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

[shotgunbob04]

It's so easy, and has been my main platform of choice for about three years now.

And one of my favorite things about playing games on PC is that I can most likely boot up a game from 10 years ago and run it at today's resolutions and framerates with little to no work.

Playing Driveclub and Bloodborne on my PS4 Pro reminded me that on console, you're at the mercy of the developer/publisher releasing a "pro" patch that allows you to actually take full advantage of the hardware you paid for.

 

[sleepnaught]

PC is the easiest way to play other than Switch.

 

[Kittens McMittens]

Honestly, the hardest part about playing on PC is just having a desk and a good chair. If you have those things, your good to go.

I recently got back into PC gaming, partly because of Destiny having cross save but mainly because I set up a proper desk area at home so I can work.

 

[Deleted member 41638]

Fucking Windows 10 updates man, so annoying.

Sure there are more hoops you have to jump through but PC has the widest selection of games and they typically all run significantly better.

 

[345]

i would say technical issues are super uncommon these days if you're trying to run a modern game on a good rig with a 16:9 monitor. i grew up in the 90s when PC gaming was often a legit nightmare and would say so on message boards and be told that i was an idiot, so i've paid my dues. at this point, though, things generally do just work.

of course there are incompatibility problems with older games and non-standard resolutions and so on but generally windows 10 is a super stable gaming platform today. the upsides far outweigh the downsides.

g-sync in particular is an incredible equaliser — suddenly framerate drops just don't really matter any more.

 

[JudgmentJay]

No, but I've been playing on PC for almost 3 decades. As others have said it's easier than ever.

 

[Xando]

Alone?

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Dat PC simulator training

 

[Mentalist]

Just FYI, you CAN build a PC without ever watching a youtube guide or anything like that. I know, because I did that, almost a decade ago, after buying a "barebones kit" and then buying a GPU, monitor and all the other stuff separately. Prior to that, my experience with hardware consisted of watching someone assemble a PC in-store in the very early 2000s. My parents always bought pre-bought, so all I ever did before that was connect the various wires in the back of a tower, so I wasn't some kind of a mechanical genius.

EDIT: actually, no I lied. In Uni I took my laptops apart a few times to clean the fans (again, without any instruction, just using a bunch of screwdrivers). Dunno if that really "taught" me anything, since laptop mobos are a whole other beast from a desktop) /edit

Obviously, you need to do some research about the kinds of parts you want. But the actual mechanical bits? If you ever used a screwdriver before, you should be fine. Building a basic PC is essentially plug'n'play these days.

 

[TransEuropaExpress]

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.

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I know it's not rocket science but...like I said, I'm entirely too lazy for this LEGO shit and the, to me, massive costs just to play video games. To me even what you just typed is a foreign language and a lot honestly haha.

 

[ArnoldJRimmer]

It's easier than it's been a decade ago, that's for sure, but still I'm not a fan of having to worry about compatibility, drivers, performance. I don't nearly have as much time to play as before, so I want to use my time that I dedicate to gaming to... actuall game, not tinker my settings and such. So for a decade or so now my main place to play is consoles, despite a lengthy time spent mainly being on PC. I don't regret it, and I still can play what is vastly superior on PC (or simply unavailable on consoles) on the computer I own, I just won't bother keeping it up-to-date like I used to.

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Ive heard this a lot in the past, though notably a lot less now a days, but it never made ANY type of sense to me.

Worse case scenario, if you absolutely have got to tinker and play with every setting because... i dont know why but whatever, and maybe tweak a little more mid game or whatever. You're talking what 10 minutes 15 minutes TOPS, and again, worse case scenario here, you absolutely must compare all settings and benchmark.

Thats the entire time lost in an entire playthrough of a game.... vs how much time you lose stuck behing load screens on consoles in your average game?

I mean witcher 3 on ps4 was like over a minute to load into the game, then as much as 2.5 minutes to get back if you died, to over a minute fast traveling. You could easily spend more time staring at a load screen on console witcher 3 in a SINGLE PLAY SESSION, than you would spend tinkering with settings with PC witcher the entire 80 hour playthrough.

Hell your reasoning is precisely why i played on PC almost exclusively: i have less time to play thanks to family and work, so id rather, you know, play the game rather than watch load screens.

