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[Spyxos]

There is a lot of complaining about how bad the PC games are . I see it differently. Pc games have never been as good as they are today. Sure there are shador compilation stutters and badly optimized games come out lately. But at least it's patched quickly these days. Total failures in major games are rare.

I can still remember Gta 4. Where I spent hours in message boards so that the game starts at all. And even then it ran barely. Or Witcher 1 which still crashed every 5 minutes after many patches. Many games had no mouse control in the menus and gamepads were mostly not supported.

There were almost no games from Japan and the ones that were there were often unplayable. Pc games where you could not even change the controls? Unfortunately, it happened a hell of a lot.

Sure it's not perfect, but it's gotten a lot better. How do you see it?

Edit: I'm only talking about Pc games not today's hardware prices. Yes, they are terrible.
Edit 2 : Times have changed quickly.

 

[bitbydeath]

You must have missed the 90’s.

 

[Thebonehead]

There were almost no games from Japan and the ones that were there were often unplayable.

Well that hasn't really changed, apart from Capcom

 

[Spyxos]

Well that hasn't really changed, apart from Capcom

Just look at the Steam Store. 90% of them were not available on the PC. Day 1 release of Japanese games for Pc was very very rare.

 

[TheDraconian]

Sure PC games arent 100% optimised but console games aren't as well. It's not the platform that's the issue. Devs need to be held to a higher standard.

That being said. PC is awesome. Mods. Forever backwards compatibility. Ultrawide. VR. DLSS. 300+fps shit. The overall experience is wonderful.

 

[rofif]

dude you ever unreal, duke nukem3d, half-life2, stalker, far cry, doom123, ut, max payne, commandos and tons and tons of other games ?
gta 4 was and is a terrible port. I still prefer it on 360 honestly. You can do 4k60 on pc but it still is missing something

edit: Yeah I maybe agree. It's super easy to build a pc and steam is very simple. Drivers are simple now. pc gaming is now very simple. It only lacks some good classic pc games... but whole industry does

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

Agreed

 

[winjer]

As a PC gamer for over 2 decades, I have to strongly disagree.
In fact, I would say this is one of the worst times ever to be a PC gamer.
GPU prices are a fracking ripp-off.
Every major publisher has it's own store and launcher. And they all want to start with Windows and most have a helper service.
Every other game has stutters, especially games using UE4.
Windows has become a vessel for bloatware and spyware.
PC games have become as expensive as console games. There was a time when PC games cost 15-20€ less than console games.

There are still many advantages to PC gaming, but it's becoming increasingly dificult to offset all the crap we have to deal with.

 

[rodrigolfp]

Yep.

 

[Spyxos]

As a PC gamer for over 2 decades, I have to strongly disagree.
In fact, I would say this is one of the worst times ever to be a PC gamer.
GPU prices are a fracking ripp-off.
Every major publisher has it's own store and launcher. And they all want to start with Windows and most have a helper service.
Every other game has stutters, especially games using UE4.
Windows has become a vessel for bloatware and spyware.
PC games have become as expensive as console games. There was a time when PC games cost 15-20€ less than console games.

There are still many advantages to PC gaming, but it's becoming increasingly dificult to offset all the crap we have to deal with.

I was only talking about the games. Sure graphics card prices are through the roof.

 

[Alexios]

It's great as always. You pose one crappy older game as the reason it's better now just as folks pose this or that new crappy game as the reason it's bad now. It's always been rad, though admitedly it got extra perks after Dark Souls or so had Japanese pubs realize they should port their stuff too

 

[rodrigolfp]

As a PC gamer for over 2 decades, I have to strongly disagree.
In fact, I would say this is one of the worst times ever to be a PC gamer.
GPU prices are a fracking ripp-off.
Every major publisher has it's own store and launcher. And they all want to start with Windows and most have a helper service.
Every other game has stutters, especially games using UE4.
Windows has become a vessel for bloatware and spyware.
PC games have become as expensive as console games. There was a time when PC games cost 15-20€ less than console games.

