I dislike the emphasis on1080p and 60fps

@maginnovision: That is a interesting story to hear. I never would think that playing the same game on PC and on Xbone would have such a dramatic effect on your gameplay. Being as I've never had my own gaming computer I'm not used to all the glorys of PC gaming.

not with you on this OP

1080p has been a reasonable baseline for years for new games that output to TV and Monitors, given how many of TVs and Monitors that are this and how long they have been. This will change over time. I think valuing picture quality always been true, although gamers didn't always talk about in these terms or use this particular baseline.

60fps is just more pleasing to the eye, that's a constant function of biology. There certainly are games that are just fine at 30 unlike what some zealots will say. There are plenty that are definitely worse off at 30fps though. However I can't think of any, assuming they are properly optimized, that aren't better at 60. It's just frustrating to play any non 2d game that requires high speed movement or precise timing with a choppy framerate.

Like others have said stability of framerate is most important, then fps, then resolution in my mind.

To me I care about a game feeling like a complete package more than this sort of stuff. Ex: original binding of Isaac looks and performs like shit, but I still love it.

I can still appreciate a well optimized game though. EX: re7 looks awesome and runs at a solid 60fps, even on the base ps4. That's definitely commendable. What really matters though is that it's an awesome game and feels cohesive.

Since this ain't my first rodeo when it comes to topics about frame rates and resolutions, I'm just going to list a few things that may or may not get the more pretentious people's panties in a bunch:

• I played Witcher 3 for 60 hours on a 750 Ti. No complaints about only getting 30 frames.
• Hyper Light Drifter played fine at 30.
• I don't use DSfix when playing Dark Souls 1 on PC because telling the game to run at 60 messes up the UI (or at least I'm too dumb to use mods outside of Nexus Mod Manager).
• Like most racing games, Criterion's Need for Speed Most Wanted played fine at 30.
• And DOOM plays fine at 30.

I rather play 1080p/60 on my high end PC than what the consoles use. Like how the quantum break was 720p/30 with dips to 23fps or how RE7 dips to 45fps on xbox. Playing PC versions of 360 games look fantastic at 1080p/60, than the ugly sub 720p at 18 to 28fps with PS2 level textures on larger games because of its 512mb ram limit.

Heck the crash physics on burnout paradise is 30fps & 60fps while racing on consoles. While PC is 60fps at all times.

Video games need to perform to the standards of the player for maximum enjoyment.

Performance is a necessary discussion. I will never understand complaints like this.

Personally I would rather have a stable framerate rather than focusing on getting a high frame-rate. A lot of games that don't look great framerate wise tend to have it dip way too often and it is distracting. Also, having a good stable 60fps framerate can be part of your art direction based on a type of game you want to make, fast paced action games with fluid motion thanks to higher frame-rates will have more style than those that can't hit a stable framerate.

60fps should be standard. A smooth running game will always look better.

To all the people saying 30fps is fine. I agree. I've played plenty of games at 30. But 60fps is better. If I had the option to make every 30fps game I played to run at 60 I would have done so without the slightest hesitation. Yes I'm content with 30 but if there's the chance to upgrade to 60 then they should take it.

I couldn't care less about resolution though since that doesn't affect gameplay.

When people talk about their performance, it's not always to 'boast that their gaming apparatus is the best thing ever', but it can also be useful information to other people. If i read that the 1070 can run the newest games at 1080p / 60 i can make an informed decision if i want to buy that one or spend more for the 1080. And if i have a 1070 but don't get the games to run at a stable 60, i might want to do some research about which settings i should change to reach that 60 fps.

You often see certain standards move along fast , while other specs have more staying power. Hyperthreading used to be the thing that you buy an i7 for, but since a lot of games didn't utilize that, many people went for a i5 instead. Buying more than 16 gb of ram is solely to future proof. Seeing how long a certain videocard stays relevant to run the newest games is therefore nice to read for me.

If given a choice, I'd prefer 30fps. Sometimes I get motion sick from games running at 60fps, most recently Doom. Even the difference going between Gears 4 single player and multiplayer is jarring for me.

I'm not an old man. I promise.

I think it's about standards. It's 2017. Shouldn't games be able to run at a TV's native resolution and refresh rate? How well a game run directly affects gameplay.

