Call of Duty: Black Ops III is the latest in the Call of Duty franchise, and has gotten positive reception across the board for the console versions. User satisfaction for the PC version is decidedly mixed, however, as there are apparently some lingering issues with Black Ops III for the PC, which surprised some users after Treyarch pledged modding for the game just last week on PC in the new year.
After the game was released earlier last week, fans of the popular first person shooter have complained about multiple issues regarding the games performance. The biggest issues stem from Black Ops III not even running properly in full optimization, causing massive framerate issues across the board. According to one report from PC World, only high-end graphics cards, such as a GTX TITAN X, and 16 GB of RAM, are making the game run smoothly on higher settings.
The issues include framerate drops in both the single player campaign and several multiplayer modes, including zombies which is only available in online mode. Outside of framerate problems, Black Ops III is also suffering from game crashes, game lag, and freezing.
Another issue affecting Black Ops III is also matchmaking and multiplayer lag. According to Express UK, Black Ops III is suffering from server and matchmaking issues not only on the PC, but also on the console versions of the game. As of an update, it appears the Xbox One and Xbox 360 console issues have been fixed, while Activision notes "Online services are degraded. Users in some regions may experience connectivity issues," at this time. For the Playstation 3 version, this may be particularlly problematic as without a campaign mode there is no single player they can play on with the servers down.
Developer Treyarch is well aware of the issues at this time, and in an update on Steam they announced a patch that would attempt to fix the PC issues overall. Treyarch also gave a quick fix solution if problems persist; telling fans that "Some systems may get better input response with FPS Cap set just below refresh rate. If you have a 60hz monitor, you can try enabling Vsync and setting your FPS Cap to 58."
Right now the steam version of Call of Duty: Black Ops III has received a lot of negative reviews, having a 57% user review on the platform, which puts it in the bottom 15 percentile on steam according to Steam Spy. It has an estimated nearly 139k owners, plus or minus roughly 10k, of which under 6k have left reviews at this time.
As of this time, Activision is not calling for a recall of the game, or pushing refunds for the pc port, like the much maligned Batman: Arkham Knight. Voluntary refunds, mostly through Steam itself, are currently active.
So what do you think about all of this? Leave your comments below.