I'm out (on PS4 that is) !

[CMDR Slee Piboi]

After some 900 hours in the game on PS4 Pro, I'm starting over on PC, for various reasons.

TL;DR: VR, better controllers, community.

In detail:

All the cool kids are on PC. It does disturb me somewhat that most of the active community, most of the youtubers, most of the action in general happens on PC. PS4 Shinrarta Dezhra is hardly the notorious de facto PvP station when all you meet is three lone Corvettes, two jump out at first sight of a Chieftain dropping in, and the third won't even respond to an o7. Meh. Now crossplay would fix this, of course console players would get annihilated in PvP by the optimized PC rigs, but still, not everyone is looking to be the apex predator. I think most would just enjoy sharing the same galaxy with the PC/Xbone brethren.

VR. Tested ED quickly on my colleague's PC account with VR at work. Now I'm no VR newbie, virtual reality has been my day job since 2015, but I still keep being amazed by the immersion of actually being there instead of just looking at it. I ran the docking and mining tutorials at the office on KBAM + Vive and I was hooked. Now I'm rocking a Rift CV1 on a GTX Titan X, it's no powerhouse but an old dev/artist PC I dragged home from work, it suffocates completely in RES fights, but I'm still loving it over the flat version. As far as Braben's comments on VR, I completely disagree with him, in the B2B sector VR is already being adopted like crazy and it will penetrate the consumer market. This toothpaste will never go back into the tube, it may take a while, but it's the future, deal with it. A sim without stereoscopic rendering will be left in the dust sooner or later as new simulations will run VR from day one.

Under-utilization of the DS4. I whined about it a couple of times in the suggestions thread, I think DS4 could be the ultimate "3D mouse" equivalent if the motion sensors were used for at least the rotations, or at best, if each of the six axes were independently available for mapping freely to Elite's various analog controls. I actually miss the DS4 especially when playing in VR, I had the input mappings so I had everything I needed at my fingertips, but the sticks just aren't a match for a mouse while aiming fixed weapons, and being limited to 4 analog axes just plain sucks.

Lack of KBAM support. Unless Sony explicitly denies games from providing mouse support, I can't come up with a reason not to offer the same KBAM options to PS4 players which PC players enjoy. This is the kind of crap that gives consoles a bad reputation when they're roughly just fixed configuration PCs running a [slightly] custom O/S. But the feeling of FDev not really caring about console players is strong. One doesn't simply play Elite like it's an arcade game. Sims need sim controls.

Lack of support for a few specific HOTAS controllers which could easily work on PS4 with some minor effort. I'm currently running a Thrustmaster TWCS throttle and a G402 mouse. Because of VR, I need to have most of the priority functions at my fingertips so I went straight to Amazon before I even started this new CMDR. Now this throttle is light years away from decent HOTAS equipment, it's still a flimsy plasticy toy, but it's also a lot better than the two sad HOTAS sticks that are supported on PS4, and I don't really feel the need for anything of higher quality right now. I just wanted pitch+yaw+weapons in my right hand, thrusters+roll+utilities in my left hand, TWCS + mouse are just fine for that purpose.

Now I must say this in defence of the PS4 version. It really is a convenient way to play. I jumped out of the PC gaming scene around the times of Matrox G400 (a GPU released in 1999) and setting up this PC for ED I sure remembered why. Linking Frontier Account to the Steam Account, setting up Oculus, trying to get the game started in VR (do I start it from Steam? From Oculus Home? Sometimes one seems to work and sometimes the other), going to the Windows audio settings to change the sampling rate from 48K to 44.1K to get sounds to work (had to google for that fix)... it took me a good couple of hours to get it running flawlessly and still sometimes when I look at the navigation panel, if I move the mouse, it will leave the ED window and I end up posting on Facebook or something. I couldn't make the fullscreen mode setting stick, it defaults back to windowed every time. I've lost my input bindings already once and I've played for a day. I HATE PC GAMING. But in ED I just feel like a second class citizen on console, so I endure. Hope PS5 brings crossplay, VR and better controller support. I would love to get back to the convenience of console gaming but it's horses for courses and to me ED is a game which requires a sim configuration, and that current-gen consoles honestly don't provide.

