What's your Patient Gamer's Unpopular Opinion?
What's your Patient Gamer's Unpopular Opinion?
Share your unfiltered, unpopular gaming opinions and let's dive into some real discussions. If you come across a view you disagree with, feel free to (respectfully) defend your perspective. I don't want to see anyone say stuff like "we're all entitled to our own opinions." Let's pretend like gaming is a science and we are all award winning scientists.
My Unpopular Opinion:
I believe the criticism against battle royales is often unwarranted. Most complaints revolve around constant content updates, microtransactions, and toxic player communities
Many criticize the frequent content updates, often cosmetic, as overwhelming. However, it's optional, and no other industry receives flak for releasing more. I've never seen anyone complain about too many Lays or coke flavors.
Pay-to-win concerns are mostly outdated; microtransactions are often for cosmetics. If you don't have the self control to not buy a purple glittery gun, then I'm glad you don't play the games anymore, but I don't think it makes the game bad.
The annoying player bases is the one I understand the most. I don't really have a point against this except that it's better to play with friends.
Overall I think battle royale games are pretty fun and rewarding. Some of my favorite gaming memories were playing stuff like apex legends late at night with friends or even playing minecraft hunger games with my cousins like 10 years ago. A long time ago I heard in a news segment that toy companies found out that people are willing to invest a lot of time and energy into winning ,if they know there will be a big reward at the end, and battle royales tap into that side of my brain.
This is just my opinion
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I've stopped advocating for PC gaming after about 15 years of being a PC enthusiast. It's just too expensive these days. I think the Steam Deck is a good entry point, but not everyone wants a handheld console. I can 100% respect anyone who looks at the price of a gaming PC and just picks up a Playstation/Xbox for $500 instead.
What do you mean too expensive? While the higher-end GPUs are still ridiculous, you can find something like the 6650XT for ~$200 and that is more than enough for 1080p gaming. Meanwhile SSDs and RAM are at an all-time low price because of how cheap NAND flash is. Throw in a previous gen Ryzen 5 or i5 for ~$100 and you could easily build a competent gaming PC for $500. Plus you don't have to pay the $60/year tax for online and get access to Steam sales and mods. And torrents if you're into that.
I'm talking about something which can achieve parity with the 4k graphics that console gamers expect nowadays. That's not remotely affordable on PC, but it is for consoles.
The Series X and the PS5 are both roughly around the performance of a 6700XT, possibly lower depending on where you look. Any "4K" that is happening is upscaling. Most games run on the equivalent of low or medium settings, use dynamic resolution, checkerboard rendering, or for big games like Starfield or Elden Ring will run at 30fps.
Look, you're welcome to nitpick graphical fidelity, but I think current gen console games running on a 4k tv look excellent. They're also a fraction of the price compared to PC hardware. That's a better proposition compared to PC gaming these days for anyone looking to get into gaming. I get that that's not a popular viewpoint among the PC crowd, but that's why I posted it.
The point isn't how good they look, the point is that it's not actually 4K. You can run your PC games at 1080p on a 4K screen and get the same experience. That's what DLSS and FSR are already doing. And if both are $500 it's not a fraction of the price it's the same price. Actually over time PC is cheaper because you're not paying $60/year for online.
After 5 years your $500 console actually cost $800. That's $300 you could have spent on more games or on a stronger GPU that can maybe actually run higher resolutions or higher framerates. At the end of the day consoles are the illusion of a good value. It is smoke and mirrors.
I looked it up, and a 6700XT costs the same price as a PS5/Xbox in my country. Add onto that all of the extra components you'll need to build a PC and it's way in excess of what a console costs. Sorry, but the cost of entry for PC just doesn't compare to consoles.
I'm going to assume you're in the Netherlands because of feddit.nl. The 6650XT that I mentioned earlier is €247 on amazon.nl while the Series X is €539. And the 6700XT is €349. That's €200 less for the 6700XT and €300 less for the 6650XT. And that's just Amazon-- I'm sure there are used options on sites I'm not going to know about. And again assuming you are using the console for 5 years the real cost is €539 + €300 = €839. You can definitely build a better PC for that much.
