All you're doing is maintaining performance consistency. Because your framerate never goes over 30 fps (and assuming never below) you get a consistent visual experience throughout the game. Personally I love it when I get bursts of 60 fps in areas where my PC can handle it, it lets me know what I'm missing. I still remember the first time I saw 60fps rendering, playing GLquake at a buddy's house. My poor VooDoo system could only do so much, and I was totally used to it. He got a brand new 400mhz PII with VooDoo2 card and kablamo, I was thrown off-guard. He even laughed at me wondering what the hell I was marveling at, since this was standard for him. I couldnt explain it, I just kept saying "it's so smoooooth!!" That, and I fragged like I had never fragged before.
![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
The Case For 30fps PC Gaming
- Thread starter HardOCP News
- Start date
All you're doing is maintaining performance consistency. Because your framerate never goes over 30 fps (and assuming never below) you get a consistent visual experience throughout the game. Personally I love it when I get bursts of 60 fps in areas where my PC can handle it, it lets me know what I'm missing. I still remember the first time I saw 60fps rendering, playing GLquake at a buddy's house. My poor VooDoo system could only do so much, and I was totally used to it. He got a brand new 400mhz PII with VooDoo2 card and kablamo, I was thrown off-guard. He even laughed at me wondering what the hell I was marveling at, since this was standard for him. I couldnt explain it, I just kept saying "it's so smoooooth!!" That, and I fragged like I had never fragged before.
misterbobby
2[H]4U
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The cpu is a joke in those consoles. Heck by the end of next year there will be cpus just as fast in some tablets and phones.
cp_kirkley
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The difference for me between 30 and 60 is just as large as the difference between 120 and 60.
If I cant game at at least 80fps I turn down whatever needed to get to that magical number. Everything else is (after years of playing this way) just jarring.
lollerwaffle
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It's all in what you're used to. If all PC games clipped at 30fps we would be none the wiser. But they don't, so we are wiser, and 30 doesn't cut it. No developer is going to dial back on the visual experience of 60fps with some shit "cinematic" and "consistency" argument, it's bad.
It is PARTICULARLY bad when the game can not even maintain 30fps consistently. It slows down lower than that on very powerful hardware at times, so that argument goes out the window.
It is PARTICULARLY bad when the game can not even maintain 30fps consistently. It slows down lower than that on very powerful hardware at times, so that argument goes out the window.
Red Falcon
[H]ard DCOTM December 2023
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I saw me a mermaid once but I sure I heck haven't seen no phantom russian submarine at 30fps.
Skipper007
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The author's whose piece kicked this whole thread off is on the record as preferring not to use the 30fps lock in Last of Us because the game hits 60fps most of the time:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-vs-the-last-of-us-remastered
As opposed to a scenario where the fluctuation in frame rate is more frequent and noticeable.
GearChoices
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It's beginning guys... Don't want 30fps locked games? Don't buy games like DA:I until AFTER they fix the cut-scene 30fps lock (because that is just a test to get you to "accept" it a little bit), and certainly don't buy any games that lock everything at 30fps. As soon as you say "well just this once:"
http://youtu.be/np9tBI7_nq8?t=13s
http://youtu.be/np9tBI7_nq8?t=13s
misterbobby
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Then you lower the settings or upgrade if you play on pc. That video shows just how crappy looking 30 frames per second locked is. And of course it's worse in person especially with a mouse.
Better boycott EA, Splash Damage, and Bethesda then. So far Ubisoft hasn't locked any that I'm aware of, though it was read they're getting pressure from the console makers to do so on the PC.
MrCaffeineX
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LA Noire had a 30FPS cap due to the type of motion capture they did for the game, if I recall correctly. There was no way to get past it without breaking the game. I didn't get very far in it because the whole experience felt like it was in slow-motion.