There are still many advantages to PC gaming, but it's becoming increasingly dificult to offset all the crap we have to deal with.

3- You don't need to buy a RTX 4000.
4- Launchers only help, no one gets in the way.
5- Every single one is fixed or being fixed.
6- Makes no difference.
7- CDkeys & cia.

 

[demented waffle]

There is a lot of complaining about how bad the PC games are . I see it differently. Pc games have never been as good as they are today. Sure there are shador compilation stutters and badly optimized games come out lately. But at least it's patched quickly these days. Total failures in major games are rare.

I can still remember Gta 4. Where I spent hours in message boards so that the game starts at all. And even then it ran barely. Or Witcher 1 which still crashed every 5 minutes after many patches. Many games had no mouse control in the menus and gamepads were mostly not supported.

There were almost no games from Japan and the ones that were there were often unplayable. Pc games where you could not even change the controls? Unfortunately, it happened a hell of a lot.

Sure it's not perfect, but it's gotten a lot better. How do you see it?

5 or 6 years ago... Yes. Now? LOL no.

 

[64bitmodels]

dude you ever unreal, duke nukem3d, half-life2, stalker, far cry, doom123, ut, max payne, commandos and tons and tons of other games ?

those games today are far better than they were 20 years ago thanks to 2 decades worth of total conversions, fixes, qol mods etc. 20 years ago Brutal Doom didn't exist. remember that

not to mention building a PC today is certainly easier than it was in 2003

 

[onQ123]

Yes Steam saved PC from the Wild Wild West that was Windows

Devs can give it their all now & know that they will see a return

 

[Senua]

gta 4 was and is a terrible port. I still prefer it on 360 honestly. You can do 4k60 on pc but it still is missing something

 

[rofif]

those games today are far better than they were 20 years ago thanks to 2 decades worth of total conversions, fixes, qol mods etc.

not to mention building a PC today is certainly easier than it was in 2003

It is MUCH easier today.
We are on a roll with a buddy from work recently and he built geforce 256 and 3ti systems. It's a mess for sure.

I have 3 vintage systems. win95, and two 98. Got them completed few years ago but only now found 3dfx voodoo 1 from diamond. Just like the on I had in 1998. perfect.
Need to drag these pcs from basement and put it in one of them. I've got few s3 virge cards to pair it with
edt: mmx200, pentium2 350mhz socketed, amd k6... I think these are the systems I have

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Sure PC games arent 100% optimised but console games aren't as well. It's not the platform that's the issue. Devs need to be held to a higher standard.

That being said. PC is awesome. Mods. Forever backwards compatibility. Ultrawide. VR. DLSS. 300+fps shit. The overall experience is wonderful.

Cries in 20 gigabyte first day patch. But apparently nobody gives a shit so what can you do?

 

[Elder Legend]

But I been told that PC gaming is dead and that Nintendo is Nintendoomed and that Xbox is going to become third party if the Activision deal falls through. Have I been listening to the false prophets? Ok, silly shit aside - I actually don't really play on my PC that much anymore, apart from World of Warcraft. I use my PC mostly for work and I am too lazy to build a new rig, been riding my 1660ti for a while lol. Probably going to be skipping 4090s and wait until the 5090 at this point. I used to play A TON of Counter Strike back in the early 2000s and a lot of UT 2004, kind of miss those games. I feel like Battle Royale shooters are the new Arena shooters of the modern gaming and its best done on PC.

 

[rofif]

360 port still is the one that got no camera bugs, no fps related bugs, proper dof and screen effects, actual MSAA, proper contrast and full legacy music. Most of these can be modded on pc and believe me. I;ve got like 60 hours on pc gta 4 and then the fuckers added rockstar launcher.
It only runs like absolute trash on 360 but everything else about it is perfect. I've got 360 with gta iv on it's release day. It got a special place in my heart

 

[poppabk]

I miss the days where the PC was it's own thing. Everything is homogenized now, sure you still get sims and the like but PC gaming is for the most part just gaming now.