 

[Old Duck]

I HATE PC GAMING. But in ED I just feel like a second class citizen on console, so I endure.

I have many times entertained the idea of getting a gaming PC for ED. But like you, I really do not like PC gaming for a whole list of reasons. And while a PC would fix some of issues I currently suffer on PS4 (primarily those terrible, awful shadows), the PC version of ED is no GOTY either. ED on all platforms has a plethora of bugs and half-baked content. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the game for what it is, but not enough to buy a PC for it.

Hope PS5 brings crossplay, VR and better controller support.

The PS5 is the other reason I'm not jumping over to PC. I have high hopes for this new console, and with the library of games I have for PS4, it makes more sense for me to be patient and wait for PS5 (which will also play my PS4 games in Pro quality).

I would love to get back to the convenience of console gaming but it's horses for courses and to me ED is a game which requires a sim configuration, and that current-gen consoles honestly don't provide.

If you need / want a simulator configuration (top-end HOTAS, K&M, macros, etc), then PC is the only obvious choice. I personally don't need any of these to feel completely immersed in ED. I just need a good-looking game that has been properly debugged, which I'm hoping we'll get on PS5.

As for horses, I just grabbed Red Dead Redemption 2 on sale, and it really shows just how weak ED is on consoles (and that the fault is not in the hardware, but the developer). For example, in ED you need a high-end PC for simple godrays, whereas RDR2 gives me incredible atmospherics, godrays being just a small part of the overall graphical presentation. It's mind-boggling how good this game looks on a humble PS4 Slim, and in comparison how awful ED looks (at least the lighting) on the same hardware. And this leads us to the other reason your choice to switch to PC as a true fan of ED makes sense - ED is a PC game first. The ports to console are unoptimized, sub-optimal shadows (haha, love that word) of the PC version. At least the PS5 should fix some of these issues by virtual of throwing more advanced hardware at ED's sloppy graphic shaders.

TL;DR - I totally understand your decision, almost made it myself, but in the end I'm happy with my console and the majority of the many games I play on it. Frontier can either fix ED on console (be it this generation or PS5), or I'll just keep on playing other games and enjoy the concept of ED vicariously via this forum.

 

[Skip Rockbounder]

The unfortunate thing about the PS4 platform (as well as the Xbox platform) is that these players provided a great deal of income for the development of ED, I say the unfortunate thing because a hellovalot of things PC gamers take for granted with point and click are not in the game from the start, simply because of the cross platform requirements, that takes a hit on PC gaming fun... in my opinion!

 

[lostagain]

Seems like Ducks PS4 has infected all PS4 consoles world wide.
But he still hangs on to it.

 

[Old Duck]

But he still hangs on to it.

Did I mention how absolutely amazing Red Dead Redemption 2 looks on my perfectly-fine PS4 Slim? I mean, AMAZING! Then again, most of the games I own look amazing. Huh, it's almost as if the problem is with ED...

How does RDR2 look in your PC?

.....

 

[Voracity_T]

Heh, dunno what timezone you're in but 'rarta is pretty active most of the time.

 

[lostagain]

Did I mention how absolutely amazing Red Dead Redemption 2 looks on my perfectly-fine PS4 Slim? I mean, AMAZING! Then again, most of the games I own look amazing. Huh, it's almost as if the problem is with ED...

How does RDR2 look in your PC?

.....

You caught me.
OK I didn't say that, the other me said it.

 

[Snowymonk]

Did I mention how absolutely amazing Red Dead Redemption 2 looks on my perfectly-fine PS4 Slim? I mean, AMAZING! Then again, most of the games I own look amazing. Huh, it's almost as if the problem is with ED...

How does RDR2 look in your PC?

.....

At the risk of derailing this thread, RDR2 was written explicitly for the PS4 by a team of very skilled programmers. Rockstar have a history of pushing the boundaries of what the PS4 can do.
They have even written bespoke compiling and lighting code that other developers have now started using.

RDR2 isn't perfect though.

Prior to the recent patch, the initial launch lighting had downgraded as it had been causing performance issues. The latest patch has gone someway to redressing this but it still doesn't look as good as it looked at launch - when FPS was patchy.

Frontier have to code a game for multiple platforms. It will be as good as they can get on each of them. If you look at other platforms, you can almost guarantee that you will find examples that look better than what you have. (unless you look at Xbox games....)

