WB Games Finally Patches 'Batman: Arkham Knight.' Is It Better Or Worse?

[kewlguy239]

Two months after the game's release, and two weeks after testing began, a patch for "Batman: Arkham Knight" has finally arrived. We decided to take another look at the game to see if WB Games came through on its vow to remedy the performance problems.

WB Games Finally Patches 'Batman: Arkham Knight.' Is It Better Or Worse? : Read more

 

[Larry Litmanen]

I wonder if this whole thing will end up having unintended consequences,since PCs come in so many configurations to make sure the game works with every PC development costs will be higher, so will this whole thing lead to developers pricing games on the same level as consoles.

Also it makes me wonder if some will conclude that it is just not worth the trouble to deal with PCs in the first place, much easier to just do PS4 and XBox One.

 

[thor220]

I wonder if this whole thing will end up having unintended consequences,since PCs come in so many configurations to make sure the game works with every PC development costs will be higher, so will this whole thing lead to developers pricing games on the same level as consoles.

Also it makes me wonder if some will conclude that it is just not worth the trouble to deal with PCs in the first place, much easier to just do PS4 and XBox One.

No one will come to that conclusion. What we have here is a game company that decided to outsource it's PC port to another company to save money. It ended up doing more harm than good.

Developing for PC isn't hard, the console hardware is incredibly similar. I always find it funny when people do bring up the "it's hard to program for PC" point because it's easier now than ever to release a game on PC thanks to software abstraction. Believe it or not, consoles are harder to program for. An entire new low level SDK has to be created and learned by developers. There is no such need for the PC.

 

[darkchazz]

I'm wondering why the game needs that much VRAM. The textures are really nothing special even on the highest setting.
Could be they don't even use any form of texture streaming ?

With my GTX 680 I have to set the textures to low else it will stutter heavily.

 

[Larry Litmanen]

I wonder if this whole thing will end up having unintended consequences,since PCs come in so many configurations to make sure the game works with every PC development costs will be higher, so will this whole thing lead to developers pricing games on the same level as consoles.

Also it makes me wonder if some will conclude that it is just not worth the trouble to deal with PCs in the first place, much easier to just do PS4 and XBox One.

No one will come to that conclusion. What we have here is a game company that decided to outsource it's PC port to another company to save money. It ended up doing more harm than good.

Developing for PC isn't hard, the console hardware is incredibly similar. I always find it funny when people do bring up the "it's hard to program for PC" point because it's easier now than ever to release a game on PC thanks to software abstraction. Believe it or not, consoles are harder to program for. An entire new low level SDK has to be created and learned by developers. There is no such need for the PC.

Why are people so hung up on outsourcing, it's a standard procedure in almost every industry. You can't always hire people for every single need because you may not need these people beyond one project.

It seems like people blame the concept of outsourcing because someone did a bad job.

Imagine Toms wants to redesign the website, most likely they will hire a guy from a 3rd company to do it because it is a one time thing, they do not need the same guy on the payroll beyond this one project.

 

[billgatez]

I wonder if this whole thing will end up having unintended consequences,since PCs come in so many configurations to make sure the game works with every PC development costs will be higher, so will this whole thing lead to developers pricing games on the same level as consoles.

Also it makes me wonder if some will conclude that it is just not worth the trouble to deal with PCs in the first place, much easier to just do PS4 and XBox One.

I wonder if this whole thing will end up having unintended consequences,since PCs come in so many configurations to make sure the game works with every PC development costs will be higher, so will this whole thing lead to developers pricing games on the same level as consoles.

Also it makes me wonder if some will conclude that it is just not worth the trouble to deal with PCs in the first place, much easier to just do PS4 and XBox One.

I wonder if this whole thing will end up having unintended consequences,since PCs come in so many configurations to make sure the game works with every PC development costs will be higher, so will this whole thing lead to developers pricing games on the same level as consoles.

Also it makes me wonder if some will conclude that it is just not worth the trouble to deal with PCs in the first place, much easier to just do PS4 and XBox One.

PC development is not hard. It's just different in that you develop for an API and not hardware.

 

[surphninja]

Why are people so hung up on outsourcing, it's a standard procedure in almost every industry. You can't always hire people for every single need because you may not need these people beyond one project.

It seems like people blame the concept of outsourcing because someone did a bad job.

Imagine Toms wants to redesign the website, most likely they will hire a guy from a 3rd company to do it because it is a one time thing, they do not need the same guy on the payroll beyond this one project.

