It's way too much of a chore to play games these days

[cl-scott]

I know this is the PC gaming forum, but this problem is coming to consoles now too.

There are times when you just want to sit down and play a bloody game (possibly literally as well as figuratively), but nooooo... You have to download some patch for the game... So okay, fine, I'll go do something else for 5 minutes while that's going... Get the update installed, and oh look, that was just an update needed by this OTHER update!

Of course it's kind of a double edged sword... On the one hand, now developers feel free to be a bit less stringent in the QA because they can just patch it later. On the other hand, if a bug manages to make it through legitimately, it's nice to have a system in place where that can get fixed. The idea of DLC is also nice. Instead of having to wait for a whole new sequel to be made, you can be drip fed new content for the game. Especially when given the outlay of resources needed for a full on sequel, it gets to be less and less likely that there will be sequels for a lot of good games. Or you get something like Xenosaga for the PS2, where the second installment kind of flopped, and what was supposed to be a 6-8 game series had to be wrapped up in 3.

Unfortunately, I think in large part we all share much of the blame. We keep wanting more and more sophisticated games, so it costs a lot more to put out a game these days compared to say the 1990s. That means that game developers have to make deals with publishers and distributers, all who want to make money on the venture, and insist on things like DRM. If we were willing to accept games on the order of DOOM or maybe Quake, then we might have a lot of games that we can just pick up and play, but who among us can honestly say we'd be completely happy with that? Probably none of us if we're truly honest with ourselves.

 

[runzwithsizorz]

I just refuse to purchase games that have convoluted drm or whatever schemes. ..don't care how "great" they are. Don't mind a simple disk check, but other than that, forget it. Currently playing Witcher enhanced for the second time ,exploring new game options. Have Witcher 2 and some older games I haven't played yet...enough to keep me occupied for quite awhile.

Wife of Runz

 

[ImpulsE69]

I think the only problem is you downgrading to windows 8.

Isn't it more like a full priced expansion pack of useless expansion stuff? lol

I know this is the PC gaming forum, but this problem is coming to consoles now too.

There are times when you just want to sit down and play a bloody game (possibly literally as well as figuratively), but nooooo... You have to download some patch for the game... So okay, fine, I'll go do something else for 5 minutes while that's going... Get the update installed, and oh look, that was just an update needed by this OTHER update!

I called this years ago when people were so excited for xbox live and psn. More control, less quality control. It's exactly what everyone wanted and exactly what they got and next you won't even be able to sell the damn game to get something else. Congratulations, the lazy fucks won.

 

[kalrith]

I agree completely, but I've found a couple ways to lessen the impact of this.

One is to disable my internet connection before opening a game if I don't want it to auto-update. A lot of games (such as SC2) will let you play in offline mode as long as you log in every so often (30 days).

Another thing is if I'm just surfing the internet and plan to game later, I'll open the game to let it update. I do the same thing with my PS3. This is especially relevant with a new game, which will need a lot of updating.

And then I have some older games (Titan Quest, Oblivion, Civ 4, WC3, etc.) installed that I know will take less than 1 minute from the thought of "I want to play this game" to actually playing the game. It's good to have reliable backups like that.

 

[thespyder]

The only way to stop the gaming companies from doing sh*t like this is to stop buying their products that have this kind of DRM. I'm always amazed at the people that bitch and moan about how terrible the DRM in a game like Diablo 3 (or insert Ubisoft title here) is but still buy the damn game... The same thing is true for shooters. You don't think that COD should release a "new" game every year. Don't buy it then.

Ok, here I really need someone to take a reality check. An individual consumer not purchasing a video game does absolutely nothing what so ever to the overall sales of the game. The Publisher couldn't care one bit if John Q Public (as an individual) stops purchasing. The marginal lift of a single disgruntled consumer buying or not buying something isn't even a blip on their radar.

Now, if a coalition of consumers were to band together and uniformly stop purchasing. Or better still, approach the development companies with a real market impact sized petition, that MIGHT wake them up. But telling an individual to not purchase a game doesn't add up to a hill of beans.

 

[Aikouka]

I really don't mind the patching thing, because as a software developer, I know that it's fairly necessary and can be a good thing. Product trouble report resolution is kind of like being a doctor with varying patients... you have to perform triage. You aren't going to worry about some minor spelling mistakes when there's a major showstopper on the list. Sometimes, there simply isn't enough manpower to solve everything on a timely schedule.

It really doesn't help that games are a lot more complex than they used to be.

 

[thespyder]

Absolutely. Particularly with PCs there is almost an infinite combination of Hardware, peripherals, drivers, OS versions and configurations and System resident programs. It is insane to expect every game to be able to have code built to match every single configuration that exists.

And patching allows for bugs or issues that simply never came up in testing, or maybe did come up but wasn't adequately accounted for prior to launch. Or the aforementioned configuration anomalies.

However, a large portion of the Always online 'DRM' (which is largely a misnomer) is so that the publishers can generate a channel to the customer. this channel can be used to further market the customer. it can be used to monitor behavior and therefore generate further sales opportunities. it can be used to control behavior. And it can be used as a sales tool (Our game now has X players playing an average of Y hours a week on it). That is the type of invasiveness that I think is unnecessary.

it's like when you chose to opt out of a marketing email. Well, you have just confirmed your email and it will now be sold to a dozen other marketers as a 'verified' address and hence more valuable. And only guarantees that you will receive four times the amount of junk mail.

 

[Maximilian]

I think the only problem is you downgrading to windows 8.