EDIT: Here you go. A decent gaming PC with performance that should roughly be on-par with consoles for €593 which is less than the price of the Series X + 1 year of Xbox Live (€599). And this is with all new parts. I usually recommend going used for everything but storage, but I wouldn't know if ebay is good or what the alternative is for you.
I mean it’s not really an apples to apples comparison. The hardware is generally more expensive for an equivalent gaming computer for sure… but I’m not convinced it’s more expensive overall. A computer can be used for more things, and games are often available cheaper (though consoles have a better used market and stuff), plus there’s a huge back catalog of older games that you can keep throughout the generations. If you want a console that’s totally fair, and there’s definitely advantages… But I need a desktop anyway, so buying a graphics card is a better investment for me, and I like not being in quite as much of a walled garden.
"In my country." Look dude, if you live in a shit country that gets like nine GPUs per year and they're all stupidly expensive then say that in your post so you don't waste people's fucking time.
"""upscaled""" 4K, righto.
I dunno why people expect extreme levels of graphics anyways. Alan Wake 2 will not be a better game just because the pores in the wood are rendered at all times.
A $600 PC runs everything if you learn to ignore this one, meaningless attribute.
This, i loved the original Alan Wake for it's story, i wouldn't care at all if the second game had the exact same graphics. The industry wants to push for graphics because it is very simple for them to improve that, just put more time/money on the assets, hire actors to do mocap and not think about anything else, that's as souless as the movie industry.
Eh, I don't want 4k on my PC, 1440p is already overkill. The only reason I care about 4k on my TV is because it's so big. But even then, my Switch looks fine, and it definitely doesn't render in 4k.
For me, PC gaming is way less expensive than consoles. I spend about $500 every 3-5 years for upgrades, and I spend way less for games because of sales.
So your complaint with the PC's affordability is that it's expensive to produce ultra high end graphics?
Yeah, people who have to care about money don't care about 4k.
Well from my perspective, 4k monitors came out about ten years ago, so it's not ultra-high end. It's actually quite old. I've been holding off on getting into 4k for so long, but the prices keep going up. The expectation was that prices are supposed to go down over time. Hence, I no longer feel like PC has the edge it used to.
It really depends on your expectations. Once you clarified that you meant parity with current consoles, I understood why you wrote what you did.
I'm almost the exact opposite of the PC princesses who can say with a straight face that running a new AAA release at anything less than high settings at 4K/120fps is "unplayable". I stopped watching/reading a lot of PC gaming content online because it kept making me feel bad about my system even though I'm very happy with its performance.
Like a lot of patient gamers, I'm also an older gamer, and I grew up with NES, C64, and ancient DOS games. I'm satisfied with medium settings at 1080/60fps, and anything more is gravy to me. I don't even own a 4K display. I'm happy to play on low settings at 720/30fps if the actual game is good. The parts in my system range from 13 to 5 years old, much of it bought secondhand.
The advantage of this compared to a console is that I can still try to run any PC game on my system, and I might be satisfied with the result; no-one can play a PS5 game on a PS3.
Starfield is the first game to be released that (looking at online performance videos) I consider probably not being worth trying to play on my setup. It'll run, but the performance will be miserable. If I was really keen to play it I might try to put up with it, but fortunately I'm not.
You could build a similar system to mine from secondhand parts for dirt cheap (under US$300, possibly even under US$200) although these days the price/performance sweet spot would be a few years newer.
Yeah precisely. I bought a PS4 to play Spiderman. Then they asked me to buy a PS5 to play Spiderman 2. Fuck. That. My PC is older than my PS4, and I'll be playing Spiderman 2 on the PC when it gets ported. This is what made me mostly give up on consoles after Halo 5, and Spiderman has convinced me to abandon them entirely. Except for my Switch, which is still going strong and playing new releases after 6 years. Nintendo knows what's up. Sony and Microsoft don't.
