In 2019, do you consider it hard to play on PC?

[Shalashaska]

PC gaming has been pretty straightforward for at least a decade. The problem has always been that 1% of the time when things go wrong, and you get stuck messing with drivers or searching random forums for solutions. But even that is really rare these days.

 

[Xando]

It's basically the same as console now.

true.

my pc:

£500 for a CPU
£300 for a motherboard
£300 for RAM
£450 for storage
£750 for a GPU.

and that's not all the parts. sure you can get much cheaper builds but PC gaming can't touch how cheap it is to buy a console.

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RAM for 300?

Did you buy 256GB or what?


I literally bought 16GB DDR4 for 80€ last week.

 

[Guaraná]

simply not true.

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its actually easier.

 

[Patch13]

Something that has gotten a whole lot easier is playing on Linux. A lot of Windows games Just Work under Proton. And for stuff that isn't on Steam, Lutris works reasonably well, too. That's not to say that everything is perfect. I've got Magic Arena running on my Linux box, and it runs really well under Wine, but I have to manually download updates and run them from the command line, which is a little less than ideal.

That said, there are a lot of ways for things to go more seriously wrong. Thermal throttling sucks, and if you're looking for portable gaming, it's really, really easy to wind up buying a machine that hitches and chugs, even when it has the specs to run a game on paper. You have to do some research and have a basic understanding of what compromises you or the person who designed your PC might have made, and be okay with those compromises, be they the thermal solution on a laptop, or the price/power ratio of the video card in a desktop.

If you've done your homework, you will wind up with a machine that has a massive back catalog of older games, has extensive mod support, and a plethora of control options. Sadly, there isn't a PC OS that really supports your basic "kick back on the couch with friends and family" scenario without a lot of tinkering, headaches, and digging out keyboards to type in a password and whatnot. Consoles are still king there. ymmv

 

[flyingman]

its actually easier.

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Yeah you can think that but its simply not true. Era bubble at best.

 

[Deleted member 48897]

Funnily enough I stayed up a little too late last night trying to figure out how to get the IRQ setup for my NeoMagic MagicWave sound card working with most of my DOS programs. I actually made what I think was a little bit of progress but the CMOS battery had been out of juice so something in the BIOS got reset that meant I was no longer able to get General MIDI sound output from my DOS programs (the sound card has the ability to do sample-based synthesis rather than just use a SB Pro / OPL3 for music). I'm wondering if I need to turn the IR port back off, which is the only thing I can think of I haven't changed. After all, I don't have any hardware that uses it.

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Just for the record, this isn't a bit but is legit what I was doing last night. I've got a Gateway laptop I keep around for when I want to do stuff in Windows 98 or DOS. Games I was testing were Kings Quest II and III that I'd put a patch on to use MIDI instead of PC speaker for sound, because fuck trying to use the PC speaker for actual music

 

[s_mirage]

Usually dead easy, and if something does go wrong then treat it as an opportunity to learn more about the ins and outs of the hardware and OS. That's something that you had to do 20+ years ago (especially before having a net connection) but precious few people seem to do today.

 

[FondsNL]

Yes, because I'm 33 and I have a two year old daughter.
Any gaming I get in is in the evenings when I should be able to pause games if necessary.
Console gaming is all I do these days.

 

[ramoisdead]

Nope it's just expensive.

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Pretty much. It's easier than ever to find compatible parts (pcpartpicker), build it piece by piece (it's almost plug and play), install mods for games (Steam workshop or user guides for fan patches), driver installation (just a click away).

The only thing that it's a detriment is how much to fork over because Nvidia, Intel and other companies keep their prices up.

 

[Edgar]

Yeah you can think that but its simply not true. Era bubble at best.

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you mean console focused era bubble , right?

 

[Glass Arrows]

The main problem for me personally is the asking price.

To illustrate: I'm going to get paid two month's worth of salary at the end of September (long story). I'm not sure how much is going to be left after taxes just yet, but most likely, with that money the most I could buy is maybe a 2200g-based PC with no GPU and 8GB's of RAM. And I don't mean "after I spend most of it on bills", I mean that buying something like that would take up most of that money period.

Buying a PC with respectable specs (as in a six-core cpu, 16 GB of 3000+mhz ram, a 1660 ti, etc) is going to take until like the beginning of January at the earliest.

