Iron Galaxy Helped Bring Overwatch To Switch, Nintendo Version Runs At 30fps

30 FPS is kind of a bummer, but I can deal with it. Iron Galaxy has done good work already, I have faith it'll run and play just fine 😁

I'm sure the game will run fine and look great, I just have no interest in as a whole.

Don't care if it's 30 fps as long as its stable. I wish more people were like that instead of whining about it

Is this cross platform mulitplayer or locked to online play with switch gamers only?

Ahhh that's unfortunate. Was really hoping given D3 and Paladins run at 60 that Blizzard would work some magic. Hell, an in-game toggle that reduces the graphics quality and resolution but allows for 60fps would be such a boon. I've been a bit spoiled by Paladins and was hoping Overwatch, a fully priced competitive shooter, would offer comparable frame rates and cross-platform potential. Still putting down a preorder but the price tag seems to have gotten quite a bit heavier sentimentally in the last few days.

Have to say I can't see it being that much of a seller.

The game has already had its day in the sun and the likes of Fortnite have taken over .

This is just an observation as I have no interest in any game like this.

Honestly as long as it has practically no drops, or is at least more stable than Doom 2016 or Fortnite, then it'll be fine. I rememebr playing Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops 1 on my Wii and that was below 30fps if I was lucky. Yet it was still fun. Gameplay over graphics, so long as it's not a potato.

handheld Overwatch...sooo fire

@BenAV it can be noticeable. What i say is 30fps gives more of 'Cinematic effect' while 60fps feels more like watching live TV or those soap opera's like Bold and the Beautifull or As the World turns.

I love my Switch and all of my other platforms have been collecting dust for quite a while. That being said, I really couldn't ever see myself play an online-only competitive shooter like this on it when the framerate has been cut in half. If it had a story mode or local multiplayer sure, but requiring me to always be connected to the internet eliminates the whole reason why I choose to buy multiplatform games on Switch over PC.

This only interests me if I can log in to my blizzard account as I played quite a bit on PC and I want my stuff on Switch

I swear, some people(especially the PC crowd) make too big of a deal out of an fps or fighting game being at 30 fps. As long as the framerate is stable and there is little to know frame tearing, it's completely playable.

@Zuljaras quite possibly, but as it is now no systems cross play on Overwatch anyway.

But unlike Paladins, Overwatch actually has characters I like and a setting I want to know more about.

@SeantheDon29 I am a fps snob but I can tolerate FPS games at 30 FPS but defo not fighting games especially if they have online. Even then the majority of developers will always try and get a fighting game to run at 60fps if they have to sacrifice things (like graphics or long load times).

Well bummer its 30fps, but if its stable then its a good thing.
Only thing now it wil be harder to make it fair in cross play.

Will skip this annyway online only is a no go for me.

@SeantheDon29 All fighting games are capped at 60 max and if a fighter is released at 60, it needs to be released at 60 on every console it is ported to. This is considerably more important for fighters than any other type of game, because a fighter that is designed at 60 and is ported at 30 will require separate balance patches and entire movelists will have to be reworked.

The reasoning is this. In Tekken for example, a "launcher" (move that starts a combo) is typically 15 frames long at 60fps. If your opponent hits you with a move and you block it, if the move they hit your block with causes their recovery to be 15 frames long, you can now launch them for a full combo. If you cut the framerate in half, any move with an odd number of frames has to be changed. A launcher would now have to be either 7 or 8 frames, and depending on which frame the developer chooses to use could cause certain characters to become exceptionally powerful or incredibly weak. If your fastest launcher is 8 frames, it would be equivalent to 16 frames at 60fps and you would no longer be able to punish launch-punishable moves. If it is 7 frames, you can now not only punish launch-punishable moves, but also moves that were previously not launch-punishable (14 frame moves). A combo has the potential to drain more than half of your opponent's health, where as a typical 14 frame move might do a quarter at most. HUGE difference just off the back of a one frame change.

