Skyrim to be a console port which "shouldn't be too hard"

[rossatdi]

Spoiler: SNIP

I'm not sure I follow. There have always been crap games and some of the best are sequels. Morrowind is a sequel and unless you're talking of the first Warcraft the biggest money spinner for Blizzard came after 3 RTSs.

Technology isn't really holding the industry back, I'm sure you'd agree that more ideas in gaming is something that we're all looking for. I would argue that this is stymied by rapidly advancing hardware. Set platforms like the 360 and the PS3 must give developers a far easier time because they don't have to worry about making sure a game can run of a budget PC with X, Y and Z components and well as being truly stunning on a high end PC with A, B and C components. Some of the most fun/interesting games in recent years have been stuff like Braid, Limbo and 'Splosion Man which are cheap little console developments.

Yes, sequels can be good when they improve wholly on the original idea. Look at Assassins Creed 2 and, like you said, Morrowind. Sequels CAN be good, it's just that sequels nowadays are treated like a way to simply change the game a bit and then release it to on the market with minimal innovation. Look at EA Sports or any of the recent games released this year. All sequels with very little innovation.

To be honest, technology IS holding gaming back. Certain ideas can only be realized using modern technology, especially ideas that involve huge sprawling words filled with people I.E. what Skyrim attempts to be. Red Dead Redemption tried this and while the world wasn't exactly filled with people it still stuttered like a drunken horse at times. As ideas get more complex you need complex means to realize them. Better technology doesn't always have to mean better graphics.

And that's called laziness. Putting as much effort as you can into a game will undoubtedly result in quality. Being lazy, however, won't. Ideas are getting more complex than ever and as such hardware and software must be up to the task so those ideas can be realized. Yes, it's hard to make a game on a PC giving that the hardware is so diverse. However, developers were willing to do so in the past. Let's not forget that back then, most companies did not have huge offices filled with hundreds of employees. Why should gaming become more simplistic when the means to develop one are becoming more complex? Nowadays, one programmer doesn't have to do all the work.

I'd much rather wait 5 years for an amazing game with a lot of effort put into it than 2 years for a mediocre one.

While that's a nice concept, the idea of an industry purposefully cutting itself down to be less profitable and smaller is just unrealistic, massively so. The tools for little indie developers to come up with ideas which then filter through into the mainstream are bigger than ever before and Minecraft is a great example. Nothing the industry is doing is going to make this harder. The only limiting factor is development cost and that is, in part, driven by ever increasing technological advancement - something that is inevitable and unavoidable..

Developers need to stop treating new technology as a new foothold into ever increasing graphical complexity. I'm not saying developing should be made harder. I'm saying that when it gets easier you should also work harder. If creating a world is easier now why not work harder to make it more complex? The tools are there for anyone to do so.

The reason games cost so much is because of graphics. Most gamers demand better graphics but that doesn't always have to be the case. A good art style and an amazing world can make up for mediocre graphics because you can hide it. Braid doesn't have amazing graphics but it does have an amazing art style which gives it it's stile and makes the whole world vibrant and interesting.

Let me give you an example. Let's say 5 years ago, it would take one year to make one character. So you develop a game for 3 years, putting 3 characters in the game. After 5 years, the technology has been developed further and now creating one character takes only one month and yet for some reason developers are still creating only 3 characters. I hope you understand.

From your above quote the assertion would appear to be that no game has been influential since Morrowind, unless I'm misunderstanding your point, I can't see how you can possibly justify claiming there's been no advancement to the world of gaming since 2002.

I didn't mean it that way. What I was trying to say is that games are no longer as influential. We no longer see innovation. Assassins Creed revolutionized action games and AC2 perfected that formula. Now, instead of attempting to perfect the formula even further and add new mechanics they're just rehashing the same shit over and over again.

I'm afraid I don't follow on a number of things. Reduction/clarification:

1. Red Dead Redemption ran fine on the 360 and is a brilliant example of a company using its existing engine not to push graphics but to increase the size and detail of their world. Judging from the horror stories coming out of the Rockstar officers, lazy is not a word that can sum up the design ethos.

2. Sports franchises have been pulling this trick for well over a decade, which they can do because of updating games to stay contemporary with real life seasons. Its not something I think is good but it does exist under a different industry model to say Assassins Creed or the Elder Scrolls series.

