Is playing FPSs on the PC worth it anymore?

[Jangles]

*Disclaimer* I am not hating on PC. I love all the cool titles that are PC exclusives, and up until recently, preferred multiplayer oriented FPSs on PC.



Since buying, downloading, and playing CoD Ghosts,I have really come to notice the prevalence and uncontrollable hacking that is abound.

Ghosts is my example because it seems that aside from technical issues that have mostly been fixed, the main thing that keeps Ghosts at such a low population level (1,999 at time of this post), which makes only TDM and Domination playable, is the plague of hacks.

With Infinity Ward seemingly not taking any action against any hackers, I and many others have opted to leave CoD, and never buy another installment on PC.

However, it also seems that multiplayer F2P games like Loadout are now being hacked. There were even complaints about Titanfall hacks in the closed then open betas.


I find myself in the predicament that multiplayer focused PC ports almost always supports larger team sizes, has the potential for smoother frame-rates and higher fidelity graphics, yet is being kneecapped by hackers not being banned.

What is your stance? Did your Ghosts experience get ruined by the hackers and lack of moderation, are you interested in Titanfall? If so, does PC hacking make it less attractive to buy multiplayer focused games for PC? Are AAA FPSs that are mainly multiplayer on PC doomed to the fate of Ghosts?

 

[PFCboom]

I get the feeling that you're talking about a very specific niche, but applying it to the larger genre. CoD:Ghosts is a AAA modern military shooter with an absurdly strong emphasis on multiplayer. I can only guess that Infinity Ward doesn't care too much about hackers on the PC version is because they might have their hands full with the crazy number of people playing on console.

But that doesn't really answer your questions much.
What is my stance? No *&^%s given.
Interested in Titanfall? Not particularly.
Does PC hacking make it less attractive to buy for PC? Full disclosure: I'm not much for multiplayer to begin with, so again, no &^%$s given.
Are AAA FPSs on PC doomed to the fate of Ghosts? NOPE. Bioshock, TF2, Dishonored, Fallout 3, *&^%-mothering Half-Life... you know that the FPS was birthed on the PC, yes?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

If Ghosts is having problems with hacking that bad, it's on Activision for not using a decent anti-cheat system. Does it have dedicated, player run servers, or is it match making only? Because if it's match making only, that makes it even worse on Activision's part. Best defense against hackers is a strong community with server admins having the power to kick/ban hackers.

Incidentally, this is why the people who go all gloom and doom about how multiplayer games are going to be hacked once the homebrew community finally gets stuff working on a new console really bug me. It's entirely possible to have an open platform yet have minimal cheating. In fact, done right it's probably easier than preventing bad behavior in a walled garden. The reason it's such a big problem on the consoles is the manufacturers try to go all walled garden with them, but it's not really feasible to do it in this day and age, and hasn't been since onboard memory became a standard thing. Once a console is well and truly hacked, all you need access to is an SD card to get stuff running on it, the days of shady dealings with mod chips and a soldering iron are long gone.

 

[Requia]

I can see your point wrt multi-player shooters by shitty companies, but multi-player shooters made by shitty companies do not actually represent the whole genre. For single player play or play where anti-hacking is actually being done the mouse rules all.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

If Ghosts is having problems with hacking that bad, it's on Activision for not using a decent anti-cheat system. Does it have dedicated, player run servers, or is it match making only? Because if it's match making only, that makes it even worse on Activision's part. Best defense against hackers is a strong community with server admins having the power to kick/ban hackers.

Incidentally, this is why the people who go all gloom and doom about how multiplayer games are going to be hacked once the homebrew community finally gets stuff working on a new console really bug me. It's entirely possible to have an open platform yet have minimal cheating. In fact, done right it's probably easier than preventing bad behavior in a walled garden. The reason it's such a big problem on the consoles is the manufacturers try to go all walled garden with them, but it's not really feasible to do it in this day and age, and hasn't been since onboard memory became a standard thing. Once a console is well and truly hacked, all you need access to is an SD card to get stuff running on it, the days of shady dealings with mod chips and a soldering iron are long gone.

I'm not sure I'm understanding in where you're coming from , what do you mean the cause of hacking is due to consoles "forcing" a walled garden?, I've enjoyed both transformers war and Fall of Cybertron on both the 360 and PC, the only difference there is the console versions base of players dwindled over a year and a half whilst the PC versions dwindled and suffered at the hands of hackers.