If you don't care about those things, then great, but surely it can't be that hard to understand why people want their games to run well. It's okay if you think things "play fine" at 30fps, but wanting better isn't a bad thing.

I don't dislike the emphasis on it per se. I dislike it when anything less is "unbearable to play." Like gimme a break.

I enjoy plenty of games that run under 60fps. But they would all have been better if they hadn't. There really is no downside. Games should run at 60.

I've read a lot of responses and I will say some of them make a good point. It's not so much I dislike the way companies talk about because it's true how important it is to know what a game runs at. What I'm more annoyed with is the people who are rude about how they go about saying they won't play a game that runs under 60fps. Once again that is their choice and they can do whatever they want and play whatever they want I just disagree with that. I'm not even saying that games shouldn't run at 60fps at all. If it can do it properly then by all means go for it.

I also understand that there is a difference between a game running 60fps and 30fps. I'm the type of person that can play a game in both of those frame rates and not have a problem with it after the adjustment of course. Some good responses none the less from most around.

@jinoru: I don't have a 4k tv so personally I haven't seen a difference in that yet. Once I do I feel it won't matter to me that much and while it will look nice I won't live or die by 4k.

Anything less than 3440x1440 @100FPS looks terrible on my monitor. It feels sluggish and looks choppy.

Once you've played at a certain FPS mark, anything less is very noticeable.

I liked that the 3ds existed with it's low-ass resolution as a cost cutting measure for making sure we got all those niche, inexpensive games the 3ds was so good at providing. That and playing Virtual Console games at their native resolution and having it be reasonably large was such an underappreciated thing. DS and Game Boy games looked amazing on my XL.

I dislike the emphasis on 4K recently. Totally unnecessary and not even a discernible difference on a sub-40'' screen from 10' away. Targeting that high resolution sacrifices graphics quality and framerate.

To me, the difference between 1080p and 720p (even 900p) is very clear on a decently sized 1080p display, and the difference between 30 and 60 fps is HUGE. Getting accustomed to 60 fps then going back to 30 fps actually gives me a headache and hurts my eyes now.

Graphic capabilities to run a game at 1080p with 60 fps doesn't matter to me. Gameplay is what matters not graphics for myself, just cause it looks and runs very pretty at those standards doesn't mean anything or at least it shouldn't.

It's 2017, who would gloat about running a game at 1080p/60fps?

Um, a sub 40 inch screen in the living room is a rarity these days, and who's sitting 10 feet away from their TV?

@hunkulese: Is it? Maybe so, I haven't been in the TV market for a long time (pretty much all PCs and monitors for me these days). I thought 42 in. was still kind of the standard. But 10 feet seems like a pretty normal living room distance to me. Steam Big Picture Mode was originally called "10 foot interface" I believe. It's not very far either, just the length of two short 5 foot people laying in a line. But my point stands. 4K in the living room, at viewing distances much further than a monitor, seems unnecessary. Especially for games, though, because like I said, to target that resolution requires sacrifices in graphics and frame rate.

@d-man123: Wasn't even the glory of PC gaming it was that I got used to 60FPS and it was almost impossible to play after that. I played more by myself, on pc, than I did with him on xbone. Other things like bloodborne are perfectly fine at 30FPS. I'd love to be ABLE to play at 60FPS but it didn't affect my ability to play it at all. Same with things like Dark souls 2. I played first on PS3, then PC. It doesn't bother me either way but then slower games shouldn't be much different at 30 vs 60 in terms of gameplay.

@canadianmath: pish posh, anything less that 6880x2880 @2000fps looks like a bag of slimy dicks on *my* exclusive and very expensive PC monitor.

I now cannot play your peasant games for they are merely 100fps and do not justify my purchase of a ridiculously extravagant visual display unit.

@insectecutor: Extravagant is relative.

Does the game look decent (as in not hurting my eyes) and play well? You can be 120p and 10 fps if you can manage it well enough (though I doubt that would be possible). I don't care about numbers. Give me a steady framerate and good enough visuals and if your game plays well, then fine. We managed w/o 1080p most of our gaming lives, we can do it.

Maybe it's just me playing most games at 60 now, but I do notice that games running below 60 are noticeably slower feeling. Not horrible, but a noticeable difference in feel. It's not too bad in single player games, but anything action-oriented and especially anything online, anything less than 60 just kind of feels bad.

