RAGE

Quote from Sentura

jetset lemming, you can't compare popcap games to everything else. they're small scale games that will run on pretty much any computer because they don't need much processing power to function. when you're dealing with complex graphics and AI in large numbers you'll have to look at things differently. a console is a standardized machine. it means it will run on every machine just the same, so developers can focus on just one type of setting, rather than on the ginormous scale that a PC has the ability to be. a 1ghz process with an old radeon 9600SE and 1gb ram gets lumped into the same category as any new super computer, and developers will waste time trying to make a good version for both, rather than just 1 version that fits all.

Don't give a shit. If you can't make a passable PC game, don't make a PC game. But if you want that market, then you have to earn it with effort. Nobody's going to buy a PC port out of pity or duty, or care about the excuses about how there's lots of hardware configurations. No consumer cares about any hardware except what they personally are using. If you can't accomplish a task, don't half-ass it, release the laughably poor results, and then expect anyone to care, or any sympathy when you blame the PC for your bad game. If id didn't or couldn't put in the proper work to make Rage a proper PC game then they should've either not released a PC port, or used Unreal Engine 3 for its PC support.

Also having system requirements if fine. Hell, if Rage came with a Nvidia-only clause, and if you were using an AMD card Steam popped up and said "Hey don't buy this game", then I'm sure while people would grumble, they wouldn't be nearly as angry. Once the "AMD Support Patch" was released a few weeks later or whatever, then that restriction goes away and everyone plays the game and everyone's happy. People will always take a delay over a shitty experience, and Rage delivered a shitty experience on releasefor the ~40% of the market using AMD hardware. When the 360 came out and so lots and lots of PC games started being DX9-only, some people complained. I know I wasn't too pleased at the time, when Bioshock came out I had a Radeon 9250 and it required a 9500 or better, so wouldn't run at all for me. But I knew that going into the demo, and I didn't buy the game until after I got my 8800gt at a later time, and "Bioshock didn't support DX8 video cards!" isn't exactly a lasting part of the game's fame. Just Cause 2 did the same thing with DX10. I didn't buy the game when it came out because I was on XP, but when I upgraded to Windows 7 it was my first game purchase after the upgrade, and the game's absolutely fantastic. I'm glad they didn't have to dilute the performance, technical behavior, or bug testing for outdated windows and outdated hardware. It's totally a valid option for developers to take. Afaik BF3 is doing the same thing, and I haven't heard a single peep of negativity about that.

Quote from Rick_D

they released the pc version, what, 6 months after the console version?would you prefer all games had an extra 6 months in dev for the pc version?

Yes, yes I would.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

If id didn't or couldn't put in the proper work to make Rage a proper PC game then they should've either not released a PC port, or used Unreal Engine 3 for its PC support.

Rage works fine now. What are you on about. Get some internet and patch it.

Wait, I forgot RAGE is the first rocky PC release ever. id has blemished an other wise pristine record.

Quote from Erratic

Rage works fine now. What are you on about. Get some internet and patch it.

Wait, I forgot RAGE is the first rocky PC release ever. id has blemished an other wise pristine record.

I never bought the game. And its widespread, basically uniform behavior on AMD hardware (roughly ~40% of the market) is different from a buggy launch or something. It's also got UI/control issues on PC, for example by default it has mouse smoothing and you need to use a launch option or cfg edit to disable it, and apparently if you turn down the mouse speed enough it becomes apparent that thumbstick-esque behavior like jumping to hotspots and deadzones etc. are in the game's mouse behavior.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

Rage works fine now. What are you on about. Get some internet and patch it.

Wait, I forgot RAGE is the first rocky PC release ever. id has blemished an other wise pristine record.

I never bought the game. And its widespread, basically uniform behavior on AMD hardware (roughly ~40% of the market) is different from a buggy launch or something. It's also got UI/control issues on PC, for example by default it has mouse smoothing and you need to use a launch option or cfg edit to disable it, and apparently if you turn down the mouse speed enough it becomes apparent that thumbstick-esque behavior like jumping to hotspots and deadzones etc. are in the game's mouse behavior.

