Dear ID and Bethesda

[indent]I'd like to start by saying I'm a long time fan of the games you have created and published. As a child I would sneak in game time with Wolfenstein 3d and Quake, through adolescence I followed Quake II and Quake III arena, throughout my teens I played Doom 1,2,3, and as an advlt I've continued with recent versions of the Fallout series, and the Elder Scroll Series. I have been amazed by the technology that has been implemented in each game, and I have come to expect great playing experiences by the software you've provided. I have been keeping up with RAGE for quite some time now and as an avid fan I bought into the hype; I've watched interviews explaining the new "mega texture" engine and It has left me speechless when viewing landscapes on its rendered screenshots.[/indent]
[indent] I purchased RAGE for PC through steam to access the pre-purchase DLC and I have yet to play the game I was initially expecting. After multiple driver sweeping sessions followed by clean installation of drivers 11.9, 11.10 preview 1, preview 2 and even the recently provided preview 3, I fail to make it past the beginning cinematic scenes. My frame rate drops horribly (not even achieving 1 frame per second) and the textures look extremely bland, after a few scarce seconds with this, the game crashes. I understand that I won't be able to run the system at max settings but with my current setup I should be able to play the game relatively well (I am currently using Windows 7 home premium 64 bit, an AMD Phenom II running at 3.2, 4 Gigs DDR3 ram, An ATI Radeon HD 6790, and a high end Gigabit motherboard to house the hardware) presently I can only play using ATI's 11.8 drivers, but the framerate is very low and the textures haven't improved much.[/indent]
[indent] I understand that John Carmack revealed in a recent interview that the game was geared toward console gamers, this is understandable being that the largest portion of sales comes from consoles. It is afterall a business, and it should be treated as such. I'll also note that many games created through your companies have had hard starts with launch titles such as Doom 3 and Oblivion (bugs and texture issues). Regardless of this information it has been nearly one month since the games release and I still find it unplayable. I'm not going to rant and expect you to redeem my money, instead I'm going to treat this issue rationally, like a business should be treated, hopefully getting the correct message across that most PC gamers are still facing today. [/indent]
[indent]Your companies have grown to large scale operations that provide good playing experiences, when you develop a game and publish it, that then becomes the centerpiece of your administration. In the case of RAGE, PC fans were stricken with numerous issues concerning the game's playability and your company's overall fan support. Both console versions run almost flawlessly; this creates a sense of abandonment to your PC community, often times I've read on both the Steam and Bethesda forums with users claiming that both companies have sold-out and created games on consoles for initial revenue, rather than supporting the platform that defined each of you accordingly. Others have demanded refunds, claims that the time spent on the PC release was insignificant compared to its console clones, this has then evolved into debate as to whether Skyrim and Doom 4's PC releases will be worth our money. I'll let your companies decide whether or not these claims pertain to each accordingly as it is not my job to tell each of you how you're doing. I would like to close by stating that if you want to retain your current PC community then you need to develop a patch that addresses the plethura of issues that we're being faced with as quickly as possible, we understand patching requires time and effort as well as cooperation with ATI and NVIDIA, this however does not excuse the fact that you've created a poor PC release and have since sparked furious debate over your company's PC platform well being.[/indent]

Proof of ownership:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Hawk1290/games/

Thank you for your time; I would appreciate it if your moderators do not delete this post as it doesn't violate any of your terms and conditions and I believe that it accurately describes many users frustrations.
If you're following this post, please bump it so that someone within the business can address it.
Edit: Corrected a few misspellings and sentence structure.

Some

spaces

between

paragraphs pls,

Wish granted, thanks for the read.

They dont care obviously,Have you seen the 400 forum posts?

just registered to say that I couldn't agree more
I paid for this and expect to be able to play it
the game does not work as advertised, as a consumer I have the right to either a working product or a refund
the focus on consoles is no excuse for the current state of the pc version

I couldn't agree more.

Also on another note no other industry treats their consumer base this way. Do you see GM or Toyota sending mechanics to your place to fix your car just because the launch version had faulty tires or wind shields. It does happen once in a while but it is rare. In the software industry is now become a norm to have a buggy launch with day 1 patches. This is not just about id software every software company out there is doing this. They release half baked buggy products and then expect consumers to be okay with it. I can understand this happening in the early 90's when the software industry was young but not any more. It has gotten worse than what it was. Small companies don't have funds and sometimes have to push a product out but not the big ones. Crysis 2 was riddled with bugs, Rage, Deus EX. Consumers of software be it on PC or Console are being treated like crap.

I have never ever had problems with and id software game. even if they were games published by them and not developed. This time was just disappointing. The scale of the problems was just too large. I know the Id is not making the money it used to just like every other PC developer from the 90's and that times have changed but at least make sure the game works for most of the people if not all. Rage must be the only game that probably died on everyone at launch.

Everyone likes to justify John Carmack's view about PC and how business has forced a console centric development and I have to agree with it, sometimes changing environments force you to change your models but the RAGE launch just felt like complete abandonment.

This is not about story, graphics or even gameplay. It's about software stability. I don't think most would mind if the PC version would have been delayed by like 2-3 weeks like Batman/MassEffect etc. Just to make sure the PC launch is stable.

Edit: Also don't expect amazing sales on the PC like starcraft/half life if you leave a trail of destruction for PC users like this. You can clearly see what has happened to Epic on the PC.

