Hi, I have a 1050 TI graphics card and my PC is hot garbage and I did have GeForce NOW, but I now hate the service because you pay $19 a month plus an additional service fee of $5.99 for more game time added NO thank you.. I was wondering if anyone knows a best way to play this game for cloud service and steam included?
There is none.
Cloud gaming services are absolute garbage and will likely stay to be absolute garbage. Not to speak of the technical issues related to them depending on the genre.
You’re solely wasting your money. Buy the games you actually play and you’ll come out cheaper.
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I’d just like to state for the record that I’ve been playing LE exclusively on GeForce NOW, and I’ve almost never had any issues with it. Also, the baseline paid tier is $10 USD/month for 100 hours, and extra time is $4.99 USD for 15 hours, effectively 20 cents per hour. Pretty minor compared to the cost of buying and upgrading a CPU and graphics card, and you have the option of playing on your phone or tablet if you’d like.
As said, it highly depends on the game-type.
For example ARPGs like LE usually are in the middle-rungs of action-speed. You don’t need to have great reflexes… but you cannot have poor reflexes either or it’ll mean you’re faring rather badly.
Streaming services like GeForce NOW add a second layer of latency, this makes your input feel ‘floaty’ to a degree. FPS games are rather useless to play like this. RTS games in any PvP manner are useless as well, hampering yourself. Anything which demands very tight controls also has issues, like for example platformers like ‘Super Meatboy’.
Hence it leaves primarily games leftover which don’t need those things, namely ARPGs barely, survival games, puzzle games, story focused games.
Now for what you state… usage-fee versus direct hardware costs.
If you’re primarily playing games with middling hardware needs like LE and are absolutely fine to play on low quality then there’s absolutely no issue price-wise. The only people paying much are those which want either competitive PvP which streaming services immediately invalidate anyway.
So that only leaves those which want more ‘eye candy’. Hence focusing on graphical fidelity.
A system made up from second-hand parts able to run Last Epoch at 60 FPS stable with lowest settings costs around $600 currently.
Playing on the phone is nonsensical because of the significant difference in input, so we wanna at least compare it to a Laptop.
A cheap Laptop which is at least able to use GeForce NOW costs roughly $350 currently, maybe a bit less, let’s say 300 to be in the proper ballpark.
So, now you’re also limited to the respective library of GeForce NOW. Games can be added… but think not a second about them being a permanent thing on there, or your monthly costs staying the same, they’ll rise over time, especially likely in the current situation.
So games like ‘Vintage Story’ (A prime Minecraft inspired game which has top-tier gameplay qualities), ‘Undertale’ (Top-tier story focused game with quirky gameplay, one of the best indie titles in terms of creativity which has been released), ‘Hades’ (One of the best, if not the best action rogue-lite ever created) and many more are not available over this service in the first place.
So, what is the cost-difference actually?
If you want to solely play mainstream titles then you’re fine with GeForce NOW for a total of ~2 years. 240 cost saved. We can increase that to 3 years with some ‘I play them forever’ titles added, for example like Last Epoch is supposed (but fails sadly) to be. Hence 360 in fees. This means you pay for the shelf-price + the difference in components (which stay with you for an average time of ~6 years average if properly used and not overtaxed steadily) and still got 30 free for another game… or several smaller indie titles.
The average PC Gamer buys 2 or less games per year. Which means at the time where the ‘2 games’ cost catches up with the monthly fee you’re spending more. Which is usually after ~4 years already the case.
And that doesn’t take into consideration for using your machine for anything else then gaming itself. No e-mails, no browsing, no bank transactions or whatever else. The difference for a full-time employee working on a PC that’s low-spec versus working on one which is mid-spec (miniscule price difference of a few hunnies plainly spoken) is a so called ‘digital downtime’ aspect that is estimated at above 100 hours of simple waiting times for files, folders, programs to load. Any sort of actual managing of your life gets significantly slower with a bad rig, or using a phone only. And organization in a time where we got far too little free time anyway makes a world of a difference.
It’s just not worth it. Not from the ownership standpoint (Your game will be thrown out the list sooner or later likely, depriving you of the option to play it and hence needing to pay anyway), not from a cost-efficiency standpoint (short-term money thinking is leading to being poor instead of long-term) and not on a actual efficiency standpoint (as your hardware will be far worse then spending the money upfront to have a better system lasting you many years).
The only people which those services are for are dopamine depraved gamers which can’t for the love of it keep playing a single game for a while, having to constantly get ‘the new fad’ to play that. It’s playing into a detriment that actively can destroy lives if pushed (and does a lot, that’s how gaming-addiction happens after all to a large degree) and leaves you with nothing afterwards. Like leasing a car, immense monthly costs in interest rates, a good depracating massively in value and loss of all money already paid should you get in dire straits which means your car is taken away.
I really don’t recommend ever using such services, they’re neither good for individual customers, nor do they actually provide a ever-expanding library as would be expected. It’s the same as Netflix, or Amazon Prime video… you get a shittier and shittier deal over time, with content being actively removed. ‘SOMA’ is a prime example. Once available… not anymore.