One thing that annoys me about porting is that developers all too often associate several different actions to one button (or key in this case). In Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, why do I have to hold down my free run key and jump key in order to do a Leap of Faith? I can automatically jump across buildings and climb walls just by holding my free run key, but I am required to press essentially three different keys in order to jump off a building? This makes no sense. The lack of a toggle run option is disappointing as well.

Is that a port issue or a design choice?

Bad menu navigation and lack of options.

The XCOM Enemy Unknown KB+M controls are a fucking abomination, that's what bothers me.

But that AC shit works the same way on console. It's just so you don't accidentally jump off before synchronizing. We could talk for ages about stupid design shit in AC though. LIKE ALL OF THE MENUS, ever.

It may have been a design choice based off of a controller's limited buttons. Either way, combining keys should be completely up to the user since the keyboard actually has many more keys to work with.

I ran into a very similar issue with the Batman games. Even though I had my Ground Takedown set as one, separate key, the game kept telling me that it was unassigned (and the game made no effort to tell me that I had to use two keys simultaneously to perform said action).

They bothered my buddies but they never really bothered me - which was strange because I'm the least KB+M of the bunch.

Sure you do, but three fingers are dedicated to WASD and you've got two spare fingers and a thumb. The controls need to be keyed to that set up. That's why you get a lot of context-sensitive controls and why some keys need to be combined. I can't imagine playing AssCreed with a keyboard and mouse though. That sounds like an exercise in frustration.

ok well my anger is a little exaggerated but there was this super frustrating issue which, when using the wheel to move up or down floors, or trying to position a unit on a ramp or a rooftop, where the game would just arbitrarily force you to pick a tile you didn't want.

Well, isn't that intentional since I'd rather not accidentally fall off the building because I kept on holding the free-run button. I think it works fine.

I hate how developers don't seem to care about porting games to PC, they'll do a half-assed job and still charge full price for a game. That's the reason we have ports that have terrible framerates, mechanics, minimal choices in the settings tab, and so on. I hope they give the PC the attention it deserves this gen.

Maybe they have to cut costs because they know 90% of post release day sales will be purchased at 50-75% off by people like me?

Terrible KB+M controls!

I find it weird that loot based action rpgs find it too difficult having a wasd control and that it fuck up game mechanics. I really wish these games also had support for gamepads, I think the ports of Diablo III for ps3 / xbox showcases it can be done if done correctly.

I really liked Bulletstorm but it had it all.

• Encrypted config files
• Mouse acceleration
• Narrow FOV
• Locked max framerate
• GFWL
• KB only menu navigation
• Multiple functions bound to a single key

Most could be dealt with a fan-made INI decrypter but some were there to stay because why bother.

What? That should have nothing to do with it. They should at least try to make a decent port.

I typically have to choose a unique key layout that works as best as it can within my physical limitations (I do not have very good hand coordination, especially my left hand).

Sorry are you implying that they shouldn't consider how much profit they stand to make before deciding how much to spend on the port?

I feel like you're just being facetious with your posts, and the constant question-answers, so I'm not responding anymore.

Unfortunately, much of the frustration felt by PC gamers shouldn't be directly at the developers per se; more than likely the publishers pushed out a bad game. Battlefield 4, for example, was essentially rushed out the door by EA. DICE is actually a very competent studio. Be mad at EA for all of the bugs, crashes, and errors. DICE specifically asked for more time and EA refused to give them that time.

Yeah, I know publishers are mostly to blame, but developers themselves aren't completely innocent either. Saints Row 2 is an example.

You're basing your bullshit on a lot of hypotheticals when there's already evidence to the contrary. You don't hear many developers talking shit about piracy on PC or the PC market being dependent on heavily discounted game sales.

Also, I'm not sure why people would be all that worried about PC ports considering how far the vast majority have come in the past several years in terms of quality. Thanks to the new console architectures, small time devs won't have to worry about a botched port as much because making it run on a PC won't be as difficult.

My only concern about PC ports nowadays is how devs still use shitty compressed video for some prerendered cutscenes that either play during a game or are used to cover load times. The next gen should help by having those prerendered videos be at proper 1080 versus 720 but I just hope it won't be compressed to shit, hell, battlefield 4 has some terrible looking prerendered cutscenes.

