I can’t do 30fps any more.

[daifuco]

Last Friday I bought, an XBOX Series S for my tiny bedroom. An impulse purchase. 

I am mostly a PC gamer , but an ageing one. I think I dont care anymore about things that mattered to me in the past. 

I am super happy with the console but I could tell that some games felt "consoley" . I was not sure wat it was.

Of course it was the 30fps rate!.

 

I refuse to get annoyed but yeah... Once  you notice the low frame rate is hard to ignore. It is like tinnitus! 

 

[NecroMorrius]

They're usually the same framerate on the X, if that makes you feel any better. In most cases there's no unlock framerate option so the game continues to default to the 30fps cap. It's quite deflating firing up something like the original Dead Space and finding it running at 720p 30fps on your new console if you're used to PC. But there are loads of games which do benefit. Get yourself a gamepass subscription if you don't already have one and get stuck in. You'll also get it on PC, and the games which overlap often have savegame sync between the two.

[Mr. Gerbik]

Dark Souls 3 just had a FPS boost on Xbox. Downside: the game wasn't enhanced for the Xbox One X, so it's sadly locked at an incredibly grainy 900p from the vanilla Bone version. I downloaded it again to check it out nonetheless. 

 

At the same time I also downloaded RDR2 again. The game came up in a conversation and I was curious how it would look on my current telly. I remember it being quite the looker (even though I didn't like the gameplay) and I recall that playing at 30FPS really didn't bother me back then.

 

This turned out to be an interesting comparison! DaS3 at 900p was as expected very low res on my current fancy 4k telly. But despite that it looked smooth and felt great. The resolution was jarring for about a second or two until I started moving - the solid picture at 60FPS was delicious and more than compensated for the resolution.

 

After that I fired up RDR2. Loaded up my old save, found myself at some early camp. It looked gorgeous for a fraction of a second until I moved. The picture was so juddery and crummy to my eyes. Keep in mind that I've been playing nothing but 60FPS games since getting a PS5 and XSX because practically every game has a 60FPS mode. Maybe I've gotten too used to 60, but man the frame rate in RDR2 just ruined the visual quality of the picture for me.

 

Interestingly, the framerate had a bigger visual impact in my eyes than the resolution. Despite 900p being extremely low by modern standards. And that's besides the controls, how smooth it feels to play - I'm talking about how it *looks*. I just couldn't stomach the picture quality of RDR2.

 

So I guess I'm here to say: hello my name is Mr. Gerbik and I can't do 30FPS anymore.

[Timmo]

It's annoying Rockstar don't release 60fps updates. I still haven't played RDR2 but there's no way I'm doing it at 30. I imagine it'll get released next year at full price and for this year we'll just have to settle for buying 2013's GTA V for the eighteenth time. (Coming out in November.)

[Kevvy Metal]

Where as, yesterday I was playing a whole bunch of Mass Effect remaster at a perfect 60 fps... then moved onto Bloodborne. 

The move to 30 fps was initially, an absolute massive shock that looked very very obvious, but after about 20 minutes of playing the game, I had gotten completely used to it, and it was absolutely zero problem. 

[JoeK]

It is annoying. I do think that out of all the versions of RDR2 I have, the Xbox One X version is still the best but it is pretty hard coming down from the 60fps PC version in terms of smoothness. It's just - and I've moaned about this many times - because Rockstar don't seem to give a crap about these things, there are a huge amount of glitches that whilst don't affect long term play of the game, they do gradually erode the genuine awe I have for it - namely, character animations not being updated to work properly at 60fps, so you have judder all the sodding time (it's especially prevalent with women and the way their dresses flow - you don't have the issue at 30fps at all). 

 

However, 60fps is what the standard should be - I'm absolutely not bothered about anything more, and whilst I have a screen that can do 144hz if necessary, I find the motion-sickness generally is unbearable for me (Doom Eternal, I'm looking at you here).

[Timmo]

2 minutes ago, JoeK said:

It is annoying. I do think that out of all the versions of RDR2 I have, the Xbox One X version is still the best but it is pretty hard coming down from the 60fps PC version in terms of smoothness. It's just - and I've moaned about this many times - because Rockstar don't seem to give a crap about these things, there are a huge amount of glitches that whilst don't affect long term play of the game, they do gradually erode the genuine awe I have for it - namely, character animations not being updated to work properly at 60fps, so you have judder all the sodding time (it's especially prevalent with women and the way their dresses flow - you don't have the issue at 30fps at all). 

