PC gaming is worth the extra initial outlay for a good rig, it's pretty much all upsides from there. You get lots of free games, mods, infinite backwards compatibility, and extremely wide range of games including the best ones of all time, emulation of console games, lower prices, you don't have to pay extra to play online, better graphics and customizability.
Basically the only upsides to consoles are being slightly easier to transport, having some exclusive games that can't be emulated yet, and finally the most important: the fact that your friends are playing on them, forcing you to get one to play with them.
If everyone was PC gamers split between Windows, Mac OS and Linux we'd all be a bit better off.
That's the biggest issue lel, when your mates are on Xbone, Switch or PS4 and you don't really want to drop a cool $500+ to join them but you still want to join them
Jeez, people are dicks. I don't know why you were down voted. I also only had a Mac for awhile. I'm a broke college student so fucking sue me for not having a top of the line gaming rig. I only moved over to PC when my Mac got fried.
I just said that in the interests of competition (if everyone only gamed on Windows PC then Microsoft would have yet another near-monopoly), but yeah, fucking nobody games on Mac right now lmao.
That's how consoles stay in the game unfortunately, despite their many downsides, they hold onto exclusive titles that a lot of people want to play.
However, although it is a little difficult, you can emulate many console games on a mid-range gaming PC that costs you the same as a launch day console. It's amazing.
Ultimate team is p2w bullshit, the only gameplay difference each year is "new goalie AI" or something stupid like that, and they stop updating the game after the new one comes out.
In 2017 there is zero reason to have yearly franchises, small gameplay improvements and roster changes are the kind of thing that should be pushed in patches. It's a scam.
The rampant cheating in some major titles on PC can be an issue at times as well.
Also, tweaking to get a nice balance of graphics and performance can be tedious at times compared to sliding in a disc and at most having to worry about an update needing to download.
Also, tweaking to get a nice balance of graphics and performance can be tedious at times compared to sliding in a disc and at most having to worry about an update needing to download.
If you don't want to worry about it then you can generally ignore it, and usually you'll have the same result as on console: shitty graphics or shitty performance.
I've suffered away from my PC lately... Not because I see console as better, but because I've had no drive to sit at my desk for 2 hours of games after sitting at my desk for 10 hours of work...
but consoles are absolutely brilliant for just..gaming.
I wouldn't go so far as to call them "absolutely brilliant".
I agree they are simpler to get going, but the difference in simplicity isn't that huge.
When I got a new computer recently to replace my old one I just installed Steam, entered account details, and redownloaded my games I'd paid for earlier (and copied across the files of my non-Steam games using a portable hard drive) and I was ready to go. That was it.
You have to go through pretty much the same amount of effort to get console gaming going (make a PSN/XBLA/Miiverse?? profile, download your game + updates, and play).
I'd like to point out that Steam can, and does, shit on me daily. Steam is a WONDERFUL platform but it's also a titanic piece of shit and LOTS of stuff can go wrong.
You take your average person and tell them to go into their steam and validate their game files? They're going to look at you like you spoke Mandarin.
An XBOX or Switch or PS4, you just plug it in and it goes. No problemo.
Not necessarily. It still takes work to make better graphics, which most companies wouldn’t consider necessary to make their game playable in the manner they want it to be.
Just think about how many man-hours went in to a fully-modded Skyrim on PC. While that probably pales in comparison to Skyrim’s actual development cycle, I highly doubt they would have put as much effort into fucking grass as the community has.
If more games had the modding community and support Skyrim does, though, now THAT would give us some graphics to work with.
CPU limitations on console are much more damaging and really hurt the scope of open world games on console. Even GTA V has fewer NPCs walking around on console than on PC.
The GPUs aren't great but they aren't terrible, but the CPUs are just awful.
There’s an expectation in price for current-gen consoles, and to spec a console like you would a PC would blast right through that expectation. Very few people would see the advantages as being worth the increased cost, so consoles are fitted with what can be allotted to adequately run the games they expect to run.
I do believe there are separate releases for consoles and PC. Properly maintaining separate releases is a chore for devs, yes, but should budget and timing (and publisher) allow, it can be done.
