A story of GTA IV

[eendje01]

This is the email I just send to GTA IV support. Wonder if I get a response...

 

Dear Support,

 

Not so much a question as a general story about my experience with GTA-IV, may be worth reading...

 

It is unbelievable how you manage to release an excelling highly entertaining game and still get people so frustrated about it, that all they want to do is smash their computer to pieces.

 

Here, this afternoon, I was in for another 15 minutes of GTA IV, just for some distraction whily studying. Well...distraction I got!

 

After going trough the start-up 'procedure' (clicking on the link, waiting 20secs while a dospromt window opens, skipping the 'social club' login-window for the zilliont time, waiting again for the social club game window to open, clicking on 'play' and yes, finally having the luxory to actually wait for the game to start! (nuclear missiles are launched with less effort), I loaded the mission where I finished the game (yep, as persistant as I am, I did get there!), and started playing. While I was in the middle of an interesting high-speed purchase, the game decided to go back to windows (xp) without any apparent reason. As I wasn't able to return to the game, my only option was to close it with taskmanager and redo the startup procedure from scratch.

 

I'm a patient forgiving guy, so no problems for me this far...

 

After waiting a minute/minute half again, I loaded my mission, went trough the flashing images sequence again (also for the zilliont of times, really, it never get's boring!), finding myself in the black window with 'game loading' on the bottom. Several minutes later, still no changes... *usually this only takes about 10 secs, me has a fast computah!

 

So, what to do then? Only option again: Windows task manager! However, as I knew from previous experience, this doesn't work as supposed to when loading a GTA 4 game: When pressing ctrl-alt-del (or the windows button), you remain in the black game-loading screen and all you see is a taskmanager flashing about 20 times per second. It is almost an impossible challenge to manage to end the GTA 4 program in this situation, as you have no clue to where your mouse icon is on the screen. I did manage to close it once, but I really didn't feel like waisting any more of my time this instance, so I rebooted my PC old school.

 

So, 15 minutes of GTA 4 fun turned into a somewhat reversed scenario. Bonus feature of this experience is, that I know I have to DELETE my last save-game for being able to load ANY savegame after this. This is because appearantly GTA 4 corrputed this last save game, and (conveniently) has no way to load any other save game then the last one, from the main menu!

 

Well, being a member of the GTA 4 support department, you probably didn't get here with reading. However if you did, I hope you get a picture of how your once loyal and faithfull game users experience one of your latest releases.

 

Disappointment is just to shortcoming a term.

 

Maybe next time provide a game that doesn't turn relaxed gamers into suicidal cliffjumpers...?

 

Some tips for that:

- Add the 'feature' that allows us to actually CHOOSE the savegame to load

- Take a minute (more) to TEST your game before releasing it

- Please, and I beg you for this: DON''T force us to use, or even view for that matter, ANY promotional crap like the social club, while all we want is just PLAY your GAME!

- IF you manage to release a game that crashes every now and then, no worries, but please: allow windows task manager to DO it's JOB!!

 

Thank you!

Sincerely,

 

Chris W.

[Murcchachosa]

You better could send that to R* than posting that sh*t

on this FANSITE and not an EMO site.

[Badass_Cyborg]

Wow I forgot how nice these forums are......

[ikt]

Task manager is a problem with your videocard drivers and Windows itself, not only GTA IV.

With the rest: Agree. (Lol'd @ nuclear missile part)

[Murcchachosa]

Come on, do you really think they care about your email???

I think you have been smoked too much meth.

Too much you see a sh*t PC in front of you and complaining/moaning about it.

The solution is really easy.

Only get decent atleast the 8400 series C2D (or Quadcore) and good GF9600GT.

These parts are really trustable.

Some pple thinks C2D are sh*t or some GPU are like crap.

But a decent ones does the work for you.

If not, go play with your duck in yo bathroom and have fun.

Sending this email to GTA IV, FTW

Too much kiddies gramma and moaning.

You always can play other games like sh*t 'n Death or Fallout or any ones.

 

Good "luck"

[DRMetzger]

Well that dos propt shouldn't be there after patching the game up, have you tried patching it up?

[Jc84144]

Maybe next time provide a game that doesn't turn relaxed gamers into suicidal cliffjumpers...?

