I can’t do 30fps any more.

[Nick R]

38 minutes ago, matt0 said:

 

It was rough, but widely regarded as a masterpiece at the time. Unplayable is a big exaggeration.

 

Yeah, SOTC's low framerate was annoying and distracting and far from ideal, but never unplayable. There was something to the argument that the chugging helped add to the sense of weight conveyed by each colossus, but that wasn't enough to outweigh the fact that 60fps would have been preferable.

 

If you want to talk unplayable: on N64 Perfect Dark, certain levels like Crash Site (the big outdoor Arctic mission) had such a low framerate that it made them significantly harder, because on one frame the crosshair would appear to be over the target, so you'd fire, but by the next frame update the reticle had overshot the target and you'd miss. That was an example of the framerate not just affecting cosmetics, but also affecting responsiveness: with a higher framerate, the crosshair is over the target for more frames, so you get more chances to press Fire within the right window. The 60fps XBLA remake proved how many of my deaths in the original were caused by the framerate!

 

(Speaking of PD's HD remake: I'm not normally someone who has trouble swapping between 30 and 60fps games. But when I first got PD XBLA, I played it a lot for about a week and then went back to Halo 3, and for an hour or so it felt like Halo 3's 30fps was such a slideshow that it really seemed like I could see the individual frames!)

[Stanley]

1 minute ago, Moz said:

They're all easily emulatable so not really a problem. Holding software hostage on shitty hardware is the issue. See Bloodborne, or BOTW2 no doubt. It's not a question of ambition, it's a question of acceptable baseline. Normal people listen to Coldplay and vote for the Tories while the rest of us have to live in their mad collective reality unfortunately.

Of course it’s about ambition. My foray into 3D games was playing the original Elite back in the day on a BBC Micro - I marvelled at the scope and ambition, those slow wire frame graphics looked incredible to me back then, it was literally a whole new universe to explore - at no point did I think, this is unacceptable because Super Mario Bros on the NES runs at 60FPS. 

 

[JoeK]

1 hour ago, Stanley said:

It depends on the game, if Breath of The Wild required 60fps to be playable then it wouldn’t exist, or not for a good while anyway. As long as the developer fashions the game around the technical constraints then 30fps can be just as effective as 60fps. 

 

If the game could have held a consistent 30fps on a Switch I might agree, but it cannot and does not and never will on a Switch. It's acceptable to play through because the game is so fine, but as soon as a new '4k Switch' comes out and we get a 60fps version of the thing, no-one will ever play it on anything else ever again. 

 

It deserves a 60fps version, and not just a sodding emulation on a PC.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

I love how this thread started with I can't do 30fps any more and now we have people in here saying regular drops to 10/11fps are fine.

This is why we can't have nice things.

[Stanley]

5 minutes ago, JoeK said:

 

If the game could have held a consistent 30fps on a Switch I might agree, but it cannot and does not and never will on a Switch. It's acceptable to play through because the game is so fine, but as soon as a new '4k Switch' comes out and we get a 60fps version of the thing, no-one will ever play it on anything else ever again. 

 

It deserves a 60fps version, and not just a sodding emulation on a PC.

It chugged a bit in some areas but on the whole it held a fairly steady 30fps, and more importantly because Nintendo know a fair bit about designing games, Link’s movements and actions don’t feel unresponsive, they’d paid a lot of time and attention to how the game looks and plays to make it acceptable at 30fps. 
 

I actually believe that hardware constraints can be a driving force creatively - you have to make choices and compromises and that in itself influences the game you end up with. 
 

And that’s what I love about Breath of The Wild - the artistic design, the world building, the various simulations, all combining to make  an unrivalled experience - all on a handheld costing under £300 back in 2017.  That’s ambition. 

[kensei]

N64 Perfect Dark is running at somewhere between 8 and 15 FPS most of the time so we're not exactly talking about a 30/60 difference here. Not that I'd recommend playing it any other way, but the Xbox version is far too twitchy. I don't think they corrected for the slowness of the N64 or the different dead zones on the pad. 

 

One of the guys from Factor 5 reckoned they could managed PD on the N64 at significantly higher framerates and that's performance is in good part due to it being a modified Goldeneye engine. 

[mikeyl]

Also, and although it may be my brain-damaged, poverty stricken upbringing talking here, playing a pirated version of Zelda on your £2000 PC completely disregards the overall video game experience you are supposed to have, the packaging, sitting cross legged in front of the big tv, or sideways in bed. The absolute synergy between the official controllers, the screen and yourself. Playing on the shitter. Playing on the shitter at work. 

