Digital Foundry Makes A Case For 30FPS

[Raid]

You just need to avoid buying Ubisoft games for PC.

If hardware is too fast(again, except for Ubisoft, and assuming you knew what you were talking about when you said "too fast"); you bought an old game, console of today can't even play a game from that time.

Every developer makes shit ports. The too fast one I used as an example was Saints Row 2 where if your CPU is too fast the character runs at super speed. Bought a copy for PS3 later and it runs just fine, no problems.

[ComradeHX]

Every developer makes shit ports. The too fast one I used as an example was Saints Row 2 where if your CPU is too fast the character runs at super speed. Bought a copy for PS3 later and it runs just fine, no problems.

Every developer makes shit ports, yet you gave one example(problem of which didn't exist on Windows 8).

Try again.

[That Norwegian Guy]

They're wrong. There is no case for 30 FPS.

 

Objection: Microsoft Powerpoint.

[sannukas0016]

I'm glad it got cancelled... for PCs.  It doesn't make sense for the PC user who knows what they're doing.

 

Take this same concept and apply it to consoles, and BAM.  Winner.

Are you implying that all pc users know what they're doing? You do realise that people who know how to build computers are a minority right?

[Raid]

Every developer makes shit ports, yet you gave one example.

Try again.

Every game which relies on specific hardware. For example, Metal Gear Solid 2 which only ran on certain Geforce-series of cards, and absolutely nothing else.

Most Capcom games prior to the last couple years with their amazingly awful keybinding.

Every 3D Win32 game with extremely limited resolution support of either 1024x768 max or 640x480 only (this includes nearly everything released prior to 1998).

Games with dependencies that are old and either completely non-functional or extremely hard to get working on modern computers with massive amounts of conflicts. This includes everything that use strange video codecs or old PhysX.

Games with shit DRM.

Games that rely on driver-side optimization to work (most modern AAA titles).

 

That, along with the previously mentioned hardware incompatibilities covers most PC games from the last 30 or so years. Very few PC games, and especially ports, are well made so it's fairly safe to say that all developers make shit ports and not just Ubisoft. Exceptions do exist yet are so rare that from a consumer point of view it could very well be a reason to stay away from PC gaming entirely.

[zacRupnow]

"It looks smoother, more presentable."

 

Yeah but it feels like ass using a mouse and keyboard at 30fps locked.

1 not true

2 true

[Lord Baal]

Are you implying that all pc users know what they're doing? You do realise that people who know how to build computers are a minority right?

I assume that's why his glad it got dropped rather then taking off, fear of those of us that didn't suffer a head injury or birth defect being stuck with it becoming the only option... It's also not like the vast majority need to build their PC there's plenty of places that'll build it, test it and even set it up for those that don't know how. I don't know why console gamers assume you have to build your own PC.

[Misanthrope]

Every game which relies on specific hardware. For example, Metal Gear Solid 2 which only ran on certain Geforce-series of cards, and absolutely nothing else.

Most Capcom games prior to the last couple years with their amazingly awful keybinding.

Every 3D Win32 game with extremely limited resolution support of either 1024x768 max or 640x480 only (this includes nearly everything released prior to 1998).

Games with dependencies that are old and either completely non-functional or extremely hard to get working on modern computers with massive amounts of conflicts. This includes everything that use strange video codecs or old PhysX.

Games with shit DRM.

Games that rely on driver-side optimization to work (most modern AAA titles).

That, along with the previously mentioned hardware incompatibilities covers most PC games from the last 30 or so years. Very few PC games, and especially ports, are well made so it's fairly safe to say that all developers make shit ports and not just Ubisoft. Exceptions do exist yet are so rare that from a consumer point of view it could very well be a reason to stay away from PC gaming entirely.

All that and this article it's irrelevant: we're not talking about choosing 30fps or being limited to that due to legacy problem. We're talking about piece of shit companies limiting to 30 FPS to favor consoles so they don't look too bad by comparison.

