Was Watch Dogs For PC Handicapped On Purpose?

Advocatus Diaboli writes: Many PC gamers were disappointed that Ubisoft's latest AAA game, Watch_Dogs, did not look as nice as when displayed at E3 in 2012. But this week a modder discovered that code to improve the game's graphics on the PC is still buried within the released game, and can be turned back on without difficulty or performance hits. Ubisoft has yet to answer whether (or why) their PC release was deliberately handicapped. Gaming commentator Total Biscuit has a video explaining the controversy.

Comments

Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuff said.

Re:Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft

[DoofusOfDeath]

Nuff said.

Well, you say that, but Heroes of Might and Magic VI was actually pretty fun.

Re:Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft

[Assmasher]

It was, but that was a looong time ago...

Re:Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft

[afidel]

It might be but I'll never know until/unless it's released on GOG because I refuse to deal with DRM more restrictive than Steam, and I'm right in their target audience as I own every game in the series from the original Kings Bounty to King's Bounty: Warriors of the North, Ice & Fire. Ubisoft can go jump in a lake until they learn to treat their paying customers correctly.

Re:Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft

[BlueBlade]

Just wanted to say, King's Bounty : Dark Side is available from Steam. It's early access, but many people have played it from start to finish several times and it's mostly bug-free (at least any serious bug) at the moment. It's due to release next month if you'd rather not play the early access version.

I've played it for a few hours and I can say, it's already much better than Warriors of the North. It's reminding me a lot of Crossworlds, which is a good thing.

Re:Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft

[afidel]

Thanks for the heads up, I'll probably pick it up at the first sale post release, summer is now my dead time for gameplay since I tend to take family vacations and go hiking instead of sitting indoors =)

Re:Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are opposed to DRM, but use Steam, you are a hypocrite.

Re:Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft

[interkin3tic]

Friends don't let friends buy ubisoft games at release for more than $20. I raise this point because I don't think an outright consumer-organized boycott is likely to be effective. Telling someone to "never buy that game you are interested in because of ethics" is a hard sell. Saying "Don't buy that game for a month or so because they're assholes, and besides it will drop dramatically in price while you're playing other games anyway" seems much more convincing to more people. And publishers would count that as a loss anyway.

Re:Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft

[mcvos]

Looks like Ubisoft is again providing pritates with a great opportunity to deliver a superior product. This seems to be Ubisoft's thing. They probably love pirates, that they're being so nice them.

Re:Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft

[mcvos]

Steam may be DRM, but it does provide some advantages in other areas that might balance things out.

Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?

Also... AAA? define.

Re:Controversy?

[dunkindave]

Anti-Aircraft Adventure, or was it Alternative Arcade Action, or was it...

Damn, where is that 80 page FBI acronym cheat sheet when I need it.

Re:Controversy?

[click2005]

AAA - A game title that cost more to market and push down people's throats than the cost to actually make it. You can tell these games because theres more trailers, teasers and cut-scenes leaked than actual footage.

Analogy: A turd in a very pretty & shiny box.

Re:Controversy?

[Ralph Wiggam]

Grand Theft Auto V cost $150M to develop and $150M to market. The GTA games have been the benchmark of AAA games for almost 15 years.

I have never heard anyone describe any of them as turds in a pretty box.

Re:Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those figures are a pack of lies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

Re:Controversy?

[sexconker]

Really?

Also... AAA? define.

Anti-Abortion Activist

Re:Controversy?

[desdinova 216]

that's odd, I always thought AAA as either an organization that provides roadside assistance and Travel services, or the top level of Baseball's minor leagues

Re:Controversy?

[Mashiki]

Also... AAA? define.

Seriously? You're on a geek based site, and you don't know. How I long for the days when /. had people who worked in the industry actually posting here. Remember them? Wasn't that long ago when developers from those studios would actually reply...oh well.

Re:Controversy?

[Ralph Wiggam]

Those numbers come from industry analysts, not Rockstar or Take Two.

Re: Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I genuinely feel sorry for you if you believe GTA V is a good game. It's an impressive experiment in attempting to create an open world, but as a game it's trudging, boring and ultimately confining. The actual missions in the game have so little creativity, you have to wonder if any part of the game *wasn't* designed by committee.

If GTA V is supposed to represent a "standard" of good games (meaning games that are actually fun to play), then good games are in danger of going extinct.

Re:Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was before the developers were all replaced by identical worker units executing MBA pseudo-code.

Re:Controversy?

[jxander]

Originally it was based on school letter grades. An "A" game was one without any flaws. A game rated "AAA" not only was free of flaws or defects, but pushed the boundaries of what games could accomplish. They elevated their genres to new heights or defined entire new ones.

That definition has been long forgotten however. These days, AAA Game just means "massive budget." People are throwing millions and millions and millions at AAA games. With that kind of money at stake, studios can't afford to be creative or take risks. So AAA games are now risk-adverse "follow the leader" operations, with massive ad campaigns to ensure maximum profits. Often released annually with incremental changes (Madden, CoD, BF, etc) and sponsored by Mountain Dew, Doritos, or whatever other company is willing to throw $$$ at them.

Re:Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I for one dont fucking care because games these days are almost to a man, utterly forgettable at best or turds at worst.

Go outside and kick a football. It's more fun and better for you.

Re: Controversy?

[0123456]

It's an impressive experiment in attempting to create an open world, but as a game it's trudging, boring and ultimately confining. The actual missions in the game have so little creativity, you have to wonder if any part of the game *wasn't* designed by committee.

But, uh, that's the same as GTA3 and GTA4.

Re: Controversy?

[Ralph Wiggam]

I only played about 10 hours of it and I agree with a lot of your criticisms. But as far as critical and user acclaim, as recorded by metacritic, GTA V is right near the top of the heap.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/grand-theft-auto-v

Re: Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

You throw a football.

Re: Controversy?

[Stormwatch]

You mean a handegg.

Re: Controversy?

[mythosaz]

If you think GTA3 and GTA5 are the same game, you're sadly mistaken.

Re: Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I only played about 10 hours of it and I agree with a lot of your criticisms. But as far as critical and user acclaim, as recorded by metacritic, GTA V is right near the top of the heap.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/grand-theft-auto-v

Which should give you some idea of how corrupt most game review publishers are. To call them professional puffery agencies is putting it mildly.

Reviewers for Watch_Dogs, for example, received a Nexus 7, courtesy of Ubisoft. No corruption there...

Re: Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no expert, but I think that punting counts as kicking.

Re:Controversy?

[Opportunist]

Maybe 'cause they buy the turd on Steam?

Re: Controversy?

[Ralph Wiggam]

That's why I mentioned the user scores as well.

Re:Controversy?

[Mashiki]

That was before the developers were all replaced by identical worker units executing MBA pseudo-code.

I better let my friends at Bioware Edmonton know this, they'll be impressed to know that they've been replaced by identical worker units. Actually it might explain the droid-like behaviors and why they always plug into a wall socket when I fly out west to visit them.

Re:Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I regularly visit my local ABC Supermarket to buy my groceries. They have their own as well as third party brands available to purchase. This works for me, and as such, I am a part of their rewards program.

ABC Supermarket signs a deal to offer one of XYZ Supermarket's products. I decide to try it out. However on the way out the door after purchasing an XYZ Branded product, I am grabbed by employees of the XYZ Supermarket, thown into the back of an XYZ branded Van, and driven to the XYZ Store. They then walk me to the counter, put a pen in my hand, and make me sign up for their rewards program. Once I do, only then am I allowed to use the XYZ product.

Next time I decide to drive myself to XYZ store to save myself the hassle of being dragged there from ABC. Unfortunately the employees don't recognise my rewards card, and have blank looks when asked about the product. A manager approaches me, and tells me that I have to first go to the ABC store, pick up the product, and THEN come back to the XYZ store before they will allow me to use it.