Yeah, what a shame. Another brat can't play GTA exactly as he wants.

 

I'll be waiting for the jumping off a cliff thing, if only more people were like you. This forum might actually not be over run with moaning little kids.

[ikt]

Ahem. All of you people over-protecting R*, look closer. In my history, a game has never been so f*cked up to lauch. Not even Doom II on gazillions of diskettes. I now just use a crack (don't care about online anymore with my low FPS, just want to mod, but they deleted that also, plus, i have the game on the xbox) to get around the launching crap. I use a mod to avoid the R* logos. The game is now near-perfect for me. The only thing that still has to be done are loading savegames on the beginning. I can't complain about the specs, because i can run the game decently on a Pentium 4.

 

OP: Don't complain about GTA IV crashing. My OS is almost dead now, and GTA IV runs FINE. Just FINE. You must have done something wrong to make it crash, because my system only crashes when i do weird stuff. CTRL-ALT-DEL is a MS/driver fault. Don't blame R* for things they don't have control of.

[GamerShotgun]

Come on, do you really think they care about your email???

I think you have been smoked too much meth.

Too much you see a sh*t PC in front of you and complaining/moaning about it.

The solution is really easy.

Only get decent atleast the 8400 series C2D (or Quadcore) and good GF9600GT.

These parts are really trustable.

Some pple thinks C2D are sh*t or some GPU are like crap.

But a decent ones does the work for you.

If not, go play with your duck in yo bathroom and have fun.

Sending this email to GTA IV, FTW

Too much kiddies gramma and moaning.

You always can play other games like sh*t 'n Death or Fallout or any ones.

 

Good "luck"

You may have no problems running the game, but some of us can't even run it on quad cores, because it runs differently on every f*cking system and that's what we are complaining about.

[abottig]

Maybe you should learn how to spell.

 

While you're at it, learn about grammar and composition.

 

Then, maybe R* will read your "letter".

[JDHauser]

Come on, do you really think they care about your email???

I think you have been smoked too much meth.

Too much you see a sh*t PC in front of you and complaining/moaning about it.

The solution is really easy.

Only get decent atleast the 8400 series C2D (or Quadcore) and good GF9600GT.

These parts are really trustable.

Some pple thinks C2D are sh*t or some GPU are like crap.

But a decent ones does the work for you.

If not, go play with your duck in yo bathroom and have fun.

Sending this email to GTA IV, FTW

Too much kiddies gramma and moaning.

You always can play other games like sh*t 'n Death or Fallout or any ones.

 

Good "luck"

You may have no problems running the game, but some of us can't even run it on quad cores, because it runs differently on every f*cking system and that's what we are complaining about.

 

lol i totally agree, i'm using quadcore too and the damn thing crashes every 5 minutes.. i posted a small complain and my problem on here and all people could do was tell me how i shouldnt 'attack' rockstar.. and avoid my problem completely..

 

i guess if people can't help they'll post anyway to raise their post count..

[eendje01]

Ahem. All of you people over-protecting R*, look closer. In my history, a game has never been so f*cked up to lauch. Not even Doom II on gazillions of diskettes. I now just use a crack (don't care about online anymore with my low FPS, just want to mod, but they deleted that also, plus, i have the game on the xbox) to get around the launching crap. I use a mod to avoid the R* logos. The game is now near-perfect for me. The only thing that still has to be done are loading savegames on the beginning. I can't complain about the specs, because i can run the game decently on a Pentium 4.

 

OP: Don't complain about GTA IV crashing. My OS is almost dead now, and GTA IV runs FINE. Just FINE. You must have done something wrong to make it crash, because my system only crashes when i do weird stuff. CTRL-ALT-DEL is a MS/driver fault. Don't blame R* for things they don't have control of.

I'd love to get a grip on that crack you mention =)

 

As for the crashes: not sure if it's anything to do with my system or if it's the game, I read a lot about it on the internet. I actually do have a decent system, bought it just a few months ago, for as much as that's worth. Taskmanager, not sure.... I gues it could be a windows issue. I mentioned it cause I never experienced this with any other game/app before.