From a pure logic perspective, a 30fps fighter HAS to be designed and balanced from the ground up separately to a 60fps fighter. The genre is much too heavily predicated on numbers for you to get the same experience as another console if there's a discrepancy in framerates. You'd be playing different games.

It isn't nearly as dire an issue in regards to shooters but fighters just can't be ported like that. The perks of higher frames in shooters are largely feel and fluidity. The people who would complain about a 30fps port of a fighting game wouldn't be the PC crowd in this case; it would be people who actually play fighting games. In terms of demographic, that is largely the PS4 crowd, with PC trailing shortly behind. Releasing a port of a fighter on the Switch at half its actual framerate would be like releasing Overwatch but every character has been redesigned and crossplay is a complete impossibility.

30 fps is a bit low for this light weight game. Why not atleast 45 fps?

I wish devs could do like DICE on consoles. Battlefield/SWBF games runs at average of 45 fps or something.
There is no rule that says.. If 60 fps don't work, it must be 30.
45 fps helps alot.

Anyway. I have Overwatch on PC, but i got bored of it quickly.
Battleborn were better with it's big co-op missions etc.

@SeantheDon29 & @Doofenshmirtz but why stop at 30 frames per second.
I get that some people really are crying that 30 fps games are unplayable which is not the case. But if everyone is accepting 30 fps on the Switch the chance is higher that devolpers will keep the game on 30 fps.

If you do not notice a difference at 30 frams vs 60 frames per second that is cool, but some people (and not even gamer per se) will notice it. And 60 fps games feel most of the time more responsive then 30 fps.

Back in the day, I have read and seen games running on 10 or maybe less frames per second. These were mostly static games with story telling tho. After that games came with 60 fps on (S)NES etc. We now have games running on 200+ frames on beast PC's.

I get that the Switch is less powerful then the PS4 or Xbox but sometimes it is just a pity that even the most simple games like Overcooked, and many more, run at 30 fps. (Also I know that there are 30 fps games on the PS4/XBOX.

In other words: Yes, I take a stable/locked 30 fps over a not-constant 60 fps, but why would I not prefer a stable/locked 60 fps above it all?

No matter what platform.

Also @cryptologous his comment. There is a reason why most (online) shooters and fighters are 60 fps.

This is a big mistake keeping it at 30FPS - especially when Paladins with similar graphics is running at 60FPS.

@Ventilator 45fps would feel worse and stuttery because it doesnt split even in a 60hz signal. youd either have crazy tearing or every other frame would be on screen for twice as long as the last one

@Doofenshmirtz

I totally agreed with you. I never understand those people. You are absolutely right. I feel the same way.

You forgot to mention that you can voice chat by plugging your headset into the system instead of using the phone app.

@Bustacap Yes, probably. I checked BF 5 on consoles now.
Max fps is 60 fps, but is mostly around 40-50 fps.

Was really impressed by the D3 port, makes me confident that it will run smoothly. Won’t be a day one since Witcher 3, LM and Pokemon are also coming up.

Im really exited for this game

Is this release with cross play? I might have some opportunity to play catch up with friends then...

I like this game on PS4 a lot. PS4 online is 25 bucks for 3 months IIRC. Switch online is 20 bucks a year. Looks like I’m getting this on switch

@Doofenshmirtz I wished more people would want 60fps, so we would get more 60fps titles.

@erv nope

Honestly 30FPS for a competitive first person shooter is pretty disappointing. Not like the Switch version is going to get me back into Overwatch since the hype has died down considerably, but I'd rather they have a "performance mode" in the settings that dynamically scaled the resolution to maintain a consistent 60FPS

@KoekiieWoekiie Ok I see your point, but for me when it comes to game i really don't see what's wrong with 30fps, since it doesn't change the gameplay for me. And yes, I get it, 60fps LOOKS better, but it still doesn't change how I PLAY the game unless It kinda goes back and forth on what frame rate it wants to be since it's just kinda annoying. And speaking of, here's another thing, if I would rather have a game be 60 fps but it have a chance of stuttering back and forth or a stable 30fps, I'd take stable since I know it won't stutter. So I thinks it's better that these types of games on switch have a stable 30fps than trying to go for 60

I play OW on PC, so I'm not gonna get this one, but as long as you're playing other people at 30fps it doesn't make a difference. The points some mentioned are correct, of course, but if everyone is held to the same input windows due to consistent fps on that particular platform, then nobody has an unfair advantage. At the same rate, the points some mention technically make OW on PC a nightmare because everyone is pulling different fps. My rig runs OW between 90-120 fps, but I'm sure there are people who struggle to pull just 60 even on lower settings (Blizzard is famous for making their PC games accessible to all ages of PCs).