Why sweat it? The PS4 console version of the game is good. It's better than a lot of other PS4 games. It is not as good as others. It is not as good as a £1000 PC + VR rig.

Ho Hum...

 

[Old Duck]

Prior to the recent patch, the initial launch lighting had downgraded as it had been causing performance issues. The latest patch has gone someway to redressing this but it still doesn't look as good as it looked at launch - when FPS was patchy.

Do you have proof* of this - like a link to a website detailing the differences? I don't doubt you, in fact I believe you. I bought RDR2 on disc and played it for a good week before finally downloading the huge cumulative patch, and I swear it's glitchier now than it was before... I've even debated whether to "roll back" to the original version, something I can thankfully do if I want since I own the disc.

Spoiler: UPDATE *

I researched the graphics downgrade and found the evidence I sought. Now I just have to decide if I want to roll back to 1.00 or continue playing with downgraded graphics! Since I can happily wait until after finishing Story mode to play RDO (which apparently is the reason for the downgrade), I'm very tempted to roll back, assuming the original's bugs aren't too bad.

Why sweat it? The PS4 console version of the game is good. It's better than a lot of other PS4 games. It is not as good as others.

Our views on "good", "better", and "not as good" are obviously subjective. I tried Everspace and couldn't play it because the control scheme is horrible compared to ED, IMO. Graphically-speaking, ED both ugly and beautiful, depending on the lighting. Now on my PS4, it's the buggiest game I own, at least when it comes to bugs that I personally notice. On that note, I wasn't experiencing the various launch-day bugs other people reported in RDR2 before I updated it, but I suspect a lot of that is how I play the game vs. how others do. ED on the other hand...

Long story short, I'm not playing ED right now because of these bugs and just how ugly it gets when it gets ugly. I'm not sweating it, however, I'm just playing other games. That's my point in commenting in this thread - ED is not good enough a game for me to invest $$$ in a gaming PC to compensate for the uglies. I'd rather spend that money on other games like RDR2. That's just me, and there's not a drop of sweat on my forehead. Still, I haven't lost interest in the game that can still be, so if you're looking to get rid of me, best use the "ignore" feature, 'cause I ain't going nowhere [insert spitting cowboy emoji].

 

[CMDR Slee Piboi]

I have many times entertained the idea of getting a gaming PC for ED.

To be honest I am cheating since I work in a company where our development machines are VR capable gaming rigs and we have no IT policy to prevent me from installing games. Heck, we actually require Steam to be installed on all dev PCs since we use SteamVR on a daily basis. My point is, it was an easy decision from a cost perspective. I don't think I would spend 3k on a top notch gaming PC out of my own pocket, I'd rather find another game to enjoy on PS4 than obsess about getting the best ED experience.

Now I'm just struggling with the fact that we just ordered in a bunch of new 2080RTX equipped PCs. Would I dare bring one home for "remote work" reasons? Plus we partner with HP, our boys are just out there in AWE2019, showing off our product on Reverb headsets. I'm definitely expecting to have one as a souvenir.

There's a good chance I might never come out of VR... even on Rift and an outdated GTX Titan X, VR really makes it that good.

the fault is not in the hardware, but the developer

Rockstar have a history of pushing the boundaries of what the PS4 can do.

I think it's unfortunate that FDev is deeply committed into tackling ALL the problems of game development, not just providing engaging gameplay and a good user experience on multiple platforms with different ux paradigms on each, but also all the cross-platform, low-level scaffolding of the engine! I have years of experience on Unity and Unreal Engine, there's absolutely nothing preventing you from building a procgen galaxy with dynamic meshes, streaming LOD and whatever you can come up with. These engines take away the horrible, horrible workload of processing various imported file formats, constructing navmeshes and AI FSMs, and designing rendercall command buffers. A decent editor GUI alone is multiple person-years of work.

Our views on "good", "better", and "not as good" are obviously subjective. I tried Everspace and couldn't play it because the control scheme is horrible compared to ED, IMO.

