Jimquisition: Shaming PC Ports Because Why Not?

[Seracen]

Never explicitly thought about it, but it IS an issue. PC gamers have ALWAYS known that they are really the BETA testers, if they buy a game at launch. As often, however, I prefer the PC version simply because mods provide more value then the nickel and diming that console versions provide (often with inferior results). It's sad, but sometimes it's worse than others.


My fave examples of this...

- Elder Scrolls/Fallout (as noted by Jim)

- Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines (and Redemption, to a certain extent)

- Dragon Age: Origins (I actually posted the fix for a bug with the DLC content, but there were a lot of unofficial patches which went unrecognized)

- KOTOR 2 (primarily the restored content mod)

- Hellgate London (although I imagine Hellgate Tokyo fixed a lot of this)


To be fair, however, I think Bethesda and Bioware got a pass on their snafus due to the release of their toolkits (although Jim's point about patches/etc within the 1st week still put the developers "on notice," as it were).

 

[ACE1918]

This also applies to unfinished games that originate or even are exclusive to PC. This is why Sub simulator fans got pissed at Ubisoft for Silent Hunter 5, that and the always online drm they had (but later got rid of) for it.

 

[DarklordKyo]

Hopefully From Software put their money where their mouths are with Dark Souls 2 (considering they apparently stated that the PC release is going to be the main release, with the console versions as the ports, and that they claim they're making DS2 a proper PC release).

 

[Magmarock]

I love this episode and I agree entirely. God bless GOG for shipping their games pre patched to work and links to mods to improve it should you so chose

 

[Something Amyss]

In Dark Souls' case, the main problem was that the port was too barebones and didn't fit common PC-specific standards. The port didn't have anything *less* than the PS3 version, it just didn't have *enough* to make it a proper PC port.

But that's contrary to Jim's argument. He said he wasn't looking for MORE, but that this was somehow offering less than a PC port. And, I mean, I brought up Jim specifically for a reason. Jim said he wasn't looking for more, he said he just wasn't looking for less. You appear to be agreeing that this was in fact a straight port. And if that's all he wanted....

Up front, yeah. When people started screaming for a port From just came out and were like "But, what, we don't even... Fuck, we don't even know how to do that. How do you..? What is a PC? What even is a PC?" And then people kept on crying and From just caved and put one out there then people started crying again because the port was shit. Should've seen it coming if you ask me.

Oh, absolutely. The writing was on the wall. Actually, the writing was in 40 foot high letters and people were complaining for it anyway and then they got it and they complained that it was basically as advertised.

It's hard not to look at the overall PC gaming community as spoiled, all things considered.

I get complaints about shitty ports (though I maintain we are often enablers to just this sort of behaviour), but when it's something like Dark Souls, it's hard to see the demands as reasonable.

$40 IIRC, but then it also came with a lot of physical extras (hardcover artbook, soundtrack CD, "Making Of" DVD, poster, art cards).

You may well be right. I only looked at digital editions which didn't have things like hardcover anything.

 

[Something Amyss]

Never explicitly thought about it, but it IS an issue. PC gamers have ALWAYS known that they are really the BETA testers, if they buy a game at launch. As often, however, I prefer the PC version simply because mods provide more value then the nickel and diming that console versions provide (often with inferior results). It's sad, but sometimes it's worse than others.


My fave examples of this...

- Elder Scrolls/Fallout (as noted by Jim)

- Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines (and Redemption, to a certain extent)

- Dragon Age: Origins (I actually posted the fix for a bug with the DLC content, but there were a lot of unofficial patches which went unrecognized)

- KOTOR 2 (primarily the restored content mod)

- Hellgate London (although I imagine Hellgate Tokyo fixed a lot of this)


To be fair, however, I think Bethesda and Bioware got a pass on their snafus due to the release of their toolkits (although Jim's point about patches/etc within the 1st week still put the developers "on notice," as it were).

But isn't that also kind of the point? Some of the most popular games are among the most broken. Giving out a toolkit and saying "fix this shit for us" is basically the issue at hand, and ravenously supporting some of the biggest examples only means there will be more of them.

Wouldn't it be a better use of modders' time to make actual mods, rather than trying to patch up crappy code?

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Nice new avatar Jim.

2c:

I'm not a Dark Souls guy, but I thought there was a lot of bruhaha before they put that out on PC where 'the community' got some giant petition going asking them to do it, and the dev's said something to the tune of 'we don't know shit about PCs so this could well be shit'. And then it was. So that seems pretty fair to me, if they acknowledge beforehand that it could be bad but the core player-base wants it anyway. Complaining after that seems kind of redundant. To top it off I think it came out of the gate at something like $40 for PC (ie less than full price, and less than it cost on console).

