[Update 2] How/why are console gamers satisfied with 30 fps?

[spwatkins]

I think that the issue comes down to the whole 720P vs 900P vs 1080P debate. I guess that the game makers that evaluate the tradeoffs get much more grief about not being 1080P then they do about the framerate being 30 vs. 60. Maybe a lot of the people weighing in negatively here about the framerate would just switch to complaining about the lines of resolution if all the games ran at 60 FPS.

 

[laggyteabag]

As someone who played exclusively on a console for about 4 years, I never really knew anything different. To be fair, I was pretty much oblivious to what FPS was, hell, I never really knew what resolution was other than that the HDMI cable made the game look prettier than the SCART lead. If I wanted to play a game, I would play it at 720p 30FPS, I never got the choice as to whether or not I could play at 60FPS 1080p, and I never really cared.

As someone who has played PC games for the best part of 4 years, I can clearly tell the difference between 60FPS and 30FPS, but resolution? Unless there are two images side by side, not a chance.

 

[Malevolentcafe]

For fighting games, and hack and slash games I prefer 60 fps.
30 fps is fine for everything else.

Mind you those types of games being at 30 fps wouldn't bother me.

Even after putting hours into Revengeance, I can still play Dark Souls at a lower framerate.
So like everyone else, I don't care.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I don't care about FPS unless it's not consistent. I played TLOU on PS4 with 60 FPS and it didn't help gameplay vs the PS3 version. I even played a bit locked at 30 and could tell the difference visually but 60 FPS didn't help aiming or anything.

 

[Recron]

I'm gonna add the the pile with another We don't care. Those of us who tend to primarily game on console just in general don't really care, some of us don't notice a difference some of do(I personally dont and yes I've seen all those comparison sites I still don't), and many of us that do notice don't seem to really care all that much. Frame rate doesn't really seem to be a big deal outside of hardcore PC gamer circles and hardcore, competitive, twitch reflex, game circles at least not from what I've seen. Different people respond differently and have different tolerances to stimuli and thats no different with frame rate. To me this whole "how can console gamers be okay with 30fps" is just an absolutely ridiculous question, maybe some people just aren't as sensitive to frame rates as you are, why is that so bizarre? You go enjoy your 60+ FPS and we'll enjoy our whatever FPS.

Edit: I'm not speaking for all console gamers here this is just based on my expiriences.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I'm cool with 30 FPS most of the time.

The only time 60 FPS really matters is in fighting games.

I mean, 60 FPS is nice to have and looks really pretty (one of the reasons why Gamecube's Bloody roar still looks beautiful to this day), but for most games, 30 is really all you need.

 

[RandV80]

The reasoning is perfectly understandable, as a PC gamer my rig is never cutting edge and I've been playing games at lower setting for 15 years without much concern. But at the same time there's a whole lot of hypocrisy here. OP names them 'console gamers' but realistically he's talking about PS/Xbox fans, and when it comes to Nintendo fans they'll lord the graphics & hardware superiority over them. Then PC gamers poke there nose into the conversation 'hey we're actually better than you there' and suddenly these things don't matter anymore.

For the current gen the defensive argument usually comes from Xbox owners/fans since they're on the short end of the stick here with PS fans the aggressors, but you just know if the One could do 1080P/60fps but the PS4 was lagging behind with some combination of 720P/30fps then the positions would seamlessly flip.

 

[KnowYourOnion]

Because I quite simply don't care. Graphics come in dead last when it comes to making a game enjoyable. FPS fall into that category for me. I don't care what the FPS are on a game so long as its fun to play.

FPS isn't graphics, it's a gameplay fundamental.

 

[small]

Because I quite simply don't care. Graphics come in dead last when it comes to making a game enjoyable. FPS fall into that category for me. I don't care what the FPS are on a game so long as its fun to play.

What, and virtually doubling your potential reaction time doesn't do that?
For games that rely on fast reflexes, like twitch shooters, DMC style brawlers, fighting games, and high speed racing games, a higher framerate is virtually mandatory.

I imagine that attempting to play Metal Gear Rising at only 30 FPS would be a lot more frustrating than it would be at a smooth 60.

*Shrugs* Revengance played just fine on my 360. Don't really see what the problem is.

That's because it was running at 60 FPS on consoles as well as PC. Imagine playing it with half of the frames cut out.
Or if you have a PS4, grab the remaster of The Last of Us, play for a while without changing anything, then go into the options and lock the framerate to 30 fps. But if you can't do that either, play a level of MGR and the DmC reboot back to back and see how your reaction time changes and see if you can tell which one seems smoother.

I think the fact you had to spell it out for me that it was 60 fps and not 30 fps should tell you how little impact that fps has on me.

