Watch Dogs

[Raven]

Graphics can and do add to the game play and immersion of a game.

If you are going to have a sandbox environment to explore then you need to make it equal or better (and there for as immersive) than what has gone before. ie, if it looks worse than a 5 year old game from a couple of generations ago its just not good enough. Especially when your pre-release videos look far much better.

It may well play well but it still looks like a game from over 5 years ago (from the videos I have seen)

A bit worried about The Division now...

 

[Mabs]

im quite enjoying the interaction with the environment, using gates , road blockers to smash police cars etc

 

[Moriath]

Graphics can and do add to the game play and immersion of a game.

If you are going to have a sandbox environment to explore then you need to make it equal or better (and there for as immersive) than what has gone before. ie, if it looks worse than a 5 year old game from a couple of generations ago its just not good enough. Especially when your pre-release videos look far much better.

It may well play well but it still looks like a game from over 5 years ago (from the videos I have seen)

A bit worried about The Division now...

donno i never feel immersed in a game. Might just be my aspergers but i really am always well aware that its on a screen and never get lost in it as such.

Pretty is nice. And the game isnt ugly really its not as refined as GTA but GTA has had lots of iterations to polish their turd. This is first time out for watchdogs.

And the mechanics in WD for me are much more engaging than GTA

 

[BloodOmen]

Lol, such a sly trick for hacking people I've been doing all day

Hack them
go somewhere to initiate it and park up in a car / hide
wait until they come speeding around the corner in a car, they get out of the car and go looking for you
once they're out of LOS get out of my car and get into the car they arrived in and hide where ever they left it
??
profit, they never even consider the fact I may by in their car xD

 

[BloodOmen]

Ooerrr, didn't quite realise just how un-polished the game was

Prepare your anus....

 

[Moriath]

Ooerrr, didn't quite realise just how un-polished the game was

Prepare your anus....

Hehe yeah not perfect but ok for a new gen franchise IMOIMO

 

[BloodOmen]

Hehe yeah not perfect but ok for a new gen franchise IMOIMO

Aye, I just hope to god they don't do the same with The Division.

 

[Raven]

Apparently it only runs at 792p 30fps on consoles too.

 

[caLLous]

I'm enjoying this for the most part. Despite all the people crying about what's *not* there (compared to GTA), it still looks good. Rockstar have been perfecting and honing open-world sandbox games for ages, I don't think this is all that shabby for a first attempt. And it's set to be a franchise so it can only get better. The hacking and all that stuff is great but oh my, the story is just plain awful. I think I prefer the driving in GTA as well (not played V yet).

 

[BloodOmen]

Mod to make it look better on the PC

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/wa...ts-bloom-and-other-improvements/1100-6420498/

 

[old.Osy]

If that's real...

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=838538

Edit: I've applied the mod, it works. No visible performance hit.

 

[caLLous]

Same. The headlights seem to flicker occasionally but otherwise it looks an approximate fuck-ton better. If anything the performance has actually improved, lol.

http://a.pomf.se/amkeaz.webm and http://a.pomf.se/jbwyci.webm

It couldn't be that Sony and MS gave Ubisoft a substantial backhander to dumb the game down on the PC... could it?

 

[Athan]

If that's real...

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=838538

Edit: I've applied the mod, it works. No visible performance hit.

It must impact on CPU more than GPU then.

I recently upgraded my GTX 560 Ti 448 core to a GTX 780 Ti (read the rest of this post...), and Watch Dogs runs great on its stock 'Ultra', but on applying this mod I dropped from ~60FPS (mostly over, occasionally under), to ~20-25 in a hideout! This is at 1920x1080 (bought a Dell U2414H monitor as well, and I'm loving it!).

I'm still on an aging i5-760 (stock 2.80GHz, but I've got it OC'd to 3.20GHz) CPU though and have to assume that this mod will run fine once I upgrade to an i7-4790k (as soon as they're available in the UK, ETAs are all over the shop from "end of June" through to "Mid-August", which is why I'm splitting my upgrade in this manner).