This isn't taking into account potential headaches I might have like taking the time to build the PC, troubleshooting it if something goes wrong, potentially having to replace parts...

I mean I'm still planning on doing it anyway, buying a console would be more convenient but IMO doesn't make much sense financially since I will use my PC for a lot of other things besides gaming, so it's worth it to upgrade.

Beyond all that I think the experience on PC is mostly fine.

 

[Deleted member 1594]

Yes, because I'm 33 and I have a two year old daughter.
Any gaming I get in is in the evenings when I should be able to pause games if necessary.
Console gaming is all I do these days.

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Turns out, you can't pause PC games.
I didn't know that.
I guess I've been playing PC games incorrectly with a 3 year old daughter this whole time.

 

[flyingman]

you mean console focused era bubble , right?

Click to shrink...

not really . High level PC gaming is very much era focused considering its expensive and hardcore based thing. Most people play on PCs but they are from poor areas like Russia,eastern europe,middle east,china. Which income is very low for average person and they simply play low end f2p games , month of stream games etc

 

[cyress8]

Back in the day, playing PC games from bed was not even a thought in my mind. Now though, I'm laid out on the couch/recliner/bed dozing off mid-game on my off day.

 

[theSoularian]

For me personally, no. That's because I've gaming on PC for like 20 years and all my PCs have been custom built.

Some of you here are assuming custom built is the only option when it isn't. Pre built PCs still exists if you don't want to do all that.

 

['V']

true.

my pc:

£500 for a CPU
£300 for a motherboard
£300 for RAM
£450 for storage
£750 for a GPU.

and that's not all the parts. sure you can get much cheaper builds but PC gaming can't touch how cheap it is to buy a console.

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You can build a PC with used/new parts for the same price (or cheaper) than a console nowadays which will also massively outperform it as consoles are locked to 30 fps in like 99% of games.

As for your build, £300 for a mobo and RAM is colossally overkill.
£500 for a CPU is also massively overkill if you're using it for gaming, though if you're doing Premiere Pro work or other demanding software then it makes sense I guess. The current go-to CPU for gaming is the Ryzen 3600 which is under £200.

 

[Tbm24]

Turns out, you can't pause PC games.
I didn't know that.
I guess I've been playing PC games incorrectly with a 3 year old daughter this whole time.

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Having a 2 year old has made playing on my PC specifically substantially harder. Between not being to sit there with headphones on to play MP games or my wife giving me the side eye for sitting at my PC setup in my own little world all the time. At least with the switch or my console I can be more in the family space and my daughter won't run in to the room all the time to get my attention and climb on it while I'm mid game which you CAN'T pause(I mostly play MP games only on PC).

 

[pswii60]

I jumped back in to PC gaming after an almost 20 year hiatus this year and it's stupidly easy these days. Everything is automatic, especially if you use Steam. I use Big Picture Mode and have my PC connected to my living room OLED, couch gaming using an Xbox controller for everything. It's perfect. And everything just works, unlike in the old days when I spent forever tweaking things.

Just make sure you use decent components with good driver support, and don't install any silly stuff.

PC gaming is amazing these days. With a 2080ti it's a gigantic leap ahead of current consoles (and likely still ahead of the next gen too) and it can work just like a console if you want it to, but if you ever want more than that (mods etc) you can do that too. No longer am I confined to having to put up with games with 30fps, or unlocked framerates, bad frame pacing, low resolutions because they didn't get Pro/X patched etc. And playing classic games like Mass Effect, Dead Space, Sonic Generations, Mirrors Edge, Alien Isolation, Portal 2 etc at 4k/60fps, is also nothing short of incredible.

 

[Adam_Roman]

Since getting my Steam Link I've played games on PC way more than I used to. Even stuff through uPlay works great as long as you feed the shortcut to Steam.

 

[NattyBo]

My second foray into PC gaming has been a much better experience than my experience in the late 90 and early 00. It was really shitty to spend money to get BSOD

 

[SweetBellic]

No. On the contrary, I find it harder to play on console, handheld, or mobile, knowing I could be having a better experience playing on my vastly superior PC hardware. Alas, exclusives are the bane of my privileged existence.

 

[Deleted member 1594]

Having a 2 year old has made playing on my PC specifically substantially harder. Between not being to sit there with headphones on to play MP games or my wife giving me the side eye for sitting at my PC setup in my own little world all the time. At least with the switch or my console I can be more in the family space and my daughter won't run in to the room all the time to get my attention and climb on it while I'm mid game which you CAN'T pause(I mostly play MP games only on PC).