In my personal opinion realism be damned, a game should look beautiful first and foremost. My all time #1 favorite game visually is Playdead's Inside, with Journey and Abzu sitting close in the top rankings. And this is coming from a guy who's been involved in 3D graphics tech since the days of mode 13h. I have looked at a lot of 3D and it is rarely the most photorealistic implementations that catch my eye these days. But I digress. My point is, Everspace and Rebel Galaxy are both visually much more enjoyable as far as space sci-fi games go, but as games they don't hit the spot ED does. After a long stint in ED, my first try of Everspace and I remember thinking "oh, so space can be made to look interesting" , ED is mostly a lot of black inhabited by few round rocks, with the odd asteroid field breaking the monotony.

Look, our art team have been doing offline rendered animations and photo manipulation since forever, with dozens of awards and the occasional Cannes Lion trophy so I guess we do something right. In the world out there, nobody wants realism. Cameras produce 100% photorealistic images but we still spend hours and hours, not to mention a significant amount of the client's money, manipulating the hell out of those images in order to make them convey the right message.

"Realistic, but with lasers and shields and FTL" . Mmkay. Games are primarily art and entertainment and immersion doesn't require realism, it requires internal consistency. Realism in video games is always cherry-picking. I think ED contains a lot of poor choices in that regard, making it rather depressing to look at most of the time.

Hm.

Actually.

Now that I'm on PC, maybe I should explore my options.

 

[Snowymonk]

Do you have proof* of this - like a link to a website detailing the differences? I don't doubt you, in fact I believe you. I bought RDR2 on disc and played it for a good week before finally downloading the huge cumulative patch, and I swear it's glitchier now than it was before... I've even debated whether to "roll back" to the original version, something I can thankfully do if I want since I own the disc.

Spoiler: UPDATE *

I researched the graphics downgrade and found the evidence I sought. Now I just have to decide if I want to roll back to 1.00 or continue playing with downgraded graphics! Since I can happily wait until after finishing Story mode to play RDO (which apparently is the reason for the downgrade), I'm very tempted to roll back, assuming the original's bugs aren't too bad.

Our views on "good", "better", and "not as good" are obviously subjective. I tried Everspace and couldn't play it because the control scheme is horrible compared to ED, IMO. Graphically-speaking, ED both ugly and beautiful, depending on the lighting. Now on my PS4, it's the buggiest game I own, at least when it comes to bugs that I personally notice. On that note, I wasn't experiencing the various launch-day bugs other people reported in RDR2 before I updated it, but I suspect a lot of that is how I play the game vs. how others do. ED on the other hand...

Long story short, I'm not playing ED right now because of these bugs and just how ugly it gets when it gets ugly. I'm not sweating it, however, I'm just playing other games. That's my point in commenting in this thread - ED is not good enough a game for me to invest $$$ in a gaming PC to compensate for the uglies. I'd rather spend that money on other games like RDR2. That's just me, and there's not a drop of sweat on my forehead. Still, I haven't lost interest in the game that can still be, so if you're looking to get rid of me, best use the "ignore" feature, 'cause I ain't going nowhere [insert spitting cowboy emoji].

Link to article detailing the graphical / performance changes in the latest RDR2 patch

Red Dead Redemption 2 patch 1.09 tested: has HDR been fixed?

Red Dead Redemption patch 1.09 arrived last week, delivering a huge update that took the online component out of its be…

www.eurogamer.net

 

[Old Duck]

....In my personal opinion realism be damned, a game should look beautiful first and foremost....

"Realistic, but with lasers and shields and FTL" . Mmkay. Games are primarily art and entertainment and immersion doesn't require realism, it requires internal consistency.

I was with you until the realism bit. I love the realistic aspects of ED, especially the Stellar Forge. That said, ED does fall a bit flat when it comes to nebula, black holes, geological features (like actual HUGE volcanoes) and other stellar phenomena that are way more beautiful and impressive IRL. Granted, some things like the nebula and even local planets we see in Hubble imagery has been enhanced to make the photos pop, and this is one area where I'd be totally fine if ED leaned towards art vs realism, but I don't want ED being the next NMS or even Everspace. I love the relatively accurate Milky Way in ED.

The other "scratch my head" reaction to your "realism be damned" post is that your OP seems to focus on your need to treat ED as a space SIMULATOR (with fancy HOTAS, etc) rather than a "sit on your couch and play with DS4" game. So which is it?

