at anyway, even on PC), is the most pathetic thing to ***** about I've ever heard of.

 

[47_Ronin]

Pick the Master Key, skipp Blightown. Solves 90% of frame rate drops.
Sucks for PC gamers but you guys are still getting a great game.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I think I am one of the single PC gamers left that has a 19" monitor with a max resolution of 1200/1024 which I have been using for a couple of years now.

Guess the cropping from the lower resolution won't make the game blurry enough and it will be playable.

Oh mister fancy pants with is 1200*1024 monitor some of us still have 1024*768 monitors. Also still surprised at people's comments here. There is what a 9:1(exaggeration but no more than "oh noes the shame of a few elitists ruining it for everyone") ratio of people not complaining and buying it over this to it being a deal breaker. Especially since they more or less said this was happening anyway.

Let me ask you this,do you own any of the 3 consoles? If the answer is yes then my point is proven.

Cause else,I really doubt you would be able to play any high fidelity games that have come out the past year with that kind of low resolution.And I would reckon that with such a low rez monitor the system specs must be pretty low as well.

PS: Don't get me wrong,I will buy the game myself,just wanted to point that out.

What is your point? I'll answer when you tell me what your point is because I don't see the point in answer since I don't know what your point is also you could have just looked at my Escapist profile. Is your point that I don't bother to play my BF 3 on high settings because I haven't had the money to upgrade my monitor and decided to upgrade important things like RAM and HDD?

So much for making a tongue in cheek comment.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

My point was actually not regarding your comment,but to the other person that mentioned that the majority of PC players have big monitors with minimum 1600 resolution.He implied that those have become "standard" in this day and age(and I can agree to that myself).I wanted to say that there are still a few amongst PC gamers that still do not own such a high resolution monitor.

Not being able to get a more powerful monitor and have a PC that could handle so much more is a tad disappointing,but I didn't want to invest in a new monitor,being already used to the 1200/1024 resolution in all the games that I have played in the last decade.

Sorry if you thought my reply to your comment was insulting,I didn't want it to turn out like that.

OT: I merely expressed my concerns about this title,because I have signed the petition as well and really want to experience the game for myself so I was a little worried about the limitations that they've put on this game just to port it.

If it flops in sales,then they will the blame PC for not being a worthwhile platform.I don't understand why they couldn't just outsource it to a developer that actually knew how to port console games to PC,really stubborn decision there.

 

[Rabid Toilet]

This whole Dark Souls port thing is being blown way out of proportion.

News sites are making it out to be garbage that no one should buy, that the developers are rushing out a crappy port to make money, that the result is an unplayable mess. The reality is that PC gamers get the exact same game that consoles have. The exact same, perfectly playable, perfectly fine looking game we've been playing for so long.

But because the port isn't superior to the original, this is apparently unacceptable. Now, the game will likely not sell very well because of everyone being led to believe the port is crap. Say goodbye to getting PC ports of future titles. Apparently the same as everyone else just isn't good enough.

You don't get it.

30 FPS is good for Conoles, but the PC doesn't use the same metric.

its like temperature, the C and F are not the same.

A normal PC game requires 60 frames to even run properly. 30 is a literal slide show, especially if the frame rate drops lower than that.

No, you don't get it.

30 FPS is completely playable on a PC. I know this from experience. Back when I had a crappy computer, that's about the frame rate I would get after lowering all the graphic settings, and it was still pretty damn smooth. Saying it's a literal slide show is just false.

 

[Warforger]

A classic case of "miscommunication", isn't it... When people asked for this game on the PC, they actually meant that they wanted a proper PC port, not a half-assed copy paste cash grab. I played Dark Souls to death on the PS3, but was still planning on buying it for the PC just so I could play it with many of my friends who are not console owners and yet were very interested in the game. Then, of course, they read shit like this and lost their interest, and so did I. So, all our sales are effectively lost for the company, and I'm pretty sure we're not the only ones who feel that way. Still, I feel that the game will do reasonably well, which is a shame. The ideal for me would be for it to tank hard and for clearly defined reasons that will be communicated to the devs/publisher, so that they know, for future reference, that if you plan on serving the PC crowd shit, they are not going to eat it. They had a very unique and, in my opinion, quite large niche of gamers to appeal to with this game. A niche that, even on consoles, is apparently large enough to support the development of a game of such ambitious scale like Dark Souls. A crowd which, on the side of PC gaming, is much, much larger and way more thirsty for a game like that. A great port might have potentially brought about changes of perspective in the industry. So much for that...