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None of that is a limitation on PC Gaming though. You could have a PC in the living room if you wanted. And multiplayer games can't be paused on any system ;)

 

[Tbm24]

None of that is a limitation on PC Gaming though. You could have a PC in the living room if you wanted. And multiplayer games can't be paused on any system ;)

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That's all really besides the point. The person you quoted and myself are simply expressing our experiences with PC gaming. As you might imagine, it's very likely me and the other poster actually DO like to PC game. You just replied sarcastically for reasons I don't understand.

 

[Suburban Thug]

I went from being console only for 20 years to PC only in 2017, so no

 

[chrominance]

Yes, because I'm 33 and I have a two year old daughter.
Any gaming I get in is in the evenings when I should be able to pause games if necessary.
Console gaming is all I do these days.

Click to shrink...

This is the biggest thing still missing from the PC side. You can suspend games on all the major consoles now, but for the most part you still can't do this with PC games. Emulators tend to be a lot better at this, and a small handful of modern games can start up instantly from a save game (Trails of Cold Steel 1/2 I believe do this, thanks to Durante's work on the PC ports), but for the most part you still have to sit through a bunch of logos and go through the menus to get into a game, and you're at the mercy of whatever save game system is built into the game.

I'd also say that as the years have gone by, the technical knowledge you need to get started with PC gaming hasn't necessarily increased, but it does change, especially now that AMD is taking back market share. For example, around the time of the first-gen Ryzen, there were lots of issues with Ryzen setups requiring RAM underclocks for high-rated sticks to boot properly and remain stable. Figuring out what RAM sticks and speeds were supported by your motherboard was a crapshoot of looking up manufacturer support grids (which were always hilariously incomplete and often outdated) and checking Reddit to see what people were saying about the RAM you wanted to buy.

Barring that, you had to put the sticks in, tinker with speed and timing settings in the BIOS, and then wait to see if the machine posts and remains stable. This kind of thing is okay once you get used to it, but I can see how it'd be incredibly intimidating for someone who just wants to get some parts together and build a thing.

Luckily, I don't think that specific RAM issue is a problem anymore. But hey, now you get to worry if that B450 board you just bought supports Ryzen 3xxx chips out of the box, or if you need to ask AMD to ship you a firmware upgrade kit. Easy peasy!

I say all this as someone who considers the PC their primary gaming platform and has played PC games for decades now. There are plenty of benefits and the physical process of putting together a PC is pretty straightforward nowadays. But there are still gotchas.

 

[Bjones]

Of course you will get skewed answers with such a topic, but here is my take.

It's easier than it was 6 years ago but not as easy it was 2 years ago.
You have to use multiple services , multiple accounts, and there seems to have been a surge of windows 10 , hardware, and port issues the past two years on top of that.

 

[c0Zm1c]

I wouldn't say it's hard to play on PC as such, most games play fine 'out of the box' so to speak, you just need to want to sort out any problems you might encounter with the ones that don't, which is typically just a quick Google search away. It helps to have the initiative to do that. And you can still run into problems even with the latest games - I'm not sure why people here are claiming otherwise - but it's intrinsic to the platform and I wouldn't have it any other way to be completely honest. The pros far outweigh any cons.

 

[Stryder]

It's really hard to play on the PC for me.

I have a badass rig and too many games to play. I can't ever choose. It's fucking dreadful. Gears 5 is out Monday and I have xbox game pass on PC, but I have such a large backlog on steam.

 

[Jeronimo]

It's not hard, I'm just not interested. I'd need to invest in a better pc and would have to incorporate it into my media room to get any usefulness from it.

 

[Korezo]

I bought crash bandicoot not too long ago, and the game can't even launch. I hate when I run into these rare issues. But I still have yet to play it because its a common problem some people have and bo fix available. Times like this makes me hat pc gaming.

 

[Torpedo Vegas]

For me personally yes, but not because it is hard to play on PC, but I can't stop myself messing with settings. I'll play for a bit and then start thinking I wonder if I can get this or that to work. Next thing I know its been 2 hours and several google searches and I've played all of 15 minutes. Then with stuff like Skyrim I've played just as much Nexus Mod Manager as I think I have the game.