And Bethesda. I'm inclined to give them a pass because none of their games have had the notorious glitches in my experience. Aside from a few gravity defying mammoths and Deathclaws as well as a few IDCLIP scorpions their games have gone off without a hitch on my pc. They design their games with a lower base texture resolution so lower end pcs can play them. I remember being ecstatic that my laptop, already 3 years old at the time, could play Skyrim on release with no issues. I will note however that their gigantic 'High Resolution Texture Pack' for Skyrim crippled my framerate without adding any noticeable graphical shine. The free community stuff on Nexus however does make the game look a lot better with much less impact.

 

[Megacherv]

-SNIP-

I will say in defense of the developers soing the porting:-

These games are originally made for console, yes? You're developing for 360 and PS3, which are themselves different from themselves and from PC. Once you've been developing for one platform specifically then you're going to forget how to develop for other platforms if you haven't developed it for a while. These people who provide fixes will be people who know how PC development works (seriously, you can just look it up and learn it, you don't need to have 1st class PhD or whatever, currently the majority of developers in the industry don't have degrees), so they'll be able to provide these fixes. The time taken to develop the fix will differ depending on the issue, and if you look at Durante's blog the original fix was fairly small and took a while to get to version 1.0. Often times these fixes can be quick, simply changing a few numbers (game development is all about manipulation of lots and lots of numbers); or can take a while, changing a lot of numbers.

 

[wulf3n]

Not really, a Professional [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional] from a work perspective simply requires the knowledge and/or training for that profession. Since Peter Thorman has a Ph.D and co-authored several research papers [http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/pers/hd/t/Thomaneter] I would say he fits the bill.

Either way the words layman [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layman], Average Joe [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_joe] and amateur [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur] don't apply because this guy is none of those things. Sure he doesn't work as a Games Developer, but the stuff he's doing is so far beyond that it's incredible.

Personally I would not feel ashamed if someone like this was fixing my code.

But would your feel ashamed if you released a game that was only playable after he fixed it?

It would depend on the cause of the bugs. Something simple or predictable yes, but something unexpected not so much.

 

[Roxor]

We should disqualify any game which releases with a bad port from any kind of award. Not just bad PC ports, either.

Hopefully the x86_64 architecture of the Xbone and PS4 will result in better PC ports, although that's probably being overly optimistic.

 

[Cybylt]

In Dark Souls' case, the main problem was that the port was too barebones and didn't fit common PC-specific standards. The port didn't have anything *less* than the PS3 version, it just didn't have *enough* to make it a proper PC port.

But that's contrary to Jim's argument. He said he wasn't looking for MORE, but that this was somehow offering less than a PC port. And, I mean, I brought up Jim specifically for a reason. Jim said he wasn't looking for more, he said he just wasn't looking for less. You appear to be agreeing that this was in fact a straight port. And if that's all he wanted....

At first I thought the video was taking the piss out of PC "master race"-ers for asking for a port, and then throwing massive bitchfits when they got exactly what they asked for.

Dark Souls was ported exactly as it is on consoles, it has the exact same frame rate troubles, video output, and control settings of the base it was derived from. The "fix" actually causes more problems than it supposedly solves by adding things that were never a piece of the game in the first place like 1080p output and the 60 frames rate. So now you have a game that never crashes and never has breaking bugs but *gasp* runs at 30fps on 720p, and as we all know that's for cavemen and filthy peasants. No, we must have 1080p 60fps even though it causes crashes on launch and freezing.

The only issue actually worth complaining about is the controls one, but the game even in it's "unplayable broken mess" state runs a hell of a lot better than many games that were made for PC to begin with.

As far as I can tell of the whole debacle, PC Gamers should have clarified. They didn't want a port, they wanted a small, low budget company to rebuild a whole game from the ground up so they could lord over a vastly visually and technically superior version to the filthy console peasants. Because god forbid they ever get any less.

Deadly Premonition is a barely playable mess of bugs in its every iteration.

Bethesda is incapable of making anything past beta stage. Bethesda's the only one on this list that should be ashamed of themselves. FromSoft did a better job porting a console game on their first try in a span of months and still did a better job of it than a company that's been PC-centric since the 80's.

 

[sageoftruth]

Well, at least he was honest about what we were in for. That awkward silence at the end was actually pretty funny.
Anyway, I agree that helpful modders should not be taken for granted. Still, I wouldn't put the performances of modders on par with what the bug-fixers do a.k.a. the marathon analogy, mainly because the bug-fixers have to look for problems, while the modders generally don't jump into the action until the problems have already presented themselves. As Jim said, these are massive projects, and looking for each and every bug in such things is not easy.

 

[Rezeak]

Indeed, Dark souls unpatched on the PC runs better than the console version. O and it was cheaper and the DLC was free and it was made because of a petition. Honestly, to say the should be 'ashamed' it just plain wrong, considering they could of just ignored the PC market like a lot of jp company's do.

As for Bethesda there games are buggy on the consoles and the PC the only difference is you don't need to wait for a patch on the PC but PC the buggy stat of their games imo should be forgiven consider they give us the Dev tools to there games for free meaning the game will have new content for years. That said, they really should pay people that release highly rated unofficial patches something and the fact they don't is shameful.