[NecroMorrius]

I tried playing BOTW in handheld mode in a hotel once. Once.

[Stanley]

3 minutes ago, Moz said:

I tried playing BOTW in handheld mode in a hotel once. Once.

You should have taken your PC 

[deerokus]

Framerate on the switch doesn't bother me, it's way less noticeable on a handheld for some reason. 

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

Who needs colour. Black and white is fine. If you can watch it whilst taking a dump then even better.

 

[mikeyl]

Are you saying that old Charlie Chaplin films would be better in colour?

[Stanley]

I mean, you guys realise the dichotomy you find yourselves in here, right?

 

Were it not for these games existing in the first place you wouldn’t be able to play them on your much more expensive PC’s with all the bells and whistles, and it’s testament to how well they were designed that they scale up and play as well as they do. 

[matt0]

1 minute ago, Opinionated Ham Scarecrow said:

Who needs colour. Black and white is fine. If you can watch it whilst taking a dump then even better.

 

 

Game Boy games look worse than Game Boy Advance games which could only manage rudimentary 3D through hacks which looked and ran worse than DS games which look worse than 3DS games which look and run worse than Vita games which look and run worse than Switch games.

 

So what's your point? You want people to be dissatisfied with the most powerful mass market handheld to date because it runs games worse than... I don't fucking know... a regular console? A mid range PC? A £2500 beast PC?...

 

It's almost like games hardware is constrained by the current level of technology and the physical laws of the universe.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

It's a discussion about acceptable base levels of performance. Looks like now we've got all the switchlords up in here giving it motion of the ocean and all that rubbish though cos they know that their little underpowered tablet suffers from the problem the most.

[Uzi]

I'm not really a framerate snob even today (I played through Cyberpunk 2077 for 95 hours at locked 30fps) despite having one of those 2 grand or whatever PC's (the dislike of spending on tech on PC's in discussion has always been weird given this is a forum where people spend on legos/expensive trainers/watches etc - its your hobby who gives a fuck how much it costs) but the funny thing about these discussions is how things are framed and then re-framed 

 

Eg Nintendo makes low-middle power console - its great - art/gameplay/its a small screen so the res don't matter- its a bit fuzzy docked but games by Nintendo!

 

All of that is true btw - I don't disagree with that and loved playing Mario Odyssey docked and it looked amazing

 

But then a few years later when its a new switch with 4K and Nvidia DLSS then these same things that are looked down upon are suddenly the best shit ever. 

 

It happens every few years - a new tech or standard comes in - its shit on saying it dlutes what true gaming is and then once it becomes mainstream that its like "how did we ever live without it?"

 

Just funny as an observer is all. Enjoy whatever you have - if you don't find something enjoyable then wait until it is in a format that you do. The punching up or down snobbery is just odd though.

[mikeyl]

Problem with the PC crew is that they know they’ve overspent on a ridiculous Microsoft Excel machine with nothing to play on it so are always desperate to play other manufacturer’s IP and insist it’s the best version because it’s what their Excel machine can now do. It’s ok, I have like 40 3D blu rays because I convinced myself 3D Blu ray was the best and not because I had to justify my tele.

[Uzi]

lol

[matt0]

Just now, Opinionated Ham Scarecrow said:

It's a discussion about acceptable base levels of performance. Looks like we've got all the switchlords up in here giving it motion of the ocean and all that rubbish though cos they know that their little underpowered tablet suffers from the problem the most.

 

It would be awesome if the Switch could run it at 60fps. It's cool you can do that through emulation. But unfortunately in 2016 you couldn't make a handheld that could do that for £300 and / or without melting your hands off after 10 minutes of extended use.

 

You have this weird idea that it's about people wanting to hold back progress, or being fine with "unacceptable" performance, but you're looking at a device that launched with the best in class performance ever. Were there more powerful handhelds when the Switch came out? Yeah, there's all sorts of crazy shit like the high end GPD machines but they're not £300.

 

Just now, mikeyl said:

Problem with the PC crew is that they know they’ve overspent on a ridiculous Microsoft Excel machine with nothing to play on it so are always desperate to play other manufacturer’s IP and insist it’s the best version because it’s what their Excel machine can now do. It’s ok, I have like 40 3D blu rays because I convinced myself 3D Blu ray was the best and not because I had to justify my tele.

 

This is the opposite end of ridiculous. In the vast majority of cases the PC version is the best version and there's plenty of high production value stuff where the PC is the lead platform.