So it's nice for me to play stuff on consoles sometimes because I don't have any choice but to accept things how they are and just play the game.

 

[thebishop]

I think PC gaming has gradually gone backward from its peak around 2015. The prevalence of siloed downloaders/launchers has really killed the experience for me. Steam was on a trajectory to turn PC into the best of all worlds: total flexibility for enthusiasts, console-like convenience for mass audiences. But as EA and Ubi and Activision, and now Epic have fractured the ecosystem into a bunch of shitty portals, it's a far less convenient way to play than Playstation4.

I'm still rooting for PC, but I fear the publishers are just going to pick the carcass until there's nothing left.

imo the next horizon for dramatically improving the convenience of gaming will be cloud streaming, and especially Google Stadia. If their tech works, it will be by far the easiest way to play games. If their tech is bad, then I'm probably gonna be mainly gaming on PS5.

 

[EloKa]

5.1GHz across 8 cores. 32GB RAM running at 3400. RTX 2080 @ 2110MHz. 1600W PSU. 8TB Storage.

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Did someone told you that you will need a 1600W PSU? If so: that person is lying

 

['V']

You can suspend games on all the major consoles now, but for the most part you still can't do this with PC games

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Actually you can. Just put the PC to sleep instead of shutting it down and sleep is pretty much identical to rest mode on the PS4/XB1.
Seeing how hard MS are trying to fix the gaming side of things on Windows I don't think it'll be long before we see key features implemented to aid with the gaming experience anyway. They're already dropping UWP for Xbox games and porting DX12 to Win7. Ideally they will make a Steam Big Picture mode for Xbox on PC as well. The Windows game bar is already completely usable with a controller which makes recording clips, taking screenshots, sending messages and invites so much easier for MS games like Minecraft or Horizon 4 which I feel are most comfortable on a controller.

In a perfect scenario they will allow Xbox disks to be used on PC (including multiplats) so I can have a neat physical library but without being locked at 30 fps on a console. I know there would be a lot of hurdles to overcome for MS and partners for that to happen but it's still my dream.

 

[Pheace]

true.

my pc:

£500 for a CPU
£300 for a motherboard
£300 for RAM
£450 for storage
£750 for a GPU.

and that's not all the parts. sure you can get much cheaper builds but PC gaming can't touch how cheap it is to buy a console.

Click to shrink...

wtf is with those prices, I've never spent that much on a GPU and I've been coasting on my GPU for 3-4 years already and still don't feel the need to replace it. RAM, not a chance in hell you're spending 300 these days, it's incredibly cheap.

 

[Cordelia]

Building a PC is like building an IKEA stuff. Some people find it easy, can do it with eyes closed, some people find it hard, like building a rocket.

Playing games on PC is super easy, just double click, open Netflix or youtube or Era if you got multi monitor. The hardest part of playing on PC is if you are trying to play with emulators.

 

[thebishop]

Actually you can. Just put the PC to sleep instead of shutting it down and sleep is pretty much identical to rest mode on the PS4/XB1.
Seeing how hard MS are trying to fix the gaming side of things on Windows I don't think it'll be long before we see key features implemented to aid with the gaming experience anyway. They're already dropping UWP for Xbox games and porting DX12 to Win7. Ideally they will make a Steam Big Picture mode for Xbox on PC as well. The Windows game bar is already completely usable with a controller which makes recording clips, taking screenshots, sending messages and invites so much easier for MS games like Minecraft or Horizon 4 which I feel are most comfortable on a controller.

In a perfect scenario they will allow Xbox disks to be used on PC (including multiplats) so I can have a neat physical library but without being locked at 30 fps on a console. I know there would be a lot of hurdles to overcome for MS and partners for that to happen but it's still my dream.

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The nice thing about the consoles is they can still do things in low power mode. There's a separate ARM-based computer inside that can do game updates and receive remote store download requests and stuff. It's pretty great.

 

[chrominance]

Actually you can. Just put the PC to sleep instead of shutting it down and sleep is pretty much identical to rest mode on the PS4/XB1.
Seeing how hard MS are trying to fix the gaming side of things on Windows I don't think it'll be long before we see key features implemented to aid with the gaming experience anyway. They're already dropping UWP for Xbox games and porting DX12 to Win7. Ideally they will make a Steam Big Picture mode for Xbox on PC as well. The Windows game bar is already completely usable with a controller which makes recording clips, taking screenshots, sending messages and invites so much easier for MS games like Minecraft or Horizon 4 which I feel are most comfortable on a controller.