 

[Athan]

Same. The headlights seem to flicker occasionally but otherwise it looks an approximate fuck-ton better. If anything the performance has actually improved, lol.

http://a.pomf.se/amkeaz.webm and http://a.pomf.se/jbwyci.webm

It couldn't be that Sony and MS gave Ubisoft a substantial backhander to dumb the game down on the PC... could it?

And/or UbiSoft didn't want players on lower spec computers complaining of atrocious performance (what recent game was it that was a huuuuuuuuuuge install on PC due to uncompressed audio to avoid issues with under-spec'd machines re-sampling ?).

 

[caLLous]

Fuck them, to be honest. I thought that's what quality presets were for?

Ubisoft left all of these files and options in the code for the game, they just disabled the lot. How difficult would it have been for them include a "this is more like how the game looked at E3" setting which enabled all of the loveliness? If they had gone to the trouble of removing all the stuff from the code then fair play but it's like they just went through turning stuff off until it looked similar to the max that the peasants could get on their consoles was. They've held back the PC version of the game so the "next-gen" consoles don't look so bad and that's utterly unforgiveable. The "ultra" quality preset is nowhere near as good as the game can look. And this is the game without any patches or updates, this is how it was shipped!

 

[BloodOmen]

Fuck them, to be honest. I thought that's what quality presets were for?

Ubisoft left all of these files and options in the code for the game, they just disabled the lot. How difficult would it have been for them include a "this is more like how the game looked at E3" setting which enabled all of the loveliness? If they had gone to the trouble of removing all the stuff from the code then fair play but it's like they just went through turning stuff off until it looked similar to the max that the peasants could get on their consoles was. They've held back the PC version of the game so the "next-gen" consoles don't look so bad and that's utterly unforgiveable. The "ultra" quality preset is nowhere near as good as the game can look. And this is the game without any patches or updates, this is how it was shipped!

Aye, its quite disappointing tbh. Really looking forward to The Division but after how they've handled Watch Dogs I'm remaining very distant from it until i've seen it running AFTER release.

 

[Raven]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b43ZlqPvBDs

 

[caLLous]

The guy who made the mod has done a set of comparison shots. There's also a 0.8 version (used in these shots) of the mod coming soon.

 

[BloodOmen]

Aye, fuck Ubisoft for doing it tbh, looks infinitely better with all the modded/re-enabled stuff.

 

[old.Tohtori]

These days i don't really care if it's "on release" or by modders, just care that i get the a great gaming experience. Which it ultimately should be.

Best thing about PC gaming by far, looking at things like fallout, skyrim, xcom etc. Can't say there's many titles that -didn't- benefit from some ini tweaking

What developers should do is ignore all the graphics shiny thingies bull, and concentrate those rsources in making a PC game as moddable as possible and then supporting that modding scene.

 

[caLLous]

Way to miss the point in a rather massive way, Toht. You work in the industry ffs, how you can take that stance is beyond me.

Games should be as good as it's possible for them to be when they launch. Developers that deliberately cripple or downgrade their games for some ulterior motive should be boycotted and openly derided. This isn't some mod whereby the guy added stuff, he's just gone through and enabled stuff that the devs tried to hide away. They can absolutely go to hell.

Going forward, what Ubisoft have done is *NOT* something that is acceptable for PC gaming and it is of crucial importance that the big devs/publishers know this and don't get any ideas about pulling the same stunt in the future.

 

[Raven]

These days i don't really care if it's "on release" or by modders, just care that i get the a great gaming experience. Which it ultimately should be.

Best thing about PC gaming by far, looking at things like fallout, skyrim, xcom etc. Can't say there's many titles that -didn't- benefit from some ini tweaking

What developers should do is ignore all the graphics shiny thingies bull, and concentrate those rsources in making a PC game as moddable as possible and then supporting that modding scene.

This isn't a mod. They are options that were hidden to hamstring the game on PC and make it look like the peasant version. They used those options to show the game off pre-release.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Way to miss the point by clinging on to the mod word.

Games should be as good as it's possible for them to be when they launch.

Quite right.

