[IGNxGamer] Starfield: Why 30fps Might Make Sense on Console

MidGenRefresh said:
The limit is already there. See, this is what they mean by creative vision. They could lower the building limit. Scale down procedural generation. Limit AI simulation. But they decided to keep those things and settle on 30FPS. Great decision.
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Still don't see a reason for not giving the players options. Start game in performance mode, be stuck in performance mode for that save, with the scaled down graphics and AI etc.
 
Ar¢tos said:
They could always set a limit to construction to keep a max framerate, like the thermometer in Dreams.
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It already does.

The problem with this engine is the inefficient amount of draw calls it has on every object. It bogs down the CPU so much leading to lower framerate.

It absolutely could be better if they redesigned their engine but everything is a bandaid workaround.

The engine was amazing back in 2002 but instead of optimizing it, the problems it had tracing back to Gamebryo and Netimmerse before it, still persists.

You don't see people complaining about Rockstar still using RAGE.
 
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Being able to come back and find the space fork I dropped in the first 5 minutes is still there after 80 hours is a level of immersion that can't be measured in frames per second.
 
The moment Todd basically said graphics > fps in a older interview, I knew what to expect. I've been playing RDR2 a lot lately, that has to be the smoothest 30fps game I've ever played, when I rotate the camera I don't see that horrible judder mess some other 30fps games have.

DF said Starfield will have per object motion blur, this is new for BGS and they sounded pretty excited about it. Proper motion blur can make a world of difference.
 
Ar¢tos said:
wow... The object persistence excuse again.
Apparently, Bethesda engine stores object information... in the CPU, instead of RAM/SSD like every other game doing it.
Heck, for 1000 planets they might even store some in the PSU or even in the game controller!
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NPCs are simulated. That how they have wide variety of reactions to your actions.

It can range from doing their daily chores to doing all out civil war.

Try doing some more involved quests and see the world change in fascinating ways.

I just finished Skyrim playthrough. No other game has NPCs like this.
 
Ar¢tos said:
Still don't see a reason for not giving the players options. Start game in performance mode, be stuck in performance mode for that save, with the scaled down graphics and AI etc.
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It's no surprise you don't see the reason, neither you nor I are privy to what aspects of the game cause the frame rate issues. It could be the ability to have 100 ships on screen at once. We could have psychic powers that allow you to move every dynamic object across the screen at once.

These are just examples but it's to show that there are game design decisions that effect performance. These just can't be toggled like a graphical embellishment or internal resolution. So again, the reason there is not a "performance" mode very well could be down to a design decision, and not one of us have played the game to be able to speak to it.
 
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vaibhavpisal said:
NPCs are simulated. That how they have wide variety of reactions to your actions.

It can range from doing their daily chores to doing all out civil war.

Try doing some more involved quests and see the world change in fascinating ways.

I just finished Skyrim playthrough. No other game has NPCs like this.
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Agreed. People are just being disingenuously obtuse for obvious reasons.

In the few passing shots we see of the major city centers, the NPC density seems quite high and with the way Bethesda does these it shouldn't be a surprise that they are pushing things. Plus the graphics must be working the GPU quite hard with the big upscale.
 
The fact that this is even a controversy makes me lose faith in gaf. This is being turned into some kind of console war debate as if the main reason Sony's games have 60 fps isnt because they are cross gen games built around shitty jaguar CPUs. Way easier to scale up. The moment actual next gen games as ambitious as Starfield come out, things are going to be very different.

We have seen what the PS5 has to do to get 60 fps in next gen only games. Fucking 600p in Star Wars. Is that what you all want? 600p? Resolutions lower than MGS4 in 2008? WTF are we doing here?

