OT: Video Game Talk (oh, also the Week before the All-Star Break Pre-Game Talk "archive")

[henchman21]

That presentation got me very hyped. I'm sure it'll be a buggy mess like all open world Bethesda games, but I'm also sure it'll be fun as f*** too.

Yeah it’ll most certainly be a fun game and have its fair share of issues.

 

[MonsterMack]

Starfield looks great. A part of me is a little concerned Bethesda might have been over ambitious but I'm pretty sure I'll sink a few hundred hours in it

 

[S E P H]

Starfield can be without all the issues and be a great AAA and I wouldn't even touch that until I beat FFVII: Rebirth. That game looks incredible and I had an immense amount of fun playing the first one (even with all the cringe dialogue). Granted, I never played the original FFVII, so all of this is new to me and in a good way.

 

[The Mars Volchenkov]

Starfield can be without all the issues and be a great AAA and I wouldn't even touch that until I beat FFVII: Rebirth. That game looks incredible and I had an immense amount of fun playing the first one (even with all the cringe dialogue). Granted, I never played the original FFVII, so all of this is new to me and in a good way.

Starfield comes out months before Rebirth, though.

 

[TruePowerSlave]

30 fps for Starfield on the Series X is a joke. Not as laughable as Redfall locked at 30 fps, but still not a good look at all. The Series X was supposed to be a tech beast, but so far quite a few titles run better on the PS5 and the 30 fps nonsense is the icing on the cake.

PC + Nintendo/Sony console remains the ultimate gaming combo.

 

[henchman21]

30 fps for Starfield on the Series X is a joke. Not as laughable as Redfall locked at 30 fps, but still not a good look at all. The Series X was supposed to be a tech beast, but so far quite a few titles run better on the PS5 and the 30 fps nonsense is the icing on the cake.

PC + Nintendo/Sony console remains the ultimate gaming combo.

This post feels relevant

The console generations are actually increasing in length (used to be more around ~6 years and are ~8 now) and cross generation support is at an all time high.


Oh 30 FPS is still around and will be around. We've seen more and more coming down the pipeline as last generation support dies off.

When Sony moves to full PS5 and away from PS4 support, their games will start being 30fps too. People want graphics and larger games... can't have the jumps people expect there and still hit 60fps consistently. The consoles are just not powerful enough for that, and given how the lifecycles are, they never will be.

More titles run better on XSX after the first ~9 months of releases. It is really marginal though... just very slight resolution bumps (that you'll never notice from more than 5' away from your TV) or a slight framerate uptick.

What we really need more than anything for consoles, is a stronger push for VRR. Sony's implementation is a joke. Microsoft is not utilizing it enough. Thus TV manufactures with the chip and inflation issues are not prioritizing VRR and the install base remains tiny. If that install base never grows, there is little reason to support it. Seems like that'll get pushed another generation at this point.

 

[TruePowerSlave]

When Sony moves to full PS5 and away from PS4 support, their games will start being 30fps too. People want graphics and larger games... can't have the jumps people expect there and still hit 60fps consistently. The consoles are just not powerful enough for that, and given how the lifecycles are, they never will be.

Probably as people are obsessed with size and graphics, even when gameplay and performance are more important.

However, so far not a single first party PS5 game has been locked 30 and no upcoming game has been said to be only 30 either. The same cannot be said about the competition.

 

[henchman21]

Probably as people are obsessed with size and graphics, even when gameplay and performance are more important.

However, so far not a single first party PS5 game has been locked 30 and no upcoming game has been said to be only 30 either. The same cannot be said about the competition.

It is what moves units... and that's why we will continue this path.

It'll happen or the 60 fps modes will get really gimped... like 1080/900p sort of gimped. We are still in the early days of exclusively ninth generation games and still coming out of the covid impact on the industry. As we progress into 2024, this is going to be pretty common. By 2025, it'll be the standard for larger or more cinematic games.

