Watch Dogs finally gets patch from Ubisoft

There's a difference between launching without any issue, and launching with experience defining issues. I agree that almost no big release game will ever launch without any issues, but at least I can live with some of the minor niggles if it doesn't impact my enjoyment of the game. I expect a working, polished title once I buy something, but I am well aware that this is a pie in the sky ideology.

Skyrim launched with more bugs than the Amazonian forest, yet I had a blast with the game, because none of them kept me from playing and enjoying the game. Watch Dogs had me wait a few days before I can actually start the game, only to send me into a graphics optimization expedition where I had to download drivers and stuff just to get it running. Even running the game on lower quality, I still have a lot to stuttering, pop-in, unresponsive and weird mouse controls, etc. These made me very angry and demotivated me even further from trying the game.
 
Wyzak said:
If you can't handle a few issues on launch you really shouldn't be pre-ordering. Wait a few months and then buy the good games on special. You'll do your health a favour and you'll save money. Win win.

I wish I knew what industry some of you worked in, and for which companies because apparently your HUGE projects are always perfect on launch and never have any issues whatsoever.

Still waiting for that one example of a game of this size that launched without any issues...
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Yeah I wish you worked with me so you could see that I work my ass off every week to deliver service to clients and I expect the same amount of service and dedication that I give back, in everything I buy. Is it really that much to ask for?

If I had to tell me boss "I don't know why this isn't working" I'd be shamed of myself for not knowing my craft, and on the upside get a boot up the arse. So yes, your analogy sucks. If you want to be a dev and make games, make the games and make them work. Any competent dev would test their games before releasing it. Oh. Wait.

And that's why, if you would go ask these people where they work if they ever fucked up a project this bad, the answer would probably be no. Most South Africans I know that work for non-retarded companies MAKE SURE shit works before rolling it out. Clearly you haven't had much experience with these kinds of things.
 
That is a fair comment, the tolerance level of different people will obviously be different when it comes to bugs. I haven't yet encountered any game-breaking bugs in watch dogs and I've been able to live with the occasional stutter after I spent some time optimizing my graphics because it's still close to launch. I was able to eliminate about 90% and I also helps to have a myriad of other things to play to keep me busy in the mean time. If the stutter is still there months down the line I will also be very pissed about it, and if it's affecting your enjoyment of the game sure then rage about it. But it's unrealistic to expect a game to be issue-free on launch, and unfortunately it looks like a lot of people have this expectation.[/QUOTE]

to0kenZA said:
Yeah I wish you worked with me so you could see that I work my ass off every week to deliver service to clients and I expect the same amount of service and dedication that I give back, in everything I buy. Is it really that much to ask for?

If I had to tell me boss "I don't know why this isn't working" I'd be shamed of myself for not knowing my craft, and on the upside get a boot up the arse. So yes, your analogy sucks. If you want to be a dev and make games, make the games and make them work. Any competent dev would test their games before releasing it. Oh. Wait.

And that's why, if you would go ask these people where they work if they ever fucked up a project this bad, the answer would probably be no. Most South Africans I know that work for non-retarded companies MAKE SURE shit works before rolling it out. Clearly you haven't had much experience with these kinds of things.
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Is your work always perfect, or do you still make mistakes? I also strive to be perfect in my work, but bugs are a fact of life and they will still happen.

Now imagine that you aren't working on it alone, but with another 1999 all with their own motivations and their own issues.

The fact that no game launches bug free should tell you something. It's not that everybody in the game development sector hates their customers. It's actually a huge project and it's simply not possible to be 100% issue free, not when you are forced to ship the product whether it's ready or not on a specific date.

The bold section is extremely subjective. In my opinion they could have done better testing and shouldn't have shipped the project with the stuttering, but it's nowhere near the train wreck that was Diablo III, or Simcity, or Battlefield 4.
 
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Let me tell you something about service. No, my work is not perfect, and I do make mistakes, just like everyone. But when you make mistakes, you fix it and if you can't fix it immediately, you maintain transparency and honesty with your client. You don't boast about how much money you are making off of them whilst ignoring them completely while you're "apparently" busy fixing it. And that's what these devs are doing. If they were open and honest and actually re-assured their client base that they are in fact addressing the fuckin' problems accordingly and give them detailed feedback instead of some vague bullshit patch notes, then people would be way more trusting.

Also, this "project" is something they had a shit long time to work on. And I bet your ass if I had to beta test this damn game for them efficiently I would be able to feedback these major issues to them within an hour or less. There is just simply no excuse for this type of behaviour from the devs and defending them in this regard is possibly the WORST thing you CAN do as it sets a terrible precedent for the rest of the developers at other companies.
 
From 2012, Watch Dogs was touted as the first "true next-gen" title, what with its swanky graphics and unique game play ideas. For 2 years Ubisoft made sure that we ride the hype train hard. Even people that don't usually fall for PR stunts and hype-bait videos started salivating at the prospect of playing this game. I myself was one of them. The game got a metric ton of publicity, good and bad, before launch. When it came out, it instantly became the best selling game from Ubisoft ever.

All this hype and emotion burst open like a bubble once we got a sub-par experience from the game. It's the reason why people so fiercely raged against Ubisoft for rolling it out with the issues it has. if it was just another AAA title I would be much less emotional about the issues.

The issues is also wide-spread enough that Ubisoft should have picked it up before launch. They were probably pressured by some corporate big wigs to get it out ASAP, seeing how they are not really making money (as a company). It's sad that it came to that, because so much anger, hate and rage could have been avoided if they just managed to optimize and bug-spray it better.
 