So if we stay relevant to the discussion, there absolutely is no case for 30 FPS only.

[Faceman]

Are you implying that all pc users know what they're doing? You do realise that people who know how to build computers are a minority right?

Not all.  There is a lot more work and know how that goes into building, and upgrading a computer by hand. It scares off a lot of the consumer base, and even those who do know how to install new components, sometimes get it wrong, myself included.  Its not as easy as a console.

[Lord Baal]

Every game which relies on specific hardware. For example, Metal Gear Solid 2 which only ran on certain Geforce-series of cards, and absolutely nothing else.

Most Capcom games prior to the last couple years with their amazingly awful keybinding.

Every 3D Win32 game with extremely limited resolution support of either 1024x768 max or 640x480 only (this includes nearly everything released prior to 1998).

Games with dependencies that are old and either completely non-functional or extremely hard to get working on modern computers with massive amounts of conflicts. This includes everything that use strange video codecs or old PhysX.

Games with shit DRM.

Games that rely on driver-side optimization to work (most modern AAA titles).

 

That, along with the previously mentioned hardware incompatibilities covers most PC games from the last 30 or so years. Very few PC games, and especially ports, are well made so it's fairly safe to say that all developers make shit ports and not just Ubisoft. Exceptions do exist yet are so rare that from a consumer point of view it could very well be a reason to stay away from PC gaming entirely.

So you're complaining old games don't always work? guess what Consoles aren't backward compatible so they can't play any older games... seems like even if they require some small screwing around like downloading a user made patch or running in compatibility mode wins over it not even being an option..

Games that rely on driver-side optimization? I've not sure I've ever encountered a new AAA game that didn't run on my system but I've never had a truly crappy system, I have no issue running most all games from Carmageddon and TA:Kingdoms onward on my gaming pc.Hell even my 7 year old core 2 quad with the aid of a more modern 560ti still plays pretty much everything from 1995-2014.

I will give you the fact pretty much all multi-platform devs make/have made some shitty ports though Ubisofts just been the worst for it recently. I'll also concede the shit DRM point but point out that's built into consoles also just in a much less intrusive way.

[Raid]

All that and this article it's irrelevant: we're not talking about choosing 30fps or being limited to that due to legacy problem. We're talking about piece of shit companies limiting to 30 FPS to favor consoles so they don't look too bad by comparison.

So if we stay relevant to the discussion, there absolutely is no case for 30 FPS only.

My point is that PC is a shit platform regardless of whether the games are 30 FPS or not. Besides, not like low FPS bothered anyone before.

And yes, there is a case for 30 FPS only. It makes development easier and cheaper.

[Raid]

So you're complaining old games don't always work? guess what Consoles aren't backward compatible so they can't play any older games... seems like even if they require some small screwing around like downloading a user made patch or running in compatibility mode wins over it not even being an option..

I was thinking from more of a consumer point of view. If a game box has the PS3 logo I can fairly safely assume it'll work on mine. A PC game has absolutely no such guarantee, if anything there's a higher chance of it not working than anything else.

 

Games that rely on driver-side optimization? I've not sure I've ever encountered a new AAA game that didn't run on my system but I've never had a truly crappy system, I have no issue running most all games from Carmageddon and TA:Kingdoms onward on my gaming pc.Hell even my 7+ year old core 2 quad with the aid of a more modern 560ti still plays pretty much everything from 1995-2014.

I will give you the fact pretty much all multi-platform devs make/have made some shitty ports though Ubisofts just been the worst for it recently.

Driver-side optimization ends up being mostly an issue from a legacy point of view. A year or so ago NVidia started removing some older optimizations from their drivers resulting in some rather interesting issues some of which could very easily be resolved just by renaming the file due to other games which require the same optimization still having theirs in the drivers.

Carmageddon is a bit of a bad example on your part considering the Windows version doesn't even install natively on 64-bit systems since the installer is a 16-bit executable.

[Lord Baal]

My point is that PC is a shit platform regardless of whether the games are 30 FPS or not. Besides, not like low FPS bothered anyone before.