There's a big difference between outsourcing to help delegate specialty work and outsourcing to cut corners. Clearly, this is a case of the latter. The pc version was obviously considered low priority, the work to port it was contracted out way too late in the development cycle, and the port was released even though the company knew that these game-breaking bugs existed.

The problems behind the pc port in this case have less to do with logistics and more to do with corporate greed.

 

[cknobman]

Learned my lesson years ago to never buy a PC game that is a console port until its in the bargain bin on steam.

Two benefits:
A. Save a ton of money
B. Give them time to fix the game so it will run properly

 

[jimmysmitty]

I wonder if this whole thing will end up having unintended consequences,since PCs come in so many configurations to make sure the game works with every PC development costs will be higher, so will this whole thing lead to developers pricing games on the same level as consoles.

Also it makes me wonder if some will conclude that it is just not worth the trouble to deal with PCs in the first place, much easier to just do PS4 and XBox One.

No one will come to that conclusion. What we have here is a game company that decided to outsource it's PC port to another company to save money. It ended up doing more harm than good.

Developing for PC isn't hard, the console hardware is incredibly similar. I always find it funny when people do bring up the "it's hard to program for PC" point because it's easier now than ever to release a game on PC thanks to software abstraction. Believe it or not, consoles are harder to program for. An entire new low level SDK has to be created and learned by developers. There is no such need for the PC.

Of course developing for the PC is not hard. Optimizing is hard. That is what the biggest issue is.

Developing for a new console is hard but the newer consoles are not as hard due to their similarities to PC hardware. But Optimizing is easy because all the consoles have the exact same hardware, drivers and software so there is no variations to work on. Later on down the road though ti becomes even easier to develop for them since they get a lot of exclusives from the big game companies. I do think though that the XB1 and Windows 10 will make it easier for consoles than ever.

That is the difference. There is no way to optimize for every possible PC configuration and develop a game within the proper amount of time. That is what most people talk about.

As well it is not easy to find an issue and just fix it. A game is millions of lines of code which takes testing for each fix to make sure it doesn't cause another issue. Considering the changes they made, such as the changes to the memory utilization and such, that is a lot of work done deep in the game. It takes time.

 

[gaborbarla]

Ok, so if you gonna re-release a broken game 6-12 months later, it better contain something extra awesomesauce or many will just say meh. And why stop at 90FPS, why cant we select 120?

 

[Tzn]

I'm wondering why the game needs that much VRAM. The textures are really nothing special even on the highest setting.
Could be they don't even use any form of texture streaming ?

With my GTX 680 I have to set the textures to low else it will stutter heavily.

Because nvidia partnered with WB and offered the game with every purchase of nvidia cards beginning from 960 and up. In short nvidia wants to push people in to buying new cards with at least 2 gb of vram just to get money. Assholes, but that is gonna change in 2016 with AMD new gpu's.

 

[cats_Paw]

Am I the only one wondering how on earth does a FULL HD resolution (from the screen shot) with normal settings and all gameworks settings off consume 2771 MB of VRAM?
Correct me if Im wrong, but I thought that 2 GB is PLenty for anything in full HD as long as its well optimized (hell, even crysis 1 used less vram and was a known bad optimization).

 

[55Ethan55]

Hey guys, so ever since the patch came out my graphics card has been running at its factory max clock speed ALL THE TIME. Even though it's been running at max, the game runs like it did before the patch. If I play the game on startup it runs awesome then after a while it's back to the lag and studering. I use Evga precision x and I tried uninstalling it and now I can't reinstall it. Any help is appreciated, Thanks!

 

[ddpruitt]

We shouldn't be thanking WB for fixing something that shouldn't have broken in the first place.

We shouldn't be accepting apologies for our patience in paying for a broken product.

The ONLY reason they created a patch it is because Steam was giving refunds, if that hadn't happened then WB wouldn't have put much effort into a patch.

I've already decided that I'm no longer giving my money to publisher's who obviously don't care about releasing broken products. So far I'm not giving any more money to WB (every Arkham game), Ubisoft (AC series), EA (everything they do), Sony (Driveclub), and a few others. In fact I went with the Humble Bundle but made sure none of the money went to Ubisoft.

That's the only way these companies will learn by hitting them on the bottom line, not reviews. I used to have Bethesda on the list because they used to release broken craptastic games but have redeemed themselves. But when people preorder Madden/Battlefield/Batman/AC/etc year after year there's no incentive to fix the game.

