Nintendo Switch

Discussion in 'Games' started by Camodude10, Jan 13, 2017.

  1. MilkCalf

    MilkCalf Supernova

    Well it is an openworld game after all. And a human only visibly notices a framrate drop if it's bellow 25 (if I remember right).
     
  2. Lil' Mini

    Lil' Mini Phantasmal Quasar

    I've had the game for 3 days now and sweet lord it's awesome. Think I might have had a framerate drop, but I guess it's barely noticable, due to the fact that I'm not even fully sure if I've had a framerate drop at all. Even so, I still highly recommend the game, now the only question wether you should buy a Switch or Wii U. :proper:
     
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  3. Camodude10

    Camodude10 Aquatic Astronaut

    Any game on any system has FPS drops in certain places. They just found it on LoZ: Breath of the Wild and since its hyped everyone's making a big deal out of it. Overall, the Switch is a great piece of hardware. Yeah, you can get scratches on it, but that's the price you pay for a hybrid console and plus the scratches can be easily prevented with a screen protector.
     
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  4. Unclever title

    Unclever title Cosmic Narwhal

    I've played BOTW for a few hours the past two evenings and I've noticed some minor FPS drops once or twice. Though at the time I was too immersed in the game to even think about investigating why it happened.
     
  5. Hidari

    Hidari Over 9000!!!

    The average human eye can perceive approximately 24 frames per second, which is the frame rate in which movies usually run at.


    I usually don't engage in tech talk unless it's in regards of troubleshooting computers for a few reasons, but I feel compelled to dispel a few things.

    30 FPS is, for all intents and purposes, deemed the "optimal" number of frames per second for playing video games. But why, when the average person is fine with 24 FPS? And isn't 60 the new standard, anyway? Why the hell would anyone want to play the Switch in that case!

    There's a good number of explanations and valid reasons, but I'm dispelling gamer myths, and the biggest farce we have to put down is the notion that higher FPS is better.

    That's right, I said it: 30 FPS, in many cases, is better than 60 FPS, especially when approaching the matter from a technological standpoint.

    Traditionally, monitor refresh rates began with 30Hz CRTs. But we're talking about FPS, why should we care about Hz? Well, Hz (hertz), in laymen terms is the measurement of how many times a wave or signal ticks per second, whether it be audio or visual. When CRT monitors fell out of favor to digital displays, manufacturers kept the 30Hz refresh rate out of tradition--and also because it meant that it would be immediately compatible with existing hardware.

    So again, if the average person sees 24 FPS, why should we care about 30 Hz refresh rates...? Well, it's all about the weakness of modern digital displays, and its lack of motion blur.

    Motion blur is a naturally occurring phenomenon BECAUSE our ocular nerves process visuals at 24 Hz and life has... well... infinite FPS. Our brains fill in the gap so everything looks smooth. And because there is no limit on FPS in real life, our brains have enough information to grab from to fill those blank "refresh" spots in. Conversely, digital monitors, while having a far superior resolution than CRT monitors (which does have a means of reproducing motion blur through its use of progressive scan lines), doesn't have a method of reproducing motion blur natively. This is where the cacophony of hardware can stumble, when the amount of power required to keep refreshing the screen at 30 Hz is more than what the hardware can provide, and you start seeing a small, minute stutter, the length of which can either be negligible (less than what your eye can detect) or a sustained disaster (which our brains process as "lag").

    So, technically speaking, we have about 6 Hz of leeway before we start noticing a noticeable blip on our monitor. ...Usually.

    So some tech head at a manufacturer probably came up with an idea to get around this problem: 60 Hz monitors! That'd get us 36 more FPS leeway, right?! Since we can only see 24 Hz?!

    Actuallyyyyyyyy... no.

    With technology, everything's timing based. When we're doubling the amount of frames in a second, two consecutive frames in a 60FPS game is equal to one frame in a 30FPS game. While missing a few frames in a 30FPS game has more impact on your perception than missing the same amount of frames in a 60FPS game, the amount of power required to keep the frame rate at 60 Hz is significantly greater.

    And this is all because of the lack of motion blur: the phenomenon that occurs in real life and with traditional theater movies that keeps everything looking like it's moving nice and smoothly.

    "But Hidari," you might be wanting to ask me, "if it's about lack of information flashing into my eyes, surely 60FPS is better. Shouldn't we be looking at console developers to produce higher FPS hardware and content?"

    Nah. I really don't want to pay an outrageous fee for games and consoles. Think about it this way: would you pay twice the sum for a console and its accessories/games/etc for twice the frames per second?