 

As for some other replys: I'm 27 for that matter. Really don't play any other games anymore, exept gta occasionally. I gues my opening post had to provoke some of these kind of responses...

 

 

 

 

[Drunk Russian 9]

Hah, I miss these anti-R* threads. There used to be a sh*tload of them.

 

As for meh, I can't stand the crashing . . . the game randomly crashes maybe an hour in; and when I choose to quit the game from the menu, it also crashes.

 

Now for some reason I can't even start GTA IV from my desktop, only R*SC. Ugh.

[oc student]

 

You better could send that to R* than posting that sh*t

on this FANSITE and not an EMO site.

WOW you're an idiot. He wrote "This is the email I just send to GTA IV support. Wonder if I get a response..."> And to those who say get better grammar perhaps he does not have English as a first language. You guys are such assholes, some of this community. I recently read a PC ZONE magazine and inside it someone sent a letter about GTA 4 and mentioned this forum as a bunch of stupid whingers and people who yell at everything.

[BikerAndy]

I recently read a PC ZONE magazine and inside it someone sent a letter about GTA 4 and mentioned this forum as a bunch of stupid whingers and people who yell at everything.

lmao

 

It does get a bit negative around here doesn't it? I think the moaners are in the minority though, most are helpful pleasant posters but unfortunately not as loud as the whingers!

[emufan]

Here´s my experience with GTA IV: I bought it on the day of release, one for me, and one as a birthday present for my brother. I installed it on a FRESH install of Windows. Launched the game...And it crashed. I did nothing wrong. Rockstar did. RSC had some bugs, so i had to log out to be able to play. That was fine with me. I play the game...Lots of popping textures. REALLY frustrating. So i eventually found the -availablevidmem command line, so i used that. No more popping textures. I could actually run it just fine. 3 patches later, and it still works fine (Recently got an ATI card, so i´m still tweaking that. Other then that, it works great.)

 

HOWEVER! The fact that i had to research all over the place to get it to work properly, do some tweaks here and there (My specs were OVER recommended, so shut your trap) is unacceptable. This should work out of the box. GTA III worked out of the box. So did Vice City. And San Andreas. So what happened? And if people want to tell me that i should stop complaining, WHY? I am a customer. And i´m not a very pleased customer. So i complain. Is there something wrong with that?

[Dcrysis02]

Not trying to do a commercial or something, but you can vote or say what you think here, if a certain proposal get's through,(if it get's through)we may not have to put up with the way games are "done" in the present.

[PecanFrost]

I'm not having a go at anyone here, I believe that if you have a problem then you should be able to open up about it, that's the whole point of a forum. If everyone had the same opinion there would be no forum.

I'm just not sure Tech Support are the people to send your e-mail to, they can attempt to get the game working for you, but that's all. They didn't develop the game, they didn't test out the game (I've worked in a Technical support role and we got to know about new products around the time they hit the shops), complaining to them about the features of the game is like complaining to you mechanic that you don't like the design of your car. That's not their job to sort out.

This might not be the place to put it, but... There is an option on rockstars own website called Mouthoff, I've not used it as I quite like the game and it's worked since day one (don't stone me)that e-mail should hopefully go to someone who can change things on the game.

[Nillus]

 

Here´s my experience with GTA IV: I bought it on the day of release, one for me, and one as a birthday present for my brother. I installed it on a FRESH install of Windows. Launched the game...And it crashed. I did nothing wrong. Rockstar did. RSC had some bugs, so i had to log out to be able to play. That was fine with me. I play the game...Lots of popping textures. REALLY frustrating. So i eventually found the -availablevidmem command line, so i used that. No more popping textures. I could actually run it just fine. 3 patches later, and it still works fine (Recently got an ATI card, so i´m still tweaking that. Other then that, it works great.)

 

HOWEVER! The fact that i had to research all over the place to get it to work properly, do some tweaks here and there (My specs were OVER recommended, so shut your trap) is unacceptable. This should work out of the box. GTA III worked out of the box. So did Vice City. And San Andreas. So what happened? And if people want to tell me that i should stop complaining, WHY? I am a customer. And i´m not a very pleased customer. So i complain. Is there something wrong with that?

/veto that.

