Originally Posted by Darth_Trethon
Originally Posted by Solarian
Graphics wise it is true, hardware is pushed to the limits trying to obtain a better experience for the users, but the need for a SSD drive should not be necessary for a game like BG3.
I'll just focus on this bit right here...SSDs have been around for quite a while now but they used to be expensive and largely optional, but we're past that now. SSDs have become affordable and mandatory. The time of HDDs is finished now, just like floppy discs, dvds, VHS, etc. I had to buy a new laptop last year and I was surprised to find that none of the electronics stores in my area sold ANY laptops with HDDs in them anymore...they were ALL SSDs...everything from the cheap $200 laptop to the expensive ones that cost thousands only had SSDs of some sort in them. If you've not moved on from HDD by now you should, because their time is well and truly over and the vast majority of games going forward, especially AAAs, will mandate SSDs.

As for optimizing games for space economy, every studio has only so much time and so many resources...they could choose to spend that time making a far better game with far more content, reactivity, etc. or they could focus on making a far worse game but oh boy it's very tightly packed, with the best space economy in the universe.

You misunderstand if you think I am advocating for not using SSD in new computers. I definitely agree it is a step forward. But just because you have extra resources does not mean you should not be thinking performance and resource management when designing software. Some people are still using older computers, and forcing people to upgrade their equipment every 5 years is a waste of resources and not fair to the users. Today it is the SSD, tomorrow it will be something else, and it is not how things should work imo. It was a necessary evil in the early days of the PCs but not today.

About resource management, I am not talking about the 150GB of data the game takes up on the hard drive, I have no doubt it is necessary for the amount of content provided in the game, I only talk about the need to access the hard drive continously and extensively. It is a way to utilize the hard drive that is contrary to how the hard drive is intended to be used. Hard drive is for long term storage of data that stays when the computer is turned off, computer memory is for temporary data that has to be readily available. What todays systems do when running out of memory is they use some of the hard drive for RAM, imo a bad strategy that leads to slow systems.

And I don't agree that better resource management would take away much time and money from actual game design. It is a matter of being smart about it, and to actually care about people with older computers.