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[James Sawyer Ford]

Countless open world games more successful than TES? You can practically count those on one hand.

He also said Fallout which is nowhere near Skyrim

Skyrim was a massive success in spite of the buginess and lack of optimization, not because of it

Correlation is not causation

 

[SlimySnake]

Yeh that's the reality of it. With consoles there's always a compromise in some way. Either the framerate takes a hit, or the visuals do. In this case it's the framerate.

All Phil had to say is that they had to make decisions/compromises based on the current console hardware available to them, the end. But then thats possibly too honest and we all know he doesn't like to do that.

Bingo.

 

[Kataploom]

People shit on Gotham Knights for multiple reasons, the most prominent reason being that Arkham Knight which released 8 years ago on previous gen hardware looks markedly better in many aspects.

I don't mean the game issues, I mean the controversy around the fact that more than one game was coming with only 30 fps mode.

 

[GHG]

Edit: Pretty sure I could ditch loads of stuff in a house in Skyrim and it would all still be the next time I fired the game up. I might be wrong its been a very long time since i played that game.

Items that you can pick up yes, blood splatter etc, no. Blood splatters and debris (bullet holes etc) are all governed by fDecalLifeTime in both Skyrim and fallout.

That's why I bolded what I did in my reply.

 

[JackMcGunns]

So you're saying they should FORCE developers? By and Large most games are 60fps, this is not an Xbox thing, the game was in development before the acquisition and it would run 30fps had it been on PS5, stop this console warring bullshit.

 

[Salty Popsicle]

There’s no difference these days. What makes a Bethesda game any more of an RPG than GTA or RDR2?

Both games involve role playing. If you’re going to limit the definition of RPG to the style Bethesda makes, well you’re left with only a small few devs that even dabble in that specific genre anymore

My criteria for a "proper" RPG is pretty simple.

1. Have a character creator
2. Customizable attributes/perks
3. Dialogue choices

 

[clarky]

Items that you can pick up yes, blood splatter etc, no. Blood splatters and debris (bullet holes etc) are all governed by fDecalLifeTime in both Skyrim and fallout.

That's why I bolded what I did in my reply.

I was mostly talking about items. But I see what you mean now.

 

[Pelta88]

So you're saying they should

I posted a tweet from the head of XBOX marketing. I didn't say shit, Greenberg did.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

My criteria for a "proper" RPG is pretty simple.

1. Have a character creator
2. Customizable attributes/perks
3. Dialogue choices

So because you can’t create your character you’re not an RPG?

How silly

But let’s go with it - Bethesda is the best at making Bethesda games because nobody else fits that narrow criteria other than maybe CDPR with Cyberpunk

 

[sankt-Antonio]

Creation Engine is one of the most CPU intensive game engines out there. Every feature set of the engine has been overhauled, new features added, while keeping the core intact. That makes 30fps on current-gen hardware completely believable.

Well then their engine sucks ? Item being tracked in location and position and linked to events isn't going to bring modern cpu to its knees. Not with loading screens. Hell, online rpgs from the late 80s had persistent worlds (Avalon etc).
If it worked on Xbox 360 its must work in just fine in 60fps on modern CPUs.

​

 

[Gaiff]

He also said Fallout which is nowhere near Skyrim

Skyrim was a massive success in spite of the buginess and lack of optimization, not because of it

Correlation is not causation

Dunno about Fallout being nowhere enar Skyrim. According to Pete Hines, Fallout 4 sold more than Skyrim over the same time period.

There’s nothing Starfield is doing, from an engine complexity standpoint, that hasn’t already been done countless times LAST generation

And that's blatantly false. What other games have schedule-driven NPCs with their own race, class, skills, stats, inventory, house, and jobs in an open world? That alone makes TES and Fallout much more complex than most open world games and explain in no small part the number of bugs. Name me those games.

 

[Loxus]

Almost every object in the game has its own physical properties and can be manipulated/moved and remain saved in the game world almost indefinitely. The only other games I know that do this are...surprise, surprise...previous Bethesda RPGs.