 

[iceblade]

PC gaming has come a long way. I believe it was the introduction of Steam that got the ball rolling, and it still hasn't stopped. Unless you get actual technical problems, gaming on a PC isn't really any more difficult than gaming on a console.

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This and it's actually easier since you're more able to do something to fix the issues, whereas on console you are likely going to need to wait for a patch.

 

[ArnoldJRimmer]

I know it's not rocket science but...like I said, I'm entirely too lazy for this LEGO shit and the, to me, massive costs just to play video games. To me even what you just typed is a foreign language and a lot honestly haha.

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Cost over the lifetime of a console vs pc is actually not bad at all unless your in australia maybe.

 

[Dinjoralo]

Building a PC on your own can be a bit complicated, but there's plenty of tools for making good machines at whatever budget and making sure everything's compatible.

 

[Duxxy3]

Easier than before, but it's not perfect. Most recent one for me - I wanted to play Gears of War Ultimate Edition last night, but realized that the developer abandoned the game a couple years ago and performance is horrible with any recent version of Windows 10.

 

[aisback]

It's stupidly easy.

I can't remember the last time I had t manually apply patches

 

[LocoRoco]

somethimes yes

one day I stopped playing SFV to go to sleep and the next morning the game stopped to work, after 253 hours the game no longer works, it's been 8 months already,

I tried everything on the web and nothing works

 

[Crayon]

I prefer PC. If you ask me, there is notably more fiddling and random issues than a console, but it's still not much in absolute terms. Trust me, I wouldn't have one hooked up to my TV just for games if it wasn't very convenient overall.

As for the price, don't let this place fool you into thinking everybody has an $800 video card. A lot of PC users look at their PC as kind of a hot rod and they like to talk shop,
Maybe brag a bit. Many more of us run on pretty basic stuff. I can't even remember what card I bought six months ago. It's a 580 or 570 I don't know LOL. It was marked down a lot to 169 and came with re2 and DMC 5. This replaces a $100 750ti that I used for 4 years. Games look better than my regular PS4 so i no gives a fuck.

That 100 dollar 750ti, by the way. I bought that and a $40 power supply and threw that in and i3 Dell Pinto that someone was literally about to throw away. I had only laptops at the time and not fast ones. Steam for Linux had just come out, and I wanted to go back to PC gaming but not break the bank. And really you don't have to.

I rebuilt it last year, and I only moved over that power supply and my hard drive. If you add up all the parts in it including those, it was about 500. Seems to be in theperformance ballpark of a PS4 Pro?

Starts saving you money real quick, too.

It's easy to get it twisted when everybody wants to talk about their thousand-dollar ray tracing cards and no one wants to talk about their $140 dumpster struggle box.

That thing could play current gen games as good as a console, by the way...

 

[Sparks]

Mentally yes... I just cannot get myself to touch my computer when I get home from working on a computer all day

 

[Bootador]

I built my first PC from scratch last month with no issues (well it didn't post but finally figured the RAM wasn't in properly). It was stressful but it was satisfying and now I can basically play anything!

Oh, and having access to a mouse/keyboard makes stuff like Divinity enjoyable all of a sudden.

 

['V']

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.

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Yeah you have a point there.

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.

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It's really useful in the same way rest mode on console is. If you ever need to be away from your PC for a long time and don't want to leave it on, just stick it in sleep and resume when you come back. Works for me every time.

 

[TheRulingRing]

Yes. I recently got a capable PC and it's still waay harder than console to get running, even when prebuilt.

If I hadn't been motivated to research that stuff myself then it would have been a crap start to PC gaming.

 

[AmFreak]

Cost over the lifetime of a console vs pc is actually not bad at all unless your in australia maybe.

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It's clearly at an advantage if you factor in +/Gold and compare fair aka with parts comparable with what the consoles have.
A VEGA 56 with as much FLOPS as X and Pro together is down to 230€.
The smallest Quad-Core Ryzen costs 50€.
16 GB are >=60€.
A cheap Mobo is 50€.
Add another 110€ for a cheap case + nt + 1TB HDD

Then you have a PC with a far better gpu, better cpu and 16+8GB Memory for ~500€.

