My worries with next-gen games running at 30 fps

Now, a game running at 30fps isn't a bad thing. In fact, a lot of people out there don't even know the difference between 30 and 60fps. But for those of you who can tell the difference and have seen 60fps, there's a huge difference. Although it depends on the game, a higher frame rate can give the game a smoother look and feel, and may even allow you to play the game better.

I love 60fps and hope to see all if not most next-gen games go up to that frame rate. But games that are staying at 30 make me worry. The reasoning isn't because I'm worried gameplay will be sluggish or slow, but because of the console recording capabilities. I've been recording games for about two years now and have experience with this kind of thing. A game that has the ability to run at 30 fps vs 60 makes a huge difference in the video quality, which is pretty important for not only the person streaming to their channel, but also to the developers and possibly even Sony or Microsoft. If a game's fps is all over the place, it's going to look obvious and all of those mentioned above may be criticized for it.

Continuing on, a game running at 60fps has the leg room to drop a few frames here and there and the player or viewer will hardly notice. But if a game running at 30fps has a frame drop, the player and viewer will most certainly notice. The reasoning is because at 30 fps, our eyes can just barely see the changes in the frames while objects on screen move and adjust. At 60, the movements and animation frames blend together and our eyes can't make out the changes so the game appears to run much smoother.

If the developers are still able to lock the frame rate at 30fps then it shouldn't be a problem. But, if you've played Dark Souls on a console, there are areas where the frame rate drops down to 15-20fps and it makes the game just horrible to play.

With the waters being pushed aside for the flood of indie developers to run through, I'm sure we'll see our fare share of unoptimized games. I fear that players are going to notice frame drops much easier and decide to set those games aside and play something that does feel good to play. But lets hope for the most part, games are able to run at 60fps as long as it doesn't hinder gameplay.

My point of all this is simply that I hope in the future, we see games run at the highest frame rate the games can run at to build more emersion. And with that comes the hope that Sony and Microsoft's streaming abilities aren't a hinderance to the players streaming or the viewer of that video in terms of video quality and smoothness of the fps.

Bonus: Here is a link to a site that allows you to actually see the difference between 15,30, and 60fps.
http://boallen.com/fps-comp...

[SilentNegotiator]

Most developers are going to go after the best graphics in terms of screenshots, coupled with ~30fps. I don't expect any real deviation from that this gen.

That's fine by me if the 30fps is constant.

[Stick89]

While I agree that 60 FPS is amazing and I want as many of the next gen games to run their games at that rate. I find 30 FPS to also be very playable.

I had this discussion with a friend of mine and I basically boiled it down to anything under 24 is unplayable, 30 is normal and playable, and 60+ is basically perfect.

The main problem is that in order to reach 60 FPS you usually have to take a huge hit to the visuals. If the visuals are cut back so much that they look like current gen games, the consoles won't sell very well to the general public. You and I might see the difference in frame rates and think it's totally worth it. But to the average consumer I'm willing to bet they'd think the games look the same because of the visual assets and wonder why they need to buy a whole new console.

[metalgod88]

I find that 30fps is definitely playable. I mean almost all of the last gen console games were run at 30fps and hey, it worked. 60fps just feels like, I don't know, a premium service for pc gamers.

Now that these new consoles are going to have a huge increase in ram and new awesome GPU's, I'd like to think that the developers can pull off awesome graphics with a better frame rate. If not now, hopefully we'll see that down the line once the game developers unleash the consoles full potential.

If not, oh well, but hopefully with all the ram these consoles are going to have, frame drops won't be as much of an issue. But we shall see.

[Pillsbury1]

Killzone will look amazing, 1080p and 60fps.

[memots]

if its mattered this much then people would be crying about every frcking game out there. Almost all games are 30fps, People needs to stop complaining about this like its some kind of disease. Seriously was the Last of us Demon soul ect..... bad because it was 30frame per second???

[metalgod88]

I'm not saying 30fps is bad by any means. It's a playable frame rate, but until you've seen a game played at 60fps, you don't know what you're missing.

Here's an example: Left side is 60fps and right is 30fps. http://i.minus.com/iKuvI6ja...

Also, the necessity of a higher fps really depends on the game. I'd say 3rd and 1st person games could benefit from 60 fps, while point and click adventure games aren't reliant on a high fps.

[memots]

i play on PC, I have Sli setup , I run everything at Ultra all the time. Like everyone else i like it when i run a Benchmark that tells me the Average is for example 73fps.