 

However, 60fps is what the standard should be - I'm absolutely not bothered about anything more, and whilst I have a screen that can do 144hz if necessary, I find the motion-sickness generally is unbearable for me (Doom Eternal, I'm looking at you here).

Yeah, Doom Eternal feels a bit weird to me at 120fps, almost like it's too fast for the controller. Maybe I need to recalibrate the controls.

[matt0]

23 minutes ago, Kevvy Metal said:

Where as, yesterday I was playing a whole bunch of Mass Effect remaster at a perfect 60 fps... then moved onto Bloodborne. 

The move to 30 fps was initially, an absolute massive shock that looked very very obvious, but after about 20 minutes of playing the game, I had gotten completely used to it, and it was absolutely zero problem. 

 

I'm baffled by people suddenly declaring "I can never play a 30fps game again" - as if they'd never played a 60fps game before the start of this gen and have only just realised the difference.

 

One thing I always do with games that are play anywhere on game pass, is install them on my PC and One S with the intention of doing the majority of playing them on the PC at 60 or 120fps, all the shinies etc. And then spend the majority of the time playing them in smeary 30fps on the last gen Xbox anyway because that's what's sat under the TV. The only time I really bother with the PC are games where I really want the mouse control (Doom Eternal, RTSs etc.).

 

Everyone's got different tolerances and preferences obviously, and I'm looking forward to the day I swap out my One S for one of the new machines, but I find this overnight "Oh, I couldn't possibly..." attitude faintly ridiculous.

[SMD]

4 minutes ago, matt0 said:

 

I'm baffled by people suddenly declaring "I can never play a 30fps game again" - as if they'd never played a 60fps game before the start of this gen and have only just realised the difference.

 

One thing I always do with games that are play anywhere on game pass, is install them on my PC and One S with the intention of doing the majority of playing them on the PC at 60 or 120fps, all the shinies etc. And then spend the majority of the time playing them in smeary 30fps on the last gen Xbox anyway because that's what's sat under the TV. The only time I really bother with the PC are games where I really want the mouse control (Doom Eternal, RTSs etc.).

 

Everyone's got different tolerances and preferences obviously, and I'm looking forward to the day I swap out my One S for one of the new machines, but I find this overnight "Oh, I couldn't possibly..." attitude faintly ridiculous.

I think it really depends, I played Yaluza 0 and Kiwami in 60fps with drops but when I got to Yakuza Kiwami 2, the drop to unstable 30fps did have an impact on how I was enjoying it. Sometimes when you play a specific type of game in steady 60fps it's harder to switch to something else at a lower frame rate. When Microsoft added a 60fps mode to Forza Horizon, I couldn't go back even though the 4K mode was stunning.

[Sumire]

I have a pretty good gaming PC, 3080 etc, but to be honest, if I can stick at it for about 30mins, 30fps isn't so bad once you get used to it again. Obviously I wouldn't choose to game at 30fps if I do not have to.

[matt0]

17 minutes ago, SMD said:

I think it really depends, I played Yaluza 0 and Kiwami in 60fps with drops but when I got to Yakuza Kiwami 2, the drop to unstable 30fps did have an impact on how I was enjoying it. Sometimes when you play a specific type of game in steady 60fps it's harder to switch to something else at a lower frame rate. When Microsoft added a 60fps mode to Forza Horizon, I couldn't go back even though the 4K mode was stunning.

 

There is a huge caveat to my last post which is I wouldn't play a fighting game or shmup at 30fps* - so I get it to an extent. But I do think it's weird that there's people who were fine with some games being 30fps and some games being 60fps from the PS1 all the way up to the end of the last generation who have suddenly decided that 30fps is unacceptable now.

 

* - Although I do happily fire up Banshee for the Amiga every 5 years or so, but that's the only one off the top of my head.

