Misunderstanding PC gaming

[MajorTomServo]

First off, Dark Souls on PC comes with the DLC, which is $15 on PSN (not sure about XBL). Second, Dark Souls - $15 [http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/us/en/pc/games/action/dark-souls-prepare-die-edition-na/]. I don't really ever get "bizarre error messages", and I have hundreds of PC games.

Valid point on the DLC, but that page looks like a sale to me... a temporary price drop.

And cool, I didn't know that error messages don't exist. Guess the entire subforum on the Steam boards dedicated to them are just console players spreading slander. [http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/]

 

[Assassin Xaero]

First off, Dark Souls on PC comes with the DLC, which is $15 on PSN (not sure about XBL). Second, Dark Souls - $15 [http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/us/en/pc/games/action/dark-souls-prepare-die-edition-na/]. I don't really ever get "bizarre error messages", and I have hundreds of PC games.

Valid point on the DLC, but that page looks like a sale to me... a temporary price drop.

And cool, I didn't know that error messages don't exist. Guess the entire subforum on the Steam boards dedicated to them are just console players spreading slander. [http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/]

I never said they don't exist, I said I never really get them get them. Your original comment:

Also, when I want to play a game, I want to put a disk in a tray and go. I don't want to spend an hour on google trying to find a solution to the bizarre error message I'm getting that won't let me play the game that I payed for.

seemed to imply that they happen every single time you go to play a game. If anything, sometimes there are issues with older games (you know, games that you can't play on consoles anyway since they shafted backwards compatibility), and it is a one time fix.

 

[Edguy]

1. the cost of a pc is too high and you have to constantly buy new hardware.
- you can buy a pc for $700 and be able to play almost every modern game at highest settings(excluding crysis 3 and games similar to it) with decent resolution plus any retro game, including console games from gamecube, ps1, gba, genesis, snes, nes, n64, etc.

2. risk buying games that won't even work.
- steam, gog, and desura all make pc gaming very easy. Just buy the game download and play. Pretty simple stuff. plus if problems do arise online forums and IT assistance from the companies will help you.

Dude, your computer is still twice as expensive (And that seems like a bare minimun if you really want to go for PC-gaming). Also, installing steam, making an account, buying, downloading and installing a game, and set it to the preferable settings, is still a lot more to do than just inserting the disc. Yes, there are a lot benefits to PC gaming, but please don't pretend that there aren't any to console gaming. When I was a kid, and wasn't exactly well versed in the realm of computers, all I had for gaming was my parents' PCs. About 50 % of the games I bough/got back then, I never got to play because I couldn't figure out installation or they otherwise didn't work. That wouldn't have been an issue if I had a PSOne or a Gamecube instead.

 

[Killclaw Kilrathi]

Well, to be fair about cost, think about it like this:

The Xbox 360 is 7 years old now. Therefore, if someone got an xbox on launch and that xbox hasn't failed on him (I know, it's a huge stretch, but it's a hypothetical), then that person would have had his Xbox 360 for 7 years while only paying $400 (or whatever the launch price of the Xbox 360 was, I honestly don't remember).

Now on the flip side, does anyone use a 7 year old PC for playing modern games? Hell no. So if someone got a new gaming PC at the same that that the xbox 360 was released, they've more than likely upgraded that PC at least once.

Therefore, the Xbox 360 would still cost less if it survived for the entire console cycle than a PC would.

Now, of course we live in the real world where this isn't necessarily the case. My Xbox 360 has died 3 times, so the initial cost of $400 + $300 worth of repairs + $50 a year of Xbox Live puts the grand total at $1050. Combine that with the much greater cost of games on the Xbox 360 versus the PC, and the two platforms come out to cost about the same, even if you end up having to upgrade your PC in the middle of the console cycle.

So I definitely wouldn't say that PC gaming costs less than console gaming, it ends up costing the same amount, or more depending on the PC you get, but while the costs are about equal, you do get a better experience on the PC, what with being able to play more games, at higher resolutions, with better graphics, and with mods.

I actually agree with you here, if compared exclusively as gaming rigs getting a console is FAR cheaper.

