I'm being serious. It may seem a stupid question, but I see people bringing it up left, right and centre in every thread. But....why? I've been gaming for almost 20 years now, and I'm a fussy person. I can see a clear difference between 720p and 1080p even on my 42" TV. I love tech and want things to be the best spec possible.

However, I just don't get people complaining about framerate. I play games with 60fps. They look great. I play games with 30fps. They look great. I play games which drop frames sometimes. But I honestly don't notice, and if I do, it lasts about a second. A second! Who cares? As long as it's not so constantly chugging by so much that it's unplayable, I really can't see an issue.

Is it just me? Or is it because I mainly play racing games and platformers, as opposed to FPS?

Enlighten me.

It's simply causes a response delay. You want to shoot something. But the whole screen is screwed up. You will more likely fall off the cliff, fly off the race track. Since you have no idea if your buttons where read at the right point, or miss with the gun. A game requires prescison. Ignoring horrible FPS. If the game keeps changing FPS, it be like trying to jog on a treadmill randomly changing speed. You will get fed up.

Because it's jarring, ugly and, unlike resolution, actually affects gameplay.

60 fps smoothness and above =

visually impressive
easier immersion
more precise gameplay
general feeling of responsiveness

I'm with ya. I've played games since the Nes where flickering and slowdown was just accepted. I played game on the Snes like Starfox and Stunt Race FX where the things were so slow and choppy, it sometimes seemed like I was watching a slide show. I was never bothered by what the games were doing wrong. I was just happy with what they were doing right.

Now, we see complaints about screen tearing (not the topic of this thread) and framerate drops that are only noticeable because Digital Foundry has a thingy running on the bottom of the screen telling us we saw it....and if your console of choice has that frame drop and the other one doesn't, you'd better get ready for the onslaught. I'm just one of those guys that plays the exact same game on multiple systems and, even if DF tells me one is better than the other, I tend to not notice it.

Maybe there are those that really care because they're professional gamers or something. There are others that just want to support their team. Anything to give weight to your argument, I guess.

Depends on the game / genre really.

A game where split second timing is key, 60 fps is god. (Fighters, Racing etc.)

Constant FPS should be the aim in any situation tho.

I'll take a locked 30 fps game over at 30-60 FPS that jumps / dips wildy.

Tho if you play PC this usually isn't a problem (unless its got BS fps locks).

I don't need a FPS counter to know when a game goes down to 20FPS.

I got spoiled by the solid FPSs in Nintendo games and PC, anything that keeps jumping around puts me off.

I grew up with Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament, where framerates meant win/loose, so it's just ingrained in me at this point.

Thankfully, being a part of the PC gaming master race means sub-60fps can be the exception rather than the rule, with consoles you don't have a choice. - It's not like you can add more Ram or a faster GPU when you have the cash in a few years to up the resolution and/or framerates and experience it all better.

Eventually, I fully expect all games to be 30fps and sub-1080P on the consoles, Playstation 4 included. - Sacrifices must be made in some area's so that peoples demands for ever increasing image quality can be met. (They help with advertising too.)

Try playing a very unforgiving platformer game with framerrate issues...