Dark Souls won’t be optimised for PC: “Strictly a port from the console version”

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/06/07/dark-souls-will-not-be-optimised-for-pc-%E2%80%9Cstrictly-a-port-from-the-console-version%E2%80%9D/

What a joke.

It had no business being on consoles and they shoddily port it to the PC. But better yet, they'll blame bad sales on the "death" of PC gaming, when in reality we just have lower tolerance for shit. At least they're being honest in telling us to go fuck ourselves and don't bother with the game, they don't want our money.

Avoiding this company and future releases.

Instead of giving us new content, they should have been optimizing the game or working with another dev studio that knows what they are doing. I'll still get it due to the fact that I want to play it and don't want to buy a ps3. I'll wait tell its dirt cheap before I even think about getting it though.

Well that figures. I probably won't bother with Dark Souls then. I'll just play more Skyrim and wait for the Dawnguard DLC release.

Although I didn't have interest in the game to begin with, I'm always extremely disappointed to find out when a company's PC release is a shoddy direct console port.

People cried it wasn't on PC, they answered despite the editor being pessimistic.

People cried it would be on GFWL instead of Steam, they ported it to Steam with no GFWL requirement (IIRC).

I guess if people cry it won't be optimized for PC they will cooperate. But keep in mind they had to make a harsh deal with Namco to make this a reality because the later only thought it wouldn't be worth the money. BTW, they stated from the beginning it will be a straight port.

From Software employees are really awesome to place their reputation in such a difficult position only to please gamers.

You entitled dicks!

K!r4 said:

From Software employees are really awesome to place their reputation in such a difficult position only to please gamers.

Um, isn't that suppose to be their job? Nevertheless gamers are the bitchiest crowd I know of.

Yes and they care about it pretty well IMO. Keep in mind it could have been much, much worse with the little margin they have (time and money-wise).

Then again it's only in the last 3 or so years that PC gamers became "entitled" by simply expecting products to show up on the platform and to show up in a form that is usable and stable and maybe even takes advantage of the platform's strengths (especially in the video card department).

Or to put it another way, only since the publishers started killing off PC gaming due to it not being a TCP.

Before then, these qualities in a PC release were the norm and games which did not meet them were greeted with scorn considered well-deserved.

It's a good point but you'll have to blame Namco for this.

Here's the recipe they have made:

- ignore PC until gamers show there's money to be made
- ask From Software to do it for august this damn year with the fixed amount of money despite the fact that devs have zero knowledge in conversion of games from console to PC
- ask them to add content because it makes everything cooler despite the limited amount of time

Namco are cunts, and From Software seem really lazy now.

Cyanosis said:

It had no business being on consoles

>Console game
>Not supposed to be on consoles

I DONT FOLLOW THE LOGIC

That kind of game can't play properly with a controller and the console gaming crowd, it's simply too unforgiving to what they're used to like Dragon Age and Skyrim. Therefore the more hardcore PC crowd would appreciate it more.

What do you know about this? Did you play it with a gamepad? Does owning a console mean you haven't a PC? Don't be a snob.

Cyanosis said:

That kind of game can't play properly with a controller and the console gaming crowd, it's simply too unforgiving to what they're used to like Dragon Age and Skyrim.

What in the actual shit are you talking about?

As a console player for 19 years, I'm pretty secure in saying that our "crowd" can deal with the difficulty pretty good. Maybe the newest generation of gamers will be frustrated at the lack of hand-holding, but nobody with a good sense of timing should find it that difficult. Combat is all about timing, and you ease into it quickly, assuming you're paying attention and not just swinging your sword around like a dumbass.

I also find your criticism invalid considering that the "PC Master Race" has access to Quicksave and Quickload whereas console players don't. Tell me, what takes more skill? Reloading a checkpoint save, making the 5-minute trek to where you where and trying to beat the challenge? Or just F5ing and F6ing your way to victory?

And considering Dark Souls was created with a gamepad in mind, your first comment makes you sound even more like an idiot.

So they're releasing a game which they have no intention of getting to work properly on the PC?

At least they're honest, I guess.

Mr. Freeze said:

Tell me, what takes more skill? Reloading a checkpoint save, making the 5-minute trek to where you where and trying to beat the challenge? Or just F5ing and F6ing your way to victory?

To me that's less of a matter of "skill" as how much patience you have to do the same stuff over and over. Making players backtrack needlessly (when there's hardware available to allow for quicksaves) is the wrong kind of challenge to impose on them imo.

You are basically telling us that a Doom level would make me backtracking needlessly if I didn't use saves. I think it depends on how they are implemented.

In Dark Souls it's a system with campfire I believe. If someone has played the game and can give us more information...

K!r4 said:

You are basically telling us that a Doom level would make me backtracking needlessly if I didn't use saves.

No, I'm basically telling you I don't like backtracking. Not even in a Doom level.

Cyanosis said:

That kind of game can't play properly with a controller and the console gaming crowd, it's simply too unforgiving to what they're used to like Dragon Age and Skyrim. Therefore the more hardcore PC crowd would appreciate it more.

No they won't. They might be better at it, but that doesn't mean the console players don't appreciate it. Many console players have never played anything on a PC -- especially Japanese console players. How would they know some games are easier to control with a mouse/keyboard?

Adding more content to compensate for framerate issues sounds hilarious. I guess they decided to stick with what they know.

It's their prerogative, regardless of what a poor decision it is. If they do a bad enough job people will remember how poorly they handled it, and nature will take it's course.