And yes, there is a case for 30 FPS only. It makes development easier and cheaper.

Lmfao you're joking right? Low FPS has always bothered people... 30-60fps doesn't change the development cost or effort in 95% of games at all... As for pc being a shit platform well I just laugh at you the current consoles are shit platforms I actually like console and PC but I don't like dramatically under powered consoles that struggle to run the games designed for them. You want to know what does cost more money and time? Trying to optimize games for the shitty under powered hardware in the current generation of consoles.  Well the version of carmageddon I have was free on steam because I own carmageddon reincarnation and it installed just fine as did carageddon 2 and every version of worms ever made and every C&C game ever made. I didn't say every older game runs without some screwing around but as I stated consoles can't run any older games at all and I highly doubt there's many consumers buying 15+ year old games unless they played them 15+ years ago on pc and then chances are they know how to use google at very least if not how to make it run anyway.

[Scionyde]

All that and this article it's irrelevant: we're not talking about choosing 30fps or being limited to that due to legacy problem. We're talking about piece of shit companies limiting to 30 FPS to favor consoles so they don't look too bad by comparison.

So if we stay relevant to the discussion, there absolutely is no case for 30 FPS only.

 

If the article is irrelevant to the discussion, why are we having it in a thread dedicated to the article?

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with your points, but the article is in no way advocating that 30 fps locks are the ideal case or should be imposed on all gamers.

[Maslofski]

Digital Foundry, Your argument is invalid.

[ACatWithThumbs]

They're wrong. There is no case for 30 FPS.

There are many cases for 30fps gaming like 4k or very graphical demanding games like Crysis 3.

Of course 60fps is better but like for everything you have to make compromises.

And many games run internal at 30hz like Battlfield 4 which means the half of your images aren't actually happening in the game physics/hit detection.

I'm all for 60fps or better 120fps/144fps but in some cases it just isn't practical.

[ComradeHX]

Every game which relies on specific hardware. For example, Metal Gear Solid 2 which only ran on certain Geforce-series of cards, and absolutely nothing else.

Most Capcom games prior to the last couple years with their amazingly awful keybinding.

Every 3D Win32 game with extremely limited resolution support of either 1024x768 max or 640x480 only (this includes nearly everything released prior to 1998).

Games with dependencies that are old and either completely non-functional or extremely hard to get working on modern computers with massive amounts of conflicts. This includes everything that use strange video codecs or old PhysX.

Games with shit DRM.

Games that rely on driver-side optimization to work (most modern AAA titles).

 

That, along with the previously mentioned hardware incompatibilities covers most PC games from the last 30 or so years. Very few PC games, and especially ports, are well made so it's fairly safe to say that all developers make shit ports and not just Ubisoft. Exceptions do exist yet are so rare that from a consumer point of view it could very well be a reason to stay away from PC gaming entirely.

I already addressed the old games issue. It's irrelevant since current gen potatoes can't play them anyway.

You still didn't cover every developer.

Fun fact: Players actually make their own fixes to resolutions in very old games(such as HOMM3).

[yurihellsing]

Since my i3+R9 270 can do 1080p at 60fps there really is no case for 30fps.

[StingBull]

I don't know why but reading the title, I expected a computer case themed after 30 FPS made by Digital Foundry.

[Raid]

Lmfao you're joking right?

Not at all.

PC is a shit platform for gaming due to a wide variety of issues as outlined above in my previous posts.

It is indeed cheaper and easier to develop a game with a specific locked framerate.

And last but not least, 30 FPS wasn't a problem before for anyone. There weren't massive online discussions when people found out that the battles in Final Fantasy 8 were going to be 15 FPS on PC too, and very few complained about the sub-20 FPS some N64 games had.

[yurihellsing]

Not at all.

PC is a shit platform for gaming due to a wide variety of issues as outlined above in my previous posts.

It is indeed cheaper and easier to develop a game with a specific locked framerate.

