The Dark Souls PC version controversy.

[RhombusHatesYou]

...so if you order a pie, and the cook warns you that it's going to taste like shit and you order it anyway, when you get it and take a bite and it tastes like shit, you're going to criticize the cook for it tasting like shit even though he warned you that that was what you were getting? What were you expecting? That it would magically stop being shit if you waited long enough? Because from my point of view, that's pretty much what's happening.

Except that for a number of the people you're arguing with, they didn't order the pie, they said "Errr... no, thanks" and the cook went ahead and made the pie anyway while a bunch of people who already had the pie shouted that not wanting to eat shitty pie made you an entitled, elitist prick.

And let's say for the people who did order the pie, they expected a big ol' scoop of ice cream with it (we're going with a dessert type pie, right?) because most places they got pie from did it... but the cook just looked at them with a puzzled expression and everyone else eating pie starting going "Oh, look at Lord Dairy-Products here, thinks he's too good to eat pie without ice cream. Who the fuck is he to ask for ice cream? What did he do to deserve ice cream? He probably expects solid silver cutlery, too. Don't you know the cook is lactose intolerant?"

 

[Erttheking]

...so if you order a pie, and the cook warns you that it's going to taste like shit and you order it anyway, when you get it and take a bite and it tastes like shit, you're going to criticize the cook for it tasting like shit even though he warned you that that was what you were getting? What were you expecting? That it would magically stop being shit if you waited long enough? Because from my point of view, that's pretty much what's happening.

The thing is that whoever was in charge of this thing, whether it's From or Bandai, had a choice in the matter. And I'm not "ordering it anyway", I'm not going to get this game. They could've done way, way better, they still would've made a ton of cash, and their image would not get tarnished with the idea of them being a bunch of amateurs.

What were you expecting? That it would magically stop being shit if you waited long enough?

This part is particularly curious. First, what I was expecting is a modicum of effort for the 40 bucks I was willing to pay. Second, you do realise that a pie isn't the same as a game, and that giving developers more time is not the same as waiting with the pie already on the table for it to get better, right?

....yeah, they had a choice to...do what exactly? Be good with PCs? I think that they said from day 1 that they were crap with PCs, and I get the feeling a lot if PC gamers don't seem to get that not all if us know how computers work (not to mention it pisses me right the fuck off when they say that it's only because I'm lazy I don't know how to work PCs, I don't know how to work them because I don't know how to fucking work them!"). Dude, they ARE amaturs with PCs, they freaking admitted that they were.

It's more like you were expecting them to put in the effort into doing something they had no experience with, somehow I don't think trying harder would've helped. When you are told to play the piano and you don't know how, it doesn't matter how hard you try, you're still gonba suck. Also I doubt From Software didn't try at all, considering that they made a free DLC pack that came with the game that us console gamers won't get for months, and the total price is 20$ less than we had to pay when the game came out. Also it's less looking at the pie and more waiting longer for him to finish it. He still said he doesn't know what his doing and it's going to taste like ass though, waiting twice as long isn't going to make that disappear.

 

[Erttheking]

...so if you order a pie, and the cook warns you that it's going to taste like shit and you order it anyway, when you get it and take a bite and it tastes like shit, you're going to criticize the cook for it tasting like shit even though he warned you that that was what you were getting? What were you expecting? That it would magically stop being shit if you waited long enough? Because from my point of view, that's pretty much what's happening.

Except that for a number of the people you're arguing with, they didn't order the pie, they said "Errr... no, thanks" and the cook went ahead and made the pie anyway while a bunch of people who already had the pie shouted that not wanting to eat shitty pie made you an entitled, elitist prick.

And let's say for the people who did order the pie, they expected a big ol' scoop of ice cream with it (we're going with a dessert type pie, right?) because most places they got pie from did it... but the cook just looked at them with a puzzled expression and everyone else eating pie starting going "Oh, look at Lord Dairy-Products here, thinks he's too good to eat pie without ice cream. Who the fuck is he to ask for ice cream? What did he do to deserve ice cream? He probably expects solid silver cutlery, too. Don't you know the cook is lactose intolerant?"