Or do we want 1440p 60 fps games like Demon Souls which was literally running the same PS3 engine underneath. So we want PS3 era gameplay and systems from our PS5 games? What about Ratchet? If all ND, SSM, Sucker Punch and GG do is release Ratchet quality games with the most basic fucking combat and gameplay systems? Are we going to be ok with that or do we want ND to go out and completely overhaul TLOU2's gameplay systems? Everyone here will have an anyreusm if TLOU3 looks and plays exactly like TLOU Part 1 at 60 fps.

Even if this is an engine issue and we see after it launches on PC that it is only maxing out one of the 16 CPU threads, UE5 games have the same exact issue. Games are meant to execute instructions sequentially. Its partly why the cell fucking failed.

We all fucking hate the Series S. No one here wouldve wanted 4 tflops graphics at 2x the framerate on the xsx. We should be praising devs for not compromising their vision and if you want 60 fps, PCs are that way. I bought a 3080 because i wanted to play all these games at 60 fps. Yes it was expensive, but i chose not to subscribe to only fans, pay millionare youtubers donations, buy $1000 iphones or eat avacado toast for breakfast every morning like all these fucking gen z and milleninals who complain about PC gaming being unaffordable.
 
Silver Wattle said:
So, at times the game runs at 60 but they cap it at 30 "just cause"? have an uncapped option you buffoons.
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They need headroom, because the CPU usage is not static and depends on what the player is doing in the game world and the simulations occurring at the time. Sure they could uncap it, but it would be all over the place. I could see a possible VRR mode however.
 
Ar¢tos said:
Still don't see a reason for not giving the players options. Start game in performance mode, be stuck in performance mode for that save, with the scaled down graphics and AI etc.
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That is just the way developers operate on consoles, if you want to bypass "creative vision" generally the only option is to go PC.
It will be interesting to see how it runs on a range of PC CPU's though.
 
While I'm fine the frame rate cap, I will support the argument that console games should have the same graphics options that PC gets. Have the basic presets, but allow the player to fuck with them if they want. If you want a fluctuating mess of a frame rate you should be able to do that, it's on you.

That being said...
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vaibhavpisal said:
NPCs are simulated. That how they have wide variety of reactions to your actions.

It can range from doing their daily chores to doing all out civil war.

Try doing some more involved quests and see the world change in fascinating ways.

I just finished Skyrim playthrough. No other game has NPCs like this.
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It's just scheduled tasks. Most of them aren't even unique task in Skyrim as it's just split to townsfolk and guards. Plenty of games have it like RDR and in that game, it extends to even unique animal interactions. Friggin Majora's Mask and Stardew Valley does this. It's nothing new yes but it has become more complex in recent releases as better hardware comes along.

That's also one of the issues in the engine. Everything from scheduled task, to sneak detection ai and combat ai are scripted and run on a single core. You can check this out by using Papyrus if you're into modding their games and wondering why the fuck did your game crash. It's why you don't see so many AIs in one place like say the city in Witcher 3. They're simply waiting for that single core which results in lower frame rates.
 
killatopak said:
It's just scheduled tasks. Most of them aren't even unique task in Skyrim as it's just split to townsfolk and guards. Plenty of games have it like RDR and in that game, it extends to even unique animal interactions. Friggin Majora's Mask and Stardew Valley does this. It's nothing new yes but it has become more complex in recent releases as better hardware comes along.

That's also one of the issues in the engine. Everything from scheduled task, to sneak detection ai and combat ai are scripted and run on a single core. You can check this out by using Papyrus if you're into modding their games and wondering why the fuck did your game crash. It's why you don't see so many AIs in one place like say the city in Witcher 3. They're simply waiting for that single core which results in lower frame rates.
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I am talking about "No one escapes sidhna mines" type of quest. After freeing Madanach, a civil war ensues in the city. Thats definitely not a normal behaviour that I see in other games.

After killing all the guards, Madanach escapes the city and goes all the way to it's hideout half way across the map. I followed him all the way, after getting fascinated by what happened in front of me.

He gets into a fight at hideout, captures it and makes it his own.