This is what it's like buying Ubisoft Products through Steam.

Re: Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously they aren't the same game, but they suck the same. Vice City and San Andreas were the only fun GTA games.

Re:Controversy?

[mjwx]

Grand Theft Auto V cost $150M to develop and $150M to market. The GTA games have been the benchmark of AAA games for almost 15 years.

I have never heard anyone describe any of them as turds in a pretty box.

Erm, GTA has not been the benchmark for AAA games by a long shot. Graphically they fall well short (well they are designed for consoles) but make up for it by having a good sense of humour... Well up until GTA IV, that was a giant turd in a box.

Saints Row The Third was a better GTA than GTA.

Re:Controversy?

[mjwx]

Originally it was based on school letter grades. An "A" game was one without any flaws. A game rated "AAA" not only was free of flaws or defects, but pushed the boundaries of what games could accomplish. They elevated their genres to new heights or defined entire new ones.

That definition has been long forgotten however. These days, AAA Game just means "massive budget." People are throwing millions and millions and millions at AAA games. With that kind of money at stake, studios can't afford to be creative or take risks. So AAA games are now risk-adverse "follow the leader" operations, with massive ad campaigns to ensure maximum profits. Often released annually with incremental changes (Madden, CoD, BF, etc) and sponsored by Mountain Dew, Doritos, or whatever other company is willing to throw $$$ at them.

AAA always referred to budget. I dont remember any of the classics that pushed boundaries like System Shock being called AAA back in the day.

The term comes from the finance industry, not education. A Triple A credit rating means that you can raise significant capital for a project. A AAA game is a game that has a significant amount of money behind it.

Re: Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice: Due to the confusion caused by various nations referring to two different games with the same name ("football"), we have hereby decided to change the name of BOTH games (thus, eliminating the confusing "football" reference) to both alleviate confusion and more accurately represent the nature of these games.

American Football will now be referred to solely as "Handegg" since the game primarily consists of players touching an egg shaped ball with their hands.

European Football will now be referred to solely as "Divegrass" since the game primarily consists of players throwing themselves at the turf in mock pain.

Henceforth, please use these new and more accurate descriptions over the deprecated terminology.

Thank you for your time.

Re: Controversy?

[ghost370]

sample oyunmy

Re: Controversy?

[xvan]

But GTA3 suck's by today's standards. I might be wrong but can't think of a better game with a similar game play that's older than the GTA3.

Re:Controversy?

[sd4f]

Bioware's soul has been eaten out by EA. As only a passive observer, that spark that originally was there seems to have fizzled out.

Re: Controversy?

[sd4f]

What about Rugby? League and Union as well?

Re:Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Really? GTAs suck balls. The first one isn't even pretty. They are made for 13 old wannabe gansters who are too fat to go out and beat whores themselves.

If there is something more horrible than 1st person games it's 3rd person camera over shoulder games. GTA, please go to the corner and die on top of Fallout3.

They are nothing but turds hidden inside a shiny shell. The gameplay isn't gameplay, it's like watching a bad movie. Now you've heard it. They are turds. Billions of flies do seem to like them, but then again, they'll buy and like anything some advertisers tell them to.

Re:Controversy?

[dslbrian]

Saints Row The Third was a better GTA than GTA.

I'll second that. I actually played SR3 before GTA IV. I thought SR3 was an excellent game, with good gameplay and good humor (occasionally over the top on the humor). I liked their vehicle customization also.

Then I played GTA IV, which made me decide not to buy GTA V. They should have called it "Boatville" since every car drove like a freaking boat. Awful gameplay with a mind-numbingly boring story. Absolutely hated it. No degree of realism could counter what a bad game it was.

Re:Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only GTA game I played was Vice City. What I found fun in the game was driving around while listening to the game's radio. I found everything else about the game utterly boring. So not really a turd in a pretty box, but from my point of view, certainly not a good game.

Re: Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

That the gaming industry started adopting terms from credit rating agencies, says a lot about what went wrong in the gaming industry.

Re:Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they've come from people who are less likely to know the correct figures, and that makes them more trustworthy?!

Re: Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Aussie Rules

Re: Controversy?

[loufoque]

All nations around the world use football to refer to what you call soccer.
The US is the only exception worldwide, they should just get in line with the normal usage.

Re: Controversy?

[HJED]

actually until pretty recently Australia used soccer as well (it has now been phased out officially, but sadly some people still use it)

Re: Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll just jump in and say that, say someone who liked the earlier GTAs, enjoyed the Saints Row games, and didn't care for GTA IV for much the same reasons, GTA V was great. They dialled back on the dull grey realism they went for in GTA V, and it feels and plays a lot more fun as a result.

Re:Controversy?

[Cryacin]

You missed the guy in the balaclava holding the shotgun and bottle of chloroform.

Re:Controversy?

[AmiMoJo]

GTA IV for PC was. The DRM ruined it, so I didn't even buy it. Their shitty and mandatory Rockstar Social Club that cost £250,000 to develop and was cracked a few days before release lost them a sale too.

It remains to be seen what GTA V will be like on PC. I'm very much expecting the turd-in-a-box version though.

Re:Controversy?

[bad-badtz-maru]

I have no idea what "AAA" means in video game context, either. I am not a gamer. I know plenty of geeks that don't game.

Re: Controversy?

[Hodr]

Just like so many other things that the rest of the world like to complain about the American's making use of (Imperial measurement, colonialization, etc.) we got the word Soccer from.......the English.

Yup, Soccer was the word the English gave to the sport to differentiate it from other games of foot ball like rugby foot ball(or basically any game concerning a ball that wasn't done from horseback).

So the question you may want to ask is not "why do American's call it soccer", but rather "why did England/other english speaking countries decide to change the name, causing most to follow".

Re:Controversy?

[ArcadeMan]

Associated Alcoholics Anonymous

Re: Controversy?

[loufoque]

Soccer was never widely used in England, even if it was coined there.

Re:Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this smell like chloroform to you?

Re:Controversy?

[Ralph Wiggam]

They know how many people worked on the game for how long. It's their job to be able to estimate how much that cost. The marketing budget is much easier to estimate because they know how much TV air time and print space Rockstar bought and how much that costs.

The point is that Hollywood accounting comes from the studio involved. These numbers do not.

Re:Controversy?

[Ralph Wiggam]

Wow. You guys are a bunch of hipster douches. You'll hate on anything that's popular, won't you?

Re:Controversy?

[Zeromous]

This is nonsense. C-AAA are distributor codes. A is a low sales game and is cheaper sale by distributor to store or rental. AAA are high demand games which are sold to retail by distributors at a higher price (which means less markup, which implies they expect higher sales on volume).

Basically your entire post is bullshit.

Re: Controversy?

[interkin3tic]

You dislike a popular game? Such taste! Wow! Very knowledgeable! Impressed!

Re: Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, is Australia not a nation anymore? We refer to "football" as soccer. Football to an Australian is one or more of rugby league, rugby union, Australian rules, super 7s, or super 9s. As far as I am aware of, this distinction also applies to New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, and quite a few other pacific island nations...

Re:Controversy?

[Opportunist]

I think you forgot that you have to hook up XYZ with your phone line so it can tell its supermarket when and how you use it, or it just won't work.

Re:Controversy?

[jxander]

Basically your entire post is bullshit.

I was actually conducting an experiment to see if people would mod-up a factually incorrect post that sounded plausible.

I really hope you weren't conducing an experiment to see if people would rescind their moderation based on new information, because if you were ...

Re: Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

GTA 2? GTA?

Even when it came out, GTA 3 felt like a test project. VC and SA were the fleshed out, fully realized games.