Well if they didn't want the pie in the first place, then why are they hanging around in the store that makes them and buying it and then complaining about the quality if something they never wanted?

Also it's less than they simply asked for ice cream and more of the owner said that they didn't have any and the guy threw a fit

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Dude, they ARE amaturs with PCs, they freaking admitted that they were.

Then they should have outsourced the port to someone who knew what they were doing or simply not gone ahead with the planned port.

 

[Erttheking]

Dude, they ARE amaturs with PCs, they freaking admitted that they were.

Then they should have outsourced the port to someone who knew what they were doing or simply not gone ahead with the planned port.

Maybe with the first point, but how many people would have whined to heaven and back if they never made it in the first place. Also who should they have outsourced it to. I'm geniunely curious.

 

[Tallim]

Won't be long before trainers/hacks make the clever multiplayer aspects a complete bloodbath of frustration.

It's more like you were expecting them to put in the effort into doing something they had no experience with, somehow I don't think trying harder would've helped. When you are told to play the piano and you don't know how, it doesn't matter how hard you try, you're still gonba suck. Also I doubt From Software didn't try at all, considering that they made a free DLC pack that came with the game that us console gamers won't get for months, and the total price is 20$ less than we had to pay when the game came out. Also it's less looking at the pie and more waiting longer for him to finish it. He still said he doesn't know what his doing and it's going to taste like ass though, waiting twice as long isn't going to make that disappear.

Spot on really. I see an awful lot of arguments online about how it took this one modder no time at all to fix what a whole team from a studio couldn't. You know how many staff FROM have total? 208. And they are working on another title which takes a lot of those staff out. Now how many modders are out there with a lot more experience than FROM with PC?


And yes they stated in an interview that because they were having trouble with the port they would concentrate on getting the DLC stuff into the PC version as a pre-apology for it being a basic port.

As a side project name some Japanese PC games? EDIT: AAA I mean.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Dude, they ARE amaturs with PCs, they freaking admitted that they were.

Then they should have outsourced the port to someone who knew what they were doing or simply not gone ahead with the planned port.

Maybe with the first point, but how many people would have whined to heaven and back if they never made it in the first place.

A lot for the first week or two and then it would have been promptly forgotten by most people. How many people, apart from Octafish , do you still hear complaining about the lack of a PC version of Red Dead Redemption? PC gamers are used to not getting interesting looking games, we have a ***** about it all then generally move on (to the next interesting looking game we don't get a version of).

Plus. let's not forget that by the time the details on the port were released it was too late for PC gamers to say "You know what? Just don't bother."

Also who should they have outsourced it to. I'm geniunely curious.

Considering the excellent job they did of the Deus Ex: Human Revolutions port, Nixxes Software would be my first recommendation.

However, accepting that the DEHR port represents the current pinnacle of porting (BF3 doesn't count because PC was the lead platform), just about any porting studio or PC experienced studio could have produced a port that met the expected feature set for a PC game.

 

[Rad Party God]

Snip

Capcom too does an excellent job at porting their games, although admitedly, they already stated many times that they supposedly make their games in PC first and then port them to consoles, but yeah, for porting from consoles, DX:HR takes the delicious DX11-tessalated-60-framed cake.

OT: I'll still wait for a Steam winter sale, until then, I'll wait for more fixes from the community.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Felt like addressing this...

(not to mention it pisses me right the fuck off when they say that it's only because I'm lazy I don't know how to work PCs, I don't know how to work them because I don't know how to fucking work them!")

That's a cop out excuse. No one springs forth from the womb knowing about the inner workings of PCs, it's something you have to learn... It all comes down to whether you want to learn or not and the reasons why... If you can't see the need to learn because it's not relevent to you, that's cool, that's why user friendly interfaces exist... If you don't want to learn because 'meh, effort' then that's lazy.

