PC Regret?

[Fearzone]

Downloading Elder Scrolls Online Beta now. 20 gigs... sheesh. A smaller beta test version would have been alright.

So, to answer your question, no. But I've always been a PC gamer and like the kinds of PC games that simply don't exist on consoles. My PS3 is fine for watching movies, sometimes I play Super Stardust. Will probably get a PS4 when the dust settles, and play that new Defender game and watch movies on it. To each their own.

But if you like console games and were hoping for a superior experience on the PC... well I can vouch for Skyrim, otherwise like everyone else says, patience is your friend.

My solution is to have both and throw in a portable of your choice to broaden your gaming diversity. If the game is better on the XBox, get that version, or if better on the PC, get that version. My guess is, even if it is better on the XBox, you'll find yourself waiting for the PC version to mature.

 

[Seracen]

I've never felt that investing in a PC is a wrong course, unless it was some exorbitant Alienware that I could build myself for cheaper. PC's do so much more, you must look at the whole package.

Moreover, even if there ARE a few games that don't play as well as the console counterparts, patches and mods add potential value to the titles. Furthermore, there's always going to be a few games that slip through the cracks, but PC simply has the advantage on sheer number of titles.

 

[Nouw]

Now that you have a gaming PC, why don't you try some games made for the PC? Like consoles, PC games have a vast library of games made exclusively for it just waiting to be played. Indie games, old school RPGs and hell even Visual Novels although none of these really need a heavy duty PC . How about grand strategy games, online FPSs and maybe MOBAs if you have a friend or two. The point is, take advantage of the platform you have and expand your horizons. You just might find that your PC is more useful than you think.

 

[Fearzone]

Just to also say... when PC gamers started getting the crappy half-assed artificially limited ports from the console world, we mostly felt the same way you do now, in fact you (the OP) are quite calm, and back in the day the forums were exploding with outrage that a console experience might be better than a PC experience for multi-platform games. PC gamers, as a collective, have since calmed down, and started looking at the bigger picture. Once you do the same, you'll start enjoying your rig a lot more.

 

[Billy D Williams]

I'm on the fence about that as well. Building a new PC will set me back about 1300$ (with a base of a 4770k, a 780 GTX and a 250 gig SSD), and I'm not sure it's worth it right now, since everything is ass but you can play the same kind of ass on a 350$ console and save yourself the hassle.

Wow ummm... why would you spend that much on a gaming PC if your worried about price? For half that I can still make a great rig, especially once Black Friday (or even better, Cyber Monday) roll around. $600 and I bet I can get something running above that of a console without even OC'ing.

Anyhow, ya there are some drawbacks to PC gaming, especially with dick companies like Ubi completely disregarding us (while still having the balls to have their own specific DRM service) and making shitty ports but considering for one, those ports usually improve either through patches or mods, two we have a larger selection of better games, three PC gaming is much cheaper while still offering superior performance to consoles (at least, if you want to. Some people just go balls out with their rigs and buy games new instead of holding out for sales) and four since new consoles have the same architecture of PCs its going to probably be easier to port over to PC, not to mention dozens of other reasons big and small, PC still seems like the best place to be on my end. If you really want to I'd wait out a year or two and pick up a console used on Craigslist. I might buy a 2DS once I can get one for less than $80 and a PS3 once I can get it below $60-70. Won't be to much longer TBH either.

 

[infohippie]

Why would you build a PC for those games? Outside of Battlefield the others are pretty much made for consoles. It feels like consoles are getting shafted this generation anyway, it's just the same shit being released over and over with minor adjustments, Ass Creed, COD, EA sports, Battlefield, Need for Speed, even the infrequent franchises like Dead Rising offer little innovation from what I've seen. As a PC player on the other hand, I feel lucky considering I get to play shit like DOTA and Arma (which wouldn't really work on console) and all of the interesting upcoming games like Dayz, Star Citizen, Wildstar, Archeage, Planetary Annihilation etc. If I bought a PC strictly to play multi-platform games then yeah, I'd feel pretty ripped off.

Well I didn't build a PC FOR the games I listed, but I'd still like to play them. It seems a shame to have spent so much more money and to find myself shafted by developers who I would normally have supported.

And that's exactly why a lot of us PC gamers always have such bad things to say about many of the big name developers. They don't put the effort in for their PC releases and we get shafted. However, since this is PC, just wait it out and there will be patches - often made by the community themselves, and many times able to improve the game far beyond not jsut its initial PC experience but beyond its console experience, too. In the meantime, play the zillions of smaller, cheaper games that you will never find on consoles and revel in all the mods and updates already available for the slightly older games, like Skyrim.

 

[Carnagath]

I'm on the fence about that as well. Building a new PC will set me back about 1300$ (with a base of a 4770k, a 780 GTX and a 250 gig SSD), and I'm not sure it's worth it right now, since everything is ass but you can play the same kind of ass on a 350$ console and save yourself the hassle.