Fighting games with specific input combos, yea. Fps is really important and could potentially be very unfair if they vary too much. But shooters, nah. It's really not as big a deal as people make it out to be.

But I mean, yea, 60fps in a shooter just feels so much better than 30. It's a shame they couldn't do 60, even just docked. I would take 60fps docked at just 720p any day.

More importantly is it natuve chat or stupid app?

@Doofenshmirtz thanks for reading it!

But yeah in the end a stable 30 fps is indeed better then a wobbly 60.

I just wish more developers opted for 60.

@SeantheDon29 If you're going to insult people and call them "FPS" snobs, then please at least learn why frame rate is important

Fighting games run at 60fps for a reason, you can't suddenly half a fighting games framerate because their moves are tied to the framerate.

@Judgedean visually paladin is not as nice. If paladin developers wanted stable 720p and 900p it would have been 30ps

I have to see how it feels. Paladins is 60fps and feels like garbage; Astral Chain is 30fps and feels like silky techno-butter.

@Lord Native chat!
Just plug in and you're good to go!

Htf would they even consider 30fps as 'running smoothly' for such a fast-paced game?!

@Xaessya brilliant I wish they would add native to Diablo 3

Surprised that 60frames user here isn't posting on here in anger

Yawn.

Still buying it.

Meh.

60fps is the kind of goal they MIGHT strive to hit a bit down the road, if the interest for the game on the Switch is really there. A solid thirty is usually better than a 40~60 rollercoaster.

Seeing as the game won't have an actual physical release at all, they could continue to readjust the Switch build in any way they please, to eventually make 60fps a reality.

Iron Galaxy did a great job on Diablo and Skyrim. I'm not surprised they did Overwatch.

@Ventilator the reason for no 45fps option is that home consoles are generally played on TVs. Most TVs operate at a refresh rate of 60hz, meaning the screen refreshes 60 times each second. That also means the maximum amount of frames a TV can output is 60. Games are either 30 or 60 because it's easily divisible by 60. That's why games at a locked 30fps can feel "smooth" because every second image displayed on the tv creates a level of consistency.

Because 60 is not exactly divisible by 45, it leads to weird frame pacing issues and may look, at times, to be either 30 or 60fps anyway because of the refresh rate of the display.

@Spiders How so? Game is smooth as hell from my experience and very responsive. Only get frame drops if both teams are throwing all their ults at a point fight at once and even then the frame drop is negligible at worst. Funnily enough, some things actually run better in the Switch version of the game than the PC version, with characters like Sha Lin not suffering any of the performance issues that plague the PC version. I'd like to know your point of reference for a game that feels good at 60 because "garbage" is some pretty strong wording.

@Coach_A 30 fps can be smooth. Look at Sunset Overdrive on Xbox one for exmple.

Then you have Arkane Studios 30 fps...Stuttering and input lag. (Prey, Dishonored 2) on consoles, but not PC.

Then you have "30 fps" Bloodborne on PS4. The game uses frame skipping all the time so in reality it's only 15-20 fps.
Textures is jaggy too.

Bloodbourne is one of the worst game engines i have seen this gen.

@Ventilator I don't think you quite understand all of what you're saying.

It's like you've watched a couple DF videos and are regurgitating what they've said

@Coach_A What's DF? I bought all these games for my PS4, so i know exactly how they are.
Try Prey and Dishonored 2 on PS4. It's supposed to be 30 fps, but is laggy with input lag.
Try Bloodbourne on PS4. Anounced to be 30 fps, but framerate is far below that.
I also bought Sunset Overdrive for my Xbox One X. Insomniac made that game and is slick even in 8 player co-op online with full mayhem at all times.