Lastly, if you want to pick on a company for bad porting Activision is up there consider the PC port of there console games are usally buggy for example in Call of Duty : ghosts high end AMD card couldn't break 60fps and on Black ops 2 if you want to use a controller and use voice chat you need to use the keyboard for push-to-talk.

 

[Metalrocks]

the worst pc ports i came across were silent hill 2 and resident evil 4. i was really pissed with SH2 when i coulndt save or even change the resolution as they said on the box. plus the horrible sound on top of it that i had to instal 2 patches to fix the damn sound.
i also agree that developers should be ashamed of them self for releasing a buggy port of their games and taking even more if not even no time to fix it.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Well hopefully this issue will be rarer now than developers must develop for PBox One and the PS4 to produce console games. I don't think that last part was 'not written' but you pulled it off nicely.

There might be issues with nVidia cards though since amd is console standard now. Hope not but that possibility is present.

 

[leviadragon99]

It is indeed very much bullshit when a PC port is treated as something to do half-assed as an afterthought, as if PC gamers are second class citizens or something, or when games just never come to PC despite them easily fitting there, because console hostages, whoops I mean exclusives are just soooo relevant in this day and age.

Hell, that's not even getting into the godawful controls so many PC ports have because they were designed exclusively for console controls and no-one ever bothered to properly rework them, instead taking the path of least resistance for something technically functional but horribly awkward.

 

[Vicioussama]

I disagree that Dark Souls was a "shitty port." Mediocre port? Yes. Shitty? No. It was playable without ANY fix. I did play it fine on release without the DSFix. How? The way they said it'd work, with my controller. Worked better than the console versions (in that it worked just the same, but less frame rate issues) with my controller. Did it suck with the keyboard and mouse? yep. Was it a game designed at ALL around that? Nope. Did they admit they had never done PC before and aren't used to it? Yep. Did they openly state at the beginning that it'd be best played with a controller? Yep.

Sorry, but at that point it's the consumer's fault if the port isn't up to THEIR standards if they were open and honest with it being best played with one type of control style (come now, as a PC player you hvae a problem with this? The medium that is a hardcore gamer's choice because it allows for more options for controls? Hell, no one complains with the flight sims or the X-Wing games sucked with a keyboard and mouse compared to a joystick... please).

So ya, it wasn't "bad" it just wasn't "good" either. It was mediocre. Bad = completely broken and unplayable. As in the game won't even run or if it does run, runs like complete shit (there have been MANY other games that are worse offenders and were bigger AAA games than Dark Souls yet they got no hate lol or far less). Mediocre = runs well on at least one control scheme, but doesn't take full advantage of the system's full abilities/natural control scheme/etc. Good = runs well that takes full use of the system's natural control schemes and abilities.

Need to stop being so stupid about Dark Souls :\

Now, I do agree that the PC as a whole gets the less effort put in by the developers, but don't go hating all developers cause one game of theirs is bad. Depends on the circumstances. Ubisoft and such who have experience with PC but take so long or don't have good versions on release? Or EA? Or Activision? Companies that started on PC? Ya, they deserve that higher criticism. And it does need to stop.

 

[Brian Tams]

I always grunt in irritation when a game developer can't be asked to change the button icons in from an Xbox controller setup to a keyboard setup.

Like in Dead Island; the "Press X to break Door" was STILL IN THE GAME.

A petty complaint, I know, but still valid.

It also gets comically bad during QTE sections that haven't changed the cues, either.

EDIT:

I disagree that Dark Souls was a "shitty port." Mediocre port? Yes. Shitty? No. It was playable without ANY fix.

That's humorous. I certainly remember my copy (and many others) immediately crashing to desktop or coming up with a fatal error on start up.

 

[Flunk]

We should disqualify any game which releases with a bad port from any kind of award. Not just bad PC ports, either.

Hopefully the x86_64 architecture of the Xbone and PS4 will result in better PC ports, although that's probably being overly optimistic.

I've got some bad news for you, almost nothing is written in assembler anymore so it probably won't matter. For almost all games the C compiler will compile the code just as easily for X86, ARM or anything else. I recommend getting an AMD GPU if you really want to leverage similar hardware.

Seeing as they're releasing their low-level mantle API that might actually help compatibility, but only with their cards. If Microsoft really cared they could just release all the same APIs that the Xbox One uses for Windows. Heck, if they really wanted they could probably release a patch that let you play Xbox One games on your PC. Will they? I expect they'll do it if Sony is destroying them sales wise, otherwise not.

 

[Covarr]

Final Fantasy VIII was released on Steam last Thursday. It turned out it had horrible MIDI music instead of something proper. Awful PC port incarnate.

And then while my friend and I were working on a fan mod to fix it, this video came out. Timing couldn't have been more perfect. Anyway, we fixed the music in a mere four days. Watch as Square-Enix doesn't do anything about it.

P.S. Thanks