You can't do the math on the price per performance of a PC at one point in time. You have to do the long term math.
I aim for mid tier, so something like $800-1200 if I built everything new. But I rarely tax my system. Here are my specs:
- CPU: Ryzen 5600X - got on sale for <$150
- GPU: RX 6650XT - ~$200 on sale
- RAM: 16GB DDR4
- monitor: 1440p @ 95Hz - ~$300 a few years ago (same can be had for $200-250 today)
I can play most games at reasonable framerates (40+ FPS, most >60) at 1440p. My system is about as good as a console, at least in overall experience (my screen is a foot from my face, so it looks better than 4k at 10x the distance).
I recently upgraded for ~$500, and before that was rocking a Ryzen 1700 (got for programming, not gaming) and GTX 960. I didn't upgrade because a specific game ran poorly, I upgraded because I wanted better non-gaming perf (compiling code, Wayland on my Linux system, etc).
My kids are just fine on my laptop with an AMD APU (3500U), and most of my most played games would work pretty well on that hardware.
Initially I agreed with your statement but patient gamer and PC gaming go well together. I do think the idea of spending 1k or 2k plus is ridiculous and the high end stuff offers zero value for money though.
Lol your unpopular opinion was so unpopular you got into a nice little chin wag with someone over if consoles can provide better graphical fidelity than a pc you can build for the same price.
I'm on your side though. I think the console has better specs to cost for just hardware. Steam sales (and humble bundles) will get my dollar significantly further than it ever will on a console. I bet dollars to donuts Dave The Diver will never be cheaper on Switch than Steam.
It's always been said that consoles are a loss leader, as in the hardware is cheap because they make the money back on the game, right? Judging the overall cost on just the initial hardware expense is mad, because as you say getting PC games (through Steam sales, Humble Bundles, free game giveaways etc) is so much cheaper.
This. The price of graphics cards means my hobby is about to become super expensive for me; I bought a OneXFly, but that's because the Steam Deck won't play some of the games I play most often, and I had two RoG Ally systems fry themselves from some sort of quality control issues. I also have to buy a portable bluetooth keyboard and mouse combo since I'll be playing mostly games like OpenTTD and Stellaris.
People said consoles were dead. That innovative high-end phones are dead. That PC Gaming is dead.
I think they're going to survive, but by merging. PCs have a role that will keep them viable, but XR goggles are quickly making phone screens obsolete and I think (at least until/unless the economy recovers and/or capitalism finally dies) we're going to be relying a lot more on portable gaming PC phone hybrids in the future.
IDK, mid tier GPUs like the 6650XT/7600 are pretty affordable at $200-300. That's about the same as they've always been. There was a crazy increase during COVID, but prices are now quite reasonable.
You can make PC gaming expensive, but it doesn't have to be. I spend about $200-300 on GPU, $100-200 on CPU, and upgrade the rest as infrequently as I can get away with. So something like $500-800 every 5-ish years, or $100-200/year. I probably save that much or more just on the cost of games.
The last gen of GPUs was real bad on price, but it's gotten better. I'm still paying a little more for my PC parts than I would a current gen console, but I always more than make up for it with lower prices on games and accessories, no online access fees, etc.
My concern with PC gaming right now is that it's starting to look like a midrange PC won't get you 60fps anymore, and sub-60 is generally a dealbreaker for me. Maybe it would have been easier if I'd grown up during the fifth console gen when 15fps was common, but 60 was the standard for my consoles for years.
This year it was like every other big PC release was Crysis, and now I gotta wait until my PC is a gen ahead to run them how I want. At least that keeps me on the patient gamer path?
A midrange PC still gets you 60 fps on all the old games and most of the indie games.