What was wrong with Saints Row 2 (I've only played Saints Row 4)?

Undefeatable mouse smoothing and acceleration, that shit is the literal worst. Make the mouse work properly you fuckers.

The game? Nothing. The PC port was absolutely terrible, though.

Wait... you play assassin's creed using a keyboard? Man, making a custom keyboard and mouse control scheme for assassin's creed would be like making a custom gamepad control scheme for starcraft 2. Just plug in a 360 controler and stop whinning.

I love when PC games ship without any mouse support.

The game itself is great. It's the port that's the problem. It's widely known as one of, if not the worst PC ports of the generation.

If I could map buttons on a controller like on a KB, I probably would use a controller for certain titles.

So far the examples given above are just overall game design choices and have nothing to do with it being a port. (except Bulletstorm stuff ervonymous mentioned)

The AC thing has been like this since the start because you need to differentiate between passive walking, free running over possible terrain, creeping over it, getting off the free run terrain (jumping) and jumping in place. Plus shit+W+space is a super common button combination in fps games, to me it just seems insane to even note it as it has been around for a long time. The X-com positioning issue due to elevation is again present in all versions due to how their tiered terrain grid can overlap and how it tries to determine what square you require, and as someone who sank over 150 hours into it k&m work perfectly fine for what you can do in that game, superb even.

@oldirtybearon: k&m works (arguably) even better then a controller for AC games, because of the way it switches how your freerun direction works, with a controller it is mostly up to the movement direction (left stick) and only minorly affected by where you look (right stick), with a k&m it's determined exactly by where you look and you just press forward (w) combine that with precise camera/look mouse control, so while the entirety of GB crew was complaining how imprecise freerunning can be and how you keep getting climbing on what you don't want to, i've never had that issue with the k&m scheme in all of the previous games

They made the mouse more sluggish in AC4, but I will still switch from a controller to k&m when Kenway is being a dunce on iffy terrain, even tho i switched to the controller for them almost entirely due to it feeling really great with ship combat.

Here's some shitty port stuff:

• locked framerate
• nonadjustable FoV
• nonexistent graphical settings period in extreme cases
• mouse lag
• mouse trying to mimic a controller vector motion instead of being point to point as it should be (this is probably the least common but the most asinine)
• no possibility to rebind keys
• inventory menus designed around a console in size and scope (eg Skyrim, Oblivion, KoA:reckoning)
• menus in general that have no mouse input
• no quicksave/quickload (if a game even has saves)
• over compressed or just plain shitty textures, hopefully we have seen the end of this as consoles now have more ram
• game running like dogshit while having no reason to do so (eg SR2, CoD:Ghosts)

All these things.

A controller-designed game coming over without controller support is the worst. Dammit, Mass Effect. At least Bioshock 2 patched it in... several years later.

I agree with all of those except the quicksave/quickload one. I like to have a bit of challenge in my games, and having the qs/ql option takes all that away through savescumming. I know others like it, and that's cool too.

Menus that are still designed for controllers, and have been in almost no way optimized for use with a mouse. Skyrim, I'm looking at you.

Do you live in 2002? Last I checked PC ports are mostly fantastic nowadays and have often been better than their console coutnerparts.

The PC version of Saints Row 2 is often considered one of the worst ever.

On the topic of controls, though, you know how most PC gamers will complain about console FPS and RTS control schemes? There are cases where it works the other way, too. Assassin's Creed and Batman Arkham Asylum/City/Origins were all designed with a controller in mind. Those games just don't adapt to keyboard and mouse controls in a smooth and natural way. Now, this isn't always the case - plenty of games can be played on both without an issue - but in some scenarios you should just use a controller.

@missacre: It's a pet peeve, it's not really for save scumming (personally). I like having dozens to hundreds of saves so that if anything ever goes wrong i can roll back to whatever state I please. This way when everyone is whining about save corruptions, or game not telling them something and overwriting, or progress ending bugs, etc etc and so on, I just sigh and smile. Being a long time PC gamer made me resistant to bugs and shit breaking by: A. being able to try and fix shit yourself; B. having shitload of backups.

A bonus is that it's a great way to explore many different possibilities in games that allow for that sort of thing.