I suppose someone could send a lengthy, informative writeup about why it's a bad move of course but that depends on how much people care.

K!r4 said:

- ask From Software to do it for august this damn year with the fixed amount of money despite the fact that devs have zero knowledge in conversion of games from console to PC

The "conversion" process is not quite what it used to be. If we were discussing 8-bit or 16-bit era games (and even some early 32-bit titles), then a "conversion" from a coin-op original (best version) to console (usually second best) and then home computers and pee cees (usually worst, but there were exceptions) meant that a game had to be rewritten from scratch, also because most of the code was raw assembler. You were lucky if the games played vaguely the same, and even more lucky if graphic resources got to look almost the same, even on platforms that had theoretically similar graphics capabilities. Let alone the vast differences in sound subsystems etc.

But in this day and age, games are developed almost entirely in higher level languages (C and C++, as opposed to assembly), all platforms have some sort of 3D acceleration and all-digital sound, and industry practices call for the use of libraries whenever possible, so now micro-optimization and trying to save on the single byte is not the issue that it was with the Sega and Nintendo eras. So there's no "conversion" of the game in that sense, and now at least game mechanics survive intact the conversion process (usually). On the downside, developers are much less likely to spend time to "upscale" a game that works for a superior platform (then again, PCs are not really a good mark, since the hardware is so variable). At most you might get a "SUPER SPECIAL SUPER DETAIL EDITION!!!11!!" later on, if the publisher feels it might pay back.

There is however an "adaptation" of gameplay and control schemes....and that's perhaps harder than a million lines of assembler to do in a way that will please everyone: a console game will always be a console game, designed for its control (rather than hardware) and target crowd quirks. That's certainly not something a team of outsourced developers can do and would do, and would certainly NOT be asked to, either.

Consoles have been getting crappy PC ports for years. The tables have turned a little and now it's whiny PC gamers making a stink. Oh well. Also Cyanosis, stop talking out of your butt. It's obvious you've not played the game on any platform so stop talking about it.

Can't play properly on a controller? The game was freakin designed for the console. I've but hundreds, hundreds of hours into this game. The controls are perfectly fine.

Well to those with the poor slack attitudes it's good to know you are actually a seasoned console vet who can bring the fuckin' ruckus, it's just too bad you are not the majority, hence the game's eventual death from too many pussies who can't handle a hard game.

I may not of taken console gaming classes, but I can criticize a game company for lousily handling their title and realize duh-obvious stupid mistakes when I see them. This shitty generation isn't ready for a game of that caliber and I think it's a shame to market it for consoles strictly and then port it so lazily to the PC.

I wasn't being an idiot, I was being realistic. Mr. Freeze on the other hand was being a jerk.

Honestly, the biggest issues with console ports are bad control mappings and forced settings, which even a "direct console port" really should take care of in order to be basically playable. The performance issues at least might be eased a bit simply by having better hardware than a console, which isn't super-uncommon these days.

Either way, this part weirded me out a bit:

"From Software are bringing three new venues, four new bosses and additional weapons to the game in an attempt to compensate for the lack of optimisation."

Am I the only one who sees this as completely backwards? :P

Then just don't buy the damn game. Holy shit. Writing essays about it when you haven't even played the game and are clearly parroting complaints you read on some other gaming website.

>PCGamer
>Someothergamingwebsite

Haha, no.

I can and have sometimes where relevant copied select comments before from articles of various things and formed them into an OP description for convenience. They do however form my opinion on the matter, but that doesn't mean I can't make my own decisions regarding them, as it is something I feel strongly passionate about and with things that I'm strongly against.

I like to see these kinds of games come around and take great interest in them, so to see them subjected to this treatment is infuriating. If there's some elite console player that can have fun with it then that's great, but that crowd is small and there's always going to be a bigger audience on PC for it. So if you want this game to last for more than a year, give it the proper release it deserves so it can have a home. This isn't rocket science people.

Cyanosis said:

>PCGamer
>Someothergamingwebsite

Haha, no.

I can and have sometimes where relevant copied select comments before from articles of various things and formed them into an OP description for convenience. They do however form my opinion on the matter, but that doesn't mean I can't make my own decisions regarding them, as it is something I feel strongly passionate about and with things that I'm strongly against.

I like to see these kinds of games come around and take great interest in them, so to see them subjected to this treatment is infuriating. If there's some elite console player that can have fun with it then that's great, but that crowd is small and there's always going to be a bigger audience on PC for it. So if you want this game to last for more than a year, give it the proper release it deserves so it can have a home. This isn't rocket science people.

Yeah man those contards absolutely hated it. It's not like 1.19 million copies of the game were sold before March 2012 or anything. Nope, only TRUE PC GAMERS can appreciate it.

I'm sure a PC can handle anything that will run on an Xbox or PS3. lol

Mr. T said:

I'm sure a PC can handle anything that will run on an Xbox or PS3. lol

RAGE.

PC gaming is the elite master race, nothing else can compare. Softcore console players that demand handholding and think that anything with a big publisher's logo on it is the best thing since bread, and think a game is badly designed when it requires them to think or otherwise act on their own without onscreen instructions, should all be forgotten by the game industry. The publishers that peddle this crap for a stupid majority should be shut down, they're shitting on the art of fine gaming in the name of profit. Only the PC gamers should be able to enjoy well made games, and not be forced to swim in a sea of mediocre triple-A garbage.