 

[Kyrios]

Couldn't be any easier really.

 

[Karppuuna]

Yes, i do. Have to adjust fans and controller is a hassle.
PS4 i just push one button in the controller and i'm back in the game from sleep mode.

 

[Yourfawthaaa]

Nah.

At first, i was hesitant to play with mouse and keyboard (same thing happened way back when analog became a thing) but i grew comfortable with it. Performance alone is why i love gaming on my pc but i still love consoles for the exclusives they offer.

Glad i built a pc and joined the gaming pc community.

 

[Deleted member 10629]

No. The hardest thing about PC gaming aside of saving money is placing the CPU on its socket, and even then you can get someone to do it for you.

Everything is so seamless now.

 

[SirMossyBloke]

It's easy as hell nowadays, and whatever you may need to tweak is easily available online.

There really isn't any reason not to jump on PC gaming.

 

[thebishop]

Yeah you have a point there.

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The funny thing is that both Intel and AMD CPUs have quasi-secret "management engines" inside which could do some of this work in low power mode. But because it's such a sensitive (and frankly invasive) technology, its potentially useful functionality is not available to end-users.

 

[c0Zm1c]

Yes, i do. Have to adjust fans and controller is a hassle.
PS4 i just push one button in the controller and i'm back in the game from sleep mode.

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Adjust fans?

 

[thebishop]

No. The hardest thing about PC gaming aside of saving money is placing the CPU on its socket, and even then you can get someone to do it for you.

Everything is so seamless now.

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imo installing the heatsink is way harder than installing the CPU.

 

[Crayon]

Fucking Windows 10 updates man, so annoying.

Sure there are more hoops you have to jump through but PC has the widest selection of games and they typically all run significantly better.

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The reason I gave up PC gaming was because I was sick of windows and switched to Mac a long time ago. Then I switched to Linux kind of also a long time ago. Wow time flies.

Anyways, I tried boot camp and stuff, but having to update Windows after you haven't used it for a minute is ridiculous. It can take hours. Besides, it's pretty annoying to shut down a desktop that could otherwise be up for weeks at a time every time you want to play a game. So I just gave up on that.

But now I can play games on Linux, so it's great for a PC hooked up to the TV. The OS shuts the fuck up, updates are like 30 seconds or a minute and under your control. No restart required. GPU driver takes care of itself. And everything stays how you left it until you decide to change something. Crazy concept, I know.

I think Windows is the worst thing about PC gaming and I'm glad there's starting to be a choice now. Emphasis on 'starting', because Windows is still easily the best overall for most people; Performance, compatibility, tools. I speak on behalf of, what?, 1% of us?

Part of what's awesome about PC. There are options out there that even only 1% of us will use.

 

[Lashley]

It's easier than it's ever been.

 

[Tibarn]

PC is the easiest way to play other than Switch.

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This.

My PC loads faster than my Ps4 Pro, the game are easily accessible from the Steam list (and searching an specific game is far easier than in the Sony's OS for some reason), load times are overall shorter even using an HDD and driver installation/updates is automatic practically.

Switch is the easier system to use, the sleep mode is great and the games don't require installation time, but other than that PC is far more convenient, unless your internet connection is slow.

 

[Shining Star]

Yes, I just have no idea about specs or what anything means.

 

[raketenrolf]

It's easy but can be annoying to get some (mostly older games) to run properly. But when they run, they're the best version by a mile 99% of the time (controller support sucks for many old games tho, still better than a few years ago).

 

[TaterTots]

It's as easy as it will ever be. You click the launcher, then click the game you want to play. You can set Geforce to automatically download drivers etc. You can even use a controller on pretty much every modern game now. Think the biggest issue for some is the entry price. It can be a lot even though you will be saving money long term. Some cannot justify that buy in price though.

I haven't played a game on PC for around a year now. I started working from home and sit at my desk on the computer all day(right now even lol). Last thing I want to do is continue to sit there to play games when I get off work. I did have a Steam Link, but I couldn't get over the latency.

 

[Save Now Chicken 25%]

I've held off on installing Gears 4 and 5 because I don't want to deal with finding space for them, but also this is true for 100% of the games I play on PS4 as well and much more annoying on that so whatever.