 

[sethro109]

Isn't Horizon Forbidden West 30FPS?

 

[henchman21]

Isn't Horizon Forbidden West 30FPS?

It has a 30fps mode, but has a 60 fps too (lowers the resolution and takes away some graphical settings). It is also a cross-gen game. So it was pretty much built for 30fps PS4 as a base and then the PS5 stuff just cranks the sliders.

I get the hatred of 30fps (especially when there are drops below it still), but the industry goes through this with every generation. The early talk is 60fps and then as cross generation support dies off, the 30fps caps creep in. The eighth generation had that happen much earlier than others due to how bad the CPUs were and by the time Assassin's Creed Unity came out, we knew the generation was CPU limited to a very heavy degree. A whole whopping year. Which lead to the pro versions that did all they could with that architecture.

Lost in this though is a very large part of this issue is display technology. The move to LCD and the very nature of how they work has made this issue much worse. Analog crt and even some plasma TVs tended to hide the issue a bit more, but LCDs can't and are relying on super fast refresh rates and new technologies like VRR to mask the issue. We lost fluidity and color upon that switch for massive sizes and far less power consumption.

 

[S E P H]

If Halo with all the mistakes they made can put out 60 FPS, I am not sure why other AAA games cannot? However, I am not sure that‘s a reason to get mad at Starfield. If you look at how much Bethseda is offering in the game, I would not be surprised if the game just couldn’t handle 60 FPS. Especially considering how adventurous the creative process has been in making the game and their *promise* of around 1,000 different planets, a ship creator, chatacter creator, and colonies throughout the universe. Additionally, I am very much not a fan of the gaming community since majority still think they need graphics to be at an all-time high cutting-edge level for a game to be considered “good.” Nintendo has always valued gameplay before graphics and even though I personally believe that Nintendo can do a lot better in the graphic department for a major studio/producer, they at least have the fun factor to back it up (decades’ worth). Give me a game that has the gameplay of a 5/5 with graphics of a 3/5 compared to the opposite ratio.

 

[henchman21]

If Halo with all the mistakes they made can put out 60 FPS, I am not sure why other AAA games cannot? However, I am not sure that‘s a reason to get mad at Starfield. If you look at how much Bethseda is offering in the game, I would not be surprised if the game just couldn’t handle 60 FPS. Especially considering how adventurous the creative process has been in making the game and their *promise* of around 1,000 different planets, a ship creator, chatacter creator, and colonies throughout the universe. Additionally, I am very much not a fan of the gaming community since majority still think they need graphics to be at an all-time high cutting-edge level for a game to be considered “good.” Nintendo has always valued gameplay before graphics and even though I personally believe that Nintendo can do a lot better in the graphic department for a major studio/producer, they at least have the fun factor to back it up (decades’ worth). Give me a game that has the gameplay of a 5/5 with graphics of a 3/5 compared to the opposite ratio.

I'd overall agree with this. If the gameplay is good, I can forgive a lot. TotK is an amazing game, one of the best I've ever played, yet it is a 900p 30fps (at times 20fps) game. Eldin Ring has a terrible framerate (all over the 40s and 50s) and can't realistically hit more than 1800p... yet it is also one of the best games I've ever played. VRR was critical to my ER enjoyment though... it was way too bad without it.

It sounds like Starfield is 30fps due to CPU limitations... which if that is the case, we got just an extra couple years compared to the eighth generation.

 

[TruePowerSlave]

FF16 demo dropped.

Felt like a great game limited by an unstable fps. Super epic and clearly a lot of inspiration was taken from Game of Thrones.

 

[henchman21]

FF16 demo dropped.

Felt like a great game limited by an unstable fps. Super epic and clearly a lot of inspiration was taken from Game of Thrones.

Yeah sounds like the performance is a real mess. Dynamic 1440p (from 1080p FSR) can't come close to being steady. We are probably looking at a 1200p (FSR 900p)ish game to get it to stabilize at 60fps. The horsepower just isn't in these consoles...

