Everquest had far fewer abilities than WoW, and IIRC in the earliest incarnation you didn’t even have the option of custom keybinds. The spells on your (single) hotbar were activated by number. It’s been a looong time so I could be wrong on that, but yeah, I played EQ too. But hands down, the gameplay in EQ was far more simplistic overall. On WoW I had 6-8 hotbars of 12 at any given time full of spells/abilities/items and most of them were keybound. So nice try on the retro one-uppage.
You’re really not getting it, but I assure you SHIFT+CTRL+3 is tons more convenient a keybind than anything on the right half of the keyboard when your hand is glued to WASD constantly.
You’re wrong on that. You had 10 sets of hot keys. Granted YOU might have never used them but a whole lot of other players did (still do, really – now more than ever with so many inventory clickables and AAXP abilities).
Not so much uppage but I’ve played both games as well which is why I found your little lecture so amusing.
Ok, so you found a means that works for you and that’s great. Would you agree that you couldn’t do the same thing on a controller? Because that was kind of the original point. I mean, you COULD have bound SHIFT+CTRL+3 to some other single press key if you so desired. You couldn’t, however, have bound it to Left Bumper+Start+Y Button (nor would you want to).
Depends on the game and how it was set up. I agree with you that radials absolutely suck with controllers and should go away, buttons that cycle between menus/tabs are much better.
“4GB of VRAM for 330USD!? It’s too good to be true!”
Seriously though, Steam active accounts are near 150 millions?
Strange that Steam doesn’t seem to have stats for the 980 Ti and the Titans, unless my Ctrl+F search missed them.
What are the hardware and software differences between this generation’s consoles and good gaming PCs?
How does that affect that PCs can or might be able to do? What’s the potential of PCs that lies largely untapped because many games are made for console first and merely badly ported to PC? It ought to be more than higher resolution, higher framerate and bigger textures.
It takes a little bit of setup, but mumble is just flat out better than the console voice chat tools.
You know you can use any kind of controls you want on PC, right? If a game is better with a gamepad, then play it with a gamepad. With your console gamepad, for that matter.
Unfortunately, gaming stagnants during console generations because most games are multiplatform, and while some developers will spend the extra effort making the PC version more technologically advanced, mostly we get the same games. PC still has a better experience due to post-processing, frame rate, resolution, configurability, mods, etc, of course. But if the games are forced to stagnate at a certain technological level, then PC hardware also becomes obsolete at a much slower pace. Some people see this as an advantage, which to me is pretty ridiculous. We wouldn’t be better off if console generations lasted 15 years and we were just now getting into PS1 territory, would we?
Game requirements do tend to go up over time - I’m not sure if it’s because they try to cram new techniques into consoles as the generation becomes well known, or if they just become lazier with optimizing the ports because most gaming PCs have 10 times the power of consoles - so you could see your system gradually becoming outdated, but it happens about 1/5th or 1/10th as fast as it used to. A console-beating PC will probably stay console-beating throughout the lifetime of the console playing the same games, although they might add new techniques to PC versions over time as that technology becomes more common, so you may have to downgrade to console-like settings.
It’s unfortunate too because lots of people have PCs set up in a way that allows same-screen multiplayer. A lot of games that feature split-screen play on consoles just artificially disable it on PC. Not all do. Rocket league, as an example, allows 2-3-4 player split screen on the same PC.
If there’s a benefit to the “Steam Box”, maybe it will help promote the PC as a platform for local co-op gaming.
I don’t really try to argue for PC gaming based on machine cost. Consoles are mass produced to a single spec and backed by companies willing to sell at thin margins or even a loss to get their machine out there. You CAN save a lot in PC gaming on the games themselves – the halcyon days of a few years ago where everything hit 75% off in a few months are largely over but PC games do still tend to discount quickly and the vast digital catalog means that there are a lot of older titles available cheap whereas stores stop stocking physical media. But the primary benefits for me are a more powerful machine, a large catalog of available games (cost aside), wider access to game genres (strategy, simulation, etc) and the fact that I’m going to own a PC anyway so why not make it a multi-use piece of equipment.
I had (R.I.P.) a set of Pulse Elite headphones and those things made Playstation voice chat an absolute dream, since the hardware integrated seamlessly into the PSN’s chat software.
Voice chat on console or PC is heavily dependent on the hardware being used by everyone in the call. If the people you’re playing with have a crappy mic/headset setup, you’re going to have a crappy experience regardless of what you’re playing.
If everyone has good gear, you’re going to have a good experience across platforms.
Another thing I wondered about as relates to AAA games:
It seems that there hundreds of thousands of labor hours are spent making static assets like walls/ceiling/floors, furniture, non-movable props. Yet, few elements are animated or can be interacted with. The gameplay mechanics are often basic.
I don’t know how much tends to be spent on mechanics, interaction and animation. Arguably, gameplay mechanics through animated interactions are the core of the video game medium so resources would be directly primarily towards those 3 elements rather than what amounts to very fancy wallpaper.
But hands down, the gameplay in EQ was far more simplistic overall. On WoW I had 6-8 hotbars of 12 at any given time full of spells/abilities/items and most of them were keybound. So nice try on the retro one-uppage.