 

[winjer]

3- You don't need to buy a RTX 4000.

All GPUs are overpriced.

4- Launchers only help, no one gets in the way.

No they don't. We should have only one store and one launcher.
It's really annoying to have to create an account for every other game, then install the launcher, fill in the login, insert a two-step verification code, then install the game.
And good luck if the overlays from all these launchers don't interfere with other overlays, like MSI Afterburner, Geforce Experience, etc.

5- Every single one is fixed or being fixed.

Lol, no they aren't. Plenty of games that never saw a fix for compilation stutter or asset streaming stutter.

6- Makes no difference.

Yes, it does. It uses more ram and CPU cycles.
And it is an issue of user privacy.

7- CDkeys & cia.

There was a time, when games where even cheaper on key sites.

 

[Black_Stride]

I guess if you only really started PC gaming relatively recently.

The golden age of RTS games, actual PC exclusives that pushed hardware and technologies, decent hardware prices, on disk DRM if any at all, so you could share games with friends, Red Alert 2, Warcraft 3, Half-Life, Baldurs Gate 2, Unreal Tournament, First Encounter Assault wtf was that?!?!.

But honestly its still great and I cant really complain.
And putting a PC together today and getting it up and running is such a joy thinking back to the Slave/Master days with IDE was fucking torture.

This IS the first generation since the Sega Master System, ive had no inclination to get a console, and likely wont actually buy one (cept the Super Switch).....so thats gotta mean somethings going right in the PC gaming space right?

 

[64bitmodels]

As a PC gamer for over 2 decades, I have to strongly disagree.
In fact, I would say this is one of the worst times ever to be a PC gamer.
GPU prices are a fracking ripp-off.
Every major publisher has it's own store and launcher. And they all want to start with Windows and most have a helper service.
Every other game has stutters, especially games using UE4.
Windows has become a vessel for bloatware and spyware.
PC games have become as expensive as console games. There was a time when PC games cost 15-20€ less than console games.

There are still many advantages to PC gaming, but it's becoming increasingly dificult to offset all the crap we have to deal with.

1. last gen GPUs are still good 2 years later to the point you can buy a 3070/6800xt and be fine for the next 3 years. PC hardware in the 90s/early 2000s moved so fast that the high range card you bought in 2002 would be outdated in 2003.
2. no counterpoints to that one, publishers can't help themselves. if nothing else some seem to be conceding like bethesda
to #3 & #4.... https://www.neogaf.com/threads/a-windows-users-experiences-with-linux-should-you-switch.1653640/
5. we still get console ports 10 dollars cheaper on average, and sales are still amazing on steam! plus all the options and outlets to get keys, including free ones if you know where to look

trust me i have my own qualms with PC gaming but the benefits still outweigh the negatives to me

 

[64bitmodels]

actual PC exclusives that pushed hardware and technologies

this is the one thing i really miss. we'll never get games like crysis again unless Nvidia becomes a game developer

 

[rodrigolfp]

All GPUs are overpriced.



No they don't. We should have only one store and one launcher.
It's really annoying to have to create an account for every other game, then install the launcher, fill in the login, insert a two-step verification code, then install the game.
And good luck if the overlays from all these launchers don't interfere with other overlays, like MSI Afterburner, Geforce Experience, etc.



Lol, no they aren't. Plenty of games that never saw a fix for compilation stutter or asset streaming stutter.



Yes, it does. It uses more ram and CPU cycles.
And it is an issue of user privacy.



There was a time, when games where even cheaper on key sites.

1 - Not here, at least.
2- We don't create an account for every other game, just one for every launcher. WTH? Overlays = off.
3- What plenty games?
4-Zero/1% CPU usage here idle. I disable every useless Windows service.
5- True, but the games were also shorter and uglier.

 

[winjer]

1. last gen GPUs are still good 2 years later to the point you can buy a 3070/6800xt and be fine for the next 3 years. PC hardware in the 90s/early 2000s moved so fast that the high range card you bought in 2002 would be outdated in 2003.