 

[TruePowerSlave]

Yeah sounds like the performance is a real mess. Dynamic 1440p (from 1080p FSR) can't come close to being steady. We are probably looking at a 1200p (FSR 900p)ish game to get it to stabilize at 60fps. The horsepower just isn't in these consoles...

At least they made sure that the combat is mostly 60 fps. The exploration is all over the place though. Sucks as otherwise the game felt great.

I would much rather have worse looking games that run flawlessly than these compromised products.

 

[henchman21]

At least they made sure that the combat is mostly 60 fps. The exploration is all over the place though. Sucks as otherwise the game felt great.

I would much rather have worse looking games that run flawlessly than these compromised products.

It is hard to say with the limited scope of the demo how pervasive (or not) the issue is, and I agree, I'd trade off pretty graphics and higher framerates for pure stability. Frankly I'd prefer 1800p/30 fully locked than a 40-60fps 1800p game. The framerate jank is worse to me than resolution.

I really think Sony and Microsoft need to push VRR much harder. That's the closest thing we have to a magic bullet here. Sony needs to figure out what they need to do to lift the 48Hz lower bound to 40Hz (probably a slight hardware revision) and both need to be pushing hard for developers to utilize it. Working to set a lower bound at 40Hz that isn't crossed, but can be significantly higher in less taxing areas could really improve the fluidity of these games while keeping the graphics higher. The VRR install base is just so small though that developers are not spending resources on it. I only have it on my computer monitor and that's eventually where I played Eldin Ring.

 

[sethro109]

That does make me wonder what Starfield's resolution is. Will they also have a 1080/60? I do wish more games had graphic sliders like their PC counter parts.

 

[henchman21]

That does make me wonder what Starfield's resolution is. Will they also have a 1080/60? I do wish more games had graphic sliders like their PC counter parts.

It was stated at 4k30 for XSX and 1440p30 for XSS. Those are likely reconstructed resolutions via FSR from the 1800p to 1080p range (I don't recall it being stated as native). If there is a legitimate CPU bottleneck, I doubt a 1080p60 mode will happen. Best we will probably get is an option to lift the cap with VRR enabled (though I have major doubts on that too since 40Hz is the lower bound on XS).

 

[sethro109]

It was stated at 4k30 for XSX and 1440p30 for XSS. Those are likely reconstructed resolutions via FSR from the 1800p to 1080p range (I don't recall it being stated as native). If there is a legitimate CPU bottleneck, I doubt a 1080p60 mode will happen. Best we will probably get is an option to lift the cap with VRR enabled (though I have major doubts on that too since 40Hz is the lower bound on XS).

Well shit. Maybe I should invest in a new PC one of these days. I haven't had a real gaming desktop in a long while.

 

[The Merchant]

Man Diablo IV is just so ridiculously good

 

[Grackle Party]

Man Diablo IV is just so ridiculously good

Im digging it. Been grinding away.

 

[The Merchant]

Im digging it. Been grinding away.

Got hooked after the intro sequence and haven't been able to put it down since. What class are you running?

 

[Grackle Party]

Got hooked after the intro sequence and haven't been able to put it down since. What class are you running?

I went necromancer. Specced into most of the blood skills. Seems to be holding up pretty good so far. I was going to do rogue but changed it up about 15 levels in. Working on unlocking tier III. What about you ?

 

[sethro109]

Some of the stuff people can build in TotK is just plain bonkers.

 

[The Merchant]

I went necromancer. Specced into most of the blood skills. Seems to be holding up pretty good so far. I was going to do rogue but changed it up about 15 levels in. Working on unlocking tier III. What about you ?

Started w necro and I've been enjoying it a lot so far in the early game using a pure minion build. Started poison rogue and companion druid alts and I'm really starting to gravitate towards the latter atm. It's crazy just how different and viable each class is, though. They really knocked it out of the park.