Will it lessen my enjoyment of the game it if ran at 30 , 37 , 45 fps ? NO

It does not make a game. The only time FPS matters is when you get stuttering or dip under 30fps, On console you rarely ever get stutter since pretty much every game lock it at 30fps and that is just fine.

[I_am_Batman]

What I still don't understand is why it's gotta be either 30 or 60fps. Why not aim for let's say 45 or 50fps. The only possible reason I see is the refresh-rate of old TVs. But nowadays most people have at least 200Hz TVs so that shouldn't be an issue anymore.

[DestinyHeroDoomlord]

Praise the sun! that is all. ..

[No FanS Land]

Blighttown says hi.

[DestinyHeroDoomlord]

After a few trips through blighttown (the hard way) no amount of frame rate drop will stop you from enjoying it

[KrisButtar]

TBH I've been gaming a long time and this gen is where I 1st heard 30fps or 60fps and that wasn't until even halfway through this cycle.

I can't or don't realize the difference of watching the blocks bouncing though..maybe if they both bounced up at the same time, side by side maybe I could see a difference in the spin but one going up while the other is falling makes it hard to see a difference if any

[metalgod88]

KrisButtar, it can be difficult to see the difference if you don't know what you're looking for. Basically, the top square thing stutters slightly, the second a little less, and the third has little to no stuttering. Look at the bottom square for a little bit, then look at the bottom square and you should be able to notice the change in fps.

[KrisButtar]

I see I was going about it the wrong way. trying to look at both the same time. but staring at the 60fps then looking at the 30fps I can then see a minor difference.

With the way people went on I thought it would be a much larger difference. I think with next gen it should be 60fps standard but the difference is so minor that even if it doesn't has it. its not really a loss.

[metalgod88]

Although it appears to be a slight difference in my example, when playing games, it can enhance game play by not only allowing smoother visuals, but lessen input lag.

[BitbyDeath]

" In fact, a lot of people out there don't even know the difference between 30 and 60fps. But for those of you who can tell the difference and have seen 60fps, there's a huge difference."

Sounds contradictory, can't be that big a difference if most can't see it unless they know exactly what to look for.

[kevnb]

this gen they cant even give us 30 fps on console 90% of the time... people keep buying cod for its smooth gameplay even though its not as pretty, get a clue developers? I know people will disagree with me just because COD is a rehash every year, but it plays smoother than other console shooters and thats why it keeps selling so much better.

[newflesh]

Agree

[Ravenor]

People don't play CoD simply because of the 60fps, there are lots of other factors involved.

[Hufandpuf]

I'd say we can't call this next-gen if we are still unable to run a game at 60fps when the PC games have been able to for years now. It's not fair because we expect an experience close to the PC with each new gnereation, yet the XB1 and PS4 aren't even close. If you bought an XB1 and a PS4, you'd mines well use that money to build a PC imo.

[metalgod88]

Honestly, I was a console gamer up until a few years ago. Once I saw how much better PC games were over console games, I was hooked. They run faster, smoother, and can be modded depending on the game.

But on the flip side, the new consoles are about half the price of a high end PC and those people won't have to worry about upgrading hardware to keep up with the increasing graphical improvements of the games as time passes.

[No FanS Land]

People you need to relax, the PS4 and Xbox one might be really powerful, their launch games are running on 1st cycle middleware engine. They haven't been completely tweaked to make the best use of the architecture.

I guess that we will see 1080p/60fps being the norm in 2015.

[DoctorJones]

It doesn't work like that. As the generation progresses the devs will want to improve the graphics, but they will hold on to that 30fps barrier even more tightly. They will want their next game to look even better, and the frame rate will not increase but will be sacrificed for the extra improvements and wow factor.

That's the way it has been this gen, you haven't seen games get better looking with higher frame rates have you, so why would you think this gen will be different?

If anything you should see plenty of games being 60fps and then having the frame rate cut as time goes on as they need to make a balance. But the sad thing is that most games won't be 60fps at all. Apparently frame rate doesn't matter to most console gamers for some reason, that's the way most devs see it anyway.

[newflesh]

Yep, that's the way it is. I remember some of the launch PS3 games like Ridge Racer 7, Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Wipeout HD ran at full HD 1080p, 60 FPS! And since that... nothing comes to mind. So the same applies for this gen. We'll see some full hd, 60 fps games in first months after console's realese, but after that it'll really only be a drop to 30 fps, 720p(probably) and better gfx. Why is it so? Because random people care about pretty graphics much more that 60 fps. And I can't blame them

Edit: Why I think there'll still be a drop to 720p in some time on new consoles? Because again casual gamers really can't see that much difference(if any) between it and 1080p. They leave it to PC elite