The current generation consoles may be lacking in raw CPU horsepower, but they do have 8 cores available to work with, as far as I know. If game code is optimized to run on multiple threads, the CPU bottleneck should be mitigated. This should be more scalable than on a PC because of the limited OS overhead and the ability to interact directly with the hardware.
If companies are not getting their code to work right and making a game playable at 60 FPS and 1080p on the XBox One or PS4, they're simply not doing it right. Consoles have always had lower hardware specs than what is available in the PC world, but even a majority of PC gamers don't have hardware better than the consoles. Just look at the Steam hardware details and extrapolate from there for reference. Somehow these people are getting playable experiences with an unoptimized platform.
Perhaps we are just experiencing the learning curve quotient combined with a ton of marketing hype, deadline pressure and unrealistic development goals across the gaming industry?
Well that could explain why some games can't hit 60fps, but I don't think any of that explains why some games get forcibly LOCKED DOWN at 30fps.
I think it's simple, why all the hyperbole?!?
1. The PS4 and Xbox One are not capable of rendering modern games at 1080p @ 60FPS.
2. Devs/Publishers want the additional revenue from PC, not just from the next gen consoles.
3. Devs/Publishers want to spend as little money as possible on "porting" for PC users.
4. Result of 1+2+3 = Shitty PC playability and experience.
5. FIX: Don't buy these shitty PC ports unless it comes out with good compatibility and support, and stop pre-ordering this garbage for fucks sakes!
1. The PS4 and Xbox One are not capable of rendering modern games at 1080p @ 60FPS.
2. Devs/Publishers want the additional revenue from PC, not just from the next gen consoles.
3. Devs/Publishers want to spend as little money as possible on "porting" for PC users.
4. Result of 1+2+3 = Shitty PC playability and experience.
5. FIX: Don't buy these shitty PC ports unless it comes out with good compatibility and support, and stop pre-ordering this garbage for fucks sakes!
I think it's simple, why all the hyperbole?!?
1. The PS4 and Xbox One are not capable of rendering modern games at 1080p @ 60FPS.
2. Devs/Publishers want the additional revenue from PC, not just from the next gen consoles.
3. Devs/Publishers want to spend as little money as possible on "porting" for PC users.
4. Result of 1+2+3 = Shitty PC playability and experience.
5. FIX: Don't buy these shitty PC ports unless it comes out with good compatibility and support, and stop pre-ordering this garbage for fucks sakes!
Except it isn't that simple, because we all know you are going to buy it anyway no matter how much it pisses you off, because no sales of AAA PC games that are ported from consoles results in the alternative that there will be NO more PC game releases of AAA titles at all. 99% of the game development companies are not going to spend the big bucks to service the smallest part of the video game market. They will pay a small amount to port to PC and pickup some bonus sales though. Until PC is the biggest part of the gaming market instead of a niche market to pickup bonus sales this is the way it is going to be with only a few exceptions of indie devs.
MrCaffeineX
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I think it's simple, why all the hyperbole?!?
1. The PS4 and Xbox One are not capable of rendering modern games at 1080p @ 60FPS.
2. Devs/Publishers want the additional revenue from PC, not just from the next gen consoles.
3. Devs/Publishers want to spend as little money as possible on "porting" for PC users.
4. Result of 1+2+3 = Shitty PC playability and experience.
5. FIX: Don't buy these shitty PC ports unless it comes out with good compatibility and support, and stop pre-ordering this garbage for fucks sakes!
Is your first point true? I have been under the impression that it has more to do with not optimizing for anything more than 30FPS because that shortens development time and makes the big money guys happy in the short-term, at the expense of long-term growth, sustainability, brand name recognition, etc.
GearChoices
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LOL, easily manipulated.
Maybe so, but also factually correct. Here are the facts:
1. There will be no boycott on PC games due to bugs. You are living in a revenge-fantasy scenario if you think so. People will buy and they will pound their fists and they will bitch and say they will do so, but they will not. This has been ongoing for almost a decade or more, it will not change tomorrow.