I did, I'm running ATI, and it works great now. Having a blast, I'm at Well Spring, checking out some vehicle parts, gonna go kill some bandits vroooooooooooooooom

I can't help but think of the people for whom rage's release was the final straw for them for PC gaming, because they had an AMD card. With the trip reports I saw of some people, especially with quite a few people saying the game would just crash on launch for them, they probably aren't sticking around for a patch or a driver update. It's not even a week since the game's release. If it had been delayed on PC that one week, so that the AMD shit could get worked out before it was exposed to the world, manchildren and teenagers would've grumbled a bit, but a lot more positive first impressions would've been had, and there'd been a lot less shit on id.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

I can't help but think of the people for whom rage's release was the final straw for them for PC gaming, because they had an AMD card. With the trip reports I saw of some people, especially with quite a few people saying the game would just crash on launch for them, they probably aren't sticking around for a patch or a driver update. It's not even a week since the game's release. If it had been delayed on PC that one week, so that the AMD shit could get worked out before it was exposed to the world, manchildren and teenagers would've grumbled a bit, but a lot more positive first impressions would've been had, and there'd been a lot less shit on id.

I experienced every problem that was reported basically. The crash on launch, which was fixed by the 11.9's, the slow texture streaming and triangle warping that was fixed with the patch, and the random crashing on level loads.

Anyone that's been PC gaming for any significant amount of time isn't going to find RAGE to be the LAST STRAW. None of this is any different than the last 15 years of PC gaming that I've done. The only difference is games are multiplatform, so now there's a source to direct all the frustration towards.

Shit was solved in less than a week. This upset won't be remembered by anyone just like all the other uneven launches of other games that are never remembered.

There are so many hardware combinations that when you target pc for launch and dont have a wide scale beta (like blizz/valve does), then you are almost bound to have a bad launch like this if you are using your own engine.

And I dont think its fair to say that if you are gonna release for the PC market that you should have a 100% working version for the PC. There are just too many different hardware/software specs around to be able to cover all your bases on release.

Far cry from "100% working" to "A huge portion of the userbase without it working". Carmack has publicly blamed AMD for the issues, saying AMD should've had the right drivers out before Rage, but when it was clear that that wasn't going to happen there should've been a last minute delay until those drivers WERE out and working. Or at the very least a public apology and warning to all AMD users that the game isn't yet ready for them due to outside issues.

You don't have to cover all hardware/software specs, but you should know and acknowledge what you are and aren't supporting, and the public should know that. People shouldn't have to buy games that won't run on their computers, or won't run acceptably. Minimum requirements should be more than just "overall windows version, overall direct x version, some vague bullshit about core speed and model numbers tacked on".

With digital distribution and online activations, you don't even need a public who can understand that shit. They should be warned before purchase or activation that their hardware is not supported, and offered a refund if applicable. This is reducing sales, technically, but it's also vastly reducing bullshit and public ill will.

I still have no idea why some people keep whining about PC gaming is dead... in the last two months alone, I had two of the most awesome experiences on my PC in the last few years (DX:HR and Rage) and BF3 is out in a month AND Skyrim as well... And this year we had a lot of cool releases as well, Bulletstorm, Crysis 2, Portal 2, Witcher 2, etc, etc, etc!

So PC Gaming is dead my ASS! PC gaming is more alive than ever...

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":1i6z69qk]I still have no idea why some people keep whining about PC gaming is dead... in the last two months alone, I had two of the most awesome experiences on my PC in the last few years (DX:HR and Rage) and BF3 is out in a month AND Skyrim as well... And this year we had a lot of cool releases as well, Bulletstorm, Crysis 2, Portal 2, Witcher 2, etc, etc, etc!So PC Gaming is dead my ASS! PC gaming is more alive than ever...

I like your attitude Helder.

Don't forget all the MMO and f2p games as well, they have HUGE publics. Stuff like Priston Tale, Combat Arms, League of Legends... they may not be the kinds of games we over here appreciate, but they definately count.

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":38k8taz2]I still have no idea why some people keep whining about PC gaming is dead... in the last two months alone, I had two of the most awesome experiences on my PC in the last few years (DX:HR and Rage) and BF3 is out in a month AND Skyrim as well... And this year we had a lot of cool releases as well, Bulletstorm, Crysis 2, Portal 2, Witcher 2, etc, etc, etc!So PC Gaming is dead my ASS! PC gaming is more alive than ever...

