Discussing the possibilities of the "Perfect" rating

[refraction]

I just meant that it took a long long time for PCSX2 to mature to where it is, and if people had started out by saying "Man this is pointless it will take years" then we wouldn't be here.

But the difference there was we didn't have something chasing us in terms of change. It wasn't like we were going to go for a couple of years and then go "ah crap, sony have totally changed the ps2 architecture, best start again", so we could always move forward with that. It's a circumstantial position I'm taking more than just being demoralizing or pessimistic.

I do agree that's a problem - but it's one we already face. Many of the results in the compat list are for older versions, some very old. That shows something needs to change right there. I'm not saying this is the answer (in fact it seems to be the anti answer as far as work) but yeah, we already have a bit of a situation.

Yeah something does need to change if we want any changes with the list to happen. As I see it we have 3 options:

1. We get an army of new testers to go through the list testing games regularly, they must be willing to fully test games from start to finish (for the new status criteria)
2. We leave it as it is and use how it is now as a "rough" guide to what the compatibility will be like.
3. We scrap it as a failed experiment and just point people to the wiki if they want to know how it's run (I don't want to do this if it can be helped)

[Blyss Sarania]

1. We get an army of new testers to go through the list testing games regularly, they must be willing to fully test games from start to finish (for the new status criteria)
2. We leave it as it is and use how it is now as a "rough" guide to what the compatibility will be like.
3. We scrap it as a failed experiment and just point people to the wiki if they want to know how it's run (I don't want to do this if it can be helped)

Just for the sake of it:

Why can't we just add a new rating and let results trickle in as they do? In the meantime we have a sort of situation where games are at LEAST as good as they are labeled, but might be better. So a "Playable" game might be excellent for instance, and just not have been tested. The only really viable option you listed in my opinion is #2. And this is basically an extension of that, just adding more "room" for improvement.

We generally test against major regressions, so we should not ever have a situation where a game that was Excellent in 1.4.0 reverts to Playable in a later version.

I'm not trying to push the issue or anything, I just haven't seen a really valid reason why that way is no good.

[prafull]

I am sure this was discussed in first few pages of this thread too but the question still remains how will you deal with Hardware Requirements of a game? FFX will be listed perfect even by a Celeron user but games like GT4 and MGS3 can be considered close to perfect only by high end users. If you remove hardware requirements I think around 80-90% playable status games can be changed to Perfect.

Even the term perfect isn't perfect in itself. Perfection varies from person to person and perspective to perspective. Even when you look at compatibility list you will read comments like- "game is perfect apart from minor shadow problems" or "game runs perfect apart from some missing sound effects" or "game runs perfect , only few videos don't work". Some other member can report these same issues from a different perspective "game is playable but shadows are messed up" ,"visually the game looks ok but messed up sound takes out all the fun away" or "game isn't the same without the missing videos".

In short, playable in itself is pretty good. That's why compatibility reports have a comments and bugs section. If you feel the game is perfect you can comment there, if the game is playable with bugs you can report there and users will know what to expect from the game.

[Nobbs66]

If a game has issues of any kind, I'd say it's not perfect.

[FlatOut]

GT4 and MGS3 wouldn't qualify for perfect, even if they ran perfect on Celeron processors. Especially GT4 as you can't even complete license tests. I don't think system demands should be considered for perfect rating, unless games can't even be run on modern setups.
And perfect is obviously the wrong name just because of the reasons you mention. Excellent or something similar should be used. I don't think games with missing soundeffects or video's(unless it's just a useless racing/sports game intro video) should be considered an excellent. You have to make a qualifying system for what makes an excellent game. It shouldn't be so hard, just make it factual, not opinion based.

[Blyss Sarania]

We decided a while back to ditch "Perfect" I think because that's very unreasonable and subjective. "Excellent" or similar is good.

As for hardware requirements - I think we also already decided that speed was NOT a deciding factor? Why should it be?

The problem is that our Playable category is just a catch all. It ranges from games that run start to finish but are horribly broken and couldn't be enjoyed to near flawless.

[FlatOut]

Has anything been decided regarding hardware vs software renderers? Will both have to be excellent to qualify?

[Blyss Sarania]

We had originally said "Perfect" would mean "Matches the experience on PS2" and decided since software did that, it was acceptable. For "Excellent" IDK.

[refraction]

We had originally said "Perfect" would mean "Matches the experience on PS2" and decided since software did that, it was acceptable. For "Excellent" IDK.

As long as one configuration provides the experience, it can be justified as "excellent"

[BlackTelomeres]

sorry, I was being facetious.

There may be some merit to that, but as mentioned there will be a lot of data work and testing to do as a result, as we will have to go through all the games marked as playable (which is 94% of them now) to filter out what ones are "playable" and what ones are "playable without annoying issues" and that won't be a 5 minute job as we will pretty much need to complete the game in order to find out of there are issues in later levels which may cause the frustrations you are on about. Given games take 10-20 hours to complete (lets say 10 for a best case scenario), of the 2436 that will take potentially 15,000-24,360 hours to complete (taking in to account a few of those games are puzzle games and simple games). I honestly don't think we have the man power for that, or if it's even worth it.

I don't think you need to think of it as a job for a specific group of forum goers or PCSX2 devs to do, but rather just an "open source" rating possibility that's there and let people who want to play through those games decide if it matches up, i.e. they completed the game and didn't notice any bugs. If hardly anyone updates it then oh well, the rating is still there if someone wants to use it a year or two down the line rather than just rating a game playable and then people don't know if it's playable with graphical bugs or enjoyable. Or if a PCSX2 dev or heavy forum goer does happen to play through X or Y game on their own time because it was on their backlog or whatever then they can rate it that if it didn't have issues. It'd be more like a long term thing, something that will never be 'done'.

Just seeing an "enjoyable/excellent" rating above playable on the front page might be an impetus for some people to contribute to ratings more than they are now since right now it just sort of seems to the average browser of PCSX2.net that doesn't get into the details (i.e. not devs or major posters on the forum) that the rating process is basically done beyond a few really niche obscure titles since the vast majority of stuff is playable. Putting that big Excellent: 0.0% above Playable kind of drops the scales from the average browser's eyes and makes them realize there's still work to be done to get more specific on the compatibility list.