2. A study just released says that in 2014 37% are PC Gamers. That certainly isn't the majority of people, but wait, you say "That's a lot of people, enough to spend the money to do it right". Except the study includes the huge amount of people that play candy crush and bejeweled as "PC Gamers". What do you think is the amount of people that play a game like Dragon Age Inquisition? 25% max on all platforms? How many of those you think play it on PC or even have a PC that can run it? Niche market.
Face it, the last major PC game that did it right and pushed the medium forward was Crysis. We're still talking about that game. It was released 7 years ago. Seven years is a lifetime in the industry. Unless people stop buying consoles in favor of PCs, we get their leftovers or we get nothing at all. You can argue with me all you want, but you are living in a fantasy land of what you want to be versus the reality of what actually is.
No argument, I agree entirely. The MW2 and L4D2 "boycott" said everything in my opinion.
I don't get your point. That study says 37% of the US population plays games on their PC. That same study doesn't give a figure for consoles, so what are you comparing to?
I think you could argue Star Citizen is pushing things forward. A PC exclusive on a massive scale that is pushing the limits of graphics and gameplay. Also while not an exclusive, Battlefield 3 was also way ahead of consoles in terms of graphics, was the lead skew, and got a lot of attention for it.
Well from EA, Ubisoft, and Activision, yeah. We'll just have to make do with the hundreds of other games we get each year.
GearChoices
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1. When did I say I thought anyone would actually follow the advice of myself and all the others that say that consumers (gamers or otherwise) should act responsibly? I don't think anyone will listen. That does not change the fact that people SHOULD listen, which is what your post seemed to argue against. And just because other people don't listen, doesn't make it a good idea for me or other responsible consumers to change into irresponsible consumers and waste our money too. I sure as heck do not buy the various rip-off games. I wait till they are either 100% complete and/or until they are at a price that is worth their level of quality. When I can afford it (not at this time) I buy games at full price that were made in high quality and with good intentions towards customers - unfortunately those games are extremely rare.
2. The cost to port a game properly to PC is minimal compared to the profits they gain from PC sales, even as a minority. The only reason they do not properly port is because they want to make EVEN MORE money, on top of the already-large profits from a PC port. Proper PC ports make plenty of profit to be a worthwhile investment if they were forced into a choice of poor sales or investing in a proper PC port. No, they would not make as much as they would on a console sale (that is the whole point), but they would make enough for it to be worthwhile. But why should they make a proper PC port when most (not me) PC gamers act exactly as you say?
That was the point of my original post, "it's beginning." Every single time the big publishers/developers in the gaming industry decides "hey, we want a higher (even after COL adjustments) compensation for our already ultra-paid top executives," which in turn means, "hey, we need more profits for our already hugely profitable company," they think of one more way to reduce costs at the expense of the quality of their games and/or customer service.
They start out small with the new idea, gradually put out propaganda about it via marketing and PR, slowly implement it a little more in each new game. And every time the propaganda is that somehow even though nothing has changed since before they started doing it, it is "necessary or else they will go out of business and/or be forced to stop selling PC games." Which is obviously pure BS, yet people eat it up, and your original post appeared to be supporting their BS. If all you meant was that no significant amount of people would exercise responsible consumerism in the face of that BS, I absolutely agree. PC gamers are no different than other consumers, and unfortunately overwhelmingly vast majority of consumers are irresponsible.
Can you come up with a reliable source on this? I'm not talking about PC revenue. You said they made profits. I just want to see how profitable all these PC games are.
GearChoices
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To be able to make that statement, I do not need a source with specific data - I can simply rely on history. But yes, I understand wanting to see one just for specific information and/or curiosity. Unfortunately, I do not have one.
As for history, PC games and developers were doing fine before bad-console ports. That is indicated by them having money to continue develop new games. If they were not making enough money, they would have gone out of business quickly. They just were not making AS MUCH money as they do now with console-to-PC ports.