I've played the Steam version of FOC for a good while now and the forums are full of RUssians admitting to hacking the multiplayer, loving to ruin the fun anyone could have and giving no fucks, yes Activision didn't really do anything about either of the two games but really at the end of the day it's still the hacker, the player who desires to ruin others fun in a multiplayer game that is really at fault, remove the desire and will for wishing to ruin someone else's fun and you don't get a hacked up multiplayer full of Russians that refuse to speak english on an english speaking game,forum and servers.

These days I find it more and more common to get insulted over numerous FPS games (even on Planetside 2 a current PC exclusive FPS game) or have the multiplayer matches hacked and ruined by the few because they don't have the brains and the guts to play fair with honour, it's not some fancy walled garden theory, it happens on both consoles and PC's and while yes it's up to the designers and pubs to get some security out there it's also the daft lowlife idiots that have to realise hacking ruins multiplayer gaming for everyone.

PC singleplayer games on the other hand are perfectly fine these days, hell I've had a blast with AVP 2010's campaign once more and look forward to replaying RAGE again while dabbling a little more into Fallout New Vegas and carrying on with Skyrim.

I will however avoid COD games for the time being until they manage to sort themselves out (which could take a long time but I can wait) and any other FPS game that can't maintain itself properly.

 

[Yuuki]

Ghosts is my example because it seems that aside from technical issues that have mostly been fixed, the main thing that keeps Ghosts at such a low population level (1,999 at time of this post), which makes only TDM and Domination playable, is the plague of hacks.

Nope.
1) CoD has never been marketed all that much towards PC players. It is very much a game that is dominated by the XBox Live community, followed by the Playstation community.
2) CoD:Ghosts had a terrible PC port. Most players either never bought it on PC to begin with, or were quickly driven away. First impressions were bad e.g. TotalBiscuit basically shredded the game:


So there's two huge reasons why the PC community was already knee-capped to begin with.

With Infinity Ward seemingly not taking any action against any hackers

^ There's your final reason. Infinity Ward doesn't give a shit. Hacking being easier on PC is only a small part of the issue here.

Any developer who cares about their community will use basic tools like PunkBuster, develop cheat-detection tools and deal with hackers by flat-out invalidating their copy/key of the game. This is further strengthened by global blacklists, i.e. if a hacker is caught on one server then their name/IP gets relayed to regional/global banlist(s) and they find themselves auto-banned from every server they try to join.
Origin is especially harsh on hackers, they risk losing their $60 license and potentially losing access to ALL their games on Origin.

Basically if the game is good and the developer cares, a healthy PC community will grow around it. A healthy community = a huge dedication towards banning hackers.

CoD:Ghosts tripped over the first hurdle.

Titanfall should be absolutely fine for the following reasons:

1) It's Origin-based
2) It's looking to have a great PC port and healthy community
3) It has replay kill-cams. Every man and their dog will be recording those replays the moment they think someone is suspicious.
4) Respawn seem to have their servers under total lockdown. There is no server browser, no private servers, no custom servers...as much as that sucks for PC, it can only mean tighter security and heavier monitoring.

At this rate Titanfall could be one of the most hacker-free PC games ever.

 

[DazZ.]

Can we not judge PC FPS on Call of Duty: Ghosts? I'm not going to go into detail about why I dislike the game but it's generally known to be a shitty port, whereas FPS games actually made for PC outshine it by miles. Since CoD started taking out PC specific stuff like leaning and basic stuff like dedicated servers it's not been worth the time.

Also Ghosts is currently on a free weekend, if there was ever a time for hackers this weekend would be it as all the cheaters and hackmakers are making free accounts to test their new hacks and hacking ideas.

Give the people dedicated servers and we can police ourselves, that way hackers can be dealt with by admins, this P2P and closed server trend is the most important thing that needs to die.

There are plenty of good FPS games for PC, and more on the way.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

If Ghosts is having problems with hacking that bad, it's on Activision for not using a decent anti-cheat system. Does it have dedicated, player run servers, or is it match making only? Because if it's match making only, that makes it even worse on Activision's part. Best defense against hackers is a strong community with server admins having the power to kick/ban hackers.

Incidentally, this is why the people who go all gloom and doom about how multiplayer games are going to be hacked once the homebrew community finally gets stuff working on a new console really bug me. It's entirely possible to have an open platform yet have minimal cheating. In fact, done right it's probably easier than preventing bad behavior in a walled garden. The reason it's such a big problem on the consoles is the manufacturers try to go all walled garden with them, but it's not really feasible to do it in this day and age, and hasn't been since onboard memory became a standard thing. Once a console is well and truly hacked, all you need access to is an SD card to get stuff running on it, the days of shady dealings with mod chips and a soldering iron are long gone.