Re:Controversy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are people giving this post points? It's completely 100% wrong. "AAA" has absolutely nothing to do with game reviews or quality. It's a designation created by marketing when they're determining how much marketing budget to spend on a game. It has nothing to do with the length, quality, or even development budget (although, indirectly, usually a game with a high development budget is going to have a high marketing budget in an attempt to increase return on investment, but there are plenty of cases of very expensive-to-develop games that have received little marketing, and therefore were not considered "AAA"). It literally just means that they're going to spend over a million dollars on marketing and nothing else.

Look at Minecraft. It's probably made more money than Call of Duty and other similarly huge budget, hugely marketed games. But it's not a AAA game because it has almost no marketing budget whatsoever.

Any other meaning ascribed to "AAA" has been entirely manufactured by the fan base who heard the term used by industry insiders and didn't understand what it meant or its purpose, and misinterpreted its meaning and just started applying it to what they thought were "good" games.

Re:Controversy?

[Zeromous]

Well you sure found the best way to get someone to post the correct answer ;)

They found a way to mess up the roads in chicago

[Joe_Dragon]

They found a way to mess up the roads in chicago so why even they to max out on the pc when you just need to do the min to get the game out.

Of course it was!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Why is this even a question? The PC version included the "Uplay" launcher/malware/crash utility.

Platform makers

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably got paid off or threatened by console makers.

Blur

[BradleyUffner]

Play the game for 5 minutes with the depth of field effect and you will see why that was disabled; the game is unplayable that way. As for the other stuff; no idea.

Re:Blur

[Travis Mansbridge]

In any game, depth-of-field looks amazing for screenshots but in order to work the camera has to refocus on whatever is in the center of the screen, so focus can change rapidly and drastically as you swing your view around, and anything the player might be looking at that's not in the center is going to be out-of-focus. The only way to really pull it off would be something like eye-tracking to find what the player is actually looking at and bring that into focus. Or design a 2-D-ish game where all the action is guaranteed to happen at the same depth.

Re:Blur

[SuricouRaven]

Why would anyone want to waste processing power simulating the physical limitations of their eyes?

You may as well render lens flare.

Re:Blur

[mikael]

It's not just eyes, they also try and replicate the limitations of cameras; lens flare, the Bokeh effect, motion blur, depth-of-field. If a title doesn't have those effects, it's not keeping up to date with everyone else.

Even with the Ultra 64, the Quake version gave you the choice of enabling/disabling mip-mapping. For a while mip-mapping looks cool because everything looks less pixelly. Then when you switch it off, everything looked better because it was sharper.

Re:Blur

[TWX]

You may as well render lens flare.

Tell that to J. J. Abrams. I tried cleaning my glasses when I went to see Star Trek but it didn't make it any better.

Of course, I don't think that removing the lens flare would have helped much in that case regardless...

Re:Blur

[makapuf]

In cgi, what you spend your time doing is rendering limitations to make it look more "real". Lens flare, dirt, vignette, glare , scratches, de focus, even color grading are artifacts or wear out that make it so more real than clean, 100% sharp plastic images.
We're seeing some elements through non neutral media and are accustomed to this filter. Look at how 100fps movies look like cheap video first. It takes time to change your habits. And if reality isn't a concern ... Well just use flash games.

Re:Blur

[Mashiki]

Meh adjust the DoF to how you like it, it's not hard and with the latest mod it's trivial to do. But other things like RT shadows, object reflections, higher density of pedestrians on the street? Hell even the particle effects for the water looks amazing with all these settings turned on. I'm not one for conspiracy theories, hell Totalbiscut isn't either but even he hinted in his latest video on it that there's a possibility that PC settings were reduced as to not make the "next gen" aka 2.5-3 year old hardware that they're built on, not look so bad.

Re:Blur

[Jeremy Erwin]

Depth of field is an artistic tool used by photographers to direct the viewer's gaze. It has a reputation for being a mark of a pro photographer because

The larger the camera's format, the shallower the depth of field for a given aperture. Depth of field control is extremely difficult on a cell phone camera.
More expensive pro lenses, such as the "Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II Lens " ($2396) lens have wider apertures than a (sort of, kind of) similar consumer lens such as the "Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED AF-S DX" ($159)

However. there are photographers, such as Ansel Adams who used "camera movements" to maximize depth of field, as well as photo journalists who consider deep depths of field to be an important tool for objectivity and for telling narratives.

A pro photographer uses depth of field as a compositional element. A game's graphics engine would have to be programmed to use depth of field to direct the player's gaze to fit the narrative.. A constant shallowness is likely to interfere with game play.

(Back in the old days, fog was used to obscure draw distance limitations. It sometimes looked decent, but in real life, piloting an aircraft through dense fog is harder than piloting through clear skies...)

Re:Blur

[Cowclops]

While its true that cameras with large sensors tend to have shallower depth of field, its actually a side effect of needing to use longer focal length lenses to get the same field of view. You might need 70mm on a 35mm camera to frame a subject for a portrait but only 12mm on a point and shoot to frame the same subject. Longer focal length means bigger actual lens aperture for the same f-stop, and thats what decreases depth of field.

For example, a 35mm f/2 lens on a full frame camera will have the same depth of field as a 35mm f/2 lens on a 2/3" CCD point and shoot, but the 35mm on a full frame camera is going to be a standard angle and 35mm on the point and shoot is going to be considerable telephoto.

People generally don't use the same range of focal lengths on full frame cameras as they do on tiny sensor point and shoots (or cell phones) so thats why it seems like its easier to achieve the shallower depth of field with a bigger imager.

Re: Blur

[Anonymous Coward]

In the other hand, depth of field in a game is the mark of a game with a bunch of dumb tacked-on features that probably just detract from gameplay.

Film grain, lens flare, depth of field and mouse acceleration are the first things I disable before playing any game. If any of those *cannot* be disabled in a game, that's another bad game I'm spared from playing.

Re:Blur

[Anonymous Coward]

A game's graphics engine would have to be programmed to use depth of field to direct the player's gaze to fit the narrative

The only games I can think of that even try to approach it this way are the ones that fake it by applying a blur mask to everything not around your sight when you're aiming a gun, and you can tell its fake because both the sight and the guy at the other end of the map are sharp.

Re:Blur

[Jeremy Erwin]

Hmm-- crop factor for a 2/3 inch sensor is 3.6, so a 35mm lens on a 2/3 would roughly be equivalent to 125 mm-- short telephoto, good for headshots from say 6-7 feet away.
Using Depth of Field Master
an f/2/ 125mm lens, at 6 ft, has a depth of field of 0.08 ft. (Canon5D Mark III)
an f/2 35 mm, lens, at 6 ft has a depth of field of 0.28 ft (Fujifilm X10, though it's actually limited to 28mm @ f/2.8)

So if you want razor thin depth of field, best go with full frame or larger, assuming that the lenses are available-- 200 mm f2 lens can be had, but they are rather expensive.

Re:Blur

[Mal-2]

While its true that cameras with large sensors tend to have shallower depth of field, its actually a side effect of needing to use longer focal length lenses to get the same field of view. You might need 70mm on a 35mm camera to frame a subject for a portrait but only 12mm on a point and shoot to frame the same subject. Longer focal length means bigger actual lens aperture for the same f-stop, and thats what decreases depth of field.

For example, a 35mm f/2 lens on a full frame camera will have the same depth of field as a 35mm f/2 lens on a 2/3" CCD point and shoot, but the 35mm on a full frame camera is going to be a standard angle and 35mm on the point and shoot is going to be considerable telephoto.

People generally don't use the same range of focal lengths on full frame cameras as they do on tiny sensor point and shoots (or cell phones) so thats why it seems like its easier to achieve the shallower depth of field with a bigger imager.

