Petition for System Requirements ?

[Oreo]

This is seriously starting to annoy me now. I don't know if it annoys anyone else, but developers and publishers really need to sort out there system requirements. I am thinking of starting an e-petition and getting as many signings as possible and then making all devs and publishers aware of it.

There are several problems that are currently faced:

#1) Totally useless specifications:

e.g. "PCI-Express, pixel shader 3.0 compatible graphic card with 256MB. "
What use is that ? that ranges from ultra fast cards to cards that would struggle to run CSS on high settings.

#2) Ridiculously wrong system requirements

Minimum system requirements are terrible on nearly all games, they are not representative of a true situation. The minimum requirements gave usually let you launch the game, with little hope of actually playing it an acceptable framerate, at a normal resolution (1280x720).

#3) "Reccomended System Requirements"

Also wrong. Reccomended for what ? reccomended for high details ? low details ? usually if i meet the reccomended i can only play at low-medium if i want good FPS.

To fix this, the following needs to happen:

#1) for a start we need true minimum system requirements. This states the minimum system to play the game on all lowest details at above 25FPS at 1280x720(or similar commonly used resolution)

#2) The reccomended should be able to play medium-high settings consistently above 35fps.

#3) We need a "Maximum Details System Requirements" this will suggest the lowest spec system they could use which would play the game at everything on highest at a resolution of 1600x1200 or higher (not counting AA and AF settings, however) and achieve above 35fps.

#4) Specific parts listed. Not just "Core 2 Duo" or "SM 3.0 Graphics Card" We need stuff like "9600GT 512mb" and "Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz"


If all developers were to follow this specification, System Requirements may actually be usefull. At best at the moment they offer a very rough guideline, which isn't acceptable. There are a few games which DO have good and accurate System Requirements, but not many and i would love it if all games had accurate requirements. I can't see how they get it so wrong. When your spending 20million on a game, is it really that much of a hardship to spend 15,000 figuring out real system requirements ? I think not. If developers even tested the game with all common systems (which they should) then surely it would be quite easy to have good system requirements in the first place ?

Any one behind me on this ? or is my opinion totally alone :laughing:

 

[wafflehammer]

There are a few issues I see with this. Especially the requirement things.

For example: Crysis at 15-25 fps looks really smooth..basically like any other game at like 30-40fps.


That's the issue i see with this. I do think that need to do more with it. Most new games list a P4 as min requirements..when you know that would barely play the game. What is sad...is by law they are doing everything the way they need to. It's the bare min to play the game so it's allowed. If they was to say you needed more high end things they would lose sells :\

 

[Druid]

I'd say at least half the games are accurate enough.

Cod5:
P4 3.0 GHz
512 MB RAM (XP)/ 1GB MB RAM (vista)
6600GT/1600XT

My old rig played it smoothly with a:
PD 3.2 GHz
1 GB RAM (XP)
6800

The cpu and RAM is a bit above minimum, but the video card is hardly above it, and that is the usual bottleneck.

Dow2 is a bit more of a liar. It played it smoothly except for the drag box lag thing. At this time the rig had 3GB ram (system only picked up 2 though). Dow2 wanted:
P4 3.2 GHz
1 GB (XP)/ 1.5 GB(vista)
6600GT/X1600

 

[Oreo]

I'd say at least half the games are accurate enough.

Cod5:
P4 3.0 GHz
512 MB RAM (XP)/ 1GB MB RAM (vista)
6600GT/1600XT

My old rig played it smoothly with a:
PD 3.2 GHz
1 GB RAM (XP)
6800

The cpu and RAM is a bit above minimum, but the video card is hardly above it, and that is the usual bottleneck.

Dow2 is a bit more of a liar. It played it smoothly except for the drag box lag thing. At this time the rig had 3GB ram (system only picked up 2 though). Dow2 wanted:
P4 3.2 GHz
1 GB (XP)/ 1.5 GB(vista)
6600GT/X1600

This is the problem.

The lack of consistency means you can never be sure until you actually get the game - rendering them pointless.

 

[philbar71]

one reason why they do such low sys requirments is that they dont want to scare off any potental buyers because there pc might not meet the requirements.

 

[Slaymate]

While it does sound like a good idea, they'd need half the box to list all of that. And some of that stuff is pretty hard to pinpoint as a minimun. Not every PC with a C2D 1.8Ghz is going to perform the same. There are just to many variables that can affect the performance. Everything from Memory (not to mention amounts, speeds, latencies, controller drivers, etc...) to varying system settings and tweaks.

Personally, I'd be more than happy if they would just increase the font size they use so I don't need my reading glasses to look at this stuff.

 

[wafflehammer]

Maybe they should have a system that goes by the vista rating thing?

like it needs a X.X score to play this game?

I know the vista thing isn't accurate..but it does get a rough estimate.

 

[Druid]

I think some games have done that. Gears of War I think. I guess it didn't really catch on though.

 

[Akubane]

im not really in the need to check system requirments but for most others a better standardized system would be handy for sure.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

I have bought quite a few games, and they all listed the GPU's that are compatable with it, and work best with the game, games like FEAR, Doom 3, FarCry all listed the exact specs to get a decent game experience with the game. Doom 3 never