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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.
Nuff said.
Why is this even a question? The PC version included the "Uplay" launcher/malware/crash utility.
They probably got paid off or threatened by console makers.
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.
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.
They were probably planning to charge players $50 to activate this 'DLC'.
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.
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.
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.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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
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.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
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.
Those figures are a pack of lies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
Really?
Also... AAA? define.
Anti-Abortion Activist
Someone said "Make our gaming console (which is basically a mid-spec gaming PC) look better than a PC."
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?
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
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)
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
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.
Om, nomnomnom...
Those numbers come from industry analysts, not Rockstar or Take Two.
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.
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". :->
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
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.
This signature is false.
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.
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
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).
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.
You mean a handegg.
Circumcision is child abuse.
You must not play many PC games outside of the niche indie market.
If you think GTA3 and GTA5 are the same game, you're sadly mistaken.
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.
Does a working Android version count as a Linux version or as a failure to be "PC exclusive"?
I just buy all of their games once a year for $2.99 on Steam and then never play them.
Crazy? For realsies? I have both versions. Now I must know!
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
Maybe 'cause they buy the turd on Steam?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's why I mentioned the user scores as well.
Maybe they noticed too late that they could sell "enhanced graphics" as a DLC?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Om, nomnomnom...
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.
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.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What about Rugby? League and Union as well?
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.
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.
Imagine all the people...
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.
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.
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 based on user account deletion
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.
actually until pretty recently Australia used soccer as well (it has now been phased out officially, but sadly some people still use it)
null
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.
http://games.on.net/2014/06/ubisoft-game-the-review/
You missed the guy in the balaclava holding the shotgun and bottle of chloroform.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
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
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
http://forums.guru3d.com/showt...
Surprised no one posted it.
Be seeing you...
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
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".
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Soccer was never widely used in England, even if it was coined there.
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.
Wow. You guys are a bunch of hipster douches. You'll hate on anything that's popular, won't you?
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.
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You dislike a popular game? Such taste! Wow! Very knowledgeable! Impressed!
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).
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
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 ...
This signature is false.
Well you sure found the best way to get someone to post the correct answer ;)
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Hmm, interesting. Then Ubisoft just gimped the game on PC overall.