Deathbringerr- I've read a good portion of the forums on both websites and I understand that theres a lot of problems, hopefully this'll just be a better way to address it. tha_jay thanks for the support man, hopefully something will happen within the next week

this guy deserves to be heard, very well thought out and respectful and hitting on the right issues without ignorance

o and btw your computer specs. should def be able to run this game at full settings

Thanks Havok13888 and RipthaJacker, I appreciate the read and the comments, thanks for keeping it alive!

Totally agree. This is beyond unacceptable.

I completely agree with you Hawk1290, I myself was a huge fan when I was younger and played countless hrs of Doom on my mates lan at his place of work. After buying Rage and as you can see in my post today I still haven't shot one bullet, so you can imagine how I feel about id. I started out with the usual driver problems and now it just crashes out saying the exe has stopped working.

I thought that games needed to be tested, Rage however has not been thoroughly tested at all on the pc at any level, my anger is with id when they said that they had placed the wrong drivers on the disc and it was clear that even them driver didn't work. id for me can go and rot in a corner, after 6yrs you would of expected a near perfect game, well we all can see where the attention has been and that is on the consoles. I feel betrayed in a way after backing id with their games and now left high and dry with a console rip that doesn't work and is bugged to hell.

Doom 4, has no chance of going anywhere near my pc. Skyrim I know to have its own engine and not this cack tech5 engine, so I'm waiting for a review before purchase. I'm so disgusted with how us pc users have been treated after years of backing id.

Totally agree

After testing the latest beta ATI/AMD drivers , some tweaking and upgrading my hardware rage runs...
But i spend more time tweaking , reading this forum and other sides , installing drivers and new hardware
then i played rage.

May be i will switch to my linux and play good old doom3

thanks for speaking my mind....signed!

Hawk1290 has managed to write one post to combine most of our problems and frustrations about this game. I completely agree with him and the rest of the guys that have commented here, making a real post about this, commenting on the poor development of this game in a mature and civilized manner, not just flaming and insults.
I have also grown up with Doom 1,2,3 and Quake, and used to have a lot of respect for ID. This "game", on the other hand, is the absolute worst written software I have touched in the last 10 years. As some others said, we are used to games having some bugs when they were launched, and even though we did not appreciate that the companies cared more about the money rather than providing a well-polished product to it's customers, we ignored it and tried to enjoy it anyway. But this... this is something completely new. A game that didn't work for almost anybody at launch (few exceptions, not even sure if they were believable or not), a game that has created the biggest forum flame I have ever seen on a single subject, a game that needed the users to create their own tweaks, config files, .dll modifications and command line parameters to make it PARTIALLY functional? No matter what everybody says, computer gaming will not die. Xbox360 is already dying, the already-getting-old console is not powerful enough for the new graphics. PS3 will soon die also, making both consoles produce weaker visual games until new consoles will be released. In this moment, the best graphics can be accomplished only by the PC, and I think it should get a bit more respect.
I feel deeply disappointed by Bethesda and ID, and I'm seriously thinking that I will not buy Skyrim and Doom 4 as I intended, maybe after at least one month, or maybe not at all. ID was an old, and from my point of view, respected, game company, and this is so much below what I was expecting

Thanks for the positive feedback Jkflipflop, Opollo, docbyte, and Posedatul. I appreciate the read and what you've added to the converstaion only strengthens it. Hopefully soon someone with a greater authority can pass this on to someone who NEEDS to read it.

+1
Spot on Hawk1290

can i ask some of idsoftware, why did you release the game before time?. why didn't you release a beta tester for the game? so that you can fix any issue.
maybe next time.
i'm wondering if it was because bf3 and codmw3 releases.. if that's the reason why,, i understand it..

I think the OP just spoke for every member of the community that has issues with their copy of RAGE.
Well done! Kudos to Hawk1290!

Agree 100%. I pre purchased the game having been a massive ID fan since the early days and I've barely been able to play.

For the first fortnight the game was totally unplayable, the 2nd preview drivers actually made the game run less than 1 fps, along with the hideous pop in of textures.

Now, with preview 3 I CAN actually play the game, for short periods. It has such poor framerate it actually is sore on my eyes, so I've decided to put it again on the backburner waiting for more fixes. It IS getting better, but much more needs to be done.

I'm running this at 720p with only 2x AA no AF no VSync and Large textures. I'm getting maybe 25 fps. My specs are E8400 @ 3.0GHz, ATi (Surprise) 4870HD 1GB, 4 GB Ram, W7 64bit.

I do think ATi should share the blame in this, clearly a lot of problems stems from their poor drivers BUT with that comes responsibility from ID and Bethesda to fully test on a variety of machines - this very clearly hasnt happened, or (more likely) they didnt give a damn and released it anyways, to be fixed later.

This is where my major issue with both companies lie. You took my money, but gave me a product not fit for purpose. if this was a sale in any industry except the games one, a refund would already be mine. Of course as its linked to Steam, this isnt possible. GO CONSUMER RIGHTS!!

What makes it all laughable is that although my pc isn't state of the art, a 6 year old games console play its version fine. I guess my money isn't as valued as theirs.

Test Skyrim better than this game guys or it will be the last product I ever buy from you, and that isn't idle pvssyr, it's a promise.

Thanks Nomadski, Urwy, Alienstorexxx, and JimBoSS I appreciate the positive feedback and the continuation of this tread