Definitely not a normal behaviour. Not seen in any other games either.
 
vaibhavpisal said:
I am talking about "No one escapes sidhna mines" type of quest. After freeing Madanach, a civil war ensues in the city. Thats definitely not a normal behaviour that I see in other games.

After killing all the guards, Madanach escapes the city and goes all the way to it's hideout half way across the map. I followed him all the way, after getting fascinated by what happened in front of me.

He gets into a fight at hideout, captures it and makes it his own.

Definitely not a normal behaviour. Not seen in any other games either.
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Check out Rimworld. You AI town can complete entire questlines for you without intervention as long as you set them up properly. Crusader Kings do this as well. Play Mongolians or Muslims and watch how they take over Europe or Rome on their own if you make your duchies and kingdoms independent.

Also, while Madanach is scripted to go there. He has no affect on whether the hideout will be friendly or not. As long as you chose to support the Forsworn in the jail, they are still friendly. The AI script in their hideout must not have refreshed as they're supposed to turn friendly as soon as you support Madanach. Other forsworn are still hostile just not the ones in the hideout.

Whether you kill Madanach before he even reaches the hideout, help the guards kill him outside the jail or he gets killed by other forsworn/aggressive AI on the way to their hideout is irrelevant.

He is simply scripted to run there. Though that in itself is inconsequential as his importance stops as soon as he leaves the jail.
 
killatopak said:
Check out Rimworld. You AI town can complete entire questlines for you without intervention as long as you set them up properly. Crusader Kings do this as well. Play Mongolians or Muslims and watch how they take over Europe or Rome on their own if you make your duchies and kingdoms independent.

Also, while Madanach is scripted to go there. He has no affect on whether the hideout will be friendly or not. As long as you chose to support the Forsworn in the jail, they are still friendly. The AI script in their hideout must not have refreshed as they're supposed to turn friendly as soon as you support Madanach. Other forsworn are still hostile just not the ones in the hideout.

Whether you kill Madanach before he even reaches the hideout, help the guards kill him outside the jail or he gets killed by other forsworn/aggressive AI on the way to their hideout is irrelevant.

He is simply scripted to run there. Though that in itself is inconsequential as his importance stops as soon as he leaves the jail.
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An rpg with this sort of visuals and NPCs doing this stuff would be more apt comparison.

Feels great when you see this unfolding in front of you.
 
vaibhavpisal said:
An rpg with this sort of visuals and NPCs doing this stuff would be more apt comparison.

Feels great when you see this unfolding in front of you.
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That's fair. That's why I'm hyped for the game.

I'm contesting that it hasn't been done before. Bethesda games isn't great at anything they do. It's the combination of all their systems that make it great. They're unique in that aspect and why so many people love their games.
 
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I love how all the technical sites that everyone holds up as gospel when their platform has a 1 frame advantage are now being dismissed when they try to explain why this game isn't 60 on consoles. You can't have it both ways.

Face reality, 30 fps is the future for these consoles.
 
MidGenRefresh said:
But according to 'experts' here, there's nothing next-gen about Starfield. Check-mate.
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1292p and 30 fps is definitely now NEXT-GEN


fucking pathetic green rat... waiting and sucking up to corporation ..



Same shills called a PS5 an 8.9 tflop console overclocked after 12.2 tflop Xbo Ser X reveal.
 
Hendrick's said:
I love how all the technical sites that everyone holds up as gospel when their platform has a 1 frame advantage are now being dismissed when they try to explain why this game isn't 60 on consoles. You can't have it both ways.

Face reality, 30 fps is the future for these consoles.
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I don't think anyone is dismissing the site, are they? Just the fact that 60 will always be smoother than 30, and that they want performance mode options.
 
Max_Po said:
1292p and 30 fps is definitely now NEXT-GEN


fucking pathetic green rat... waiting and sucking up to corporation ..



