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

[Dragonbums]

Because we literally don't care. The only thing we care about is if it lags or not. That's it.

Resolution gate is the dumbest thing to get mad about in a console. I care about the games and the visual aesthetic. Not what is essentially a dick bragging contest about fps, that become irrelevant to the eye after 40fps.

 

[The White Hunter]

Because they get what they pay for.

I'd rather a solid 30 fps than something that fluctuates between 20-40 and tears like crazy (tearing gives me bad headaches). That said I play on PC and lock everything to my monitors refresh rate at 60. I am planning to upgrade to a higher refresh monitor as well as a higher resolution one in the near future, though the new Asus ROG monitor doe not suit my needs because gsync requires nvidia hardware and I refuse to bind my HID's to a specific gpu manufacturer.

Also the whole "human eye sees x frames" thing is bollocks, stop it, stop it now.

 

[Yonnick19]

In my opinion the higher framerate is required not to make the game "look nice". But instead it's to reduce input lag as much as possible, improving my gaming experience. This directly increases my enjoyment of a game as well, I played The Last of Us on the Playstation 3 and I know I'd have loved it a lot more if it was running at a solid 60, it made aiming ridiculously cumbersome for me.

On the PC, I'd willing turn down the graphics just to have a higher framerate, again because it's about the gameplay, not about the graphical quality. I wish this was an option on the console too. It's such a big point for me that that's one of the issues stopping me from considering to buy a console at the moment.

 

[mrdude2010]

I gamed on a lousy computer and consoles for a long time. 30 FPS really doesn't bother me unless the game runs too quickly for that to be enough (racing games and fighter pilot games typically tend to have to run at pretty high FPS because of the speed of the action). As long as I can clearly make out what's going on, that extra touch of smoothness usually doesn't make or break a game for me. Likewise with resolution. I'd certainly prefer 1080p and extensive AA/texture detail/etc. over a locked in setting, but graphical aesthetic is far more important. I'd take a game like Portal 2 or Arkham Asylum or Call of Juarez: Gunslinger over a lot of more recent titles because they looked damn good no matter what setting they were on.

 

[omega 616]

If you were selling 60fps for 1 fuck, I'd keep my fuck.

All I ever read is about resolutions and fps scores but the only people who care about it are pc users. "OMG, it only runs at 30 and so and so resolution?" And the console users just say "I like/hate this game".

It doesn't even register in a buying decision, where as you said yourself pc gamers will shun games that don't meet certain requirements. Doesn't matter how enjoyable the game is, if it doesn't meet expectations then it can fuck off.

Personally, I think console gamers have it right. Caring is snobbish and elitist to me ... which fits in perfectly with the amount of "Pc gaming master race/console peasent" comments I see.

 

[babinro]

My guess is because games can have fluid controls and nice graphics at 30 FPS.

This just became accepted as a standard over the years and here we are. I have no REAL problem with the situation but it does seem odd that FPS are not among the many things we strive to improve over time.

I suppose when it comes down to spending money and weighing the return based on what's spent...there's simply more important things for companies to invest in over exceeding 30FPS.

That said...I was almost exclusively a console gamer for a time when you'd find a good mix of both and I definitely appreciated the games that went for 60FPS. It was never a deal breaker but it was a noticeable change that I appreciated.

I'm a PC exclusive gamer now though (thanks to steam, humblebundle and similar sites driving down the cost of the hobby).

 

[loa]

Maybe they're still shellshocked by the 15fps eye destroying playstation 1 "beginning of three dee" era.

Fps and resolution seem to be the new "bit" in this "console war" except that this carries more actual meaning than bits and blast processing but if you have been an owner of a pc for a while, this whole catfight about already on the brink of outdated formats seems kind of ridiculous and not something you'd want to draw attention to if you were responsible for those consoles.
Like the ps4 can "do 1080p" at a constant 60fps.
Conglaturations sony, here's a lolipop. Good jo- oh noo, 4k is right around the corner.
Welp.
Better make a new console that can "do 4k" now since you market on the resolution. Idiots.