3. I agree with you on art style over graphical complexity. I would love to see a new sonic 2d game done with an interesting painted art style like Braid rather than the bland style they went with. But as you say, gamers like graphics and developers have to sell games - so there's a driving force there.

4. Regarding innovation. There is a point when a genre has conventions that just work. Take First Person Shooters, two analogue sticks to move and aim, trigger for Primary/Secondary, reload/jump/action somewhere on the face buttons and so on. There's no need to revise this. What makes each game better is what they do with it. Portal 1 & 2 were excellent examples of games that thoroughly experimented within their own field.

We're entering industry maturity to some regards with gaming. Like cinema, things like tracking shots, zooms, closeups, etc had to be invented but the rate of those kind of major discoveries has slowed. Now there's only innovations in technique like dicking around with 3D (again), the genre steps forward with story and vision - not technology. Gaming, I believe, is starting to reach that point of having the key directorial/technological components and innovation will come through better stories (Skyrim), clever subversions of tropes (Portal 2), trying out new things (LA Noire). There will always be the summer blockbusters (Modern Warfare) and the Indie darlings (Minecraft) but I just get the impression you're expecting some kind of collective agenda setting for the better from the industry, which isn't going to happen.

Conclusion: What I don't understand is how you can be upset that a company that has a desire to make good games, and have as many people play them as possible, and a profit margin to maintain has moved to a platform of development that allows them to do that.

As a pen and paper gamer, I've noticed that system complexity can be a cover for lack of interesting world design. If Skyrim has a few less in-game options but a more interesting world and a better story, that's a sacrifice I don't mind.

 

[AndyFromMonday]

1. Red Dead Redemption ran fine on the 360 and is a brilliant example of a company using its existing engine not to push graphics but to increase the size and detail of their world. Judging from the horror stories coming out of the Rockstar officers, lazy is not a word that can sum up the design ethos.

I never said they were lazy. In fact, I find Red Dead Redemption to be an amazing game with even better production values. HOWEVER, I experienced frequent stutters and lag , especially when it was raining or a lot of people were on screen. My machine is barely a year old and from what I've read on other forums this is a common occurrence.

The Rockstar team had an idea, gave everything to make it work but in the end it was still limited by hardware. This is why I think PC's have it right, because when you develop a game you are not limited by hardware whilst at the same time you CAN make it work on weaker machines.

Whilst consoles are great, you're still spending 400 dollars every 4 to 5 years and this is similar to upgrading a PC except the consoles are extremely limited in the amount of tinkering you can do with it whilst at the same time extremely prone to company control(see Xbox Live).

2. Sports franchises have been pulling this trick for well over a decade, which they can do because of updating games to stay contemporary with real life seasons. Its not something I think is good but it does exist under a different industry model to say Assassins Creed or the Elder Scrolls series.

They're obviously keeping new features out of newer games so as to space them out since it's a yearly release.

The Assassins Creed series is not exactly bad, but the yearly releases don't exactly thrill me. On one hand I enjoy that they're fleshing out the character but on the other hand we're still playing the same game only with attacks looking differently.

3. I agree with you on art style over graphical complexity. I would love to see a new sonic 2d game done with an interesting painted art style like Braid rather than the bland style they went with. But as you say, gamers like graphics and developers have to sell games - so there's a driving force there.

Yes, and gamers ARE a part of the problem. Sadly, from what I've seen, most gamers aren't ones to appreciate a good story progression or amazing gameplay. They want amazing photo realistic graphics and they want those graphics to work on consoles so developers not only have to spend loads of money creating those graphics but at the same time they need to optimize them to work on consoles since the hardware is so fucking old.

The modern gamer is spoiled. If we downgraded the graphics just a little bit and focused on mechanics, NPC's etc we would get much better games. We wouldn't see a drop in sale but there would be a lot of backlash similar to the shadows in The Witcher 2. However, future generations will get used to not having photo realistic graphics just like we're used to them. I'm not exactly one to play Baldur's Gate but as it stands I have no problem with Morrowind whilst I know a lot of people can't get into it due to the graphics looking so blocky and muddy.