Wow ummm... why would you spend that much on a gaming PC if your worried about price? For half that I can still make a great rig, especially once Black Friday (or even better, Cyber Monday) roll around. $600 and I bet I can get something running above that of a console without even OC'ing.

Well, first of all I'm not American, and we don't really have Cyber Monday and all that stuff around here. PC hardware prices are pretty much fixed, it's not something that you can find heavily discounted. Secondly, I wouldn't buy a desktop gaming PC just so I can play demanding games on med/high. If I'm gonna get one, it has to be good, otherwise what's the point, I might as well get a console. I'm not talking enthusiast crap here, just an all around powerful system like the one I mentioned above.

 

[Rastrelly]

I'm on the fence about that as well. Building a new PC will set me back about 1300$ (with a base of a 4770k, a 780 GTX and a 250 gig SSD), and I'm not sure it's worth it right now, since everything is ass but you can play the same kind of ass on a 350$ console and save yourself the hassle.

Everything's ass? Sooo... There's KSP on consoles? SC? JA? TES*? Total War? Civilization? XCOM? HoMM? C&C**? M&M? BG? SS? WoW? NWN? TF? Fallout***? KB? Wizardry? WC? Majesty? GC? DoW? Settlers? Planescape? Homeworld? GalCiv? Billions of awesome old games that will never appear on consoles? Should I continue? Or you think gaming is buying AAA shit, playing for three hours of gameplay it offers and then dropping?

______
* Unmodded TES is not TES
** Ah, yes, that WONDERFUL NES or SNES version...
*** Unmodded F3 and FNV are not F3 and FNV

 

[Billy D Williams]

I'm on the fence about that as well. Building a new PC will set me back about 1300$ (with a base of a 4770k, a 780 GTX and a 250 gig SSD), and I'm not sure it's worth it right now, since everything is ass but you can play the same kind of ass on a 350$ console and save yourself the hassle.

Wow ummm... why would you spend that much on a gaming PC if your worried about price? For half that I can still make a great rig, especially once Black Friday (or even better, Cyber Monday) roll around. $600 and I bet I can get something running above that of a console without even OC'ing.

Well, first of all I'm not American, and we don't really have Cyber Monday and all that stuff around here. PC hardware prices are pretty much fixed, it's not something that you can find heavily discounted. Secondly, I wouldn't buy a desktop gaming PC just so I can play demanding games on med/high. If I'm gonna get one, it has to be good, otherwise what's the point, I might as well get a console. I'm not talking enthusiast crap here, just an all around powerful system like the one I mentioned above.

Well, your throwing in a 4770k and a 780 GTX, both of which are two of the best components you can put into a rig when it comes to PC gaming. Not that I'm trying to tell you what you should and shouldn't buy, but if you do decide to get those parts that would be something of an enthusiast rig in my book. An AMD FX-6350 and a Radeon 7870 (or 7950 if you want to get some more power) are still fairly high end parts and half the cost. Also, a SSD is... well there is no going around it SSDs are enthusiast gear. They cost a TON of money, you can only put 1/4 of your games on them without needing to buy a separate drive and they only serve to reduce loading times. If you REALLY feel you want one but don't want to spend the enthusiast money you'd probably be best to get one thats relatively low in storage for your OS and maybe one or two of your most played games, but otherwise that's some enthusiast gear right there.

Like I said, I'm not trying to tell you what to buy or if you should even buy anything at all, I'm just giving a friendly suggestion from a PC gamer. Also, ya I tend to forget that other countries don't get our Black Friday sales, I have a few buddies who I'm helping to build PC's for and were going to get them there parts on Black Friday and I guess I just got a little over excited in trying to pass along the savings

 

[GoaThief]

Maybe I was just looking forward to a string of releases that happened to go awry, but it's got me worried!

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news but this has forever been the case with PCs. Personally I enjoy the tech side of things so tweaking and modifying is usually enjoyable. However, not everyone is the same and the vast majority of people don't want to deal with all that - they buy, plug it in, download or whatever, and it works.

These forums and certain aspects of it minimise or even completely disregard some of the obstacles faced by the non tech-savvy and I wish more would be understanding towards these people and console owners. It probably should have been much clearer to you if you have over relied on these forums and had a very PC centric take on things provided.

It's not all doom and gloom, I don't know how powerful your rig is so it may be a case of being realistic on a few cases and stop pushing as hard as you can. Scale back the graphics, make sure the rest of your system (both hardware and software) is stable and working flawlessly and try not to be swayed by the negative hype factor which can overblow small niggles into "zomg, don't pay for this broken piece of shit". There is the option of selling your PC too, and if it's recent you will likely find a good price for it but that is probably worth doing sooner rather than later as price drops are often sharp and brutal. There is no shame in cutting a small loss and trying again after you've experimented enough on a budget PC or you catch the bug (which it seems you've lost?) again.