[layten]

I emulate my paid for and still owned Wii U version of BotW and use an official Switch Pro Controller. 

 

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

To be fair when I played Shadow of the Colossus I was living on a friend's couch and had £4 to my name. I was at rock bottom and couldn't even dream of a high end pc but the performance was still unacceptable and 100% affected my enjoyment of a stone cold classic. I would have hapilly waited to experience that game properly.

[Stanley]

2 minutes ago, Opinionated Ham Scarecrow said:

To be fair when I played Shadow of the Colossus I was living on a friend's couch and had £4 to my name. I was at rock bottom and couldn't even dream of a high end pc but the performance was still unacceptable and 100% affected my enjoyment of a stone cold classic. I would have hapilly waited to experience that game properly.

Maybe one day then...

[Uzi]

4 minutes ago, layten said:

I emulate my paid for and still owned Wii U version of BotW and use an official Switch Pro Controller. 

 

Please disregard your enjoyment unless sitting cross legged on the floor or sideways on the bed

 

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

@Stanley The PS4 version did the job.

[mikeyl]

7 minutes ago, Uzi said:

Please disregard your enjoyment unless sitting cross legged on the floor or sideways on the bed

 

I know it’s not a dedicated Gamer Chair with cushioned lower back support, but also the shitter.

[TehStu]

Perception to frame rate is surely subjective? We don't all see the same colours, much less the frequency at which they're presented to us. I don't think there's any need for $2000 Excel machines or switchlords (the latter is a new one to me, that's really bad).

 

If someone says a frame rate is "fine", or some other arguably positive adjective, we all realize they're not talking authoritatively and are just "IMHO", right? And what you're used to is definitely a factor. I mean, yeah, at one point my PC would run WoW at 300 fps. I've got a screenshot of it somewhere. But I'm playing Minecraft Dungeons yesterday at 30 fps and, after a few minutes of urngh, I totally forgot about it and got on with the game. But then, it's consistently 30 fps and I am, at least, frequently back and forth 30/60 games. Maybe if the big TV did 120 the bounce between 30 would be even more offputting, but I'm not going to hurl my XB1 into the abyss.

 

More than ever, we've got machines that bang out absurd detail at 4k60, and so it's pretty reasonable to expect that to continue, particularly after the latter part of the gen offering performance/fidelity options. Also,it's going to be a bit daft if the platform holders make a big thing of 120 fps and that's only attainable on a couple of indie titles and some BC stuff early in the generation.

 

So, perhaps we will continue to see 60 fps targeted this gen. That would be sweet. Please don't pick on anyone who doesn't care - if you care, you have options to mitigate the problem without shitting on anyone's perception.

[HarryBizzle]

I have to say, Moz is doing wonders for the 30fps cause. I was pretty sure I was in team 60fps before I read some of the stuff he’s spouting. 

[mikeyl]

I’ve got 120Hz enabled on most things unless the choice is for prettier, but to say that you can’t go back to under 60  or refuse to play some of the best games ever in the format the creators intended is wild. It’s an artificial made up barrier.

[TehStu]

Unless it's so personally jarring that you can't now be doing with it. I've refused to play games for all sorts of reasons.

[NecroMorrius]

37 minutes ago, Uzi said:

I'm not really a framerate snob even today (I played through Cyberpunk 2077 for 95 hours at locked 30fps) despite having one of those 2 grand or whatever PC's (the dislike of spending on tech on PC's in discussion has always been weird given this is a forum where people spend on legos/expensive trainers/watches etc - its your hobby who gives a fuck how much it costs) but the funny thing about these discussions is how things are framed and then re-framed 

 

Eg Nintendo makes low-middle power console - its great - art/gameplay/its a small screen so the res don't matter- its a bit fuzzy docked but games by Nintendo!

 

All of that is true btw - I don't disagree with that and loved playing Mario Odyssey docked and it looked amazing

 

But then a few years later when its a new switch with 4K and Nvidia DLSS then these same things that are looked down upon are suddenly the best shit ever. 

 

It happens every few years - a new tech or standard comes in - its shit on saying it dlutes what true gaming is and then once it becomes mainstream that its like "how did we ever live without it?"

 

Just funny as an observer is all. Enjoy whatever you have - if you don't find something enjoyable then wait until it is in a format that you do. The punching up or down snobbery is just odd though.

 

I call it the Boozy the clown effect. 22fps on Xbox One is fine because only gameplay matters and only a snob would think otherwise and true gamers don't care about getting splitting headaches, but if the Xbox Series X can do 120fps and the PS5 can only do 119 it's frontpage news.