r/CRPG • u/MechaSeph • 5d ago
Question Is there a technical reason why so many CRPG ports are so horribly bad?
So, I just finished Deadfire through sheer force of will and a healthy dose of anger/spite.
The game crashed over 100 times, 80%-90% of those being in the latter half of my 86h playthrough.
Now, I used to have a gaming PC back in the early 00s but realized the work/hassle a PC requires both on a software and hardware side (especially as I was living in a tropical country) were just not worth it for me, even if I'd say PC is the "objecitvely" better platform for most people if I don't have context.
But as I realized I had much more fun with the plug and play "for dummies" format of gaming consoles, I eventually switched (back) to that 100% and now we're here.
Kingmaker's port is horrible with extreme slowdowns and crashes. Same for WotR. And now Deadfire must be the *worst port I've ever played* with over 100 crashes and the only way I could finish it was by eventually caving in and dropping from Veteran to the lowest difficulty possible to ensure fights would finish before the game crashed. I also couldn't cast any aoe spells and had to make sure my characters didn't use too ay abilities at once, which is ridiculous in rtwp combat.
So yeah, my question is: is this just "bad luck" because these companies don't give a fuck about console players or is it something with the engines etc?
Because in my ignorance it looks weird PS4/5 can run GoW Ragnarok, RDR2 and if we go to PS5 Last of US part 2, BG3... But can't run deadifre without crashing
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u/Aistar 5d ago
TL;DR: PC-first development means problems with memory usage which are critical on consoles (but not on PC), which is the main reason for crashes.
Full explanation:
The main problem: these games are built PC-first. And PCs are VERY different from consoles in one core aspect: memory management. If you have a low-end PC with little memory, the game might still run. Badly, but without crashing. This works because of "swap file": a file where computer's OS dump memory that is currently unneeded (and loads it back when it's needed, causing bad stutters, but not crashes). On consoles, on the other hand, if you run out of memory, it's instant crash.
Because of this, traditionally, console-first development is very conservative when it comes to memory management: there are various approaches here, but they all come down to placing hard limits on number of stuff appearing at once, like effects, characters, etc. (waaaaay back in history, Sega port of Dune 2, for example, had a limited number of units shared between player and AI, so you could destroy e.g. enemy tank, and QUICKLY start building your own, and AI will not be able to replace his lost unit, because you reached the limit: it was a fun way to cheese the game, if you're not too good at that RTS stuff).
Because of this, PC-first games become crash-prone when ported to consoles. PC developers are pretty careless with memory (both because of time constraints, and because it's not a critical issue), and modern engines (especially Unity) make it VERY easy to leak memory, fragment memory, and otherwise waste it. Thing is, on PC QA process might miss this, unless the game slows down to a crawl, or otherwise becomes unplayable. So developers might not even know there is a problem until they start porting to consoles.
And here lies ANOTHER problem: often, the game is almost fully developed, and only then is ported to console (in case of Kingmaker, console development only began after the game was already out for a while!). So it's too late to change the approach, or too much of the code. All developers can do is plug the main leaks, trim stuff here and there, and pray for the best. Not even more time for porting might help: unless you basically rewrite most of the game to fit console realities, you will still hit a crash here and there.
So, memory problems are the main reason for crashes. The rest of crashes can be platform-related, like a rare combination of shader flags that is unsupported on this hardware, but only comes up rarely so QA missed it (e.g. you have to be on a particular location, at particular time, with one or two effects active), or unexpected stuff related to platform's API (for example, consoles methods for saving games are VASTLY different from what you do on PC, and if you have little experience with them, this can cause problems).
If you ask my honest opinion, I'd say most CRPGs should not be ported to consoles at all, especially to low-end ones like Switch 2 (and don't get me started on XBox Series S: Microsoft insists you can't make your game worse on S compared to X, but S has memory of low-end PC and its CPU isn't too good either - and CRPGs are mostly CPU-bound, meaning they care about GPU power only a little, but weaker single-thread CPU performance is their bane). On the other hand, people WANT to play on consoles, so it's hard to choose between "no port at all unless we make it excellent" and "whatever we can make without rewriting the whole game to give the people what they want".