This is not quite true. The larger formats come with larger acceptable circles of confusion as well, since it is expected they will be enlarged less. The basic premise is correct, but it's not straight linear. A 50 mm lens at f/1.4 has less effective depth of field on a 14 MP crop sensor than it does on a 14 MP full-frame sensor, just because the actual sensing elements are smaller.

Re:Blur

[Luckyo]

Personally, the first thing I usually adjust in game graphics after installation and selecting the correct resolution is turning off depth of field and motion blur.

Both make screenshots look nice and make actual gameplay look utterly terrible imho.

Re:Blur

[gl4ss]

depth of field in games is used for the same shit as in movies - to enable shit backgrounds from ruining your screenshots.

all and all, it's shit, it's used for forcing your eyes to look at one point. in cutscenes not so bad(but still a trick to enable crap backgrounds). in gameplay? fucking appalling.

(for example of shit backgrounds hide trick dof, dragon age II).

Re:Blur

[Ja'Achan]

You may as well render lens flare.

Only if you call them Solar Flares

Re:Blur

[Anonymous Coward]

The human eye actually does not have a very shallow DOF (as many games try to show) under decent lighting conditions, as its "aperture" is pretty small. The brain also filters out the visual defects as much as possible. In the real world, people do not consciously see a huge amount of blur (at least not with healthy vision anyway), chromatic aberration, lens flares, distortion, or bloom all the time. The number and shape of lens flares also depends on the number of lens elements and the shape of the aperture, so a presumably human character would need to have a somewhat unusual anatomy to see half a dozen hexagonal lens flares, for example.

Games use these effects, alongside with other tricks like overly saturated colors and exaggerated material and HDR effects, to grab attention and look "cool", and to show off the capabilities of the engine, but they are in fact often not displayed in a realistic way.

Re:Blur

[ildon]

A lot of the changes that people claim are "downgrades" are just aesthetic choices. The modded version is darker overall and colors are less vibrant. The mod increases the reflectiveness of wet surfaces (which I think makes it look way less realistic to the point that it looks goofy). As you mentioned, the DoF effect looks terrible and makes the game unplayable. The only real "upgrades" are basically the car headlights and rain particles. Everything else is basically an aesthetic choice.

Also the claims that there are no performance hits is a lie. Every video I've seen comparing the two, there is a noticeable (but minor) drop in framerate with the mod. Some people are claiming that the mod gets rid of "stuttering", but I haven't seen any hard (meaning video) evidence of that.

Re: Blur

[X0563511]

Some things it makes sense for, such as looking through reticules or other such items that would actually have an appreciably small DoF.

Still bugs me and I turn it off, though.

Re:Blur

[X0563511]

If your crosshairs are not fairly sharp, your scope is not adjusted correctly for the distance you're aiming at.

Re:Blur

[X0563511]

Some people are claiming that the mod gets rid of "stuttering", but I haven't seen any hard (meaning video) evidence of that.

If your FPS varies wildly, this is perceived as a stutter. If you chop the peaks off without appreciably changing the rest of it, you'll find a "smoother" experience even if your average rate has gone down.

Re:Blur

[ildon]

Good point.

Apparently they will do the same to Far Cry 4

[Payden K. Pringle]

Apparently they will do the same to Far Cry 4, specifically this article from Forbes about that subject.

Oh, and that update on Alex Hutchinson's Twitter response? Bollocks.

Re:Apparently they will do the same to Far Cry 4

[The Real Dr John]

I really hope not. Maybe now that this story is making the rounds, they will be less inclined to screw over PC gamers. If they don't handle this correctly before release, it will probably hurt PC sales.

Re:Apparently they will do the same to Far Cry 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you nerds should cry more, might lubricate your cunts.

Re:Apparently they will do the same to Far Cry 4

[Luckyo]

Not our asses?

DLC

[0123456]

They were probably planning to charge players $50 to activate this 'DLC'.

Re:DLC

[Grog6]

This is probably exactly right; $9.95-$49.95 for a settings tweak.

I'm Happy I haven't bought this yet; I'll have to see how this goes. :)

Re:DLC

[Jahoda]

"Watch_Dogs Remastered Gold Edition"

Re:DLC

[Mikawo]

Well, the list price is the same no matter what platform. I think console gamers might get butthurt if they spent the same amount of money and on another platform the game looks a lot better. There is something to be said about delivering a somewhat consistent experience across different platforms. Getting that extra quality through a DLC doesn't seem all that unreasonable.

Re:DLC

[Opportunist]

So PC gamers should not feel butthurt if the game they got sold got its quality artificially lowered to pander to the console crowd? Isn't it bad enough that games get dumbed down and have its controls crippled because of that?

Re:DLC

[Mikawo]

Generally speaking, all instances of a given product from a manufacturer should not be significantly different in quality. Otherwise the value is not consistent and it would be unfair to price it all the same.

Re:DLC

[Opportunist]

So it was really unfair that those games that came out for Amiga and C64 looked so extremely different? It's unfair that the games are optimized for 24" displays 'cause I only have a 19" one here, of course with fewer pixels and hence interlacing difficulties? They should optimize for the lowest common denominator! To hell with progress and quality improvement, to hell with hardware progress and most of all to hell with Moore's Law!

Oh, and while we're at it, everyone should have the same gaming experience, so lower the difficulty to the point where even a 2 year old can beat it, or it would be very unfair to people who have worse hand-eye coordination. They paid for the whole game, too, so it would be unfair if they could never see half of the content! And no, multiple difficulty levels don't cut it, because they invariably come with achievements, and it would be unfair if some bumbling idiot could never achieve all of them!

And what about me! It's unfair that some of them require hundreds of hours of playing, I don't have that much time! I want my "obsessive compulsive" achievement but can't invest a thousand hours!

UNFAIR!

Re:DLC

[Mikawo]

There are games that want to push the limits of PC hardware and have all the fancy bells and whistles and if that's what you want, then those are the games you should get, but why do you expect every game to be that way? Why is it wrong to optimize for the lowest common denominator to, say, reach a wider audience? Not everything needs to be at the cutting edge. Just making the game fun is a worthwhile goal in itself.

Re:DLC

[Opportunist]

This game HAS all the fancy bells and whistles, but for some odd reason its maker decided to lower its quality (and I'm not even talking about DRM this time). How does that in any way increase the "fun" I might have with it? This ain't an 8bit game where crappy graphics adds to some kind of nostalgia effect I might be feeling.

Probably

[asmkm22]

But not for any nefarious reasons. The depth of field effect, in particular, messes with the gameplay in unexpected ways. Stuff like not being able to find a camera easily because it's more than 20 feet away and blurred out. Or when you're in a gunfight and everyone not right next to you are blurred out. That kind of thing. It's great for screenshots, and very tightly-controlled situations, but I wasn't impressed with how it felt in terms of gameplay.

Re:Probably

[TWX]

Maybe they left it in there in case anyone had gotten to market a VR headset with proper eye tracking built by the time the game was released, so that depth of field would follow what the eye was looking at rather than where the center of the screen is pointed. But, that could be me being rather more charitable than they deserve.

Re:Probably

[guruevi]

The depth of field has been a problem with the game since release. Things popping in and out, blurry distances. Check out TB's original review of the game; the game is simply bad (it's Ubisoft after all), there are no other quality differences between these higher settings and the original settings

Re:Probably

[Anonymous Coward]

Depth of field can be dialed down and turned off completely. The rest of the settings don't affect performance any more than the gimped Ultra settings. Your comment is nonsensical.

Re:Probably

[dywolf]

DOF and motion blur. both annoying.