I'm from that time. A GPU would not last more than 2 years.
But they cost a fraction of what they cost now. Usually, I would buy a new GPU, sell the old one for like 100-150 euros diference.

 

[Kataploom]

I agree, but mostly because I don't use to buy on day 1. All this PC gaming gossip we have these days is mostly because of devs not giving PC platform the priority for QA on day 1.

Games get fixed sooner rather than later by devs or community, but by then everyone's attention moved to some other game.

PC gaming sales are more long term than day 1, and devs know that, hell I haven't experienced more than some bad port here and there (that now I can brute force or mod anyway... they mostly have shit consoles versions too) because I just get the games on sales or later whenever I want to get some specific feel and by then games were already fixed.

Being day 1 buyer now is hard on PC, but as many PC gamers are patient for sales or fixes, most will wait anyway.

 

[T4keD0wN]

There is a lot of complaining about how bad the PC games are . I see it differently. Pc games have never been as good as they are today. Sure there are shador compilation stutters and badly optimized games come out lately. But at least it's patched quickly these days. Total failures in major games are rare.

I can still remember Gta 4. Where I spent hours in message boards so that the game starts at all. And even then it ran barely. Or Witcher 1 which still crashed every 5 minutes after many patches. Many games had no mouse control in the menus and gamepads were mostly not supported.

There were almost no games from Japan and the ones that were there were often unplayable. Pc games where you could not even change the controls? Unfortunately, it happened a hell of a lot.

Sure it's not perfect, but it's gotten a lot better. How do you see it?

Theres hundreds of just Unreal engine 4 games that have shader compilation stutter. You can probably count all the ones who have fixed it on 2 hands. Theres some that have launched without the issue in the first place so you cant really count those among the fixed ones, but that amount is pretty small.

GPU prices went to hell starting with turing and havent yet recoved. To be fair they have outpaced the advancements in cpus so much that unless youre at 4k youll be cpu limited even with an upper midrange gpu pretty often.
PC Game prices have doubled in my country (some games cost over 20% of monthly minimum wage), some have it even worse than that with 500%+ increases apparently.

On the other hand we have the largest amount of games, everyone is embracing steam.
Theres some cool new tech like dlss and frame generation (directstorage still MIA). Too bad it feels like some of those extra features are starting to get used as a crutch.
Half of the games are great, the other half is terrible.

While some things are better, some things are worse. The experience is wildly inconsistent.
2016 to 1st half of 2020 was better imo.

 

[Danjin44]

 

[AMSCD]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

 

[Spyxos]

You must have missed the 90’s.

I guess if you only really started PC gaming relatively recently.

The golden age of RTS games, actual PC exclusives that pushed hardware and technologies, decent hardware prices, on disk DRM if any at all, so you could share games with friends, Red Alert 2, Warcraft 3, Half-Life, Baldurs Gate 2, Unreal Tournament, First Encounter Assault wtf was that?!?!.

But honestly its still great and I cant really complain.
And putting a PC together today and getting it up and running is such a joy thinking back to the Slave/Master days with IDE was fucking torture.

This IS the first generation since the Sega Master System, ive had no inclination to get a console, and likely wont actually buy one (cept the Super Switch).....so thats gotta mean somethings going right in the PC gaming space right?

I played on the Pc in the 90's but unfortunately I didn't have my own Pc, but I played everything from Duke to Red Alert 1 to Carmageddon. Friends and internet cafes helped me out. I had my first PC in 2000.

I can still remember how much money my friends spent on new hardware and 2-3 years later the latest games were no longer playable. There is no such thing today.

 

[winjer]

1 - Not here, at least.

You must live in the only place in the world were GPUs are not overpriced. What a miracle.

2- We don't create an account for every other game, just one for every launcher. WTH? Overlays = off.

I used a bit of hyperbole. But seriously, there's probably a dozen launchers on PC. Maybe more.

3- What plenty games?

Have you been living under a rock? Almost every game launched on PC in the last few years have a ton of stutter.
And very few ever get fixed.

