Top 5 Things I Hate Hearing When Asking For Help With PC-Gaming/Setup Issues.

[Azaraxzealot]

I'm slowly but surely transitioning from consoles to PC now that I actually have more than 100 dollars a year to spend on myself. And of course I've already passed the hurdle of dropping 500 bucks on an acceptable rig (it was actually around 450 but whatever), and don't anyone tell me it gets any cheaper than that because if you want to play games at acceptable settings even at low resolution you NEED to spend that much (and I've done hundreds of hours of research into this).

Anyways, moving on... When playing PC games it seems I hear the same phrases over and over again when asking for help with something like flickering graphics, strange moments of framerate drop, random crashes, and freezes.

These are the ones I hate the most and those of you who have used these phrases, please kill all your internet accounts, cut off your fingers, and sew your mouth shut immediately (and I mean that in the most respectable way).

5.) Download this [insert DLL or mod] here to improve the performance.
You know what? The only reason I even WANT to be a part of PC gaming is because of mods, but this is just bullshit here. You know why? Because the god damn game should WORK when I get it! The most infamous example (and I'm going to be dragging this one into the limelight a LOT) is Fallout 3/New Vegas. Too often there was some arbitrary issue that would prevent the games from starting, crashing to desktop just trying to start it, or freezing on a screen at startup. And after days of troubleshooting, downloading DLLs, and mods that all were supposed to fix the issues (and added more in the process) it ended up being that Fallout doesn't like to run when the Raptr desktop app is running...

And it seems I'm the only one who has figured that out...

4.) Just follow the directions.
Okay I can understand this, even though I didn't need to be told. I mean, what's simpler than following the directi-HOLY SHIT THEY WANT ME TO PUT WHAT IN WHAT WITH THE WHAT?! This may not be gaming related per-se, but those of you who have never looked inside a computer before and suddenly did one day may understand what I'm saying...

There's just so many different parts to everything that goes into a computer, and all of them could fail with the slightest wrong touch. And I don't know about you but I don't learn well from reading static text on a piece of paper. I need someone to SHOW me. It all sounds like a cop-out way of saying "Figure it out." and having to grow up with that being shouted at me all my life ("Here, do this thing that you've never done nor seen done before, what's that? You don't know how to do it? Figure it out!").

3.) Here [links me to CanYouRunIt] this should tell you if you can run a game.
Actually dipshit it most very well DOESN'T! You know why? I don't know because if you compared a radeon hd 6450 512mb ddr3 with a radeon hd 4850 512mb CanYouRunIt would give you the exact same results because it can't tell what the memory bandwith/core clock/number of transistors on the graphics card is?! I fucking HATE it when someone links me or someone else to CanYouRunIt, because it is the worst way to tell if you can run a game short of trying to put the card in your pee-hole and the disc in your mouth and seeing if something happens.

And I fucking hate those tom's hardware charts with a million fucking bars as well. I want someone to just straight up tell me "I have this card, these games run like so." and then list the framerates and settings they play games at. Is that too much to ask? I'm sure I'm not the ONLY one who owns a radeon hd 7750 out there! Someone give me SPECIFICS (which is why I make it a point to say specifics whenever I do a review of a card).

2.) Re-download it.
Omfg I hate hearing this one. I may be one of the few people left on the planet who doesn't have download speeds exceeding 200kb/s in my house because everyone treats re-downloading so casually.

Lemme tell you all something, it takes me THREE GODDAMN DAYS (as in 60+ hours) to download GTA4, if there's a motherfucking problem with it it's no simple task for me to delete it and re-download it!

In theory the suggestion makes perfect sense, in practice (for me) this is the absolute last resort solution that can't be made lightly.

1.) Make sure your drivers ar-FUCK YOU GO KILL YOURSELF RIGHT NOW!!!!
Just... fuck these condescending ****-nuggets. The graphics card doesn't fucking WORK unless my drivers are up to date, that's the first fucking thing I do! I wouldn't be messing around with the innards of my computer if I didn't have at least THIS level of competence!

Anyways, so ends my rant. I mean this in no disrespect to any specific person or group of people (god knows I've been guilty of some of this shit in the past) but these are the things I hate hearing so often as a new PC gamer. Anyways, what "advice" do you all hate hearing? Vent it all out.

 

[dumbseizure]

Okay so uhh, let's take this in order.

5: There are Dlls that increase performance for certain games. They may change some visual effects or slightly change some coding and it makes it more optimized. I am sorry that they did not work in your case, but not everyone runs Raptor. And I am also pretty god damn sure that if it does, you aren't the only person who knows that.

4: Some people don't look at instructions when installing software or hardware, this is a pretty good suggestion, I know of a few people who didn't bother looking at instructions, put their CPU into their motherboard, clipped it in place, and then cracked their CPU cause they put it in backwards.

3: People buy games and install them without looking at the requirements. And no, someone will not be able to tell you that, unlike a console, a computer has too many variables, RAM speed and amount, CPU speed and number of cores, video card Memory amount and memory bandwidth, clock speeds etc.

You can't just say "YOU HAVE A 6990 SO YOU CAN RUN IT" if their CPU is a complete pile of ass.

2: This is a legitimate solution, if something corrupted while downloading, then you will have to redownload it. Don't expect everyone to know what your situation with your internet is. You are talking to strangers.