    If you said yes, I hope you enjoyed paying $120 USD for Breath of the Wild in your crazy fictitious alternate plane of existence and $600 for the console. That's absurd. Besides, consoles use 30FPS for its hardware and games so that it can allocate resources for things that are more CPU intensive anyway.

    So given the greater amount of power required for its benefit, 60 FPS is a load of BS, right? Not exactly. Some games that are less intense on the CPU can benefit greatly from it. The whole 30FPS vs 60FPS debate is a load of BS in and of itself since the matter is actually entirely situational.

    So now we know that consoles traditionally use 30Hz refresh rates, we only perceive at 24Hz, and FPS dips depend more on hardware and what's going on in the game to determine how taxed the CPU is.

    So what did I accomplish? Well, setting up my argument, of course.

    Given that I own both a Switch and Breath of the Wild, to say that the game runs "poorly" on the Switch is a poor choice of words driven by a bad experience lived vicariously through a sad YouTuber who was driven to leave a palmprint across Nintendo's face for all the overhype the game received. As venomous as this sounds, it's actually an unbiased analysis (which will be explained below), and I'm just as disappointed because I'm also versed in psychology and know that people do these kinds of things for various subconscious reasons, and then justify it for usually other reasons that sound/seem more logically fit.

    These reviews require viewers to take with it a huge heaping amount of grains of salt because you're viewing 30FPS that have been captured, encoded, EDITED!!!, compressed, decompressed, decoded, and then plastered on your screen at possibly a different FPS for your viewing displeasure. That is to say: what you're seeing on a YouTube video pales in comparison to what actually is, and it's extremely easy to play this up just to say some system is garbage, regardless of whether that comes from the author or the viewer.

    Of course, I'm probably using a more aggressive set of words than what most people are willing to accept, but then again, some people just want to doubt--and that's actually a good thing.

    I am a huge advocate for adventure, as first hand experience cannot be replaced when it comes to exploring new things. That, and when it comes to naysayers, people naturally like to root for the perceived underdog. Seeing people in the thread say things such as "the Switch will be vastly underpowered" will actually make some people want it more because those naysayers make others want to prove the naysayers wrong.

    So here I am, with a mild grin of amusement on my face, having long since come to an ironic conclusion because psychology, thanks to people who want to talk negatively about technology because psychology dictates them to do so, when the technology doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things because physically we can't perceive the massive slew of faults that actually are there because technology and physiology are battling and contradicting each other, and yet people feel justified in still debating it because subconsciously they just want to stir the pot. And then explain their rationale in a completely left field way because psychology.


    Opinion time? Opinion time! I like Breath of the Wild. If there's been FPS dips, I haven't noticed them because I haven't had someone trying to point out every single one of them to me, and even if I do eventually notice one, I'll probably be having too much fun to care.

    The mechanics are great and the controls are responsive. The visuals are outstanding and the art style is fresh. The game is engaging but doesn't require you to commit a grand swath of time for you to complete an objective. There's tons of places to explore but the trek isn't overwhelming. Nintendo put a lot of love and care into their project... and, in my opinion, faithfully delivered an outstanding flagship title for their new system.

    Actual rant time, though, don't ever complain about dipping to 25 FPS, like... at all, unless you're a hardware/software developer (and even then, you'll have to be especially context specific). It'll make you sound like a moron because to the average person, you're missing out on NOT SEEING ONE ADDITIONAL FRAME PER SECOND. WOW. Now, having five consecutive frame skips or misrenders? THAT IS AWFUL AND I FEEL AWFUL FOR YOU. And I will give you a hug and tell you things will be okay, because a sixth of a second of your life isn't worth crying over because I bet you won't miss it.

    (But for the people who actually can perceive greater than 24 FPS, I would recommend explaining that you can do stuff like that before complaining, except that this is the internet and most people actually won't care, so you're no better off than the average individual. And for that, I sympathize.)


    I actually recommend against reading the spoilers, because you're all wonderful people and I love all of you and I don't want anyone to take things the wrong way. :3 But if it is the truth you seek, be warned that the truth ain't pretty. ;o
     
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  6. Camodude10

    Camodude10 Aquatic Astronaut

    Finally someone speaking the truth. People need to stop whining and posting about it just because they tapped a button too hard or some **** (just an exaggeration).
     
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  7. Arnust

    Arnust Big Damn Hero

    Some games need 60 FPS or contrarily can't.
    Hyper Light Drifter is enjoyable only in the first and Nuclear Throne couldn't work at 60.
     
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  8. Hidari

    Hidari Over 9000!!!