4. Regarding innovation. There is a point when a genre has conventions that just work. Take First Person Shooters, two analogue sticks to move and aim, trigger for Primary/Secondary, reload/jump/action somewhere on the face buttons and so on. There's no need to revise this. What makes each game better is what they do with it. Portal 1 & 2 were excellent examples of games that thoroughly experimented within their own field.

I'm not saying controller innovation, even though creating a controller that allows for more buttons than just your basic ones would do great(HINT: Keyboard. I understand that one of the main attractions of console gaming is being able to play from a couch but is it really that different from playing on a PC? You're in a sitting position, most of the times close to the TV to see what the fuck is going on. When playing a PC game you're sitting in a chair, close to your monitor. There's virtually no difference except in the controller and hardware. So why not include keyboards? They already work on consoles so there's no reason not to. It just seems so limiting to force developers to work with so few buttons.

Like you said, Portal innovated. THAT'S the sort of innovation we need instead of bland, unoriginal sequels made on a yearly basis. The problem is, consoles are to limiting, both in hardware and controller so innovating is quite harder than on the PC.

Conclusion: What I don't understand is how you can be upset that a company that has a desire to make good games, and have as many people play them as possible, and a profit margin to maintain has moved to a platform of development that allows them to do that.

They're treating PC gamers like shit by basically flat out saying they're not going to dedicate a lot of time to this specific platform. At the same time, you can see just how limiting console hardware is nowadays. You can accomplish so much more on the PC, in part due to the fact that you get to work with up to date technology and software.

At the same time, they're attempting to simplify the game so they can appeal to a wider audience. That is not always a good thing. Sometimes, simplifying a game just makes it worse. Look at Dragon Age 2. It leaves little room for experimentation and exploration. From what I've seen of the demo, your paths are very limited. Yes, you can go up to a mountain and fight a bunch of dragon worshipping cultists but at the same time, at least from what I've seen, you're pretty much guided through the entire game. There are rocks on the side of roads obviously in place to discourage exploration.

Then the new dynamic quest system. I don't like it. I understand what they're trying to do but it just seems to me like the developers got lazy and didn't want to create quests. Let's face it, there can only be so many "randomly" generated quests. Hand made quests on the other hand could easily interweev with the story, make it more interesting. Of course, this would mean dedication and ambition, something which modern developers lack.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Wait... Didn't they do this with Oblivion? I have heard it was optimized for console play (I do not know for sure. I only played the 360 version, so I cannot compare). Considering how well Oblivion turned out, I do not think we have anything to worry about.

 

[rossatdi]

1. Red Dead Redemption ran fine on the 360 and is a brilliant example of a company using its existing engine not to push graphics but to increase the size and detail of their world. Judging from the horror stories coming out of the Rockstar officers, lazy is not a word that can sum up the design ethos.

I never said they were lazy. In fact, I find Red Dead Redemption to be an amazing game with even better production values. HOWEVER, I experienced frequent stutters and lag , especially when it was raining or a lot of people were on screen. My machine is barely a year old and from what I've read on other forums this is a common occurrence.

The Rockstar team had an idea, gave everything to make it work but in the end it was still limited by hardware. This is why I think PC's have it right, because when you develop a game you are not limited by hardware whilst at the same time you CAN make it work on weaker machines.

Whilst consoles are great, you're still spending 400 dollars every 4 to 5 years and this is similar to upgrading a PC except the consoles are extremely limited in the amount of tinkering you can do with it whilst at the same time extremely prone to company control(see Xbox Live).

Hang on. So you're saying that Red Dead was limited by hardware (generally) despite the fact in ran fine on 360s but not on your PC? I'm not sure I follow. Tinker or not, there's not way I could buy a half decent PC for the same amount as a game console every 4-5 years. Maybe its different in the US or if you're happy to build something yourself but a lot gamers want to play games not build PCs, I have other things going on, other hobbies, a wife, a job, I like PC tinkering but not that much.

2. Sports franchises have been pulling this trick for well over a decade, which they can do because of updating games to stay contemporary with real life seasons. Its not something I think is good but it does exist under a different industry model to say Assassins Creed or the Elder Scrolls series.

They're obviously keeping new features out of newer games so as to space them out since it's a yearly release.

The Assassins Creed series is not exactly bad, but the yearly releases don't exactly thrill me. On one hand I enjoy that they're fleshing out the character but on the other hand we're still playing the same game only with attacks looking differently.

