You should maybe go out to the shop and buy the damn game then!
My plea to the genuine LFS community people; when you see a post like this one I've quoted above, please report it. Let the mods know talk of illegal activities is going on here - if Rockstar saw posts like this then they'd be the first to start a lawsuit against either the above quoted person AND/OR the LFS devs/mods for allowing this on their official forum.
I'm fed up of seeing people who think it's fine to crack other games and freely admit it on here (MotorM4X another prime example).
What makes these people worse is that they are always the first to jump at a Demo player accusing them of cracking LFS.... How is it any different?
EDIT: back on-topic... GTA IV is a great game for PC as well as Xbox 360.
I put everything on medium and have had zero problems from day 1 (looks better than 360/PS3 and runs at 35-45fps)... The main problem is people putting the settings far too high for their PCs, or not being patient enough to wait for Rockstar to patch it. Oh, and people on single core systems trying to run it, as well as everybody with an ATI card.... Most nvidia users (like myself) are wondering what the hell everybody's problem is!
Oh, and my PC isn't top of the range: C2D E8200, 4GB DDRII 800, GF 9600GT 512MB, Vista 64bit
Remember that the 10th the new Catalyst drivers come for ATI. I find it a bit unfair, because (i think!) the Games of today are better performing on Nvidia cards because the games are more 'made' for it. Just to make people think ATI cards perform crappy. Correct me if im wrong.
Mine is working perfectly fine, its by now means a power house and i'm on medium settings, i get a small FPS drop when it rains and during dusk (due to the lighting and shadows) but otherwise its fine. I love it.
Eh, now you are blaming ati cards? oh my, if rockstar cant make games for ati cards then they should **** off, now gta iv is even more not worth of buying, and i have dual core at 3,1ghz. They should damn optimize this game so you don't have to have some 4x hd4870
Just wait for new ATI drivers. Released on wednesday I believe.
The game as rockstar have said is made for med-high end computers today to run at medium, for next gen PC's to run on high and above, they want this to be futureproof (yeah i don't quite understand either). Turn everything to low and work from there, or wait for new ATI drivers, or here's a better idea for you, buy the fecking game!!!
I now understand why PC gaming is dying, and it's down to people like you.
For anyone else that didn't bother to read the memo, neither discussion of NOR advice on cracking software is permitted on this forum. Some things we don't discuss. This is an official forum for a game and if people are so stupid that they can't connect those dots, their posting rights will be suspended while they go and grow some braincells.
Some people have an abysmal sense of right and wrong, but I'm afraid I have no sympathy. They can do what they want on their own PCs, but I'll be damned if it's going to be discussed like it's acceptable on this forum.
Tomba(FIN) will be back in a week, with some new grey matter.
So it doesn't work really, does it? My camera isn't drunk, and my fps isn't low. Oh wait, I bought my version.
So it doesn't work really, does it? I can see all the road and "things". Ever thought about paying for your software?
But you didn't buy it. What are you complaining about again?
Is there a f*cking echo in here? You didn't buy it, so you've no right to complain about how it's not worth buying. And if you knew anything about GTA4 or PCs then you'd know that it's CPU limited, and all the HD4870s in the world won't help.
Couldn't agree more.
Some people have no concept of right or wrong. They've always pirated their software, so the concept of paying for anything is totally alien. I can sort of understand why it happens when you look at the likes of EA, who shamelessly and cynically trot out yearly updates of all their franchises with little more than some new textures and a single new feature or two, charge full whack for them, then repeat next year. Or amateurs and hobbysists that use professional software but wouldn't be in the market to afford the hundreds or thousands of pounds it costs to buy. But then we have Rockstar, who for all their technical problems with GTAIV PC (although they are supporting the title and communicating with the users on forums), have produced groundbreaking games with the series and are the kind of developer that should be supported on the PC... yet saddeningly you still get the idiots like Tomba.
I'm happy for you, but sorry for me. I bought it too and, in a few words, from a technical point of view it sucks. And I know stuff about PCs, although I'm more used to networks and systems than to single computers. It's my job.
I'm not going to recap my odissey with GTA IV, but in 24 years dealing with computers this is the first time (and I hope the last) that I have encountered such clumsiness from a major publisher, ranging from false minimal specs printed on the box (they differ from what Rockstar support states) to the lack of solutions to real and widespread problems in official forums, as long as you don't consider Valve's Steam forums an official Rockstar forum, because it isn't. It's Valve's: still, you can find some professionally organised solutions and workarounds there, which don't apply only to Steam. All these solutions are absent on the official support.
All things considered, it's an ugly way to treat customers. If the IT firm I work did things that way, I'd be serving coffee in a bar. There would be much more dignity. I thought the low ratings on Gamespot were undeserved, than I tried for myself. This game isn't simply rushed, it's at an early beta stage.
