I'm a PC person and I'm not saying anything. You're absolutely right that for gaming only, PC's are cost prohibitive. For the price of a medium-grade GPU like the 1060 or 580, you can buy an entire console like the base Xbox ONE or PS4. For the price of something a little more high end (but not the highest end) like the Vega 56 /64 or Geforce 1070 / 1080, you can buy a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X and probably have some money left over.
PC Gaming is only "cheap" if you play E-sports titles that can run on any potato PC. To buy what an average gaming PC costs is probably twice the price of a base console, and 1.5 times the price of an upgraded console like the PS4 Pro. I like PC gaming, but I'm not a fanboy who won't admit how expensive it is, especially in terms of initial cost of entry.
@dejavu1982: I get what you're saying, but feel that newer consoles like the Xbox One are getting more and more PC-Like. Including annoying updates at the damndest time (or you can't go online), the requirement to download every game and its patches instead of running it off the disc, and now the Xbox One series runs on Windows 10 with DirectX12 just like modern PC's.
To the point where even a lot of Windows store apps are available on the Xbox One storefront, and run with a virtual mouse that you control with a thumbstick.
That said, consoles are still thankfully more low-maintenance than a PC so far, but I wouldn't be shocked if that didn't change in the future, especially since everyone but Nintendo is literally running their "console" hardware on a custom AMD PC, for all intents and purposes.
This is coming from someone who does play games on PC (albeit mostly for mods and flexibility rather than sheer graphical power, as my gaming PC's always tend to be 2-3 years behind the curb and can barely run "current" games) but buys consoles for simplicity in addition to exclusives.
@Barighm: Very true. And to fund it all they rely on microtransactions and DLC's, sometimes really overpriced add-ons to a full $60 game (so they're double dipping) and on top of box sales, they're also trying to nickle and dime customers and also appeal to whales to drop hundred (if not thousands more) on a full priced game that could've solely been funded by initital sales alone.
Thankfully there's been some backlash against it, like the Battlefront 2 and Shadow of War, but just pushing better and better graphics seems to just be increasing development costs to the point where AA and mid-tier developers have just shut down, leaving only AAA big-budget guys and cheap indies.
Don't know if the graphics arms race is sustainable long term just due to the increasing costs in an industry that's frankly just a hobby / luxury good. If you couldn't play games, it'd suck sure, but it's not like it's life threatening, like lacking water, food, or medicine. Plus you could just go outside and kick a can around or perform music or a play like they used to in the past when there wasn't even such a thing as television. Card or board games would also be an option.
@hrv_25: What's wrong with AMD? They've always been good at making console-related stuff, even from the ATi days, and their Zen-based CPU's are really good now. The only thing they're lacking is competitive GPU's for PC, which is why NVidia's raising prices and milking the mid to high end like they are.
@caj1986: I agree, and think that's what's going to happen. Rumors are that the upcoming "Navi" architecture by AMD will be console-focused first, and then (ironically?) ported over to PC's. One rumor says that Navi will be optimized for the PS5.
@Deckard2323: Agree with you on all points. Especially with Tyranny, which was so polished and streamlined compared to Pillars 1, that I feel like it's the game that Pillars should've been.
To be fair, toxic people cold probably easily get around this filter by mispelling words on purpose (including adding / subtracting letters, replacing with numbers, adding spaces, etc.) and innocent people could get caught up in the filter due to typos or words meaning something different in another language.
The best way to implement something like this is to have actual humans watching / playing in matches near 24/7 and looking for real patterns of abuse / toxicity with maybe some machine learning help, but that would probably be too expensive.
Automated tracking and bans are just too easy to get around though.
Well, I guess we'll see how the final game turns out, but I'm thinking they'll find out that Players can always find new ways to abuse the systems and have to patch in solutions fast if they want to solve these problems.
I hope they listen to calls for an offline mode, even if it's limited or content-locked. Even some single-player capable story DLC would help.
Not shocked, the game's not been particularly interesting for a while now, and has always suffered from getting repetitive and same-y after a certain amount of playing. Probably wasn't making enough money, and the cost of making new content was likely too high as well. Doesn't help that some of the design decisions they've made weren't great and that the game always had balance issues.
@biggamerdude: I like it and am back into playing it. The thing I most dislike about it is the Elder Scrolls / Skyrim-esque "Wander around picking up junk and crap everywhere" busywork, and think that you should be able to send settlers out to farm that for you so you can focus on the important stuff, and the same-y dungeon grinds with a few holotapes in them are boring too, but the main storyline is great.
The introduction sequence, the big beats of the campaign, the plot twist, the cinematic introduction of the Factions (particularly the Brotherhood of Steel) was all like playing through a blockbuster movie.
The introduction sequence in Fallout 4 was the best of any Fallout IMHO, and much better than the lackluster "Temple of Trials" tutorial in Fallout 2, which was my least favorite. The Automatron DLC is fun so far, and I haven't even touched Nuka World and Far Harbor yet, but they seem like they'll be fun based on what I've read.
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