1: This is also legitimate, some people, honest to god, don't ever update graphics drivers, which causes horrible performance in games. This is a pretty common issue, so I don't understand what your problem is. That you know how to update drivers? Not everyone knows you, don't expect them to know these things.

Actually I don't know what your issue with any of these things are, they are legitimate solutions to bad game performance.

OT: The one I hate for computers that I heard is "Your CPU temperature is too high, you need water cooling". Guess what, I got the temperature down with just better placed fans, so take that! I ain't spending $200 for water cooling when I don't need too!

 

[Azaraxzealot]

snip

My problem is that it seems as though I'm being treated like an invalid the moment I need some help with something with my PC games. So before I even ask for help I have to waste time explaining that yes, I've updated my drivers, yes, I've installed it correctly, no I don't have any mods installed that could conflict with the running of the game. Yes, I pass the system requirements, etc.
My problem with 4 is that I'm a hands-on learner, so I actually kind of need physical help. I was lucky when I installed everything correctly and the computer successfully turned on. And I know I'm not the only one.

With number 3, actually, the graphics card carries more than 90% of the "can i run it" weight. As long as the cpu is dual core and more than 2 ghz and there is 2 or more gigabytes of ram nothing else holds as much weight as the GPU (as evidenced by the fact that I just stuck a radeon hd 7750 into a dell inspiron 530 with 4 gigs of ddr2 ram clocked at 533 mhz and a 2.4 ghz cpu and was able to run any game on the same settings that some youtube videos showed with faster cpus and more ram. I was able to run Starcraft 2 at 45-60 fps on Extreme just because of the change in graphics card.) So nowadays it's pretty safe to assume that people getting into PC gaming will be safe on the CPU and ram side because of how far technology has marched on.

With number 2, It's more of an annoyance on my end than anything else that I have to explain to these people that I don't have the big bucks for faster internet. I feel like everyone is looking down on me because of it.

With number 1, i just hate that that's the goto saying for everyone. Like when you lose something and the first thing someone says is "did you check the lost and found?" or when you don't have a job and are looking for one and someone says "so do you have any leads?" It's become too ubiquitous is my complaint and like I said, I find it very condescending.

 

[Crises^]

snip

My problem is that it seems as though I'm being treated like an invalid the moment I need some help with something with my PC games. So before I even ask for help I have to waste time explaining that yes, I've updated my drivers, yes, I've installed it correctly, no I don't have any mods installed that could conflict with the running of the game. Yes, I pass the system requirements, etc.
My problem with 4 is that I'm a hands-on learner, so I actually kind of need physical help. I was lucky when I installed everything correctly and the computer successfully turned on. And I know I'm not the only one.

With number 3, actually, the graphics card carries more than 90% of the "can i run it" weight. As long as the cpu is dual core and more than 2 ghz and there is 2 or more gigabytes of ram nothing else holds as much weight as the GPU (as evidenced by the fact that I just stuck a radeon hd 7750 into a dell inspiron 530 with 4 gigs of ddr2 ram clocked at 533 mhz and a 2.4 ghz cpu and was able to run any game on the same settings that some youtube videos showed with faster cpus and more ram. I was able to run Starcraft 2 at 45-60 fps on Extreme just because of the change in graphics card.) So nowadays it's pretty safe to assume that people getting into PC gaming will be safe on the CPU and ram side because of how far technology has marched on.

With number 2, It's more of an annoyance on my end than anything else that I have to explain to these people that I don't have the big bucks for faster internet. I feel like everyone is looking down on me because of it.

With number 1, i just hate that that's the goto saying for everyone. Like when you lose something and the first thing someone says is "did you check the lost and found?" or when you don't have a job and are looking for one and someone says "so do you have any leads?" It's become too ubiquitous is my complaint and like I said, I find it very condescending.

Thing is Azaraxzealot that when it comes to a pc problem it could be a number of things so you need to write down a check list of all the things that could cause the problem then go through them one by one. Also the cpu is very important for running games just some games use the gpu alot and some use the cpu alot.

It can be very annoying hearing the same solutions but to be fair people are only trying to help so they're probably saying the main causes that caused them problems in the past.

 

[farscythe]

i guess i've been lucky with pc gaming, as far as i can remember i've never run into a problem i couldn't google my way out of.(except for that winprotector or something virus that was a *****)
its been a few years since i've gamed on pc though so maybe when i make my triumphant return to pc gaming next year i'll run into those problems,guess i'll find out .

till then i'll be stuck with my 8 year old laptop (even ftl runs in slow motion heh)

 

[MrShowerHead]

Think you're taking it a bit too personally? I mean yeah, some of the advices are no-brainers, but those people at least try to assist you. I've seen worse, me mentioning somewhat frequent FPS drops on BF3, most people jumped in and started yelling "Buy a better graphics card" or "Ur Pc sucks lol" Running through the basic list of possible solutions is a bit different than condescending.

Though I agree with you on CanYouRunIt, it only takes to most simple aspects of your PC and compares them with the game. I've had some bad experiences with it on my older PC.

 

[Savo]

I know what you mean. At least they're trying to help you though, useless as much of the advice may be. That's one of the inherent problems in PC gaming, sometimes a game just decides to hate your PC and it's exhausting fixing it. There's so many different things that can go wrong, it's many times anyone's guess as to what exactly is causing you trouble.