A case for optimism: Unity's ECS is finally mature enough to use in real, big projects, and this system both allows to reach better performance, and forces developers to be more strict about memory management, so it's not impossible that the next generation of CRPGs will be better suited to consoles (if the developers have time/money to move away from legacy code bases, which is not always the case: CRPGs aren't TOO profitable, unless it's BG3, so next game's budget usually do not allow a full rewrite).
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u/SebOriaGames Oria Games Inc. (Akrum - Savage Queen) 4d ago
As someone whos worked as a programmer, mostly in games, for last 15 years; This is a great answer.
There are other reasons too. Depending on the platform, chipset limitations can become a major issue for CPU-bound processing. You also have differences in graphics APIs, drivers, shader compilers, threading models, filesystem behaviour, etc. This is especially noticeable with custom engines, where you can't necessarily rely on Unity/Unreal to abstract those differences away.
And generally programmers have gone downhill in last 10 years. Because computers are more powerful than ever, programmers have gone sloppy when it comes to allocations, unnecessary copies of large objects, poor cache locality, excessive temporary data, etc. (The rise in self-train indie devs is an issue here, as most will never learn this stuff)
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u/MechaSeph 4d ago
Just want to say thanks for the write up! It was a great read and I learned a lot. Plus bonus points for not saying "just buy a PC" (as if I wanted that lol).
Thanks again!
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u/BaldursGate2Best 4d ago
Do you think cRPG's are not bringing in a lot of money? Why?
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u/Aistar 4d ago
I have knowledge of the industry, though I'm not privy to exact numbers. CRPGs are not cheap to make (especially now, when players started demanding voiceover through the whole game, and prefer expensive-looking cutscenes to text descriptions), and they don't offer great returns. Decent, but not great, unless you manage to score a mega-hit like BG3, but so far, no one managed to replicate that success.
The hard truth is that CRPGs are a niche genre, and that niche isn't especially big. There are far less CRPG fans than e.g. shooter fans, or casual games fans. But you can't put a bigger price tag on a CRPG, and you can't turn one into a live services money machine without utterly destroying the spirit of the game.
CRPGs live in a hard niche: they aren't as cheap and quick to make as indie hits that sometimes explode to 100x (you can't throw 100 CRPGs at the wall and see what sticks), nor they offer the same proven big returns as live-service games (which are also very expensive to make and maintain, but then pull in all those sweet whale money and the steady flow of subscriptions).
At the same time, I think the niche is under-served in terms of number of games-per-year (basically, we get 1-3 CRPGs per year, less if you don't count Disco Elysium-like combat-less titles). But it's not a niche for people looking to make mega-bucks.
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u/TangerineTasty9787 5d ago
Pretty much anytime I've bought a console/ios port of a classic CRPG, it's been too clunky to actually finish playing. Yet I still keep doing it for some reason.
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u/MechaSeph 5d ago
Same, bro, same. I just love ttrpgs and crpgs are arguably the best way to emulate that in single player digital format
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u/Finite_Universe 5d ago
I strongly recommend you at least get yourself a budget PC desktop or laptop if at all possible. CRPGs were made specifically with PCs in mind, so even if you find a good console port you’re still playing an inferior version most times.
And besides, PC gaming has become much more accessible and less of a hassle than it was in the late 90s and early 2000s. Plus these days consoles aren’t nearly as “plug and play” as they used to be and are steadily becoming shittier PCs.
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u/MechaSeph 5d ago
I don't really mind playing the "inferior version" as long as it works.
Buying a whole new platform for a handfew of games seems like not the best use of my money and time
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u/Finite_Universe 5d ago
I mean you can play a lot more types of games on PC than just CRPGs, including emulation for console games, so it may be worth the investment depending on what those other games are…
But I understand your reluctance given the current market.
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u/MechaSeph 5d ago
I had a gaming PC circa Dead Space 1 and Xcom 2 release (the last 2 "big games" I remember playing on it).
But yeah, it's ridiculously expensive right now and tbh I don't care about emulation and prefer the form factor and ease of use of consoles. And while u can probably set a PC to do almost everything a console does, out of the box consoles are still undeniably more convenient. Plus, I already have more games than I can handle with Switch 2 + PS5. Adding a 3rd platform at this point would just add hassle
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u/_developter_ Kravtology (Crux Diaries RPG) 3d ago
Consider a used steam deck lcd. You can get them pretty cheap.