I care because playing on the PC with mouse support it feels good to control the game when response is smooth. That is why pc gamers are starting to use more 120 or 144hz monitors to get an even smoother experience. On a console or when playing with a controller anyway, 30fps is okay in single player scenarios but not with anything that requires precision or is competitive. I transferred to pc because 60fps or more just feels so smooth. If consoles had a way to reduce resolution for a better framerate i would do that with most games that arent allready 60fps. It's all about the feeling.

@jones24: What does playing with a controller have to do with framerate? Higher framerate plays infinitely better with a controller too, it's not exclusive to KB/M.

@zevvion: Yes it does, maybe my point didn't come across the best way. Obviously it is better when played with a controller too, but if i have to give up good framerate, i rather do that when playing with a controller.

Because people always want something to latch onto and be bitchy about. "I haven't played this game yet, but I want to hate it so...yeah...Imma find something to bitch about and call your game trash."

Lower resolutions allow lower budget studios to make more interesting stuff while 60 fps is just far too beneficial to be cut from most of the games I play.

If we weren't more-or-less forced into 1080p imagine how much better the average pixel art game's animations would be? Remember when games like Street Fighter III and Mark of the Wolves existed? They kinda can't in the world of HD, not that animation is the only thing affected.

Ideally monitors wouldn't be so terrible at changing display resolutions and a wider range could be supported.

@lv4monk said:

The quality of "pixel art" (hate that term) games' animation mostly depends on how many frames the studio making the game draws. The reason games like SFIII and Garou had gorgeous 2D animation is because Capcom and SnK actually drew an obscene number of frames for them. It's an expensive and time consuming process. Which is why you don't see games like that anymore and most fighters are going 3D because you can fluidly animate a 3D model without drawing every single frame for it. The same is possible with 2D - like in Guacamelee - but it's not quite the same as the frame-by-frame, drawn animation of Third Strike and Mark of the Wolves. Higher resolutions being more standard now than then has nothing to do with those types of games being rare. They still exist anyway. Look at Owlboy.

It isn't lower resolutions exactly that enable low-budget studios to do interesting stuff. The aforementioned Owlboy runs perfectly fine at 1080p. It looks "pixely" because the sprites and backgrounds are drawn that way. You draw a sprite that's something like 32x32 pixels, and then blow it up to 256x256. Or a background that's 480x360 and blow it up to 1920x1080. That gives it the "pixel art" look, but those squares aren't in reality the pixels that are being drawn on your screen at whatever resolution the game is running at. Unless you run it at native resolution, but then due to the pixel density of your average monitor today, the game window is tiny - or you can see the entire game on one screen. Emulate a GBA game and run it native resolution (1:1 pixel for pixel) on a 4k monitor and the window is the size of a dime.

Frame rates are more important to me than resolution is. Before I upgraded my graphics card I was fine playing at 720p if that's what it took to get 60fps.

The DmC reboot was a prime example of this. I found the 360/PS3 versions unplayable, the controls felt so unresponsive at 30fps. I played it on PC and the frame rate mattered a great deal.

I am perfectly fine with 720 and 30 fps. In fact, I only have issues with framerate when it can jump wildly.

People are obsessed about it because it matters. Its honestly a shame that consoles can't consistently do 60fps 1080p yet. Frame rate has way more to do with a game than how it looks. Frame rate affects input lag which is a massive deal for a lot of game genres.

I will take stable 60 frames over graphics every single time.

I think a large part of it has to do with 1080/60 being the minimum performance threshold on PC for over a decade now. Sony and MS then marketed the current gen consoles on the promise of 1080/60 finally being consistent on consoles, but both have failed to actually deliver that the majority of the time. I would gladly sacrifice some image quality to hit the native resolution/refresh rate of my display any day of the week.

Higher frame rates are a lot nicer feeling when using a mouse, especially if the sensitivity is turned up. Native resolution looks nicer since I sit so much closer to my monitor than I would a TV. In fact, I would say that 1080 looks a little jaggedy with how close I am to the monitor. That, however; is a something my budget can't solve at the moment.