I don't get this, people on console don't even give a shit about graphics and they don't feel there is any problem with the framerate. Why is it such a big deal on the PC? In fact why do PC gamers give so much of a shit about this crap? Oh great now I can't enjoy the game now that I've been told it's 30 fps time to picket the developer. If the only advantage PC gaming had was graphics no one would be gaming on the PC because that's just a fucking waste of money. PC gaming though has mod's, it has expanded capabilities like supporting 60 players in one multiplayer match, it has a larger selection of controllers, it has longer lasting servers as well as private servers,it has the best exclusives etc. etc. hence why I'm going to get my rig updated. How come PC gamers don't get angry over you know those things that actually matter and instead focus on graphics the most inconsequential part of gaming? Like how Batman Arkham City doesn't have mods? Or better yet how some games don't come out with capability of modding them? To me it's like not buying a game because you don't like the HUD or the menu is ugly.

I mean I guess I'm not the kind of person who is willing to shell out a couple extra thousand dollars just so that a couple of minor graphical problems are gone, but at the end of the day it's just picture, now I'd get if you got a surround sound system and a better sound card because Sound is what truly immerses you and it's something that you will notice every second of gameplay whereas you only notice good graphics for the first 10 minutes before you forget about them.

 

[Carnagath]

A classic case of "miscommunication", isn't it... When people asked for this game on the PC, they actually meant that they wanted a proper PC port, not a half-assed copy paste cash grab. I played Dark Souls to death on the PS3, but was still planning on buying it for the PC just so I could play it with many of my friends who are not console owners and yet were very interested in the game. Then, of course, they read shit like this and lost their interest, and so did I. So, all our sales are effectively lost for the company, and I'm pretty sure we're not the only ones who feel that way. Still, I feel that the game will do reasonably well, which is a shame. The ideal for me would be for it to tank hard and for clearly defined reasons that will be communicated to the devs/publisher, so that they know, for future reference, that if you plan on serving the PC crowd shit, they are not going to eat it. They had a very unique and, in my opinion, quite large niche of gamers to appeal to with this game. A niche that, even on consoles, is apparently large enough to support the development of a game of such ambitious scale like Dark Souls. A crowd which, on the side of PC gaming, is much, much larger and way more thirsty for a game like that. A great port might have potentially brought about changes of perspective in the industry. So much for that...

I don't get this, people on console don't even give a shit about graphics and they don't feel there is any problem with the framerate. Why is it such a big deal on the PC? In fact why do PC gamers give so much of a shit about this crap? Oh great now I can't enjoy the game now that I've been told it's 30 fps time to picket the developer. If the only advantage PC gaming had was graphics no one would be gaming on the PC because that's just a fucking waste of money. PC gaming though has mod's, it has expanded capabilities like supporting 60 players in one multiplayer match, it has a larger selection of controllers, it has longer lasting servers as well as private servers,it has the best exclusives etc. etc. hence why I'm going to get my rig updated. How come PC gamers don't get angry over you know those things that actually matter and instead focus on graphics the most inconsequential part of gaming? Like how Batman Arkham City doesn't have mods? Or better yet how some games don't come out with capability of modding them? To me it's like not buying a game because you don't like the HUD or the menu is ugly.

I mean I guess I'm not the kind of person who is willing to shell out a couple extra thousand dollars just so that a couple of minor graphical problems are gone, but at the end of the day it's just picture, now I'd get if you got a surround sound system and a better sound card because Sound is what truly immerses you and it's something that you will notice every second of gameplay whereas you only notice good graphics for the first 10 minutes before you forget about them.

It's not the graphical quality that's the issue, it's optimization. PC's are different than consoles. People usually play pc games on a desk, sitting close to a large monitor. This is why having options like an FOV slider (especially in first person games) and a framerate higher than 30 is important, it makes playing the games more comfortable for your eyes. Lying on your couch 4 meters away from a TV is a different setup. Granted, you can do that with a PC too, but most people don't do it due to the way their space is set up. In such conditions, many things go unnoticed, limited FOV is more forgiving to the eyes, aliasing issues are not as prominent as when you are sitting in front of a computer monitor etc. Try running a console game and move yourself close to the TV and you will notice how terrible it actually looks, but distance alleviates some of the issues. Of course, there is also the fact that people spent some money to buy a rig with certain capabilities. Even if it is a mid-range rig, it should be more than capable of handling far higher fidelity than any existing console. When a developer copy pastes the console version and denies you that, because they cannot be arsed or cannot afford to properly optimize their port, it leaves you an unsatisfied customer.

My original post has been quoted a few times in this thread, with replies that basically boil down to "why do you care that it's a bad port". My answer to that is, what the hell is the matter with you? Are you serious with this shit? Come on... And I'm not even a "PC gamer", I own all the consoles and do most of my gaming on them actually, but it's a simple fact that PC's have more capabilities and a developer should at least put SOME minimum amount of effort into taking advantage of those, if not for better visuals then at the VERY least for some basic comfort. If you lock your game at 30 FPS even though my rig can handle 60, just because you can't be arsed to change a single line of engine code, or release an FPS that is locked at 60 FOV so that I can't see shit and it gives me a headache, then why on earth would I buy it?