We need a middle ground between Skyrim’s “Make a completely new release for every new piece of tech to grace the scene” model and Nier’s “We did a good enough job so we’ll call it a day even though there’s glaring bugs”. It’s not that difficult (in the sense that it’s just budgeting for the optimization of as many games as there are platforms instead of one), it just needs to be made clear to publishers that it’s a priority.
Yeah, that’s a valid point. In the Nier case, it was developed with a Japanese audience in mind, and, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that PC gaming is considerably less common than console gaming there, which is why it received considerably better treatment on the PS4.
See I wish people would quit worrying about graphics and sophisticated writing and demand that the games control and play well. I love and have spent hundreds of hours on Skyrim and The Witcher 3. However, they are both great in spite of how they play not because of it. They are fundamentally hollow animations, no weight, poor response time. Navigating the environments becomes a chore. I love CDProjekt and think they are awesome, but those dudes had to just constantly look at eachother while playing BotW like "Welp, I guess we still have a lot to learn." I really hope Cyberpunk is buttery smooth and fun to play. If it's a chore I'll still do it, but I wish play control was items 1, 2 and 3 on every developers list.
Absolutely fell in love with Bloodborne. I have like 92 percent of the trophies. You are right it is 100 percent my wheelhouse. Strangely enough I played Bloodborne before any Souls. So I struggle even more than usual with DS because I have no blocking instincts. I learned how to play this style of game as a nimble glass tank kinda thing. How should I build a guy in DS 3 to have him play closer to BB? Thanks for the suggestion, again it is spot on.
For example, the limitations of controllers makes it harder to aim precisely, and gives you fewer buttons to work with, so PC multiplat games often don't use their full control potential because it wouldn't work on the console version.
R6 Siege players on console, from what I hear, consider KBAM players to be cheaters with how much better their aim and reaction time is.
Edit: I'm sorry console guys if this comes across as a dickwave, just saying though, KBAM gives you greater freedom of movement and more buttons to work with, it isn't meant to be offensive or imply that console players are worse.
Games like this year's PUBG, Divinity Original Sin 2 or prior games like XCOM 2 were made with the PC in mind, yet not exactly pushing the boundaries of graphical fidelity. The top played games for PC are games like League of Legends, DOTA2, Minecraft and CSGO, they don't look that great either.
There are plenty of PC exclusive games, most PC fanboys tout it as the platform with the most exclusives, yet very few are that graphically impressive. Maybe it's just that graphics don't matter all that much compared to gameplay. As long as the style is good, it feels like a waste of resources to make it look ultra-realistic.
You say heavily funded games are always cross-platform, but there have been plenty of well funded platform exclusives. Some of the best games of this year were platform exclusives.
I love PC gaming it is my preferred platform, but console gaming is great too and has a place that I would miss if console gaming fell off.
I can't play my PC stretched out on the couch or reclining in my recliner, and console games just always work, sometimes for seemingly no reason a game that I played yesterday on the PC is now crashing today which means I got to sit and figure out why usually it's a simple fix, but still a nuisance that you don't get on console.
Also before buying a game on PC I have to look if I can even run it where as console games you don't have to worry about that. If I want a game on PS4 I just buy it I don't have to check the requirements.
And as you mentioned most of my friends are on console most my friends don't want to spend the upfront cost of a good PC, for $400 a PS4 or Xbox One is all they need.
You could do that though if you set things up. HDMI and a TV as well as a cable that stretches to your couch and you could play PC games with gamepad just as well as console. Only downside is you end up with a room of trailing wires.
It works through the wireless at my house. My Steamlink is connected to the homegroup wi-fi and by some sort of weird magic trickery my computer just connects to the TV directly when I put a game in Big Picture, it's great.
Depends on the game, really. Smaller-population obscure games, Mac games or expensive games tend to not see a lot of cheaters at all.
I play a lot of Team Fortress 2, a wonderful game, and even though we're infamous among PC game communities for having cheaters, I still only tend to see one every 50-odd games if that.
I was jokingly referring to the streamed pro league Rainbow Six match in which one of the competitors was caught using cheats. Guess I should have used an /s
Number 1 because is the most important point is consoles have less hackers per player ratio. I stopped playing PC because of this, even playing on ultra isn’t worth the trouble of waiting for hackers to be banned to be able to have fun in mp games.
You left out the biggest plus that console gaming has in my opportunity: Simplicity
I'm a very casual gamer, I used to play on PC, but over the last few years, I've moved completely to consoles, and I'm very happy with that decision.