And last but not least, 30 FPS wasn't a problem before for anyone. There weren't massive online discussions when people found out that the battles in Final Fantasy 8 were going to be 15 FPS on PC too, and very few complained about the sub-20 FPS some N64 games had.

 

But all those issues are very fixable way more fixable than any issue you could get on a console.

[Derangel]

Not really.

PC is no more difficult to build than Legos once someone learn to RTFM and perhaps ask a simple question on internet.

At this point consoles don't have any less hiccups than PC(assuming user does not go to shady porn sites...etc.). Games crash, patches fail(and they do have to patch to play...day one); all within the norms(or worse) of PC.

 

The act of building a PC (assuming nothing is missing or goes horribly wrong) is easy. Getting all the right parts is a bit more of a challenge for newbies without a lot of help. The real problem comes in when things don't work or when you need to spend a lot of time tweaking every little setting in a game's graphics options menu to make the game run right (thankfully something that is becoming less of a problem due to Nvdia's Gefore Experience and AMD's Raptr). Console games can and do have issues but let's not pretend it is anywhere remotely close to what can be run into on PCs. PCs can have a ton more hiccups, especially when we're talking enthusiast grade hardware and gaming peripherals. Several fixes for games require messing with INI or other types of files that are likely to scare the hell out of people who aren't enthusiasts. That's not even getting into hardware issues and having to deal with several different companies for tech support (or essentially getting told to pound sound by way too many of those companies). When I built my current set up I spent almost two hours messing with the software for the H100i in Windows 8 and trying to look up how to make it actually work correctly. The fix required taking the top off of my case, squeezing my hand around to where the USB cable was plugged into my motherboard (I love this board but the layout is fucking stupid) and checking each entirely generic labeled USB Input Device to find out which one vanished when I unplugged the cable. From there I had to go into RegEdit to disable power saving features. That's only one case of things going wrong but it's not exactly rare to read tech forums and find people asking how to fix various other weird hardware or software issues that always seem to pop up, especially when building a new system. So tell me again how consoles don't have less hiccups than PCs.

[Lord Baal]

Not at all.

PC is a shit platform for gaming due to a wide variety of issues as outlined above in my previous posts.

It is indeed cheaper and easier to develop a game with a specific locked framerate.

And last but not least, 30 FPS wasn't a problem before for anyone. There weren't massive online discussions when people found out that the battles in Final Fantasy 8 were going to be 15 FPS on PC too, and very few complained about the sub-20 FPS some N64 games had.

Your wide variety of issues all related to 15+ year old games.... No there wasn't massive online discussions before the internet was common in house holds wtf? low frame rates have always bothered people who know the difference and using old consoles as examples is pretty much invalid as I was playing many games at 60fps even in the 90's there are some games such as RTS games 30 is perfectly fine more is always nice but in first person shooters 30 is terrible. Final fantasy is probably the worst example you could give being the games combat is essentially the same as pokemons and doesn't require any swift action what so ever and would work fine with 2 frames per second haha

[ComradeHX]

Not at all.

PC is a shit platform for gaming due to a wide variety of issues as outlined above in my previous posts.

It is indeed cheaper and easier to develop a game with a specific locked framerate.

And last but not least, 30 FPS wasn't a problem before for anyone. There weren't massive online discussions when people found out that the battles in Final Fantasy 8 were going to be 15 FPS on PC too, and very few complained about the sub-20 FPS some N64 games had.

What "massive online discussion"?

30fps was never a problem until it's used as excuse for shitty optimization/underpowered hardware(then the idiots started regurgitating the bs that 30fps is cinematic).

It does not change the fact that the standards have moved to 60fps a long time ago.

PC is a great platform because even if companies go bankrupt, players have been able to develop fixes for ages. (most recently FF13)

Console games? Forget it(most people end up having to play the old games through emulators...on PC).

These complications are just minor side effects of having much more/better options on PC... They are not cons of PC. I would take all the "hiccups" of PC gaming over the nothing on console gaming(putting the "con" in consoles).