[Mr. Gerbik]

42 minutes ago, matt0 said:

I'm baffled by people suddenly declaring "I can never play a 30fps game again" - as if they'd never played a 60fps game before the start of this gen and have only just realised the difference

Like I said, we're now more than half a year into the generation. You try playing nothing but 60FPS games all the time for 7 to 8 months straight. And then fire up a 30FPS title. Like going from VHS to DVD or from SD to HD, going *back* makes a far bigger noticeable difference than the actual jump forwards.

 

As others have pointed out out, it takes about 30 minutes to get used to it again. That's fair enough, but I couldn't be arsed playing RDR2 for 30mins to find out. When I have so many other games on my backlog.

[sofasurfer]

I thought I'd finally finish playing through Mass Effect Andromeda after completing ME Legendary. I lasted about five minutes of actual gaming before the 30 fps was annoying. I really do feel I've been spoiled by able to play so many older games in 60 now. 

[SMD]

28 minutes ago, matt0 said:

 

There is a huge caveat to my last post which is I wouldn't play a fighting game or shmup at 30fps* - so I get it to an extent. But I do think it's weird that there's people who were fine with some games being 30fps and some games being 60fps from the PS1 all the way up to the end of the last generation who have suddenly decided that 30fps is unacceptable now.

 

* - Although I do happily fire up Banshee for the Amiga every 5 years or so, but that's the only one off the top of my head.

just adding to @Mr. Gerbik's post, when more and more games start offering 60fps as standard or a performance mode, it can really make a difference particularly when playing very similar style games. I get that open world games are unlikely to be at that level unless it's not cutting edge but for a lot of titles, if you give me the choice I'll pick 60fps whatever the trade off.

I also think there's an extra benefit to devs as the level of fidelity needed would be understandably lower so assets wouldn't need to be in as high detail as fixed 4k for example.

[matt0]

32 minutes ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

Like I said, we're now more than half a year into the generation. You try playing nothing but 60FPS games all the time for 7 to 8 months straight. And then fire up a 30FPS title. Like going from VHS to DVD or from SD to HD, going *back* makes a far bigger noticeable difference than the actual jump forwards.

 

As others have pointed out out, it takes about 30 minutes to get used to it again. That's fair enough, but I couldn't be arsed playing RDR2 for 30mins to find out. When I have so many other games on my backlog.

 

It's never been close to 7-8 months, but there's definitely been times in the past where I've played exclusively PC stuff at whatever frame rate (I had a weird 75hz monitor for a long time) for months at a time and then gone back to the current gen consoles and the end result was "oh... yeah... that's how these games run".

 

One thing that admittedly probably skews my perception of all this is I usually play a lot of handheld games (going back to GBA, DS, PSP era stuff), 8 / 16 bit era stuff, and even with modern games I usually end up caught in between generations. So there was a big overlap where I was still playing Amiga games into the late 90s, even though I had a Pentium PC (no GPU, that was my next machine), I was still playing a lot of PS1 games alongside the PS2 console era stuff and a few years back I was playing 360 games alongside Overwatch, Titanfall 1+2, Destiny 2 etc. on PC. So at any given point in time I've always got one foot in the past - I never really experience the going back effect.

 

But if a game came out you really wanted play, or you wanted to go back to one specific game that meant a lot to you and your only option was to play it at 30fps, you really wouldn't shrug it off and say "this one game I want to play is a bit rough"?

[moosegrinder]

Just to be that contrarian dickhead I've been playing Split Second again and the 30 frames doesn't bother me as much as I thought it might. I doubt it hits 30 consistently either. 60 frames is absolutely the business but if the games still fundamentally good I'll see around it.

[Mr. Gerbik]

8 minutes ago, matt0 said:

But if a game came out you really wanted play, or you wanted to go back to one specific game that meant a lot to you and your only option was to play it at 30fps, you really wouldn't shrug it off and say "this one game I want to play is a bit rough"?

New Tenchu at 30? Would definitely play it of course. But I would also repeatedly complain about it here.

[Pob]

31 minutes ago, matt0 said:

But if a game came out you really wanted play, or you wanted to go back to one specific game that meant a lot to you and your only option was to play it at 30fps, you really wouldn't shrug it off and say "this one game I want to play is a bit rough"?

