Or you could just... use Windows 10? Because it's not a big deal?

Maybe not for you :P

It might be a big deal if you lived in Iran, the USA vs Iran political situation deteriorated and MS deactivated all keys on a country-level. That actually wouldn't be the first time an entire country had its DRM'd video games remotely locked out either (and Consumer W7 is a lot easier to run offline permanently activated than Consumer W10 if it ever came to that)...

Has it actually been confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 is W10 only (eg, DirectX12 exclusive), or is it simply a placeholder more like "It's listed W10 because we only tested Cyberpunk in and for W10, however it also has the option of DX11 / Vulkan / OpenGL and thus will probably run under W7-8"? The store page's actual requirements section still says "TBC". I think if GOG are accepting pre-order for it, they should definitely clarify the issue. Hardware requirements may change but you should certainly know in your 4th out of 5th year of game development time what API you're using...

(A) Oh, I agree...however, we both know, that there are a lot of things that shouldn't be...yet they are.

(B) Mmm,...I don't know if I would go so far, as to say a well made argument for, or against, a certain graphical style, can be considered useful criticism.

I mean - this is still only a forum in the belly of a games shop...not the annual developers conference.

Whichever argument I may make here, and no matter how well I make it - with 99.99% certainty it won't ever reach the people in the positions, where changes could be made.

And even if: my criticism can (naturally) always only be done retrospectively, so it won't change anything on the actual object of my criticizm.

At the best I could hope for betterments (a term, which, in itself, is highly subjective) for a possible future successor of the game I criticize.

The way I see this in general:

Criticizing anything about a game after it got released, is like criticizing a newborn in front of its parents.

No matter, how politely I word my criticism, and no matter how correct I may be in my assessment, on what cosmetic surgery is able to do nowadays...this particular conversation won't end well. ;)

I agree.

I like good graphics, especially combined with a great art style.
If theres a checkbox i'll click it and if theres a slider that goes to Ultra i set it to Ultra ;)
... unless i dont hit around 60FPS then. First things i turn off are antialiasing because it really doesn't matter all that much to me or hair physics and stuff like that.

Exceptions are especially intrusive effects, like the ridiculous lensflares in Battlefield 4 (or 3? - one of those), or the ugly bloom in many 2002-2010 games for example.

Honestly, I don't really understand this. To me, criticism of works is a good way to encourage constructive discussion (and, in fact, *is* constructive discussion in and of itself).

I am not even afraid to criticize games that I like. (I like both SaGa Frontier games, for example, but have no trouble pointing ount their flaws.)

I may have criticized Morrowind's lack of color and poor use of lighting (it's better to either make things pitch black so you can't see at all without light or avoid light as a gameplay mechanic entirely), and I won't claim the game is balanced or bug-free, but I can still find it fun, and respect players for whom it's one of their favorite games.

By the way, SaGa Frontier 2 does have a nice non-realistic graphical style that makes it unique and is pretty clear (except for the part about it not being obvious where you can and can't go); it's much cleaner than SaGa Frontier 1's busier style. (Although, it might be interesting to imagine how the high tech areas of SF1 would look in SF2's style; remember that SF1 has high technology (playable robots!), while SF2 is more medieval-level technology.)

Oh, I didn't notice he was from Iran. Well I guess that could make some sense. I'm sure there are... other ways though.

I'm happy to spend maybe 200 ... just checked, 500 hours on fallout 4 with a gtx 650. However when I play GTA V where theres nothing to do except constant chase scenes and maybe some shootouts I lose interest quickly. Guess graphics don't matter if you got good gameplay.

I do want a new computer with a hot graphics card, just so that I can start a new game of fallout 4 survival mode. Maybe with the new graphics patch.

Disable all shiny crap - HDR, bloom... you name it.
And disable some fancy settings, even though my GPU can handle it I rather play with silent GPU so no immersion ruined :]

Enable some AA, 60Hz refresh rate and V-Sync.

Then average resolution of 1440x900 in windowed mode and I'm ready.

Confirmed I cannot say. I just wanted to support Cdpr and Gog by pre purchasing cp 2077 so I've asked support person before hand. From what I've gathered the excuse might be: Because Microsoft is ending support this January for windows 7 and as we know the game comes out in April.

Usually, I crank things to max and see how my performance is at 1440p. If I'm hitting 70+fps (or game cap if it only goes to 30 or 60), I'm usually good. From there, I'll tweak some settings to my preferences. If I'm getting drops or poor performance, I'll tweak settings until I get something more acceptable performance-wise. I usually leave Chromatic Aberration, Film Grain, Camera Blur, Sharpening Filters, etc, off since I just don't think they look very good. Depth of Field I might leave on since in some fantasy-type games or games with prettier art-styles, I think DoF when used correctly can enhance the look of the game to be more film or dream-like (esp in the case of some third person games), but something like a fast-paced FPS (or even first person in general) will have me turning that shit off pronto.

Fully agree with others in the thread saying style > technical graphics. The latter can enhance the former, definitely, but there's a reason why games with great art styles, even older 3D games, still are considered pretty today, and it's not because the PS2 was the most advanced system ever made.

For 2D games, I can be a bit pickier with resolution or graphics settings. I hate games that go for a retro style but then utilize a bunch of modern shaders that feel really out of place in a game with SNES-style graphics (Octopath Traveler comes to mind with this complaint). Likewise, I try to stay at resolutions that are mostly native to the game so I don't end up with either A) Uneven pixels (in the case of games utilizing a pixel style) or B) really bad bilinear filtering (for games that use higher resolution sprites but apply bad filters at above native res.

EDIT: Worth noting I don't really care if a game is new or old, graphically, though. I spend a lot of my time playing older consoles and late 90s/early 2000s PC games, so something being technically old doesn't bother me.

I wish that the graphics settings in games that have them would give descriptions that would indicate which setting gives the best performance and which ones are the best ones to tweak if there are performance issues.

Absolutely agree on this. It always irritates me having to google optimal settings for something when I'm having issues.

Technique to reduce stutter.