Same shills called a PS5 an 8.9 tflop console overclocked after 12.2 tflop Xbo Ser X reveal.
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If you're an adult then you got some shit to work on my brother
 
Silver Wattle said:
So, at times the game runs at 60 but they cap it at 30 "just cause"? have an uncapped option you buffoons.
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I think you've misunderstood. A game hitting 60 when you look at the sky means jack shit if its hovering between 30 and 60 all the time otherwise. It will be constantly dipping in and out of the VRR range, the response and judder would be ridiculous. Also if the unlocked frame rate makes the frame times unstable, no amount of VRR will be able to "fix" it either.

If they're using a 30 lock for stability, they probably know exactly how much headroom they might have any any given time to come to that decision.

They might work on it post-launch to have a separate 60 FPS mod with cuts to reach it, but at this point just because it reaches 60 at some points, it doesn't mean its gonna be a viable mode at launch.
 
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DeepEnigma said:
I mean, it doesn't detract that it's a very good game, going by reviews and impressions.
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It's not even 90 on Meta and if I've learned one thing from critics posting on NeoGAF, it means that the game is just okay / Gamepass material.

Maybe if they focused all they attention on a single mode it would reach that magical barrier of 90. Maybe. I guess we'll never know.
 
MidGenRefresh said:
It's not even 90 on Meta and if I've learned one thing from critics posting on NeoGAF, it means that the game is just okay / Gamepass material.

Maybe if they focused all they attention on a single mode it would reach that magical barrier of 90. Maybe. I guess we'll never know.
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Oh come on. You see the slacktivists docking it hard because of the "evil white people." Just stop, you are being silly now. None of them, and I mean NONE of them mention anything about modes.

They even say and I quote, "would be one of the best games of all time... but white people."

Go visit the review thread and stop acting like this thread is the reason that a great game is supposedly not great, even though it has great scores till minus the bullshit outliers and their retard idPol.
 
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DeepEnigma said:
Oh come on. You see the slacktivists docking it hard because of the "evil white people." Just stop, you are being silly now. None of them, and I mean NONE of them mention anything about modes.

They even say and I quote, "would be one of the best games of all time... but white people."

Go visit the review thread and stop acting like this thread is the reason that a great game is supposedly not great, even though it has great scores till minus the bullshit outliers and their retard idPol.
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Relax, I'm just fucking with you. It's just funny that first we have outrage that Starfield won't offer 60FPS mode, no matter how shit it would be and now we have outrage that FF offers an absolute mess of a 60FPS mode.

I'm sure FF is a great game, I only played FF VII and FF XV for a couple of hours total so I'm not an expert.

I'm aware of the fake outrage of fake Frappuccino infused California based pseudo journalists. That's funny as hell if you ask me.
 
MidGenRefresh said:
Relax, I'm just fucking with you. It's just funny that first we have outrage that Starfield won't offer 60FPS mode, no matter how shit it would be and now we have outrage that FF offers an absolute mess of a 60FPS mode.

I'm sure FF is a great game, I only played FF VII and FF XV for a couple of hours total so I'm not an expert.

I'm aware of the fake outrage of fake Frappuccino infused California based pseudo journalists. That's funny as hell if you ask me.
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*backs away from the ledge*

I wasn't outraged by Starfield, I get the reason, I do. But with that said, I also understand why people who have been marketed to for 3+ years with 60fps/120fps options day in and day out, down to execs on twitter pushing it, would also be upset for a lack of option.

Personally, I am going with PC for Bethesda games as I always do. It's the only sound choice if one has the means to do so.
 
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DeepEnigma said:
I don't think anyone is dismissing the site, are they? Just the fact that 60 will always be smoother than 30, and that they want performance mode options.
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But they are explaining why a performance mode is likely not viable for this particular game.
 
