I've played with many game settings over the years and I am 100% sure of the following (on a 65 inch OLED):

1) I can not pick out the difference between 1440p and 4k

2) I can pick out 30 fps vs 60 fps immediately

3) I can pick out 60 fps vs 120 fps immediately 

4) most impactful graphical settings are lighting, shadows, volumetric and particles

90% of my game time is currently eaten up by my Steam Deck and the remaining some odd games that I play on my Mac mini... so yeah 100%.

It's not even about price, it's mostly about dev times and the snail-pace tech evolution we have seen this gen. Yes, there are some technically very impressive games out there, but I still can't believe it how good games like The Order 1886 still look. Never have we been in a time in this industry where a 10+ year old game could look just as good as most games that are released today.

Crysis is the odd one out, but there was a future-proofing effort on the dev side for a single-core future that never came to be.

I don't even care for 60 fps. I've played games with 30 fps my whole life, and I'm fine with it. Besides, I find the moviments of things in 60fps weird

Absolutely. The increasing price and developement time situation is the reason I started to focus on indie games and retro gaming. More than 6 months with my Switch 2 and the only full priced game I have is Metroid Prime 4. And that's a Switch 1 game.

I have always been fine with 30fps too, but nowdays picking the 60fps option doesn't actually take that much of the game visual quality on PS5 so I'm always picking the 60fps option if the difference is just that.

I think consistent framerate and frametime is still more important than 60fps, having a consistent performance is always the best option, but 60fps is so much better than 30fps.

Opposite from your experience, now I find 30fps a bit weird, and I'll take some time playing until it mostly goes away.

30 fps is definitely playable and enjoyable if done properly, but nowdays I hope all games are developed with 60fps in mind.

Going back to 1080p 30fps? Absolutely not.
I've been gaming in 4k since 2015. I have a 240hz monitor now.

Now that I've seen the light, it would be agony returning to darkness, as much as I'd like to think otherwise.

It depends on the game. One thing I miss, and this is probably just a matter of diminishing opportunities since low hanging fruit had to be picked in earlier generations, is games that are experimental and genre-producing. If we had more of those, because developers/publishers aren't chasing production values and cinematic experiences, as much, I'd be more fine with limited graphical features. 

The reality though, is a lot of the graphical advancements have saved development time. Ray-tracing, mesh-shading, automated LoD management are all meant to save development time compared to the more art-intensive/asset-heavy techniques of the 8th Generation. 

This of course means the barrier of entry for development is lower, and we have many more unoptimized/poorly optimized games. It also means that middle-ware has become so dominant and centralized that many games feel copied and pasted from each-other. 

There are always going to be trade-offs like this in so much as game development is a profit-driven enterprise where the development process expects a return on time and resource investment. 

It will not be a coincidence that GTA 6 will be the most technically/graphically advanced game and probably the most successful game of all time as well.

I made this thread before and If I remember correctly my take was that if games capped at RDR2 and Uncharted 4 (PS5 version) I'd be happy. Since I have noticed that games are actually regressing and not even up to that standard for the cost and dev times apart from a few oddities like Death Stranding 2.

Hmm. Seems like you missed the PS4 PRO.