PC Gaming & mods, am i missing out?

Victor Mildew wrote:One other thing, which is really specific so I can't really claim it's going to be of benefit to you, is being able to canabalise from an older system when upgrading. I've still got my really old gaming pc in the loft (it got put there when I built my new one), and the other day I had a thought to see if I could pinch any bits from it. Sure enough, I could take the old HDD out, and as my new pc has a load of spare bays, I just put it in there, took some old games off it and then formatted it. Got a free 250gb extra storage.

Yep this is a good point!

"Cross generation" hardware is a big bonus for the PC world both in terms or reusing hardware in a new build but also things like peripherals - when I move to a new PC I don't need to replace other hardware like controllers or webcams etc. that might be necessary on console (though it sounds like MS certainly are moving toward supporting controllers from previous generations which is a good move).

My current PC which was built in 2014 uses the old case, power supply and secondary HDD from my last PC which saved a bunch on the build cost. I'll likely take stuff forward to a new machine when I build that soon as well

Personally this does not benefit me, but i can absolutely see how it is a plus. My current "PC" is one of those idiot boxes where everything is in the monitor. I can feel the blood pressure of the PC enthusiasts here rise as they read that.

My first PC from 1994 was an early "all in one" style model, they weren't quite as elegant back in the day:

I actually like that! Hmmm, i feel i may be loosing focus on my mission though.

I was still using an Amiga 500 in 94. Good times.

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:I actually like that! Hmmm, i feel i may be loosing focus on my mission though.

I was still using an Amiga 500 in 94. Good times.

Nothing wrong with an Amiga. We actually upgraded from our Amiga to get that PC!

OrangeRKN wrote:Mafro has visited my island in animal crossing so mods aren't exclusive to PC gaming

If it wasn't for mods then STALKER: Call of Pripyat wouldn't be one of my favourite games of all time. Then you've got stuff like Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines which basically launched in an unfinished state and was "fixed" in a big community patch. Crusader Kings 2 has a Game of Thrones mod which makes it a whole new game. Football Manager has a huge modding community for adding in all the official kits, player profile pics, club badges, league names etc. that aren't present to begin with due to the licensing rights.

To be honest, I tend to use mods more for improvements+fixes than for custom content, though I do still love to see the latter.

I get pretty fussy with wanting more modular options (lemme disable motion blur D:). I appreciate community efforts that provide those!

Big big tip: Get into the habit of checking the PCGamingWiki entry for every game

^I always do that to check if there's any tips on improving stuff, even if it's just being able to skip pre-title screen intro videos. Handy for knowing resolution + frame rate caps too!

Oh man if we're counting intro video skips as mods, then I mod virtually every single game. I then get annoyed when I play a console game and have to sit through them.

On the other hand, despite primarily being a PC gamer, having a baby in the house has completely flipped the script and all of the faff that comes with it (that I previously had the time and patience for) is steering me away.

It’s disingenuous to act like there isn’t a significant amount of time spent not actually playing a game when you’re on PC, especially if time is at an extreme premium. Every boot seems to bring with it launcher and game updates that are ruinous if you only end up getting 15-20 minutes to yourself.

I once lost an entire day of my life chasing down an issue with a new Samsung SSD I bought that, inexplicably, does not support a windows installation. I could format it over and over, I could partition it as an additional storage drive, but when running the windows installer to put the OS on it, it was just not displayed on the list of selectable drives. Best answer I could get was just “yeah, some drives just don’t like it”

I’ve lost hours trying to work out why Ubisoft games wrest control of your system mic volume and trying to find a way to prevent that from happening but to no avail (temporarily blown out mics in the discord channels every time you join an UNO lobby is still a problem to this day)

For months I had to put up with an issue where Rainbow Six Siege would suddenly go completely black screen in the middle of a round that could only be resolved by alt tabbing *twice* (not once). Turns out it was the software that let me customise the RGB on my K&M, even though it wasn’t even running, simply being *installed* somehow strawberry floats with Siege.

And just last night, I actually had 1 hour to myself before bed, of which I spent 95 minutes trying to work out why the strawberry float my Terraria server was hating the new settings I was putting in (turns out there’s been a bug in the latest server release for a few weeks and it can’t generate maps correctly, so I had to eventually create it locally and upload it afterwards), and 10 minutes actually playing the game.

I compare that to yesterday being able to pick up a PS4 controller, press 1 button and within 5 seconds I’m right there, paused on lap 6 of my 10 lap race. PC gaming might be much better than it was back in the days of multi disc installs and dial up. The versatility and openness of the platform is great, and gives it a real “play it however you want” vibe, just so long as whatever you want isn’t immediacy, where it trails well behind.

jiggles wrote:
And just last night, I actually had 1 hour to myself before bed, of which I spent 95 minutes trying to work out why the strawberry float my Terraria server was hating the new settings I was putting in (turns out there’s been a bug in the latest server release for a few weeks and it can’t generate maps correctly, so I had to eventually create it locally and upload it afterwards), and 10 minutes actually playing the game.

