What qualifies a game as a bad PC port?

[Iggy Wolf]

After the recent complaints of RDR2 being a "bad pc port", I have to ask the community what people think TRULY qualifies as a bad PC port. We know games like SR2 and GTA IV were considered bad ports, but does anyone ever ask why? Is a game a bad port because it forces you to "brute force" your way to smoother performance by having higher than necessary hardware just to achieve playable performance (e.g. having an i9 9700 K for a game that requires no more than an i5)?

Is it that it underutilizes the GPU and puts more strain on the CPU despite nothing in the game requiring more CPU usage? Ignoring the usual terrible bugs that qualify a game as a bad port, what about memory/RAM leaks? I'd be interested in hearing what other people have to say so that perhaps we can put to bed the false assumptions and silly arguments that other people use to say something is a "bad port" when it isn't.

[Iggy Wolf]

Originally posted by Degeneracy:

Its functionally a bad port. SR2 was completely non functioning. GTA IV a bad port like RDR2. GTA 5 as a port is perfect.

There is a range.

Exclusively controller
Controller centric
Awkward with controller
Bad mouse support or no remapping
Equal to mouse + keys

Then you have functional problems:
Rockstar launcher
Crashes
lag on mid - ultra specs

Devil May Cry 5 for example isnt perfect. The animation for turning is based on a stick being used so when you use wasd to move you suddenly jerk across screen with seemingly missing animation. Animation would need editing for the snappiness of keyboard vs smooth movement of a stick.

Good examples. I think what annoys me is people who defend a game, even or ESPECIALLY if it is a bad port, by saying that the problem MUST be on the user's end. The most common defense is that the user has a bad CPU. This despite the fact that if a game is more CPU bound, it's bound to tax ANY CPU, regardless of how powerful said CPU is.

The problem of course is whether a game SHOULD be taxing the CPU more than the GPU depending on what type of game it is. As an example, I can't see a racing game being anything other than a bad port if it heavily taxes the CPU, while underutilizing the GPU. And yet, there'll be people saying that the fault lies with the user, and not the game.

[Kargor]

Oftentimes, people expect improvement on the PC version, and complain if they aren't getting them.

A port that works fine is a good port, simple as that. I have plenty of PC games that are exactly like the console versions. These are ports, not remasters. There is no reason for them to have different/better graphics; it would just explode the costs for the port beyond beyond attractive for the publisher.

I don't know usually whether their keyboard/mouse support is considered "good", although I've heard it's bad in some cases. However, strictly speaking, *adding* keyboard/mouse is already an *additional* feature beyond merely porting the game. It can be considered important, but it's understandable if they don't want to put a whole lot of effort into it as serious gamers can just use a gamepad anyway.

[Stoibs]

Performance issues is an obvious one, but on a more grounded level that very well could - and very well *should* be fixed and looked at by the devs it's control inconsistencies and platform specific omissions that irk me.

A lot of games these days use 1 key for multiple actions (Vault/Take cover/Jump/Sprint) due to obvious controller limitations. Why is this still present here when we have an entire keyboard and gaming mice with countless buttons at our disposal? Why are default keys in a lot of things just broken messes that make no intuitive sense? - Page up and Home keys in Dark Souls? ZXCV / HJKL in japanese Rpgs or ports (Looking at you, Yakuza Minigames), Rage 2 had an absurd hotkey bound to the general all-use 'power' ability that was absolutely impossible to use in conjunction with certain combos and maneuvers.. I mean, Who the hell even playtests these things..?

Lack of FPS options is a huge one, and I'm not even talking about 30 here. (Yeah so 144+hz monitors have been a thing for like, a decade or more now.. they aren't exactly niche or the minority anymore. Let's move on from these 60 caps or tieing one's physics engine to the framerate, yeah?)
Also lack of FoV sliders, we're sitting much closer to our monitors here compared to a typical living room console playing experience. Nausea induced motion sickness is a very real and documented thing for many of us. I don't care if I see broken arm models clipping through or it 'breaks the intent that the developers had of wanting a tighter experience' (or whatever lame BS excuse they use these days); I'd actually like to be able to play without needing to throw up and getting a headache..

Essentially, if a game obviously feels like it was given the least amount of effort in being shoehorned in and shoved over here without even a modicum of making sure it runs at the barest minimum of expected standards for the given platform, then it's a pretty lazy port as I see it.

[feytharn]

1) It is at least available for one other system (this works even if the PC version was there first)
2) ... that is pretty much it. You will always find some unhappy customers (?) raging about how bad the port is.
(I am not saying there are no bad PC ports, there absolutely are, but to qualify in terms of gamer rage this seems to be all that is needed.)

