Starfield’s 30fps frame rate is “a choice,” God of War dev says

What irks me is when game developers ties the physics engine to the framerate. We all know this will cause issues down the road, could we just.. not?

Not doing it also causes issues in the form of micro stutters when some but not other frames have updated physics or not. Frame pacing is hard, and locking everything down happens to be the only sure-fire way to completely eliminate display issues. But then, of course, you have a locked frame rate.
They better delivery that "visual fidelity" if you are already capping at 30 fps on a current-gen console.
I imagine there is some reason we still see this. Any devs in the Industry lurking?
- I'm not in the industry, but I've dabbled in Unity and that's just kind of how it works by default. You create a game object and it gets an Update() function that is called once per frame. You're encouraged to perform calculations and update it's position in that callback.
  You're supposed to use Time.deltaTime to scale your calculations based on how long it's been since the last frame.
  But that takes effort and it's very easy to just not do that and your game will still work fine in most cases.
Is this really a thing lately? Maybe on some Switch games, but I think most modern games can have a dynamic framerate.
- Skyrim famously did this. So the concern that Starfield could have similar issues is not unfounded.
- Remember Red Dead Redemption 2? On PC, your stats depleted faster the more FPS you had so with 60FPS you'd get hungry twice as fast as with 30FPS. Iirc even the sun moved faster so a day was only half as long.
I think they fixed this with Fallout 76, so here's hoping that those changes also made its way into their future projects.
- Assuming that it will be ported to PC then I'm sure they've resolved those issues.

“Game dev here,” Carlone writes, adding that they are a “big fan” of Dreamcast Guy. “Wanted to clarify: it’s not a sign of an unfinished game. It’s a choice. 60fps on this scale would be a large hit to the visual fidelity. My guess is they want to go for a seamless look and less ‘pop in.’ And of course, [it’s] your right to dislike the choice.”

Sure. Maybe. It could be this. Or...

Arm-chair babbling idiot who plays too much video games here, I am one hundred percent convinced that it has nothing to do with visual fidelity and everything to do with that asthmatic engine they've been dragging since Morrowind. Can't prove it but... you know. Just a hunch I get from playing their games.