Well it depends what you value. I don't necessarily want a whole new gameplay experience everytime with a franchise like AC. I want new situations, stories, adventures - messing around with the gameplay could just ruin this if they get it wrong. If gameplay is satisfying it stays satisfying you just need new variables (which is why online shooter have such replayability for certain people - tight, rewarding gameplay - infinite variation from playing against people).

3. I agree with you on art style over graphical complexity. I would love to see a new sonic 2d game done with an interesting painted art style like Braid rather than the bland style they went with. But as you say, gamers like graphics and developers have to sell games - so there's a driving force there.

Yes, and gamers ARE a part of the problem. Sadly, from what I've seen, most gamers aren't ones to appreciate a good story progression or amazing gameplay. They want amazing photo realistic graphics and they want those graphics to work on consoles so developers not only have to spend loads of money creating those graphics but at the same time they need to optimize them to work on consoles since the hardware is so fucking old.

The modern gamer is spoiled. If we downgraded the graphics just a little bit and focused on mechanics, NPC's etc we would get much better games. We wouldn't see a drop in sale but there would be a lot of backlash similar to the shadows in The Witcher 2. However, future generations will get used to not having photo realistic graphics just like we're used to them. I'm not exactly one to play Baldur's Gate but as it stands I have no problem with Morrowind whilst I know a lot of people can't get into it due to the graphics looking so blocky and muddy.

All you're saying here is your tolerance for outdated graphics (Baldur's Gate) is lower than others (Morrowind). I love Deus Ex but every time I replay it the graphics are more blocky and comical. However, I'd say there's actually been a real slowing in graphics obsession (perhaps because the current console fleet is ageing). Oblivion is 5 years old now but is still very pretty, some of the character animations are a bit wonky but still visually impressive. Similarly Red Dead is a good looking game because of the map design and colour choice - individually the character models aren't that advanced. LA Noire has amazing facial animations but that's an effort application rather than a rendering one.

4. Regarding innovation. There is a point when a genre has conventions that just work. Take First Person Shooters, two analogue sticks to move and aim, trigger for Primary/Secondary, reload/jump/action somewhere on the face buttons and so on. There's no need to revise this. What makes each game better is what they do with it. Portal 1 & 2 were excellent examples of games that thoroughly experimented within their own field.

I'm not saying controller innovation, even though creating a controller that allows for more buttons than just your basic ones would do great(HINT: Keyboard. I understand that one of the main attractions of console gaming is being able to play from a couch but is it really that different from playing on a PC? You're in a sitting position, most of the times close to the TV to see what the fuck is going on. When playing a PC game you're sitting in a chair, close to your monitor. There's virtually no difference except in the controller and hardware. So why not include keyboards? They already work on consoles so there's no reason not to. It just seems so limiting to force developers to work with so few buttons.

Like you said, Portal innovated. THAT'S the sort of innovation we need instead of bland, unoriginal sequels made on a yearly basis. The problem is, consoles are to limiting, both in hardware and controller so innovating is quite harder than on the PC.

There are only so many unique ideas per year that can be developed, what I'm saying is that games like Minecraft demonstrate outright that people can get them into the world just as easily as they could.

No and No on the sofa/desk assertion I'm afraid. I used to be an avid counter strike player. You know how much I miss the mouse and keyboard? A tiny, little bit. If you send all day at a desk working, you know what you don't want to do when you get home? Sit at a desk.

I sit at the same distance to play games as I do to watch TV, which is a pretty reasonable distance. Using a controller is so liberating - especially for FPSs. No longer is the person with the maddest mouse accuracy king. Its relaxing, I can sit back, have a beer and blast zombies with no sensation of not having accuracy. Its largely conditioning - mouse-ers are used to mouses, pick up a controller and feel lost, shock, they don't spend as long on the controller of course it will feel harder. A controller will never be quite as accurate as a mouse, but who cares as long as everyone's on the same footing.

Conclusion: What I don't understand is how you can be upset that a company that has a desire to make good games, and have as many people play them as possible, and a profit margin to maintain has moved to a platform of development that allows them to do that.