The Starfield 30 FPS Outcry Is Overblown — Here’s Why

“Always these huge, open worlds, fully dynamic, hyper detail where anything can happen. And we do want to do that. It's 4K in the X. It's 1440 on the S. We do lock it at 30, because we want that fidelity, we want all that stuff. We don't want to sacrifice any of it.”

The reason for lock 30fps according to Todd Howard is fidelity, not physics.

Seeing the resolution so low tells me this is a GPU limitation. I don't know where this complexity talk is coming from, I see no gameplay complexity in Starfield.

Not even the planet traversal is complex as traveling to another planet is interrupt with a cut scene.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Dunno about Fallout being nowhere enar Skyrim. According to Pete Hines, Fallout 4 sold more than Skyrim over the same time period.

Skyrim sold 60M

Saying “over some arbitrary period” is cherry picking. Fallout ain’t anywhere close to 60M

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

Almost every object in the game has its own physical properties and can be manipulated/moved and remain saved in the game world almost indefinitely. The only other games I know that do this are...surprise, surprise...previous Bethesda RPGs.

This again... It obvious you have no idea what you are talking about if that is what you think or look at as complexity. And you have already dismissed your own point by making reference to the fact that other Bethesda games does that too.

So I won't be a total ass, though you deserve a little of it... I will try and explain a bit.

Object persistence. Think of a level editor, when a map/level/word...etc is built, every object has an ID, and is placed in a specific point on that map. This applies to every single game in existence. Now think of that object and its location and where that info is stored as a registry. let's call it the global object registry.

What real-time object persistence is, is just a registry editor. You pick up an object, drop it somewhere else, and the registry gets updated. That update, that particular one line in that registry for that particular object, gets saved as part of your game state save file as a change flag. When next you go into a level, that level loads up like any other level in any other game, using the updated registry file for that level.

This entire thing is not a CPU-persistent task. The object is loaded into the RAM at the same time every other object in that level loads in. Only difference is that now it has a new address.

And that other thing you said about Horizon...ot even gonna get into that. Being that I didn't say I expect every game to have a 60fps mode to begin with so I dont even know why you were saying that to me.

 

[Gaiff]

Skyrim sold 60M

Saying “over some arbitrary period” is cherry picking. Fallout ain’t anywhere close to 60M

Fallout 4 came out 5 years later. How else would you compare them?

 

[Roxkis_ii]

People have been saying here for a long time that 30 fps will become standard on consoles once crossgen is over. That you don't believe it and hope for some miracle. Is your own problem.

Street fighter 4 and Final fantasy 16, two current gen only games that aren't even first party and they both have a 60 fps mode. Despite PC gamer opinions, it's companies out here that can meet current gen standards.

If Starfield is supposed to be a big tent pole game for Xbox, Microsoft needs to get their money back.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

And that's blatantly false. What other games have schedule-driven NPCs with their own race, class, skills, stats, inventory, house, and jobs in an open world? That alone makes TES and Fallout much more complex than most open world games and explain in no small part the number of bugs. Name me those games.

This has nothing to do with engine limiting design that should cause 30fps.

Zelda has most everything you mentioned on the Switch

 

[sendit]

Street fighter 4 and Final fantasy 16, two current gen only games that aren't even first party and they both have a 60 fps mode. Despite PC gamer opinions, it's companies out here that can meet current gen standards.

If Starfield is supposed to be a big tent pole game for Xbox, Microsoft needs to get their money back.

SF and FF16 aren't even in the same graphic, scope, scale, budget as Starfield.....Horrible comparison.

 

[Mr Moose]

So you're saying they should FORCE developers? By and Large most games are 60fps, this is not an Xbox thing, the game was in development before the acquisition and it would run 30fps had it been on PS5, stop this console warring bullshit.

They should force Aaron to STFU.

Street fighter 4 and Final fantasy 16, two current gen only games that aren't even first party and they both have a 60 fps mode. Despite PC gamer opinions, it's companies out here that can meet current gen standards.

If Starfield is supposed to be a big tent pole game for Xbox, Microsoft needs to get their money back.

6?

 

[Gaiff]

This has nothing to do with engine limiting design that should cause 30fps.