4-Zero/1% CPU usage here idle. I disable every useless Windows service.

You are like me, and clean up Windows.
But the matter is that we have to do it.
And those who don't, which is the vast majority of gamers, have to run all that bloatware and spyware.

5- True, but the games were also shorter and uglier.

But they didn't have NFTs or micro-transactions. Didn't have stupid NPCs constantly talking and solving puzzles.
There was more innovation and variety. And they were full to the brim with filler and empty open worlds.

 

[demented waffle]

I played on the Pc in the 90's but unfortunately I didn't have my own Pc, but I played everything from Duke to Red Alert 1 to Carmageddon. Friends and internet cafes helped me out. I had my first PC in 2000.

I can still remember how much money my friends spent on new hardware and 2-3 years later the latest games were no longer playable. There is no such thing today.

Games back then were still limited by consoles(just like now). Well, outside of some outliers like crysis. Even then, crysis was still able to be ran by only a few pc's(at least well).

Although, this isn't shade against consoles(or at least not intended). Without consoles, we're still a decade behind due to baseline player base.

 

[Hugare]

I understand your point, OP

But the golden age was back when PC had exclusives, therefore an identity of its own.

I have a very capable laptop, but its a console port machine where I can play the same console games, but with better fidelity. And emulators, of course.

Exclusives are what really make a platform especial

And DX 12 fucked PC ports pretty hard. Every game has stutter or other performance problems due to this shit.

 

[BennyBlanco]

I agree with the boomers here saying PC used to have way better games. I still play HOMM3 and AOE2 often. The good thing is these old ass games are now better than ever. The bad thing is nobody with a budget is making them anymore because theyd rather chase GaaS money on PC. It’s still way better than console gaming tho.

 

[rodrigolfp]

Have you been living under a rock? Almost every game launched on PC in the last few years have a ton of stutter.
And very few ever get fixed.

Almost every? On top of my head, and only talking about AAA, HZD, Days Gone, GoW, Spiderman, U4, Atomic Heart, Forspoken, Gears 5 didn't have stutters. Sackboy, freaking Gothan Knights, Callisto Protocol all fixed...

But they didn't have NFTs or micro-transactions.

All optional and every single game that I played with all this stuff was cosmetic.

 

[winjer]

Almost every? On top of my head, and only talking about AAA, HZD, Days Gone, GoW, Spiderman, U4, Atomic Heart, Forspoken, Gears 5 didn't have stutters. Sackboy, freaking Gothan Knights, Callisto Protocol all fixed...

And so many that stutter a lot, that you are ignoring.

 

[nani17]

 

[64bitmodels]

But the golden age was back when PC had exclusives, therefore an identity of its own.

because console ports weren't coming to PC as frequently. like yeah you guys got doom but missed out on Mario World, Street Fighter 2, Super Metroid, ALTTP, Sonic, Streets of Rage, Castlevania, Contra, etc
not to mention that they're not console ports.... they come to everything day one

And DX 12 fucked PC ports pretty hard. Every game has stutter or other performance problems due to this shit.

THIS IS IT. I came to the realization that it was DX12's fault once I tried Linux. Elden Ring which was a stuttery mess on Windows was now nothing more than a decent port thanks to running DXVK.

 

[rodrigolfp]

And so many that stutter a lot, that you are ignoring.

Examples?

 

[Crayon]

Yeah it is. When I switched to linux many years ago, my pc gaming was in a lul anyway and I wasn't missing much. Then steam for linux came out so I was like what the hell and picked up a little gpu to throw in and old office computer and hooked it up to my tv with a dualshock3.

Now, I can play almost everything on Linux and I've gardually transitioned back to a real gaming pc as it's got better over the years. So for me, pc gaming is way better than ever. No stutter, too. Bonus.

Now if you are talking about the heyday, I woul call that the dos era, when there was very little overlap with consoles and pc games sort of picked up in complexity where consoles left off. But in absolute terms, it's better now.