Sadly I know I'm in an extremely small minority, but if you don't want broken crap games STOP BUYING FROM PUBLISHER'S THAT DON'T CARE!

 

[jimmysmitty]

We shouldn't be thanking WB for fixing something that shouldn't have broken in the first place.

We shouldn't be accepting apologies for our patience in paying for a broken product.

The ONLY reason they created a patch it is because Steam was giving refunds, if that hadn't happened then WB wouldn't have put much effort into a patch.

I've already decided that I'm no longer giving my money to publisher's who obviously don't care about releasing broken products. So far I'm not giving any more money to WB (every Arkham game), Ubisoft (AC series), EA (everything they do), Sony (Driveclub), and a few others. In fact I went with the Humble Bundle but made sure none of the money went to Ubisoft.

That's the only way these companies will learn by hitting them on the bottom line, not reviews. I used to have Bethesda on the list because they used to release broken craptastic games but have redeemed themselves. But when people preorder Madden/Battlefield/Batman/AC/etc year after year there's no incentive to fix the game.

Sadly I know I'm in an extremely small minority, but if you don't want broken crap games STOP BUYING FROM PUBLISHER'S THAT DON'T CARE!

Actually Steam would have given refunds even if it was not as broken, they now have a refund policy. The backlash was what caused them to work on it more than anything. But WB also extended the refunds beyond the normal 14 days or 2 hours played.

On top of it if we consider the past Batman games WB/Rocksteady have always been pretty on top of the games and created fixes for them. Hell AC was released with some pretty major bugs and they got fixed. As well if you had the normal edition of AA and AC when they released the Steamworks versions you got the new GOTY editions for free. I didn't have all the DLC for AA or AC and got it for free when they launched the Steamworks versions of them.

As well the past Batman games have been great games. These are nothing like what say Activision does which is to release a new CoD game every year and suck the money straight from your pay check. It is quite funny that people forget how well WB has treated people with AA and AC.

And Bethesda did launch games with lots of bugs but again these are not just simple games. They are huge open world free roam games with tons of things to do, there will be bugs. But they have pretty much always gotten patched out and even so the community mods did a better job at making the games even better, which is what TES is always good for.

 

[ddpruitt]

...

Actually Steam would have given refunds even if it was not as broken, they now have a refund policy. The backlash was what caused them to work on it more than anything. But WB also extended the refunds beyond the normal 14 days or 2 hours played.

On top of it if we consider the past Batman games WB/Rocksteady have always been pretty on top of the games and created fixes for them. Hell AC was released with some pretty major bugs and they got fixed. As well if you had the normal edition of AA and AC when they released the Steamworks versions you got the new GOTY editions for free. I didn't have all the DLC for AA or AC and got it for free when they launched the Steamworks versions of them.

As well the past Batman games have been great games. These are nothing like what say Activision does which is to release a new CoD game every year and suck the money straight from your pay check. It is quite funny that people forget how well WB has treated people with AA and AC.

And Bethesda did launch games with lots of bugs but again these are not just simple games. They are huge open world free roam games with tons of things to do, there will be bugs. But they have pretty much always gotten patched out and even so the community mods did a better job at making the games even better, which is what TES is always good for.

That's being apologetic and accepting of things that shouldn't have been broken in the first place. If a car company releases a car that only starts half the time, the bumpers fall off, and only goes 40 downhill they go out of business (insert appropriate car company joke here). Steam extended the refund period because of the poor quality, WB had little control over it. Did they do the same thing with the previous games? No, because they didn't have to. The COD thing is something different but related.

And to top it off mods are now considered a plus. Mods used to be a given, now its a "feature" when you let other people fix your mistakes and add new content.

 

[jimmysmitty]

...

Actually Steam would have given refunds even if it was not as broken, they now have a refund policy. The backlash was what caused them to work on it more than anything. But WB also extended the refunds beyond the normal 14 days or 2 hours played.

On top of it if we consider the past Batman games WB/Rocksteady have always been pretty on top of the games and created fixes for them. Hell AC was released with some pretty major bugs and they got fixed. As well if you had the normal edition of AA and AC when they released the Steamworks versions you got the new GOTY editions for free. I didn't have all the DLC for AA or AC and got it for free when they launched the Steamworks versions of them.

As well the past Batman games have been great games. These are nothing like what say Activision does which is to release a new CoD game every year and suck the money straight from your pay check. It is quite funny that people forget how well WB has treated people with AA and AC.