DeepEnigma said:
*backs away from the ledge*

I wasn't outraged by Starfield, I get the reason, I do. But with that said, I also understand why people who have been marketed to for 3+ years with 60fps/120fps options day in and day out, down to execs on twitter pushing it, would also be upset for a lack of option.

Personally, I am going with PC for Bethesda games as I always do. It's the only sound choice if one has the means to do so.
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In all honesty playing Bethesda game on a console sounds like torture. Maybe Starfield will be different. Most likely not.

Most people here act like Series X/PS5 is their first console generation. They bought into eating monsters for breakfast / magical SSD powers narrative when in reality these machines are just budget gaming options that are outdated the very second they hit the store shelves. Amazing budget options that are punching way, way above their weight but c'mon we can't expect miracles.
 
Umbasaborne said:
This game likely has some other things going on that are very cpu intensive. If you bought a console expecting to always get high levels of performance then I dont know what to tell you. Cross gen is over, the ps5 and series x are not super computers.
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People keep spewing this talking point with zero idea if it's even true.
 
FIREKNIGHT2029 said:
I was playing FF7R today on my PS5 today and switched to 30fps mode just to see what it's like and it felt and looked terrible to me. It was the first time I had seen a game running at 30fps in front of me in a long long time and I started wondering how I tolerated it in the past. 30fps feels wrong and I refuse to play any modern game on modern hardware at 30fps in 2023. I'm never going back to 30fps if I can help it, not on PC and not on my PS5.
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When you jump back and forth that quickly it will always feel like dogshit. You have to watch a movie or something 24fps first and then jump into a 30fps experience but even that may not be enough.

You have to also play that game game for multiple hours for your brain to get used to it. The second you jump back into 60fps you have to repeat this process.

Personally I'm so excited for this game that I was considering buying an Xbox but I'm not going back to 30fps. I'm going to build a new PC with an I7, 4080 and 64gb of Ram.

I'll be playing this and going virtual camping in Red Dead 2 for the foreseeable future at 4K, 60fps. Because I don't my games to run any higher than that.
 
Zuzu said:
For the people saying that they should offer an unlocked fps mode for VRR displays because it sometimes goes up to 60fps this may not be a good option.

Digital Foundry recently explained that if it's a cpu limitation problem then the frame times might be so variable when the frame rate is unlocked that even with VRR the experience would not be smooth. If it's gpu limited then VRR would help because the frame times would be more consistent.

Locking it to 30 may be the only way they can get a consistent frame time performance and the smoothness that produces.
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It would make me sad if people were really too stupid to understand this.
 
HL3.exe said:
Wait, is it still debatable that multiple simulated systems colliding with each other + all the item persistence that's going on under the hood is not taxing on the CPU / IO?

Well then 'yes', 60fps probably is easily feasible if you're only taking static rendering into account. Thanks big brained Gaf.

Edit: For everyone saying the engine is terrible have barely a clue what 'engine' means I bet. Their way of memory management, entity tracking and runtime simulation consistency has always been pretty incredible. Janky because of the underlying realtime simulation that's going on, but spares on the 'fakery' most tech rely on. If you're only looking at visuals then yeah, not sure what you want me to say.
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The engine is one of the oldest, creakiest engines out there. This had been known by everyone for centuries. Wtf are you talking about?

It's def a big part of why this is 30 fps but if it's able to hit 60 at times than it can have a performance mode at a lower framerate if they wanted to. This isn't rocket science

Oh ...and if people are believing this will be a stable experience and one of Bethesdas "least Buggy games" even at 30 fps, get ready for disappointment. The warning signs are all over the place that this game will have major technical issues.

They had an extra year at least to optimize. It's still shown running at an inconsistent 30 fps. It's the Creation engine and it's Bethesda.
 
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MidGenRefresh said:
The limit is already there. See, this is what they mean by creative vision. They could lower the building limit. Scale down procedural generation. Limit AI simulation. But they decided to keep those things and settle on 30FPS. Great decision.
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please God be stable 30fps.....
 
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