People constantly complain about the engine that they use but no other game engine is as flexible when it comes to modding and no other game engine has the same level of complexity when it comes to being able to pick stuff up and move it around. You can take items off a shelf or desk in skyrim and fallout and stack them somewhere else. You can if you want decide to hoard a bunch of garbage you stole and stack them into a pyramid in your home base area.
Are their quirks? Sure the physics tied to framerate in skyrim was a problem, the games are always buggy, and they arent usually the prettiest games out there(though skyrim looked decent when it first came out and the graphical fidelity mods can work magic).
As for the premise does it have to do with fidelity? Of course it does. Setting a framecap on consoles means theyre able to use higher resolution assets, better lighting effects, and more complex models. I understand the preference of giving up fidelity for some smoothness and frames but 30fps isnt totally uncommon in console spaces and this is a bethesda game not a twitch shooter or a 2d fighter.
Outside the PC space gamers hardly ever talk about or think about framer rate. Graphical effects and details and fisual fidelity are a higher priority and more important in a game where generally you mostly just walk around and explore.
It would be nice if they had an option for a lower res mode or less detailed mode and 60fps target, but I get why they made the choice they did and ideally Im sure it'll run at a normal framerate on pc.
Now if it runs poorly on PC then we can riot.
- It's also a personal choice of Bethesda not to rename their engine. Many other studios do this same thing and reuse engines, but they often rename them after significant rewrites. Bethesda just doesn't do that.
  Also they aren't worried about how the game will be released. Their games have legs. So a 60fps version will eventually come out. Then they'll release it 5 more times.
- I also agree with that. I love the modding aspect of it and I fear it'll go away with a new engine.
Arm-chair babbling idiot who plays too much video games here, I am one hundred percent convinced that it has nothing to do with visual fidelity and everything to do with that asthmatic engine they've been dragging since Morrowind.
Code doesn't go bad with time, that's not really how it works. And game engines tend to be a Ship of Theseus situation, where just because it's still the same "engine" in theory, doesn't mean that large parts (or all of it), haven't eventually been replaced or refactored over the years.
Unreal Engine has been around for 30 years at this point, would you also consider that an "asthmatic engine"?
- No, what I mean is that this engine always had a cobbled up together with duct tape feels to it. It's also the beauty of it.
- Some engines get better and some just get more and more spaghetti duct tape.
No, it's most definitely a choice. You can make any engine run at 60 FPS if you sacrifice something else for it. The RE engine runs beautiful games at 60 FPS, but they had to make all sorts of sacrifices to fidelity to get World Tour in Street Fighter 6 to run at all, let alone at 60 FPS on current gen consoles.
- I mean sure but give us the choice, damn it! :(
It sure reads like they are saying "more fps makes game look bad", but my assumption is that they mean " if we want this to run at higher fps we will have to reduce fidelity or the engine cant handle it". At least thats what I hope they mean
- Yeah, reducing graphical fidelity is often one of the things needed in order to increase framerate. That is not unique to their engine, or any engine.
that asthmatic engine they’ve been dragging since Morrowind
I don't believe that's true at all, though. At least by Wikipedia, Morrowind was NetImmerse, Oblivion was Gamebryo (modified Havok), and Skyrim was Creation. And I remember in the announcements for Skyrim that they remade the engine for the game. And Starfield is an updated engine, Creation 2
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_Engine for more
- Gamebryo was called netimmerse until 2003. Creation is a modified gamebryo. So Creation 2 will also be based on it. So yes they use kinda the same engine since morrowind. Beteshda will not change away from it because gamebryo is a large reason why the modding community is as strong as it is for skyrim etc. And the modding community sells a lot of copies!
I'm sure you're right about this. Probably the framerate bounces all over the place which feels much worse than simply locking it to 30fps and having a consistent experience. I think a PC has the potential to simply brute force it into 60fps, but an Xbox simply cannot. Which is probably fine. The game is said to run at 4k and 1440p depending on which Xbox you have, and for a game like this where exploration is going to play a big role, those visuals will do a lot of silent storytelling.
I would rather walk over a hill and see an incredible alien sunset on some moon, than have more frames, especially if those frames are bouncing around between 60 and 40 and going over that hill stutters and jerks spoiling the immersion.
If only players could make that choice themselves, perhaps through some sort of graphics settings menu. No, that's crazy and unprecedented, it could never work.
Call of Duty still runs on the Quake 3 engine, if we go off of the logic people uncharitably use for Bethesda's games specifically.
I think that they talked at one point about how they had it running at 60 fps at one point, but they opted for a more “stable” experience (translation: the amount of frame drops probably would’ve made Cyberpunk on the base Xbox One blush).
I'd be a lot more willing to believe it's down to the engine if we weren't also dealing with a bunch of other games coming out on consoles at 30FPS.

This incessant nagging about fps is the most tiresome thing in gaming since gamergate.

Yeah how dare consumers expect their products to be good
- Good ≠ a single metric.
I agree up to a point. If a game is at 30 and feels good to play, then I’m OK. For example, Zelda feels great. Controlling Link is tight and snappy.
On the other hand, if the game has bad frame pacing (like Bloodborne), playing at 30 feels real bad.
I try not to get too crazy about frames, but sometimes some games just don’t feel good.
I will say, though, that while I really like channels like Digital Foundry, I sometimes wonder if them picking apart games to show the most minor frame dips is slowly teaching us to see these things, and as a result we kind of subconsciously will be like, “Well now I noticed this game had some moments where the frames dropped during an explosion. Obviously it’s a bad game.” I know that’s some hyperbole, but still.
- I have no problem playing 30 fps games. It's when it goes really low like 10 fps that it's choppy. Like dark souls in blighttown. Now that isn't the best to play. But it's still doable and an awesome game. 30 fps games are great. 60 is butter but not necessarily.

No lock 24 and add film effect

I honestly don't really mind if a console game runs at a steady 30 fps. I just know that it isn't going to be steady lol

30fps for top end consoles in 2023 is absolutely pathetic.