Maybe you're right, that there will be no mass boycott, but we can hurt their release numbers followed up with information on WHY we didn't buy it that can lead to changes. Your millennial-esque defeatism is why YOU will never change it, but instead rely on those of us with the balls to see it through.
You speak in absolutes as if it will always be the way it is today. In the early 90's PC reigned supreme for FPS games, now CoD has shifted that to consoles (why oh why with a gamepad to aim?!?
), and it may indeed swing back again as people leave consoles behind in favor of their phone, tablet or HTPC/Desktop. While we "power gamers" may be rare in terms of the overall population, we still are a large enough community that we still have an entire arm of the computer industry still catering to us in terms of hardware, so we aren't as small as you make us out to be.Take your cowardly defeatism and shove it bro, I'm not going to back down and eat shit because you're willing to cave.
CreepyUncleGoogle
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Yup, pretty much PC gaming is a small niche in the world of video games where console games make like the biggest potential profits in sales. I think it's always been that way (or at least for a really long time) so now that porting is super easy, PC gamers get ported games which is most cost effective. Publishers aren't gonna spend a lot of time on PC gaming because they can't get a standard experience since there's a big diversity of computers out there that are of different ages, have different operating system versions, hardware, drivers and whatever else. Atop that, the PC gaming types have been proving themselves really hard to please with all their yelling and making death threats to each other, developers, and women. It's no surprise that a lot of companies don't want to stake their reputation on having that kind of audience. And yeah, for all their yelling, PC gamers still do buy games within their small niche so why change the status quo? Even EA didn't get at all hurt by the golden poo award thing they kept winning. They played a little like lip service kinda stuff to the world and everyone forgot in time to complain about Ubisoft instead.
Uh huh. Fight the power. I guess I'll have to wait and see if you're right. But currently I'm right, and I think I'll be waiting a very long time for you to be right.
I probably shouldn't have quoted you specifically, it is just the thread current was flowing in the direction that there was going to be an uprising and all of this is going to change and it seems people just needed a reality check. I should say that my opinion is that this isn't the way it should be, and I really miss the golden days of PC gaming in the 80s and 90s. But nobody can honestly look around and be completely honest with themselves and think that is where it is headed back to. Consoles are the domain of the majority of hardcore gamers and mobile is the domain of everyone else. Desktops aren't going anywhere anytime soon but they will become more and more of a niche as time rolls on. All my friends that were hardcore PC gamers in the late 80s through the early 00s are now console gamers. All the young kids in my family and theirs are console and mobile gamers. I'm the only one left carrying the torch.
GearChoices
Gawd
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Well I am not 100% sure *exactly* what either you or mavrocket are arguing, but regardless, whether you disagree or agree with this:
When someone does something on principle, it does not matter what the result is. If his/her principle is right, it does not matter if what he/she does actually changes anything, the person is still in the right, and definitely a greater person than those that never do anything on principle. Now if the person truly expects something to result that is clearly not going to happen, well then you could say the person is an idiot, but at least they are not an unprincipled idiot, which there are far too many.
GearChoices
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I completely agree with you there. Eventually, the only decent PC games are going to be coming from PC-centric indie developers (both large and small), with a continuing cycle of them eventually being bought out and cannibalized, while the mainstream companies keep on doing exactly the same and getting worse.
It sounds like you're speaking from your immediate experience around you, but you have to look at the larger trends. I completely agree there's not going to be a big uprising like you stated, but PC is absolutely gaining ground and has been for at least 5 years. Do you honestly thing PC gaming is in a worse state than it was 5 years ago? If you look at a company like Ubisoft, PC has a higher percentage of their sales than it ever has, and has been increasing each year. It will cap off eventually, but it's looking bright. Combine that with decent indie games all over the damn place, independent crowdsourced funding, and how companies are only JUST starting to make serious efforts towards moving the PC into the living room for gaming, PC gaming looks like an explosion unfolding in slow motion. Seriously, look at any stats of PC gaming compared to 5 years ago and look at them year over year. It's just getting better and better.
