With the recent announcement of Diablo III being ported to Playstation 3 and Playstation 4, a lot of design choices that went into the PC version suddenly made a lot more sense, at least to conspiracy theorists. The maximum amount of four players as opposed to Diablo II’s eight, the way the button and skill system worked with a maximum of 6 active skills, and the matchmaking / auto-join system as opposed to custom game lobbies design choices are being called on for being console design choices versus what people were expecting for the successor to Diablo II. *Semi Mass Effect 3 Ending spoilers ahead* The public outcry over the console port reminds me of the outcry over Mass Effect 3 ending. *End Spoilers*
So with that in mind, when is it okay to sacrifice PC functionality for console ports or visa versa, or enable features for one side of the coin or another? In the example of Diablo III, the PC version was online only, because the developers described it as an online experience (Source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/blizzard-defends-always-online-diablo-iii-6387833) However, in a recent interview, it was slipped that the console version will potentially enable offline support (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFFNtE3yu20 around 8:46).
(The new console UI)
Both PC and console have their own advantages and disadvantages. Should developers then work to create an experience for each as similar as possible and as much similar feature as possible? Or should developers play to each strength and weakness and even go so far as to disable certain features on or another for the sake of the game? And are outcries when one side gets certain features justified or simply people being spoiled?
In most situations, I think that it is okay to sacrifice features or graphics to keep multiplatform releases consistent across different platforms. When versions of a game are different, people will compare it to whichever console (or PC) version that isn’t as good. A lot of people may buy console versions as opposed to PC versions said because of its offline play, so it’s good to ensure that the console version doesn’t have something that the PC version doesn’t. In the case of Diablo III, a maximum of four players is definitely a good way to keep it consistent between the console and PC versions.
It’s already hard enough to keep something like graphics consistent across platforms with game development. For example, in the game Bayonetta the PS3 version did not look nearly as good as the Xbox360 version and the game had some frame rate issues because its development was almost entirely done on the Xbox360 (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-bayonetta-faceoff). It would be too expensive to develop the same game twice for different systems, so I think it would have been acceptable to sacrifice features or graphics in this case as well.
Studios should try to do the best they can to keep things consistent across platforms, so that there’s no disparity between the same game in different platforms.
I feel like developers should try to create as similar expierence as possible between the consoles and PC, as long as it doesn’t greatly hinder one or the other. In the case of Diablo III, although I haven’t played it, it seems like it didn’t negatively affect the overall feel of the game. However, with a lot of console to PC ports, it seems like they are hastily done and don’t have many features that PC players are used to and expect in games. Most of these deal with tweaking graphic settings in order to either make the game look it’s best or to make it run smoothing on their PC. Features such as these are very important to a lot of PC gamers because, unlike consoles, most people do not have the same exact PC specs. When a game doesn’t include these there is always an outcry from PC gamers. I feel like a least some basic graphical options, such as adjusting the detail on certian items, is important because without it some people will not be able to play the game as smoothly as they should. Another difference is controlling a character using a mouse and keyboard is much different then using a controller. This seems to play most important in using certain UI elements and even hotkeys. It frustrates me when a PC game doesn’t allow me to use a mouse to just click on menu items and forces me to use only the keyboard. When this happens it is all the more obvious that the game was made with consoles in mind and also just takes a lot longer for me to navigate through the menus.
Overall I feel like there are certain aspects between consoles and PC that are fine if they are restricted due to console technology (such as matchmaking options and such) as long as they don’t greatly affect the gameplay. There are options that are vastly more important on PC then console (graphical options). Appeasing to PC gamers is a lot harder then console mainly because they have come to expect these options and are angered when they are missing. One game that this occured in is Borderlands, and prompted Borderlands 2 to send out a PC gamer “love letter” (http://www.borderlands2.com/loveletter/) to show all the options made just for PC gamers.
I first want to say, saying that the ending of ME3 is bad is in no way a spoiler. Second overall the message I sort of took from your topic is that a game should not be ported from the original format it was designed for and should be designed to run optimally on each system it will be released on. If that is not the case then ignore what I am about to say.
The reason things like this keep happening, and I believe they will always continue unless console generations last only 2 or 3 years to keep up with PC’s constant hardware upgrades, is because the developers want to try to get their game into the hands of as many people as possible, it is as simple as that. When they go about designing a game, they design it for the “worst” or most inferior hardware they are going to release the game on and just up-scaling the graphics and changing only a few features for the better systems. When I was young and naive I thought developers should design the game to be optimal for all systems not realizing the ludicrous amounts of time and money that would take.
Because of this PC is almost always the system that gets the worst ports because developers design their games for the very dated PS3 and Xbox 360. With the soon to be new generation happening I expect to see some much better ports coming to the PC, at least for a while until PC leaves the consoles in the dust, again.