The AMBIVALENT Thread: Have Mixed Feelings Here!

[BP]

From HOPEFUL: Dead Rising 3 hype and PC elitism

The bad news is that DR3 has come out and my PC doesn't run it fast enough for it to be playable, regardless of graphics settings. It's poorly optimized enough that, with the framerate uncapped, it bounces around from 30fps to 60fps on a 2000-dollar machine. Which I don't have. So I'm getting what I think looks like 10fps or lower, and played about 15 minutes' worth of the game in two real hours. It wasn't crashing every ten minutes like other people have been reporting, but it just isn't playable on my computer.

But it's no wonder, because my graphics card is really out-of-date and was already pretty cheap when I got it. Almost every game I've gotten on Steam in the intervening time has run nicely... I often get a better framerate in Dark Souls 2 on my PC than I ever did in anything on 360. But, I ought to have expected to need to upgrade sooner than later. So the good news is that this is only a wake-up call that my PC is due for an upgrade, which will cost a hell of a lot less than buying a new console, will affect all the Steam games I can already play for the better, and will probably get me DR3 running better than the Xbone can do.

[Weegee]

Jeez, seems to be a widespread issue. They should have playtested it on mediocre PCs.

[WarpRattler]

There's no reason to playtest a game originally designed for the Xbone on systems weaker than the Xbone.

They should've playtested it on systems that should actually be able to run it, though. That kind of inconsistent framerate is unacceptable.

[BP]

Well, it began development "with high-end PCs in mind" before Microsoft bought its exclusiveness. I dunno if that changed anything much, though. It runs at 30fps on the bone sometimes, drops to 20 or less if any action is happening. Models render late and textures pop in constantly...which happened in 360 Dead Rising 2 all the time as well. I'm not saying my PC should be able to run it with this graphics card, I'm saying it's pretty poorly put-together in general just like its predecessor, and maybe if it weren't, it would have run fine.

Also keep in mind that it is "acceptable" in Capcom's eyes that it does that on a 2000-dollar machine because it bounces from at least 30 to anything above it. There's no in-game option to uncap the framerate. You can do it and they've acknowledged you can, but it involves creating a user.ini that doesn't already exist. It's supposed to run at 30. Which is pretty stupid and ought to be considered unacceptable in 2014. It's probably what I'll get if I drop $150 on a graphics card that slightly outclasses the one listed as "recommended" for the game and greatly outclasses the one I have now.

[BP]

Right after this, my drawing tablet broke. The monitor started flickering weakly. These things aren't cheap and I've really lost the feel for the traditional mouse pad-like tablet. I thought it might be a wiring problem and had my dad take a look at it, but he found nothing he could fix and it was looking like I'd need to buy a new one. Although we got the flickering to stop and the monitor was just extremely dark. Too dark to use. I came to terms with that but I hate wasting good parts, so I dismantled it further thinking "at least I could probably slide the still-functional part of this thing that handles the pen input inside my laptop's screen or something." And that did work, albeit awkwardly and in a way that would murder my shoulder quickly. In the midst of all that, though, I found another part that got me curious (it instantly had me curious because it plugged into the circuit boards and anything like that has me going "ooo what's this do") and it turned out to be the backlight. Which was broken. I can get a new one of these and replace it for much less than buying an all-new tablet.

tl;dr my expensive and important [dukar] is broken. but i can fix it myself instead of buying a new one.