Re:Probably

[quietwalker]

Yeah. I tried playing Assassin's Creed in 3D, thinking it might be cool. Most of the 3D effects are minimal, with the exception of the new inclusion of depth of field. With 3D on, it makes anything more than 20 virtual feet from your character fuzzy and imprecise. After being sniped by or alerting rooftop guards that I couldn't distinguish from chimneys, masonry, doors, etc - I just turned it off. It incurred a penalty to play that way.

PS3 Version Missing Stuff, Too

[CanHasDIY]

All through the almost 2 solid years of following the game, the developers made it clear they intended ALL game features to be consistent across platforms; in fact, one of the last videos they released prior to the game hitting the market was to explain that the only real difference between versions would be graphics quality and population density (ie, the new consoles would have more peds/cars drawn in one place then the previous gen consoles).

Now, I haven't played it on anything but PS3, but one feature from the pre-release advertising is decidedly not in the PS3 version of the game: Team Hacking.

See, in the videos, they showed a multiplayer mode where two teams of four people were tasked with finding a certain item and hacking it before the other team could; the devs even played a demo game to show off the mode.

So, imagine my chagrin when I found out that mode is not, in fact, present in the PS3 version. OK, maybe 'chagrin' isn't the right word - I'm downright disappointed, because that was the one multiplayer mode that looked truly interesting to me.

Anybody played the PS4/Xbone version, and if so, did they leave Team Hacking intact? Or did Ubisoft decide to screw all of their customers, instead of just screwing the ones using previous-gen equipment?

Side Note Spoiler Alert: the climactic ending is decidedly anti-climactic.

Re:PS3 Version Missing Stuff, Too

[Luckyo]

Not much of a spoiler. Even the most cursory reviews of the title clear state that plot is throw away material.

Re:PS3 Version Missing Stuff, Too

[CanHasDIY]

Oh, I wouldn't call it a throw-away plot - I had to stop playing the first Darksiders title because of how lame the storyline was - But I agree it's far from the epic tale woven in, say, the Mass Effect series. It was interesting enough, I guess (could have used a LOT more character development), and there's enough side quests and special events to make me feel like it was worth at least most of my $60 bucks.

'Course, they just pushed an update last night (dammit, why don't they include changelogs in console game updates?), and supposedly there are more coming down the pipe, so who knows? I hold out hope that some content will be added in (like the multiplayer feature I complained about in my last post), but this being Ubisoft, I'm not banking on it.

Re:PS3 Version Missing Stuff, Too

[X0563511]

Online Decryption isn't under your online contracts app? That's sucky...

No accounting for taste.

[RyanFenton]

While the unlocked graphics style is certainly better for screenshots, it suffers the problem of highlighting close things, while highly blurring anything at a distance. While more 'realistic', if I were testing the game, I'd definitely suggest disabling this 'feature' by default, as it really can hamper gameplay and discovery. Skyrim EMB mods frequently enter into this territory, and it can be troublesome there too.

The headlight effects are pretty cool though.

The worst middle-finger-to-the-audience has to be the mouse handling though - it's not just mouse smoothing or mouse acceleration, but a particularly nasty form of negative acceleration from capping out the maximum allowed mouse speed, presumably to match controller max speeds. This limitation is a pain in the ass if you're expecting any kind of free or accurate mouse control. I cannot imagine any tester not making this a 'show stopper' bug - it's really, REALLY bad from what I've heard/seen/tried, and can't be fixed so far (lots of half-fixes out there though).

Ryan Fenton

Re:No accounting for taste.

[Electricity Likes Me]

You can disable depth of field with the new mods.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[sweffymo]

What about things like bloom and shadows? Those hardly make the game unplayable. Not to mention the fact that some of the people who ripped code out of the game found comments like "PC only -- Who cares?" and whatnot.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[viperidaenz]

Maybe they limited mouse speed to make it more realistic. People don't have unlimited speed, why should your character?

Re:No accounting for taste.

[Nahor]

And your character can kill people with mostly impunity, how come?

We don't want a "realistic" game, there is "real life" for that! "Realistic" should only go so far as to improve the game, not hinder it.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[Anonymous Coward]

The comment is right, thought. Time and time again Ubisoft shits down people's throats. Yet, their customers always ask for more when a new turd is coming.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[Lumpy]

"People don't have unlimited speed,"

My real name is Barry Allen and I disagree with that statement you insensitive clod!

Re:No accounting for taste.

[jxander]

The mouse just used to point and look.

Meatspace analogy time: Look at something on your right. Now look at something on your left. Pretty quick maneuver. Imagine being limited to 30 degrees of rotation per second, making that 180 degree change of direction (from your left to your right) a 6 second operation.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[Electricity Likes Me]

That screen shot is a fake.

Unless there's been an actual source leak, there is no possible way anyone was looking the C++ code for Watch_Dogs to be able to get that screenshot. Which means they couldn't possibly see code comments.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[Cley Faye]

While the unlocked graphics style is certainly better for screenshots, it suffers the problem of highlighting close things, while highly blurring anything at a distance. While more 'realistic', if I were testing the game, I'd definitely suggest disabling this 'feature' by default, as it really can hamper gameplay and discovery.

That's pointed out in the end of Total Biscuit's video. There's still stuff to enable/bring back, and stuff to adjust. He plainly says that the depth of view effect might be too much in this version of the "mod".

Re:No accounting for taste.

[thejynxed]

They capped total mouse frame movements to the 30 FPS of the console version. This is just lazy porting, again.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[viperidaenz]

I know, you should totally be able to shoot someone in the head from 1000 metres with a sniper rile immediately after jumping off a 5 metre tall roof that effectively half killed you and popping your head up from behind a wooden box that is some how magically bullet proof.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[viperidaenz]

It's not just moving your head though, it's aiming your rifle too.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked, most man-portable rifles aren't attached to mechanical stablization systems that limit one to 30 deg of rotation per second.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[Anonymous Coward]

How does limiting the camera position update rate to 30Hz in any way limit the amount of camera rotation permitted per frame?

Re:No accounting for taste.

[gfxguy]

Pointing, not aiming. Aiming might take a little bit more time... pointing your rifle from one side to the other is done very quickly... then aiming it at a target takes a little longer. I don't have a rifle, but in movies and news footage, I see soldiers and SWAT team members often going at least 60 degrees left and right, if not more, in the blink of an eye.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[jones_supa]

Could be some kind of shader code which typically ships uncompiled.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[jonwil]

Having just found the info in question at http://forums.ubi.com/showthre... I can confirm that yes, its from a shader file.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[gl4ss]

sure it is there if you're having shaders in there and are too lazy to rip out the comments...

Re:No accounting for taste.

[Rich0]

While more 'realistic', if I were testing the game, I'd definitely suggest disabling this 'feature' by default, as it really can hamper gameplay and discovery.

It is only realistic in the sense that this is what you get when you take a photo of something.

It is true that your eye has a limited depth of field like any camera, but that isn't how you actually perceive vision. To your brain the entire world is in focus, but you have an innate sense of depth as well. Your brain just discards the out-of-focus stuff you aren't looking at.

Photographers and cinematographers certainly use depth of field to draw your eye when creating their works. However, this is a carefully planned and scripted thing.

So, as you say, this is best saved for things like cutscenes which are scripted.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[drinkypoo]

Aiming might take a little bit more time... pointing your rifle from one side to the other is done very quickly... then aiming it at a target takes a little longer.

It basically depends on your sight situation and the amount of practice. Acquisition with a red dot sight (at relatively close range, but still worthy of a sight) is barely longer than it takes to raise the weapon and point it. With iron sights, it's a little longer. With a scope, it depends to a degree on how much you spent on optics. The bigger the scope, and I literally mean bigger and not more magnification of course, the easier it is to sight. And then there's point shooting, where a practiced shooter can be fairly accurate without actually aiming. At close range, a well-trained gunman can't hardly miss. The conventional wisdom about firearms being unuseful at extremely close differences is a lot of cockery.