The issue here, though, is if you're trying to make a commercial product for the PC you really, really should 'lrn 2 pc' before attempting it... or hire/contract/outsource-to people who know their arse from their elbow on PCs.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Snip

Capcom too does an excellent job at porting their games

In general, yes, but this is also the company that made the monumental fuck up of not adding mouse support to a PC port (RE4)... but otherwise their ports usually range from good to excellent.

Also, to be fair, DXHR was closer to parallel development than a straight out porting job.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

As a side project name some Japanese PC games? EDIT: AAA I mean.

I'll have a crack as soon as you provide a definition for 'AAA game' that uses criteria with actual numerical values (ie, USD$X million) rather than vague ones (ie, 'big'). Provide examples for all criteria.

Then, there's the question of whether multiplatform games count... if not, then name some Japanese Xbox 360 AAA games.

 

[Ryank1908]

Snip.

What, PC Gamers kill your family or something? Jesus Christ dude, you need to lighten up. At the end of the day, they put the least effort possible into converting something. Yes, it's still a good game, of course it is. Is it anywhere near as technically sound as it could have been? No. Not in the slightest.

The REAL comparison would be converting a PC game to a console title and yet still requiring you to use a mouse and keyboard, because if you try playing Dark Souls on the PC without a gamepad, you're fucked. There's NOTHING you can say that will make me think that FROM did a good job with this. Call it entitled, call it whatever you want - I'm calling it being objective. NO developer should get away with sloppy ports. I'd rather they hadn't done it.

 

[Stavros Dimou]

...so if you order a pie, and the cook warns you that it's going to taste like shit and you order it anyway, when you get it and take a bite and it tastes like shit, you're going to criticize the cook for it tasting like shit even though he warned you that that was what you were getting? What were you expecting? That it would magically stop being shit if you waited long enough? Because from my point of view, that's pretty much what's happening.

The thing is that whoever was in charge of this thing, whether it's From or Bandai, had a choice in the matter. And I'm not "ordering it anyway", I'm not going to get this game. They could've done way, way better, they still would've made a ton of cash, and their image would not get tarnished with the idea of them being a bunch of amateurs.

What were you expecting? That it would magically stop being shit if you waited long enough?

This part is particularly curious. First, what I was expecting is a modicum of effort for the 40 bucks I was willing to pay. Second, you do realise that a pie isn't the same as a game, and that giving developers more time is not the same as waiting with the pie already on the table for it to get better, right?

....yeah, they had a choice to...do what exactly? Be good with PCs? I think that they said from day 1 that they were crap with PCs, and I get the feeling a lot if PC gamers don't seem to get that not all if us know how computers work (not to mention it pisses me right the fuck off when they say that it's only because I'm lazy I don't know how to work PCs, I don't know how to work them because I don't know how to fucking work them!"). Dude, they ARE amaturs with PCs, they freaking admitted that they were.

It's more like you were expecting them to put in the effort into doing something they had no experience with, somehow I don't think trying harder would've helped. When you are told to play the piano and you don't know how, it doesn't matter how hard you try, you're still gonba suck. Also I doubt From Software didn't try at all, considering that they made a free DLC pack that came with the game that us console gamers won't get for months, and the total price is 20$ less than we had to pay when the game came out. Also it's less looking at the pie and more waiting longer for him to finish it. He still said he doesn't know what his doing and it's going to taste like ass though, waiting twice as long isn't going to make that disappear.

They can't not have experience.
What is it exactly the experience they don't have ?

Is it technical experience ?
Because if it is,then that means that they didn't even ever graduated from a university,and that their company hired them for absolutely no reason. To add things like resolution options, or changing the button prompts,or removing the fps cap is something any person who have graduated a class of programming could do. And by the way ALL games are developed on PCs, and are programmed in either C++ or C# or both of them. Which means what a programmer have to do to tell the pc to do that,its the same he have to tell to the xbox360 to do it,same for ps3.
The programming languages are universal. That means if they didn't had the experience to do these things for PCs, they wouldn't have the experiences to do them for the console versions either,so they would never had created any game at all.
MYTH BUSTED