Try this then.
http://30vs60.com/formula1.php
Or this
http://www.30vs60fps.com/
Or this
http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html

It should be easy to see how framerate effects gameplay with these sources.

thank you for posting those links i was curious to see the difference myself and.. apart from the bottom link example spinning faster at 15fps i couldnt actually see a difference in any of them

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Because I quite simply don't care. Graphics come in dead last when it comes to making a game enjoyable. FPS fall into that category for me. I don't care what the FPS are on a game so long as its fun to play.

What, and virtually doubling your potential reaction time doesn't do that?
For games that rely on fast reflexes, like twitch shooters, DMC style brawlers, fighting games, and high speed racing games, a higher framerate is virtually mandatory.

I imagine that attempting to play Metal Gear Rising at only 30 FPS would be a lot more frustrating than it would be at a smooth 60.

*Shrugs* Revengance played just fine on my 360. Don't really see what the problem is.

That's because it was running at 60 FPS on consoles as well as PC. Imagine playing it with half of the frames cut out.
Or if you have a PS4, grab the remaster of The Last of Us, play for a while without changing anything, then go into the options and lock the framerate to 30 fps. But if you can't do that either, play a level of MGR and the DmC reboot back to back and see how your reaction time changes and see if you can tell which one seems smoother.

How is it so hard to believe that it doesn't matter to some people?

I could see a minor difference in the video in the links, but it wasn't enough for me to care. Both still looked perfectly good enough to play.
I think the fact you had to spell it out for me that it was 60 fps and not 30 fps should tell you how little impact that fps has on me.

Try this then.
http://30vs60.com/formula1.php
Or this
http://www.30vs60fps.com/
Or this
http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html

It should be easy to see how framerate effects gameplay with these sources.

thank you for posting those links i was curious to see the difference myself and.. apart from the bottom link example spinning faster at 15fps i couldnt actually see a difference in any of them

Do all of you people have 30Hz monitors or something?

How is it so hard to believe that it doesn't matter for some people?

I saw a difference in those links, sure, but it wasn't enough to care about. Both the 20 and the 60 videos looked perfectly good enough to play.

 

[spartan231490]

Simple, there are no discernible gains above 30fps, it's all placebo effect. We'd rather see development money and processing power spent elsehwere.

 

[Signa]

What, and virtually doubling your potential reaction time doesn't do that?
For games that rely on fast reflexes, like twitch shooters, DMC style brawlers, fighting games, and high speed racing games, a higher framerate is virtually mandatory.

Who ever told you that was full of shit. Increasing the framerate doesn't double your chances to react, it halves them.

That's even assuming the game counts frames the way you're expecting it does. If you're talking about a fighter running at 60fps, then frame-perfect combos are still going to have to have their timings adjusted. A combo with a 5-frame window is going to need a 10 frame window at 60fps to allow the player the same amount of real time to react. Otherwise, doubling the frames gives them half the time to hit the next key.

Or, lets pretend you're playing a bullet-hell shooter. Say you have impeccable reaction, and each frame is a still image in your mind for a brief second, giving you a chance to think how to react. A 30fps game will give you twice the amount of time to think how to react when you're one frame away from death.

I'm not saying that 30fps is superior to 60fps, even when counting examples above, but it doesn't change gameplay for the better just by being 60fps.

 

[irishda]

And people wonder why everybody thinks the PC Master Race stuff isn't meant as a joke.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Movies have been 24 fps for forever and that's been good enough for me. Art direction and storytelling are way more important (also lighting. It's nice to be able to see things, developers).

Yes, this is what I've been wondering too. Aren't all movies at 24fps? Or is this only from the NTSC/PAL days? Now it depends on the refresh rate of the TV doesn't it?

Either way, I've found that after watching my older TV for awhile, then going and looking at electronics store newest and flashiest model, I can really tell the difference. But after buying one once upon a time, I also realized you just get used to it, and the graphical quality is kinda more important. As long as your machine doesn't drop below 30fps, you're alright, that's the rule, of course you want to aim for 60fps as much as possible because everyone knows frame rates aren't 100% consistent so that allows for some hectic moments so things don't get too choppy.

And yes, I agree also lighting is damn important, some developers are crazy with that shit, I'm playing a modded version of Doom 3 at the moment and it's insane what they've done with that. Can barely see much of it, but it's juuuuust on the boundaries of annoyingly groping around in the dark and adding to "immersion" and "tense atmosphere". Commendations for that, id

 

[EternallyBored]

Yeah, speaking as someone who has a pretty high end computer, all the current gen consoles, and likes to max out graphics and FPS, I notice the difference in frame rates, and for twitchier games the smoother FPS feels nicer, but for pretty much anything else, I'll take 30 on my consoles just fine, and I'll take a consistent 30 over fluctuating between 50-70 any day of the week. Even in console shooters, it's noticeable for me, but I get used to it fast and stop caring.

So yeah, sure, I notice it, but it doesn't really hurt my enjoyment, and I usually stop noticing it after playing for a couple minutes.

I'll take 60 FPS if I can get it, but before I upgraded my PC some genres I've purposely knocked the graphics up and ran around 30 FPS just to get shinier textures or a better draw distance. 60 FPS or higher is nice to have if you can get it, but I've never really considered it to be a massive deal if I get locked at 30.