Bulletstorm had Rage-esque technical issues for me, unfortunately. Weird color banding, black blocks instead of blood effects, bad stutter in a lot of places, etc.

...okay so your hardware sucks. Its time to think something is wrong with your hardware if you have issues with multiple games. Maybe you should go on a crusade against the hardware manufacturer instead of the game companies?

The Radeon line and their drivers are pretty bad anymore, yeah. The card was cheap and for the games without issues (Which, to be fair, is 95%+ of them), run great. I paid $60 over a year ago and can run the BF3 beta at 30FPS on low. But the driver shit is just too unreliable (plus no proper scaling options that preserve aspect ratio. What is the point of even HAVING scaling options if you're just gonna horribly skew 4:3 to my 16:10 display? Ughhh.)

My next build, I'm thinking AMD processor (Sandy Bridge CPUs are nice but expensive as hell, I don't want to spend $180 on just the processor), Nvidia graphics. Hopefully I'll be able to build it as a nice christmas present for myself this winter. If I once again aim low on graphics (was eyeballing a Geforce 550 ti a couple days ago for $120), I can even keep my current 400w Corsair psu.

Anyway, all that is besides the point. Bethesda/id pushed the "release the game" butan on Steam knowing that the proper AMD drivers weren't out yet, they weren't public until a few hours after release. And they were pushed to such a deadline that clearly nobody had even installed the stupid things and ran the game they were designed for, as they were universally dogshit, causing widespread cases of terrible experiences and another day's delay before proper "Preview Drivers" were out. The game's release should've been delayed until that crap with Catalyst was squared properly and ready for showtime. While the issues were AMD's fault, id still should've held back on the game to avoid AMD's egg on their face. No matter who was at fault or what you think of PC development or any of that shit, the consumers suffered, and they shouldn't have.

god almighty you're more of a fuckin bore than dux, sentura and me all rolled together. can i really be bothered, on a monday morning, to go through 2 pages of quoting and repsonding explaining why you're a fucknugget, who didn't even buy the game but is qualified to advise id to delay a game based on a set of drivers out of their control, or to simply not release the game at all because there's a chance 40% (lol who uses ATI anymore, what are you, a fucking retard? go join the other special kids on the bus, those ping pong tables won't drool on themselves) of people might not be able to play it within seconds of it launching.

as for delaying a game 6 months to work on it for a market that has 1/5th of the share, i don't really see how anyone thinks that is a good idea.

i think issues like these could have been solved earlier but i guarantee they were so focused on passing submissions for the 360 and ps3 that they figured, fuck it the pc will handle itself. if there's was any quality control at all (like microsoft and sony have for the consoles) on the pc then these issues wouldn't arise. but then you would probably have about 2 graphics cards to choose from, 1 cpu, 2 types of ram, and you could only use windows 7. but because the pc is essentially the wild west of hardware and software, you have to put up with this kind of shit. new engine, new tech, new game, new launch process, there's gonna be teething problems, and if you can't handle it maybe you should buy a console.

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AMD drivers weren't out yet, they weren't public until a few hours after release

OH JESUS SOMEBODY CALL THE GOVERNMENT!

let's see, it'll take people at least an hour or two to download the 21gigs from steam, "40%" of people has ati, so that means at least 60% will be able to play right away. "Well guys, let's not punish 60% of people just because 40% were cheap fucks and bought the wrong stuff" Democracy wins! USA! USA! USA!"

i mean, no offence.

I checked the steam hardware survey, and AMD doesn't have 40%, Nvidia just has 60%. AMD splits that 40 with Intel. Apparently a whole 6% of Steam users use intel graphics. I am absolutely flabbergasted.

Anyway that's still a third of users who payed for a game and got bullshit with a promise to make it less bullshit later.

Also when I said the stuff about not releasing at all, I was thinking of RE4 PC, or Saint's Row 2 (SR2 PC was actually totally fixable by mods, that work really should've been put in officially though, rather than requiring people seek out mods and shit. The unofficial patch for Vampire Bloodlines does not forgive Troila, no matter how good their artistic content was on that game). Thank God for Capcom's new engine. RE5 is great on PC, except for some clumsy default key bindings that I am totally free to change. I've been meaning to replay it, but the first couple chapters with all the stuff you've got from a New Game+ make it kinda boring.

Also, man, I had no idea "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right" was such a controversial idea.