I compare that to yesterday being able to pick up a PS4 controller, press 1 button and within 5 seconds I’m right there, paused on lap 6 of my 10 lap race. PC gaming might be much better than it was back in the days of multi disc installs and dial up. The versatility and openness of the platform is great, and gives it a real “play it however you want” vibe, just so long as whatever you want isn’t immediacy, where it trails well behind.

Great post plagued by questionable maths

jiggles wrote:On the other hand, despite primarily being a PC gamer, having a baby in the house has completely flipped the script and all of the faff that comes with it (that I previously had the time and patience for) is steering me away.

It’s disingenuous to act like there isn’t a significant amount of time spent not actually playing a game when you’re on PC, especially if time is at an extreme premium. Every boot seems to bring with it launcher and game updates that are ruinous if you only end up getting 15-20 minutes to yourself.

I once lost an entire day of my life chasing down an issue with a new Samsung SSD I bought that, inexplicably, does not support a windows installation. I could format it over and over, I could partition it as an additional storage drive, but when running the windows installer to put the OS on it, it was just not displayed on the list of selectable drives. Best answer I could get was just “yeah, some drives just don’t like it”

I’ve lost hours trying to work out why Ubisoft games wrest control of your system mic volume and trying to find a way to prevent that from happening but to no avail (temporarily blown out mics in the discord channels every time you join an UNO lobby is still a problem to this day)

For months I had to put up with an issue where Rainbow Six Siege would suddenly go completely black screen in the middle of a round that could only be resolved by alt tabbing *twice* (not once). Turns out it was the software that let me customise the RGB on my K&M, even though it wasn’t even running, simply being *installed* somehow strawberry floats with Siege.

And just last night, I actually had 1 hour to myself before bed, of which I spent 95 minutes trying to work out why the strawberry float my Terraria server was hating the new settings I was putting in (turns out there’s been a bug in the latest server release for a few weeks and it can’t generate maps correctly, so I had to eventually create it locally and upload it afterwards), and 10 minutes actually playing the game.

I compare that to yesterday being able to pick up a PS4 controller, press 1 button and within 5 seconds I’m right there, paused on lap 6 of my 10 lap race. PC gaming might be much better than it was back in the days of multi disc installs and dial up. The versatility and openness of the platform is great, and gives it a real “play it however you want” vibe, just so long as whatever you want isn’t immediacy, where it trails well behind.

Sorry to hear about those problems Jiggles, but from my experience I think it is disingenuous to suggest that the situations you are describing are the "typical" PC experience in this day and age.

I'm not saying it never happens, some problems are always going to find there way into any ecosystem, but like I say I genuinely do not remember the last time I had a problem with a game in this way.

In contrast I thought I would check out the latest PS Plus games on my PS4 recently only to find that the PS4 had crashed/powered off during sleep mode (despite nothing else in the house suffering from a power outage) and so had to sit there whilst it scanned the HDD for 10 minutes. Then wait whilst it decided to boot really slowly for some reason. Then I went to the PS Plus page to find that it had logged me out for some reason so I had to log back in again. Then when I went on to the newest PS Plus game and tried to claim it the "Add to Library" button wasn't there. So I rebooted the machine again to try and fix it and when it rebooted it wouldn't connect to the network for some reason even though it was on it 2 minutes ago. I switched from Ethernet to Wi-Fi which seemed to solve the problem and went back to the PS Plus page but there still wasn't an "Add to Library" button but there was a "Download for Free" one so I though I would press that... but nothing happened. So I thought I'd see if I could do it on the PS store from my phone but it doesn't look like you can claim games in that way, but then I noticed I had an email from Sony saying "Thanks for your PSN purchase!" which was referring to the Plus game that I was trying to get. Great I think, I can get at it from my Library ... nope it's not there either. And now it has been removed from the PS Plus section as well because it obviously thinks I already have it. So after wasting all this time I still don't have access to the game I want to play and from the looks of things I never will!

Console gaming, it just works!

Balls to it, I’m buying another Amiga.

Just you wait util apple make a new games console, then you'll see console gaming that just works*

*for a year until the new model comes out, and it mysteriously slows down and becomes laggy.

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:

jiggles wrote:
And just last night, I actually had 1 hour to myself before bed, of which I spent 95 minutes trying to work out why the strawberry float my Terraria server was hating the new settings I was putting in (turns out there’s been a bug in the latest server release for a few weeks and it can’t generate maps correctly, so I had to eventually create it locally and upload it afterwards), and 10 minutes actually playing the game.

I compare that to yesterday being able to pick up a PS4 controller, press 1 button and within 5 seconds I’m right there, paused on lap 6 of my 10 lap race. PC gaming might be much better than it was back in the days of multi disc installs and dial up. The versatility and openness of the platform is great, and gives it a real “play it however you want” vibe, just so long as whatever you want isn’t immediacy, where it trails well behind.