They're treating PC gamers like shit by basically flat out saying they're not going to dedicate a lot of time to this specific platform. At the same time, you can see just how limiting console hardware is nowadays. You can accomplish so much more on the PC, in part due to the fact that you get to work with up to date technology and software.

At the same time, they're attempting to simplify the game so they can appeal to a wider audience. That is not always a good thing. Sometimes, simplifying a game just makes it worse. Look at Dragon Age 2. It leaves little room for experimentation and exploration. From what I've seen of the demo, your paths are very limited. Yes, you can go up to a mountain and fight a bunch of dragon worshipping cultists but at the same time, at least from what I've seen, you're pretty much guided through the entire game. There are rocks on the side of roads obviously in place to discourage exploration.

Then the new dynamic quest system. I don't like it. I understand what they're trying to do but it just seems to me like the developers got lazy and didn't want to create quests. Let's face it, there can only be so many "randomly" generated quests. Hand made quests on the other hand could easily interweev with the story, make it more interesting. Of course, this would mean dedication and ambition, something which modern developers lack.

Haven't played Dragon Age 2, played 1 on the PC and was a bit underwhelmed. As to the general point - no, they are not treating PC gamers like shit. They are working to make their game, the best for the most amount of people. There are more people in the console market who will buy Skyrim - so develop for them. As shown above, Red Dead works fine on the 360 but is limited on your PC.

If you were a writer, equally fluent in French and English, and you wanted to write something really good that was going to take you years. You figure, the English speaking world is a bigger, broader audience. So you'll focus on getting that right and translate it to French later.

Nothing from the video I've seen makes it look like they've been restricted by primary development for the 360 - it looks astounding I can't wait. PC gamers have to get used to the fact that for big, triple A titles - they're the minority now. They're not going to get the attention they used to - after all what's the reward for developers?

In other way - if I'm making a Game, and I need a primary development platform. Platform A used to have the biggest share of the market, now Platform B does. Platform B also has less variables to test for and the audience pays more for its product. Which Platform will I develop for?

What you're criticising in Dragon Age 2 is a choice by the developers, I can't imagine why exploration would be a limiting factor for consoles.

 

[WorldFree55]

If minecraft can come out for the xbox 360 which is basically built on user-generated content, and if games like Infamous 2 and little big planet games can have user-generated content in them, so can Skyrim with the request for mods in their game. It shouldn't be difficult at all and this whole PC outrage can dwindle down.

 

[bfgmetalhead]

Does that mean that I should pay a small percentage of its price tag to Bethesda and tell them to take a hike if they expect the rest while I give the rest of the money to modders, because I think that would be the fairest thing to do.

Yeah, how dare Bethesda charge you full price for a game they've spent 5 years working on which will probably give you more hours playtime than 5 or 6 other mainstream titles put together.

Strong in this one, the sense of entitlement is.

you sir are a master of telling it how it is!

 

[mavkiel]

Wait... Didn't they do this with Oblivion? I have heard it was optimized for console play (I do not know for sure. I only played the 360 version, so I cannot compare). Considering how well Oblivion turned out, I do not think we have anything to worry about.

And so you voice the fear of pc gamers. Oblivion was an abomination. They pretty much gutted morrowind, slapped better graphics and a nicer combat system in. Everything else in that game was god-awful*.

*Except for the dark brotherhood quests, those were neat.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

I keep reading alot of Posts from xbox owners talking about "entitlement", "catering", etc.
Why are you commenting? If I'm not mistaken, the thread was about the PC version. Talk about entitlement and people being catered to. Seems to me there's a legitimate concern about how the game will port over. You're not buying it on PC? I don't see why you are worrying about what the people getting it on PC are saying. ALOT of pots calling the kettle black in here.

I'm a PC gamer, dabbled in a bit of modding, shat bricks with the rest of you as the notion of "PC gaming is dead" went rampant.

And yet I can't shake the feeling all the PC users on this site are stricken with entitlement issues. I actually hate the community I associate with sometimes.

 

[rossatdi]

Wait... Didn't they do this with Oblivion? I have heard it was optimized for console play (I do not know for sure. I only played the 360 version, so I cannot compare). Considering how well Oblivion turned out, I do not think we have anything to worry about.

And so you voice the fear of pc gamers. Oblivion was an abomination. They pretty much gutted morrowind, slapped better graphics and a nicer combat system in. Everything else in that game was god-awful*.

