PC Gaming will reclaim the throne during the last half of this Console Gen.

[vlad321]

JaggedSac said:

vlad321 said:

JaggedSac said:

Ah, I see.  You mainly have a problem with matchmaking and voice chat.  Seems like that is only personal preference and not atrocious flaws with the system.  Also, not all console games have solely matchmaking services.  I, for one, think matchmaking is great.  You can pick playlists of game types you want to join and the game rotates your party between games against other parties, of the same skill, in various game types(of the same nature as the playlist you are in) and maps. This is how it should be.  A match.

As for voice chat, I couldn't live without it.  Especially when I am partied up with a group of friends.  Hands free communication that is easy to implement in every game.  PCs definitely have this option, but it is like a deserted wasteland.

As for mods, yes those can be cool for a match or two, but the majority are utter shit.

Another point to the overall online community. It's far more profound on a PC than it is on the consoles (probably because the people are already at their PC). New maps, new mods, everything is just far more cohesive. Also, just looking at UT2004, mods are fucking amazing. The Invasion RPG thing? Alien Swarm? Chaos? That one Invasion Overkill (or w/e)? All outright awesome. The main browser will even launch the mod when I click on a server running a total conversion mod.

 

The only mods I ever got into was Team Fortress for Quake and Battle of the Sexes for Quake 2.  All the others that I tried were just complete bollocks.  Tribes probably had the best map variant capabilities that I have seen.  It is much like Halo 3 in that the basic geometry of the map stays the same, but you can place structures and walls and such.  And the main benefit of this approach is that it was completely uninvasive to the client, no residue on my hard drive that I ever joined a server that had some random person's map or models.  But I can definitely see the benefits of mods. 

So mods, voice chat, and matchmaking are why you have a distaste for console online gaming.  I was hoping for something a little more, not stuff that just boils down to personal preference.  Nothing much else to discuss here then.

We can also go into Live's payment, and just the overall community, as I stated above. It's just more knit and more interactive than a Console's, since a lot of the people who play the game also contribute in some way to the overall community discussions about the game, not a small part, as is the case with console gaming. There is no reason to have a server browser and a matchmaker in games, but I don't even know if Live allows things like that.... At least not that I have seen. And mods are actually a HUGE deal, it's what keeps the game good and being played well after you've finished the main game.