 

[MetalShadowChaos]

It's easy to undersell the importance of visual fidelity in enjoyment of a game. When people talk about a game not needing to look good to be enjoyable so long as the gameplay is fun they assume that means the game looks passable, or generic, as opposed to the game looking like garbage. Trust me when I say you probably wouldn't have enjoyed games like Okami if they didn't look as stunning as they did. Sure if it looked passable it would have had SOME cult following, but if it had looked like arse it would probably never have been noticed.

Slight tangent, but point being it applies to FPS as well, albeit FPS being more complex due to having much larger and consistent affects on gameplay. A consistent 30fps is at least passable, and I'm sure as hell glad companies set it as the baseline, but I'll be damned if 60fps isn't 100% better in all cases ever.


Probably not the most cohesive argument out there, kind of just reeling off my thoughts for while, but whatever.

 

[Quadocky]

I actually attempt to force my PC to 30 Frames a second when I am able. Much like in the world of Film, having lower framerates can change the feel and the experience. in the context of modern games I do notice that Lighting effects seem a lot more constantly noticeable in lower framerates given how they reflect off of textures and junk.

Problem is a lot of games on the PC arn't designed to run at 30 frames and end up glitching in minor ways. Such as Killing Floor losing its slickness and certain UI elements.

Though in general its always better to play the game at the framerate it was designed around. Fable 3 for instance on PC allows framerates higher than 30 but it looks bad because all the effects and the like were designed to be viewed at 30. You also lose that nice fantasy-realism blur bloom effect.

 

[KazeAizen]

Is there really no difference playing at 60, or is that difference really so negligible that you would prefer better resolution/visuals?

Pretty much this. Honestly why should we care? That is the bigger question. For me its kind of like asking why do you settle for less than 1080P Ultra HD Mega Pore Viewer Mode? We "settle" because if the designers have done their job right it really shouldn't matter. For the visuals if it has a unifying art aesthetic that makes the game unique then it shouldn't matter if its in 360p or 1080p it will look good/beautiful either way. Which I don't think its wrong of me to say that Nintendo are the masters at this and probably the best in the entire industry at it. Their games from all the way back in the NES and SNES days have aged spectacularly. I'm even willing to bet 20 years from now Super Mario World on the SNES will have aged much better than any of the CoD, Battlefield, or Gears of War games.

As for the FPS question its kind of the same thing. If they have done their jobs right there really should be no noticeable difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS. PC devs have just been using 60 as their standard for so long that if it even slightly drops below you can tell a difference and it makes the game less enjoyable. With games that look and run just as smooth at 30 vs. their PC counter parts at 60 why should we care?

 

[Quadocky]

The human eye does not have a framerate or a resolution. This whole "your eyes can't see higher than X" is complete nonsense.

You can, but most average people don't notice differences above 100+ frames a second.

I mean, I would have a hard time noticing unless V-Sync was enabled at 144hz or something.

 

[The Lunatic]

It's easy to undersell the importance of visual fidelity in enjoyment of a game. When people talk about a game not needing to look good to be enjoyable so long as the gameplay is fun they assume that means the game looks passable, or generic, as opposed to the game looking like garbage. Trust me when I say you probably wouldn't have enjoyed games like Okami if they didn't look as stunning as they did. Sure if it looked passable it would have had SOME cult following, but if it had looked like arse it would probably never have been noticed.

I think there's another element to it.

It's easy to undersell frame rate, because nobody can just show you an image of the game running smoother.

Graphics, I can show you a low-resolution picture from a console compared to the high resolutions of the PC, and you can see the difference outright.

Frame rate?

Not so much. It actually has to be experienced.

People like myself can sit here and go on about the visual fluidity, the responsiveness and all that stuff.

But, it's utterly meaningless to somebody who hasn't experienced it and thus can be dismissed outright.

 

[SUPA FRANKY]

It's clear most people aren't used to 60FPS. Once they have played games at that frame-rate, they will notice.

So mostly it's just ignorance.

 

[Something Amyss]

It's a couple of things that layer on top of each other:
- their screen is 10 feet away
- the camera angles are tight
- all sorts of effects are added to muddy up the moving images
- their controls are real slow comparatively
- and games are designed to compensate for inherit imprecision
This makes it hard to tell there is a stutter.

