Kirby: Star Allies Gameplay Runs At 30FPS But The In-Game Menus Run At 60FPS

Even if it ias using a modified version of the Return to Dreamland engine, that doesn’t mean it must be just as demanding. An engine doesn’t pre-determine any shaders or graphical settings. Just looking at one of the screenshots I can see that:

1. The background has a strong bokeh effect which tends to use a good amount of a memory bandwidth and the Switch is generally bandwidth limited.
2. It’s 900p to 1080p which means it’s about 4.6 to 6.75 times higher resolution than Return to Dreamland and 7.5 to 10.8 times higher resolution than Triple Deluxe. That also uses much more bandwidth.
3. In at least one moment there’s a ball of about 50 waddle dees that chases you through the level.
4. Unlike either of those games, this one has actual shadows that are more subtle and soft.
5. It’s also likely using deferred rendering which is what many modern games use. This uses more bandwidth but helps prevent the GPU from wasting time drawing things that would eventually get obscured otherwise.
6. It’s likely using ambient occlusion.
7. Compared to Triple Deluxe, the camera also goes wider as is usually the case when comparing handheld games with console games.
8. Both other games use a lot of sprites for the leaves in trees. Star Allies doesn’t appear to do that.

To make up for any bandwidth or processing bottlenecks, they can choose to either run it at lower/dynamic resolution, run it at an unlocked framerate, or run it at a locked 30.

If it’s that important to you, why on earth would you not be running a decent upscaler because there’s no way you don’t have plenty of 720 content coming through to your screen.

A lot of people don’t think to spend $60 on an upscaler for there TV. That would only work for standard resolutions, too. For example, a 900p game would already be scaled to 1080p by the game which would effect the ability for the upscaler to scale as well.

This would be more impactful if people weren’t constantly arguing on the boards the exact opposite of what you claim, that a game is a failure and not worth the time if it’s 1080 (or even 4k) 60fps. You’re telling us that nobody means this when people overtly say it all the time.

While I’ve seen people argue over graphics, I’ve never seen anybody say that graphics are more important than gameplay and story. People often make the mistake of looking at discussions about Digital Foundry videos and see people talking only about specs and performance and assume these people must only care about graphics. That’s not true, they’re just their to have a discussion about these things.

So they bother getting a high end tv,

Just because they have a 4K TV doesn’t mean it’s high end. 4K TVs are cheap now.

can spot the difference between 30fps and 60fps in a low action game like kirby

A lot of shit can happen on-screen in four player Kirby game btw, but I wasn’t talking about Kirby specifically. Also many people can tell the differences between frame rates. They noticed it when the Hobbit ran at 48fps in theaters instead of 24, and they notice to some degree it just depends on how much they care.

the tiny, near undetectable difference in visual quality actually bother them

A 9x resolution difference is tiny and nearly undetectable? Literally every pixel in a 720p image becomes a blurred 3 x 3 grid on an Ultra HD TV.

but they’re unaware that scalers exist?

That’s very possible because again, you’d have to have pretty shitty sight not to see a difference between 720p and 4K. Most people would just go “Hey this games blurry” and not know there’s some way to make it less of an issue.

It may also be the case that people don’t want to buy scalers because they’ve not miracle workers. Most Switch games don’t have anti-aliasing so using bicubic or lanczos scaling is going to turn jagged edges into blurred jagged edges and shittier upscalers that assume you’re mainly using it for watching TV shows or movies may have additional latency. I myself wouldn’t buy one unless it was the difference between having an image or not like in the case of using a 4K camera output on 1080p preview monitor.

Which accounts for the overwhelming majority of content.

The overwhelming majority of TV shows and films, not games. Look at games like Mario Oddysey and Breath of the Wild. Neither had anti-aliasing and use dynamic resolutions that top off at 900p and get as low as 720p (in Mario’s case) but both already scale the output to 1080p before compositing the HUD. On top of that, both do certain effects at half or even a quarter resolution. Just go into he inn in Hateno village and talk to girl that runs the place and you’ll notice that the light from the lantern is below standard definition (likely 320 x 160). Scalers can’t do anything about that.

So now we’ve narrowed down this problem to only effecting people who are intimately familiar with resolutions and framerates

You don’t need to be intimately familiar with resolutions or framerates to notice that something is softer or less smooth.

BUT don’t know about upscalers

Or don’t use them.

AND are using the tiny realm of content that doesn’t conform to resolution standards.

At least 29.6 million of the 52.6 million games sold on the Switch use non-standard resolutions. That’s only counting top-selling games because they’re the only ones I know sales numbers for but there are many more. Yooka Laylee, Skyrim, Flames in the Flood, and Dragonball Xenoverse 2 all run at 900p max. Snake Pass runs at 1200 x 675. Doom averages 1088 x 612. Fast RMX’s resolution can go as high as 1080p or as low as 480p. Apparently Kirby Star Allies is running at 1536×854 when docked (at least sometimes). LA Noire can go as low as 1440×1080. Rocket League can go as low as 1024×576.

These titles make up a majority of the software sold on the Switch. Some of these games only run at 30 fps at max and have frame dips and when a game is dipping well below 30 fps, aspecially when they dip in the way that RiME does on the Switch, then it DOES affect gameplay.

You’ve made the group so small they’re no longer worth worrying about.

This sounds like a defensive mechanism to me. Just because you guys don’t have eyes for these things or don’t care doesn’t mean that nobody should care.

Keep looking. It’s not very hard. I’ve been listening to gaming arguments across six generations now. There are always people who openly argue that graphics are the absolute top priority.

I’m no newbie when it comes to console war stuff. People may argue about graphics more than gameplay, but that doesn’t mean they prioritize graphics over gameplay. Graphics are also an easy thing that fan boys can use in arguments because opinions on games themselves are too subjective or the same game is available on both.