While resolution may not be the most limiting factor when it comes to lower budget studios creating higher quality pixel art (sorry, too useful a term) it's hard to believe an artist wouldn't have a significantly easier time developing so many frames of animation for 200-ish by 200-ish resolutions compared to modern displays. Past 2d art you still have to make a 3d game that looks and runs well being pumped out at such high resolutions, something that to varying degrees would also be easier and cheaper at lower resolutions.

Depending on the game it may not actually be the choke point but I still pine for an industry that allowed games to be made at lower resolutions (ala SFIII and Garou or basically anything on 3ds) instead of being forced into looking reasonable at something like 4k. Uprez a gamecube game, for instance, and it rarely doesn't look barren and lacking in detail.

Going for a pixelated look is one thing but hoping for anything else requires either more detail or lower monitor resolution. Adding in more detail with methodically placed pixels isn't simply a matter of extending the points between polygons. I look at something like the hand held Castlevania games and can only imagine how much more work that would've taken if the sprites in question had to be high resolution. I can't imagine those games would exist at those resolutions and if they did I can guess how much less crisp and sharp they'd look.

@lv4monk: If it were purely a matter of budget or ease of creation, poor studios would be better served wiring up and animating 3D models or vector graphics than they would be animating "pixel art" (argh!) Even if their assets were low-res, they'd still have to draw every single frame of animation. Making "pixel art" (argh!) look good is arguably just as hard - or even harder than - making high resolution art look good.

I'm not sure what you're on about lowering monitor resolution. Yeah, you could make a 15 inch monitor with 256x240 resolution and play NES games on it without upscaling, but then you've got a monitor that's not much good for anything but NES games, and you could have gotten identical results by just upscaling the game on a regular monitor.

Pixel art being too difficult and expensive for so many devs at this point and monitors not ably supporting lower resolutions is kinda my whole point. The key here is your idea of "identical results". If it really comes down to that then we'll have to agree to disagree that the results are anywhere close to identical. I keep older handhelds and older monitors around because the difference between that and emulating/running things at high resolution is so far apart.

On a smaller display I could do 900p 60fps. I will gladly lower resolution for smoother gameplay.

@lv4monk: An NES game is always 256x240 regardless of what monitor you play it on. There's very little difference between upscaling it on a 1024x768, 15 inch monitor and upscaling it on a 4K, 23 inch monitor. The same goes for any low-resolution game. Unless you're using filters when you upscale or by "old monitor" you mean a CRT or something. I don't know of anyone nostalgic for old, LCD screens.

oh for sure, the dialogue around 60fps can get really noxious at times. Like that Steam curator "frame police", I find the information it strives to provide pretty valuable. But they don't need to be crappy and hyperbolic about it.

That being said, I think 60fps should always be the standard and it's fair to note when a game doesn't achieve that.

I'm almost exclusively a PC gamer and as long as the FPS doesn't dip below 25-30 or so, I am good. I can't tell the difference between 30fps and 60 for the life of me.

While I think it's perfectly fine to request and expect most games to hit the 1080p/60fps target, I do think there's an unhealthy obssession with it and people are occasionally unfair to some games because of it.

So i'm somewhere in the middle, I guess.

Shades of gray, yadda yadda.

Can you elaborate on what your friend meant by The Witcher running at the same resolution and framerate? That's categorically untrue, unless I'm misunderstanding what you wrote.

@ezekiel said:

There should be no difference in verticality if both displays are rendering at the same vertical FoV, which they ideally should be.

As for pillarboxing, I occasionally play some older games that don't support widescreen properly pillarboxed on my monitor (with a custom 1440x1080 resolution to avoid ugly interpolation) when I don't feel like hooking up my old CRT instead, but it is absolutely very noticeable and not ideal. I could totally understand someone with a lower tolerance not buying games that they can't play without black bars, whatever the reason for the lack of support might be. The biggest deterrent from me ever buying a 21:9, personally, is not just that I'm quite happy with 16:9, but the fact that support is limited and I would have to play with pillarboxing fairly regularly.

For the record, the fact that I was forced to initially play TLoU on PS3, complete with a poor frame-rate and muddy textures, pretty much ruined the experience for me.

1080p/60 is, frankly speaking, the bare minimum we should be expecting at this point. We're already moving into the 4k era and somehow sub-30/720p is still the console standard.