*Except for the dark brotherhood quests, those were neat.

Yeah, except for the graphics and the combat and that part of the story I really like it was rubbish.

Oh...

Wait...

I enjoyed Morrowind more at the time but I think that's partially because of lack of a fast travel system which totally killed the sense of scale for me. I tried to go back to it recently and it was just flat. Viva la Skyrim.

 

[Katana314]

I was so amazed that everyone raved about the game simply from its existence...

Obviously, if it turns out simplifications help, then I'll enjoy it. Oblivion was fun, but occasionally any "smart" tactic other than "rush in and beat everyone to death" tended not to work too well.

 

[Ranorak]

Wait... Didn't they do this with Oblivion? I have heard it was optimized for console play (I do not know for sure. I only played the 360 version, so I cannot compare). Considering how well Oblivion turned out, I do not think we have anything to worry about.

And so you voice the fear of pc gamers. Oblivion was an abomination. They pretty much gutted morrowind, slapped better graphics and a nicer combat system in. Everything else in that game was god-awful*.

*Except for the dark brotherhood quests, those were neat.

Yeah, except for the graphics and the combat and that part of the story I really like it was rubbish.

Oh...

Wait...

I enjoyed Morrowind more at the time but I think that's partially because of lack of a fast travel system which totally killed the sense of scale for me. I tried to go back to it recently and it was just flat. Viva la Skyrim.

I played Morrowind after Oblivion, and the only thing I think Morrowind did better was the setting.
Something Obivion fixed with with Shivering Isles.

Combat is awful, I started as a magic user, and I died several times in that smugglers den right outside the starter town.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Yikes, someone is entitled.

Look, want to know why the console market is bigger now? Because it has almost the same capabilities as PC and it's much harder to pirate. We buy more games, in basic terms. We also don't throw a fit whenever the dev changes something.

Bethesda is a company. They may make money by making games, but they still need to make money. Just because they make things you enjoy doesn't mean that their entire purpose in live is to make things for you. They aren't "betraying" their core audience by putting the emphasis on consoles in the same way that Subway didn't "betray" their core audience by starting to advertise their food as healthy. Console gamers buy more, don't throw as many tantrums, and you don't have to worry about making it for old operating systems or anything like that.

I don't feel entitled at all I just want to be treated fairly.

It has the same capabilities as a PC? Let's face it, consoles do NOT in fact have the same capabilities. Ignoring the fact that games have actually been getting shittier in terms of mechanics and innovation since console gaming has become a huge market, the controller is way to limiting and the hardware gets outdated quite quickly.

In regards to piracy. Piracy does not hurt the industry as most major publishers would like you to believe. The thing with piracy is, if someone did not pirate a game you would not have full certainty that the person would actually buy that game. We also get no data on WHO and WHERE most downloads go to so in the end we simply get a few companies claiming piracy hurts them with no data whatsoever to back that up.

Console piracy has also become easier in recent years. The chips used to circumvent the protections in place are easy to get a hold of nowadays and piracy on the PS3 has become possible with the use of an external HDD. Piracy on consoles has also risen quite a bit.

Oh, and throw a fit? Of course people are going to be angry when developers are dumbing down game. If you do not demand quality from your games then that's fine by me but don't expect others to hold the same opinion.

And thanks for implying PC gamers are all pirates. It only reinforces my original point.

Well yeah, they do need to make money to stay afloat. That's no excuse to dumb down games in order to appeal to idiots. I'm not saying all console users are idiots, hell I own a console myself and I regularly play games on it(360 by the way). What I am saying is that we should not accept their shit.

Let's face it, console hardware is outdated. This is why they have to make so many compromises. This is the problem with console gaming. Whilst you don't have to upgrade your console every 3 to 4 years in order to be able to play the most recent games on the high settings they're essentially holding back technological advancement. This is why there are so many compromises with games nowadays. Cities are always small and separated in sections with 5 or 6 NPC's to populate the whole thing and you can never have huge all out battles because the hardware doesn't support that. Remember the Bruma battle I believe it was in Oblivion? It was described as being this huge, epic clash between the forces of Oblivion and those of Bruma. In the end, you had 8 soldiers against waves of 4 enemies at a time.

