Even she won't be happy if her online game borks out in a critical moment because the graphics driver took an illegal shortcut.
(For the WoW gamers among us, like, the main tank going offline in the midst of a boss fight...)
Design goals
Re:Design goals
Every good solution is obvious once you've found it.
-
mystran
Re:Design goals
This is totally offtopic, but I just have to pick on Solar:
People crashing is typically worse in small parties; in raids you almost always have some redundancy. That is, assuming your communication and/or leadership works well enough to take advantage of it. So I'm going to assume a small party in what follows.
I personally don't care if my tank has a stable system. Most of the time you have someone who can at least attempt to tank in case of panic (druids, lolladins, hunter/warlock pets, even rogues). I've even had to do that with my mage a few times as a last-hope solution (in end-game 5 man instances and sometimes successfully, mind you). All you need is good healing.
Which leads to the main point: once the last healer dies or crashes during a non-trivial fight, you can just as well have a coffee break, 'cos it's lost cause and a corpse run (for the ressers anyway ;D)
To illustrate the point: If you have a party with a druid (or lolladin) as a tank and a priest as a healer (and then just say rogue+hunter+mage), and the priest crashes during a non-trivial fight, what do you do? Most people would move the druid (or healadin) to heal instead, and live without a proper tank (or hope your hunter has a well-trained bear with him), 'cos a tank without a healer is about as useful as a mage without mana (that is, dead).
To get back to topic, here's my priority list for a The Healer OS:
1) stability
2) ultra quick reboots
3) some performance to enable timely reactions to sudden shortages of health in party members.
4) some more extra stability, just in case
Btw, as a mage, I prefer "stable framerate" much more than "high framerate". It's ok for me to play with a framerate of 10, if I know that I can trust it stay that way no matter what happens, and not like freeze for 2 seconds (which is typically fatal if you're having AoE fun).
People crashing is typically worse in small parties; in raids you almost always have some redundancy. That is, assuming your communication and/or leadership works well enough to take advantage of it. So I'm going to assume a small party in what follows.
I personally don't care if my tank has a stable system. Most of the time you have someone who can at least attempt to tank in case of panic (druids, lolladins, hunter/warlock pets, even rogues). I've even had to do that with my mage a few times as a last-hope solution (in end-game 5 man instances and sometimes successfully, mind you). All you need is good healing.
Which leads to the main point: once the last healer dies or crashes during a non-trivial fight, you can just as well have a coffee break, 'cos it's lost cause and a corpse run (for the ressers anyway ;D)
To illustrate the point: If you have a party with a druid (or lolladin) as a tank and a priest as a healer (and then just say rogue+hunter+mage), and the priest crashes during a non-trivial fight, what do you do? Most people would move the druid (or healadin) to heal instead, and live without a proper tank (or hope your hunter has a well-trained bear with him), 'cos a tank without a healer is about as useful as a mage without mana (that is, dead).
To get back to topic, here's my priority list for a The Healer OS:
1) stability
2) ultra quick reboots
3) some performance to enable timely reactions to sudden shortages of health in party members.
4) some more extra stability, just in case
Btw, as a mage, I prefer "stable framerate" much more than "high framerate". It's ok for me to play with a framerate of 10, if I know that I can trust it stay that way no matter what happens, and not like freeze for 2 seconds (which is typically fatal if you're having AoE fun).
Re:Design goals
It all depends on the perspective. My mainchar is a Druid (restauration skilled). As such, I consider healing to be easily done, and consider main tanks to be the true heroes of the game - because when the MT goes down, the mob tends to go after me, not the mages. 
Full ACK on the stable framerate, though. A freeze-up ruins anyone's day, mage, druid, or rogue.
Erm...
What was the topic, again?
Oh, yes. Stability. I like stable main tanks.
Full ACK on the stable framerate, though. A freeze-up ruins anyone's day, mage, druid, or rogue.
Erm...
What was the topic, again?
Oh, yes. Stability. I like stable main tanks.
Every good solution is obvious once you've found it.