Sweet. Why don't I notice the difference between playing on my PC at 3 feet and playing on my TV at 10 feet then?

Seriously.

 

[SerithVC]

to end this discussion. it is because console gamers are not PC MASTER RACE types who cannot seem to understand that specs are not everything. Just because a game is [insert resolution above 1080p] and is running at 60fps doesn't mean it's a good game. Seriously this entire thread seems to be "Why aren't console gamers PC MASTER RACE?" where in my experience games run smoother on consoles unless you have the money and/or know how to make your own computer.

 

[Belaam]

Exact same reason no one cares about movies being in 24 of 48 fps. It's not a big enough difference to make or break enjoyment of the medium, particularly if the viewer is used to the lower speed.

 

[RedDeadFred]

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.

Yup. Graphics not only come last fore me, but FPS is probably the thing I care about least when it comes to them.

So ya, literally the last thing I care about when playing a game.

 

[Pseudonym]

I mostly play PC but I just don't notice the difference. If I stare intently at those 60vs30 comparison websites I can tell the difference after a while. I occasionally, depending on the specific example, need to look at what the website tells me is 60 and what is 30. For most games I've played I haven't a clue what framerate they are. I don't start noticing until it dips well under 30. I understand it might be a problem for really fast paced games but even with that said, I just don't know the framerate of my fastpaced console games. I'm reading Halo is at 30. I didn't experience any trouble with that. And while that isn't a twitch game it's still reasonably fastpaced. Maybe it becomes more of a problem if you have faster reflexes than I do. (which most people seem to have)

I agree that 1080p is better than 720p and that 60fps is better than 30fps. I like playing something like crysis that looks good. That said I have older games that run at 240p that I quite like the look of and I recently played through Robin hood: legend of sherlock again and because it wouldn't work well for whatever reason the framerate was well below 30 most of the time. To me that is slightly annoying but I still played 30 hours of it with that problem. If you don't want to play anything below 60 that's your prerogative but some people, and I imagine most console users, don't care in the slightest if they are even aware of what FPS is. (which I wasn't untill I encountered threaths like these and video's on the internet about it)

To me a long draw distance matters much more. Pop-in is clearly immersion-breaking and sometimes even harmful to gameplay. When I go exploring in minecraft it annoys me I can't see further. If I need to adjust the route I am taking to a certain point in a game because I couldn't see a large structure that was in the way because of poor draw distance, that is much more harmful to the experience for me than any framerate or resolution. Similarly there is only so much that high fidelity can do when the artwork isn't pretty enough. Crysis doesn't have the visual appeal to me that Rayman forever or metroid fusion have. Obviously Crysis has vastly higher pixelbits and frameresolutions per kilometer but all I'm looking at are very well rendered trees. I just see a sea of green most of the time anyway. And that's not even mentioning all the other things that go into whether a game is good or not like the gameplay mechanics and the story and all those kind of things. With all those things considered FPS is just about the last thing that concerns me if it can stay above 30. The amount of space it takes from the Terabyte of memory on my PC is a larger consideration for me.

 

[Erttheking]

It's clear most people aren't used to 60FPS. Once they have played games at that frame-rate, they will notice.

So mostly it's just ignorance.

Pardon me? I'm ignorant about fps? I know the difference very well. I just. Don't. Care.

 

[Cheesy Goodness]

These PC vs Console - or the tired GamerGate or equality threads for that matter - discussions crop up far too often, but I will bite. I've been a PC gamer since the 90s and have steadily moved away from consoles. That information is probably not relevant, but it may show my bias towards the platform.

In my opinion, anybody that says they can't tell the difference between 30 or 60 is a liar, has cataracts or uses a toaster as their display monitor. The links below are visibly noticeable by a mile. You may not notice if 30 FPS is all you're used to, but you'd know it if you had to regress from 60 to 30. Even some experiences, like many fighting games and shooters, would suffer at 30. If that still doesn't matter to you, more power to ya. I wish 60 would be the industry standard, but I applaud any developer that sets out to do that.

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.