I'm not sure I'm understanding in where you're coming from , what do you mean the cause of hacking is due to consoles "forcing" a walled garden?, I've enjoyed both transformers war and Fall of Cybertron on both the 360 and PC, the only difference there is the console versions base of players dwindled over a year and a half whilst the PC versions dwindled and suffered at the hands of hackers.

I've played the Steam version of FOC for a good while now and the forums are full of RUssians admitting to hacking the multiplayer, loving to ruin the fun anyone could have and giving no fucks, yes Activision didn't really do anything about either of the two games but really at the end of the day it's still the hacker, the player who desires to ruin others fun in a multiplayer game that is really at fault, remove the desire and will for wishing to ruin someone else's fun and you don't get a hacked up multiplayer full of Russians that refuse to speak english on an english speaking game,forum and servers.

These days I find it more and more common to get insulted over numerous FPS games (even on Planetside 2 a current PC exclusive FPS game) or have the multiplayer matches hacked and ruined by the few because they don't have the brains and the guts to play fair with honour, it's not some fancy walled garden theory, it happens on both consoles and PC's and while yes it's up to the designers and pubs to get some security out there it's also the daft lowlife idiots that have to realise hacking ruins multiplayer gaming for everyone.

PC singleplayer games on the other hand are perfectly fine these days, hell I've had a blast with AVP 2010's campaign once more and look forward to replaying RAGE again while dabbling a little more into Fallout New Vegas and carrying on with Skyrim.

I will however avoid COD games for the time being until they manage to sort themselves out (which could take a long time but I can wait) and any other FPS game that can't maintain itself properly.

Console versions rely on the way that, out of the box, you can't run any code that wasn't approved by the manufacturer on them to prevent cheating in online games. Once a console is cracked open by the homebrew community, the hackers have access to it. Meanwhile, legitimate players don't have a backup option for dealing with the cheaters. PC devs had had to worry about hackers from the get go, and the competent ones put in both some form of anti-cheat, and have methods for getting problem players off of a server.

Meanwhile, (some) people who never played an online game before they became standard on consoles pitch a fit any time the homebrew community cracks open a system, because A.) they don't realize there's more to homebrew than piracy and cheating, and B.) they don't realize they should be angry at the manufacturer and/or the devs for having such a crappy way to deal with hackers, instead of the homebrew community. You saw a lot of this with, for example, the Geohot case.

 

[Stavros Dimou]

*Disclaimer* I am not hating on PC. I love all the cool titles that are PC exclusives, and up until recently, preferred multiplayer oriented FPSs on PC.



Since buying, downloading, and playing CoD Ghosts,I have really come to notice the prevalence and uncontrollable hacking that is abound.

Ghosts is my example because it seems that aside from technical issues that have mostly been fixed, the main thing that keeps Ghosts at such a low population level (1,999 at time of this post), which makes only TDM and Domination playable, is the plague of hacks.

With Infinity Ward seemingly not taking any action against any hackers, I and many others have opted to leave CoD, and never buy another installment on PC.

However, it also seems that multiplayer F2P games like Loadout are now being hacked. There were even complaints about Titanfall hacks in the closed then open betas.


I find myself in the predicament that multiplayer focused PC ports almost always supports larger team sizes, has the potential for smoother frame-rates and higher fidelity graphics, yet is being kneecapped by hackers not being banned.

What is your stance? Did your Ghosts experience get ruined by the hackers and lack of moderation, are you interested in Titanfall? If so, does PC hacking make it less attractive to buy multiplayer focused games for PC? Are AAA FPSs that are mainly multiplayer on PC doomed to the fate of Ghosts?

That's why traditionally,in the 'good old times' PC games used to allow the player who bought the game to make his own machine a dedicated server. A lot of people would make computers in their houses to work 24/7,and would make a community website,where someone could donate. And the server owners would form up a team of moderators so there is always someone moderating the game,and banning cheaters when they show up. Once upon a time online video games were played by online communities. What happened to the servers,and all the gameplay mods a server would have would be voted by the community so players always have options to play as they prefer,without cheaters. Ahhh those were good times...

But you see,nowdays it's the era of consoles and console ports,where useful features get axed from PC versions of games for arbitrary obscure reasons. Microsoft doesn't allow anybody to set a server for an xbox game,and thus awkward and crippled systems like "game lobbies" and "servers that you don't own" happened,and they were forced on PC players too,because PC players have to be punished for Microsoft being an ***hole.