 

[Smokey]

It is for me most of the time.

Download, install, boot, play.

The only extra step for the majority of games is messing with settings.

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And even then, that can be automatically done for you.

 

[Deleted member 10629]

imo installing the heatsink is way harder than installing the CPU.

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It requires more effort but IMO there's less chance of fucking up something fatally

 

[Kaji AF16]

Not particularly hard, per se. During the last decade and a half or so it has arguably become more streamlined.
That said, I don`t find it as cohesive and comfortable as console gaming. Working on a PC several hours per day makes the switch to playing on a console a vital part of my current gaming experiences; it implies a change of attitude, of posture, of ecosystem that I ultimately need and prefer. I am no longer comfortable when playing with keyboard and mouse, for example... and I was extremely used to it back in the day. I know I can use almost any pad on a PC, but that`s not the point.

I could also argue about the relative costs (here in Argentina, a powerful gaming PC can be significantly more expensive than any console -I am talking about several monthly average incomes-level expensive-; if I add Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to the equation, it almost becomes a no-brainer, unless I were to pirate PC games).

Obviously, PC gaming has some relative advantages. I did prioritize it as my main gaming platform for 15 long years, but no more. I can`t really say, though, that it is mainly related to ease of use. It includes it, but also trascends it. If I want to do some emulation or `80s-`90s vintage gaming, I can always use my work laptop. Putting a gaming PC together? Not for me anymore.

 

[c0Zm1c]

Part of what's awesome about PC. There are options out there that even only 1% of us will use.

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Thinking about that, it always bugs me when people (on Steam) dismiss complaints about the lack of, for example, ultrawide support, like we should all comply with a common standard, when that goes against the very nature of an open platform. And they'll use Steam stats to prop up their counter argument failing to realise that despite the percentage being really low it's still in the millions of users!

 

[RetroMG]

It's not hard, but consoles are easier. Especially if I want to play on my big TV and my couch. Then I have to mess around with streaming from Steam to whatever.

 

[GearDraxon]

Yes, I just have no idea about specs or what anything means.

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If you're interested, the PC Builders Thread can be super-helpful, even if you're not familiar with the specs. As Crayon mentioned above, because posters lean more towards the "enthusiast" side of things, they can get far into the weeds with details that the typical user doesn't need to know. If you say "hey, I like these sorts of games, this is the monitor/TV I want to hook up to it, this is my budget" they can give you a couple of good system recommendations without going into why each specific part was chosen.

 

[Astronut325]

I still find consoles to be easier and less hassle than PCs. My PC is getting old and running games on it now can get tricky to get decent performance. Also, my setup is more comfortable where my PS4 is. My PC setup has a $20 IKEA chair.

 

[Fredrik]

Nope, it's like playing on consoles, but better.

 

[Butane]

Been a console gamer all my life. Decided that I do need a new computer (my laptop is pushing 7 years old), so I might as well build one since it seems cheaper that just outright buying one.

So far I can say that it looks like the process of building one is not too bad (I'm still a bit weary on the actual wiring of it and installing motherboard/gpu drivers), but man, that price of some components and differences between trying to figure out what you want and wondering how good it will be and how long it will be relevant for is kinda nerveracking, especially since I want to try to be fairly budget with it and know new consoles are just around the corner.

 

[ViperViking]

The worst thing that I've heard people having an issue with is graphics drivers. AMD graphics drivers are somewhat difficult, and I've seen first-hand NVidia graphics drivers make someone think that they had a bad GPU. Of course, once you figure out it's your graphics drivers you can just DDU it and directly install the latest driver from NVidia, then update from GeForce Experience from there. But that's the worst issue if you ask me.

Other than that, I think gaming on PC is pretty simple.

 

[Deleted member 25117]

No. In fact my PS4 gives me more trouble than my PC most of the time.

 

[Crayon]

Stop complaining about your PC being in your office when you're the one who put it in your office lol.

 

[Fredrik]

It's not hard, but consoles are easier. Especially if I want to play on my big TV and my couch. Then I have to mess around with streaming from Steam to whatever.

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Mess around? Steam link is super easy, setting it up is straight forward and you just wake it up from the controller and choose the game to play like if it was a console.