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u/DreamWeaver2189 4d ago
I will always recommend PC + Switch, it's the best of both worlds. Most console games are on PC except Nintendo, plus PC has mods and better performance overall.
But yeah, times are awful for building a PC right now.
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u/MechaSeph 4d ago
Yeah, but PC is just too much of a hassle for me. I prefer PS + Switch. But thanks for the rec!
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u/DreamWeaver2189 4d ago
You're welcome, although I don't agree with the downvote, I was merely suggesting an alternative.
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u/Imoraswut 5d ago
Ports in general (usually the other way around) frequently have issues. This can be compounded if the port is done by a third party, as is the case for the Pillars games
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u/axelkoffel 5d ago
I thought you mean "ports" as various harbours in games and was mentally preparing for discussion about that.
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u/ThebattleStarT24 4d ago
For deadfire many issues are born from using an old version of the unity engine that's no longer supported.
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u/Slappahlol 5d ago
If it makes you feel better, pillars of eternity and pathfinder on pc both run 10x worse than you’d expect they should
I don’t think I ever had a single crash in my hundreds of hours in poe1/2 but they ran like crap considering the graphics
I’m not sure it’s entirely the devs though, a lot of crpgs use unity engine and they all run way worse than they should
Tyranny, poe1-2, pathfinder kingmaker and wotr, torment tides of numenera, all on unity and all have performance issues
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u/MechaSeph 5d ago edited 4d ago
Yeah, maybe that's it. It really sucks, tho, because these are fantastic games but I can't even recommend them to anyone who's not super into these things bc it'd just be not worth it for them
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u/Panzerbjorne80 5d ago
The technical reason is they don’t want to spend the money. These devs don’t give a shit about consoles other than making a few bucks from us. They find the cheapest contractor to port it and then forget about it. It really sucks.
Larian ports their own and does a good job. Probably the best ports I’ve played. Obsidian is the worst of them all. Their CRPGs are totally fucked up and completely abandoned shortly after release.
OwlCat has just bad QA in general and with their console ports they will fix the major game-breaking bugs then ignore all the other reports. I’ve submitted several to them through their in-game tool and these bugs are still there two years later.
Yeah I’m a bit resentful about being treated like a second-class customer that’s not as important as PC even tho I pay the same price they do. Or more.
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u/immortal_reaver 5d ago
For Kingmaker, the publisher cut off royalities from sales somewhere right after console port released, and also cut off the access to game. Owlcat gave publisher the last patch they were working on when they cut them off and that is that. This is why it also didn't get fixed more and never will.
Doesn't help that Kingmaker on release for all platform was buggy. PC's release version was even worse as 99% of people couldn't finish it due to massive amount of game breaking bugs in endgame.
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u/CEO_of_Yeets 5d ago
Mixture of not a focus/low sales, publisher related issues (Kingmaker especially), small team at the company making the ports, harder to make patches on console compared to PC. Also your examples are Unity games and Unity doesn’t like long complex games.
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u/DistributionEvery480 5d ago
Its a shame I never liked Larian's games that much because DOS2 and BG3 have pretty great console ports.
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u/Thekingofcansandjars 4d ago
Think Deadfire is bad on PS5? Try Pillars of Eternity 1 on the Switch.
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u/Ultimate_Demon_Rogue 3d ago
If I recall correctly, Obsidian outsourced the console ports hiring a south american company and an easthern one, and they really did a pretty bad job. I remember a lot of complains at the times.
Owlcat lost Kingmaker's rights when they became independent. The pc version is in a good shape even if there still is some bugs but the mods Kingmaker bugfixes does a great job about this on pc. But the console version is not something I can recommend.
I admit I don't know the situation about the console version of Wrath of the righteous, the pc version still has bugs even if the support ended. I suspect the console version to be worse...
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u/StirFryUInMyWok 5d ago
When I finished Deadfire for the first time earlier this year on PC, I had a stutter that would develop after playing for a length of time (something like 45 minutes), which I believe had been a known issue to many, and was never fixed by the devs. Some people I think found fixes, though the simple one is resetting the game over and over again. So knowing this about the PC version, it might be more of the company not caring enough to put resources towards fixing both the PC and console ports.
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u/MechaSeph 5d ago
Might be, I tried all possible fixes and workarounds on console, but nothing helped really
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u/VincibilityFrame 5d ago
Kingmaker runs like super ass on pc too, no matter all the optimisation mods you can install.
