jigglet
Banned
After a few years of playing CS obsessively back in 2000-2002, I've been exclusively on console for about 20 years now. Here are the things that really got me interested again:
Here are the areas I think PC still needs to improve:
I am however saddened by what's happening with Epic and platform exclusives, however I'm not going to bother expanding on this in this thread.
Anyway, I'm curious whether anyone else has recently gotten into PC gaming and what was it that convinced you?
- Technological progress has slowed down - yes I see this as a positive. Back in the early 2000's your PC would become significantly out of date after about 6 months. It was depressing. I bought a gaming PC that I barely used in 2013, and 7 years later I was shocked to see: 16gb ram was still optimal (it used to double every few years), and the 5ghz barrier for CPU's has remained largely unbroken. For my new build, I bought 3 year old mid-tier parts (GTX 1060, i5 8400) and it runs the game I want to play at over 100fps. Wow.
- Windows is now solid. In the early 2000's, the number of crashes and corrupt files you'd get was off the charts. I couldn't stand using Windows, but now it's in a much better spot. Also it's so easy to install Windows now on a fresh build, making it much more inviting for people to DIY these days.
- Freesync. Wow. Being able to use the full potential of your GPU without gimping it with vsync? This is probably the tech I appreciate the most. Love it.
- Wireless gaming mice. Logitech proved wireless gaming-grade tech was possible a few years back and it's only gone from strength to strength.
- RTS games, god how I've missed them. C&C Remastered!!! Red Alert 2!!! So good.
Here are the areas I think PC still needs to improve:
- Header cables and their motherboard ports are still a mess. There is no global standard, and they're fiddly, shitty little cables I hate working with. Building your own PC is such a breeze these days, except for this. It's not hard mind you, just unnecessarily annoying given how much progress everything else has made.
- Windows still doesn't do a great job cleaning up garbage files. I love the freedom of testing dozens of games on console without making a mess. On PC it still leaves crap everywhere, and every few months I need to go digging through various directories looking for the footprints that uninstalled games have left behind. For example I just uninstalled a game only to find: a temporary directory it used to extract files into but didn't auto delete post-installation, an entry in the Documents directory to store config files that weren't removed, some garbage files left in my Program Files directory, and I think 2-3 other spots I can't remember. This is just shit. Keeping a "clean" system is so hard. The Windows reset feature is great but extremely limited. This is the one thing that has remained unchanged since I started using computers back in the 90's and I was hoping they'd have a more sophisticated solution for by now. You'd think it wouldn't be difficult to keep a log of all the files generated from each app. I feel a little guilty every time I try out a demo, and I think to myself: this is so stupid!
I am however saddened by what's happening with Epic and platform exclusives, however I'm not going to bother expanding on this in this thread.
Anyway, I'm curious whether anyone else has recently gotten into PC gaming and what was it that convinced you?
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