Re:No accounting for taste.

[operagost]

And the wooden crate doesn't even have a pallet under it! How realistic is THAT?

Re:No accounting for taste.

[jxander]

The mouse issues in W_D get really wonky in other areas, too. The mouse is also used to, for instance, select buttons on a keypad (actually a simulated Smart Phone) which has different acceleration than outside the simulated phone.

Meatspace analogy mk2: To better represent the situation in the game, set your phone on your desk. Imaging being limited to 2 inches per second of motion while interfacing with your phone (dialing a number, or selecting an app from your home screen) but while not interfacing with the phone your limit was much different, to allow faster movement across your desk. Not only does dialing the phone become a major hassle, but as soon as you're done dialing and try to go pick up your coffee, the increased speed screws with your mental calibration. Worse yet, if you're trying to move the cursor between two non-phone items, but happen to cross the path of the phone screen ... ugh

A lot of the ideas sound reasonable at first, but as soon as you get hands on and try to use the thing, it's immediately apparent that it's NOT working, not viable and needs to be redone. (similar to the Depth of Field mentioned elsewhere in these comments... sounds good on paper, looks great for screenshots or carefully planned scenarios, but in practice it's WAY more trouble than it's worth)

My suggestion:

[viperidaenz]

Someone said "Make our gaming console (which is basically a mid-spec gaming PC) look better than a PC."

hum

[Charliemopps]

So a game that already runs like shit on PC had some graphics settings disabled on PC. How is this even a question? Perhaps those settings caused everyone with an ATI BLAHBLAH card to have random crashes and they didn't want to bother fixing it?

And when did we start believing trailers video quality?

Re:hum

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that Ubisoft is hated to the point where deliberately crippling titles (in graphics AND FPS) on the PC looks like it could be a legitimate Ubisoft strategy. Re your theory: there's already stratification in PC gaming with Low/Medium/High/Ultra/etc. presets and auto-detection of hardware. This is about simple changes to a config file that make the game run faster and (arguably) look better.

Re:hum

[Anonymous Coward]

Most likely it's about a whole bunch of extra time and money that they didn't wanna spend testing different hardware configurations.

Easier to minimize what needs testing by turning off some features that weren't necessary anyway.

Re:hum

[sadboyzz]

If you read some of the comments it seems enabling the graphics also enhances performance at the same time. The theory is that the decision to castrate the PC version was perhaps made at the last minute and they didn't have enough time to test and optimize the crap version.
Disclaimer: this is second hand info as I do not own the game.

Re:hum

[davewoods]

Indeed it does. I was running on "high" settings at 25 fps, after the mod on "ultra" settings, I still get 25 fps.

Please

[Hamsterdan]

Graphics? Sound? HDR?

What about *gameplay* (what makes a game worth playing)

Half-Life, DooM, Quake, Quake2, X-Wing series, even some games on my C64. I'm replaying Tie Fighter on an old Ppro200 with an Ensoniq Soundscape Elite soundcard, the gameplay is amazing, the story too. Graphics are crap compared to today's games, but the iMuse music is one of the things that make that game almost perfect.

Dozens of hours of gameplay. (unlike modern games)

Re:Please

[jxander]

Check out Total Biscuit's YouTube Channel "WTF is..."

He does first impressions and mainly focuses on smaller indy titles (not exclusively, but primarily) Smaller budget games can't just throw "SUPER MEGA REALISTIC AMAZING POLYGRAPHICS" and have to rely on creativity, story and gameplay instead.

Re:Please

[Grog6]

I played Q2:Ground Zero for ~6 hours on my lan last weekend; It's still the best for gameplay. :)

We do a "give all" at the start, and one per each kill you make; It keeps the game moving. :)

And I have my own skins, that I made; something not seen since UT2003.

The "Catholic Schoolgirl" bot in UT2k3 was the best programming I've seen, lol.

Re:Please

[Anonymous Coward]

Dozens of hours of gameplay. (unlike modern games)

My hours played on TF2 seems to disagree.

Re:Please

[Cley Faye]

Graphics are certainly not the *key* point for a good game, but saying that they are not relevant would be crazy.
From your examples, Half-Life was great, but the graphical difference from HL1 to HL2 certainly contributed to improve the experience. There's nothing saying that we can have either good gameplay XOR good graphics. Both at the same time are nice too.

Re:Please

[Anonymous Coward]

I still enjoyed the quake(world) team fortress more.

Re:Please

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The very beginning of HL2, when you saw the giant displays with Breen's face on the monitors everywhere was killer.

Graphics absolutely push immersion forward.

However, that being said. I picked up a Wii U Mario Kart bundle at launch and I've had more fun with it tha anything on PC in years. The free new super mario bros u that came with mario kart 8 might have something to do with it; I regret not getting wind waker instead though.

The problem is entirely cultural at development studios. It's more about focus and design than just raw graphics. Sure, valve makes some awesome PC titles, but that's because valve works on PC titles. It's about making the most out of what you have, not just raw horsepower.

Re:Please

[X0563511]

There's nothing fun about everyone having every weapon and full ammo always. Make the player work for it, otherwise map positioning becomes of little importance.

Re:Please

[Grog6]

Amazingly enough, this is our most popular game after all these years. :)

We play other games that don't have this fast-twitch playstyle, but nothing else is like it.

Another favorite always played on a LAN weekend, is Unreal Tournament 2003.

Zoom instagib with ~10 players and as many bots as will fit is a lot of fun. :)

Playing PC Games

[apharmdq]

If I'm going to play a PC game, one of my absolute requirements is that it is PC-exclusive, or that at least it was PC-exclusive for the initial release. If this isn't the case, then no matter how enticing the game is, no matter how much I'm drooling in anticipation, I won't give it a second glance.
Somehow, I've managed to get by. Not once have I regretted missing out on a game that hasn't been PC-exclusive. And as an added bonus, since I only have so much time to play games in my life, and there are so many of them, this requirement brings it down to a manageable number. (No, I don't pirate them out of "protest." If your game doesn't meet my requirements, I'm not going to PLAY it.)

Other requirements for me to bother playing a game:
- No DRM (Dota 2 is the sole exception, since it's free to play, and meets the following requirement)
- Native Linux Version available (that runs well)

So thanks, Watch Dogs, for reaffirming my principles.

Re:Playing PC Games

[asmkm22]

You must not play many PC games outside of the niche indie market.

Re:Playing PC Games

[tepples]

Does a working Android version count as a Linux version or as a failure to be "PC exclusive"?

Re:Playing PC Games

[apharmdq]

I adopted these principles about 3 years ago, so I've had a chance to play a wide variety. Since then, all the games I enjoy most have met the requirements with the exception of a couple. And fortunately, now games seem to be meeting my requirements more frequently. It seems to work out.

Re:They found a way to mess up the roads in chicag

[nschubach]

They found a way to mess up the roads in chicago

Let's be honest here... Chicago-ans are already doing that all by themselves.

Re:They found a way to mess up the roads in chicag

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you actually been to Chicago? The roads are pretty messed up.

Re:Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft - Agreed

[Grog6]

I've been watching this; it looks like a cool game.

I noticed the e3 trailer was completely different than the reviews, even on good video setups.

I have learned long ago not to buy a game until you see what you're getting. :)

Now that someone has found how to restore the original graphics, seeing how Ubisoft responds will pretty much determine their future, pretty much. :) (At least for me, anyway.)

A C&D about now would really make my day, lol; I've come to hate those pricks.

Hey, my two 7970's in crossfire fixes the texture pop in Rage at high res; I bet it would run this. :)

Now to wait for the next "patch". :->

Yerlat, is that you?

[Anonymous Coward]

lol.