But look what happens when there are not actual human moderators moderating the online games: Cheater extravaganza!!!
Microsoft & Company: Crippling PC gaming since 2001 (Xbox)

 

[Jangles]

Ghosts is my example because it seems that aside from technical issues that have mostly been fixed, the main thing that keeps Ghosts at such a low population level (1,999 at time of this post), which makes only TDM and Domination playable, is the plague of hacks.

Nope.
1) CoD has never been marketed all that much towards PC players. It is very much a game that is dominated by the XBox Live community, followed by the Playstation community.
2) CoD:Ghosts had a terrible PC port. Most players either never bought it on PC to begin with, or were quickly driven away. First impressions were bad e.g. TotalBiscuit basically shredded the game:


So there's two huge reasons why the PC community was already knee-capped to begin with.

With Infinity Ward seemingly not taking any action against any hackers

^ There's your final reason. Infinity Ward doesn't give a shit. Hacking being easier on PC is only a small part of the issue here.

Any developer who cares about their community will use basic tools like PunkBuster, develop cheat-detection tools and deal with hackers by flat-out invalidating their copy/key of the game. This is further strengthened by global blacklists, i.e. if a hacker is caught on one server then their name/IP gets relayed to regional/global banlist(s) and they find themselves auto-banned from every server they try to join.
Origin is especially harsh on hackers, they risk losing their $60 license and potentially losing access to ALL their games on Origin.

Basically if the game is good and the developer cares, a healthy PC community will grow around it. A healthy community = a huge dedication towards banning hackers.

CoD:Ghosts tripped over the first hurdle.

Titanfall should be absolutely fine for the following reasons:

1) It's Origin-based
2) It's looking to have a great PC port and healthy community
3) It has replay kill-cams. Every man and their dog will be recording those replays the moment they think someone is suspicious.
4) Respawn seem to have their servers under total lockdown. There is no server browser, no private servers, no custom servers...as much as that sucks for PC, it can only mean tighter security and heavier monitoring.

At this rate Titanfall could be one of the most hacker-free PC games ever.

Cool it's good to know that Origin is good for something. I'm not counting on you knowing, but it is odd that IW didnt use VAC for ghosts or other games.

 

[Windcaler]

Well make no mistake there are hackers in all the platforms. PC just makes it a bit easier to do and get away with for a time. In the case of CoD ghosts, I didnt play it. I havnt played any CoD since Modern warfare 2 and even that was on an xbox. However Ive played many other FPS on PC. Battlefield: Bad company 2, 3 and 4 being probably my most played FPS and hacking was delt with as soon as DICE found them. Plus they make it really easy to spot

With alien arena I dont think Ive encountered a hacker yet. Some people Ive suspected but when I review fraps I dont see any evidence that they are 100% hacking

In my four or five months playing super monday night combat I encountered several hackers (aimbots mostly) which was one of the reasons I left that game (the other being that when I got up around level 40 I just wasnt good enough to compete with players at that level).

Blacklight: Retribution was another one that I played for about a year and in all that time I think I saw 2 or 3 hackers that were eventually banned from the game (to be fair Zombie was really good about analyzing evidence and running their own investigation on suspected hackers and they were really fast about bans).

With loadout Ive seen 2 people I can confirm were hackers (with video evidence) but thats it. No bans have happened yet to my knowledge but Ill give it a month before I start to complain. Granted I usually only play a couple matches a day so if you've been playing it nonstop since it went live you've had more experience with the game then me.

At the end of the day while hackers do exist in these games they are usually very much in the minority. Is it worth it? Absolutely. FPS on PC to me is more responsive and more accurate, plus with some games like the battlefield series you just get better experiences. Not only that but the variety in the types of FPS or 3PS is much wider. You generally dont see games like Guns of Icaris, Alien arena, loadout, Blacklight, and many more go to consoles. You generally just see the samey big budget games like CoD, battlefield, and crysis and sometimes I just want something different

Also, no. Various games will not end up like CoD unless they take the same steps. Battlefield (cods main competition) is very much alive along with many indie titles (again blacklight)

 

[Clowndoe]

Not to mention all the unique and awesome multiplayer FPSes that are PC-exclusive like Natural Selection 2, Red Orchestra 2, Insurgency and so forth.