Hope your outlook takes a turn for the positive soon.

 

[josemlopes]

Why would you build a PC for those games? Outside of Battlefield the others are pretty much made for consoles. It feels like consoles are getting shafted this generation anyway, it's just the same shit being released over and over with minor adjustments, Ass Creed, COD, EA sports, Battlefield, Need for Speed, even the infrequent franchises like Dead Rising offer little innovation from what I've seen. As a PC player on the other hand, I feel lucky considering I get to play shit like DOTA and Arma (which wouldn't really work on console) and all of the interesting upcoming games like Dayz, Star Citizen, Wildstar, Archeage, Planetary Annihilation etc. If I bought a PC strictly to play multi-platform games then yeah, I'd feel pretty ripped off.

Well I didn't build a PC FOR the games I listed, but I'd still like to play them. It seems a shame to have spent so much more money and to find myself shafted by developers who I would normally have supported.

Dont worry much, the case with COD and Need For Speed (especially Need For Speed) were just them "promoting" next gen consoles, COD was an all around fuck up by the devs (Infinity Ward clearly isnt the same was it was) and Need For Speed was an example of someone building two identical houses and setting one of them on fire to claim that the other is better.

Just give it less then a year and the rest of the games will be more stable (if not better on the PC like Battlefield).

And from what I heard ACIV runs fine, only if you enable certain features (that not even the PS4 version has) then the game really needs a beefy PC to run well.

The trade-off for not being able to play some generic mainstream content out there at the best quality comes when you can play a shitload of other stuff (including a lot of generic mainstream content too) in any way you want at the best quality.

 

[Longstreet]

I love my PC, i'll probably never own a console.

Keep in mind though, that stuff like Need for speed rivals being locked at 30 fps, isnt a pc problem, it's a developer problem.

Anything else that can be said, has been said but just FYI, for me both AC black flag and Battlefield 4 run great. Yes BF4 crashes every once in a while but, for me at least, it isnt a really big problem.

 

[Carnagath]

I'm on the fence about that as well. Building a new PC will set me back about 1300$ (with a base of a 4770k, a 780 GTX and a 250 gig SSD), and I'm not sure it's worth it right now, since everything is ass but you can play the same kind of ass on a 350$ console and save yourself the hassle.

Everything's ass? Sooo... There's KSP on consoles? SC? JA? TES*? Total War? Civilization? XCOM? HoMM? C&C**? M&M? BG? SS? WoW? NWN? TF? Fallout***? KB? Wizardry? WC? Majesty? GC? DoW? Settlers? Planescape? Homeworld? GalCiv? Billions of awesome old games that will never appear on consoles? Should I continue? Or you think gaming is buying AAA shit, playing for three hours of gameplay it offers and then dropping?

______
* Unmodded TES is not TES
** Ah, yes, that WONDERFUL NES or SNES version...
*** Unmodded F3 and FNV are not F3 and FNV

I was a bit too general in my "ass" definition for purposes of brevity, I of course don't mean that everything is ass, just the recent "next gen" highly awaited games, which don't really take advantage of the hardware the PC has to offer and are not optimized. Also, I can play all the games you mentioned perfectly on my 2 year old laptop, most of them maxed (currently playing Xcom EW actually, it runs fine even with max AA on a laptop with just a 540M, great job Firaxis).

Well, your throwing in a 4770k and a 780 GTX, both of which are two of the best components you can put into a rig when it comes to PC gaming. Not that I'm trying to tell you what you should and shouldn't buy, but if you do decide to get those parts that would be something of an enthusiast rig in my book. An AMD FX-6350 and a Radeon 7870 (or 7950 if you want to get some more power) are still fairly high end parts and half the cost. Also, a SSD is... well there is no going around it SSDs are enthusiast gear. They cost a TON of money, you can only put 1/4 of your games on them without needing to buy a separate drive and they only serve to reduce loading times. If you REALLY feel you want one but don't want to spend the enthusiast money you'd probably be best to get one thats relatively low in storage for your OS and maybe one or two of your most played games, but otherwise that's some enthusiast gear right there.

