Spec Question

Thats why you have graphics settings. Its not about NEEDING top line hardware to play PC games, it's about making it worthwhile for those that HAVE that hardware.

Mike

Buying a top-notch awesome-graphic average-story game like Crysis really makes no sense if your hardware does not support the highest settings imho. At least I only played it for the graphics.
But even Crysis 3 is somehow "low" on requirements. I played it through on nearly maxed settings and I have a midrange card that was released like a year ago. There really are no games anymore that need a brand new high end card to run on maxed settings and that is mostly due to the weak consoles, as you described. Looking at how Crysis 3 cost 66 Million Dollars (or something among does lines) to make we seem to have reached a situation where it is unreasonably expensive to make a game that really utilizes current high end hardware to its upper limit.

This is highly unscientific, but I would say if your computer can play Super Monday Night Combat, StarCraft 2, and Supreme Commander 2 on lowest settings, than it's reasonable to believe it could run Planetary Annihilation on lowest settings also.

The Crysis series is a pretty good example of my point, the first one was a PC exclusive(until 2011) and murdered PCs of the time(2007) and now with Crysis 3 we have the experience Colin shows above.

Mike

Well tbh StarCraft 2 is pretty badly optimized. But I see your point, on low settings sure I guess it would run well.

I can play StarCraft 2 on high settings on a laptop I bought 2 years ago for $1000, so if a new laptop can't run it on low, then it may be in danger of running PA on medium settings, (and you may be ripped off if you buy a new laptop for $1000 and it can't run SC2 on low) but I hear what you are saying.

why would you settle for running this game on low res and a dinky little monitor. Highend cards have given me far better value for money when you consider the screen size and res that I want to use.

I hope PA has decent graphics settings, that's not really PA specific, but a principle thing.
In the past, I have played often enough games on less than optimal hardware and for many games the reduced graphics settings look just plain awful (far worse than the necessarily have to be).
Usually, I went for less framerate over more detail to save the most of the visual impression.
Sure, making half-way decent low res modes is time intensive, mostly because some things should be displayed differently instead of just with less of this and that. But if you don't invest the time to do that, one should also be honest enough to say max specs are min specs more or less.

Nowadays, I usually upgrade earlier , but that's just me.

That only makes the client/server system even BETTER.

If you had enough bandwidth on a handheld device, it could probably play PA.

I read that and was just thinking about Sim City. So my first reaction was:



Then in a second thought I still don't know what happens if you loose connection. Pause the game? Quit it? And what happens if you loose connection? If you have problems over the next few weeks?

Sure if you could choose if you or the server performs all the calculation. But that is additional development and so on...

All calculations will be done on the server. You can host a local server if you want, so it's not forcing you to be always online.
If you drop out, you'll have the chance to reconnect, there's a drop in system that already works.

There is no information on pausing yet, but I'd imagine it'll work like in SupCom.

The local thing is the most important thing here. I expected it to be like SupCom. Just reading the last week all day about SimCity (I don't have it and never will) just gives me nightmares when it comes to client/server. And although I knew how SupCom worked I just panicked a bit reading this.

Thank you sir for calming me down.

Edit: Still I'm interested how much CPU will be stressed per player. Didn't they say you can play with as much players as you want s long as you have right hardware?

CPU usage is too early to tell, honestly. But they did say you could play with as many players/planets/units as you want if you have the right hardware.

The bulk of the work is done by the host(s). So the host will absolutely need a stronger computer.

The client side takes information from the server and turns it into a shiny display. Since clients have ZERO direct impact on the game state (orders are processed through INTERCAL), visual requirements can be as high or as low as Uber desires.

I'm just interested because me and all my friends who will probably play this game have far or less the same specs in their PC's. So it's interesting for me to know if we can handle the computing our self or if we need external power.

I know there it's too early to know about that. Just saying I'm interested in the result

The disaster Maxis has brought upon its customers has nothing to do with a server-client architecture. It comes from trying to transform a known single-player game into a MMO but only with very few weak servers and little to no reasonable MMO-Features apart from annoying customers and making it "harder" on pirates.
PA's server client has nothing to do with it. PA is not trying to be a MMO in any way. You can play offline all you want, the game will silently create a server on your local machine that you use to play vs the AI. You probably won't even notice that there is a "server" on your machine somewhere in the background.
PA really only asks you to be online if you want to advantages of UBER-net (probably matchmaking, chat, achievements, whatever).

tl;dr: Maxis tries to fight piracy by making its product bad for paying customers. PA is accepting that piracy will be there anyway and focuses on the best possible experience for the paying customer.

I know that (by now ). But just hearing the word "server" I get a cold vibe. Dunno what my brain made me think. Just say screw DRM - now messing with my brain

I already knew that before... I was just making sure... u know...

The whole sim city thing is all because maxis fundamentally misunderstand whats going on. After all traditional thinking would dictate that if your anti piracy measures didn't stop piracy, you should build better anti piracy measures. It sounds good on paper but we all live in the real world.

Most companies have realised this by now.

Providing a better product for paying customers (through constant support and leagues) is definitely a way that i condone.

Piracy is nothing new, but the digital age has given it a revival of sorts. Even less than 50 years ago, no one would have expected a product to be reproducible at practically no cost. That used to be the realm of slave labor. Nowadays, it's as easy as Ctrl-C Ctrl-V.

Devs have a pretty sucky choice. They can make the paid experience better, or they can make it worse. DRM has almost always hurt paid customers more than the pirates. It makes things more cumbersome and the added bugs of a crack does the game experience no favors. Perhaps the most effective answers have been using some kind of CD key or providing online services for registered users. The former is fairly neutral, and the latter only enhances the benefits of paying.

Uber has plans to host servers of their own, and may have competitive ladders. It would make sense to demand a simple login (Steam is probably good enough) to keep pirates and troublemakers off the official servers.

All this business about servers is very weak. What if your going to a lan or your offline against AI. Highend cards and raid 0 is the way forward.