Thinking about switching to PC, need input.

Krucid

So i have been playing ESO on PS4 for about 3 months now, and to be honest i am thinking about switching to PC. I am tired of the 30 fps cap on PS4. My main issue however is lag on PS4. So for my question. Is the lag on PC any better than PS4? I know PC gets mods and that is a huge sway for me as well. Any input is welcome and if you have any other thoughts, please do share.

Thanks

MythicEmperor

PC is to console as Dummer is to N'wah

That is to say: Superior.

idk

Much of your experience depends on your rig.

Basically the closer the PC is to GTX 980 or GTX 1080 the better. The close it is to the min specs the worse.

So,yes, the PC is superior to the console as long as it's not a potatoe.

Runschei

for pvp the lag can be pretty damn bad, same for fps ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Runs

I suggest grabbing a copy of ESO when it is on sale and trying it out. Even if you don't wish to stay playing on PC it will give you access to the PTS, and something to do when consoles are getting patched since patching is done on a different day.

silky_soft

Everything is better. You even get to fight people with CE.

With ryzen coming out in the next few weeks and vega down the road. No better time then now to ditch console.

kyle.wilson

If you are planning on playing on a decent desktop, go for it.
If planning on playing on a laptop, I would stick to the console.

Tandor

It depends, I suspect, on your server, system and playstyle. More information would be useful, although getting a consensus view will doubtless be impossible! The jury may also be out, of course, on the extent (if any) to which mods may themselves inpact on PC performance.

All any of us can do is give our own experience. In that respect, I have played on the PC EU server since launch with a medium/high spec desktop machine with a cabled internet connection, running the game on generally high settings, without any addons, and without guild membership. I am a solo/co-operative PvE player who has never been to Cyrodiil or Imperial City and who doesn't do competitive/formal group PvE content. As such, my performance has been nigh on flawless throughout the last three years such that I've never had a reason to check my fps or ping to be honest. Obviously others will have a different set of circumstances and their mileage will vary!

In particular, it does seem to me as a regular forum user that the PC NA server has more problems than the PC EU one (both now being accessible to all players from the same installation), and that the performance issues are very largely related to PvP and competitive PvE content although the significance of the user's system specs should not be under-estimated. Incidentally, I strongly recommend that you have a cabled internet connection rather than a wireless one for consistency of performance. I access the game directly through the ZOS client rather than through Steam, but don't know whether there is any significance in that.

Best of luck if you go ahead with the switch. My understanding is that you will need to get another copy of the game to play on a different platform and will need to open a new account such that your existing characters cannot be transferred. I would suggest you don't consider it without a lot more research if you are planning on using a laptop or a minimum-spec desktop. You must in any event have a DX11 compatible graphics card.

Krucid

My PC is about 2 years old. It was top of the line when i built it, so i figure i can do ESO at least on medium to high.

dbgager

I generally get 60 FPS on my I5 4690K/ GTX 970 rig with high settings. Although you will experience lag when you get in the cities with a lot of people running around and a lot of buildings and objects. I have seen as low as 40 FPS.

Tandor

Krucid wrote: »

My PC is about 2 years old. It was top of the line when i built it, so i figure i can do ESO at least on medium to high.

Age means nothing, specs mean everything. "Top of the line" can mean anything, as can someone saying they built it themselves. No disrespect intended !

Krucid

Tandor wrote: »

Krucid wrote: »

My PC is about 2 years old. It was top of the line when i built it, so i figure i can do ESO at least on medium to high.

Age means nothing, specs mean everything. "Top of the line" can mean anything, as can someone saying they built it themselves. No disrespect intended !

No offense taken. I understand where you are coming from. I know my PC can run the game. My main worry is server lag on the PC server compared to it on PS4 server. Lag seems to happen a lot on PS4.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Krucid wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Krucid wrote: »

My PC is about 2 years old. It was top of the line when i built it, so i figure i can do ESO at least on medium to high.

Age means nothing, specs mean everything. "Top of the line" can mean anything, as can someone saying they built it themselves. No disrespect intended !

No offense taken. I understand where you are coming from. I know my PC can run the game. My main worry is server lag on the PC server compared to it on PS4 server. Lag seems to happen a lot on PS4.

Lag definitely happens on PC, but I really only notice it in PVP primetime and HardMode VMOL. Otherwise, I usually sit pretty stable at 60 FPS at 3440x1440 with a 980TI. I dont think you will ever escape the lag. How PC specifically compares to PS4, I cant say.