Now, if a game comes out on PC, and poor optimization locks it at 30 FPS despite my computer probably being able to run it at 90, then yeah, that sucks, but its not really about the FPS being low, I just don't like having my options limited when I have sunk money into building a machine that can crush the upcoming holiday game list.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

Its negligible to the point of not being able to really tell a difference until you put them next to each other. And even then, nobody with sense would fork out over a grand for a small visual change unless they have more money than batman.
I'm not going to pay any extra money or bother asking for something that will not affect the game in any way that matters.

Its saddening to hear when PC elitists(The actual elitists. Not just someone who happens to game on a high end pc.) will purchase a game that even they admit has bad gameplay just because the its runs at a silky smooth 60fps and justifies their $6k desktop purchase. It does happen. Check out every second thread on /v/.

As for assassins creed, you may have noticed if you have ever played a game before: Style/aesthetics>graphics/fps/etc.
Compare something like the original smash bros to something like Halo 4. That's over a decade of difference yet SSB looks pretty much as good as Halo without all the fancy graphics advancements. Runs just as well too.

 

[gsilver]

Just saying, what's *really* bad is people gaming on PC that don't even get the framerate up to 30.
Seriously, it does happen.

On my team at work, basically everyone plays games during the lunch break, and I'm the only one who brought in a decent video card. So, I'm playing stuff at full frame rate, and they're chopping away with budget cards. My friends game on budget laptops, with similar results.

Also, if you look at the hardware stats that Steam publishes, you'll see that people with "enthusiast" level builds are rather uncommon, so <30 FPS is likely the default PC experience.

I play a lot of console games which run at 30, and generally have a good time at it (though stuff like the N64 Zelda games that run at 20 is really rough)
...But that being said, my primary PC at home has a 144HZ monitor. Because reasons.

 

[Risingblade]

Looking at some of these responses, there quite a few people who don't know what fps actually is when it comes to gaming.

 

[Rozalia1]

Dude, you're conflating frame rate with the game's actual clock speed. The only reason anyone would code it like that is if they're new to coding, or they're an idiot.

Yeah, that sixth of a second long animation now has to be 10 frames now instead of 5. Yeah, no shit. That's because animation speed is tied to the internal clock speed, not frame rate. And no-one who has half a brain would code it that way.

There are modern games made by big companies just like that (as I mentioned in my first post of it being a further finger up at PC gamers if they did that). I personally have no problem with the practice as I had the good experience of the double speed really working in my favour to the point I made sure to keep playing it like that (cutscenes would revert I believe to 30 so nothing all that terrible happened). Obviously you'd need to be playing quite a sluggish game in the first place as otherwise it becomes near unplayable as I've seen some evidence of.

 

[Signa]

What, and virtually doubling your potential reaction time doesn't do that?
For games that rely on fast reflexes, like twitch shooters, DMC style brawlers, fighting games, and high speed racing games, a higher framerate is virtually mandatory.

Who ever told you that was full of shit. Increasing the framerate doesn't double your chances to react, it halves them.

That's even assuming the game counts frames the way you're expecting it does. If you're talking about a fighter running at 60fps, then frame-perfect combos are still going to have to have their timings adjusted. A combo with a 5-frame window is going to need a 10 frame window at 60fps to allow the player the same amount of real time to react. Otherwise, doubling the frames gives them half the time to hit the next key.

Or, lets pretend you're playing a bullet-hell shooter. Say you have impeccable reaction, and each frame is a still image in your mind for a brief second, giving you a chance to think how to react. A 30fps game will give you twice the amount of time to think how to react when you're one frame away from death.

I'm not saying that 30fps is superior to 60fps, even when counting examples above, but it doesn't change gameplay for the better just by being 60fps.

...The hell?

Dude, you're conflating frame rate with the game's actual clock speed. The only reason anyone would code it like that is if they're new to coding, or they're an idiot.

Yeah, that sixth of a second long animation now has to be 10 frames now instead of 5. Yeah, no shit. That's because animation speed is tied to the internal clock speed, not frame rate. And no-one who has half a brain would code it that way.

No, a 60 FPS game doesnt give you half the time to think as a 30 FPS one. It gives you the exact same time, seconds wise. The only change is that the death that's one frame away is now two frames away.

OK, so you do know the difference. Then what did you mean by "What, and virtually doubling your potential reaction time doesn't do that?"

As Rozalia pointed out, a lot of games ARE that badly coded, and in the case of "games that rely on fast reflexes, like twitch shooters, DMC style brawlers, fighting games, and high speed racing games" a game that has its gameplay speed tied to the framerate rather than the clock speed, increasing the framerate will halve your time to react.

In a perfect world, doubling the framerate won't do a damn thing other than make motion look silky smooth (which is a fantastic thing), but that doesn't explain what you said in that quote.