My take on it though, is that there's also an integration issue to consider. I'm not sure about you personally, but the majority of people own a computer whether they game on it or not. And while I'll happily grant that a computer that's used for work and internet stuff doesn't have to be as powerful as a gaming rig, upgrading it into one that will do the job with modern games is still cheaper than an outright console purchase.

I should also point out that the market is drastically changing when it comes to PC upgrades. Back in 2005 upgrading frequently was a necessity because games were getting substantially prettier all the time, but these days the change in gaming system requirements each year is in a pretty sharp decline. We've basically hit a plateau with graphics, games two years ago are arguably just as realistic looking as current ones and while new rigs might give you a few more FPS older machines can still reliably run newer games.

That said, I'm going by the assumption that you're happy with a PC that's fairly bare-bones when it comes to bells and whistles. A pure gaming rig is pretty damn cheap to build nowadays, but the cost will go up if you also want it to replace your TV. I'm also assuming you have the skill to build it yourself, plenty of people don't and that can add a hefty installation fee to the purchase (though this cost seems to have gone down with so many customers choosing the DIY route). So there's good arguments on both sides.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

Okay, slightly off topic question, but the OP mentioned resolution and it got me thinking. I've never really monkeyed around with resolution and pretty much always used the same one. How taxing is resolution when playing games on PC?

It makes a huge difference for me. I have an Nvidia 240m in my laptop. Take a process intensive game like Metro 2033, I can run it on medium to low at 1080p on my TV, medium to high on my laptop's native resolution of 1600x900, and high to very high at 720p (same resolution as current consoles). 720 looks like blocky poo on my laptop but it looks great on my TV because of the higher pixel count and size (27 inches). Therefore, I usually play on my TV at 720p. It's the best way to get more frames per second

 

[Ratties]

The thing I find funny about this. There will be a real fun game out on the Xbox and PS3. Then you will read an article which says that the game is coming to PC. one year later after it's been out, PC owners can now play it. Everybody loses their minds that own a PC. They start getting all hyped, I am just thinking to myself, everybody has already beaten that game and moved on.

 

[Pink Gregory]

I've said this before, but the only thing that perplexes me about some parts the PC gaming community in particular is how, once they're done calling people 'console peasants' unironically like some grotesque Rothschild stereotype and decide to start being inclusive, and bringing across the truth that PC gaming isn't particularly expensive given the right information; that you then are treated to pages of PC specification bragging that seems to imply that these people care more about looking at the damn thing than they are with playing anything.

It's a small minority that do this, but I can understand why people might feel that they're out of their depth when PCs are concerned.

 

[DoPo]

the 'fix' is to open the command prompt and enter a line of code every-single-time you want to play a game?

That is a thing? Wow, I don't think I've seen that. Not since one of my friends had his first PC and that didn't have Windows, that is, but that's not a "fix" it's just how you do stuff normally under DOS. Which was...more than 15 years ago. Not even under Linux did I really needed to fix games using the command line, now that I think of it.

anyone thing water cooling is worth it?
noise vs cost

Well, are you going to overclock the PC? Or do you have problems with heat? If not, I wouldn't really put water cooling for the noise alone. Well, if I have lots of spare money, I might, but I don't. Alternatively, I'd probably do it for the challenge, though it still needs money. If you're bothered by the noise, you can get silent fans and new heat sinks (also, make sure you clean the PC, too) - that should be cheaper.

 

[LetalisK]

Okay, slightly off topic question, but the OP mentioned resolution and it got me thinking. I've never really monkeyed around with resolution and pretty much always used the same one. How taxing is resolution when playing games on PC?

Higher resolution requires more power from the equipment playing it.

I have some games that did not work well at full 1080P so I intentionally put them to 720P increasing the frame rate, the smoothness that the games play at.

If your system is powerful enough, this difference would likely never make a difference for you, so, no reason to mess with top settings.

Erm, what's the translation for those? For example, I run at 1600x900. I'm not sure which resolutions would be 1080p or 720p. Basically any resolution where the second number is around said HD resolutions? Derp, nm, figured it out.

Was that way too technical?

A little, but I think I got it. Thankfully, it doesn't seem like my card has that underhanded marketing problem, it's at 256 at 1GB.