You are very ignorant, that is all.

 

The act of building a PC (assuming nothing is missing or goes horribly wrong) is easy. Getting all the right parts is a bit more of a challenge for newbies without a lot of help. The real problem comes in when things don't work or when you need to spend a lot of time tweaking every little setting in a game's graphics options menu to make the game run right (thankfully something that is becoming less of a problem due to Nvdia's Gefore Experience and AMD's Raptr). Console games can and do have issues but let's not pretend it is anywhere remotely close to what can be run into on PCs. PCs can have a ton more hiccups, especially when we're talking enthusiast grade hardware and gaming peripherals. Several fixes for games require messing with INI or other types of files that are likely to scare the hell out of people who aren't enthusiasts. That's not even getting into hardware issues and having to deal with several different companies for tech support (or essentially getting told to pound sound by way too many of those companies). When I built my current set up I spent almost two hours messing with the software for the H100i in Windows 8 and trying to look up how to make it actually work correctly. The fix required taking the top off of my case, squeezing my hand around to where the USB cable was plugged into my motherboard (I love this board but the layout is fucking stupid) and checking each entirely generic labeled USB Input Device to find out which one vanished when I unplugged the cable. From there I had to go into RegEdit to disable power saving features. That's only one case of things going wrong but it's not exactly rare to read tech forums and find people asking how to fix various other weird hardware or software issues that always seem to pop up, especially when building a new system. So tell me again how consoles don't have less hiccups than PCs.

Post one post on reddit /r/buildapc and you have all the "right part" you need.

I don't spend a ton of time tweaking settings... majority of games get is right automatically(or click on ultra preset), with very few exceptions.

You are also mistaken in thinking being able to tweak settings is a problem...there are Xbone/PS4/Low/Medium/High/Ultra presets...being able to further tweak them is an ADVANTAGE to PC.

Face it, if you can find this forum and register an account; you can deal with any "problem" with PC.

 

but it's not exactly rare to read tech forums and find people asking how to fix various other weird hardware or software issues that always seem to pop up, especially when building a new system. So tell me again how consoles don't have less hiccups than PCs.

That's why tech forums exist...

There are also people asking how to...everything on PS4...etc.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/playstation-4/PS4_Problems

[Lord Baal]

The act of building a PC (assuming nothing is missing or goes horribly wrong) is easy. Getting all the right parts is a bit more of a challenge for newbies without a lot of help. The real problem comes in when things don't work or when you need to spend a lot of time tweaking every little setting in a game's graphics options menu to make the game run right (thankfully something that is becoming less of a problem due to Nvdia's Gefore Experience and AMD's Raptr). Console games can and do have issues but let's not pretend it is anywhere remotely close to what can be run into on PCs. PCs can have a ton more hiccups, especially when we're talking enthusiast grade hardware and gaming peripherals. Several fixes for games require messing with INI or other types of files that are likely to scare the hell out of people who aren't enthusiasts. That's not even getting into hardware issues and having to deal with several different companies for tech support (or essentially getting told to pound sound by way too many of those companies). When I built my current set up I spent almost two hours messing with the software for the H100i in Windows 8 and trying to look up how to make it actually work correctly. The fix required taking the top off of my case, squeezing my hand around to where the USB cable was plugged into my motherboard (I love this board but the layout is fucking stupid) and checking each entirely generic labeled USB Input Device to find out which one vanished when I unplugged the cable. From there I had to go into RegEdit to disable power saving features. That's only one case of things going wrong but it's not exactly rare to read tech forums and find people asking how to fix various other weird hardware or software issues that always seem to pop up, especially when building a new system. So tell me again how consoles don't have less hiccups than PCs.

If building a PC is too hard for some people they don't have to build a PC you can buy one or have anyone of the thousands of places that build custom gaming pc's do it for you.. lots of stores will build it and test it for you for as little as $50 ontop of hardware costs.. I don't see people trying to build their consoles so why always assume you have to build your own pc ffs.