    It's actually a matter of perspective. I think the Switch isn't as bad as some believe it to be, but maybe they have a faulty system. It is brand new and these things happen. And as the life of the system is brand new, it isn't anywhere near optimized yet. Remember when loading software on the Wii U took forever? No? Well, they patched it so that load times were more efficient. You can even skip loading the initial menu on the Wii U at startup--which is smart if you just want to play the game you turned the console on to play. It's easy to write a system off at the birth of its life cycle. Look at the XBox 360. The Red Ring of Death plagued loads of consumers when it first started out, which was indeed a manufacturer blunder, but the system itself wasn't bad--it just had some kinks to work out.
    In my first spoiler, I actually addressed that some games benefit from 60 FPS, while others benefit more from 30 FPS. It's entirely situational, but the ultimate bottom line is you're still not seeing the whole thing because your brain skips the surplus frames it doesn't need.

    I've played Hyper Light Drifter, and it's amazingly smooth because it's not very CPU intensive so it can afford the higher frame count. Though I haven't played Nuclear Throne, it sounds like it could very well be significantly more CPU intensive. *looks the game up* Top-down shooter, possibly a bullet hell? The sprite count in some of those images alone verifies that it taxes the CPU. :p
     
  9. Arnust

    Arnust Big Damn Hero

    The thing with Hyper Light Drifter was that the 30FPS version was an ass to play, basically becouse I-Frames were so incredibly narrow (due to lesser frame count) that only master ninjas could play unscathed.

    Nuclear Throne has a very tight physics, frames and entities count to near perfection. Don't think that it's more demanding than HLD. Significant slowdowns and such only happen, well, when you are in the way of killing 200+ enemies, explosive at best, with a single shot of a BFG-like gun that splits projectiles. Or blowing up their corpses. Or instakilling them with a wormhole.
    It has a freezeframe option to ease this stuff.
     
  10. Hidari

    Hidari Over 9000!!!

    You have a very weird way of agreeing with me.

    A lot of people don't think that 2D games can be very demanding of the CPU, but if I may use your own testimony, 200+ sprites plus bullet sprites/explosion animation plus simultaneous execution of death scripts of said 200+ enemies is a lot more going on than anything I've ever experienced in Hyper Light Drifter, and that kinda supports what I said about some games reaping greater benefit from the lower frame rate. Imagine your computer not only doing everything you described in Nuclear Throne, but also trying to push out two times the frames for everything that's happening. You'd experience far greater slowdown because there's far fewer resources for the CPU to use in executing at least 600 subroutines simultaneously (collision

    But now we're getting off topic here, and it wasn't my intention to derail the thread.

    I admit that I bought a Link and Zelda amiibo for Breath of the Wild. :x They... they just looked too good. And they look amazing on my desk. D:
     
  11. Arnust

    Arnust Big Damn Hero

    Well that is not the rule. Not until Loop 2, that is.

    Back to topic, check this out:

    It has a Part 2
     
  12. Jerln

    Jerln Oxygen Tank

    I was hoping to see Enter the Gungeon for a second in the video...

    Whatever that game was with the spring-loaded boxing gloves, that looked pretty fun.
     
  13. Corraidhín

    Corraidhín Supernova

    I ended up getting a Wii U instead of a Switch, it was a very nice platform, but I REALLY want to play the games I missed on the 2 nintendo generations I passionately decided to ignore... ooooh I really enjoy Pokken and BoW and X other games
     
  14. Waffle-Chan

    Waffle-Chan Guest

    I know no one cares, but Cave Story is coming to the Switch soon
     
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  15. Hidari

    Hidari Over 9000!!!

    Currently playing: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

    I embarrass friends by beating them using Isabelle.

    You just got beat by 1) a girl 2) a dog 3) a secretary. Which displeases you the most?!
     
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  16. MilkCalf

    MilkCalf Supernova

    Sexist!
    Racist!!
    Even more sexist!!!
    :sarcasm:
     
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  17. Hidari

    Hidari Over 9000!!!

    Sarcasm or no, there are male secretaries.

    And I don't think "dog" is a race so much as it is a species. <.<;;;;;;
     
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  18. Camodude10

    Camodude10 Aquatic Astronaut

    The new Legend of Zelda feels so much more like the original two on NES to me. I absolutely loved them and this one is my new favorite. It's how LoZ was meant to be played.
     
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  19. Waffle-Chan

    Waffle-Chan Guest

    Kill TAoL with fire!
     
  20. Corraidhín

    Corraidhín Supernova

    I dont know... I havent finished Cave Story+... I shouldnt have played on Hard Mode from the beginning...
     
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