Assuming I always use a resolution below 1920 x 1200 or 1920 x 1080, should the resolution itself ever give me a problem? IE dropping from 1600x900 to 1280x720 wouldn't see a significant performance increase?

Edit: Actually, I just went and tested those two resolution out on Tomb Raider with fairly high graphics, including TressFX[footnote]Which, btw, while it looks cooler than normal, it actually looks less realistic than the normal hair. Ponytails do not do what TressFX has them do.[/footnote], and it gave me an additional 10 fps. I might drop down to 1280x720 since I can't see the difference between those two resolutions. Edit2: Just did a benchmark test in TR with 1920x1080 and I couldn't tell the difference between that and 1280x720. Is that odd and I must be graphically blind or something? I mean, I don't think I have a small monitor either. It's 23" and actually has 1920x1080 as its recommended setting.

 

[Frostbite3789]

you'd miss out on the console exclusive games of which there are quite a few

but what about pc exclusives?
hawken, path of exile, lone survivor, amnesia, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Hard Reset, Team fortress 2(because the console version blows), and (insert indie title here).
the list practically never ends, plus virtually endless backwards compatibility. If you can't play it on pc, you can be sure somebody out there is making it possible.

Not to mention the most popular game in the world currently is a PC exclusive. And free. League of Legends.

 

[C14N]

I do agree there are a lot of misconceptions about PC gaming, the biggest one being the price. It's not nearly as expensive as people expect. The fact that so many gamers just like to indulge and spend insane amounts of money as a hobby might be the reason for this perception. Generally though, if you have a fairly standard (?/$500-600) desktop PC, all you need is a mid-range graphics card (add another 100-150) and you will play ALL THE GAMES.

They don't go out of date that fast either. You'll might have to start turning settings down a bit over time but even then you usually end up with a prettier game than on a console.

In addition, you save a load of money just due to how frickin' cheap PC games are. I've bought plenty of special edition PC games and none of them have cost as much as the RRP of a standard console game. Regular editions are obviously even cheaper.

There are some problems though
- you're still going to have to learn some basic stuff about computer hardware to play, which will put a lot of people off for life no matter how simple it is
- consoles gamers are worrying about the second hand game market next gen but this has been missing on PC for years now and it's never coming back. I think we tend not to mind though since the games are usually cheaper than second hand console games.
- no local multiplayer, despite Valve pushing for a living room gaming PC to become common. You can always play on LAN but now you're getting a bit to complex for most people and you need your friend to bring their PC
- almost no big-budget exclusive games beyond RTSs and MMORPGs that can't really work elsewhere, unlike the consoles
- generally more DRM on games driven by rampant PC piracy
- every possibility that PC piracy will make game devs just not release their games on PC which happened with the Gears of War and Halo franchises and Rockstar have become reluctant to release their games on PC too*


*Please don't pirate PC games. The devs can see how much their game has been torrented and it's usually many times the number of time it's been bought. The games are so cheap that you won't have time to play them all anyway (something many gamers will attest to). Just buy the damn things.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

This is actually very informative - I just figured that if everything was good under the hood, that all the games would work...silly me.
What about emulators for old school arcade games and such...would steam actually be considered an emulator?
Way back in the day I used to rock M.A.M.E....

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

Edit: Actually, I just went and tested those two resolution out on Tomb Raider with fairly high graphics, including TressFX[footnote]Which, btw, while it looks cooler than normal, it actually looks less realistic than the normal hair. Ponytails do not do what TressFX has them do.[/footnote], and it gave me an additional 10 fps. I might drop down to 1280x720 since I can't see the difference between those two resolutions. Edit2: Just did a benchmark test in TR with 1920x1080 and I couldn't tell the difference between that and 1280x720. Is that odd and I must be graphically blind or something? I mean, I don't think I have a small monitor either. It's 23" and actually has 1920x1080 as its recommended setting.

Nah, its because you have a bigger monitor and its full 1080p that it makes a difference (I don't know if I dun goofed and you didn't see my quote of your original post). I have heard some people have problems playing at lower resolutions because their tv's try to upscale the resolution and fail. My laptop monitor fails when I try to play anything lower than its native resolution of 1600x900. 1080p is a little overrated in my opinion. I can never see the difference between 1080p and 720p on my tv other than the difference in frame rate so I just go lower res so I can get higher quality visuals

Edit: why do pc threads always get derailed into computer talk threads?

