Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Spud]

I like my RX580, it's a nice card.

 

[Hentai-Semitism]

if I can look at some older game and some newer game side by side and they both look basically the same graphical quality, but it takes more computing power to run the latter at the same native resolution and FPS as the former, then I would say the developers of the newer game are doing something wrong and they should stop that.

This is mostly what I'm talking about. AW2 is a great looking game, but this is the first time I've seen this upscaling option. Apparently it's required to run the game at an acceptable framerate on a decent rig, which is bullshit IMO. Nobody's talking about running it above 1080p and on Ultra.

Another thing that's special about this game is that requires a GPU with mesh shader support. It means that it's almost unplayable on Nvidia's 10 series cards.

 

[Calandrino]

This is kinda a myth. While yes the business practice is to get more quarters, casual audiences wouldnt usually drop more than a quarter since 1cc is enough to have an enjoyable experience.

Meanwhile more dedicated whale players would learn games and if a game was just unfair they wouldnt play it. The balance was to make a game difficult but fair, that's why the 1cc is the golden rule since generally thats 3 lives (unless its a lifebar game).

The truth of arcade design is a bit more grey than people make it out, true "kusoge" would just go unplayed in those settings.

A person who is casualized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with 1CC recordings, with developer interviews. Even if I take him by force to the arcade and show him a Shinobi 1LC, he will refuse to believe it. That is the tragedy of the situation of casualization.

Happy page 1337, everyone

 

[The Ugly One]

In any case, modern consoles are making heavy use of some type of upscaling to keep at resolutions above 1080p, sometimes to even to get above 720p.

So did consoles in the good old days. The vast majority of PS3 and Xbox 360 games upscaled from 540p or 600p to 720p. The difference is that back then, upscaling was done with either nearest-neighbor or bilinear interpolation, and today, the upscaling methods are more sophisticated and produce superior results.

You seem pretty emotionally invested in proving that there was never any point that games were more optimized in the past

Emotions have nothing to do with it. I do a lot of engineering-level hardware evaluation as part of my job, and I write a lot of code, so I just see it as people are saying a bunch of things that are factually wrong or make no sense, especially YouTubers who were little kids in the days they're trying to be nostalgic about. When this whole hue and cry about "optimization" started, I checked out some YouTube videos, and, to use one example, this pimple-faced kid was going on and on about how "well-optimized" Battlefield 3 was. I was absolutely dumbstruck, because i remember when the game came out, and it ran like absolute shit. The Frostbite engine was a shambling heap of garbage that ran inconsistently even on high-end hardware. I kept watching, and the kid was, IIRC, showing how buttery-smooth it ran on an "old GPU," and IIRC, the "old GPU" was a 960, which came out 4 years after BF3. I don't think he was trying to say the past was better because if you waited 4 years to buy a computer, games would run well, I think he just had no clue what he was talking about and didn't even think to look up how BF3 ran on current hardware.

and that standard changes based on time and platform, and we could just end up disagreeing on the standard

Sure, some stuff has changed. 640x480x16bpp was fine in 1998 and intolerable now. But 15 fps never looked good. A GPU being obsolete when it was 3 years old sucked. Over time, games run better and better on older and older hardware...but this is worse, somehow? We've gone from my 4-year-old GeForce 2 being completely unable to run Doom 3 to my 4-year-old 6700 XT being able to run the latest games at 60+ fps, HD resolutions, and looking absolutely brilliant...and I'm supposed to be outraged that I can push that to 120fps by using frame gen? I'm supposed to be furious that I can push the settings higher if I use upscaling? I think it's just nostalgia. When people say games were better optimized in the good old days, it's like when Boomers say cars were built better in the 1960s. They just weren't. The body rusted out in 4 years, the drive train was shot by 60,000 miles, and they cornered like a sofa strapped to a Radio Flyer. These supposedly "optimized" games ran like ass on 3-year-old GPUs. A good chunk of them wouldn't even run at the highest settings on any hardware in existence. What was better about that?