Is it PC market experience ?
Nope.That's the third game From Software releases on PC.They did mistakes back then too,they got feedback,gamers told them what was good and what was bad,they could have learned from those mistakes,and they could not repeat them again.Yet in Dark Souls they replicated the exact same issues their last game "Ninja Blade" (2009) had,even while they knew that they made people mad,and drove review critics to evaluate their game with an average of 6 out of 10.
They knew the reactions of critics and gamers for these issues,yet they transferred them exactly as they where on Dark Souls. One could forgive even the most terrible mistake if it happened once,but if it happens twice too,then...
MYTH BUSTED

 

[Amaror]

All I've been hearing from PC gamers about Dark souls is constant whining, "Boo hoo, it's 30 fps, it's unplayable!"

Seriously, some people just need to grow up. It's not some god damned conspiracy to sabotage PC gaming, and it sounds crazy if you think it is. It's just 30 fps, console players deal with it all the time, we don't gush tears of blood when something doesn't come in 60 fps.

This pisses me off to no end, I'm an actual Dark Souls fan, and these people balling their eyes out after From Software took the time to actually MAKE a port for them, after thousands of petitions saying "We want the game! We'll play it! WE PROMISE!" has the potential to ruin From Software's reputation and finances for the rest of us.

I seriously hope that, if this continues, the PC wont see another port for a Souls game again, I think all the crying has proven they just plain don't deserve it.

You do know that this stuff is a lot more important, when your face is 30 cm away from the screen and not 3 m, like when you play on your tv, don't you?

 

[Amaror]

They can't not have experience.
What is it exactly the experience they don't have ?

Is it technical experience ?
Because if it is,then that means that they didn't even ever graduated from a university,and that their company hired them for absolutely no reason. To add things like resolution options, or changing the button prompts,or removing the fps cap is something any person who have graduated a class of programming could do. And by the way ALL games are developed on PCs, and are programmed in either C++ or C# or both of them. Which means what a programmer have to do to tell the pc to do that,its the same he have to tell to the xbox360 to do it,same for ps3.
The programming languages are universal. That means if they didn't had the experience to do these things for PCs, they wouldn't have the experiences to do them for the console versions either,so they would never had created any game at all.
MYTH BUSTED

When you graduate from university your not going to become a game programmer.
Maybe a designer when you studiet that, but programming is not a college - degree - job.
And it's not like they did not know how to remove the 30 fps cap or let it support higher resolution. The problem is that it's kinda easy to optimize a game for fixed platforms.
But a pc is not a fixed platform with fixed hardware. Therefore, they did not want the game to be unplayable for a lot of people and locked the resolution and fps count, because they did not optimized the game very well.
I sure hope they will opimize it, though...

 

[OldNewNewOld]

After having played it a bit at a friends house, I can say only 3 things.

The game isn't as hard as people make it to be. (and if you've played MH for as long as I have, this game is rather easy, but still harder than most games made in recent gaming history)
The game is decent. (would be good, maybe even great if it wasn't for the next point)
The camera is the worst things in human history. (this is a deal breaker for me. I can't play games with bad camera controls)

Seriously, what the hell have the guys at From Software been smoking during development?

 

[Sandjube]

And you of course have your right to not buy a straight port if it doesn't appeal to you but insulting a fair developer just because its not had a extensive upgrade over one version of the game, seems petulant to me.

And speaks of a mindset that doesn't care for the design principles the developers put into the game in the first place.

And if this is the case because I may be horribly wrong, why bother with the game?

A developer is free to do a half-assed job of any product, for any reason.

Customers are free to buy or not buy said product based on their perception of its quality.

Customers are also free to draw what conclusions they will about the motives and/or competence of the developers.

All of that is fair game. If you want a reputation for doing a good job, do a good job. It's really that simple. If I'm baking a cake, and I warn you ahead of time it's likely going to be shit, and it turns out shit, I don't then merit a reputation as a baker of excellent cakes just because I'm a good dude and I gave you a heads up. Most particularly if I then try to charge you extra for my cake.

Everything you say makes me love you more. You also seem to be able to deliver my points better than I can/could last time this thread was here. People are infuriating.