It's going to be tough when a big new game comes out without a 60 option, but for now older stuff that is still languishing at 30fps is totally off the menu for me. Partially I think that's because I know if I hang on for a bit, there's a good chance of an update or FPS boost. So although I still want to go back to them, there is no way I'd play Dishonored 2 or Red Dead 2 right now.

 

Breath of the Wild 2 would be a good test. A couple of years ago I'd have bought a Switch just to play it. But if it's going to be limited to 30fps (perhaps dropping even lower) then it's a less clear-cut purchasing decision.

 

I think the only way for me to play 30fps games now is to dedicate myself entirely to it for the duration and not intersperse it with 60fps gaming sessions. I've not tried that yet, but no doubt I'll have to at some point.

[scoobysi]

I’m playing HZD at the moment on PS5 and that’s fine at 30fps, I can see how it would be better at 60fps but it’s perfectly playable. I can then swap into GoT or vice versa without any problem.

 

The only real issue I’ve had was when I changed between 60fps and 30fps in the same session of Miles Morales to try it out and it felt awful. Maybe it’s the much faster moving gameplay or that immediate transition.

 

33 minutes ago, moosegrinder said:

Just to be that contrarian dickhead I've been playing Split Second again and the 30 frames doesn't bother me as much as I thought it might.

I’ve just dug out my 360 to play TDU2 and London 2012, I’m going to add Split Second to the list now, love that game 😀.

[Mr. Gerbik]

With the inclusion of Quality/Performance modes being so prevalent right now, I think there's a good chance I will never or very rarely encounter that scenario though. Assuming there will again be mid-gen upgrades for the current PS5 and XSX, there's no reason for developers to change their current approach. If anything it's better to keep including the Quality/Performance option since they will need to implement those again anyway once the PS5 rolls around.

 

And if I'm wrong about this, as ever the solution is investing in a good PC. 

[Mr. Gerbik]

59 minutes ago, scoobysi said:

The only real issue I’ve had was when I changed between 60fps and 30fps in the same session of Miles Morales to try it out and it felt awful. Maybe it’s the much faster moving gameplay or that immediate transition.

That was the exact game that started the ruination of 30 for me. Switching in the middle of gameplay really made quality mode, fancy RT or no, look bloody awful. And now every 30 game looks like that to me. After my experience with DaS3 as described above, it appears that I'll take any resolution hit to achieve 60. Even 900p at 60 is now preferable to me over native 4k/30. I know how that sounds, but I'd rather have the visual smoothness.

[matt0]

43 minutes ago, Pob said:

It's going to be tough when a big new game comes out without a 60 option, but for now older stuff that is still languishing at 30fps is totally off the menu for me. Partially I think that's because I know if I hang on for a bit, there's a good chance of an update or FPS boost. So although I still want to go back to them, there is no way I'd play Dishonored 2 or Red Dead 2 right now.

 

Breath of the Wild 2 would be a good test. A couple of years ago I'd have bought a Switch just to play it. But if it's going to be limited to 30fps (perhaps dropping even lower) then it's a less clear-cut purchasing decision.

 

I think the only way for me to play 30fps games now is to dedicate myself entirely to it for the duration and not intersperse it with 60fps gaming sessions. I've not tried that yet, but no doubt I'll have to at some point.

 

When was the last time you actually tried to play anything at 30fps though? Because if it's a game you really wanted to play, something of the calibre of BOTW 2, I honestly think you'd just get used to it.

 

This is an extreme example because one of the games is below a lot of peoples acceptable tolerance whether they're fine with 30fps or not, but I've been playing Doom Eternal at 120fps on PC and Hyrule Warriors at PS2-era-EDF-fps on Switch. I wouldn't want to immediately go from the first to the second in the same gaming session but the more you switch the easier the adjustment gets. It's the immediate comparison that makes everything feel worse than it is, going from a 60fps game to a 30fps game in the same session is rough, going from 60 to 30 in the same game is worse, but going from 120 to 60 feels in the same game feels incredibly rough too.

 

And it would be better if any given 30fps game ran at 60 but you do get to experience the reverse psychological effect. If you play something at 30fps for any length of time and then play something at 60fps, it's like you got a Daytona arcade cabinet for Christmas or something.