The sheer number of objects the game needs to keep track of for one.

Zelda has most everything you mentioned on the Switch

Not even close. Have you ever even played a Bethesda games? NPCs in Zelda are husks with a single line of dialogue. They won't pick up a weapon you drop to fight off an invading monster. You can't pickpocket their inventory, get caught and subsequently get a bounty on your head that causes the guards to chase you. Zelda has almost none of that. Hell, no other game comes even close to the sheer level of interlocking systems seen in Bethesda games. What Zelda does better is having a much more advanced physics and weather simulation system.

 

[Spyxos]

Street fighter 4 and Final fantasy 16, two current gen only games that aren't even first party and they both have a 60 fps mode. Despite PC gamer opinions, it's companies out here that can meet current gen standards.

If Starfield is supposed to be a big tent pole game for Xbox, Microsoft needs to get their money back.

I can't say anything about Street Fighter 6. I only played it for 5 minutes or so in the beta, but I played the Final Fantasy 16 demo and it looks a lot like a crossgen game. You can see it most clearly in the characters. And no I don't only play on the Pc I have all the consoles too.

And I played the FF16 demo at 30 fps. I have no problem with that at all.

 

[Bernardougf]

I don't buy this 30 fps. You can drop native resolution, use DRS, checkerboard render and now even FSR 2. You can use dynamic between to low/medium/high settings, dynamic LOD...

PS4/Xbox One would be fine, but we're now in an age of amazing tools to mitigate the framerate. The game don't need to be native 4k, but neither 30 fps.

Will PC version runs at 30 fps with resolutions like 1920x1080p with weaker CPUs than Series X too?

We all (apart from fanboys and 30 fps cultists) know is bullshit.. they just didnt have the time to optimize and give two graphics modes at launch , you just have to look to the series s to see what they did there to their "vision"....

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

The sheer number of objects the game needs to keep track of for one.

Not even close. Have you ever even played a Bethesda games? NPCs in Zelda are husks with a single line of dialogue. They won't pick up a weapon you drop to fight off an invading monster. You can't pickpocket their inventory, get caught and subsequently get a bounty on your head that causes the guards to chase you. Zelda has almost none of that. Hell, no other game comes even close to the sheer level of interlocking systems seen in Bethesda games. What Zelda does better is having a much more advanced physics and weather simulation system.

Show me examples of this supposedly amazing NPC design in action that should limit the game to 30fps?

I really don’t care that they have their own stats

All I remember from Skyrim was a bunch of mostly wooden and unconvincing NPCs

 

[Salty Popsicle]

Street fighter 4 and Final fantasy 16, two current gen only games that aren't even first party and they both have a 60 fps mode. Despite PC gamer opinions, it's companies out here that can meet current gen standards.

If Starfield is supposed to be a big tent pole game for Xbox, Microsoft needs to get their money back.

LMAO if you actually thought the 60FPS mode in the FF16 demo was running at 60FPS. They should have called it an "unlocked FPS" mode because it hovers in the mid 40s most of the time.

 

[VolticArchangel]

Street fighter 4 and Final fantasy 16, two current gen only games that aren't even first party and they both have a 60 fps mode.

Street Fighter 6 is crossgen, available on PS4 too.

 

[BrutalTruth_]

So you're saying they should FORCE developers? By and Large most games are 60fps, this is not an Xbox thing, the game was in development before the acquisition and it would run 30fps had it been on PS5, stop this console warring bullshit.

He's shit posting, ignore it

 

[Ozriel]

He also recently said this game running at 30fps was not a hardware issue

He lies left and right and simply is not ready to reveal a pro level console as sales just jumped for the Series X for this game.

So you’re saying you have insider info that they’re planning to release a pro version of the Series X?

 

[Bernardougf]

I don't know why people keep thinking console users are going to tolerate 30 fps. Every game that has released with just 30 fps get shit on relentlessly. These people are going to learn one way or another.

I fully expect DF eats its own crow when all sony first party's comes with 60 fps options

Or.. if they are just talking about xbox... well.. maybe they are right..standards are lower there apparently for "creative visions"

 

[Three]

With any single item I mean everything, for example you can take a potion and drop it in the ground, it will be affected by physics and where it lands (roll or whatever) will stay forever.

