I'd still want the game to respond to input and move the player at a good rate. Otherwise, things can get rather frustrating, when the game isn't responding to your input in a timely manner.

Offenders include:
* Might and Magic 4-5: Sometimes, when you press buttons enough or hold the direction, the game buffers all the input and you can't stop moving or attacking, which can sometimes lead to party wipes or similar issues.
* Ultima 5 NES: There's a lot wrong with this particular version of the game, but apparently, for 5 frames each second (game runs at 60 FPS like most NES games, even if it doesn't feel like it in this particular game), the game ignores your input, causing it to be lost.

Mine is 45 fps, which in itself is still pretty high. That said, the truth is, my tolerance concerning what's the lowest fps that I can still consider playable is still higher, around 24 fps. The reason why I said 45 fps is because I can't help but also apply the same fps cap for the rest of my games with the same fps cap of my most demanding game. Therefore, if I had to limit the fps for one game to 45 fps, I would also do the same for my other games even if those games can still achieve a higher fps with a much higher graphical settings. (I think it's just me being a perfectionist) Therefore if I were to set the fps cap for one of my games to let's say 24 fps or 30 fps, some of my more fast-paced games will become unplayable.

Aside from genre dependency...

I've played some realtime games with framerates in the 10s without a problem.

I've even succeeded and even enjoyed plenty of realtime games with framerates in the 20s (sometimes even with lows in the tens in some cases).

Your other specific question prompts, I'm going to have to think on.

I'd say 60 FPS, but really anything below 100 FPS feels jarring, I don't put up with it unless it's a game that absolutely falls apart otherwise.

I found CP2077 still playable and enjoyable at 50-60 fps. But I hardly believe that I could anymore go lower.

It was fun times playing some old FPS games at 15 fps as kid with our cheap family laptop :D

If the player managed to get into the game, I'm sure there is also a way out regardless of how slow it is. In worst case scenario you would terminate the program/process. Unless this is about some specific bug, running the game on weak hardware or on another layer via virtualization/emulation/etc.

If you meant games with mods, then well that is entirely up to the modder to optimise it if possible and set limits, object culling, etc. Original devs can't be responsible in this case as no one can foresee every possibility. Every hardware can be brought to its knees if that is your goal (benchmarking and esp. stress-tests / burn-ins exists also for that reason), esp. modded 32bit games with older APIs that lack multithreading / parallelism (said problems will manifest earlier in them, also thanks the default 4GB ram limitation).


Anyway, so what's the consensus here? Are the min. tolerable fps number provided by users here surprising, expected, (un)satisfactory, too low, too high? Please, provide some summary what you think of all this community feedback.

Maybe around 5-10? The Game Boy port of Sreet Fighter II was around the lowest framerate at which i could still enjoy the game without any compromised fun.

I guess it depends on the genre though. When i'm playing chess on Atari 2600 i only need frames to refresh when i make moves.

Depends on a lot of things. Anything fast paced and requiring reaction times, 60 would be the absolute minimum, but will try to push it as close as possible to my 240 Hz display. The difference in my performance was jarring when I started playing UT 2004 in 240 FPS.

Slower paced stuff, 30 is tolerable with gritted teeth, 60 would be the good minimum, but I will still try to keep it at least in the 100-120 range. The overall smoothness of mouse, camera movement etc. is massively better than at 60.

I tried Deathtrap Dungeon for a bit. That game is locked to 16 FPS and I simply stopped playing it because it was too hard to look at.

Generally, I see little point in going above 240 FPS due to diminishing returns. I think I will stay at that for probably decades. 1440p + 240 Hz is the sweet spot for me. Will probably bump it to 4K a long time from now, when GPUs can affordably run 4K in the 240 FPS area. So probably 10+ years.

If you don't mind me asking, what was your fps for UT 2004 before playing it at 240 fps?

Once I knew a group of e-mail-rpg-players. They planned their moves on paper and sent them per mail to the game master. When he got all the player's moves, he played them out on a flowchart. One round took one week to play out and at the end of the week the game master mailed the updated map to everyone.
For them, one frame per week was absolutely playable.

I don't think games should target frame rates. They should implement the game they want to be. Then if you want to be more accessible you can have options for the user to alter things like MAX particles, draw distance, high/low quality etc. I'd let the user make the decision rather than the game. At least on PC. Maybe if it's a console you might make the choices for them and just use your own judgment.

I never really cared for framerates.
And since the usual school of thoughts agrees that the human eye is capable of seeing everything between 30 and 60 FPS, I would say 30 FPS do the trick.
At least I never had any problems with that.

Eight (from experience), but since (modern) games aren't expected to be running at a single-digit framerate, if you're getting one you probably won't be getting the same frame rate consistently, and the inconsistencies will be a problem.

One more thing I think is worth mentioning is how framerate can also be used to enhance the immersion of a game. For example, Downwell. I take it everyone who plays the game experiences this too, and that is whenever your character gets hurt, the fps will plummet for an instant, further emphasizing the pain that the character you play experiences. But honestly, it's just a flaw in the engine lol. But you can always try to replace that reason with something else to help you live with the fps issue that can never be fixed.

Well, it helps that:
* Given the medium, you're not expecting an immediate answer.
* The "game" at least is reading input; you can immediately read what you wrote.
* You're not stuck paying attention to the game the whole time. (This trait is also present in incremental games, which is another topic, and where lower framerate, if the game is well coded, is perfectly acceptable when the game is in the background, and sometimes when it isn't (1 FPS isn't unreasonable here, as long as the game is still responsive).)
* You can quit the game easily, and not have to sit and wait for the game to finally respond, or to force quit it. (Though, if that doesn't work, even when you've said you're quitting, you do have the option of just ghosting the game master.)

That's assuming, of course, that the player can get into the options to lower the settings. This can be a problem if, for example, either:
* The main menu is so laggy with default settings that the player has trouble getting to them.
* The game doesn't allow access to the settings before the player has started a new game and sat through the opening cutscene, and the cutscene doesn't run under default settings. (Games with settings should *always* allow access to the settings before starting a first game, both for this reason and for accessibility reasons.)

Reminds me of Celeste, where if certain enemies are about to hit you, the game slows down. The problem is that this can easily throw off the player's rhythm, and make it harder to dodge the attack.

(Worth noting that Celeste isn't really a game about fighting enemies, and it's only occasionally that you'll find enemies, and generally you're not attacking them, with one exception, and even then the game is still focused on platforming.)