GTA IV may be promising but as long as Rockstar doesn't fix a lot of issues (precisely: crashes, unjustifiable poor performance, texture issues, authentication issues, false statements on game boxes, poor support - each single issue experienced by me) it's a botched piece of software. My friends were sending messages on the phones advising their friends not to buy the game while they were watching my plight in realtime and the total lack of clues regarding the unexplicable range of random crashes I had on a totally clean and working machine.
Publicly GTA IV for PC is being treated as a very troublesome game, and rightly so. No one's going to give me back the time I spent troubleshooting something that worked perfectly, and that means my pc: if I had to charge Rockstar for the time I spent trying to run the game at decent settings at my normal rates at work I'd collect 720 Euros. That's enough to buy a PS3 and a lot of games.
Add insult to injury, you can't even use a controller such a Logitech Rumblepad 2 unless you use the workaround you find on Valve's forum. Without that workaround I should shell 40 Euros more for a 360 type controller... GTA IV is running (almost) fine here at the moment after all my troubleshooting on something that worked perfectly with most recent games, but some well thought out patches and improvements are badly, badly needed.
No wonder this failure has been slashdotted, and poor ratings only reflect customers' dissatisfaction with a title who hasn't lived up to the expectations to the point it isn't even running on some systems which should manage GTA IV without a single problem. They'd better get their act together very soon. Otherwise I will just be waiting for Fallout 4, because no matter how many technical issues Fallout 3 has with its random crashes and sporadic texture issues, it's still far more playable than this mess.
All in all, this is a very bad publicity for those of us who shell out a significant amount of money in PCs (there are three working at my home constantly at the moment) and decide to support the gaming industry. I know I have a far superior machine compared to a console... I'd like to be able to use it, if developers and distributors allow me to do it. In this case, they didn't.
Oh I'm not saying it hasn't got issues. I'm saying the freeloading scum don't have any right to throw a hissy fit about the problems.
However, when you look at the fan forums it quickly becomes clear that although there are genuine problems, they're mixed in with a hell of a lot of n00bs who are bitching and crying just because their £3000 uber-gaming rig can't run it with all the graphics options maxed out. I've seen people saying the performance is shit, but then I see them posting elsewhere that they're getting 30+ fps, and they'd probably be getting a lot more if they they weren't trying to run it at settings way in excess of what Rockstar suggests.
Rockstar screwed up, yes - the release has been something of a disaster. But the volatile (and plain abusive, hostile) reaction they've received is also down to ignorant, impatient n00bs on forums with unrealistic expectations with regards to graphical performance.
There is no official forum. The closest that I'm aware of is gtaforums.com, where Rockstar Toronto are directly responding to people's problems and investigating where appropriate.
My sentiments are the same. Fortunately, Rockstar is listening to the feedback from forums and has already added support for DXInput controllers in the next patch, so any controller can be used. The first patch is ready and done, and is with Microsoft for certification due to GTA4 being a GFWL title (yes, if it wasn't for MS, the patch would've been out already). This first patch basically includes all the work they've done on the game since it went gold a few weeks ago, so although it probably doesn't address the problems that have become apparent since it was released, it will include all the refinements and improvements coded in the last few weeks.
I know video game scene as we know it is full of freeloaders who SHOULD NOT HAVE ANY RIGHT TO SPEAK and kiddies who know nothing. But as I said I'm not exactly a noob and I'm a paying customer. I expected far more and far better for a simple reason: professionalism. This is a very big delusion from Rockstar.
Official forums: there's none, I know perfectly. I was being sarcastic and the lack of an official forum should just tell you how much they care. If I have to resort to Valve while not being a customer, it's a gigantic customer satisfaction failure, because I didn't buy anything from Valve. Yet their users solved some issues to the point the game is playable. There's enough reason to be bitter and to feel let down.
As for Microsoft being the cause of some problems, I don't really know and don't really think so. While troubleshooting I fired up my Task Manager replacement, that is Process Explorer written by Mark Russinovich, by Sysinternals (now owned by Microsoft), a legitimate piece of software used to investigate PC issues. It turns out SecuROM won't let me start the game if it detects Process Explorer running... and it even asks for a reboot! This is pure bull. They won't let me investigate possible troubles with a legitimate Microsoft software commonly and widely used for professional troubleshooting. This is insulting.
Rockstar botched it and they're giving close to no support. Everything is hearsay and there's no official statement on their support site. They might be working, but they're doing it without officially acknowledging problems except for "a small number" of users. That's a bunch of PR lies because the number of issues I have experienced tell me that many other people who lack expertise are in much bigger trouble. Either they'll solve issues in a fast and efficient way, or they can call me an ex customer, and rightly so.
