As long as its above thirty, I couldn't give two shits about frames per second. Me too. At their E3 demonstration, they just kept saying it over and over again. Frames per second does not compensate for gameplay. Unless it's choppy, then it starts hurt gameplay, but that doesn't happen if it is at least at 30.
Technically, we can see up to and beyond 220 frames per second, but the cones in our eyes (responsible for color) end up doing 3 times as much work, therefore 1/3 the speed. In order to make up for this, our brain automatically blurs things moving at a different speed than our primary focus. Blah blah blah, long speech, but essentially though we can see things infinitely faster than 30 fps, due to our brains automated motion-blurring, anything moving too much faster than about 24 fps is almost identical, simply because our brains fill in the gaps with what we expect the other 200 missing frames could be. We can perceive a difference in higher refresh-rates, but that is because our brain is doing less work, and causing it to be easier to focus on. It only benefits those who are susceptible to migraines, the lovely vidiophiles, and a great deal of marketers and CoD fanboys.
Why is this presented as if it's a choice between a good framerate and good gameplay? The two are only related in that poor framerate can detract from gameplay. Complete and utter false dichotomy here. The more accurate dichotomy is between the framerate and the quality of the graphics. Things like texture resolution, particles, reflections, and other stuff can all be improved when the designers are willing to sacrifice framerate. In that case, I care more about framerate than having a few extra particles or whatever.
I don't care at all, play the old Marathon games or Catacombs 3D or Hovertank 3D. As long as the FPS doesnt lag enough to affect gameplay. You get used to it once you've played alotta games from early 90s.
I don't think that's what most people are thinking, at least that's not my logic. See, I'm okay with Call of Duty keeping it's 60 fps. They've optimized that engine well enough that it can look like it does (which would be a decent enough looking game if I wasn't tired of watching that engine) while still running at that higher frame rate. That's all well and fun for the people who want a game that runs so well that it can be competitive and more twitchy. Me, and many other people on here, arguably the more hardcore gamers, don't want or don't care about having 60 fps in a game, because games are all about technology. If every game ran at 60 fps, that would mean we weren't pushing the boundaries of what is possible on modern PCs and consoles. So, there are people who want to optimize what we have so that we can have the best experience possible now, and there are those who want to keep pushing forward, always improving but not quite perfecting.