 

[Warforger]

My original post has been quoted a few times in this thread, with replies that basically boil down to "why do you care that it's a bad port". My answer to that is, what the hell is the matter with you? Are you serious with this shit? Come on... And I'm not even a "PC gamer", I own all the consoles and do most of my gaming on them actually, but it's a simple fact that PC's have more capabilities and a developer should at least put SOME minimum amount of effort into taking advantage of those, if not for better visuals then at the VERY least for some basic comfort. If you lock your game at 30 FPS even though my rig can handle 60, just because you can't be arsed to change a single line of engine code, or release an FPS that is locked at 60 FOV so that I can't see shit and it gives me a headache, then why on earth would I buy it?

Oh ok, that makes sense. But I think what I and other posters were talking about was just in general, things like this [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.333801-So-Batman-Arkham-City-looks-kind-of-bad-on-consoles?page=1] are what confuse me, I mean the you only slightly notice it during the screenshots but during gameplay you don't notice at all. For all the advantages the PC has, PC gamers seem to be the most sensitive and the most proud of its graphics, and I just can't figure out why because that is possibly the least important thing you can be proud of (and hell it makes it worse for developers as now they have to take up more time on graphics instead of the rest of the game).

 

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Wow. Does everything have to turn into a PC vs console debate with the two sides at each other's throats?

I don't really see a problem with this. The devs admitted that they didn't have experience with the PC and that it was going to be a direct port. It's not like we PC gamers were promised a shining, golden version of the game that could cure cancer and feed the homeless.

The good news is that, given a bit of time, fans will probably fix it. Also, driver-side enhancements like morphological AA will probably work.

Captcha: remain calm. Yeah, that's what I just said!

 

[MPerce]

Touche, good sir. Being a console gamer who's never owned a PC worth jack shit, I infrequently take such matters into consideration. I still feel like I'd need to actually see the game in motion on a PC to make a call as to its quality, but I now understand what people are pissed about.

Knowledge is awesome, being ignorant is not. Thank you very much!

What? You are probably the first person in this thread to [dramatic]see the light[/dramatic] and not bail on the thread once you're challenged on your views. For that, you get 1000 internets. Spend them well.

Thank you for the Internets! I shall wisely invest them in the next video that is just beginning to go viral. Once it has grown from a million views to fifty million views, I shall sell my shares for MILLIONS of Internets!

THE WEB WILL BE MY OYSTER!!!

But yeah, when I am proven by a fellow forum member to be completely incorrect and talking out of my ass, I find it's better to just accept it and learn from it instead of stubbornly sticking to my guns and coming off as a troll/moron.

 

[Rabid Toilet]

No, you don't get it.

30 FPS is completely playable on a PC. I know this from experience. Back when I had a crappy computer, that's about the frame rate I would get after lowering all the graphic settings, and it was still pretty damn smooth. Saying it's a literal slide show is just false.

For anyone (or, well, most anyone) who's used to 60FPS, it's perfectly true. And you don't even have to be used to it to notice the vast difference between 30FPS and 60FPS, even though you might actually be fine with playing it at 30FPS.

I, too, used to have a shitty PC, and I played things at around 30FPS. Seeing how smooth everything was on my brother's PC at 60FPS blew my mind. It is an objectively, and immensely, superior experience, unless one has some eye defect or something to that extent. And it's the fucking standard, and has been for a long long time, which is something a lot of people conveniently forget. This is a studio game that costs 40 bucks, not having something as basic as this is inexcusable.

Yes, 60 FPS is better than 30. I'm not arguing that.

I was objecting to him saying that 30 FPS is literally a slide show. Sure, it won't look as good as it would at 60 FPS, but it's still perfectly playable.

 

[Alatar The Red]

You're completely wrong about the frame rate.

The human eye can only see as high as 60. However until it gets as low as about 25, you shouldn't notice much of a difference. It's probably just a placebo effect that you thought the game was really laggy and choppy (like seriously, Most of my friends play PC games at 30fps at most, none of us see anything laggy or choppy about the said games).

Also, I have two computers, I've tested them side by side. One of them plays games at 15-30 FPS, the other plays them at 60+. Unless the first computer dips to 15, there's literally no difference between the quality.

Have you ever used a screen with a higher than 60hz refresh rate?

You're obviously not educated on the matter if you truly believe that the human eye has a certain amount of FPS that it can see. There is no maximum like that, of course there will be a point when you will start not noticing the difference but that differs from person to person and unless your eyesight is severely impaired I can assure you the limit wont be anywhere near 60fps let alone 30fps.