In a perfect scenario they will allow Xbox disks to be used on PC (including multiplats) so I can have a neat physical library but without being locked at 30 fps on a console. I know there would be a lot of hurdles to overcome for MS and partners for that to happen but it's still my dream.

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Oh. Hmm. I honestly never put my computer to sleep so this isn't something I've ever tried.

That said, that wouldn't be the system I want for suspend/resume anyways, because usually I want to put a game on hold to do other stuff on my computer. Alt-Tab works for short periods of time but sometimes you want something in between.

 

[Mr.Vic20]

Depends, how good are Nvidia's drivers this month?

 

[thebishop]

Depends, how good are Nvidia's drivers this month?

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It would be so nice if Valve's linux work paid off and we could build AMD+AMD PCs running SteamOS that never need to manually update drivers again. AMD's first class drivers are open source, so it's all plug and play.

 

[Rathorial]

Nope, it's very rare at this point where I run into an issue with a game, and it's easier than it ever was vs. the past. Been a while since a bsod as well.

 

[Hieroph]

I do. I used to play a lot on PC, but it gradually just died out. Now, when I sometimes think about it, I come to the realization that modern PC gaming is just not for me. A big issue is the lack of physical games. Why should I pay through the nose for worthless digital games when the physical releases of those games mostly run great* on PS4 and with none of the hassle?

*not you Control

 

[Fastidioso]

You need a minimum of tech knowledge to build a decent rig. No one should trust blinded to the seller. That's my personal opinion, of course. It's not hard but it needs surely you have some passion/interest to the pc world. Honestly, I think the people who said otherwise (it's easy, it's like console etc etc) live in their little bubble. But I want to be clear, I'm not trying to say it's tough play with it. Just I don't agree with who says it's like console.

 

[Transistor]

Hard? No.
Inconvenient? Yes.

Ever since I had kids, much of my play time is done in short bursts, so I am basically reliant upon the ability to suspend / resume my games at any time, something that a PC just can't really do all that well.

 

[Rosebud]

not really . High level PC gaming is very much era focused considering its expensive and hardcore based thing. Most people play on PCs but they are from poor areas like Russia,eastern europe,middle east,china. Which income is very low for average person and they simply play low end f2p games , month of stream games etc

Click to shrink...

It can be expensive, but it's not hard to play once you have it. It's just like a console: download > install > play.

 

[Rbk_3]

Budget and hardware upgrades keep me away. I simply don't have the interest to research hardware, what runs what and all that stuff. Then again, I may be stuck in a mid 2000's mindset...

Basically the idea of not knowing if my PC can handle some new game I want to play or not and then worrying about upgrades, including the price point of shit like graphics cards, turns me off. I'm too lazy and prefer the convenience of seeing "out on PS4" and going "cool, buying that" and end of story.

What I miss most I guess is playing FPS with a mouse and keyboard, mmmmmm.

Click to shrink...

https://pcpartpicker.com/ will literally walk you through and if you want to pick your own parts it will let you know if everything is compatible. It's really not rocket science. You just need to pick a CPU and Ram that works with a particular motherboard and make sure your PSU can handle your build.

 

[Finaika]

my 5 year old kid can build a PC.

so you can too.

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Alone?

 

[cowbanana]

It's less bothersome than consoles to me because everything is smoother and faster and you can seamlessly swap between a game and browsing/youtube etc. etc. - multitasking is blissful! I can't remember the last time I had to "mess around" to get something to work. I've been using PCs for decades and it's never been easier than now.

 

[Viale]

I dunno about hard, but it can definitely be a lot more annoying than consoles. Spent a couple of hours the other day just trying to get gsync to actually do something and having it fail spectacularly to the point of just having to rely on ingame vsync instead. There are definitely loads of pros to playing a game on pc, but I also prefer just slapping in a disc or cartridge and not giving a shit about anything else.

 

[Pagusas]

Nope, last issue I had was Ace Combat dropping down to 1fps when a missile was fired, but that was my own fault for having a stupid "razor game optimizer" thing installed that decided every time a missile fired in the game it hat to optimize memory (like wtf). Anyway, killed that program fixed all. I don't think I've had a system crash in 3 years. And even then the previous ones were during super high overclock testing.