I never said their entire purpose was to make things I enjoy. What I'm talking about is staying true to the audience that made them all rich. I'd expect better treatment from a company that would have been dead in the water right now if not for PC gamers everywhere buying their shit. They can still make a profit on the PC, the Witcher 2 proves that. What you can't do is make a console game, port it to the PC and expect that money to come rolling.

Console gamers don't necesarely buy more, it's just that the only profit a developer can make off a console game is from console gamers. I don't understand why developers expect PC gamers to suck it up and continue buying shitty ports of shitty games. You designed a console game, not a PC game. Don't expect me to buy it.

Also, tantrums? Criticism is a good way to tell a developer what they did wrong. A good developer listens to its audience. A bad one can't see anything due to its own arrogance.


Sorry for the double post.

Yes, tantrums. Criticism is "This seems unnecessarily simplified, to the point where it's losing depth rather than streamlining the experience." and not "continuing to shell out money so publishers can continue fucking us in the ass."


Here's the other thing. Being a console port would affect it if it were dumbed down, and yet all information released prior to this indicated it wasn't. But now, all that gets ignored once it's revealed to be a console port, which is equivalent to being made by the Antichrist and always ruins everything ever, no exceptions at all forever.

 

[Blaster395]

Strange, since games are developed on PCs would it not make more sense to create them for PC first and then port to console?

 

[Atmos Duality]

Well, Bethesda is reasonably good at porting .. frankly, I think people are bitching more than they should.

You haven't had to put up with Bethesda's bullshit practices like I have.
Trust me, a game that crashes every 20-45 minutes on the hour JUST BECAUSE you don't have a close enough hardware profile to an Xbox 360 is bullshit.

This happened not once, but TWICE, for both Oblivion and Fallout 3. Their port-jobs, at least on the programming end, are hack-jobs. You literally had to win the hardware-profile lottery to get the game to run stably.

[But weren't all versions equally buggy? I only played the pc version.

Yep. And the 360 version still the worst loading screen times I've ever seen.

Parts of the game are literally 80% loading, 20% playing.

Some trivia:
That was a problem that initially started with the 360 version, and then persisted onto the PC version. On PC, it occasionally created memory leak bugs that lead to crashes.
It had to do with how many environment "cells" outward from the player the game would render before trying to predict which way you were going (so it could pre-render more). Sometimes, the game would guess twice, and begin rendering cells, but never stop rendering them until you reloaded a save file, or did anything else that forced Oblivion to wipe the slate clean.

That's why certain parts of even the 360 version were giving you the "Loading" bar every 30 feet, when some worked as normal.

For some odd reason, the PC version wouldn't always unload your previous "cell searches" either if the area you were loading into wasn't immediately adjacent to the one you currently occupied. It would sometimes generate increasing lag in your framerate until it just crashed.
Most of the though, it just acted like a time bomb and went at the most random of times.
This happened to me CONSTANTLY with Oblivion Gates.

The solution to that was surprisingly simple to perform: a few console commands that set the specified "load this many cells out, then purge all previous renderings" fixed it (and you could automate this in your config file without using a mod), afterward, I suddenly wasn't seeing the "Loading" text nearly as often, and it stopped crashing when I did any event that required "teleporting" to new, non-adjacent cells.

Fallout 3 had a similar-in-design bug where some idiot forgot to code the game to unload the pre-rendering video codec (that's used in in-game cinematics) in the PC version. So after you started a new game, you would have to save, or experience a crash due to the codec slowly eating up your system's memory.
Since the title menu uses the same codec, there was no real option for me to play except in knowing that my game could die anytime after 20-45 minutes. I made many, MANY emergency saves, and put up with a complete computer restart every two crashes or so.

Eventually I gave my copy of Fallout 3 away out of disgust so I cannot say for certain if this bug was later patched out.

 

[crono738]

People have no faith at all. I should start bitching about PC ports to consoles. The Witcher 2 is going to suck so much on the 360, because it was on a PC first! The Xbox has no keyboard or mouse! This can't work at all!

Seriously though, calm the fuck down. Bethesda is a good developer, even if the UI is crappy the modding tools should hopefully be out with the game and I'm pretty sure there would be a fix for the UI up within the first two days of the game being out.

This. People need to stop saying Skyrim's RUINED FOREVER...it's not even fucking out yet.