[8ullfrog]

IdolNinja is fixing SR2 right now, they really should have let him crack the whip on CD PROJEKT when they were porting it.

[Iggy Wolf]

Originally posted by 8ullfrog:

IdolNinja is fixing SR2 right now, they really should have let him crack the whip on CD PROJEKT when they were porting it.

I know. I was really happy to hear when they found the source code and are now finally gonna fix it.

[Walach]

For me there are a lot of red flags when it comes to ports. For example:
Hold a button for an action to happen. I mean, why do I have to hold a button in the first place? why not press it and be done with it?

Lack of options in the option meny, everything from graphics to controls. I've also seen so many games that 1. doesn't tell you what the slider for the field of view does, how much does it increase or decrease?

2. Have some weird "+1" or something when moving the field of view slider, I mean, +1 from what? 60? 70?
Or when you get the fun Low, Medium and High settings for 8 of the 10 settings but the other 2 have, for some reason, a "Very High" setting aswell.
I have to check ALL those settings in all games as of today because, somehow, making the setting stop at either end of the scale instead of going from high back to low again is unheard of for many developers! :P

Bad textured HUD elements are also rather normal from my experience.
Mouse smoothing-acceleration was something that bothered me for a long time but today it's not that bad as most developers have an option to turn it off.

And those HUGE HUD elements that are not even close to the sides of my screen aswell, Oh man, those ones...
Sometimes I, for real, get some sort of claustrofobic sensation when the ingame HUD comes to close to the middle of the screen.

The "press any button" start screen that consoles uses because you might want to change user on the console. And that is also the reason why we might only get something like 1-3 saves in total in the game, you have to change the user on your computer to get more.

Those are some problems I have with game ports. Some of them more irritating than others but I can always find something wrong with every game. But I guess that might explain more about me than the game! :P

[Out Of Bubblegum]

The one thing I hate the most is the controls. All the controls are limited to reusing the same keys for multiple different functions. Because controllers only have a few buttons. I have 84+ keys. I want one key for one function.
The games Fallout 4 and Skyrim are limited to only 30 Hz internally. Because they were made for consoles. They can do 60 FPS on a PC but it is "imaginary". The 30 FPS events are interpolated to look like 60 FPS.

[FireFox]

Some claims you have to take with a grain of salt because 99% of the time it's someone who built their Gaming PC with minimal effort and minimal specs.

Example:
Tri-Core CPU instead of a 6 core CPU
GTX 1030 instead of a GTX 1070
8GB of Ram instead of 16GB or 32GB

They really do put minimal effort into their build and then complain that the games are a "bad port" because they can't run the game at Ultra settings and the game runs poorly with everything turned on.

And they're usually be the ones here on the forums screaming at nobody for the developers to "optimize" the game.

Take away: You want to play High quality games? Don't build a peasant PC.

[Meneluma]

Generally the truly bad ports tend to be ports of an older version that lacks content/fixes the newer build had.
Bonus points if they try to sell you back those fixes as DLC.

[Xite >X< 👁️👁 🇦🇺]

If you can tell it wasn't made for keyboard and mouse, it isn't done well enough.

[AustrAlien2010]

That´s completely subjective, because there is no official bad PC-port committee.
If you´re looking for opinions. I don´t have those.

Okay. I'll try be part of your committee, and formulate some sort of biased statement:

A bad port would mean it would take a lot more horsepower to run, then it does to run the orginal, without being different.
But it also makes it a good port, because it's not any different.

So... Yeah. It does not matter.

[Out Of Bubblegum]

Originally posted by Xite >X< 👁️👁 🇦🇺:

If you can tell it wasn't made for keyboard and mouse, it isn't done well enough.

But 90%? of all AAA games are this way now. The consoles are 75% of the sales. The PC is an afterthought. And if you complain, 90%? of players will call you stupid. Because many of them use a controller anyway. And all of them see all the AAA games being this way. So this IS how it is supposed to be. Sigh :(

[Xite >X< 👁️👁 🇦🇺]

Originally posted by Out Of Bubblegum:

Originally posted by Xite >X< 👁️👁 🇦🇺:

If you can tell it wasn't made for keyboard and mouse, it isn't done well enough.

But 90%? of all AAA games are this way now. The consoles are 75% of the sales. The PC is an afterthought. And if you complain, 90%? of players will call you stupid. Because many of them use a controller anyway. And all of them see all the AAA games being this way. So this IS how it is supposed to be.

I hear you there. But the kicker is they are all designed on PC's and they can't get it right for machines they are made on. Guess they use controllers too.

[nullable]

I suppose it's a bad port if it's not stable like a typical PC release. Or has limited options users expect. And that's aside from the nebulous "optimization" black hole people tend to invoke when a game turnS out to be a bit more demanding than they'd like to see.