I haven't suggested anything or argued anything about the possibility of the game being ported better. You're the only one arguing anything at all here.
That's actually the whole point of what people are upset about. There's barely anything (if anything) to change to use the same port. Yet somehow we got stuff taken away. They would've had to go through more effort to give us this dumbed-down version than the proper version, since it's the same code that runs on PS4 and XBone. AFAIK on the shaders (not that they're actually a significant feature) should port with no work, since it runs on the same hardware.
I could be a wall and the conversation would have nearly the same flow, as I have raised neither contradiction nor conjecture.
In short, stop arguing with yourself. It's weird.
Now you're making no sense.
So much salt and paradox in here over something not yet confirmed based purely on knee jerk emotional reactions.
And history.
I honestly am in the dark over why the two stages didn't make it to PC, so not trying to hide any information about it. My only logical understanding of a hypothetical reason is that the two stages were required exclusives by Microsoft & Sony on the New Gen versions in order to be green lit.
Otherwise, personally I prefer having 4K res with 4xMSAA over no AA at all at 1080p. Lighting is meh, I haven't really enjoyed or noticed the sub surface scatter when I play the new gen versions. Only thing I notice from the "new" engine is the nice particle effect with a critical burst.
That's cool until we realize we're talking about the PC version right now, not the ps3 version. If it were that type of thing, why would they not demand ps4 and xbone versions be different? PC is always next gen.
I'm surprised they didn't do the F2P model on PC, but I believe most of that decision lied in them not having online ready by launch :-/
Mods are a real fear for the PC version. They still are. If people can use the mods to either pirate or compete with DLC they're making, they loose.
From a technical standpoint, and from the poor messaging I have received in regards to the next gen stages, I believe it is because a lot of the stage effects rely heavily on DX11. The PC/Arcade version run on DX9.
As the game is already released this also opens up a lot of technical and legal hurdles. If you don't patch the game to work with DX11, you have to dedicate dev resources to altering the level so it works with DX9. KT is cheap, so we know they don't want to.
If they release a patch so that DX11 works and is optional, they have to dedicate resources to coding in stage lock-outs during online play against other players who run on DX9. There is also the strong likelihood of game breaking bugs trying to put DX9 vs DX11 which would have to be patched out, which would require even more future resources.
If they make DX11 mandatory, they run into legal trouble as the game has already released on Steam and people who can't run DX11 will start demanding refunds from Valve.
So basically, there are some solutions that work. But KT is cheap and doesn't want to dedicate the resources to do it. They likely see no benefit at this point.
Finally, an explanation that might actually make sense. I can only wonder, however, why they wouldn't go with DX11 on PCs when it comes preinstalled on "current gen" (windows 8). I can see them wanting to reach more people with the PC release, however they should've seen that less people would be interested when it's nerfed. It smells more of scam now than being less inclusive would've felt like elitism.
Thanks Rikuto for this interesting point of view, I think that you could be on something here.
But what could be the reason for not developing the PC version on DX11 since the start?
EDIT: The PC version is actually a porting of the Arcade one, so I believe that the real question should be made about that porting. If there are chances because the Arcade can get a similar update, maybe there are even chances for a patch on PC (admitting that there is an easy relation between the two things, I'm ignorant on the matter). At this point is clear that the PC release hasn't the first priority over the other next gen versions, so we should ask how much KT care for keeping updated the Arcade scene.
This is the thing that gets me, though. The similarity between the PS4 and Xbone hardware is such that the code should be the same. When you make a game that you expect to run on multiple platforms, you develop something called a HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) to separate as much of the software from the hardware as possible (and given how software works, you also do the same things for platform-specific APIs). If you can narrow the whole game down to mere scripts and such, then only the shell has to be different, it'll be easier to port, since 90% of the game is the scripts. This is why Skyrim, Oblivion, and the like are so easy to port: most of the game that you get is all scripts, models, etc that doesn't use machine specific opcodes.
It still could use some improvements and I'd love to be able to run it with DX11 as opposed to 9 and get particles and soft engine (does soft engine need 11?).
In theory, shaders are compilable code that gets run on the GPU rather than running on the CPU and signaling specific instructions on the GPU (the non-shader way). However, in practice, we need a HAL to keep things sane (since there's 2 major card makers out there that are mutually exclusive (because 2 GPUs ata the same time doesn't work very well [although possible, but let's not get into that, because you might actually try it and learn the hard way that it's a really bad idea]), but OpenGL and DirectX are not mutually exclusive). So yeah, odds are, soft engine would need DX11 (not truly, but to keep development costs down since they're using DX11's "built-in" features).