Yeah that's a weird choice. Todd Howard said that the game has performed upwards of 60fps in some places, but they made the choice to lock it down to 30fps on console for full graphical fidelity.

I get that not everyone has a TV that supports VRR, but they should be able to programmatically check what the xbox is currently supporting. If it is a Series-X and does support VRR they should be able to unlock FPS to up-to 60. I mean even 40fps on the steamdeck is surprisingly good, whereas 30 can be really jarring. Or give a choice to the user, 4k@30 or 1440p@60 with VRR.

If there is a 'mods' system like Skyrim on Xbox, it should be possible to remove the frame rate cap. People managed it with Xbox before they added FPS Boost to Skyrim, using INI tweaks and a dummy ESP plugin. That's without VRR, though.
I don't understand it. If it's a problem on console, why not have a full-fidelity "quality" mode but also offer a reduced-fidelity "performance" mode? Presumably there could be options like that similar to the PC build.
- I just hope it plays 60+ on PC, who knows it could be pretty rough. I haven’t watched the digital foundry video on it yet, I assume it’s just Xbox version.
Ya, I'd also like to see a 40fps mode. Really adds to the smoothness. Todd Howard suggested that they still had a decent amount of overhead, just not enough to hit 60 consistently. Would be nice if 40 became a new standard option, at least.

on Xbox

I don't know, Bethesda's games have always been iffy when it comes to FPS. Skyrim for example breaks if you mod it to have over 60 fps if I remember correctly. Even on Fallout 76 movement speed was kinda tied to the FPS so players looking at the ground (so that less things render thus increasing FPS) would run faster than others.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they cap it to 60 FPS on PC as well.
- The Skyrim FPS lock to 60 fps was due to the physics engine not working beyond that. Knowing Bethesda, and knowing the fact that in the 30 or so rereleases of Skyrim they've never fixed that, I wouldn't be surprised if that's still there

Of course it is. As always a choice between visual quality and framerate.

DF did a pretty decent video on the whole 30fps question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9ikne_9iEI

Reminds me of Horizon Zero Dawn running at 30fps but it felt silky smooth because the FPS was rock solid.

yeah.. if you have not ever played anything 60fps or more.
30fps is normally alright for 3rd person adventure games, but shooting, especially first person, might feel different. Idk, I still don't know how to feel about this one. The digital foundry guys seemed to be supportive, but I still just don't trust Bethesda lately
- I decided to play Jedi Survivor at 30 on the PS5 just to sort of get the feeling of 30 and as I began playing, I"m like alright this is okay I'm loving the graphics and how awesome everything looks. Played for about 30 minutes like this at 30fps then decided alright I'm gonna toggle performance mode on and see how it compares now that I've experienced 30 and whew.. it was a night and day difference. It felt so silky smooth, despite the fps drops in Survivor it still felt 100000% times better over 30. Just the smoothness and fluidity is insanely good. It was like I was going from slow motion to real life when I made the switch.
  I really hope Starfield can feel good, but man being first person at 30 is gonna be rough I bet. I really hope I'm wrong and it'll be decent though.

No Man's Sky runs at a very stable 60fps, I personally know people who have wrangled it up to 120fps. I know they don't have the same underlying tech, but they're very similar in terms of gameplay (from what we've seen)

They're a wildly different level of detail though. The NMS physics engine is pretty simplistic, mostly effecting NPCs and a very few physics objects. Starfield is like other Bethesda games, tons of little items and junk that all have their own physics and interactions.

"...causing worry about the space sim on PC, but a God of War..."

wat?

FPS itself is not as important as consistent and low frametime.

If frametime graph is pretty much flat the stuttering would be low and overall experience is nice, but if it's janky one would like to drop the game or decrease quality settings pretty fast.

My guess is that gunplay in any version of "creation engine" is going to be janky as ...

30 FTS for this kind of game should not matter too much in world, but I agree that it's pretty disappointing. But I'm extremely skepticial about the whole release anyway.