I run it at a solid 130 fps. For a while my performance dropped to 70 pfs and it was horrible. But this is a good option for those who dont have a good pc. I just have an gtx 1060. So wont buy the switch version but the switch is my most played hardware i own. Just beat the blue lions story on three houses and just googled the other stories. I didnt feel like replaying the whole game 3 more times. Now im pkaying astral chain. I am gonna buy daemon x machima day one. I liked the new demo. I liked the old one actually lol. As a main pc guy i would gladly pay a pretty penny for a more powerful switch. The switch is just more convenient than a pc or a home console.

As long as its fixed 30fps and not dropping below it.

No issue with this being 30fps as everyone will be in the same boat and I imagine there will be a good amount of overhead to ensure no drops at all. Visually this is looking really good and either they didn't want any more compromises or they couldn't guarantee a lock, so dropped to 30fps which is a smart decision and that one guy suggesting 45fps? Just no, it'd be unplayable

It really doesn't matter if it's 30 FPS or not. There's no crossplay therefore everyone you'll encounter will play at 30. What really bothers me is the comparison with Paladins and that that game manages a smooth 60 FPS. I play Paladins on Switch and it's just not on the same level as Overwatch when it comes to polygon count and details. It's a gigantic difference and let's not forget that Overwatch has a total of 12 players per match and Paladins only 10. I will stick with Paladins but let's not forget that Overwatch works very differently. Both being in the same genre doesn't make them equals in term of system requirements.

@hippoeater there's no crossplay for any version of the game. Every platform is on its own.

@Spudtendo games like this usually run fantastic with a Hotspot I do it with Paladins sometimes and there are no problems at all.

@Zuljaras Nah, it was never being developed in the first place.

@DenDen crossplay never was a thing for Overwatch. So, that's not a problem at all.

@Judgedean it's definitely not similar. Overwatch uses about 10000 more polygons per character. That's way more demanding on the hardware. And OW has 2 characters to display more overall, too. The maps are also way more detailed than Paladins. And I say this as someone who prefers Paladins.

@erv no. Overwatch never was a crossplay title and they're not changing it now. Especially with Overwatch 2 around the corner. The dev team has another focus right now.

I'm kind of hoping for a demo or a free weekend of sorts so we can give it a spin before buying, just to get a feel for how well it'll play.

I will definitely buy it and play when I'm hiking. I only take photos and post to reddit so it doesnt matter how well it runs

@cryptologous
To be fair, I haven't played Paladins since the PS4 Beta and the Switch "free version" launch, so performance could be smoother now and I just reach for a personal example and not a consensus example, but the frame rate when I played was not solid and felt out of sync with input polling, netcode, and SFX on both systems.

Arena Of Valor would be a better general example of a 60fps game undermined by netcode.

That said, I think the point stands: target 60fps doesn't automatically mean a smoother experience than rock solid 30fps in terms of feel - enough that I'm cautiously optimistic about Overwatch.

@In_Ex_Fan The comparisons aren't unwarranted. It isn't just that both games are cut from a similar cloth. It's the fact that Blizzard are quite literally ten times the size of HiRez. Not only that, but Paladins hasn't ever been HiRez's main baby; Smite's consistently been their primary project, they've had Realm Royale, and the fact they have a new game dropping next year at the very least implies they've been working on it at LEAST since Paladins was originally ported onto the Switch (given Paladins took 4 years to develop) which, by proxy, would mean reallocation of resources within the company.

Furthermore, the game is running on spaghetti code, and it shows. I get near identical framerates in both Paladins and OW on my PC, yet OW is CLEARLY a better looking title. How they managed to port such a broken game onto the Switch is a marvel, let alone getting it to a pretty damn smooth 60 and allowing cross platform progression and cross play. Obviously different PCs will handle the games differently, and there is every chance my specific CPU+GPU configuration disproportionately affects the frames for or against one game over the other.

