How about it? How does it play compared to previous games?
Currently rated as Mostly Negative on Steam, mainly for technical issues.
Any idea why the PC version would be capped at 30 FPS?
Yikes, from the comments it sounds like the new Steam refund policy is getting a heavy workout today.
A) shitty port - it had to be capped at 30 on the consoles, farmed PC version didn’t get optimized properly.
Why does it have to be capped at 30 on the consoles?
Does that mean that for the PC port, they just blindly translated the code without asking themselves if the cap still made sense on PC?
Generally you cap framerate to try and keep it reasonably steady. As much as people bitch about being able to tell the difference between 100 and 105 fps, a reasonably steady 30 fps is much more playable than something that jumps between 30 and 60.
The PC version was ported from the console versions by a separate studio…whose previous porting expertise was oriented toward porting to the handheld systems, so who knows what the hell were they thinking?
Because the drop from 30 FPS to 25 is less noticable than dropping down from 45 FPS.
Yes indeed, although it should be mentioned that the PC port was made by a third-party developer and not Rocksteady. Apparently the ini file looks like this, which doesn’t exactly exude competence.
Rocksteady is pushing that excuse hard but I don’t see where it earns much sympathy.
“Hey, we just paid someone else to do the work, apparently did no quality control or testing to make sure that it was done right and then pushed it out the door at $60 a pop so it could run like shit on your system – It’s not our fault!”
Rocksteady should just write “Batman” on a box full of bees and sell it to people. “Don’t blame us – we paid someone else to pack the bees in there!”
Sometimes I wonder if the PC release is screwed up on purpose to dissuade people from getting it on PC rather than console and to make people dependent on patches (which would make pirating more of a bother).
If so, that seems suboptimal because they could just release it months later by saying that they kept working on it longer to make the PC release extra good.
Also, what are the giveaways of incompetence in the note Telperion linked to? I can see some things that look off but since I pretty much only know how to Hello World in Python, there are many things that might look off to me but are actually alright and vice versa.
I doubt it - Rocksteady is one of the companies that had clever anti-piracy measures. Arkham Asylum had it so the cape didn’t work as a glider in the pirated versions.
You generally don’t release unprofessional comments in your ini files. *Especially *ones that flat-out say you don’t know why certain things are happening.
The first I could take or leave - I’ve left some comments explaining my code in “witty” ways, and named functions/variable silly stuff (e.g. naming the variable governing whether or not a general gets inbreeding traits in a Total War mod “HowMuchHabsburg”).
OTOH, “I have no idea what this does but it seems to work if you put that there, so I did.” or comments to that extent don’t inspire much confidence, no. I mean, I’ve done it too (again when modding hardcoded TotalWar diplomacy stuff that behaved downright weird unless set to specific values) but I’m a shit coder working on foreign code without any of the in-house documentation.
It sounds like a funny idea, but I can imagine it backfiring. If somebody has a genuine problem with that part of the game - maybe they don’t realise the cape glide isn’t a toggle - giving everyone and their dog a license to pile on the so-called pirate when they ask for help isn’t going to make you any friends.
Comments in compiled code is fine. Comments like that in publicly accessible files, not so much. In amateur mods, where you really don’t have any way of seeing the actual code, it’s pretty much inevitable.
The not-plummet-to-your-death part was completely automatic. But wasn’t present in the pirated versions. Nor was the hold-the-button-to-glide. So every time they jumped off a roof, they’d die.
Oh, and they’ve changed the system requirements - very, very unprofessional to do so after the game launches.
It’s likely to go down as the worst PC port of the generation if Rocksteady doesn’t pump out a couple of patches that fixes EVERYTHING, and soon.
The main issue is really performance and a complete lack of graphics options (in stark contrast to the previous games). Add in stuttering, even worse performance when in the batmobile, and texture pop-in issues, and things turn ugly.
I’ve been playing it on a 780ti + 3770k @ 1440p at around 55 FPS avg. Which is actually excellent, given the resolution I play at, BUT in the batmobile the performance tanks below 40 FPS, sometimes going below 30, and the stuttering can be annoying. The main Nvidia features also run like ass.
In the previous games you needed beefy hardware to enable them, but this time around, even GTX 980’s can’t handle them without going below 30 FPS.
It’s just very poorly optimized. They’ve even removed some of the higher quality shaders used on the console versions of the game, fer chrissakes, as well as removed all AO!
We went from Batman being a showcase for PC graphical goodness, with lots of scalability options, to it being the first multi-plat game this generation to look and run better on consoles sporting 3 year old hardware.
Having said that…
The game itself seems great. I like the new detective side quests a lot, and despite the short comings, the city looks amazing. Combat gets a few new twists early on too, and the enemy variety is better than in the past games.
::Sigh:: Just gotta hope they patch it soon.
Worse, if memory serves, it was a while ago. But at the time there was a lot or buzz about how the game was broken which if you weren’t someone who paid attention to games blogs and such like (ie the average consumer) you’d be much likelier to hear than the whole ‘Ha ha suck it pirates’ reveal.
Which is why it’s not a common strategy. The chance of blowback is substantial.
And, for some reason, I’ve been seeing an amazing amount of idiots claiming the shitty PC port is Sony’s fault. :dubious:
How the hell that is supposed to work, I don’t know, given the XBone’s (you know - the guys Sony actually considers direct competition) version works fine.
I don’t think anyone seriously thinks that. At least not anyone worth listening to.
This is WB being cheapo bastards. Probably the brain child of some asshat suit, hunched over his desk counting pennies.
The DF report is damning:
WOW. Just WOW.
WB has officially suspended sales of the PC version.
Looks like they are taking this seriously.
I’m thinking there is hope we’re going to get a proper PC version at some point.