I think the main reason people, especially YouTubers, are hyperventilating about "optimization" is that the PS4 has been the lead platform on nearly all games for 11 years. So for a very long time, as long as you had a decent GPU from 2016 or later, it would absolutely scream on any marquee title. It is only just now, in the last year or two, that a tiny number of games have come out that either have no PS4 version, or the PS4 is an afterthought. The games everyone bitches about, like Alan Wake 2 and Space Marine 2, have no PS4 version. They're targeting the PS5, and in some cases, pushing it pretty hard, so a PC that was utterly clobbering games is suddenly only adequate. In the case of the 6700 XT, it's gone from being about 7x faster than the target platform to being 1.3x faster.

This is mostly what I'm talking about. AW2 is a great looking game, but this is the first time I've seen this upscaling option. Apparently it's required to run the game at an acceptable framerate on a decent rig, which is bullshit IMO. Nobody's talking about running it above 1080p and on Ultra.

Alan Wake 2 runs at 60-70 fps at 1080p medium on the 4-year-old Radeon 6700 XT with no upscaling or frame generation

Another thing that's special about this game is that requires a GPU with mesh shader support. It means that it's almost unplayable on Nvidia's 10 series cards.

The 10 series GeForce is now eight years old. EDIT: Alan Wake 2 can still manage 60-70 fps on a 1070 at 720p.

 

[Hentai-Semitism]

Alan Wake 2 runs at 60-70 fps at 1080p medium on the 4-year-old Radeon 6700 XT with no upscaling or frame generation

Apparently I was hallucinating all the things I said. I'm like those guards in video games who hear a gunshot in the adjacent room and say out loud "must've been the wind". I rest my case.

 

[PutridusVictus]

I liked the concept of the cancelled doom 4.

 

[Wesker]

Max Payne 3 is the best of the trilogy.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

if you waited 4 years to buy a computer, games would run well

I suspect the reason people have gotten so righteously indignant about "optimization" in recent years is that modern visuals continue to get more computationally expensive for less apparent visual improvement than ever before. Games that were a decade old used to look like hilariously antiquated dogshit and it was patently obvious to the normiest normie what you were getting for your money when you bought your modern game for your modern console or PC hardware. Now decade-old games look good and run at 10,000 FPS, brand-new games look marginally better and run like cold molasses.

In a perfect world, instead of sperging about optimization, both the industry and audiences would stop at this inflection point to fundamentally re-evaluate gaming's relationship with cutting-edge graphics. But I suspect the autistic obsession with "bigger number better" means we'll continue down this path until every studio goes bankrupt developing games that players don't enjoy for hardware players can't afford for the sake of higher-resolution ray traced reflections in puddles that you can sorta notice if you squint.

 

[The Ugly One]

I suspect the reason people have gotten so righteously indignant about "optimization" in recent years is that modern visuals continue to get more computationally expensive for less apparent visual improvement than ever before

I think most people also don't realize that nearly all new games are actually just PS4 games with high-res assets. If all you're doing with new hardware is taking games designed for old hardware and increasing asset fidelity, they still look like old games, but you can always increase asset fidelity high enough to crap out any GPU. Unreal Gold with hi-res textures at 4K still looks like a 1990s game. For example, a Radeon 6700 XT can push just over 7x the texels of a PS4. Go any higher on texture resolution, and you drop frames. It also has 6.45x the pixel fill rate. If the PS4 game is fill-limited by a game at 30 fps@1080p, rendering 60 fps@4K would require 8x the fill rate, so the 6700 XT couldn't do it with nothing else whatsoever changed.

In a perfect world, instead of sperging about optimization, both the industry and audiences would stop at this inflection point to fundamentally re-evaluate gaming's relationship with cutting-edge graphics.

I think they kind of have been forced to, since console gamers didn't rush to get the PS5. Consequently, most games have PS4 versions, which in turn means the PC version typically can run pretty well on a 2014 GPU, like BF 2042 running at 60-70 fps on a GTX 970. And because most games are designed to run well on 11-year-old hardware, when a game is instead designed to take advantage of hardware that's "only" four years old (imagine telling a gamer in 2006 that 4-year-old GPUs would be considered "recent" in 2025), it feels like a slap in the face.