There are so many other reasons, mostly addons, that make PC superior than console that I wouldnt think twice about moving.

IcyDeadPeople

Keep in mind, lag/latency issues are an entirely separate issue from frame rate, which manifest in the form of unresponsive skills or weapon swap, rubber banding, etc, typically when during very high traffic and near large battles. Frame rate can be high even when ping spikes and you notice the rubberbanding/latency issues, which are more about server and not caused by your hardware.

Sometimes both problems occur at the same time, but usually the frame rate has more to do with your client CPU and GPU struggling to process all the draw calls and calculating actions of many players at once, many particle effects, etc. Cyrodiil seems to be more demanding on hardware compared to PVE areas or most other games.

Just built my first desktop PC a few months ago with i7-6700K, GTX 1060 6GB OC 1797 MHz, and it can do consistent 1080p 60fps in PVE areas on Ultra, but for PVP I have to lower some settings to get smooth frame rate. Total cost was pretty cheap, $890, here is the parts list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/pp8WzM

I lower textures setting to medium, turn shadows off, grass off, water reflection off and keep subsampling high, and this improves frame rate in Cyrodiil a lot compared to Ultra settings.

I find it still drops as low as 20-30fps in large battles, but usually goes back up to at least around 45fps or so after a while. In Imperial City or Cyrodiil when there are no large battles anywhere, generally stays around 60fps. This is a lot more playable than the experience with my old laptop which would drop below 10fps in large battles at lowest possible settings, even with resolution bumped down to 1024x768.

When recording 1080p 60fps video or streaming on twitch, there is not any noticeable drop in frame rate.

raglau

I have a Core i7 6800K @ 4.4GHz with a GTX980Ti and it's significantly improved over running ESO on my XBox 1 - don't have a PS4 to compare. However, this game is basically a lame dog, you will never truly escape its myriad performance issues, you can't polish a turd, as they say. But yes, IMO a PC is a better option for ESO, as it is for most games.

Although I do love my console for convenience, it's never going to match up to a decent PC.

runagate

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Much of your experience depends on your rig.

Basically the closer the PC is to GTX 980 or GTX 1080 the better. The close it is to the min specs the worse.

So,yes, the PC is superior to the console as long as it's not a potatoe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdqbi66oNuI

One thing it's important for console players to consider is - can you type?

I realize there's not that many people who can't but voice coms are vastly less prevalent on PC.

FOULMISCHIEF

I switched from PS4 to a 15in MacBook Pro with discrete graphics of right around 1 TFLOP of performance (so High @ 1080p 45 FPS). With console being at ~Medium graphics and as low as 24ish FPS, High @ 45 FPS was amazing (not to mention KB+M).

That was a year ago. Since then, I've built an external GPU (GTX 1070), bought a 27in 4K display, and run the game in Very High settings @ 4K 45-60 FPS. I've also gone back to using the DualShock 4 controller, mainly for more fluid combat.

Valorin

To be honest, I am having close to no issues on PC. Though others have, this is most of the time due to playing on potatoes or due to bad internet I figured. I'd say ESO is a bit sensitive and needs an SSD if you want a really smooth experience.
It has been said more than once so far: don't play on a potato.

I wouldn't want to miss a lively chat, addons... oh my god, addons... inventory sorted by more than those few categories the game offers, junk handlers who unstuff for you... Buff trackers, immersion mods which turn off UI stuff, InventoryInsight, which logs all the stuff in the bags of your character and your bank, for you to look at whenever you want.

Let me share the wisdom of my wife, who is addon coder herself: addons are like toilet paper. Yeah, it's not life threatening if you don't have it, but you wouldn't want to miss it either...

Liofa

Whatever you are doing right now , stop . Get up , get your PC . Break your chains . Your life will be much better .



Note : I was a console player as well . Moving to PC feels like getting out of a small-ass apartment and having a beach house in a private island instead .

menedhyn

As someone who played on PS4 for about a year, my experience is that lag is noticeably less on PC, but it still makes an appearance, albeit on rare occasions. I play exclusively on the EU server.

By way of comparison, I built my PC late last year. It's nothing special when compared to some of the rigs people play on (i5-6400; GTX 1050Ti), but I still get 40-45fps in populated areas and a constant 100fps elsewhere. As @Tandor has sensibly pointed out, playstyle is a factor; I also tend to focus on solo and co-operative PvE. Settings are at high / maximum. I have no complaints or regrets about moving to PC or the performance of my setup.