 

[Rob Robson]

Assuming I always use a resolution below 1920 x 1200 or 1920 x 1080, should the resolution itself ever give me a problem? IE dropping from 1600x900 to 1280x720 wouldn't see a significant performance increase?

Edit: Actually, I just went and tested those two resolution out on Tomb Raider with fairly high graphics, including TressFX and it gave me an additional 10 fps. I might drop down to 1280x720 since I can't see the difference between those two resolutions. Edit2: Just did a benchmark test in TR with 1920x1080 and I couldn't tell the difference between that and 1280x720. Is that odd and I must be graphically blind or something? I mean, I don't think I have a small monitor either. It's 23" and actually has 1920x1080 as its recommended setting.

The lower the resolution, the jaggier outlines become and the 'need' for antialiasing becomes more pronounced. Look at high contrast edges, for example at leaves on trees against the sky to observe the 'staircase effect'.

Also, at lower-than-native resolution settings your monitor doesn't produce a 'clean' downsampling of the image and it will appear soft and blurry. For a clean downsample you would have to go down to half your monitor's resolution.

As for the lack of difference between 1600x900 and 1280x720, it's because neither of those are your monitor's native setting (which is 1920x1080) and thus both are equally 'bad', or soft.

Your graphics card has a wide enough bus for 2GB of memory but only has 1GB, this would be bare minimum for 1920x1080 at mostly high settings, just remember that shadows are textures too, but also have to be calculated, I think shadows is the area where you can gain back a lot of FPS by simply switching them specifically to medium and the rest to high.

 

[LetalisK]

Nah, its because you have a bigger monitor and its full 1080p that it makes a difference (I don't know if I dun goofed and you didn't see my quote of your original post). I have heard some people have problems playing at lower resolutions because their tv's try to upscale the resolution and fail. My laptop monitor fails when I try to play anything lower than its native resolution of 1600x900. 1080p is a little overrated in my opinion. I can never see the difference between 1080p and 720p on my tv other than the difference in frame rate so I just go lower res so I can get higher quality visuals

Edit: why do pc threads always get derailed into computer talk threads?

Nah, I saw your previous posts, but I was thinking we had different experiences when I think maybe you were just related to what I said via the TV? You mentioned how 720p looks like poo on your laptop, therefore I assumed you also meant any time you play on a normal monitor you need 1080p.

Your graphics card has a wide enough bus for 2GB of memory but only has 1GB, this would be bare minimum for 1920x1080 at mostly high settings, just remember that shadows are textures too, but also have to be calculated, I think shadows is the area where you can gain back a lot of FPS by simply switching them specifically to medium and the rest to high.

Yeah, I generally don't care about shadows so if I have to turn down anything those are the first to go. Lighting and character detail are what I generally care about most. Also, when doing 1920x1080, I did notice the edges of the loading screen text were slightly crisper. I think next time I play Tomb Raider I'll change settings while playing rather than using the benchmarker to see if I notice a difference that way.

Edit: Also, from the sounds of it, I'm going to start scaling down my resolution to 1280x720 if I stay in the 720p zone if there isn't an actual difference between that and higher 720p resolutions but I get some extra fps out of it.

Edit2: Oh, another monitor question. I decided to tinker with the resolution in Warcraft and noticed that I had been playing at 1280x800 resolution the entire time. Started tinkering with the resolutions and x720 looks like shit while 1920x1080 started to actually give me a headache. Tried 1600x900 and it was okay but something felt a little off, so I went to 1440x900 and it was perfect. Is there just a matter of preference here or is there something that would cause a 1440x900 to seem just a bit crisper than a 1600x900?

 

[Adon Cabre]

[HEADING=1]Blah, Blah, PC purists[/HEADING]
E3 will blow you all away with the assortment of console exclusives that none of you will ever own.

[http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/03/tomb-raider-vs-uncharted-the-comparison-we-had-to-make/]
No Uncharted Series (PS3),
No Tomb Raider (2013) for PC.

