You really need to play more games if you think this. O_o
That being said, from what I get from your comments on VGC, you only play on Nintendo systems and/or Nintendo is kind of your god, so I guess I can't blame you.

As a victim of severe eye cancer from last gen and MK8 I politely disagree. Better looks do make a game better. Period. Of course you can't help it if the game is locked on a single platform anyway but pretending that it doesn't matter just because we can't change it isn't right either.

There is a thing called standard. Everyone has its own and it is influenced by how well experiences stack up to another. Sure, fapping is great but once you had sex you don't want to go back. It's absolutely legitimate for people to call out experiences who are just another fap instead of full on sexy time. We had fap last generation. Then we experienced what is infinitely better. Why would we want to go back? Why would we deliberately choose to go back to fap?

I've played tons of games, including popular picks for best graphics, like Infamous Second Son, Killzone Shadowfall, and Ryse.

And you'd be wrong to assume that; I also game on Xbox 360, for stuff like Bioshock that doesn't come to Nintendo consoles.

I am not saying graphics are not important. But no, graphics are not key to new gameplay methods. 95% of every game made today stems from genres that have ben in existance for the most part of the last 20yrs. Yes, we get better detail and more effects, but te things that really make these games shine tody aren't things that are defined by graphics. A games mechanics, ai, animation, physics, level design...etc are all the details that makes a game better today. It doesn't hurt that the game looks good though.

i will say again, as far as performance, certain things are important as they actually affect how the game is percieved and played. A games framerate being consistent at at least 30fps is more important than if that game is running at 60fps or 120fps and should be reported as such. We should say, rock solid framerate before we say 60fps. Just look at games with an unlocked framerate that drops from 60fps to as low as 45fps..... any gamer given the option to lock that framerate down to 30fps will jump at it.

Before I made this thread I did something, and I want you to try it too. 

I have a 1080p projector hooked up to my PS4 and as a secondary display for a very powerful pc rig (i call it my workstation). I have also got a 720p 32" display in my bedroom. 

Here is what I want you to try (having taken everything you have said into account), find and download the high quality Uncharted 4 1080p trailer. Play it back on a 1080p display. Enjoy it. Then if you can get your hands on a 720p display, play it on that too... then answer this. Does it suddenly "look worse"?

I am not saying we should go back, or tech doesn't need to evolve, I am just saying taht our focus on it is misguided at best and usully for all te wrong reasons. We ae literally arguing about things that we actually cannot really see when actually playing a game.

and this is exactly how bad things have got. the graphics are just th easiest things to see about a next gen console. But believe me when i say its the least important thing about where games can go thanks to every new generation. eg, something like amount of available ram and a consoles cpu, gpu and i/o has more to do with what kinda experiences you can have on a console or any gaming platform for that matter than its graphics.

It only looks a little less sharper.  But as you said, not in anyway a detrimental experince. It actually still looks just as good overall. And whats really funny, is that that loss if detail, in "sharpness" is something that you will not notice if you took a step or two back. 

For me a game doesn't have to look great or have a great resolution or frame rate to be fun or playable. The newest DLC actually downgrades the games graphics to give the game more of a retro look but it looks super fun they did upgrade the online for that one though since up to four players can play it co op versus only two in the regular game

Agree also, plus on top of that I don't have perfect 20/20 vision and sometimes still play games on a 720p TV. 

I think you're short changing what graphics consist of.  Graphics is a wide term and includes animations in many regards. Graphic capabilities are heavily tied with the performance of a computer system. The stronger it is the more particles can appear on screen, the more joints can be rendered, the further distance can be viewed, the greater particle destructability can be acheived, the greater persistency of particles can be obtained. All of these can be incorporated into gameplay mechanics. The value of destructable environments, the scale of players, the density of world environments, environment effects, etc. The enhancements to one game to the next in a series is not due just to a better understanding of game design and gameplay method experience but to the advancement of the graphical capabilities of the hardware that allow for new and improved methods to be utilized and tried.

Graphics are not just frames per second, resolution, shaders, and filters.