The end point I'm making is that if ever there was a company that COULD port OW at 60 (or at the very least include a graphical decrease toggle for anyone willing to take a visual hit [see: anyone who's ever played a competitive title on a PC]), it would be a company as huge as Blizzard. ESPECIALLY if they are asking for near-retail price on a multiplayer only title that is three years old. Not a studio like HiRez with a fairly patchy reputation who operate on a F2P model and have a fraction of the funding and workforce power.

If Blizzard feel 30fps is the best they can do with this port, so be it. It'll run smoothly, it'll have that signature polish, and it will still be a mighty fine time. But people's qualms aren't entirely unfounded, especially when considering the asking price.

@Spiders fair enough man. I have little doubt it's in a better state than it was back then. Haven't played much AoV but it definitely felt very smooth when I did give it a swing.

And absolutely, I'd be doubtful anyone disagrees that a rock solid 30 is better than a choppy "60". But given how positive the reception to Mortal Kombat's in-battle gameplay was even with its abysmal graphical fidelity, I really hoped (and hope!) a toggle will be made available for those of us who don't mind the game looking like ass for a smoother experience. I guess only time can tell how things pan out.

@cryptologous Overwatch and Paladins are only similar on the surface. What's beneath is a completely different story. Character models in OW are way more detailed and not just in terms of how they look. OW's Tracer for example has over 10000(!) polygons more than Paladins' Evie does. Multiply that with the number of players per match and you got a huge reason why you're talking about a very different game under the hood. Add way more detailed maps into the mix and the explanation is right there. My guess would be that the game would look like crap if you'd shoot for consistent 60 FPS. Would it be possible for blizzard? Sure no doubt about it. But the question is if that would still look remotely appealing to those blizzard is going for here. It's not those who play already. They're mostly (not exclusively of course) going for the core Nintendo audience who haven't played OW yet. Paladins can look a bit rough at times on Switch and it's not as demanding. Overwatch probably wouldn't fair very well if you'd hold it to that standard. I love Paladins on Switch but it's simply on a completely different level than Overwatch.
Oh and when it comes to HiRez and priorities: Smite, Paladins, Realm Royale and the upcoming Rogue Company are made by 4 different studios owned by HiRez (not quite sure about the one making Rogue Company). The teams are working separately from each other. So resources for Paladins aren't the concern of the other games. The teams are pretty much set and every game has their own budget.

I would much rather prefer playing at 720p 60fps on Switch rather than 900p 30fps. What games has Iron Galaxy helped work on? I've only known them from their awful console port of 7 Days to Die.

@Echang you wouldn't be playing 720p 60fps in portable mode though. People would then moan about the sub HD resolution.

Blizzard have made the choice to prioritise the visuals for overwatch on switch. I can understand that decision.

@Ventilator https://youtu.be/K6jxhgMteB4

Seems to be a quite consistent 30fps. I think you are referring to motion blur

@In_Ex_Fan I haven’t disagreed that OW is a better looking title. It clearly should be the more demanding of the two. I simply noted Paladins being so poorly optimised because performance roughly equals out as a result. Even though OW looks a whole lot better, it is also massively well optimised, and thus runs wonderfully.

I should once again bring up the idea of a toggle. A lot of people would rather play at 60 with poor resolution and graphics settings than 30 with everything pretty. This isn’t just a competitive thing. The first game on the Switch to have a toggle was Fire Emblem Warriors. Quite literally the furthest possible step from a competitive game one could get; a single player musou. People like smooth gameplay enough that a reduction in visual flare isn’t always a big deal. You’ve even noted Blizzard could hit 60 if they wanted, and if the company CAN, it doesn’t make sense to me that they shouldn’t give players the option to choose how they want the game to perform. It is also worth noting Paladins on the Switch runs a fair bit above the lowest PC settings. It looks patchy in areas because Paladins in general just isn’t the best looking game.