Remember when

[Anonymous Coward]

MDK2 for PC had the shadows gimped out to make the Dreamcast look superior?

PAID FOR BY SEGA !1!1!1!![/conspiracy]

Re:Remember when

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

Crazy? For realsies? I have both versions. Now I must know!

Throw-in

[tepples]

You throw a football.

True. Just as in basketball, a ball that goes out of bounds past the sideline is inbounded with a throw-in. But the rest of the time, you kick a football with your foot (or headbutt it with your head).

Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[dave562]

I was really looking forward to the game and pre-ordered it for PC. My experience has been horrible. I am running an i7-960 (8 cores, 3.20ghz), 12GB of RAM and 2 GeForce 660s in SLI (4GB of total video RAM). I have a dedicated OS drive, a dedicated games drive and a dedicated pagefile drive. By way of background, I run ~1400VMs for a living. The VMs support a number of SaaS applications that are sensitive to transaction latency. I tune applications for performance for a living.

The game runs like crap on my PC, even on medium settings. It reads files from all over the place. It pulls textures out of the temp directory. It pulls data files out of the game directory. Even with over 4GB of FREE (not Available) RAM, it still manages to make the system do a steady 2MB/s of paging.

The game play is horrible. The driving is clunky. The interface scheme was obviously designed for a game pad. The multi-player is embarassing. The net code is crap. With 6 people, there were serious rubber banding issues. That was with a very small slice of the map. It is not like they had to render the entire thing. In a good 50% of the multi-player games I was in, there was at least one invulnerable person. That leads me to believe that the code is obviously pretty easy to exploit.

The game concept was a good one, but the execution was horrible. I have learned my lesson. In this day and age, everything is in beta. Developers are okay with releasing incomplete products and patching them later. I spent my youth couriering warez and getting a free ride. Now that I can afford games, I have been willingly purchasing them to support the studios. I cannot do it anymore. They just release crap products. They are not even worth pirating.

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[Anonymous Coward]

. Developers are okay

No managers are....

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[Anonymous Coward]

You do latency tuning for a living and aren't running on SSDs? And a pagefile disk... might as well have that on a RAM disk if you actually care about latency.

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[dave562]

Where did you get the impression that I am not running SSDs?

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[Anonymous Coward]

> And a pagefile disk... might as well have that on a RAM disk if you actually care about latency.

*facepalm*

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[Luckyo]

Try the hack mentioned in the story. Among other things, many have reported significant performance improvement.

It seems that the decision to gimp the PC version came at the last minute and they didn't have enough time to properly optimized the gimped version.

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[vux984]

re pagefile disk

I'm curious...

I assume windows 7 x64?

What are you using as the disk?
How much of an impact does it make, and in what circumstances?
Have you ever benchmarked it vs having it on the OS drive, I assumed SSD there as well?

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[Anonymous Coward]

Two 2GB 660s is not 4GB VRAM. SLI doubles video RAM usage, so for application your system still offers 2GB VRAM.

Also GTX 660 is already pretty much obsolete and will not be able to tackle modern DX11 games.

Funnily if you had bought one good card rather than two mediocre ones, you'd still be fine...

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[dave562]

Yes, Win7 x64 Professional. I am using a Samsung 840 (128GB) for the pagefile disk. I have been putting pagefile.sys (and TEMP, TMP) on a separate disk since NT 4.0. I have not run any benchmarks on Windows 7 to see what the improvement is like.

If you are curious about the impact of the pagefile on the OS drive, I would look at disk queue depth and file latency. As long as your queue depth isn't over 2 and your file latency stays in 5-10ms range, you should be fine.

Before I went SSD on the data drive, I was running 7200 SATA drives in RAID1. The write penalty kind of sucked, but having two spindles for reads was nice. The benefit only really showed up during sustained reads, like loading new levels in various games.

To be completely honest, as soon as the system starts hitting the pagefile with any sort of regularity, you need to buy more RAM. Tuning the disk subsystem is not going to get you much benefit. For example with WatchDogs, I started playing it with 6GB of RAM. That was not enough, and the OS was paging at 16MB/s. That was just too much IO, even with a dedicated drive. The drive itself can handle way more than 16MB/s, but the application could not deal with the latency of having to go to disk.

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[Anonymous Coward]

> And a pagefile disk... might as well have that on a RAM disk if you actually care about latency.
*facepalm*

You laugh, but that in fact might solve the problem he is having. For programs that -insist- on writing to a temp drive or paging, it would effectively force them to run from RAM.

I have a machine with 32GB of RAM, and the temp drive is a ramdisk. It is consistently full of crap while 60% of RAM remains unused. Now the RAM gets properly used, albeit indirectly.

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[eWarz]

You lost me at 8 cores...the i7 960 is a quad core chip. Intel has never released octa core chips. Nvidia Geforce 660s are crap, as are most non maxwell nvidia chips. (NVidia finally sold me when they released maxwell, i've never seen such a low powered high performance graphics card). Don't blame ubisoft for shitty ass hardware from yesteryear...even if their shitty ass software can't run on it. P.S. for all the other gamers running actual decent hardware....UBISOFT WHAT THE HELL, are you TRYING to get me to not give you my money?

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[Osgeld]

the last ubisoft game you should have bought was years ago when they were too busy treating paying customers like theives for sub par garbage and charging to fix it guised as DLC

but least you pulled your head out of your ass now

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[Osgeld]

fuckem

if they can not produce a competent game without hacks to make it playable they do not want your money

its rather simple, ubisoft is a shit company

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[Anonymous Coward]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=logical+cores+per+physical

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree that your suggestion may solve the "paging when it should be using the free RAM" problem, I would argue that 2MB/s is not worth caring about. That's definitely not his problem, because everyone else would be experiencing the same problem multiplied by at least a factor of 3 1/3 (500MB/s SSD vs 150MB/s spinning drive).

Notice that he didn't bother to tells us his frame rate or his display resolution. He also makes sure to tell us that he has an ancient CPU but doesn't bother to try to convince us that he has SATA3 or PCIe 3.0 x16 busses on his motherboard (both came out after his CPU was already considered slow). And he didn't mention power supply, so maybe he's attempting to pull too much power and forcing his cards to run in low power / slow speed mode.

My money is on one or more of the following:
(1) SLI driver bug,
(2) HDMI cable limiting bandwidth,
(3) he forgot that he changed some defaults in the video driver that are f***ing with the game's ability to manage itself,
(4) he's "one of those guys" that complains when frame rate drops from 92 to 77,
(5) he's actually complaining about input lag.

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[L4t3r4lu5]

You seem to be knowledgable on low-latency computing. Have you considered a RAMdrive instead of an SSD for your page file, temp directory etc, or disabling swapping altogether? I've not used a swap file since Windows XP; Keeping my background tasks few and necessary only has become habit.

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[drinkypoo]

The game runs like crap on my PC, even on medium settings. It reads files from all over the place. It pulls textures out of the temp directory. It pulls data files out of the game directory. Even with over 4GB of FREE (not Available) RAM, it still manages to make the system do a steady 2MB/s of paging.

Well, it does sound like it's a poorly-architected pile of crap, but if you have 12GB RAM, why do you even have paging turned on? Most games can be played without paging in only 4GB, and pretty much anything will leave you with free memory if you have 8GB. Well, apparently, except for this game.

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has a mid-range PC, I can at least confirm that there's MASSIVE stuttering while driving even with settings on the bare minimum (really very little change from min to max settings in this respect). And no, I didn't fuck with the graphics driver, everything on that is set to use the game's settings where possible, and I'm using the lastest GeForce driver that claims better performance.