Captcha: ocesou yoo

 

[Danceofmasks]

Well, Bethesda is reasonably good at porting .. frankly, I think people are bitching more than they should.

You haven't had to put up with Bethesda's bullshit practices like I have.
Trust me, a game that crashes every 20-45 minutes on the hour JUST BECAUSE you don't have a close enough hardware profile to an Xbox 360 is bullshit.

This happened not once, but TWICE, for both Oblivion and Fallout 3. Their port-jobs, at least on the programming end, are hack-jobs. You literally had to win the hardware-profile lottery to get the game to run stably.

[But weren't all versions equally buggy? I only played the pc version.

Yep. And the 360 version still the worst loading screen times I've ever seen.

Parts of the game are literally 80% loading, 20% playing.

Some trivia:
That was a problem that initially started with the 360 version, and then persisted onto the PC version. On PC, it occasionally created memory leak bugs that lead to crashes.
It had to do with how many environment "cells" outward from the player the game would render before trying to predict which way you were going (so it could pre-render more). Sometimes, the game would guess twice, and begin rendering cells, but never stop rendering them until you reloaded a save file, or did anything else that forced Oblivion to wipe the slate clean.

That's why certain parts of even the 360 version were giving you the "Loading" bar every 30 feet, when some worked as normal.

For some odd reason, the PC version wouldn't always unload your previous "cell searches" either if the area you were loading into wasn't immediately adjacent to the one you currently occupied. It would sometimes generate increasing lag in your framerate until it just crashed.
Most of the though, it just acted like a time bomb and went at the most random of times.
This happened to me CONSTANTLY with Oblivion Gates.

The solution to that was surprisingly simple to perform: a few console commands that set the specified "load this many cells out, then purge all previous renderings" fixed it (and you could automate this in your config file without using a mod), afterward, I suddenly wasn't seeing the "Loading" text nearly as often, and it stopped crashing when I did any event that required "teleporting" to new, non-adjacent cells.

Fallout 3 had a similar-in-design bug where some idiot forgot to code the game to unload the pre-rendering video codec (that's used in in-game cinematics) in the PC version. So after you started a new game, you would have to save, or experience a crash due to the codec slowly eating up your system's memory.
Since the title menu uses the same codec, there was no real option for me to play except in knowing that my game could die anytime after 20-45 minutes. I made many, MANY emergency saves, and put up with a complete computer restart every two crashes or so.

Eventually I gave my copy of Fallout 3 away out of disgust so I cannot say for certain if this bug was later patched out.

Oh wow. Memory leaks, eh?
I think I avoided all those issues simply by having 12 GB RAM ...

 

[Atmos Duality]

Oh wow. Memory leaks, eh?
I think I avoided all those issues simply by having 12 GB RAM ...

Well, I didn't have the cash for a (then) equivalent mega-server.
Cripes, I could have hosted several dedicated servers with that.

 

[lovest harding]

Skyrim will be a great game on PC. Just as good if not better than consoles (even without mods).
I own Morrowind on PC and Xbox. It's better on PC.
I own Oblivion on PC and 360. It's great on PC (although pretty equal to the console version without mods).

I think Bethesda has proven they can make great(if buggy) games on PC and 360 (haven't played the PS3 version, so I can't say anything on that).
If you have a PC and buy a copy of Skyrim for PC you'll get a great game (and even better for you, you'll get unofficial patches making it even more solid than what console gamers get), unless Bethesda screws it up. I seriously doubt that they will seeing as how they've been working on games for PC for a very long time.

This is coming from someone who would consider themselves a primary console gamer.

 

[ImprovizoR]

I don't know what you're talking about. Just Cause 2 was 10x better on PC. Better controls, Dx10.1 support, mods etc. I actually think PC was the lead platform for Just Cause 2. Over 150 hours with absolutely no problems. Not one! And the game didn't even need a patch.

Mass Effect 2 ran better than some PC exclusives and a lot better than most ports.

Dragon Age 2 was intentionally dumbed down for consoles. The whole game suffered from a quick cash-in syndrome too.

 

[TheKramers]

I like PC gaming, but it's far too expensive. I've always wanted a good PC but have never been able to afford one at all let alone one that can run current-gen games. I'm glad they're focusing more on the console version.