And Bethesda did launch games with lots of bugs but again these are not just simple games. They are huge open world free roam games with tons of things to do, there will be bugs. But they have pretty much always gotten patched out and even so the community mods did a better job at making the games even better, which is what TES is always good for.

That's being apologetic and accepting of things that shouldn't have been broken in the first place. If a car company releases a car that only starts half the time, the bumpers fall off, and only goes 40 downhill they go out of business (insert appropriate car company joke here). Steam extended the refund period because of the poor quality, WB had little control over it. Did they do the same thing with the previous games? No, because they didn't have to. The COD thing is something different but related.

And to top it off mods are now considered a plus. Mods used to be a given, now its a "feature" when you let other people fix your mistakes and add new content.

I am actually weighing the good vs the bad, that is not apologist but rather logical thinking. I don't jump on the hate nor the hype bandwagon. Hell I was predicting that the Arkham Knight was going to be a previous character reused in a new way even when everyone was 100% sure it was going to be a completely new character.

The previous games were well done and while AC had some issues they got fixed. AC had DX11 issues which was due to both DX11 being new and the drivers. Once it was fixed it was a great game. And again if you owned the original AA and AC you got the fully loaded GOTY free. They could have done what some companies do and told you to buy it again.

Again I am just pointing out the other side to it instead of focusing on the negatives.

I do think they took the right steps to fix it. Should it have been better at launch? Absolutely. Instead of complaining people should be glad they are fixing it while I have seen games go untouched after launch by bigger companies. They pulled it from sales shelves and offered refunds BEYOND the normal Steam policy, which WB had a hand in not just Steam, and started working on the patch.

For me personally it worked fine. Sure I was stuck at 30FPS but I didn't have the hitching or stuttering and I can play a game at 30FPS. I prefer more but I wont complain, considering I also have a much older GPU. I pretty much finished it, just need to do the Riddler puzzels but other than that I am done and enjoyed the game itself.

And the car is a bad example. The game does not cost $20K+ nor do you rely on it as a means to get to work, home or necessary places to live. It is entertainment.

And modders have been "fixing" games since before recent years. In fact modders have often moved on to work for big game companies due to their work but they have always been enhancing the game or making it better.

Team Fortress and Counterstrike both started as mods that were better than the original game. Same with Left 4 Dead.

 

[alidan]

Am I the only one wondering how on earth does a FULL HD resolution (from the screen shot) with normal settings and all gameworks settings off consume 2771 MB of VRAM?
Correct me if Im wrong, but I thought that 2 GB is PLenty for anything in full HD as long as its well optimized (hell, even crysis 1 used less vram and was a known bad optimization).

very simple, and i'm going to rant a bit.

programmers/developers are lazy as hell, before they optimize a game so it runs well on lesser hardware, they take a look and see if it will run reasonably good on the best hardware, if it does than what usually happens is they say to hell with the lower hardware and throw resources at the problem.

this is why i despise games that are made graphics first, or for hardware that doesn't exist yet (crysis)
instead of picking a mid range build, or even a low end and making the game around that and faking some of the effects, saving a crapton of resources because the effects are faked, they decide to go for non faked effects, god knows the reason.

the most recent thing i can think of is ambient occlusion in far cry 4. i usually turn this off as it's USUALLY a small effect, many games bake ao into textures for things that never move to save processing power, so it really only ever effects moving objects, basically such a minor thing that i'm willing to forgo it for the sake of faster frames or never dipping below 60fps. however, the scene in farcry 4 where you went into a prayer area, a cave, and all the shadows were handled with ao instead of baked... that is where i found out how necessary it was in this game because a main focal point in the area had no detail at all because it relied exclusively on ao, so now i have to take a 5-10 fps hit all because they wanted to go real time with everything...

had they based the decisions around lesser gpus, or lesser systems, they would have faked some effects and made the game run better across the board without negatively affecting the visuals much if at all.

and to the over 2gb, you gave the developers gpus that had over 2gb of ram, for what reason would they make optimizations for anything less than 2gb?

on a more cynical note, this is a gameworks game, nvidia is content with maxing tessellation out to a retarded extent to hurt their older gpus just because it hurt amd's gpus more, in the CCC amd has a setting to limit tessellation largely for this reason, what makes you think nvidia didn't work with them to give people with older or lesser gpus a reason to "upgrade"

 

[rawoysters]

I will never buy a game that has a 30FPS cap.