Surprising how this is actually mildly unpopular, but I agree with you! You just get a more convenient and better experience (relative to the investment, I mean) from consoles nowadays, and you can resell the games if you bought a physical copy. I don‘t think PC gaming is dead, but consoles have the edge for now. Personally, I have a PC and a Switch, haven‘t had a „big“ console since the PS2 but I agree.
PC gaming is way cheaper for me. It has a higher upfront cost (like $1k to get started), but if you buy last gen hardware (e.g. I just bought a 6650XT for a little over $200) and stay around the middle, you can get fantastic value long term.
Since you're sitting close to a screen, you don't need 4k and 1440p will probably provide a better overall experience than couch gaming @ 4k anyway. So you don't need to match consoles in GPU performance, you just need to match them in overall experience. Upgrade every 5 years or so for $500, and you'll always have a pretty decent, mid tier setup that'll rival consoles in performance.
So yeah, $500-800 every five years keeps you at or a little above consoles in terms of performance. And games are cheaper (assuming you're a patient gamer) and don't lose compatibility when you upgrade, so PC should be cheaper long term.
Ah Yes $500 plus $70 a year plus a library that won't work on the new one in a couple years plus more expensive periferals is definitely much cheaper than a used PC
you're comparing the
most premiumpriciest possible console experience with the cheapest way to play pc games, they can get used consoles as well, and just like pc they get discounts on old games, not to mention that secondhand games are a thing on console,Online play is premium? I know this generation does have backwards compatibility but what about the next one? Your used games won't work when you do decide to upgrade.
My bad, premium as in pricy
That one talks so much around the compatibility of gaming and regular parts, how laptops and smartphones are so much more popular now for non gamers, and fetishism about how expensive everything is.
Gaming on PC used to be just buying a graphics card and putting on your regular computer, maybe upgrading the PSU, now although a low end graphics card on a regular desktop can give you pretty good results, most people don't have desktops, and notebooks are getting less and less modular.
I also blame how the community seems proud of spending a lot and getting diminishing results. The market sees how people are spending irresponsibily and know they can raise the price as much as they want.
At the end of the day, gaming on a PC ends up cheaper because you own everything, and a good computer makes your life so much easier outside of ganing. When on console, you are kind of forced to play by the company's rule, at least if you don't buy everything on the diminishing returns region instead of the cxb region.
Agreed. I am pretty frugal and PC gaming ends up way cheaper than console gaming. I have a Switch and a PC, and just getting the console and 10 games or so is the same price as building a PC. You can get a lot of bang for <$1k. Here's a rough price list:
- CPU - $150-250 - 7600 or similar
- GPU - $200-300 - 6650 or 7600
- motherboard + RAM - $200 - DDR5 platform
- PSU - $100 - >600W Gold or better from decent brand
- case $50-100
- drive - $50-100 - 1TB NVMe
- keyboard+mouse - $100
- monitor - $200-300 - 1440p 27" or high refresh 24"
This gets you a high quality setup on a modern, upgradable platform for $1000-1300. You could drop this down to $800 or so and still play most modern games at 1080/60.
I recently upgraded my PC and only needed the first two (Ryzen 1700 + GTX 960 to Ryzen 5600x + RX 6650XT) and spent $400-500. I had the PC unchanged for 5 years (spent ~$800 in 2017 for CPU, mobo, GPU, and case; reused the rest), then spent about the price of a new console to bring it mostly up to date.
Games are much cheaper on PC. Since I'm a patient gamer, I can get most AAAs for $10-20 on a typical sale about 2 years after launch, or $5 if it's in a bundle. On console, I'd probably spend $20-40 used. I also don't lose my games or peripherals when I upgrade my hardware, and I can use my PC for tons of other stuff.
So PC is still way cheaper for me. Then again, I buy lots of older games, not a handful of newer games, and I'm in it for the long term (I'm married with kids, so I have plenty of space and don't plan to move).
Totally agree. It's getting out of hand now with the high prices but low value for money.