Arcania - Updated System Requirements?

This is an old-school RPG board

That said, I have a decent enough rig - though it's only quad-core. I do have a 5870 ATI card, so it runs most things pretty well. Not Elemental, though - but that's also next-gen to the max

There better be some sweet tech in there for needed that kind of a PC. But it's probably more likely the game is just really poorly optimized.

And I hope when they say recommended for best experience, it means a smooth 40+ fps, not 30fps +-10.

I don't see the game selling too well with those kinds of requirements. Although that never stopped Crysis.

Hmm. I've also kept updating the graphics card as required, but my X2 hasn't been a bottleneck in any games so far. Interesting that it's an RPG that might be the downfall!

BearishSun said:

I don't see the game selling too well with those kinds of requirements. Although that never stopped Crysis.

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Talk of Crysis's high system requirements was greatly exaggerated because even if you were only able to run it at medium settings it was still better looking and more technically accomplished than most other games available at the time. According to Desslock's post, systems that ran the mighty Crysis just fine on medium will choke and die on Arcania.

I had hoped that the change of engine after Forsaken Gods would be for the better. I will certainly be waiting for more concrete feedback, but if this is indeed true then so be it; my insufficient Core 2 Duo and I will go play Fallout: New Vegas, or some other RPG that has actually been properly optimised.

Jowood still has the old specs on their website too.

I think this is somehow getting a little out of hand. I have a high regard for Desslock but I must admit I remember him best from his days at Gamespot. All of this is based on his comments and even though I don't think he is lying others might see different results or he might have an non-optimized build, drivers etc.
As I see it Arcania is not a title that will appeal to mainstream gamers and rumours like these spreading wil now certainly cause a lot of people interested in the game to think twice before buying it.
If the rumours should turn out true, then I can only conclude that the developers either didn't have the time or the talent to make an optimised and polished game.

My prediction: "Our game only sold 50k copies. PC gaming is dead, must have been the pirates."

Ah well, good I don't have enough time to play just any game. Perhaps I'll pick up Arcania in 4 years or so. By then I should have the rig to play it, too.

This game is coming out on consoles, so the PC market is probably not their primary concern.

petardo said:

By the way, Why all of you are so harsh with Gothic III ?

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Arkose said:

Talk of Crysis's high system requirements was greatly exaggerated because even if you were only able to run it at medium settings it was still better looking and more technically accomplished than most other games available at the time.

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Well, both of these things point into one direction :

It's called "rumors". They spread, and they are very, very hard to stomp out.

An imagehas been created in the course of the time within something vagua as "the gamers community". And it says that "both game won't run".

I suspect they indeed didn't run - on the majority of machines available at that point. No-one really knows (apart from he Steam statistics) how the "majoity" of gaming machines is composed of.

So, everyone assumes some things. One of them is kind of a "guessed prediction" on what part of the gamers own what kinds of mchines.

I don't know where this all comes from : There is a strong tradition within gaming to bring out gmes that only a fraction of gamers are able to run. Hardcore gamers. Are they the targeted customer group ?

Just remember Origins. Especially with their later Wing Commander games. Almost only the magazine editors could play them. And they looked fantastic.

Now, why does history repeat itself ? Why does this happen ? Why do developers - guessing this is actually the case - develop gmes for the next or the "overnext" generations of machines ?

I don't know, becaue to me, this doesn't make much sense. But I'm not a developer nor a publisher.

Who actually forces that ? I mean this kind of development ? That requires very, very good machines the majority perhaps just doesn't have or doesn't be abl to afford at that point ?

And - why and how does this cliché evolve at all ? That certain games "won't run". Someone must have seen it, someone must be spreading the actual rumor. Could it be younger gamers who want the game, but don't know a thing about technics and/or how to upgrade a machine ?

There are currently a lot of very angry people at the Larian forums still wondering about the "stuttering", and even more are even more angry about Larian seeming to have fixed the FPS rate at 30 FPS. Perhaps even *because* of that stutterng ? To prevent it ?

And who says that more FPS is *always* better ? Shouldn't be the eyes not able to see a difference at one point anymore ? Are there scientific studies about that ?

Because I learned that in movies, ALL movies are fixed at about 24 pictures per second. And that's what we call a "movie" since agges. Literally. So why should a "movie" have about 60 pictures per second ?


All of these hardware requirement discussions leave more questions thn answers to me. I still wonder, why this happens (high system requirements), how this happens (why do they need them at all ?), and how this rumor/cliché evolves.

If I remember the recent news about financial troubles at JoWood correctly, then too high requirements might cause the last blow, so to say. But, until we all have the demo, the question is there : Is it really true ?

Shannow said:

My prediction: "Our game only sold 50k copies. PC gaming is dead, must have been the pirates."

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Yes, I fear so, too. The "industry" is always quick in finding a scapegoat. Rather then question itself.

Let's get a few things straight. These specs were provided by Dreamcatcher (unless, of course, you want to straight up accuse Desslock of lying). He didn't dream them up - the publisher provided them in response to a query for official specs that could be shared with PC Gamer readers.

Elikal, you're entitled to believe what you like and noone is suggesting these are absolutely final or that there might not be further optimisation. However, noone forced the publisher to provide these specs - they could have easily said "we are still working on optimising the game". As for moderators - these are usually community members, not employees. Have any of them actually played the game or spoken directly to the publisher about this issue? I'll bet not.

