This will be a bit of rambling, but maybe someone will find the observation interesting.

I've been using, for the past few months, my girlfriend as a little study case as she's playing both on PC and consoles. PC gaming, as a whole, is disgusting to me and I only deal with it for as little as I possibly can  - Anno, LoL, Heroes, Disciles, that sort of thing -, but she's really into it at times.

Lately, she's gotten into Black Desert Online.

It's a nice enough game, as far as I'm concerned. Played it a bit but my laptop can barely run and heats up like crazy, so I'd rather spare it the torture. Hers, however, is handling the game quite well. That is to say, well enough, as the game does slow down massively in some areas and does become a slide show while visiting towns.

I went into the settings, tweaked them a bit and managed to get a 30 FPS stable frame rate after dropping a bit of eye candy. It's still in the high-mid range in 1920x1080.

And this is where it gets fun.

Normally she's been able to run just about anything in High or Very High with no problems  - mostly anything being Dark Souls 3, Fallout, Skyrim, Anno, Witcher 1, 2, 3, the sort of stuff she plays. She's never had to worry about the frame rate and never had to worry about details. She'd go between Dark Souls 3 on the PS4 and the PC version with no problems, same for Skyrim on PS3 and PC - fully modded - and so on. Same goes for any game she's played on two platforms or more.
But this is the first time where I've found her trying to tweak her settings again. Not to get a more stable FPS, but, and I quote, "Because I want it to look better".

And I ask "Why? What's wrong with how it looks now?"

Took her a minute or two before coming an answer: "I...honestly don't know. It's just frustrating that I can't see more of what the game has."

Now, from the above, you'd say that she never had this connundrum because she'd always gone from a version with worse graphics to one with better, so it was enough.

Thing is, that's completely false.

She would always come back to her console saves just as well once I was done with the console version of the game. We switch between versions because there's only one console - for now - in the house and we need to share.

But for the first time, when she couldn't get a game running in Very High details, she felt frustrated. Not because the game wasn't gorgeous already, but because  - as we discussed further - she felt the game was holding back on her. She wouldn't get this kind of frustration when she was playing something on the consoles because there was nothing there to be gained extra. Same as other games.

That got me thinking though, especially with similar stuff I've seen on 9gag or Facebook gaming groups. The mad dash for max graphics isn't really something about the graphics per say - because, let's face it, you don't need graphics for immersion or fun or to be competitive...you really don't and it's been proven by decades of gaming so far. It feels, mostly, like it's about getting your money's worth from the product you've got as it's really frustrating, from a buyer's remorse kind of view, to play a game and not be able to see its full potential on your PC. I've had it happen to me before, with the first Gothic game that would run like crap on my Riva TNT2...I still played it, 640x480 and minimum details, but it did feel upsetting up until I made the jump to a GeForce 2 at the time.

What's your point of view on graphics importance and why it's become such a HUGE thing on the net in recent years?

That's actually sort of a pretty good point. I'm not sure if reflects my thoughts on the matter perfectly, but I think it hits pretty close.

Personally I don't really think graphics are that important, as long the style is good. I don't it's surprising that a lot of PC gamers find graphics important, but I'm genuinely surprised at the number of console gamers that argue about the importance of graphics. Why would anyone get a console in the first place if graphics are that important to them? You get what you pay for.

Is part of our ridiculous culture where everything that was great 2 years ago now is shitty and not enough, everyone loves to hate on hipster, but then they go and behave worse than them.

Recent years? Graphics have always been a massive selling point and quality improvement in general has always been an emphasis in any industry.

"you don't need graphics for immersion or fun"

How are you going to play a video game without graphics?

As a PC gamer, apart from all the other value I get from playing games on a pc such as free online and etc, whats important to me is performance more so than just graphics. I like playing games at 60fps cause it directly affects gameplay regardless of what some people think. Having a high fps means a smooth and responsive gameplay experience...

As for visuals, do I want to max out every setting there is? Sure, why not? Do I get frustrated when I play a game where I cant? Not really cause I value performance more and that is what I love about PC gaming.

Cause PC gaming is about choice that will cater to your need as long as you have the money for it. If you dont have the money, there are many budget builds which will still get you many benefits and of course, you can always choose a console. And that is the way I look at things.

Its not like if you buy a console, there isn't a case of a better version potentially being available either. If you get an x1, the ps4 version is better, if you get a ps4, the pro version is better, if you get a pro, the scorpio version will be better. The only difference is that the tweaking is limited on consoles so if you value better lighting over say higher resolution shadows, well too bad. And of course, you cant just replace the component which is causing the bottleneck.

Of course, this doesn't count for exclusives which is the only reason why I buy a console.

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To me is similar to the people saying that 1080p looks blurry now that 4k is the new thing

Now what was fantastic little time ago feels not enough today, this girls feels fustrated for not having better graphics just because she knows she could have better graphics. And this is natural to some degree but happens too fast nowadays.

Personally I adjust the settings of the game until the framerate starts to get unestable, then I drop the settings a bit and never look them again, just because I can have it looking better I shouldn't get fustrated if already looks fine and the less I'm looking at the settings, the better, I rather do it once and never look back so I'm not constantly changing things.

Some people have it more then others I guess. I'm just happy when my games run stable at a graphics level which makes the game look at least somewhat as intended. (for example, Shogun 2: Total War looks horrible on low settings, but is quite pretty at medium). If my PC really struggles to run games at a level which I find satisfactory, then I would upgrade (still rocking an Athlon X4 860K and an Radeon R7 265 mind you).

That's really what it comes down to, despite the narrative some people try to advance that PC gaming is only about having everything at max setting.

I actually go in and turn down settings sometimes from what my PC can run.  I can pick and chose what is important to me.  I reduce some effects like motion blur because they give me a headache and other effects, like god-rays, I turn down for the performance boost.  I was getting some frame-rate problems near water with Fallout 4, as an example, so I turned off water reflections.

God I hate motion blur. That's the one thing I wish we could turn off on consoles cause it really is annoying to me as well.