calin_banc (DayZ)

It encourages bad business practice, plain and simple. You can always found their work by donating to their Pay Pal account whenever they make one available.

People might be interested in mods while they're free, paying is a whole different thing, more so when the gameplay is basically the same.

You're probably talking about Overhaul mods then and not small ones. Keep in mind that you need a stable and large enough player base in order to justify the server(s) and to actually be enough people online at any given time to play it. Sure thing, it's your money and your choice to spend it on whatever enterprise you see fit. I for one, said "no" a long time ago to this cow milking business model.

And how many people do you think will buy it (of course, IF Bohemia allows them to sell - no moder make can sell his/hers work for money)? You've probably missed the whole discussion about DLC policy on ArmA 3 forums. Payed "mods" wouldn't be mods anymore, just money grabbing content, with limited usability - since most likely will have to be allowed server side.

With such ideas, the moding community would not exist.

And that's why we can't have nice things.

I was talking in general to why PC players are skeptical about such moves and particular to Day Z, about development time.

They've made enough money to build a whole new game from the ground up on the PC base players and they should have done that first. That "new tech thanks to PS 4" it's just PR talk and makes Dean look like he and Bohemia tried to make a "money grab" initially. To "dumb down" something doesn't apply to technical stuff alone, it goes deep within story and gameplay.

It has more to do with the fact that the game development is taking a long time without significant improvements and usually games that have gone to consoles as well, equaled dumbing down.

Saying console crowd doesn't care about tech stuff puts you in quite a funny position. Perhaps you had missed (or purposely avoid) all the jokes and remarks about the xbox one not being able to stood it's own ground against PS4 or the pixel counting that went on for the last gen. BTW, the frame rate on TW 3 shown on xbox went close to 20s during a fight and going bellow 30 at each encounter. But hey, let just assume that "frame rate and resolution are just numbers", shall we? :) Hard to see the difference on multi platform games? Sorry, but that's absurd and not even worth mentioning. Never mind the fact that better image quality helps with the immersion (after all, it's not the same to watch a movie at a cam rip or at a Blue Ray quality), higher frame rate and better, almost lag free/precise controls and so on. Besides graphics quality, on last gen you were stuck with smaller maps and maximum 24 players in BF while I could just as easy play on 64 players larger servers in Eyefinity (yeah, now that's "the way it's meant to be played). Oh, not to forget about poor fps//fps drops etc. - guess what, consoles games are as well poorly optimized, performance that ALWAYS will remain the same, not matter what you do. This all "just wait to unleash the power from the consoles" was a leitmotif last gen as well. No real breakthrough though.

From all I wrote there, you've picked just Ubisoft. :)

Back then PS3 and xbox360 were high end machines, only in the years after PCs managed to get ahead of them. Still, they had, like all consoles, one fundamental flaw (and advantage): fixed hardware. You can optimize, you can see more clearly where to cut in order to get the best quality out of the available performance, but still... there is so much it can be done. Crysis ported to old gen looked like crap, it's the most obvious example. Also Oblivion had it's dynamic shadows taken off (from the PC version as well, because f**k logic - or perhaps there is one, in the money from Sony and Microsoft). It didn't ran that great back then, more so on PS3, but on PCs as well. The thing is... it still runs like crap on consoles, but now it works like a dream on the PCs of these days, even modded. Same with GTA 4, ran like snail on almost all platforms, runs pretty great now (pro tip, win 8.1 at least does miracles). You see, games do look better, but they can't match what's going on in the PC environment - and I say again, that was with some high end hardware at launch. New ones... oh well... To put it into perspective, my almost 4 years old CPU and almost 3 years old GPU, give a run for their money on these new ones. 2 more years and I'd say you've got from a build such as this (2500k, 8GB ram, 7950OC) what a console gamer expects to get from a console (that if it doesn't dye on him, of course :D ). A console need to run an OS as well, ergo PS 4 only has about 5,5GB RAM available to the developer (vRAM + RAM together) and 1 or 2 cores are reserved for the system (not really sure on that one). Even so, those 8 cores are quite slow on speed and efficiency. Now, add DX12 and better optimized OS for the PCs and the advantage of a consoles fades away even more. All in all, you get real quick to the point of the most popular and weaker hardware, holding you back. :( Ubisoft just stated that the new Assassin's Creed will work on 900p 30fps even on PS 4 in order to provide the same experience (kudos to M$), plus more and more developers say the consoles cannot match the high end PCs now (and no one is talking about uber high end like quad GPU, $1000CPU and so on). Ubisoft was stating that the CPU is not enough to push more due to the AI, whie GPU it could have been able to do more.

Back then last gen were the best, top high end parts, both. Now mid range at best. Overestimate it is not. ;)

Don't expect Xbox/PS 3 to happen again. Sure, the games will look somewhat better, however in order to be on the same level with previous gen at launch time, these new ones should have been fast 8cores CPU (probably 3,5-3,8GHz), 8-16GB RAM and a 780ti or something GPU, some fast SSD, etc., which means quite high end parts. With that said, yes, they can cut or reduce a lot of stuff to fit the consoles standards, plus some optimizations it should be ok.

Some seem to think that one pirated copy means one lost sale. Couldn't be more wrong than that. Piracy let's people use content that otherwise they would have probably not payed for or afforded. Some use it as a tool to asses product quality before purchase. Of course, as a developer you only see what you wanna see and instead of adjusting prices regionally (not only for PC, but for other platforms as well), they just moan. Moreover, let's not forget that on consoles, each second hand copy and onwards, brings nothing to the developer. In a way, the end result it's still the same as in piracy = 0 income for content creator. Haha, that would be a perfect trolling situations against PC players and a lot of rage against Bohemia plus Dean. :D

Yup, it's basically a huge money grab, mostly with profits as a first goal, backed up by huge PR and marketing budgets. Creating something out of love or commitment to your ideals have gone secondary or tertiary. The discussion was about consoles in general.

It's only Day Z, not Arma. At least for now.

Parked cores are showed as idling as far as I know, so that doesn't always happen (at least I have never experienced it).

It's 4 core CPU and of course it shares resources with the OS and other small apps running in the background, just like in any environment. The game cannot run just by himself. As you can see, BF 4 under mantle and Crysis 3 in that grass level, can keep the CPU at 100%. Other than that, it varies accordingly to the load. Cry Engine 3 is able to use up to 8 cores, at least that was the last time I heard about it, however, each game must be optimized to do that. Mantle and DX 12, just like consoles API, reduce the graphic API bottleneck within a system containing a CPU weaker than the GPU would need in order not to limit it. http://i.imgur.com/S2BwDXR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/f9FajEf.jpg http://i.imgur.com/s0Nuetw.jpg http://i.imgur.com/1ArNfyh.jpg

BF4, Star Citizen and Watch Dogs from what I saw, are using 100% of the cpu (2500k@4,5GHz) at times, probably Crysis 3 as well in levels where there is a lot of grass, with BF getting some nice performance improvements under Mantle. As time goes by and devs stop focusing on older gen platforms (in which 3 core optimization was the default), multithreaded code will be more common. Yes, performance wise at the moment, PS 4 is enough, at least they can chose 900p or something like that if needed. What I don't believe, is Dean's statement regarding performance improvements and engine stuff such as DX11, 64bit servers and so on, due to PS 4, when in fact, they've made enough money so far to do that. Moreover, the game should sell at least half of that from this point on, for the PC alone. Check Star Citizen with it's complexity and what they are doing, tech wise as well: mantle, tress fx, dx11 and most likely dx12, linux, etc., with work force I would say more expensive then Bohemia's. At the same time, they remain with the engine for any future games to build upon, win-win Bohemia. Other than that yeah, is nice to expand user base, there shouldn't be any reason for the game to come dumb down by any means on the PC.

Actually they implement what they want and it isn't as realistic as you may think. Hopefully what they wanna put in the game as time goes by, it's what we like and makes sense.

The issue with performance in MP is manly due to server side bottlenecks. You could have a computer from 1000 years into the future, it would still run at a "cinematic" 22-24fps, but at least it would look good, which is nice.

Not the best PR answer I would say. However, this unrest within the community has it's grounds in the past, as other companies have done this move again and again (declaring all hands on deck for the PC version and then switch focus down the road) or have gone into console exclusive stuff or content; even CDPR did the last bit with physical content. And I get it, you are in the business of making money out of your work which is understandable, but just as Bohemia makes judgments call when buying something, so do we, as consumers. In the FAQ section Dean said: Now THAT is just non-sense. What was the point of the stand alone if not future performance improvements targets, most of them driven by DX11, 64bit and so on? And why was DX 11 such a big problem when you ALREADY had it in ArmA 3 engine, why not use that one? I suspect some in house licensing stuff, but who actually knows. Content wise, I doubt any of the community modders would have said no if Dean asked them for assets to be implemented into the mod. Fix somewhat the zombies and there you have it, the mod making a stand alone WITHOUT any significant improvements (especially performance wise, where RV engines always suffered), pointless - even that nasty lighting system which is broken in ArmA 3 as well. Also the buyers were expecting that their money were put to good use into developing the PC version full throttle, with all devs working on that and not for another platform they have no interest in - more so, when development seems to come to a snailing step. Announcing PS 4 port and starting to work on it after the job was going to be done on the PC, it would have been something else. After all, you've made from this Alpha until now, and still going strong, almost as much as Star Citizen. Of course, if the support from Sony represents the only resources devoted into making Day Z a thing to PS 4, then fine. As a consumer I don't see at this moment any impediment for the PC version with that in mind. But you have to consider, a lot of users are quite rightfully doubting that. Personally I've bought a lot of your games, including ArmA 3 and Day Z, starting from the Alpha state. I'm hopping that after this troublesome birth, the game can truly shine and be a polish product, somewhat a new beginning for Bohemia and their products. Best of luck to you! :)

It's Day Z, not ArmA to have a bunch of controls all over the keyboard. Also performance wouldn't be such a problem, because ArmA engines had and still have problems regarding API overhead, whereas on consoles, it should be greatly reduced and hopefully if they go for DX11 at least, it should be a smoother sailing on PC as well. My only grudge against the PS 4 (well, perhaps 2), is/are: 1. They should have put all man hours into finishing the PC version and then and ONLY then start working on the PS 4/whatever console version. 2. Some ideas might be left out due to lower denominator being the consoles, so they probably want the experience to be the same and not "port" it from the PC (PC 1st in order to put out the best version that it can be), with what features can be on the consoles hardware and the rest being left out, aka PC exclusive.