Petardo, come back to me about how "false" the newsbit is when you've spoken to the publisher or played the game. If they didn't like these specs, they simply didn't have to supply them. It's quite possible these aren't final but, again, it's their numbers.

Come on, use common logic. If THESE were the real, final PC min. specs, no way in hell they could release it for console!

@Dhruin: Well I understand there is a tricky balance between the journalistic "we just report things" and the impact it has on games per se. I know, all journalists in the world always say "we just bring the info". (I worked as a journalist about politics, so I know how it works.)

However, sticking to gaming, any info can drastically alter the success of a game. I have read too many negative previews about it, from internet mags, all claiming just telling opinions and judging based on what they know. While that is all nice and fine, I feel these days it has gotten out of hand. Gamers are so easy in hysteria of hating or fanboyism, and every new info sparks the flame wars anew. In the end, some potentially good games never have a chance, just because some journalist didn't have the patience to back up the info.

I am not saying you should not write this. I am just saying, we live in sensitive times, and gamers are a sensitive lot. Some good game died before release because of some… unwise statement. Yes, in an ideal world every gamer would form his own opinion. But in reality, too many just read such a headline, and delete the game forever from their radar.

And why haven't the Jowood and Arcania websites been updated ?

elikal said:

Come on, use common logic. If THESE were the real, final PC min. specs, no way in hell they could release it for console!

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Have you played the PC version of GTA IV? Poorly optimised ports are nothing new. That has lower specs than this, but the recommended ones are still much more powerful than a console, and you may as well not bother even trying to play it on the minimum specs.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

So, everyone assumes some things. One of them is kind of a "guessed prediction" on what part of the gamers own what kinds of mchines.

I don't know where this all comes from : There is a strong tradition within gaming to bring out gmes that only a fraction of gamers are able to run. Hardcore gamers. Are they the targeted customer group ?

Just remember Origins. Especially with their later Wing Commander games. Almost only the magazine editors could play them. And they looked fantastic.

Now, why does history repeat itself ? Why does this happen ? Why do developers - guessing this is actually the case - develop gmes for the next or the "overnext" generations of machines ?

I don't know, becaue to me, this doesn't make much sense. But I'm not a developer nor a publisher.

Who actually forces that ? I mean this kind of development ? That requires very, very good machines the majority perhaps just doesn't have or doesn't be abl to afford at that point ?

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I fear the explanation is rather simple. You set the design goals for the engine up to five years in advance of the game release, otherwise your games would look five years old. It's not an exact science, and the rate of home hardware improvement varies according to several factors. All it takes is for people to decide that they don't actually need to upgrade this time around and everything gets thrown out of sync.

elikal said:

Come on, use common logic. If THESE were the real, final PC min. specs, no way in hell they could release it for console!

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How so? Consoles (excluding the Wii) are capable of running at least 6 threads simultaneously, so the requirement of at least 3 threads for a PC version shouldn't be a huge surprise.

No-one would want to publish correct specs early if they are too high, because that would cut some percent of the sales.

Then rather let people buy a game and flood the forums with complaints about the game "being unplayable". A huge percentage will very likely just sit there and wait for patches optimizing the game simply out of stubbornity (so to say). Because they'd say "we have paid for the game so we want something [a patch] for the money !".

Pladio said:

And why haven't the Jowood and Arcania websites been updated ?

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http://www.arcania-game.com/

Show me where the official site says the PS3 version has been delayed until 2011. Show me where it says a demo will be released. Show me where it lists the specific release dates JoWood published on 24th August.

The website isn't exactly up to the minute.

Again, it is possible this is isn't final. Hell, for all I know they made a mistake - but it's their mistake.

elikal said:

Come on, use common logic.

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Not really the best idea when we're dealing with a JoWooD game

I think people are underestimating consoles a bit.

Xbox 360 is running a tripple core power PC processor.... playstation is running cell.... so to me 3 cores is perfectly logically if it was optimized for consoles.

Speaking in technical terms they probably built 3 main threads all of them CPU heavy.... one probably used for graphics, one for gameplay computations etc, and maybe one for physics. Perfectly reasonable setup.

With 3 very CPU heavy threads it is going to run like crap with less than 3 CPU's... so......

Wow, this is interesting. At Gamescom the game didn't look like it would have such high requirements. I estimated them to be comparable to Risen.

But I must say that after seeing the game in action, I became more optimistic than I was before. Combat looked nice, and had some strategic elements - for instance, there was a giant bug that could go into a defensive stance, which you could break by zapping it with a lightning spell.

I recently bought a new machine - a quadcore with a quite potent graphics card. Reading about the system requirements has an interesting effect on me. I feel even more compelled to get the game just to make use of all the processing power underneath my desk. I hope the game turns out to be decent.

Gothic 3 was messed up in many, many ways other than framerate or graphics. Enemies routinely got stuck on terrain or wouldn't go hostile at all, for instance.

All the Gothic games have the same jumpy, twitchy feel to them which I just don't like. I tried playing G3 for probably 15 hours total with a couple restarts and it was just too much of a pain in the ass. Also the unlimited inventory system is just plain stupid. G3 had good terrain graphics, but that's all.

Maybe there was a good story buried in the mess somewhere, but no thank you.