Bow your heads,

"Thank you, Console Exclusives".​

​

[li]No One Builds their PC[/li] I hope you all reaize just how small a % of PC gamers actually do this -- 5%?

[li]PC Market Growth[/li] It's growing because of Social Gaming (Facebook) and the average MMO, not because of Crysis 3 or Witcher 3, so don't count on a PC exclusive to rock the gaming world like Playstation 3's Uncharted 2 or Wii's Super Mario Galaxy 2 did.

[li]Game Sales[/li] Like any sale, you've got to hunt for them, and then create accounts in Amazon, Steam, Origin, Windows Live etc...

[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/10241-SimCity-Is-Broken-And-Its-Not-Just-the-Servers]​

[HEADING=3]And When Publishers Answer to No One?[/HEADING]

You would think that freeing a company of the big bad Console market would make triple-A titles more intuitive to a wider audience. Not so, because now they don't have to meet the standards of Microsoft and SONY's quality management. They can put out whatever they want.

For example, Final Fantasy XIV got ripped for being the junk that it was; but consider these problems fixed as SONY will now be incorporating that title into their console library.

No Tomb Raider (2013) for PC? But it is on PC?

Also I see a lot of people saying £450 is expensive however most of you would have a computer. A basic computer that cannot play games starts at like £300, so you're only paying an extra £150 to play games on your computer at high settings.

I got my computer earlier this year and I can play Crysis 3 on high settings. Case in point, it's not very expensive if you want a computer also.

Tomb Raider owes a lot to Uncharted
There is no Tomb Raider if their
hadn't been a leap in cinematic style
of gaming that came from Uncharted.
Most 3rd Party Developers tend to
lean on the tactics of 1st Party Exclusives.

[h4]PC = Cheaper[/h4]
Console gaming is more expensive; but there's always a trade off with PC. While everyone gets to enjoy the brilliant Bioshock Infinite, PC users can't play the more experimental Beyond: Two Souls, or the just as exhilarating Last of Us. So many Journalist sites awarded the Playstation 3 exclusive Journey with "Game of the Year" for a reason.

I don't have time to buy up
every game and find every sale;
I just want the best quality
on the market.

[h4]Exclusives = Experimental[/h4]
Exclusive Developers, like Team TRICO, and Quantum Dream, get to produce such diverse genres because SONY lauds experimental games with $ -- games that 3rd Party Developers would be too nervous to make. This is why PC gaming has never made sense to me -- that is, unless you play MMO; because exclusive titles for SONY offer the most diverse and quality selection in the market.

I guess it comes down to why people play games.

 

[hutchy27]

snip

That tomb raider thing makes sense now.

 

[endtherapture]

[h4]PC = Cheaper[/h4]
Console gaming is more expensive; but there's always a trade off with PC. While everyone gets to enjoy the brilliant Bioshock Infinite, PC users can't play the more experimental Beyond: Two Souls, or the just as exhilarating Last of Us. So many Journalist sites awarded the Playstation 3 exclusive Journey with "Game of the Year" for a reason.

Your point is moot. Console gamers don't get to play FTL. They don't get to play Crusader Kings or Total War. They get no strategy games. They get no MMO games. They get no management games. They don't get Dota or LoL. They don't get old school RPGs.

Also...no modding on consoles.

 

[Calcium]

the 'fix' is to open the command prompt and enter a line of code every-single-time you want to play a game?

That is a thing? Wow, I don't think I've seen that. Not since one of my friends had his first PC and that didn't have Windows, that is, but that's not a "fix" it's just how you do stuff normally under DOS. Which was...more than 15 years ago. Not even under Linux did I really needed to fix games using the command line, now that I think of it.

Unfortunately so, though thankfully some other patch fixed it. Not sure for how long the bug was present, as the hassle of it lead me to stop playing for a while. Was really frustrating as it was a game I played more than anything else.

Anyway, you may be unsurprised to hear the client was Games for Windows Live (I had no choice!)

Unrelated to the reply, but in my initial post I forgot to mention my previous computer. Custom built and would spontaneously break down completely every 6 months or so. It's golden moment was when ScanDisk deleted a file it needed to start up.