:thumbsup:

 

[StinkyPinky]

has nobody here every had to mess with creating your own boot floppies to run games?
Don't get me started on trying to get your SoundBlaster Pro card to work so you'd have sound in your games... you kids bitch WAY too much,

Yeah I did all that. I remember Ultima 7 was especially a pain to get running. But that was just the limitation of the hardware at the time, rather than gaming companies being difficult. All computing back then took patience.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Upgraded?! lol

Windows 8 is great. Have been running it for 6 months now with zero issues. Faster and much quicker to navigate.

 

[StinkyPinky]

What bug in dawnguard? I finished it as both a vampire and a dawnguard member. Aside from random crashing it works.

The Moth Priest is hostile to everything, including myself and my companions. Which makes it impossible to continue the quest.

 

[thespyder]

has nobody here every had to mess with creating your own boot floppies to run games?
Don't get me started on trying to get your SoundBlaster Pro card to work so you'd have sound in your games... you kids bitch WAY too much,

LOL. I remember that. I remember having to reconfigure my memory such that I could run the original Gold Box Pool of Radiance. That was a PITA, let me tell you.

Yeah, people whine a fair amount. But then, with the technology today actually being made to run this stuff, you kind of expect that you won't have to fight your hardware and software vendors just to have a good time. And be marketed thoroughly along the way.

 

[Childs]

More importantly, why would you want to play games when you have midget porn?

 

[thespyder]

More importantly, why would you want to play games when you have midget porn?

Presumably because they don't want to wear out their "Joy stick".

 

[Martimus]

:thumbsup:

IRQs, DMAs, highmem.sys, yay!

I think I finally got tired of boot floppies, and I finally ended up writing am autoexec file that let me choose which game I wanted to play, copied a config.sys and autoexec.bat for the game, then rebooted straight into the game.

I did that too, with three options on the boot screen. The batch file even renamed the config.sys files around automatically based on the choice. It was actually relatively easy compared to using something like GFWL.

 

[BladeVenom]

So I'm off to watch midget porn.

So who are the hottest female midget porn stars now?

 

[Bateluer]

Been saying this for a while now, you need to stop buying games that require online connections to play single player and other idiotic draconian DRM schemes. Until you start impacting their bottom line, nothing will change. Nothing changes because you keep buying the games.

Also, Bethesda has never made a bug free game. Everyone from Daggerfall to Skyrim has been a buggy shitfest.

 

[Rambusted]

I dont get Blizzard, they lock you out of a game you legitimately own while hundreds of private wow servers are running 24-7 with total immunity. Molten wow has to have at least 150,000 active accounts, but yet they are concerned about your single D3 account?? Between origin, steam, gfwl, ubi's bs service, and battlenet it really is getting just completely out of hand.

 

[modestninja]

Ok, here I really need someone to take a reality check. An individual consumer not purchasing a video game does absolutely nothing what so ever to the overall sales of the game. The Publisher couldn't care one bit if John Q Public (as an individual) stops purchasing. The marginal lift of a single disgruntled consumer buying or not buying something isn't even a blip on their radar.

Now, if a coalition of consumers were to band together and uniformly stop purchasing. Or better still, approach the development companies with a real market impact sized petition, that MIGHT wake them up. But telling an individual to not purchase a game doesn't add up to a hill of beans.

That's true, but if every consumer that bitched about how shitty so and so company's DRM is didn't buy that game, that would make a huge dent in sales and they'd notice.

As far as I'm concerned, the only person's action that I can control is my own (besides the midget I keep chained up in the basement obviously) so if everyone were to think that way, it would add up.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The Moth Priest is hostile to everything, including myself and my companions. Which makes it impossible to continue the quest.

Yeah I see that one mentioned all over the place but luckily I didn't get it. Some people said doing random things for a while and coming back eventually reset it for some reason. Some people say using a pacification spell or power works too *shrug*

That's true, but if every consumer that bitched about how shitty so and so company's DRM is didn't buy that game, that would make a huge dent in sales and they'd notice.

As far as I'm concerned, the only person's action that I can control is my own (besides the midget I keep chained up in the basement obviously) so if everyone were to think that way, it would add up.

You know that's not what happens though lol. People still run out to buy the latest titles every time.

 

[thespyder]

That's true, but if every consumer that bitched about how shitty so and so company's DRM is didn't buy that game, that would make a huge dent in sales and they'd notice.

As far as I'm concerned, the only person's action that I can control is my own (besides the midget I keep chained up in the basement obviously) so if everyone were to think that way, it would add up.

True. IF every consumer spoke up. My point is, that without unification, not every consumer is going to stand up. Not even 'Enough' consumers are going too. It only works if there is unification and some kind of solidarity. Which there isn't currently.

 

[Martimus]

True. IF every consumer spoke up. My point is, that without unification, not every consumer is going to stand up. Not even 'Enough' consumers are going too. It only works if there is unification and some kind of solidarity. Which there isn't currently.

So you want to create a disgruntalled gamer union? I don't feel the same way, since I don't care enough for the companies that do things I don't like to want them to change. They are failing well enough on their own and someone else will take over for them afterward.

 

[thespyder]

So you want to create a disgruntalled gamer union? I don't feel the same way, since I don't care enough for the companies that do things I don't like to want them to change. They are failing well enough on their own and someone else will take over for them afterward.

I want to create no such thing. I was merely indicating that telling individual consumers to not purchase does nothing.

And people with attitudes such as yours only makes the matter worse. Without a unified front to stand up for the gamers wants and needs, the game developers will continue to do things their way.

 

[micrometers]

The problem for me is that I've so intellectualized games that I can't enjoy them much anymore.

 

[Sulaco]

The problem for me is that I've so intellectualized games that I can't enjoy them much anymore.

Uh huh.

How does one "intellectualize" Dragon Age 2 exactly?