[PikaStu]

It never really bothered me until recently, but with Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Remaster, I can’t play it at anything other than 60fps. Unfortunately that means 1080p on my XboneX. 
It also means that from now on, I have to play the Forza Horizon games at low res 60fps on console as I can’t go back.

I don’t think it affects other genres, I mean Flight Simulator is fine at 30fps, but I’m now of the mindset that racing games have to be 60fps.

[Mr. Gerbik]

If only everything was 60 by default, then we wouldn't need to have this discussion.

 

[Pob]

2 minutes ago, matt0 said:

 

When was the last time you actually tried to play anything at 30fps though? Because if it's a game you really wanted to play, something of the calibre of BOTW 2, I honestly think you'd just get used to it.

 

This is an extreme example because one of the games is below a lot of peoples acceptable tolerance whether they're fine with 30fps or not, but I've been playing Doom Eternal at 120fps on PC and Hyrule Warriors at PS2-era-EDF-fps on Switch. I wouldn't want to immediately go from the first to the second in the same gaming session but the more you switch the easier the adjustment gets. It's the immediate comparison that makes everything feel worse than it is, going from a 60fps game to a 30fps game in the same session is rough, going from 60 to 30 in the same game is worse, but going from 120 to 60 feels in the same game feels incredibly rough too.

 

And it would be better if any given 30fps game ran at 60 but you do get to experience the reverse psychological effect. If you play something at 30fps for any length of time and then play something at 60fps, it's like you got a Daytona arcade cabinet for Christmas or something.

Probably the same as Mr Gerbik - I've tried to play both Dishonored 2 and Red Dead 2 over the past 6 months or so (since becoming fully accustomed to 60fps) and I've shelved them both after about 30 mins play. It would have to a really special 30fps game to make it onto my list.

 

It's also made me realise that ray-tracing is basically not going to be a thing for me, until a mid-gen hardware refresh or a whole new generation makes it less computationally expensive. Yeah you've got Insomniac's games that have RT + 60fps options, but stuff like Control, Watch Dogs Legion and (presumably) the next-gen version of Cyberpunk offer a choice between framerate and ray-tracing, and I'd pick framerate every time.

[Timmo]

Just now, Pob said:

Probably the same as Mr Gerbik - I've tried to play both Dishonored 2 and Red Dead 2 over the past 6 months or so (since becoming fully accustomed to 60fps) and I've shelved them both after about 30 mins play. It would have to a really special 30fps game to make it onto my list.

 

It's also made me realise that ray-tracing is basically not going to be a thing for me, until a mid-gen hardware refresh or a whole new generation makes it less computationally expensive. Yeah you've got Insomniac's games that have RT + 60fps options, but stuff like Control, Watch Dogs Legion and (presumably) the next-gen version of Cyberpunk offer a choice between framerate and ray-tracing, and I'd pick framerate every time.

Metro Exodus has both 60fps and RT and looks stunning in places, but I'd definitely agree that 60fps will always be a massive preference if the choice is between them. 

[matt0]

4 minutes ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

If only everything was 60 by default, then we wouldn't need to have this discussion.

 

 

We're probably only a generation of Nintendo hardware away from being close to that anyway, but all those old games you loved are still great if you can hold your nose when you go back to them.

[Kevvy Metal]

The Ratchet and Clank 40 fps on a 120 hz display is the absolutely fucking business I might add. 

It's enough to get away from the choppy look of 30 fps while delivering a much more responsive feeling game.

I prefer it to the 60 fps of Performance RT, as you make far fewer visual compromises and the game looks and feels great, and far better than 30 fps.

[dataDave]

10 minutes ago, matt0 said:

 

We're probably only a generation of Nintendo hardware away from being close to that anyway

 

The WiiU and early Switch generation was bolstered around 60fps being the standard for their first-party output. It's a shame that changed.

 

Mario Kart 8 is still one of the best looking games ever, and like stuff such as LttP I doubt it'll age at all.

[Mr. Gerbik]

13 minutes ago, matt0 said:

but all those old games you loved are still great if you can hold your nose when you go back to them

No need, I have an Xbox so most of them will have a boost anyway I've replayed a bunch of games lately boosted on Xbox and it was :chefskiss: