DayZ on Consoles? More Negatives Than Positives

[RJTurneR 112]

So with E3 around the corner and DayZ pretty much at the same point, the topic of DayZ being on consoles one day has really picked up steam it seems. I for one can not figure why. It baffles me. Now I'm not protecting DayZ, acting like it is mine and no one else can share. The more people that play a game the better. I have played consoles since I was about 5 and have had Playstation all my life. Last year I entered the world of PC gaming and haven't looked back. So any argument with things like this I always see both sides. The question I have is have console players really considered everything when asking for this? There is a lot of questions to be answered, and I'm hoping I can express my opinions on this matter.. Let's go.

The first one, as I'm sure you have seen, is the KB&M Vs The Controller. This isn't an actual concern to me. Mainly because a lot of games on consoles have multiple assignments to one button/joystick, and I can imagine DayZ on console being stripped down alot, so this may 'offload' some of the weight on the controller so to speak. So that covers that, quick & easy.

When I say I can see the game being stripped down on consoles, this comes down on the limitations of consoles. There are some games out there on consoles that are large but are optimised for console and so load very quickly. DayZ being developed on PC only right raises concerns of things like loading times and possible lag on console. DayZ in general will be more optimised on PC when it comes out, but it will still be somewhat demanding, the map is very large since they now added to it, and there are many objects to load. It would be interesting to see if consoles could handle this. Now the recent argument is that next-gen will be equal to mid-end gaming PC. Now this seems true, but the games will developed on console and be optimised. This won't be the case for DayZ. We have no idea how it would handle DayZ as we have nothing to compare to or no evidence, but I feel consoles would struggle to run the entire game without something being taken away e.g. Making the map smaller, less players, less zombies, less objects, etc...

Then we move on to the audience. Now DayZ was boosted in popularity mainly through YouTube and streaming. This obviously attracted players from all different audiences in the gaming community, because its a video of a game, they are not experiencing it for themselves. Now generally speaking videos of DayZ are pretty much always edited, due to the length of time people play DayZ, so the length of the videos ends up being 30 minutes as opposed to several hours of playing the game non-stop, for many days as well I find. I believe this may have misled some of the console players. DayZ is almost like a game of being committed. To get anywhere, you find yourself playing long hours, this is down to the size of the map and having to travel, and generally speaking the only way to get geared up is to spend a fair amount of time doing so. I have shockingly discovered that I have almost 600 hours worth of gameplay on Arma2:OA, this is a combination of the main game, DayZ, and Wasteland. But I'd say the majority of that is DayZ.. Maybe say, 400 hours or so. So since playing DayZ since September last year, I find myself grinding through hours upon hours of travelling, looting, killing, etc... Even some nights were me and a group of friends would spend the whole night into the next morning playing DayZ.

This pretty much goes against what a consoles were designed for. Pick up and play. Jump on, have an hours worth or so, and then pop down the pub for the night (In my experience.... ;) ). Consoles are not really designed with an unusual amount of hours being used in mind, although they are used commonly in such ways. I had a PS3 for 5 years, in that time I opened it up many times, cleaned it, replaced the fan once for a better one, and reapplied thermal paste twice or so on the CPU/GPU. Did it resolve the issue of overheating, mass amounts of dusts, and loudness? .. No. As the term goes, the fans would kick into 'Jumbo Jet' mode, this happens on both PS3 and Xbox. And is usually the death of them. I kept mine going through maintenance but the common consoles player may not know how to go about that, majority of people I know who have a PS3/360 have experienced bad overheating issues and have had maybe 2-3 models each (More common in Xbox I find). Now I built my own PC start of January this year, I just opened it up and I can only see a very thin layer of just of the two front fans, which is protected by mesh to stop dust anyway, some on the PSU, and a little bit on the two GPU's (I run CrossFire). So thats 6 months and almost no dust, there are 8 fans in there, but thats the point, you can fight against things like dust and heat in PC's through installing more fans and other methods to help airflow and overheating. So taking DayZ longer hours of gameplay into account, and then combining with the consoles general issue of dust and overheating, the two clash quite a lot. Which takes me back to the point of the game maybe having to change in order for it to work on consoles.

I could probably come up with a few more reasons as to why it won't work very well on consoles, including the fact that majority of MMO's have mainly been developed on PC's and are more successful on that platform. But this covers my main concerns when it comes to people wanting the game on console. You have most likely "Been there, Done that" with all this but I really wanted to go in depth and shed some light on some of the real issues that I feel will hinder the game from being a success on consoles.

Thanks for taking the time to read, if you're going to make a subject worth discussing you may as well absorb a lot of information first.

Edit: This is in relation to the discussion of DayZ to consoles, but similar issues could be applied to other and similar games wanting to be made on console too.

Edited June 6, 2013 by RJTurneR

[Masterfocker 103]

You have points, but some thinking is wrong, or you don't touch on it.

1) The controller can handle the game. It can hold all the necessities. I already made a list how, in this thread: http://dayzmod.com/f...e/page__st__100 <----Page 6, couple posts down.

2) With next-gen consoles, DayZ can easily run when it's dumbed-down. There's no way in hell it'll be as big as Chernarus on PC, it could be 100km^2. That'd be plenty big enough. Could be a lot smaller and be ample size.

3) You say console people would get the wrong idea with Youtube videos. That could be true, but the same thing would be true with PC players. However, the mod is extremely popular. On consoles, following the same vibe, it'd be even more popular. Sure, consoles are for pick-up-and-play, but that doesn't mean there aren't hardcore gamers, or people willing to put in time to DayZ.

Edit: Oh, and Minecraft :)

Edited June 6, 2013 by Masterfocker

[dallas 5195]

What I find most endearing about Rocket is that being very honest and transparent, often gets him in more trouble, than if he had played by the traditional industry PR rule book.

Rocket: "Sure if the standalone succeeds, why not hire some external code monkeys to squeeze a few buck out of the consoles market."

Internet: "DayZ for consoles confirmed!"

[God Dan 62]

We don't even know when it will come out, why would anyone ask for this now?

Edited June 6, 2013 by God Dan

[Cap'n (DayZ) 1827]

It'll benefit us because Rocket and team will make more money off a console release because it would cost more and more people play on the consoles. Some console players have given up the console for dayZ or are waiting for a console release, so there is already an audience. Not that I'm glorifying them, console players are on a much lower level than us. That's right guys, embrace elitism. They have nothing against us that they can back up, so why should we care?

[dallas 5195]

I kind of thought Rocket's comment about DayZ for consoles was kind of a "water is wet - sky is blue" statement. Something like Ford saying "Sure 2000 years from now, our cars will most likely fly."

[that_f-in guy 1]

A lot of assumptions in your post.

[colekern 1364]

It would be ported to next Gen consoles. Also the control scheme is being redone even on PC. As for players, I don't think that's a problem. I mean really console guys play dark souls which is just as unforgiving as DayZ.

[RJTurneR 112]

A lot of assumptions in your post.

Sometimes when looking at things like this, assuming is better than just throwing a load of random points that don't add up. I'm going by the console audience, hardware, and general history. When you look at consoles traditionally they are designed for such games or for long hours of play, this much is apparent and is proven.

I still love my console and as soon as I caught wind of the PS4 earlier this year I was already sold. I have been a long time fan of Playstation. But from my perspective, and obviously everyones is different, the game doesn't make a lot of sense being a console without a lot of change. Thats taking into account the type of games on consoles, most recently the CoD/Battefield series, both being fast paced, pick up and play type games. They are avaliable on PC, but look at the numbers and see just how many more people play those games on consoles. DayZ is not among those genres, which could be an issue.