What do minimum and recommended system requirements mean?
Does minimum mean you can play the game in 30 FPS @ 720p & low settings?
Does recommended mean you play the game in 60FPS @ 1080p & medium settings?

I have absolutely no idea what the developers mean with system requirements.
Do you?

Well I have started a feature wish to fix this:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/better_system_requirements


Opinions on this?

Min: Means you can play it, if you can enjoy it is a different story :P
Recommended: That you can start to enjoy it.
And if you look at some games, best example IMHO the X3-series: If you build really huge complexes in there you WILL be down to a slight show although the rest of the game works fine. And anything less of a supercomputer would be down to a slide show anyway ;)
This just show that the user does influence the minimum and recommended requirements as well. Not counting the obvious of certain things like AA and so on.

Right this is what it should be but...
Different games mean different things.
For example... The Witcher 2, I have better hardware than the recommended system requirements are but I still need to tune this game down to 720p to reach playable FPS.

And then there is the Witcher 3 and GTA 5 who's minimum required CPU is way too high and pretty much a lot of worse CPUs will still run those games fine.

Even on low there is no guarantee that you would be running at 20 or 50 - there's too many variable with the client machine. GOG can't explicit put that up for obvious reasons. Also, I don't buy that you don't understand what System Requirements mean...

However, the last part about Galaxy is a good idea.

Indeed there are a lot of variables but it would still be nice to get an idea what developers mean with minimum & recommended system requirements since its game specific.

And yes I know what System Requirements mean but I don't know what developers mean by it.
And mostly I look at third party benchmarks to see or I can run the game since the official system requirements are pretty much useless.

I must say, I had hardly any problems with my games, but unfortunate as sanscipt mentioned, too many things influencing it. Like a older GPU driver doing better than a newer one or similar. And quite a bit is out of the hands of the developers and GOG.
And if I sometimes watch youtube videos (last one being this sky game ;) ) even on XBOX the FPS was tanked to like 14 FPS. I do remember that SOME games have a special test to run for FPS (like X3) this would be the only perfect way to show it, but that would be up to the devs and not GOG, or?

I understand, but I would like for the developers what they mean with minimum & recommended system requirements.
Like an (i) button to show what the mentioned (recommended) settings the game can run at (4K 60FPS Ultra Settings for example).

Seriously?

That would be like asking a car company to tell me exactly how well a car would perform on a particularly road, or how much fuel it would use exactly.

It's all a relative estimate...

I'm asking a car company not to tell me the car can perform "good", I'm asking at how much km/h it can ride at.

Minimum requirements: This are the minimum specs under which we'll try to troubleshoot your problems. If you try to run our game on lower specs, we will not be able (or attempt) to help you.
Recommended requirements: This are the specs the majority of our testers played the game, and the ones we aimed for. If you have these specs, you should get the experience we were aiming for.

Resolution, fps and graphic settings do depend on the age of the game as well, if you could run Ultima VII at minimum requirements at 30FPS at 720p, I would indeed salute you (original minimum requirements, not the Dosbox ones).

My post and your other reply overlapped ;)
Devs? wrong place to ask here ;)
GOG, on which system? Which GPU and and and.....there are so many variables that it is de facto a bit useless, unfortunate. I do understand YOUR request, but so long there is no base line being defined it is mood to talk about.
Just look at DX12 and the discussions about it, only one example.

1st part: Thanks for the clarification.
2st part: Fair point :p
Yeah the amount of variables really is a pain in the ass for developers.

Minimum requirements: the specs your PC must meet for you to be eligible to get a refund in case the game does not run.

Everything else is bollocks.

This is one of the reasons demos were created, not just to get a feel of the game, but to check how it will run for you. Even with the recommended hardware, once you start cranking up visual effects, adding mods, etc. it's a whole different ballgame. I think devs should consider putting either a simple demo, or benchmark test or something similar on the store page.

Demos are mostly a thing of the past with everyone putting their games out there before they are even finished, or players NEEDING that new game day1, hour1. I still like to see them around, as I have bought plenty of games with the min and am unable to do anything with even after upgrading.

Well, if you want a game to be playable, you should have a computer that is at least 1/3 above the minimum specs.
Wisdom from an old gamer. :-)