 

[ultragemmy696969696969420]

this opinion is only unpopular within kiwifarms:
Celeste (despite being troonslop) absolutely nailed it's movement system. very tight and snappy without feeling juddery. and stage props accompany the movement like *insert some analogy here or whatever* shame i can't see a page of community content (to play something other than the EASY FOR THE SAKE OF INCLUSION campaign) without seeing MUH HECKELIN' VALID TRANS FLAG CUS WE'RE SOOOOOOOOOOO VALID VALID VALID VALID VALID VALIDVALID VALIDVALIDVASFDV

 

[StacticShock]

this opinion is only unpopular within kiwifarms:
Celeste (despite being troonslop) absolutely nailed it's movement system. very tight and snappy without feeling juddery. and stage props accompany the movement like *insert some analogy here or whatever* shame i can't see a page of community content (to play something other than the EASY FOR THE SAKE OF INCLUSION campaign) without seeing MUH HECKELIN' VALID TRANS FLAG CUS WE'RE SOOOOOOOOOOO VALID VALID VALID VALID VALID VALIDVALID VALIDVALIDVASFDV

trooneste was never said to have bad movement, what the fuck are you smoking? trooneste is laughed at for being a tranny analogy which can be summarized into two words: Mental Illness.
also let me laugh at you

 

[Sugriva]

trooneste was never said to have bad movement, what the fuck are you smoking? trooneste is laughed at for being a tranny analogy which can be summarized into two words: Mental Illness.
also let me laugh at you

Guacamelee rules and was unfairly shit on when it came out for having all those outdated memes. The sequel was disappointing and basically a rehash of the first game.

 

[Fig Kommandant]

But I suspect the autistic obsession with "bigger number better" means we'll continue down this path until every studio goes bankrupt developing games

It's tangently related but a decade ago, lots of PC gaming circles were much more about the specs than video games. It probably translated into the general culture of PC gaming. Same with ricing the hardware with LEDs or ricing the desktop with whatever themes or widgets, it's rarely about actually playing games. Meanwhile on the console discussion space, there's some console war but they do seem to talk much more about games, they don't waste time talking about the specs of their console.

 

[Hentai-Semitism]

they don't waste time talking about the specs of their console.

There's only so many different consoles on the market. If you want to talk about hardware, then there isn't much to discuss.

Speaking or PC ricing fads, remember cathodes?

 

[The Last Stand]

How DOES crouch jumping work?

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

There's only so many different consoles on the market. If you want to talk about hardware, then there isn't much to discuss.

Speaking or PC ricing fads, remember cathodes?

Yep. And I remember being a dumb 20 something wanting these in my pc when i first saw them in 2005.

 

[Hentai-Semitism]

Yep. And I remember being a dumb 20 something wanting these in my pc when i first saw them in 2005.

I had a pair of blue ones over 20 years ago. These days I only look inside my case when I'm connecting an HDD I use for backups.

 

[StacticShock]

Guacamelee rules and was unfairly shit on when it came out for having all those outdated memes. The sequel was disappointing and basically a rehash of the first game.

that sucked hard because dev didn't get it, he was too focused on the multiplayer bullshit to actually craft the story and decided to rehash the first game, his last game was some procedural generation shit but the art is good at least meanwhile guacamelee is gathering dust.

 

[Sugriva]

that sucked hard because dev didn't get it, he was too focused on the multiplayer bullshit to actually craft the story and decided to rehash the first game, his last game was some procedural generation shit but the art is good at least meanwhile guacamelee is gathering dust.

I really hate when devs waste resources adding useless multiplayer. Who the hell has 3 other friends willing to play Guacamelee with them?

 

[Neodanthril]

The primitive gamers of the 20th century actually unironically thought it was great fun to draw maps of dungeons, or play a 20-minute game for 10 hours without beating it, or finally figure out the solution to a riddle after wrestling with it for days.

I will never forget reading about how the co founder of Sierra loved being stuck on some moon logic bullshit puzzle in a text adventure game for 6 months.

no idea what Alan Wake is

It was remedy's ( the max Payne studio) next big IP. supernatural twin peaks inspired third person shooter. Had a massive advertising campaign with a micro series that was really cool. Came out the week before red Dead redemption. I'm sure you can guess what that did to sales. It's a fun game though, I enjoyed it.

Thread tax:
Games should not sell themselves as "realistic" and then only include the part of reality that makes things suck and none of the good parts. Best example is project zomboid. In base game it takes several in game months to improve your physical condition a single point, but you can't craft spears or bows despite all the other stuff it seems unlikely you could realistically do. You can't even throw rocks or make a slingshot from cloth. And then something as durable as a pipe wrench can somehow be broken by beating people with it.