Intentional or not, that’s a very disingenuous observation. HiRez only split into multiple studios in August of last year. Realm Royale came out in June of last year. Paladins in 2016. Smite in 2014. Resources for Paladins absolutely were the concern of the other games. When you consider Paladins took 4 years to develop, the upcoming game had most of its development time while all games were being made under one roof. That is four mainline HiRez titles being developed at the same time.

@cryptologous yes, I said that it was probably possible to hit 60 FPS. But I also said that it would probably look so bad that it might not be desirable. It would probably be too blurry to recognize characters from the distance etc. That's something you don't take into account. And being well optimized doesn't mean crap. It's well optimized for its current systems. But the Switch is a new story. That's literally why it takes a while to port a game.
It's pretty rude to assume someone being disingenuous. It doesn't matter when the team split was made official. Something like that isn't done in a few weeks. Every team acted separately from each other long before that. It's not like every dev team did a bit on each game. And every game has its own budget. That means the budget of each game isn't the concern of the other games and their respective teams. And I'm pretty sure that's how it was before too. Because every somewhat large company ever has seperate budgets for each devision. Smite doesn't concern Paladins and vice versa. And Realm Royale doesn't concern Paladins anymore since it was just a game mode after that. After it was spun off it was given to a separate team with a separate budget. The only thing that would change that would be relocating assets and resources to other teams or HiRez as parent company running out of money.

@In_Ex_Fan What is your point of reference for game-breaking bluriness or fidelity? I'm not sure if you've played games like Paladins or OW or any litany of PC shooters at their lowest possible settings, be them via in game settings or via modifying game files, but there are so many options for reducing graphical intensity that don't directly impact the bluriness of player models and important features. Doom looks fuzzy as all hell on the Switch but enemy character models are still well defined even at extreme distances. The most important aspects that would need to be retained largely aren't the ones that would have the biggest impact on performance (shaders, particle effects, aliasing, reflections, etc).

And good optimisation for current systems absolutely is important. It is why Doom managed to get ported to begin with, and why Turok's port is such a mess. It is why the best console version of Skyrim is the Switch version. Poorly optimised games are harder to port. I haven't said anywhere it doesn't take a while to port games. IG have had plenty of time to tinker with the Switch though and I'd imagine they've become quite efficient having managed to port Skyrim and D3 so well. HiRez's first ever port to the console was Paladins. It certainly felt like a first port at launch, but they ironed out a lot of the flaws very early on.

Don't take it personally dude, the observation was insincere when you look at the history of the company and its personnel. As someone who's followed Smite since launch and Paladins since open beta, it's difficult not to see gaps in the image. Smite and Paladins were sharing their lead developer all the way up until the split. The majority of the Paladins team was working on Realm, and Paladins saw a significant drop in progress when Realm began development. Paladins' team was born out of a large sect of the Smite team. Smite's update cycle has taken a hit numerous times coinciding with major Paladins updates. You seem to be drastically overestimating HiRez's scope, and they have a pretty substantial history of sacrificing progress and even entire titles while pursuing other games they've got running simultaneously. This isn't the fault of the employees; it definitely comes down to poor management and HiRez have a terrible reputation in this sense. The split was an attempt at solving persistent development issues in the company that have only VERY recently (going by Paladins' recent changes, as late as early 2019) started getting resolved after the split has been enacted (Paladins getting a new tech lead, the assembly of champions, the three mainline games fully operating independent of one another, etc).

None of this changes anything about my initial points, and arguably bolsters them instead. The allocation of resources for Paladins isn't even remotely close to comparable to that of Overwatch, and it isn't hard to see even now when you look at OW's Esports production values and the marketing that goes into all of their DLC. If it still seems I'm asking for too much wanting a 60fps toggle, I haven't really got much else to say. I'm preordering the game irrespective of whether such options are added. It's simply a wish I would have expected (if anyone) Blizzard to implement, and I don't think anyone is wrong in being somewhat disappointed.

@Coach_A Yes. Perhaps the motion blur is making it look worse and is why it stutters on camera movement.

@Ventilator that's not what motion blur does. Motion blur alleviates the "stuttery" look when panning the camera around

@Coach_A You are right. Perhaps it were turned off here. It stuttered alot more when i played it.