Re:Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under same impression actually. The game runs flawlessly at medium settings on an i7/gtx560ti/32GoRam ... their must be some other reason than poor coding that explains your problems... Admittedly it sucks up a lot of Vram but it really should run smoothly at medium setting on your setup.

btw, with SLI you do not increase Vram by summing the amount of two cards : each GPU only get 2G which is quite different from a single card even with 3G.

I'm on last mission on the PC Version.

[BrookHarty]

I'm rather enjoyed the story line, but the last mission is hard, they throw all the cops at you.

But does this game have replay value like gta5? It might, but I doubt I will continuing playing after a few more online skirmishes and finish this last mission.
So was the game worth 60 dollars? I have over 30 hours of gameplay for 60 bux, does seem expensive to me but it was enjoyable.

Re:I'm on last mission on the PC Version.

[Anonymous Coward]

shill

Problem solved!

[Jahoda]

I just buy all of their games once a year for $2.99 on Steam and then never play them.

Re:Problem solved!

[ToasterMonkey]

I just buy all of their games once a year for $2.99 on Steam and then never play them.

Me too, lorem ipsum, undoing mods.

Re:Problem solved!

[MrL0G1C]

Do you get notice of these sales? I can see from steamalerts.com that games are sometimes free or > 80% off but that's about it.

Re:Problem solved!

[Jahoda]

I mostly just watch the "specials" tab in the store - but the good news is that the summer sale starts in about 2 hours at 1 PM EST =)

Re:Problem solved!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds familiar. As my life got more complicated, my list of unfinished games became ever longer.

I finally admitted to myself that I'm a game collector, not a player.

Those Steam/GOG/Humble sales keep on growing my library that I never have time to play.

DLC

[Opportunist]

Maybe they noticed too late that they could sell "enhanced graphics" as a DLC?

Halo syndrome

[Trogre]

They were probably paid lots of money by a certain monopolist to cripple the PC version so as to not make their XBox version look so bad in side-by-side comparisons. The lowest common denominator wins again.

Title explanation: Recall that Halo for PC was never released. A pity because it looked quite good. What eventually came out on the PC was a low-quality port of the XBox version.

Re:Halo syndrome

[Stormwatch]

Indeed. The piece of shit that came out was almost nothing like the Halo that they had promised.

Are some people really this stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing so many people going "hurr it was a good move because DoF looks like ass" in everywhere from imageboards to comments sections like this is really making me believe in Ubisoft damage control. Just in case anybody that has said that is actually just dumb and not a shill: you can not only dial back DoF to whatever intensity you want, but you can turn it off entirely without affecting the rest of the many things that were disabled/gimped by Ubisoft.

Possible valid reasons...

[jonwil]

1.It could have been done because the stuff they disabled wasn't finished.
2.It could have been done because the stuff they disabled wasn't properly tested across all the hardware configurations in their QA matrix. (or it didn't work right on all their hardware configs)
3.It could have been done because it affected how the game played in some way (i.e. balance)
or 4.It could have been done because it was unstable or crashing or had other known issues.

Re:Possible valid reasons...

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer to all of these, however, is turn them off by default even on "ultra" or "high" or whatever their top display config is and have them available as an Advanced Setting.

This isn't rocket surgery here.

Nerds dont play sports

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, the term AAA is derived from some fucking sport -maybe football or baseball- I can't remember. Nerds don't do sports. E-sports are not sports!

I'm not surprised.

[SvnLyrBrto]

They've been dumbing down the gameplay on real games for years to make things easier the konsole kiddies. Look at Deus Ex: HR or the Xcom: EU vs. their namesakes for fine examples. It doesn't surprise me a bit that they'd cripple the graphics too. Can't let the children get jealous that someone else has something better, after all.

Re:Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft - Agreed

[ButchDeLoria]

Ubisoft intentionally gimped the game for AMD cards as well, so your 7970s would probably do worse than a certain major Let's Player getting 40 FPS with SLI Titans.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Ubisoft & PC? How is this news?

[janoc]

How does this surprise anyone? After Ubisoft CEO calling PC users "pirates" (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/05/ubisoft-drm-piracy-interview/), always-on DRM required on PC, Ubisoft changing focus to consoles because of piracy (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ubisoft-guillemot-E3-games-piracy,6152.html) and more and more of similar vibe coming out of the Montreal's company over the recent years. They don't give a crap about PC and ideally they wouldn't publish for it all if they could, as it is only an extra expense and liability for their piracy obsessed CEO.

They are obviously crippling their PC titles to both push people away from the platform towards the consoles and to not undermine the sales of their console versions at the same time, because PC can outperform the consoles without too much hassle. If the PC version looked significantly better, the console players would cry foul, having paid the same money but getting inferior product. If everything looks like the same crap, players will not think about it twice.

Any PC gamer still buying Ubisoft's stuff is a masochist.

Re:They found a way to mess up the roads in chicag

[Dins]

I wouldn't say is set in Chicago. It's more "Chicagoesque". Yeah some of the buildings are represented, and certain Chicago landmarks are thrown in, but like OP says, the layout is all wrong, and many major landmarks are completely missing. Like the Field Museum, Soldier Field, etc. Now they probably ran into licensing issues with a lot of this stuff, but as someone who's more or less familiar with Chicago (grew up in the suburbs), the game doesn't feel like Chicago.

It's like they bought the rights to use the name "Chicago" and rights to certain other landmarks and buildings, but just made up all the rest. Sort of a fun game, but when a game claims to be set in the city of Chicago, it should fucking look like it.

Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft

[Anonymous Coward]

http://games.on.net/2014/06/ubisoft-game-the-review/

whoops

[drinkypoo]

The conventional wisdom about firearms being unuseful at extremely close differences is a lot of cockery.

Distances, too. Obviously, no one thinks that firearms are unuseful for settling differences, the debate is over propriety and not effectiveness

download link

[Nyder]

http://forums.guru3d.com/showt...

Surprised no one posted it.

Directors cut

[Anonymous Coward]

More like Fools Cut, in order for you to buy it many times,

1) Pre order!
2) Directors Cut!
3) GOTY Edition!
4) DLC, DLC, DLC
5) Seasons Pass DLC!

Steam summer sale, christmas sale, what kind of idiot pays full price, and multiple copies of the SAME game?

Oh yes, same idiots that buy Adobe Creative Cloud, same idiots that jump in joy for Photoshop and Lightroom on iPhone.

Last Ubisoft game I will ever buy

[Anonymous Coward]

The game runs like a clockwork on my gaming station on "ultra" with a single graphic card(gtx780, though) and no dedicated drive for pagefile (raid1 ssd for system and raid5 of velociraptors for apps though.. ) .
Running VMs for a living and setting up the proper gear for gaming may not be the same job after all ...

PS3 Version Missing Stuff, Too

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be added as a $ 19.99 DLC.

Not New

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of thing has happened before, and that's all I am going to say on the matter.

Re:Dozens of hours of gameplay. (unlike modern gam

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm embarrassed to say I have over 1,000 hours in Dota 2.

SSD's and CPU configuration

[phorm]

Because you went into decent detail about your processor, GPU, and RAM configuration but didn't mention them?

Also, the i7-960 is not 8 cores, it's 4 cores with Hyperthreading (~8 threads). It can act similar to 8 cores in some instances, but it's not quite the same... (not that you need 8 cores for games, as generally per-core performance is more important).

Re:Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft - Agreed

[Vastad]

Not the impression I got from the Reddit thread that popped up around this issue. All anecdotal, but mostly positive with only 2-3 fps lost and at least one where the fps improved instead.

Re:They found a way to mess up the roads in chicag

[Joe_Dragon]

and yet in a prom video they showed in game local tv that was useing video from the weather channel local on the 8's that looked like the real thing.

Re:Friends dont let Friends buy Ubisoft - Agreed

[ButchDeLoria]

Hmm, interesting. Then Ubisoft just gimped the game on PC overall.