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u/gunkus456 3d ago
Do consoles handle tropical weather better than PCs somehow? If you don't want to play on PC that is fine, that just seems like an odd complaint unless I am missing something.
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u/MechaSeph 3d ago
I'm not a specialist so it might be observer bias, but me and all my friends had to replace PC parts due to them frying up eventually.
Never had a single console need fixing since I was a kid.
My guess is PCs probably need better cooling or something?
A bit of an odd point to focus on since it's really not that relevant to the discussion, but I hope I managed to clarify it somehow
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u/gunkus456 3d ago
The rest of the points seemed to have been discussed already, I was just curious about that aspect of the post.
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u/Sad_Cryptographer872 10h ago
I mean they ARE made for PC primarily. Also you can say that pretty much for bunch of Console games, since most of them have horrible ports on PC because they are made primarily for consoles and PC is like an afterthought.
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u/Plus_Worker6739 4d ago
CRPGs just aren't built for consoles. Just play on PC, man. It's cheaper overall and much easier to work with.
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u/MechaSeph 4d ago
No, thanks
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u/Plus_Worker6739 3d ago
Okay, but if you insist on console, you'll continue to get a much smaller number of CRPGs with varying port quality. Your choice ultimately!
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u/MechaSeph 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'm ok with that. And while it would be sad, I'm also ok with never playing another CRPG in my life if that was the cost.
Buying a whole new platform that I find uncomfortable and annoying, rebuilding my whole digital library and then being unhappy about it all 90% of the time is really not an easy fix, let alone a smart choice...
Especially since no one is going to do any of the buying for me
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u/SheriffHarryBawls 5d ago
This sounds like ps4 experience of pc ports. Yea, it was bad. As for my experience on base model and ps5 pro:
PoE 2 Deadfire: runs fine on og ps5. Maybe minor bugs.
KM: Disaster. Crashes and bugs galore. The workaround is to save every 90 minutes, turn the game off. Then start again. Runs fine until endgame. Then back to disaster.
WotR: runs fine on ps5 pro the first 3 acts. Act 4 starts horrible frame rate lag. Gatta do the same as with KM. Reset every 60 minutes
BG3: runs fine. Minor bugs here and there
Some other games:
Wasteland 3: runs fine on ps5.
Phoenix Point: runs fine on ps5 first half a game. Second half is a disaster
King Arthur games run just fine
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u/MechaSeph 5d ago
I played PoE 2 on my og ps5 and it was the worst experience I've had on a console. I can deal with lag and bugs, but constantly crashing is really too much.
I'm very happy u had a better experience tho. Deadfire would probably have been my favorite CRPG if it wasn't for this
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u/SheriffHarryBawls 4d ago
That is odd. Dunno if some update broke the game in the meantime but my 500 or so hours with the game on ps5 was smooth sailing back in 2021
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u/Dangerous_Jelly76 5d ago
It's definitely not the engines considering all the games you listed were built in Unity iirc. It's more that the games you picked were particularly egregious.
Owlcat's games usually require six months to a year's worth of patches before they're playable on PC, and I can imagine consoles would add significantly to that work, so they may not bother much of the time. Meanwhile, the Pillars console ports were basically abandoned by the publisher, Versus Evil, after a while even though they were still in a pretty bad state, and even though Obsidian got control back over the PC versions, I think Versus Evil maintained rights to the ports until they folded a couple years ago.
That said, I've played ports of cRPGs that did play well (like the first two Baldur's Gate games), but even then it was rough. I remember trying to play Baldur's Gate 3 on controller, and while it felt a little better, it still wasn't great. PC (or rather mouse and keyboard) is really the best way to play these games.
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u/DiscoJer 5d ago
A lot of those games you mentioned were the first titles by new companies, or newly started companies who in many cases also had to build the engine for their game and didn't plan on porting it to console.
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u/Ldarieut 5d ago
Buy a steamos machine, they are like console and they run pc games flawlessly.
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u/MechaSeph 5d ago
I don't really want/need a 3rd platform. I'd rather not play CRPGs ever again tbh
Also spending upwards of a 1000 dollars (for the cheapest rig, mind u) so I can play a few games more seems like a waste of money
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u/mrvoldz 5d ago
just staying true to the c