For the example you said, star citizen is impressive but items are a just a string in the menu.

You can drop food or drinks in Star citizen just like you would a potion. They're not just strings in a menu.

Never tried Ark so not gonna comment on it, in Minecraft the items you drop in the world will stay there for more or less 2 minutes, you can manage to not male them despawn by leaving the game chunk, but as soon as you get there again the despawn counter will restart. Also the item you drop are not effected by physics.

Ark you can drop items too.

 

[SF Kosmo]

I like how people lose their minds because Starfield is locked at 30, but games like FF16 that have juddery 40-something framerate "performance" modes that only occasionally hit 60 fps get off scott free.

 

[Gaiff]

Show me examples of this supposedly amazing NPC design in action that should limit the game to 30fps?

Yeah, so you never bothered playing the game and are criticizing it.

I really don’t care that they have their own stats

No one cares that you don't care. It's yet something else the game needs to keep track of. Get an NPC's health down to a certain level, those with magic skills will attempt to heal, those with potions in their inventory will attempt to use it, and regular folks will flee whereas guards will fight to the death.

All I remember from Skyrim was a bunch of mostly wooden and unconvincing NPCs

Of course they aren't "convincing", there isn't a single game with convincing NPCs because artificial intelligence just isn't there yet. It doesn't change the fact that not a single game comes even close to the level of complexity of TES games except for perhaps GTA but it excels in other things that are more predictable (thus less buggy).

You said that "countless games" have the level of complexity of TES or Fallout which is nothing short of laughable.

Here, the quest Diplomatic Immunity has numerous ways to be completed. You can just rush and kill all the Thalmor. Attempt stealth. Cause a distraction by making NPCs cause a scene. Frenzy them. Sneak into different areas and so forth.

 

[Fredrik]

Well i share their opinion about the "this is bethesda's best looking game" part. Their games were never a gfx powerhouse, but this one looks really good tech wise and gameplay wise too. Definitely the best looking gunplay they've ever done

Yeah the game looks amazing, I was blown away last year but more so this year, seems like they’ve actually used the extra year well here.

But the beards… I don’t understand how a game that otherwise looks so great can stumble so much on characters.
Just look at this, looks like they’ve drawn the beard in Paint.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

You said that "countless games" have the level of complexity of TES or Fallout which is nothing short of laughable.

Here, the quest Diplomatic Immunity has numerous ways to be completed. You can just rush and kill all the Thalmor. Attempt stealth. Cause a distraction by making NPCs cause a scene. Frenzy them. Sneak into different areas and so forth.

You keep throwing our complexity without knowing what it means.

Bethesda has a certain style of game, but RDR2’s handling of missions and NPCs is vastly more impressive AND complex. Plenty have multiple ways to tackle missions. This isn’t something unique

Specific to this thread, how is the complexity a limiting factor in the engine allowing a 60 fps mode?

 

[SF Kosmo]

Street fighter 4 and Final fantasy 16, two current gen only games that aren't even first party and they both have a 60 fps mode.

FF16 has a "performance mode" that can run "up to 60 fps" but that doesn't mean it consistently hits that. Performance is pretty dodgy and it's clear why 30fps is the default.

 

[PeteBull]

Just so we got all the info, DF pixeltounded the demo and it can drop well below 4k, in this particular case 1296p so even below 1440p
Timestamped in the vid
Now if xsx can go as low as this expect xss to go much lower, at least to 900p too, maybe lower

Edit: corrected timestamp, somehow it didnt copy properly first time.

 

[Elysium44]

Xbox Series X and Series S - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Where did it all go wrong. Three years ago DF were hyping the Series X like it was the second coming.

Inside Xbox Series X: the full specs

This is it. After months of teaser trailers, blog posts and even the occasional leak, we can finally reveal firm, hard …

www.eurogamer.net

"12 TFLOPs was our goal from the very beginning. We wanted a minimum doubling of performance over Xbox One X to support our 4K60 and 120 targets. And we wanted that doubling to apply uniformly to all games," explains Andrew Goossen.