Like I said, I'm not trying to tell you what to buy or if you should even buy anything at all, I'm just giving a friendly suggestion from a PC gamer. Also, ya I tend to forget that other countries don't get our Black Friday sales, I have a few buddies who I'm helping to build PC's for and were going to get them there parts on Black Friday and I guess I just got a little over excited in trying to pass along the savings

Indeed I was thinking of dropping the SSD, I just included it because I like playing action RPG's like Diablo 3 and Path of Exile on Hardcore, where long loading times can get you killed, it's also a huge quality of life improvement to have everything load twice as fast, it's not a meaningless overpriced gimmick in my eyes, it's actually awesome. About the CPU, I tend to avoid AMD ones because I live in a very warm country and overheating can be an issue unless you bundle them with a kickass, expensive cooler. Aside from that, my research on the 4770k indicates that it's thermally great, and it also doesn't put a big load on your PSU. Also, it's generally a good idea to get a good, 4-5-year future-proof CPU when you build a new system, because upgrading them later tends to also require a mobo change, which is a big hassle. As for the GPU, again I avoid AMD ones due to temperature issues and the 780 recently got a price cut and is now actually reasonably cost-effective at around 350$, you can also get them as factory-OC'd models (I believe Gainward does that) and they still behave well thermally, so it's an all around great choice I think. I wouldn't call that an enthusiast system personally, that would be something like a base of a 4930k with a 780Ti at around a terrifying 1800$. Fuck that

 

[marurder]

I've never regretted having a PC. I HAVE regretted trying to install some games that may have issues relating to the various components of my PC which result in additional hassle (updating drivers and so on) where a console is more plug and play. But I find that for every game I have this hassle, there is an answer and also a larger selection of games which have been modded, adjusted and updated for the 'modern' PC.

Also the emulators for 'console' exclusives. I refer to older consoles and games no longer on the market.

 

[Floppertje]

Well, I used to own a ps3 when I got a gaming rig. then after about a year I just sold it because my tv was inferior to my monitor, so I hooked my ps3 up to that. Then I realized how silly I was being. Yes, sometimes I do feel a little pang of envy when a console exclusive comes out that I'd like to play. Infamous: second son looks like it'll be a ton of fun. But then I realize that I get to play Star Citizen next year, that makes up for it and then some. so no, no regrets here.

 

[Revolutionary]

Welcome to PC gaming, Infinitely superior but occasionally a pain in the arse. It's a fair trade off IMO.
Also it's worth noting that while it's true that AC4 is hard to run, it also looks fabulous (better than the PS4 even on low settings).

 

[Ian Booton]

It depends entirely on whether or not you get into PC exclusives. For example, have you tried Total War, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Planetside 2, etc.? If you dig into PC exclusives, that will more than make up for whatever you're missing from consoles.

 

[Billy D Williams]

I wouldn't call that an enthusiast system personally, that would be something like a base of a 4930k with a 780Ti at around a terrifying 1800$. Fuck that

I guess we just have to disagree on what we define enthusiast as lol. For me anything over $1000 is enthusiast, if I were to build a PC I'd go with the 6350 and 7870 (I live in place thats never to hot and never to cold fortunately), a 600W PSU, 8GB of DDR3 RAM (maybe upgrade eventually), and a decent $50 case and after OS come out at about $600, and I'd ride that out for probably 4+ years. Call me a cheap-o but that's just me, and hey its better than the XBone and PS4 when it comes to power

 

[Rastrelly]

I was a bit too general in my "ass" definition for purposes of brevity, I of course don't mean that everything is ass, just the recent "next gen" highly awaited games, which don't really take advantage of the hardware the PC has to offer and are not optimized. Also, I can play all the games you mentioned perfectly on my 2 year old laptop, most of them maxed (currently playing Xcom EW actually, it runs fine even with max AA on a laptop with just a 540M, great job Firaxis).

Thanks gods. I'm getting tired of people who actually thinks PC is only about graphics T___T

Well, I must say, nowadays it seems too expensive, but just think strategically. 5 yeras later you'll still be able to play games with high requirements AND if you manage your expenses well*, you'll save just enough for a new rig or a fine upgrade That is, of course, if you do want to collect games, for, as I understand, many of console gamers actively exchange their copies for new stuff (but it still has to eat more money then games for $2 - 5 on Steam).

_____
* Steam sales, purchaces after price drops, etc.

 

[Aesir23]

I've definitely regretted it. A short while ago I decided that I would switch to PC and even started upgrading with what I could afford. I still have a long way to go before it's even halfway decent but I got some games that are supposed to be able to run just fine (as far as the Specs were concerned).

I will say right off the bat that the vast majority of my problem appears to be due to having a 32 bit OS which, as far as I know, limits my RAM usage to 3GB regardless of the amount of RAM actually in my computer.

Still, with the amount of fiddling I've had to do just to get my games to work somewhat well, the amount of problems I still run into and the total amount of money it will cost me to get my computer to that semi-decent state... I've just decided that between the cost and the hassle, it's just too much of a pain in the arse in return for access to mods and a prettier picture.

I know that I will probably get some hate for this. I will also admit that in many ways (technology, as an open-platform, backwards compatibility, graphics, etc) the PC is the better platform. However, for someone like me who doesn't want to deal with the hassle after a long day and just wants to plug & play then a console tends to be the better choice.

All in all, it's essentially down to what you prefer and your priorities as a gamer.