And as far as "being in the industry" is concerned, i know no company would hinder a PC release on ourpose to make it look similar to a console version, makes no sense at all, which only leaves the possibility of game breaking bugs and/or performance issues and no time to add options etc. As a highly speculative example; running the game on those settings for too long would cause a memory error that would crash the game. Can't release the game with the options enabled.

If there's official word on it, then we'd know more, but otherwise it's just internet ragemachinery. It's not as simple as "Oh rara ubisoft hid us a prettier version of the game!"

 

[caLLous]

If it's tangibly better than it was at launch by doing nothing other than enabling stuff that Ubisoft disabled then surely it wasn't as good as it was possible for it to be at launch? That's not hard to understand is it? :\

 

[old.Tohtori]

If it's tangibly better than it was at launch by doing nothing other than enabling stuff that Ubisoft disabled then surely it wasn't as good as it was possible for it to be at launch? That's not hard to understand is it? :\

You're only looking at the pretty pictures in that. I can give you a direct example; in a project we had around 200 assets in the game, call it items if you will. After testing it was noticed that loading so many items caused instability in the game. So it was decided to drop the amount to 150 so there wouldn't be a game breaking situation like that(even if it only affected 20% of players). Now removing those assets takes a lot longer then just disabling them, so the 1 was turned into 0 in the loading, while the assets remained in the files.

If that clears the point any better.

Prettier and more stuff doesn't always equal a better game.

Now i'm not saying definetaly that they couldn't have done this out of a stupid move of some such, but it's a lot less likely then there being a good reason for it.

 

[caLLous]

Meh, it's *possible* (and that's undoubtably the spin that Ubisoft try to put on it if they ever release a statement - they can't really say much else) but there are many 1000s of PC gamers collectively putting lots of hours in with this patch and I've not seen a single comment about it negatively affecting stability or performance. Indeed, in many cases (including mine), the game actually runs better with this stuff enabled.

And it's not that prettier equals a better game, it's that Ubisoft showed off this wonderful looking game 2 years ago at E3 and then they released something that looked fairly awful in comparison, without so much as mentioning that it was possible to bring the stuff back. It might just be bad timing but, to me, the whole thing stinks of them trying to make the brand new consoles look less shit with what was a massively anticipated title.

 

[old.Tohtori]

As said, could be right, but from what i've learned in my years is that all things in games are for a reason. If it indeed is because they want the comparison between consoles and PC to be less, then it's a really stupid move(not to mention wrong) since it would only hinder PC sales and wouldn't boost console sales any more. Which is why i'm doubting that reason.

Also there is the small issue of a mole hill mountain ala internet that always takes hold, especially when people like TB use it as a self booster. Don't get me wrong, TB does great stuff also, but also uses stuff like this to boost ratings and get moneys. The latter ofcourse understandable since it's his livelyhood

In any case it's good we're on the PC, now we have a free choice of publisher intended and gamer preferred content.

I do however will say, besides this point and more towards the game itself, that it doesn't look/look to play at all like advertised/hyped. Which ofcourse is more often the caset. I was expecting something new, not gta with hacking bits.

 

[Raven]

You're only looking at the pretty pictures in that. I can give you a direct example; in a project we had around 200 assets in the game, call it items if you will. After testing it was noticed that loading so many items caused instability in the game. So it was decided to drop the amount to 150 so there wouldn't be a game breaking situation like that(even if it only affected 20% of players). Now removing those assets takes a lot longer then just disabling them, so the 1 was turned into 0 in the loading, while the assets remained in the files.

If that clears the point any better.

Prettier and more stuff doesn't always equal a better game.

Now i'm not saying definetaly that they couldn't have done this out of a stupid move of some such, but it's a lot less likely then there being a good reason for it.

That's why they have sliders on PC.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Yeah no question someone f*cked up somewhere along the production, timetables, etc, but if a wedding cake is boxed and ready to go to the wedding, then someone saying "we really need to add this banana into the filling" will be impossible, even if banana in the filling would be excellent and you had all the bananas prepared.

 

[caLLous]

That's why they have sliders on PC.

Exactly. Whack an extra quality preset on the PC version called "this is how it looked at E3 two years ago and only PCs are powerful enough to run it. Fuck off peasants."