 

[CMDR Slee Piboi]

Fair enough, I'll try to elaborate.

A simulation as a video game genre has always been de facto recognizable by exposed complexity. The system exposes the very fine details of its setting and you get to interact with those details to a fine degree. With the details exposed, there is a much greater risk of missing a spot and introducing an internal conflict, which then breaks the suspension of disbelief. Conversely, when successful, the immersion can be much deeper than with an arcade type approach which exposes (and therefore risks) very little but consequently leaves the integration of the player into the setting more shallow.

Realism is merely an objective comparison of the make-believe world to our current physical paradigm. Immersion is when you forget where you really are, until you put down the book, the movie ends, or you quit the game. Immersion is broken by inconsistency, when the world doesn't play by its own rules, whatever they may be. By this definition, a realistic simulation may be immersive but an immersive simulation does not have to be realistic.

I need ED to simulate an internally consistent make-believe world where mastery of the game is achieved by being able to manage a complex system of multiple variables requiring both reasonably fast real-time decision making (which is where high-grade human-computer interfaces such as HOTAS and VR come into play), as well as a certain amount of forward planning (because it's a persistent, simulated universe where actions have meaningful consequences).

This simulated world does not have to resemble our own.

 

[Voracity_T]

Have you tried murdering other players?


It's really quite fun.

 

[stormyuk]

Have you tried murdering other players?


It's really quite fun.

You can do that equally as well on a PC or PS4.

 

[Voracity_T]

This is true..

However console gamers I would say are more entertaining to shoot at.

PC folks, although very competative, are generally much nicer to one another regarding wins and losses. Or at least thats how it seems in this game.

Console folks in ED seem to end up very unhappy when they don't win. Making a grown man in thier 30's/40's rage quit because they did'nt win is endlessly entertaining.

Call me a sadist or whatever but I seldom get tired of it.

Although as soon as I get the move sorted, I too will join the ranks of the PC pilots as there are more players and a considerably higher skill ceiling, I also very much look forward to the comradery avalible on PC. Its pretty lacking on Ps4. There are some nice guys around, but it seems like many are just a bit.. Eww...

 

[Old Duck]

Although as soon as I get the move sorted, I too will join the ranks of the PC pilots as there are more players and a considerably higher skill ceiling, I also very much look forward to the comradery avalible on PC. Its pretty lacking on Ps4. There are some nice guys around, but it seems like many are just a bit.. Eww...

ED is like a version of Facebook for old space nerds. Many players here seem more interesting in socializing than engaging gameplay. I personally play games to play, and use social media like this forum and Twitter for my socializing. Perhaps part of this is the "eww" factor (I've met some real creepers on PS4, especially when I play my alt female CMDR), but mostly I want to fly my spaceship in an immersive futuristic galaxy, not type "o7" ever other minute or discuss RL politics on Discord or play Bumper Cars with other SRVs down on random planets, etc.

This is probably why MMOs often let me down in general - they end up feeling like a theme park filled with other video game players, rather than an immersive world filled with space ship pilots or (insert theme of MMO). I actually prefer "socializing" with NPCs in more advanced games like RDR2, because in many ways they feel more 'real' in relation to the game world. But that's just me.

 

[CMDR Slee Piboi]

I actually prefer "socializing" with NPCs in more advanced games like RDR2, because in many ways they feel more 'real' in relation to the game world. But that's just me.

No it's not just you. This is why I never got into the multiplayer thing in the first place. I can still remember the disappointment when the tech was finally there and I was expecting something roughly along the lines of pen & paper RPGs (in a limited sense of course since the GM was still AI) but instead of people roleplaying all I found was "omg lol yo momma" players who could seemingly only navigate the game world by jumping. In my experience NPCs are a lot better at roleplay than 99%+ of the gaming population.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I had a g400. I was young and stupid and didn't like nvidia because i had 3fdx cards. Thats it.

 

[CMDR Lukas Vance]

I'm also considering PC, after over 4000 hours on PS4 Pro, but mostly due to the fan which makes my console sound like a Boeing 747. ED is bad, but it makes RDR2 unplayable for me. I've looked and I can't even seem to find a replacement fan unit here in the UK. At least I have a few billion in assets to transfer.