While the system requirements are not yet set in stone, though I think they're pretty close to the mark; we will not be artificially inflating them. Despite what some may think the vast, vast, vast majority of PCs are not state-of-the-art, they are at least 3-4 years old (believe it or not, Schem is right on this point 
).
Kind of a mute point don't you think? They never spoke of altering the range of requirements, just expanding the high end which does not affect the market reachability. It'd probably increase it, probably with very little effect tho since, as you mentioned, there arnt a lot of people here at the top
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This goes back to the limiting of potential market stuff I tried to explain in the 3D thread.
Higher system requirements does not automatically mean more features in the game either. That stuff depends on development time and, more importantly, budget.
Good point, but I wish most people would just offer this reason, no budget, rather than chalking it up to graphics vs. quality or to what system the average user has: the average user isnt a pc gamer either. The comparison is self-fulfilling nonsense, you never have to have one or the other except when budget comes into play.
All these features cost money to put into the game. For example, with GalCiv II there were people who wanted every race to have custom building artwork on the colony management screen. However, adding that in would have meant cutting out custom ship building entirely - which is a much better feature that everyone loved. Given the choice, I think most people would rather have something that's fun.
Don't make us choose, I am sure most people would choose both good gameplay and good graphic scalability, even mid-rangers because they might still be playing in a year when they upgrade and such. But regardless, it's a balance and it seems like a few people have questioned the max settings so perhaps just take it at face value and asess whether the balance is correct at this point.
I am with the OP and LordKosc. I hope to god Multianna's demos were on a 1.5 gig machine running at 800x600 with 0x aa or af because I would be incredibly dissapointed if that was at max or close to it (yes i realize and accounted for the video degredation in the released demos.) Starting to question my order... I want long-term playability from my games and that includes graphical scalability for later on too.
Mmm, yay for my first post. Been lurking for a while and waiting for a game like this for years. Congrats on the concept and good luck on the execution.