 

[clippen05]

I find it really amusing that COD: Ghosts has hacking problems and it is made by one of the biggest companies in gaming, while Red Orchestra 2, as far as I can tell, has no problems at all; its made by a team 1/100th the size. The cynical side of me would say that it has to deal with the different playerbases And it also surprises me that Red Orchestra has around half as many players daily as Ghosts... didn't know PC Cod was THAT unpopular.

 

[Reed Spacer]

No. Can't stand 'em.

Nothing says fun like being griefed for being a good shot. "Ooh, he's shooting really well - he must be using a bot!"

It's called skill, kids . Maybe if you spent less time picking your noses and more time practicing, you'd be good, too.

I washed my hand of the whole thing ages ago.

 

[DoPo]

Can we not judge PC FPS on Call of Duty: Ghosts?

But then that would mean that we won't be able to make sweeping generasations that conform to what we say. And, in turn, it would mean that we would need to think of things in not purely black or white but consider shades of gray, or even, gods help us, we would need to actually consider different things as...well, dare I say it different - judging them on a case by case basis, rather than painting them all with the same brush.

I see no reason to do it your way.

 

[Xariat]

I never played CoD ghost and Frankly I only know one person who does, he plays on both PC and consoles AFAIK and he has never once mentioned hackers. I very rarely encounter hackers when I play FPS games on my PC and it has never been very ruining. (I play bf4, insurgency, dayZ, Css, and a whole lot of other fps games).

As for Titanfall, complaints about hacking is not evidence of hacking, not at all. people will scream hacks at basically any good playere. Now i was never really hyped for Titanfall to begin with, but I will probably check it out and I don't think hackers will be the thing that puts me off it if any.

In general I don't think hackers are that big of a deal, sure they can be annoying at times but I highly doubt hackers will kill PC gaming.

 

[Atmos Duality]

There are exceptional FPSes on PC here and there (ARMA, Red Orchestra), but unless the title is an MMO or MMO-like (service centric/multiplayer only, like upcoming Titanfall) where it's easy to milk or entrap the player for more cash than a regular game would cost, AAA publishers don't really care; They shunned PC shooters to push their console-bias agenda around the start of the previous console generation.

Frankly, I think the last truly great all-rounder PC FPS was UT2004.

 

[BeerTent]

As with any medium, some research is required when purchasing your products.

"Safe" IP's just aren't fun anymore to me. Not to mention, I'm also keeping off of EA, as I do not agree with their business practices. (I encourage boycott groups to, you know, actually fucking boycott instead of being spineless, pointless voices. I digress.) Games like Battlfield, CoD, they're just tossed out for cash, and because they're the #1 games that do not require much thought, they're bound to attract an extremely large number of players. Too large a number, as these companies are not equipped to handle it, or in EA's sense, they squander their resources, and do not handle it effectively and efficiently at all.

If you're looking for good FPS's on the PC, think outside the box.

If you're looking to avoid cheating, console is not the way to go.

If you're really into shooters, try these. All on PC babe, and will tax your system significantly less than the graphics demos you play. Keep in mind, I'm a very co-op player, so a lot of these games, I'll only touch if one of my RL friends is online.

Loadout
Unreal Tournament 3
Team Fortress 2
All Points bulletin (Piss-poor monitization scheme. Becomes not fun once you're Gold Threat. Free tough, might be a little fun. Friends required)
HAWKEN (I don't know if this is released yet. This is starting to take the brainless FPS route in their devcycle)
Natural Selection 2 (Extremely team based.)
ARMA Series/DayZ (Friends required)
Killing Floor (Friends required)
Payday series (Friends required)
PlanetSide 2 (Friends required, the more, the better. Best LAN I had in the Capitol was this one.)

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Since buying, downloading, and playing CoD Ghosts

There's your problem!

No seriously, Infinity Ward and Activison don't give a shit about the PC port and when the companies don't care about the product enough to do basic things like use Punk-Buster or VAC then its open season for hackers.

Besides I believe the COD scene for PC has remained with Black Ops 2 because Ghosts is a pile of ass on PC.

 

[USIncorp]

Counter-Strike Global Offensive has the best anti-cheat system i've seen, and it works the best as well. For those unfamiliar, basically what happens is you report a hacker, and it goes to a subset of players called the "Overwatch." The Overwatch player watches a replay of the match you were playing when you submitted the report, and they will decide if the potential hacker is hacking. The honor only goes to the best, most active players, so the people doing it are all legitimate and trustworthy. VALVe reported a 90% accuracy in the system, and I have not seen a single hacker since.