PC hardware enthusiasts are kinda getting fucked with gpu prices though. The apparently poor 4080 sales were a glimmer of hope, but not out of the woods yet. As long as you are not deadset on burrying consoles with your build, a modest gpu is still a ripoff but only going to come to 100-150 bucks more than it should be. Not $600 more.

 

[winjer]

Examples?

Take a look at DFs youtube site.

 

[Crayon]

THIS IS IT. I came to the realization that it was DX12's fault once I tried Linux. Elden Ring which was a stuttery mess on Windows was now nothing more than a decent port thanks to running DXVK.

Yep. You can run a dx12 game through proton and it's all good. Linux Master Race.

 

[Laptop1991]

I remember a PC only genre and games in the 90's and noughties, where is it today!, they are ports now, well there is Star Citizen, but that's not coming out anytime soon, infact the ports rarely work properly now, op must be on a wind up or the drink!.

 

[rodrigolfp]

Take a look at DFs youtube site.

DF didn't remake the videos past stutter patches.

And DX 12 fucked PC ports pretty hard. Every game has stutter or other performance problems due to this shit.

DX12 didn't do anything like this, it's here single Windows 10 launch and back there not a single game had stutters like today. And far from being every game. What hyperbolic shit.

 

[64bitmodels]

Yep. You can run a dx12 game through proton and it's all good. Linux Master Race.

the excuses people make to try and not even dualboot are ridiculous

 

[SmokedMeat]

PC is everyone’s best friend. Both Sony and Microsoft snuggling up with their console games. Japan getting more and more into PC gaming is also a great thing.

The free games and bundles are just the icing on the cake. So much to love about it, and the whole PC port issue stuff is overblown by non PC gamers.

 

[Black_Stride]

this is the one thing i really miss. we'll never get games like crysis again unless Nvidia becomes a game developer

They are on their way.
They have alot of realtime demos in their own engine, but its still only used for visualizations and simulation.
Let them just give it to us to fuck around with im sure theres some devs who want to melt 4090s already.

I played on the Pc in the 90's but unfortunately I didn't have my own Pc, but I played everything from Duke to Red Alert 1 to Carmageddon. Friends and internet cafes helped me out. I had my first PC in 2000.

I can still remember how much money my friends spent on new hardware and 2-3 years later the latest games were no longer playable. There is no such thing today.

Were your friends like super poor or super stupid?
Office computers would come with weird GPUs that met min spec and could launch games.
We were all playing on CRTs so the hunt for resolution or FPS wasnt even a thing.
You could literally walk into any office and when the receptionist was on her lunch break quickly install a game and be all good, hide the exe and tomorrow lunch time.....its on!

Pre DX9 yes it was possible to be left behind by games, but it was actually super rare.....like im trying to think of times pre 2000s that any major adcanvent happend that forced people to upgrade.....that was likely well before my time.
OpenGL was also a viable renderer for alot of games.
So i cant really think what latest games they couldnt play every 2-3 years.

 

[Sygma]

There is a lot of complaining about how bad the PC games are . I see it differently. Pc games have never been as good as they are today. Sure there are shador compilation stutters and badly optimized games come out lately. But at least it's patched quickly these days. Total failures in major games are rare.

I can still remember Gta 4. Where I spent hours in message boards so that the game starts at all. And even then it ran barely. Or Witcher 1 which still crashed every 5 minutes after many patches. Many games had no mouse control in the menus and gamepads were mostly not supported.

There were almost no games from Japan and the ones that were there were often unplayable. Pc games where you could not even change the controls? Unfortunately, it happened a hell of a lot.

Sure it's not perfect, but it's gotten a lot better. How do you see it?

Edit: I'm only talking about Pc games not today's hardware prices. Yes, they are terrible.

Technical issues have always been a main selling point for pc users and not the other way around. For the rest I don't know, it changed too much to even attempt a comparison with what was before. Market evolved, pc regressed imho. I think when the whole graphical parity happened and the emphasis for everything to become an action rpg, i mean. you know. It's different