Now you might think well this is just a temporary fluke, but consoles have a more questionable lifespan for multiple reasons. They had a lackluster launch compared to previous generations, they were underpowered from the beginning, the advantages of consoles (offline play, not needing patches, simply putting the game in and starting) are diminishing, they may have more competition from living room PCs, and most of all, the stakes are much higher financially. A triple A title nowadays costs far more resources nowadays than it used to, yet the price point on games hasn't moved.
As for your own personal experiences, that's anecdotal. I know about a dozen people who used to be console gamers, but have more or less moved to PC and haven't bought the new consoles primarily because gaming was so much cheaper on PC. I mean hell, the latest steam sale had over 5000 games on sale.
Now is PC in the same place it was in the 80s and 90s? Absolutely not, but the whole world has kind of changed since then. While in retail, PC has been anemic a long time (in the USA at least). In digital, it's turning into a behemoth.
Well unless you have figures that show people are switching from consoles to PCs for gaming your experience is anecdotal as well. The sky is falling, death of the PC is way overstated but PC sales *are* declining, not increasing. And while I agree the newest generation of consoles have lackluster hardware, I don't see how you can say their launch was anything but a success. PS4 sales alone eclipsed all previous PS console launches. Unless you have some sales figures that show otherwise, all figures I see point to the fact that consoles still greatly eclipse PC gaming machines and the consoles are still running with that ball to touchdown.
/dev/null
[H]F Junkie
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I turn off vsync even though I can easily hit 60fps on pretty much any fps shooter on my R9 290 (1680x1050) because the input lag is unbearable. 15+ms...
I play all my games with vsync on, I absolutely hate screen tearing. I also enable triple buffering and haven't had a problem with input lag. But I'm not as sensitive to input lag like screen tearing.
MrCaffeineX
[H]ard|Gawd
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Forbes ran several articles earlier in the year describing a trend for increased PC gaming revenues. Here are several:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...how-long-should-console-makers-keep-fighting/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2014/07/14/the-console-war-is-over-the-pc-already-won/
Key points from each:
Yes, these figures include PC-like devices, such as tablets. Also, the numbers include revenues for games that those filthy casuals enjoy.
Unfortunately, despite these proclamations from the wizards of smart at Forbes and other news outlests, the PC side of Triple A title sales are disappointingly small, as evidenced here:
http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=battlefield+4
Selling over a million units worldwide for PCs will definitely produce noticeable revenues, but compared to over 10 million units worldwide for consoles...Combine these figures with a business mentality that stresses profit at all costs and the roughly 9% of sales that are from PC users looks like an unfavorable investment to the bean-counters.
Unless companies are willing to accept a slightly lower profitability in exchange for the good will of their target markets, this will continue to be the case. The focus of a lot of companies has not been on producing a quality product, but rather on saturating, then expanding or reinventing the market.
This philosophy was pushed heavily at Radio Shack about a decade ago and look where it has gotten them. It appears that Michael Dell also figured out that an intense focus on the bottom line wasn't doing his former company any good, so he maneuvered to buy it back. Whether it was all showboating remains to be seen, but if he does bring the focus back to making a quality product at a competitive price, I suspect he'll gain a lot of ground, especially with HP faltering right now.
The same could happen in the realm of video gaming and I would say it is starting with indie developers on the PC carving out niche markets and making some bank in the process. Just look at what happened with Mojang and Minecraft. Hopefully Microsoft's new boss will keep the focus on a quality experience and not try to bleed every consumer dry with micro-transactions...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...how-long-should-console-makers-keep-fighting/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2014/07/14/the-console-war-is-over-the-pc-already-won/
Key points from each:
Yes, these figures include PC-like devices, such as tablets. Also, the numbers include revenues for games that those filthy casuals enjoy.