Gooseen being one the Xbox system architects. From the horse's mouth, telling us the console was designed to target 4k60, not 1296p30.

Are DF hoping we forgot about this or just choosing to gloss over it because reasons? Presumably those reasons being they don't want to upset Microsoft. Am I being too cynical?

 

[Roxkis_ii]

FF16 has a "performance mode" that can run "up to 60 fps" but that doesn't mean it consistently hits that. Performance is pretty dodgy and it's clear why 30fps is the default.

That's fine, I don't mind taking the hit to at least try to reach 60. Anything is better then just 30 fps.

 

[Mr Moose]

Just so we got all the info, DF pixeltounded the demo and it can drop well below 4k, in this particular case 1296p so even below 1440p
Timestamped in the vid
Now if xsx can go as low as this expect xss to go much lower, at least to 900p too, maybe lower

I didn't watch the video, too lazy to put my headphones on, but I don't know if this is using DRS, do they mention anything about it?

Where did it all go wrong. Three years ago DF were hyping the Series X like it was the second coming.

Inside Xbox Series X: the full specs

This is it. After months of teaser trailers, blog posts and even the occasional leak, we can finally reveal firm, hard …

www.eurogamer.net

Gooseen being one the Xbox system architects. From the horse's mouth, telling us the console was designed to target 4k60, not 1296p30.

Are DF hoping we forgot about this or just choosing to gloss over it because reasons? Presumably those reasons being they don't want to upset Microsoft. Am I being too cynical?

It does support 4k @ 120fps, but that is extremely taxing.

Edit: Oh, this bit: And we wanted that doubling to apply uniformly to all games,

 

[Elysium44]

So you're saying they should FORCE developers? By and Large most games are 60fps, this is not an Xbox thing, the game was in development before the acquisition and it would run 30fps had it been on PS5, stop this console warring bullshit.

Expecting Microsoft to abide by their promises is console warring? How about we hold them to better standards?

(I have an Xbox Series console, PS4 and gaming PC FWIW.)

 

[clarky]

You keep throwing our complexity without knowing what it means.

Bethesda has a certain style of game, but RDR2’s handling of missions and NPCs is vastly more impressive AND complex. Plenty have multiple ways to tackle missions. This isn’t something unique

Specific to this thread, how is the complexity a limiting factor in the engine allowing a 60 fps mode?

Sorry to interject and a bit OT, but the worst aspect of RDR2 in my experience is in its missions, they are fucking awful. They made me quit the game with the very specific mission fail parameters. Stray too far from the golden path(s) and you fail.

That's fine, I don't mind taking the hit to at least try to reach 60. Anything is better then just 30 fps.

Nah, im not defending 30FPS here, it sucks, but an unlocked frame rate wobbling about all over the shop without VRR is gross.

 

[adamsapple]

I didn't watch the video, too lazy to put my headphones on, but I don't know if this is using DRS, do they mention anything about it?

No, they just mention one specific scene. Likely DRS or a good use of FSR, cause the IQ looks pretty good.

 

[Spyxos]

That's fine, I don't mind taking the hit to at least try to reach 60. Anything is better then just 30 fps.

Nothing is worse when the frame rate is not stable. Stable 30 or 60 is good. When it jumps back and forth it's not exactly playable.

 

[Roxkis_ii]

Nothing is worse when the frame rate is not stable. Stable 30 or 60 is good. When it jumps back and forth it's not exactly playable.

I play cyberpunk on a laptop with 3060 that has 6 gb of vram, I'm used to unstable framerates unfortunately.

 

[Zathalus]

The Starfield 30 FPS Outcry Is Overblown — Here’s Why

“Always these huge, open worlds, fully dynamic, hyper detail where anything can happen. And we do want to do that. It's 4K in the X. It's 1440 on the S. We do lock it at 30, because we want that fidelity, we want all that stuff. We don't want to sacrifice any of it.”

The reason for lock 30fps according to Todd Howard is fidelity, not physics.

