The new simulation Cities: Skylines 2, The upcoming console release has sparked a new debate about games running at 30fps, which the developer has declared to be the long-term standard. With Colossal Order, at least, they see no advantage to aiming for 60fps.
In a recent AMA on Reddit, where it primarily concerns the PC version of City Skylines 2 They explained that they had settled on 30fps because that's the nature of the game, which puts increasing strain on the CPU as city building progresses. Unlike a shooter, this has to be taken into account in the long run to prevent the game from eventually stuttering and to ensure the UI remains responsive.
"For this reason, our simulation is based on an expected frame rate of 30 fps. However, reaching 60 fps doesn't hurt, as it can contribute to better graphics in terms of temporal effects. So, while our target is 30 fps, we don't intend to limit or stop our optimization work just because we achieve it on recommended hardware. We simply don't believe that setting the target at 60 fps would offer any long-term advantage, especially since we face rendering challenges both up close and from a distance :)"
General debate about 30fps games: Are young developers incapable?
Apart from City Skylines 2Where this decision can be understood, a real debate has broken out about 30fps games, with which more and more players are not satisfied.
Here, the blame is placed on the general development of the industry, but especially on consoles. Previously, optimizing games was essential, as there was simply no other option. Many small memory tricks were employed to make games run well and look great even with limited specifications. Now, however, consoles are also demanding ever more performance to compensate for the growing performance gaps – the easy way out.
An interesting observation points to the "brain drain" of recent years, in which many senior developers who were still involved in memory optimization have left the industry. These are often replaced at lower costs by less experienced developers who, in turn, rely on powerful hardware and have not been taught optimization techniques because it wasn't a priority for them.
As a result, today's systems rely more on a GPU to handle the workload, thus compensating for the additional effort and costs. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the future, especially with consoles still having limited resources.
Either I've become really spoiled, or there's something wrong with my eyes. I find 30 FPS too choppy, and anything below 50 FPS feels choppy to me.
I play games without any artificial smoothing or other filters from the TV using Instant Game Response (LG). 30 FPS is simply impossible under those conditions.
One reason not to play that nonsense.
I do not support such things.