Unfortunately, despite these proclamations from the wizards of smart at Forbes and other news outlests, the PC side of Triple A title sales are disappointingly small, as evidenced here:
http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=battlefield+4
Selling over a million units worldwide for PCs will definitely produce noticeable revenues, but compared to over 10 million units worldwide for consoles...Combine these figures with a business mentality that stresses profit at all costs and the roughly 9% of sales that are from PC users looks like an unfavorable investment to the bean-counters.
Unless companies are willing to accept a slightly lower profitability in exchange for the good will of their target markets, this will continue to be the case. The focus of a lot of companies has not been on producing a quality product, but rather on saturating, then expanding or reinventing the market.
This philosophy was pushed heavily at Radio Shack about a decade ago and look where it has gotten them. It appears that Michael Dell also figured out that an intense focus on the bottom line wasn't doing his former company any good, so he maneuvered to buy it back. Whether it was all showboating remains to be seen, but if he does bring the focus back to making a quality product at a competitive price, I suspect he'll gain a lot of ground, especially with HP faltering right now.
The same could happen in the realm of video gaming and I would say it is starting with indie developers on the PC carving out niche markets and making some bank in the process. Just look at what happened with Mojang and Minecraft. Hopefully Microsoft's new boss will keep the focus on a quality experience and not try to bleed every consumer dry with micro-transactions...
That's harder to get statistics on, though I did find this:
http://www.performancepsu.com/gaming/percentage-console-vs-pc-gamersinfographic/
It shows 70% of people gaming on consoles and 65% on PC. The question is to compare that to previous years to get a more accurate picture. It's harder to say if that's console gamers switching or just more people playing PC. As for revenue, you probably are familiar with how PC revenue passed consoles not long ago (though much of this is due to the MOBA market):
http://hexus.net/gaming/news/industry/69141-global-pc-games-market-revenue-overtakes-consoles/
PC sales dropped a lot in 2013, however they're mostly stabilizing for 2014:
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2793921
Although even then, that's really not representative because during that time the GAMING PC segment was actually GROWING while overall PC sales were declining:
http://hexus.net/business/news/comp...hardware-sales-unaffected-overall-pc-decline/
The decline had to do more with the tablet / netbook space rather than gaming.
I admit, I was thinking of Xbox One more as an awful launch. As for sales, PC gaming dwarfs consoles by a large margin, though it's much harder to track. Back in 2009, Intel made an estimate putting "mainstream and high-end" gamers (NOT casual) at 100-150 million:
https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/03/03/just-how-many-pc-gamers-are-there
Nowadays, they're saying 711 million PC gamers, but I likely think that number is inflated and counting casual ones as well:
http://www.pcgamer.com/there-are-711-million-pc-gamers-in-the-world-today-says-intel/
I also saw this claiming PC gaming market revenue was much higher than console sales:
http://www.maximumpc.com/bragging_rights_pc_gaming_market_maintains_sales_lead_over_consoles_2014
Finally, there's Valve stating that they're simply getting more sales year after year and this was when PC sales had fallen drastically:
http://www.vg247.com/2013/09/17/ste...r-year-unit-declines-in-pc-sales-says-newell/
Anyway, hope that's enough evidence for you. Again, while the overall PC market has declined some and is currently stabilizing, the GAMING segment has just been exploding and is doing better than ever.
Well to be fair, this is just one game. It's better to look at trends. Take a look at Ubisoft's PC numbers:
http://www.statista.com/statistics/269679/breakdown-of-ubisoft-sales-by-platform/
While yes, it's still a small percentage of the pie at 15%, it's also showing it growing and growing since 2010 and their highest PC percentage in the company's history best I can tell. What this says to me is that while PC is still an obvious minority in the AAA space, things are definitely shifting and it's anyone's guess where it's going to go.