Look, PC gamers are never truly satisfied. Being a series whose bread is buttered on console, Call of Duty’s PC versions have rarely been the best examples of what the platform can do. But this year’s edition has folks a little more upset than usual.
There are two big reasons for this. One is performance, and how the game’s default settings affect this. Many users are finding they have to dig in and check/uncheck some weird settings in their graphics options to get things to a playable state, ranging from running the game in borderless windowed mode (a tip which more than doubled my framerate) to turning off shadow caching (which seems to be helping everyone).
Normally this isn’t that big a deal – PC gamers are accustomed to messing around with settings to find their smooth spot between visuals and performance, and developers can’t ever ship a game that runs perfectly for everyone straight out the box – but what makes Advanced Warfare infuriating is that every time you change the options, pretty much the entire game reloads.
Example: I was playing a level in Detroit and got some stuttering. So I paused my mission, toggled some options, clicked “accept” and…had to sit as the mission cutscene reloaded, then watch that cutscene, then when that was done, the mission itself had to load. Slowly. We’re talking minutes here, and that’s just for a single reload. If you want to jump in and out toggling things you’ll be doing a lot of waiting. I’ve never seen a PC game handle the issue like this before; even those that force you to restart the game, or jump back to the main menu, manage to do things quicker than the mandatory loading done by Advanced Warfare.
The other thing getting on PC gamers’ nerves is the game’s multiplayer. Here’s Sledgehammer’s Michael Condrey, speaking early last month:
Yes, we will be supporting dedicated servers and there will be announcements soon on which providers and platforms. I can’t answer just yet, but you can let your community know that it’s coming.
There was never an announcement, and PC gamers have fired up Advanced Warfare to find the game stuck with peer-to-peer, and accepting pings of up to 800, which is utterly unplayable.
Condrey has this week re-iterated on Reddit that, yes, there will be dedicated servers. They’re just not available now.
None of these are things that can’t be fixed, either with some patches (or driver updates) or the implementation of dedicated servers, but it’s still a shame to see people’s experiencing sucking on a Call of Duty that, if you take out the technical issues, is one of the best entries in the series in years.
Comments
20 responses to “The PC Version Of Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare Launched A Little Rough”
thank god, the game is so horrible with peer to peer, somehow they keep picking very bad hosts.
I’m having a terrible time on ps4. Every MP game has the lag spiking non stop. Going from full bar to red 1 bar constantly throughout the match. It’s a real pity.
I feel that pain..
I think most PC gamers take objection to the fact that the first Call Of Duty was released on PC only
Well, there was an OSX version as well to be technical.
the earlier games were great on pc. i think it was after mw2 that things went downhill
Thats when the servers disappeared…..
yep WM2 was when they abandoned the PC for consoles. Remember Leaning left (q) and right(e) where too hard for consoles and that matchmaking was sooooooo much better than dedicated servers and mod support was only something that flithy hackers and cheaters wanted
Matchmaking isn’t a console thing, Battlefield 4 uses dedicated servers on console.
This is an Activision being cheap thing.
The comment wasn’t about which platform the series started on, it’s about which platform it makes 95% of its money from.
I have no idea how it determines best host on PC but it does a bad job of it! last night it kept making the only American in our lobby the host, so everyone else ran on 1 red bar and he enjoyed sending his K/D through the roof. Meanwhile Like everyone else on the server I’m in Aus, and have NBN. even after our Yank counterpart left, I never got host, everyone else said DSL not NBN….wtf
Player hosting is still a thing now? I remember I ran into that problem last time not sure which game, was it crysis 2 or BF3. It was a nice smooth game and then the host left and I became the host with my shitty ADSL2+. Upload speed maxed out and whole game was lagging and my whole network is fucked as well due to upload bandwidth being maxed.
Yeah I would like to see peer hosting left to indie titles, and even half of them allow you to either ‘Join’ a game or ‘host’ a game. At least then people who know their net sucks can ‘Join’, and people like me with NBN can ‘Host’.
Personally, when I make the jump from student to indi, I’m just going to release the server binaries and call it a day.
Old school style. Even if you didn’t buy the game, you can still opt to host it for whatever reason.
“Shitty ADSL2+”? I’m stuck on ADSL1 and some people don’t even have that. :/
He could be referring to the quality of his ADSL2+.
If you are 5km from the exchange with ADSL2+ you will have a way worse connection than someone 100m from the exchange with ADSL1.
I even experienced this way back on MW2 when it released…
Guess their matchmaking and host selection methods haven’t changed much since!
I was considering buying this game until i found out there were no dedicated servers. By the time the game releases dedicated servers the player base will be ruined as they will have released DLC to pay for.
This is why i don’t game on PC anymore, the graphics are generally better and nothing beats a mouse and keyboard, but none of that matters if you cant actually play the game
from what i’ve heard. The mouse acceleration is the biggest problem. Its tied into the framerate or something.
Well I’ve had no trouble on PC besides a bit of lag. Everyone blows it out of proportions, saying the games stuffed and doesn’t run, I want a refund etc. Give it a week or two and it will be fixed, people are just too impatient. All the hardware problems will be sorted out with patches and newer drivers.
I’ll add that I do have to use a gamepad (ps4 controller) because of the mouse going crazy but for COD I usually prefer a controler.
Even on PS3 back when Blops 1 and mw3 came out, there was issues with lag during the first weeks.
Servers should have plenty of capacity once most people leave?
Really though, how hard is it to allow dedicated servers?
I’ve had two issues with CoD: AW on PC so far.
One was that I completely missed out on early-access having to re-download the game because steam kept erroring after I completed pre-load, and had to re-download the content.
Two is that the game doesn’t appear to be compatible with my Crossfire setup. I had to disable crossfire to get it running smoothly.
Enjoying it otherwise.
Wow, the mission doesn’t load during the intro cutscene? I stopped buying these when the price reached 100 dollars, Activision, don’t give me more incentives to avoid it.