Now I guess if the maximum any human can see is 60fps then would you mind explaining to me what 120hz monitors are for? Or why competitive fps gamers still use high resolution CRTs with well over 60hz refresh rate? The reason is pretty simple, there is a pretty clear difference between even higher framrates/refresh rates such as 60 to 85 or 60 to 120.

some good reading: http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

 

[Wolfheart]

Give it time, they are giving us the source material and we (as we do best) as PC gamers are going to mod it into perfection. This is what we do, they give us silver we make gold, we are the alchemists of the digital realm and I look forward to diving in.

Also FYI if you cancel your orders now you will be showing that we are elitist PIGS and they will continue to not release titles for us. They took it to PC on our request, we one the battle and Ile be damned if were losing the war!

 

[Sandjube]

Oh God, this is atrocious! This game needs to die in a pit of flames and death, I just... I won't be able to play this game at all, in fact, I should just reject the terms of service of Steam and have my account terminated. THIRTY FPS?! That's... Who can ever play a game at 30FPS?! Even though that's the standard FPS of many things and the human eye can't see much more.

AND CONSOLE RESOLUTION?! OH GOD PLEASE STOP NO MORE! God forbid, you'd think that i'd buy the game for the gameplay... which is why any normal human being would buy the game. But I buy games exclusively on my PC because I only play them for graphics, I hope the developers die for this. This game is probably worse than those shitty busts like Super Meat Boy and League of Legends. Who the hell would play those? The graphics are terrible. At least I still have Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, what an amazing, brilliant game that is.

I was playing Borderlands before, dropped down to 40 frames and though "Dammnit this is annoying and laggy, hopefully it will go back up to 60".

Then it did, and I was happy. Ipso facto, you're completely wrong about the framerate thing. Also try reading about the fact that monitors and televisions aren't the same thing (weird I know).

You're completely wrong about the frame rate.

The human eye can only see as high as 60. However until it gets as low as about 25, you shouldn't notice much of a difference. It's probably just a placebo effect that you thought the game was really laggy and choppy (like seriously, Most of my friends play PC games at 30fps at most, none of us see anything laggy or choppy about the said games).

Also, I have two computers, I've tested them side by side. One of them plays games at 15-30 FPS, the other plays them at 60+. Unless the first computer dips to 15, there's literally no difference between the quality.

Edit: You know what my post was far too snarky and self-satisfied, honestly we're probably not going to agree and I can't be bothered being one of "those" escapists that argue with everyone so let's just drop it.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

Most people on this site, /r/gaming, /vg/ and other gaming communities signed a petition asking the developer of an otherwise fantastic game to release it on the PC in spite of the fact that said developer doesn't have a lot of experience with PC development and the engine powering the game that's being released on the PC was optimized for consoles to begin with. And yet, people are still bitching.

You're getting the same exact game, blisters, boils, blemishes, and all. At least they're providing new content for the PC and console versions to make up for the issues. It's certainly a hell of a lot better than a publisher *Cough Rockstar cough* outright refusing to port a beloved game *cough* RDR *Cough* to the PC in spite of numerous petitions and rumors surrounding a PC version.

 

[Erttheking]

Christ, people are getting really fucking worked up over graphics. I guess this means that developers should spend more time on graphics and let gameplay go die in a ditch huh? Isn't that what you people want?

 

[Erttheking]

Christ, people are getting really fucking worked up over graphics. I guess this means that developers should spend more time on graphics and let gameplay go die in a ditch huh? Isn't that what you people want?

Yeah because we want a game to be playable we hate gameplay. Fuck your strawman argument.

...so what you're telling me is that the version of Dark Souls that I play isn't playable...bullshit. Just because you don't get graphics twice as good as ours, doesn't mean that it's not "playable".

 

[chadachada123]

Fuck those P.C. elitists and fuck their arguments! They asked for a console port, and by golly, they'll get one! I can't believe they're whining over little unimportant things like graphics and FPS when they're still getting (functionally) exactly the same thing. They even get free DLC! They're clearly all entitled whiners who think the entire industry should bend over backwards to justify their latest £300 graphics card purchase.

Right, here goes.

Well, good sir. I disagree! I think that if FS are going to put in the effort to make a port then they should get basic features like changing the internal res of a game. Hell, even emulators and games as far back as Quake have these options.

If not they should have made the game moddable so the community could fix it a la TES and Fallout.

PS GFWL is shit and including it is just 100% trollng

If it was an American studio, by an American publisher, I'd probably completely agree with you.

However, this IS a Japanese studio, from a country where PC gaming is practically non-existent, this studio having absolutely no experience in PC gaming, let alone experience concerning the...attitudes of American PC gamers, or how to deal with them.

All I'm saying is that this company likely has no idea what they're getting in to and probably no idea that outsourcing would even be an option.

Edit: Though I'll agree that GFWL is almost, *almost* inexcusable, and only barely excusable because they've never really done PC gaming before.