 

You should expect from this game that, when you meet the recommended requirements, you can play without issues, let it be in low gfx quality and view distance and a 30'ish FPS, but fine.

A game is tested for that, right? However, it appears that it doesn't work this way with GTA IV.

 

'j00 but all pcs r different we kant test for all pcs tis jus 1% of zeh usrs kornflakes thank you!11'.

 

You managed to do so for the other PC ports. (GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas)

PCs that met the recommended requirements or even the minimum reqs were able to play the game without issues - like we expected!

To launch it without going through loads of propaganda produced by that hired Joseph Goebbels from Microsoft.

To play it without saying it the data got corrupt and you need to reinstall - some guy here reinstalled 10 times in a week because of this and eventually he got his serial locked out - what's up with unlimited installations?

 

Have you ever had this much complaining, Rockstar? (Niggus smells Hot Coffee and Bully)

We are customers and we buy your product.

Because our PC can run it and we love GTA.

But not being able to run this software properly results into unhappy customers and thus to a decreasing sale of the product, plus loss in respect for your company.

 

I know this is (isn't it?) the first usage of RAGE for the PC platform, I remember back with GTAIII (first PC GTA with Renderware) there were also issues.

Fine, but please try to improve the current situation, instead of dumping it on 'teh customers are fautly they dunt have decent pcs and use faulty drivers'.

Customers should be able to enjoy your product without going through all of this hassle - aslong they met the minimum or recommended specs.

Even that small '1%' that is complaining right now.

 

My two cents.

[Rob.Zombie]

Only problem with GTA IV is GFWL.

Really what kind of sh*tty "program" is that? At least they should copy steam or maybe better: use steam.

I agree it really runs different on every computer, but thank god I managed to get an almost lag free game. I get a pleasent 30 fps, sometimes it drops below 25. (mainly because I use maximum values (modified popcycle.dat) for cars and there are always traffic jams in my game )

[RobJohnB95]

Why is everyone being such a git to the lad?

his comp wont run gta iv, well thats not R* fault thats yours in not having a taste in marketing and not being able to find a suitible one that does the job right.

 

pick up a pc magazine or summit and read the bit where it tells ya all bout new systems and gaming systems

buy one of them.

 

rite this dude and many others complain its not good enough for you...well its not exactly my suiting either...its standard but it could imrpove so much better with a higher driver, as im running a 9500GT geforce and 2gb ram...which also could do with upgrading.

 

but tbh i cba wiv that lot cos im only on my comp now n again and i'm busy in rl atm lolz.

 

if u want to complain its bad enough on these forums but you send a email...to the support line

 

seriously if ur tht fussed get an xbox 360 or ps3

[oc student]

LOLZ uh LMAO uh I couldn't understand one word of your post but you seem to think "he's fussed" over the game and doesn't have a good enough PC. First of all he said repeatedly that he had a PC well over the recommended specs if you know how to read and secondly trying to get GTA 4 to run for more than 5 minutes is not being fussy. I think you just are trying to fit with the crowd and posting random comments. So yourself kid.

[Nillus]

Why is everyone being such a git to the lad?

his comp wont run gta iv, well thats not R* fault thats yours in not having a taste in marketing and not being able to find a suitible one that does the job right.

 

pick up a pc magazine or summit and read the bit where it tells ya all bout new systems and gaming systems

buy one of them.

 

rite this dude and many others complain its not good enough for you...well its not exactly my suiting either...its standard but it could imrpove so much better with a higher driver, as im running a 9500GT geforce and 2gb ram...which also could do with upgrading.

 

but tbh i cba wiv that lot cos im only on my comp now n again and i'm busy in rl atm lolz.

 

if u want to complain its bad enough on these forums but you send a email...to the support line

 

seriously if ur tht fussed get an xbox 360 or ps3

Yeh as ocstudent said below, this guys said he as a computer that is OVER the recommended settings and it still refuses to run properly.

He as customer has the right to complain and that's what's happening right now - and I find it totally fine.

 

People who try to run it decently on hardware with minimum specs (these are way too low btw) shouldn't be whining here and buying a console if they want to play this badly.

But people who bought it and it still doesn't work, even though their PC meets the recommended requirements have the full right to complain.