Folks, this is why PC gaming sucks now

[Vyse of Arcadia]

That eye candy crap they call an Action-RPG(Dragon Age to name one) might be consider mainstream(barely), but no RPGs, Sports, racers, fighters, music games, most Action-RPGs, rts, survival horror, platformers, simulation, or what not is not considered mainstream in the PC gaming world.

Let's forget about the nonsensicality of "eye candy crap" for now, but since when was Dragon Age an action RPG? I can, while playing the game, at any time, whack the space bar and then take as much time as I please to micromanage. If you consider Dragon Age an action RPG, then Final Fantasy must be a full-blown beat-'em-up.

[TheRollingStoner]

I love how you continue to ignore the fact that the minute Steam goes out of business, you're FUCKED.

Actually, Steam has stated several times that if they were to go out of business, they would make it so you would be able to patch your games to play without steam. Of course, you'd have to actually do a little research to find that out, so I'm not surprised that you don't have your facts straight.

Rage on.

[kokujin]

In any case this far from being one PC gaming's true problems.There are bigger things to worry about.

Let's forget about the nonsensicality of "eye candy crap" for now, but since when was Dragon Age an action RPG? I can, while playing the game, at any time, whack the space bar and then take as much time as I please to micromanage. If you consider Dragon Age an action RPG, then Final Fantasy must be a full-blown beat-'em-up.

[Olls]

I stand behind Zoltar on this one.

I'd bought a physical copy of a PC game, that was nothing more than a direct link to either Gamespy or Steam. I'm not sure if it was Borderlands (Gamespy network) or Metro 2033 (Steam), but after popping in the disc, I had to download over 7 gigs of game data. The disc hardly downloaded any information onto my PC. The game defineatly wasn't on the disc.

Weird. I have both of those games sitting on my shelf. The only things it downloads are patches.
Zoltor has no idea what he's talking about. Plays a few cheap-o PC titles and thinks he knows everything there is to know about PC gaming.
I've seen your top lists! Almost none of you are avid PC gamers anyway.

[gamevet]

Weird. I have both of those games sitting on my shelf. The only things it downloads are patches.
Zoltor has no idea what he's talking about. Plays a few cheap-o PC titles and thinks he knows everything there is to know about PC gaming.
I've seen your top lists! Almost none of you are avid PC gamers anyway.

Steam tells you how large the file is you're downloading, so it wasn't my imagination. I know I was thinking WTF, when I'd realized the disc had very little data on it.

[kokujin]

Steam tells you how large the file is you're downloading, so it wasn't my imagination. I know I was thinking WTF, when I'd realized the disc had very little data on it.

It's actually "downloading"from the disc.I learned this when I reinstalled Fallout NV without the disc.

[gamevet]

It's actually "downloading"from the disc.I learned this when I reinstalled Fallout NV without the disc.

I'd think that was what it was doing, but discs don't download at a rate under 2 mbps.

[kokujin]

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_...5357-FSQM-0382

That should fix it.If not try pausing the download, deleting the local game content, and trying again.

[gamevet]

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_...5357-FSQM-0382

That should fix it.If not try pausing the download, deleting the local game content, and trying again.

I feel better about it now. Thanks!

[villahed94]

I agree, the lack of physical media merchandising sucks, dl? Come on, what about if your DL speed is slow, or you have a HDD crash? You have to pay for it again, while having a CD lets you to reinstall it.

[kokujin]

I agree, the lack of physical media merchandising sucks, dl? Come on, what about if your DL speed is slow, or you have a HDD crash? You have to pay for it again, while having a CD lets you to reinstall it.

Most reputable services only ask you to pay once.I haven't heard of anybody asking for money every time a game reinstalled.

[kool kitty89]

What happens when the company is around no longer for you to DL the game and you don't have a backup copy because the software wouldn't let you make a backup copy in the first place.

What do you do then? Say, "ah well, I had fun with the game while it lasted"... meh

Morally legitimized piracy.

As it is already, piracy can be LESS of a hassle to do in some cases than going through legitimate DRI crap, and if I own a game that got corrupted or such and can't get it from the publisher/developer anymore, you better bet I'm going to "download" a "backup image" of it.

Yet games like Doom that were distributed Digitally are still available on their original sites and on new digital download platforms like Steam.

It's not like they are trying to steal money from you by making you pay every time you download the game. It sounds to me like you simply don't understand how the system works.

Yes, but there's tons of cases of more obscure companies that went under and no one maintained support for the games.

Again, that's still not an issue as most/all of that is still available if you look a little ways . . . it just might not be technically legal to do. (but with practically zero chance of repercussions as long as you're fair and reasonable about it -ie not a blatant waerz peddler or something like that -plus it's only newer games that the pubs usually even care about)

I do not understand the digital complaint. Almost all PC games are at retail too and consoles do the same (PSN, XBLA, Wiiware, downloading full retail games).

What bothers me the most lately is how games use microphones. I do not like how PC games tend to automatically turn on my microphone without telling me, as if I want a bunch of 15 year olds to listen to everything I do. And then there are programmes like Steam that cannot put voice audio on a headset and game audio on my speakers, thus I have to use another programme like Skype to talk to people properly.