Great post plagued by questionable maths

That was the point. I had an hour free to play a game before bed, I ended up playing for only 10 minutes and going to bed 45 minutes later than I intended

Sounds like your kid is the problem here. Broom it.

Victor Mildew wrote:Sounds like your kid is the problem here. Broom it.

Jenuall wrote:

jiggles wrote:On the other hand, despite primarily being a PC gamer, having a baby in the house has completely flipped the script and all of the faff that comes with it (that I previously had the time and patience for) is steering me away.

It’s disingenuous to act like there isn’t a significant amount of time spent not actually playing a game when you’re on PC, especially if time is at an extreme premium. Every boot seems to bring with it launcher and game updates that are ruinous if you only end up getting 15-20 minutes to yourself.

I once lost an entire day of my life chasing down an issue with a new Samsung SSD I bought that, inexplicably, does not support a windows installation. I could format it over and over, I could partition it as an additional storage drive, but when running the windows installer to put the OS on it, it was just not displayed on the list of selectable drives. Best answer I could get was just “yeah, some drives just don’t like it”

I’ve lost hours trying to work out why Ubisoft games wrest control of your system mic volume and trying to find a way to prevent that from happening but to no avail (temporarily blown out mics in the discord channels every time you join an UNO lobby is still a problem to this day)

For months I had to put up with an issue where Rainbow Six Siege would suddenly go completely black screen in the middle of a round that could only be resolved by alt tabbing *twice* (not once). Turns out it was the software that let me customise the RGB on my K&M, even though it wasn’t even running, simply being *installed* somehow strawberry floats with Siege.

And just last night, I actually had 1 hour to myself before bed, of which I spent 95 minutes trying to work out why the strawberry float my Terraria server was hating the new settings I was putting in (turns out there’s been a bug in the latest server release for a few weeks and it can’t generate maps correctly, so I had to eventually create it locally and upload it afterwards), and 10 minutes actually playing the game.

I compare that to yesterday being able to pick up a PS4 controller, press 1 button and within 5 seconds I’m right there, paused on lap 6 of my 10 lap race. PC gaming might be much better than it was back in the days of multi disc installs and dial up. The versatility and openness of the platform is great, and gives it a real “play it however you want” vibe, just so long as whatever you want isn’t immediacy, where it trails well behind.

Sorry to hear about those problems Jiggles, but from my experience I think it is disingenuous to suggest that the situations you are describing are the "typical" PC experience in this day and age.

I'm not saying it never happens, some problems are always going to find there way into any ecosystem, but like I say I genuinely do not remember the last time I had a problem with a game in this way.

In contrast I thought I would check out the latest PS Plus games on my PS4 recently only to find that the PS4 had crashed/powered off during sleep mode (despite nothing else in the house suffering from a power outage) and so had to sit there whilst it scanned the HDD for 10 minutes. Then wait whilst it decided to boot really slowly for some reason. Then I went to the PS Plus page to find that it had logged me out for some reason so I had to log back in again. Then when I went on to the newest PS Plus game and tried to claim it the "Add to Library" button wasn't there. So I rebooted the machine again to try and fix it and when it rebooted it wouldn't connect to the network for some reason even though it was on it 2 minutes ago. I switched from Ethernet to Wi-Fi which seemed to solve the problem and went back to the PS Plus page but there still wasn't an "Add to Library" button but there was a "Download for Free" one so I though I would press that... but nothing happened. So I thought I'd see if I could do it on the PS store from my phone but it doesn't look like you can claim games in that way, but then I noticed I had an email from Sony saying "Thanks for your PSN purchase!" which was referring to the Plus game that I was trying to get. Great I think, I can get at it from my Library ... nope it's not there either. And now it has been removed from the PS Plus section as well because it obviously thinks I already have it. So after wasting all this time I still don't have access to the game I want to play and from the looks of things I never will!

Console gaming, it just works!

I mean, not to get into a pissing contest here, but if we’re talking about broken storefronts, that absolutely pales in comparison to the Microsoft Store. Reliability so bad they had add the WSReset command to every Win10 installation (it was previously a troubleshooting tool you got from Microsoft.com), and even then, it barely ever resolved the issue, so if you wanted to play Forza Horizon 3 or whatever you’d have to reinstall Windows first.

I mean just *look* at this glorious 10-option “solution” from Microsoft where option 10 is “reinstall windows” and multiple people saying that’s the only one that fixes it. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... b9575c77aa

The Microsoft store on PC is absolutely awful, and I would never encourage anyone to use it ever.

Yeah I've avoided the MS Store entirely but there's no denying it's a piece of gooseberry fool!

In a way that's another plus for the PC though - no store monopoly. I can buy and download games from multiple vendors and benefit from the choice and competition that brings whereas on console I'm stuck with the single option

Jenuall wrote:Yeah I've avoided the MS Store entirely but there's no denying it's a piece of gooseberry fool!

In a way that's another plus for the PC though - no store monopoly. I can buy and download games from multiple vendors and benefit from the choice and competition that brings whereas on console I'm stuck with the single option

*when buying digital