That's all well and good for the majority of users. As a rule of thumb though, developers of PC games should allow you to uncombine keys. The beauty of PCs is that they are customizable and this is mostly apparent in games that are well-thought-out. As long as combining/un-combining certain actions do not give the player an unfair advantage, this should always be an option. If PC games were developed in such a way that they only took into account the most common denominator, what's the point of key mapping then?

@believer258: Played all of Batman games with k&m and all AC games up to AC3 with it too. They work perfectly with k&m. First fight I got into in Arkham City I did a flawless 30+ combo. And being able to control exactly which dude in any direction you are going to hit in a split second by having superb camera rotation and Batman going exactly where you point him is really nice. I didn't have a single issue 100%'ing them. (made my case for AC in a post above)

So I think they adopt rather well. :)

imo

Something tells me you play on consoles a lot more than PC.

@gamingmichael: What exactly do you mean of combining/uncombining keys. And can you give examples of games that do this?

I don't think I've ever done or seen what you're describing, tho i might be mistaken and thinking of a different thing.

Poor optimization

Locked frame rate

Mouse lag or mouse acceleration

QTEs designed for controllers

No option to change between toggle and holding for different actions such as crouch or ADS

A lot of people in here are listing Saints Row 2 as an example of a bad pc port, and rightly so. Having the speed of the game vary wildly based upon the clock speed of your processor was ridiculous, among other things. The thing that gets me though is many people don't realize that CD Projekt did that port. From that abomination to The Witcher series ... what a change.

Poor optimization is probably my biggest complaint. For example, Assassin's Creed III. I was really disappointed that my 1,500 dollar PC ran at 30 fps in Boston. Although some ports have great optimization, like DMC. My fps range from 150 to 210 in DMC.

My other big complaint is when there is no vsync option and I have to use a console command or the nvidia control panel to turn it off. Some games, the nvidia control doesn't work, like NFS Most Wanted 2012.

Also, a lack of proper mouse acceleration is a pain too.

@songwriter1987: Compare and contrast the size, density and detail of environments in AC3, the number of characters, shadows, objects, dynamic light sources to the same things in DmC...

DMC ran on a fairly vanilla version of UE3, it was always going to run at a billion frames per second (Much like Mass Effect and UT3).

My biggest complaints about console ports on PC are the users on forums. I swear, every time a game comes out with high system requirements users moan about it being a shit port. Take AC4 as an example. The game's textures are twice as large as the PS4 textures, there are extra shaders in use, HBAO instead of default SSAO, PCSS (percent closer soft shadows), and proper AA instead of the FXAA used on the console ports. Then people complain about how the game does not run at 1080p 60fps on their system they built a year ago when everything is cranked to the maximum. Just because you spent $1200 on a PC does not mean you deserve to run every game at full detail AND get 60fps. Especially at the launch of a new console cycle. It would be nice, but companies like Nvidia try and get developers to add features that only the owners of an SLI system will be able to take advantage of. As someone who has spent over $1000 on two video cards before, it feel nice to be able to play a game that takes advantage of your expensive hardware.

The Ground Takedown in the Batman games, for example, requires you to hit two buttons (crouch + takedown). This also happens when attempting to open a floor vent/hatch.

Well, AC4 came to mind when I read the title and then I come in and a lot of the conversation is about AC.

What bothers me specifically about AC4 is 21:9 and 16:10 resolutions get black bars on either the side or bottom of the screen and the frame rate is capped between 62 and 63 fps.

I play on either a 2560x1600(16:10) monitor or a 1920x1080 144Hz monitor and I can't fully utilize either of them.

Seriously, dude. This mentality is bullshit. If you want to game at 4K resolution and play everything at maximum settings, more power to you. Buy two Nvidia Titans, but this idea that you have to go out and buy a top-of-the-line card instead of insisting the developers actually optimize their games is ridiculous.

Total Biscuit recently reviewed the game Adventure Park, essentially a knockoff Rollercoaster Tycoon. He has two GTX Titans and, according to him, the game optimization is so bad that the frame rate drops into the 30s or lower. That is simply inexcusable, so my advice to you is that you consider the game may not be optimized for PCs all that well. Ubisoft has essentially taken the stance that optimization does not matter. Buy better hardware they say. $1500+ worth of hardware should be able to run 95% of games at maximum settings at 1080p. That is perfectly reasonable. 1600p? Then I can see your point.