I get the complain: downloading DVD (or larger) sized files is a pain in the ass, especially if you have a less than ideal connection (reliability wise) and/or a lot of shared users. (and other ongoing downloads)

Even with mid-range broadband (peak of some 3-4 Mb/s vs more like 10 for cable), it was still a pain to download portal. (the only game I've gotten from steam so far) I know it would have been far, far worse a little under 2 years ago when we still only had 1 Mb/s max (often more like 500k) broadband, and anyone using low-end 256k DSL, let alone the odd case of dialup would be practically out of luck entirely.


That's one very strong argument about making DL games episodic: segmenting load time overhead.

OTOH, many of the lower-budget/indie titles on consoles and PC are pretty small, at least by modern standards (4 or 5 years ago a 20-30 MB game would be a PITA for many average users with common DSL -let alone dial-up), and some that are smaller than that even. (and tons of neat free flash games and such worth looking into -a lot of generic/crap stuff to filter though though)

Ok, so forget action RPGs, MMORPGs, traditional RPGs, real-time strategy, survival horror, sports, platformers, and simulations as counting in the "mainstream" then, right?

EDIT: Forgot music games, party games, puzzle games...

Any of the above have multiple popular games in the genre, all of which are found with a physical copy.

Flight sims may have declined, but they're still a fairly significant genre on PCs... more for the air combat stuff (modern and historical, arcade style, fantasy, and realistic), but not much on the sci-fi/space sim stuff anymore, though there's a few (and many more homebrews -the FS2 engine going Open Source was a godsend to that) and I've heard Tie Fighter is getting a remake. (technically the second if you count the win9x accelerated version)

A shame EA didn't keep the wing commander franchise going when they decided to pull Origin's other stuff after the flop of ultima IX. (OTOH I wonder how Ultima Odyssey might have done against other MMOs -it was canceled over a year before WoW launched)

Most reputable services only ask you to pay once.I haven't heard of anybody asking for money every time a game reinstalled.

How is that managed though? Per computer or per IP, or what?

What if your PC gets totaled? (or you have a total HDD failure without a backup and have to do a total system rebuild, or a good chunk of the hardware gets fried and you need to do a total overhaul and re-install and migrate files)

I didn't have any such DL content on my last PC, but say I did: when I migrated all my files from my old desktop to my laptop, would it still recognize my licensed ownership of the game or would I have to resort to piracy to avoid re-paying?

[kokujin]

How is that managed though? Per computer or per IP, or what?

What if your PC gets totaled? (or you have a total HDD failure without a backup and have to do a total system rebuild, or a good chunk of the hardware gets fried and you need to do a total overhaul and re-install and migrate files)

I didn't have any such DL content on my last PC, but say I did: when I migrated all my files from my old desktop to my laptop, would it still recognize my licensed ownership of the game or would I have to resort to piracy to avoid re-paying?

On Steam, you can install it on any computer as long as you log into your account.I have a crap connection, the most I can get downloading is 1.1MB/s, It takes me less than 7 hours to buy a game, sure it's not instantaneous, but it's not unreasonable considering the convenience.If you have dial up then you should probably be buying disc releases, but the demographic of people that play PC games, and have dial up should be very small.You can't please everybody, and most PC titles still have disc releases, once in a while a game you want won't be disc release, but it does happen and I'm sorry, but that doesn't mean it is major problem.

[Obviously]

I agree, the lack of physical media merchandising sucks, dl? Come on, what about if your DL speed is slow, or you have a HDD crash? You have to pay for it again, while having a CD lets you to reinstall it.

Except you don't. I've uninstalled a bunch of games that are sitting on my Steam list waiting to be downloaded again at my leisure.

Seriously people if you're going to criticize the download services without having ever actually USED them at least look up the answers to the obvious questions.

Also people complaining about download speeds, I buy most games on the Internet anyway and since it's nearly impossible to find a large selection of PC games in stores these days it really doesn't take any longer to download most games than it would for them to come in the mail.

The only problem with Steam is if your account is stolen then you're fucked. It's the same as somebody coming into your house and stealing your physical collection. It happened to one of my friends and Valve's customer support really didn't do shit to help him. I'm not entirely sure how that saga ended to be honest.

Granted this shouldn't happen since nobody should know your password it still could happen.

Flight sims may have declined, but they're still a fairly significant genre on PCs... more for the air combat stuff (modern and historical, arcade style, fantasy, and realistic), but not much on the sci-fi/space sim stuff anymore, though there's a few (and many more homebrews -the FS2 engine going Open Source was a godsend to that) and I've heard Tie Fighter is getting a remake. (technically the second if you count the win9x accelerated version)

A shame EA didn't keep the wing commander franchise going when they decided to pull Origin's other stuff after the flop of ultima IX. (OTOH I wonder how Ultima Odyssey might have done against other MMOs -it was canceled over a year before WoW launched)

Wing Commander is my favorite franchise of all time. I will never forgive EA for basically putting it out to pasture. Didn't know about a TIE Fighter remake I really hope it's serious.

[madcrow]

For me, PC gaming begins and ends at GOG.com

Great games, cheap and with no DRM (and WITH unlimited re-downloads in case you forget to archive them)

Steam and retail games are SO loaded with DRM that I go out of my way to avoid them.