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Personally, I use my PS5 for 3D games that look pretty and need the most power, so I play most games on Quality mode, like FFVII Remake and Rebirth, even if it drops the FPS to 30.
30fps feels cinematic to me, which I often prefer in story-driven RPGs.
Framerate is king.
I remember when I legally pirated Oblivion back in 2006 or 7. I was trying to run it on a geforce 6800 in 1280*1024 and the poor thing just couldn't take it. With everything off it fared better, sure, but the landscape was barren like a golf course. With everything maxed out I topped at 4 or 5fps, and it looked so good that I just pushed through it. I must have played hours at that framerate.
Legally pirated
That's called "privateering." 🤣
I prefer performance mode if it is decently implemented. For slower games I go for quality mode if the difference is obvious enough. Recent examples that come to mind are Somerville and Forspoken. Forspoken is a strange one, as it is actually a really fast game, but it looked horrible on performance mode and actually worked quite well once I got used to the 30fps. I play on base PS5.
Same here: action games, fighting games, and shmups. Performance mode all the way—can't afford to drop frames in those games.
sufficient performance > sufficient beauty > power usage > max beauty > max performance
I set a frame rate limit in most 3D games, to avoid inflating my electricity bill for barely noticeable effects or FPS improvements. Plugging my system into a Kill A Watt was enlightening.
sufficient performance > sufficient beauty > power usage > max beauty > max performance
This is basically alien to me. I think it has to be game specific.
Euro Truck Simulator? Beauty is more important than performance, unless playing it on my handheld, in which case I can knock the FPS limiter down to 40 and crank the settings down
Satisfactory? Performance over everything.
Granted most of the games I play are older (so I don’t need to choose) or CPU-bound simulation games (Raising the graphics doesn’t make it run meaningfully slower if your CPU is the bottleneck).
Although I must also point out that I think the current trend of “fidelity=beauty” is ridiculous. I recently played INFRA, a game built in Source, and while the fidelity was clearly “outdated”, the game looked fantastic.
Plugging my system into a Kill A Watt was enlightening.
Laptop gaming is a harsh but educational mistress re: power consumption (even when it’s plugged in), I’ll tell you that. All the heat you generate is right in front of your face, as is all the airflow (and noise) needed to wick it away.
Quality mode, as I can't see the difference between 30 and 60 fps. I think it's one of these things that only connaisseurs can tell the difference, like for 99% of people Pepsi taste the same as coca cola but for the 1% that drink it daily there is a difference.
I'm a performance mode type myself. The games look good enough so I want them running smooth.
I think this question also applies to PC. Why? Because we are limited too. I try to reach 120 fps and consider it performance mode when dialing back quality settings, and enabling upscaling to reach that. If not, 90 fps is also pretty good. For certain games, 60 fps feels like what you describe of 30, but that does not apply to all games. There are single player rpgs played with a gamepad, that I would even consider playing at 30 fps if there is no other option. The problem is, games are not designed to be played with that low fps, as the input latency increases.
I'll compare this to the Switch, playing Zelda (emulated with Yuzu). Breath of the Wild on original Switch is designed to be played at 30 fps. Playing it on my PC like that felt like a slideshow, but one can get used to it. If I didn't had the 60 fps patch, it would still be fine at 30. The next game in the series, Tiers of the Kingdom, was not stable at 60, so I was "forced" to play at 30. And after some time playing it felt pretty good and not upsetting like in the first few minutes.
What I mean by that is, performance mode if possible, I would sacrifice quality. But not too much, because at some point the image looks really bad.
PC is harder to define since everyone has varying hardware and specific setting preferences. Most PC games let you change nearly everything and let you mix and match what is high, what is low, what is on or off, etc. And if you have the money, you can get both performance and quality if the game isn't busted. :p
That's not entirely true. Because even if you buy a strong PC, you have to make choices, depending on the game. It's just the fps and settings we are talking about are higher floor. In example on PC people can enable RayTracing, which tanks the fps a lot. Do you go for 120 fps or 60 or maybe lower fps with higher fidelity and RayTracing in example.
So the question to answer is still the same, its just on PC we have a bit more individual choices to make.
Edit (added): Most people don't have the strongest PC anyway. Look at the Steam hardware survery, most have common graphics cards like the 4060 in example. Or look at handheld PCs and laptops, with fixed hardware. And as said, even in high end with lots of money people need to make cuts in fidelity or performance; just on a higher level in that case. So your question applies to PC as well.
Performance, but Death Stranding 2 looks weird (really washed out) in that so I left it on quality. It's not a fast paced game, so I'm ok with that.
I've always gone for performance mode. 60 fps at the minimum is what I want.
I tend to stick to quality mode unless it causes too many < 30fps drops OR it needs a higher FPS e.g. driving. I don't play shooters or any PvP games on console though