I never really understood this argument.  I mean, we used to play games at 240p on the N64 and it was fine.. back then.  But today it isnt acceptable. 

Forza was 14 years ago..   

I've played plenty of more recent games at 30fps too, most recently Kena Bridge of Spirits. 30fps is fine to me in most games.

I guess I am surprised so many are ok with 30 fps in 2026, especially when better versions are readily available.  Especially games with parry systems, higher fps is so much more accurate.  But to each their own.  I dont think I will ever understand settling.  

Looks fine to me.

Side by side comparisons always expose the fps difference for me but in reality you don't play different frame rates side by side. If I toggle from 30 to 60, 60 looks artificially sped up before normalising to my eyes. If I then go back to 30, 30 then looks really jittery for a good 30-60seconds before normalising.

I actually think this is one of things I've come to dislike about modern day console toggles/options and one of the reasons why people never had issue with 30fps during the PS4 era. A game starting up in a decided singular mode prevents there from being a direct/immediate comparison and so most don't notice and just see the games fps as natural to whatever experience its offering.

I try to approach it by gauging what things I will benefit from across my whole experience, knowing that my eyes themselves will adjust to any frame rate. Certain things like FSR fizzle, I never get used to and always feel like an eye sore. Games with no blur on camera panning can become a headache if the panning feels stuttery. Going above 1440p isn't really meaningful to my eyes but I do appreciate more world detail like foliage etc. I also like motion blur and often times games loose most of it at 60 unless the developer manually tunes it for that mode (most don't)

I played Expedition 33 at both 30/60 but settle on 30 because the image quality is quite bad on console. I'm not especially competitive or sensitive to input lag, but I found that with parrying systems I just adjust to what queue I'm responding too. At 30fps, Imagine I just react a bit earlier in the enemies animatioins versus 60. I never really noticed a difference to my performance but I think my reflexes are pretty meh anyway.

I would say resolution is different from FPS for a few reasons. Amongst which is that we used to play 240p on CTR TVs (often no bigger than 30") which is a huge difference compared to 240p on an LCD flatscreen

But its funny because Zelda was a 20fps experience on N64 and I recall correctly FFVII was 20fps during combat. Now would I go back to that? Nope! But similar to resolution I think there is a floor of sorts where 30fps will always be coherent for most experiences. Just the same way that 1080p will always be a decent image at most viewing distances.

Regarding 20fps though I will say frame rates have intrinsic qualities. So there was a slight pupeteer/stop motion feel to PS1 FF combat which I quite enjoyed. As you didn't manually control the camera, there was always a clear focus and background panning wasn't really an issue.

the overall view, I agree with, there is a point where something is playable.  We just disagree on the levels.  For me 60fps and 1080p are those acceptable levels.  I just don't think 30 fps enough.  Anytime these discussions come up, with are fun (being serious), I got back in fiddle with my computer.  I am in the middle of Ragnarok.  I popped it on 30 fps and it was just awful.  At 60 fps, fair, runs well and acceptable.  120 fps, of course, was fantastic.  I just can't do 30 fps anymore.  

I just feel like this is very self explanatory. It might not be your personal case, since this seems to be a hot topic for you, and i know youre not a "young player" (no offense intended here) but ive found that most people of my gen - or of similar ages - who have been playing videogames since the 80s-90s have no issue with 30fps because we grew up playing that, or less than that, its not something that bothers the majority of older players. Most of the time its not something that we will consciously notice unless we are made to notice. 

I agree that expecting that for today's standards is unnaceptable, and ideally 60fps and 1080p would be the bare minimum. Younger audience will notice this more than older gamers, and will bring it up as an issue, and given today's technology its perfectly reasonable to do so.  But id be lying if i tell you that 30fps looks awful to me, or that its something of a deal breaker, cause it really is not one at all. 

Not to mention frame rate and resolution aren't linearly comparable like that. 

TV resolution had a big jump with the advent of HDTV flat screen (and even some tube sets). Not only that you went from 4:3 sets as the standard to a more cinematic 16:9.

So yeah by that metric, older TVs running games at 240p-480p were going to look ancient. But it's not like that leap is constantly happening. 

Even today with 4K sets, most over the air broadcast TV is 720p-1080p, lots of people bypass the 4K Netflix plan to get just the standard HD one and for games most games aren't terribly bothered by sticking with 720p-1080p for the last 20 years. 1080p still looks fine even on a 4K set. 4K Blu-Ray also never really took off either even when physical media sales were still reasonably high. 

The jump to HDTV and all it entailed (going from giant cube TV sets that weighed a ton, to think screens that could be mounted on the wall like a painting, the resolution jump from SD to HD, the aspect ratio change from 4:3 to 16:9) was a huge jump for most people. But since then? People don't really care that much about resolution increases. 

At 30 fps the human brain stops seeing still images and the brain just interprets what its seeing as pretty much true to life motion. That's just a fact, Hollywood knew this 100 years ago, it's why movies generally still to this day run at 24 frames per second, because the illusion of motion at 24 fps even is enough to get the brain to just think it's looking at basically an alternate reality. 

As a matter of fact if you shoot anything at 60 frames per second, you don't get reality of motion as in how your eye perceives things, what you get is slow motion.