Majic

"You've taken your first step into a larger world."

-- Obi-Wan Kenobi

Dredlord

Whats your focus in game pve or pvp?

I play ps4 and pc regularly and the server lag is similar when there are alot of players in one area.

My pc runs the game on max settings at about 80-100 fps and pc obviously will look much better if you have a good machine.

Tyrobag

kyle.wilson wrote: »

If you are planning on playing on a decent desktop, go for it.
If planning on playing on a laptop, I would stick to the console.

Incorrect. I play on a gaming laptop and have no issues on high graphics.

fred4

I play on a desktop with a high-end, but way outdated CPU (Intel Q9650) and recent nVidia GTX970 graphics card, in Ireland. Lag is an issue for me, in Cyrodiil, to the point where I usually avoid it in favor of IC. To be honest I am happy with anything over 20FPS. I have read the framerate IS tied into the networking code in ESO, so I don't believe ping and FPS are totally unrelated in this game.

My CPU is overclocked and a true quad-core that should have about 40% to 50% the performance of a high-end desktop quad-core CPU of today. ESO does use all 4 threads. I suspect that CPU performance is a bottleneck in this game, along with networking and server performance, when there are many players around. Having said that, I talked to friends on Teamspeak one time. One had a really high end 6-core Ivy Bridge system, which performed terribly, whereas one had a high-end Skylake quad-core, with a lower-end graphics card, and his performed fine.

I guess what I'm saying is, if you get 30FPS on PS4, I'd be happy. There is no guarantee a PC will fix that, regardless of spec. If I knew for certain a processor upgrade would fix my issues, I'd do it, but I've been getting too much conflicting information.

The reason I'd switch to PC is for the addons.

Stovahkiin

Tyrobag wrote: »

kyle.wilson wrote: »

If you are planning on playing on a decent desktop, go for it.
If planning on playing on a laptop, I would stick to the console.

Incorrect. I play on a gaming laptop and have no issues on high graphics.

Not necessarily "incorrect". It's a simple fact that laptops are not known as well for running games as desktop comps are. (And yes, this is coming from someone who has used both a laptop and desktop for gaming, and I prefer my desktop far moar)

Remag_Div

It's worth it alone just to play at 60+fps instead of the 30 cap on consoles.

Wanderinlost

PC is well worth it. If you are only ever going to be playing ESO you could get a powerful enough PC for a reasonable price. ESO is not that demanding. A modern i5/i7 processor, and a 1060gtx($250) and you could easily stay around 60-100+fps.

If budget is less of a concern I would make/order a custom built PC with top end components. You pay a premium but you will get much longer lifespan. A $5000 PC will keep you running cutting edge1080p games at max setting for at least 5 years before you start seeing limits.

One other thing to consider is there is opportunity to up your resolution. The trend is moving towards 1440p ultrawide screens, which are more demanding but increase your pixelcount by a large factor. Something I would seriously consider if you are in the market for a new PC.

qsnoopyjr

Tip of advice.

PC is pretty outdated compared to consoles, so I'd stick to consoles.
One of the things that make PC outdated compared to consoles is that it doesn't have voice chat, so I recomend you start downloading Ventrilo, Teamspeak, Mumble, and Google Hangouts... I couldn't get into a group before cuz I didn't have Google Hangouts...

You'll need all of them, trust me.

I wish the PC would finally catch up to Consoles when it comes to compatibility. PC has been behind in gaming for a long time now.

theultimatewarrior

I switch a month ago. Yes from pc to ps4 and im happy about it. I play three months on pc. Had a real good toon with alot of those coins. If your against bots. Cheating... And lag console is way better.on pc you going find bots farming raid obsses. And itll dissapoint you tremendously. I saw thw bots with my first 3 days of playing. Couple of days ago saw a video of some cheaters being able to dected you while in hide. From a legal addon. Sure there are addons thst make it easy to find everything. I say the concel is better. The lag on pc is horrendous it was the main reason i switched. I had also upgraded my pc .. the ram and graphic card and still i had lag.

theultimatewarrior

I found people afk shootin the spots were bosses spawn .. but at least is not as sad on pc where its a infeststion

MLGProPlayer

The experience is way better on PC if you have a decent computer.

Graphics are vastly superior, plus you can enhance them further with Reshade. You also get access to hundreds of add-ons. You'll wonder how you ever got by without them (the game would be unplayable for me without some of these now that I've experienced them).