The perception usually is "if there are no huge discounts for our apparently (i do not see China as a economically weak country) economically weak country then there is no regional pricing." Regional pricing for many of us simply means "they get cheaper prices"... to say it blunt. However, for some other gamers, at the other end of the pricing "strategy"... it is exactly opposite: Regional pricing means "higher price" to them.
If we want to be "fair"... and nope the world is not fair, fairness is just a ethical idea of some pretty humanistic minded people, then we may have to take the individual situation into account, which simply is not possible (way to complicated). So, in the end, the prices are simply the result of "what is working or does it work", or "trying to reach the average pain threshold of a given location"... nothing else. The most fair thing we may be able to hand out is "using a purchasing power parity of any given country" but even that one can become distorted a lot by the high inequality of any given country, ultimately never being able to become "fair."
Anyway, regarding NIS, a publisher in general not in favor for "low prices" (i guess i hit the nail here) it is special if they are now handing out a big price cut on a sale, so those interested into those games may now start to buy... as it may not become that much lower anymore and surely not frequently.
Regarding game settings: A certain user was showing me a YT video trying to show me how they are "apparently without a sweat" able to run YS Nordics "all maxed" in 1440P and 100 FPS. Now this is all nice and stuff but it does not show me the actual GPU load. All i was able to see is settings and FPS, thats it.
However, using a 3090, according to my experience (which is about 15% weaker than a 3090 TI in very demanding scenarios) if we go full settings, it will reach the maximum load at those settings (100 FPS) and in some scenarios the FPS will even drop a lot (still above 50, sure). There is yet a "small trick" with big effects: This trick is called "4x MSAA instead of 8x MSAA", it may look like a small change but the effect on the peformance is huge. 4x vs. 8x MSAA will result into 1/3 lesser load! So, in this scenario given to me, a 3090 might actually be able to keep nearly 100 FPS in almost any scenario, yet... it will need its full "load potential", so this GPU is not doing "a walk in the park" using those settings, still.
For my GPU it simply would mean, using 4x MSAA instead of 8x MSAA, 60 FPS instead of 100 FPS, and going 1080P internal resolution instead of 1440P (the resolution is always internal, mind it... because if the internal resolution is to high or to low... in the end it will still produce the resolution demanded by the screen using scaling technology)... anyway, it would mean i get about 1/3 load in average with some "demanding spikes" at around 40% load. In the words of power usage it would mean between 120 and 170 W TDP, which is actually the value important to measure "actual load condition". Because, every GPU got a certain TDP-range it is able to "make use of it". A 3090 TI can use a pretty large range of 30 to 460 W, in my experience, with a 50% load of about 230 W. The currently only GPU with comparable value is a 4090, simply with about 50% more performance, at the same load. What is important is the actual GPU load and how much load it is able to handle, other values are less important. Because this "load tolerance" will decide if the performance will remain stable or rather not.
Anyway, regarding settings of YS Nordics: I do recommend using 1080P+ internal resolution (any value higher than that will stress the GPU a lot, with rather low graphic quality gains) and not more than 4x MSAA. Higher MSAA might not even be useful as, as long as the screen is 1080P or lower (ideally 4k+) the game is not able to completely eradicate any aliasing, simply to less pixels. Using those settings the game may run smooth in a "modern GPU" but it remains the most demanding YS game ever "at max or near max settings".
Optimizing a setting simply means, getting the load conditions sufficient for any scenario. Nearly perfect if it does not exceed 50% load in average, so there is enough of headroom left for demanding spikes. If no headroom left... a modern engine may instantly reduce certain specs such as "internal resolution", resulting into sudden drops of graphic quality... a blurry image, but it may not even become noticed because many of us may use "motion blur"-technology which i hate... so they think the drop in quality is just "natural", which is not true. Using AI, even a internal resolution of 720P (YS Nordics can almost go down to a SD resolution = 520P, 50% of 1080P = 4x lesser pixels, a lot of magic here, it even works on a Switch pretty well) may still produce a sharp image but with missing stuff... artifacts or what else, or at least input lag if "artificial frames are used" instead of reducing internal resolution. The matter is pretty complicated nowadays because the modern GPUs along with modern engines are true magicians at sufficiently trying to produce "fakes" at every little corner of a picture and making it appear "correct and real". Anyway, in my mind, native may still produce the best quality but native will remain demanding, even on the very best GPUs out there. We are that much used into "AI" that we actually may not even notice it anymore and the game designers are already using AI as much as possible for calculating performance requirements. A old GPU, such as 1080 TI, is soon extremely outdated, as it can not deal with AI on the hardware side, no matter "how well" it still is being received by some retro-enthusiasts.
Post edited October 27, 2024 by Xeshra