Seeing the resolution so low tells me this is a GPU limitation. I don't know where this complexity talk is coming from, I see no gameplay complexity in Starfield.

Not even the planet traversal is complex as traveling to another planet is interrupt with a cut scene.

His quote is literally including everything about a huge open world that is fully dynamic and hyper detailed. That doesn't just mean graphics.

Also if you watched the direct and see no gameplay complexity then I cannot fucking help you as those fanboy goggles are likely stuck forever.

 

[Elysium44]

I didn't watch the video, too lazy to put my headphones on, but I don't know if this is using DRS, do they mention anything about it?

It does support 4k @ 120fps, but that is extremely taxing.

Edit: Oh, this bit: And we wanted that doubling to apply uniformly to all games,

I mean it just seems disingenuous for them to now claim they only meant it had to 'support' 60fps games. All consoles have done that since forever. The Sega Saturn, PS1 and Dreamcast had lots of 60fps games. They clearly said or at least very heavily implied it would be the standard, at least for their own first party games.

I wouldn't be so disappointed if it wasn't for Spencer lying about it rather than just fessing up 'yep we got that wrong, sorry - but we think the trade-off is worth it'. If he was just honest, people would be more forgiving.

 

[Gaiff]

You keep throwing our complexity without knowing what it means.

Bethesda has a certain style of game, but RDR2’s handling of missions and NPCs is vastly more impressive AND complex. Plenty have multiple ways to tackle missions. This isn’t something unique

No it isn't. RDR2 gets constantly shat on for being on-rails and having outdated mission design that basically boils down to "chase this guy, stop this train, shoot this thing."

That you tried to say that freakin' Zelda's NPCs are similar to those of Bethesda games proves how ill-informed you are. It's not even the same planet.

'without knowing what it means" you must be fucking joking. You're the dude who seriously argued Zelda is similar to Bethesda games in terms of NPCs. Clearly, you didn't play their games for any significant length of time, so why argue?

Specific to this thread, how is the complexity a limiting factor in the engine allowing a 60 fps mode?

For one, there could be a 60fps mode later on, who knows? Redfall will supposedly get a 60fps mode. For two, you've been told but keep playing dumb. The fact that the game is 30fps but 4K suggests a CPU bottleneck, pointing to the game logic and all the stuff the CPU has to do to run the game properly. This includes the thousands of things a character can do, their schedules, stats (that you hilariously tried to dismiss as being irrelevant), equipment, what faction they belong to, their pathfinding, etc. That plus the thousands upon thousands of objects littering the world that you can interact with and that also have physical properties such as mass, volume, etc. You enter a cave and there are two mage factions consisting of necromancers, fire mages, lightning mages, and others, blasting different spells all at once while summoning creatures and raising their dead comrades or turning invisible or maybe they simply run away because they're afraid. That's the kind of stuff that can happen in TES and it's not even scripted. Shit can get out of whack when multiple random events interfere with one another.

And no, not Zelda, not RDR, not Horizon, not GTA, not Elden Ring, not AC, none of the open world games you will name does that like TES or come even close.

There's a reason their games are so buggy; the sheer numbers of interacting variables is mind-boggling.

 

[Mod of War]

Move on from the Greenberg tweet and get back on topic.

 

[Fake]

Just so we got all the info, DF pixeltounded the demo and it can drop well below 4k, in this particular case 1296p so even below 1440p
Timestamped in the vid
Now if xsx can go as low as this expect xss to go much lower, at least to 900p too, maybe lower

There is no timestamped. What point of the video?

 

[Three]

I like how people lose their minds because Starfield is locked at 30, but games like FF16 that have juddery 40-something framerate "performance" modes that only occasionally hit 60 fps get off scott free.

People should call that out too but if they start trying to talk about "the particle effects that have never been seen in a game except games from SE, what FF16 is doing is complex so only hitting 40fps in spots is a creative choice" then you would have what's happening here.

 

[Heisenberg007]

My criteria for a "proper" RPG is pretty simple.

1. Have a character creator
2. Customizable attributes/perks
3. Dialogue choices

As per this criteria, even The Witcher 3 is not an RPG.