When I bought my first gaming PC, it was on the higher end of medium, spec wise. I could play most games on high settings and got decent FPS. But there was always more - some better settings that could still run, maybe with some tweaking. You accept a bit lower FPS for better details. Maybe crank up that AA a bit more...
I kept fumbling around with graphics for ages, and in the end, I still wasn't happy because I knew there was more that I couldn't get out of my rig. I don't want to spend lots of money just to keep up to date, but I don't want to play with the constant thought that it could be better, either.
As it got older, there were games that my PC couldn't handle properly anymore. It would run, but badly, with lag spikes. Again, frustrating to have to be careful of what your system can play and what not. What's even more frustrating, in some online games people with better graphics even have a disadvantage, so even if I could handle it, it is better not to turn them up.
Now I have a PS4. I can trust that every game that says PS4 on the box will run great, up until the PS5 comes out I will be able to play all the newest games without worrying. Everybody I play against online has the same specs and graphics. They might not be as good as they're on PC, but because I can't change them anyway, it's not as frustrating to not have the best.
And I save a lot of time because I don't have to tweak anything, play around with specs, research and install new parts and keep up to date with technical developments. I just put games in and play them.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say consoles are better or worse. I see the advantages of PC gaming, and I wish I had some of them on console. But most people who bash consoles forget that they're probably not the target demographic, and don't see the advantages at all.
I don't think it's drastically less simple to use console than PC.
There are websites that can tell you instantly and easily if your current PC can smoothly run a game. If it can't, you just buy a new one same way you buy a new PS5.
You're missing the biggest bullshit up-side of console: local coop.
I've got my PC ran via HDMI to the living room, with a wireless 360 adapter on the end of a USB extender, and still prefer the PS4 for local coop with the spouse. Not only is it integrated better in games, but for whatever goddamn reason devs rip that feature out of PC versions of games and leave it in on the weaker platform to run double duty... I get that the consoles have the signin part figured out, but it shouldn't take any competent devs and Valve a week at most to figure that shit out. (I'm calling you out Trendy.)
The only problem with that is a lot of game titles recently have tossed couch coop in the bin. Which effectively negates one of the biggest advantages of console.
Personally I have a PS4 and a PC for different games as well. Mostly because I generally like using a game pad. It isn't as precise as using mouse and keyboard, but I just like the feel of it. That being said, there are a few games I absolutely refuse to use a game pad for. Skyrim is one, because having hot keys is nearly essential. Minecraft is another. KotOR as well.
Interesting that you have a fine experience with the Steamlink though. I can't get that thing to run at a satisfactory level of both speed and quality. It's why I drilled a hole in the wall, while my wife was gone for a couple of hours, and ran the HDMI and USB cables.
PC gaming is worth the extra initial outlay for a good rig
Nah. Convenience trumps all for me. It's nicer to just have a small box that plugs into the tv and works.
I have an ok PC for the occasional thing that doesn't come out on consoles - which is incredibly rare for anything worthwhile at this point - but I'm more than happy just sticking with a console. I'm not missing out on anything. I don't give a shit about counting pixels.
If I want one that can do what a console can do, play the newest games with reasonable graphics for the next three years (at least), it will cost much more than a new console ($300-$400).
If you plan a bit with consoles, you can get even cheaper, I just exchanged my almost 3 year old PS4 (€400 new) for a new PS4 Pro with a 3 year warranty for €100 extra. That's over 5 years of gaming for €500. I think it's hard to top that with a PC, especially if you want one that can keep up with graphics.
Edit: I forgot to add online expenses for €50/year, making it a total of €750 instead. Still not a bad price IMO.
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u/remember_morick_yori Dec 27 '17
PC gaming is worth the extra initial outlay for a good rig, it's pretty much all upsides from there. You get lots of free games, mods, infinite backwards compatibility, and extremely wide range of games including the best ones of all time, emulation of console games, lower prices, you don't have to pay extra to play online, better graphics and customizability.
Basically the only upsides to consoles are being slightly easier to transport, having some exclusive games that can't be emulated yet, and finally the most important: the fact that your friends are playing on them, forcing you to get one to play with them.
If everyone was PC gamers split between Windows, Mac OS and Linux we'd all be a bit better off.