DieGrootHammer said:
From 2012, Watch Dogs was touted as the first "true next-gen" title, what with its swanky graphics and unique game play ideas. For 2 years Ubisoft made sure that we ride the hype train hard. Even people that don't usually fall for PR stunts and hype-bait videos started salivating at the prospect of playing this game. I myself was one of them. The game got a metric ton of publicity, good and bad, before launch. When it came out, it instantly became the best selling game from Ubisoft ever.

All this hype and emotion burst open like a bubble once we got a sub-par experience from the game. It's the reason why people so fiercely raged against Ubisoft for rolling it out with the issues it has. if it was just another AAA title I would be much less emotional about the issues.

The issues is also wide-spread enough that Ubisoft should have picked it up before launch. They were probably pressured by some corporate big wigs to get it out ASAP, seeing how they are not really making money (as a company). It's sad that it came to that, because so much anger, hate and rage could have been avoided if they just managed to optimize and bug-spray it better.
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Also, I think that the controversy around this entire release is a very good thing. People are starting to finally speak their mind against this corporate bullshittery and Ubisoft tried their stunt at exactly the wrong time. It's good that these issues are being exposed, and hopefully the ignorant ones out there will start realizing that it's not OK to exploit people.
 
to0kenZA said:
Let me tell you something about service. No, my work is not perfect, and I do make mistakes, just like everyone. But when you make mistakes, you fix it and if you can't fix it immediately, you maintain transparency and honesty with your client. You don't boast about how much money you are making off of them whilst ignoring them completely while you're "apparently" busy fixing it. And that's what these devs are doing. If they were open and honest and actually re-assured their client base that they are in fact addressing the fuckin' problems accordingly and give them detailed feedback instead of some vague bullshit patch notes, then people would be way more trusting.
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The patch will be out any day now. They have acknowledged the issues and are busy fixing them. This is a huge company with a ton of people working for it. It is the job of the marketing team to milk their time in the spotlight. All companies do this. Do you expect the marketing team to sit on their laurels and patiently wait until all of the issues have been resolved to everybody's satisfaction? By then nobody would care about it anymore. It's a vicious cycle in modern marketing unfortunately.
 
Wyzak said:
The patch will be out any day now. They have acknowledged the issues and are busy fixing them. This is a huge company with a ton of people working for it. It is the job of the marketing team to milk their time in the spotlight. All companies do this. Do you expect the marketing team to sit on their laurels and patiently wait until all of the issues have been resolved to everybody's satisfaction? By then nobody would care about it anymore. It's a vicious cycle in modern marketing unfortunately.
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"All companies do this". And there you go, that's your problem. Enough said.
 
Wyzak said:
Thanks for clearing that up. Now are you still going to pre-order or are you going to start spending your money wisely?
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I didn't pre-order the game, in fact I got it as a birthday present. What do you say to that? Your "don't pre-order" nonsense is not applicable here, so how about that?
 
Wyzak said:
Thanks for clearing that up. Now are you still going to pre-order or are you going to start spending your money wisely?
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Wooooosh! :D

I mentioned earlier that I've learned my lesson a long time ago.The reason I bought this game was justified by my mostly positive experience with Ubisoft games in the past. I honestly didn't expect the game to be as watered down and buggy as this. They took me for a p**s this time, and therefor, as I said, I won't be supporting Ubisoft unless they prove themselves to be capable of doing it the right way.

In fact, I haven't bought any AAA games for a while now, mostly indie games that I made super sure I would enjoy before dishing out my hard earned money.

Eugene said:
I didn't pre-order the game, in fact I got it as a birthday present. What do you say to that? Your "don't pre-order" nonsense is not applicable here, so how about that?
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My point exactly.
 
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Well i started getting major lagginess on my game last night after like 3 hours of play and the online multiplayer is absolute shit i hacked someone once and then entered 3 of the other game modes for online but it so damn laggy i couldn't do shit
 
AlienTaker said:
Well i started getting major lagginess on my game last night after like 3 hours of play and the online multiplayer is absolute shit i hacked someone once and then entered 3 of the other game modes for online but it so damn laggy i couldn't do shit
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I have that same issue after an hour or so it varies the game starts chugging like mad.I know what the problem is it is a memory leak if I remember correctly Oblivian had the same issue and it sucks.The game chews up my 1 gig of v ram and shits it out lol.
 
Grabbing the patch now.

On the topic of games that have launched without problems; I wouldn't say that I recall many games that launched completely bug free and there have of course been numerous examples of big-name AAA devs dropping the ball at launch, but I don't recall a game being this borked by DRM and badly optimised performance on PC at launch since SimCity.

Even Ubisoft themselves managed to deliver some great products at launch last year; Splinter Cell and AC4 - I am aware that AC4 was criticised for bad optimisation, although it was nothing that caused as much consternation as Watch Dogs.

Dishonored was superb at launch, Wolfenstein was fine but I did have the dreaded slo-mo sound-sync problem in cutscenes.
Tomb Raider was pretty good aside from the absurd TressFX problems, but that was more to do with AMD drivers.

Hitman Absolution gave me no problems and looked stunning (although it was kinda boring). Dead Space 3 was perfectly fine on PC.

By comparison, GTA 5 (single-player) was great at launched, albeit given the advantage of a console launch. The multiplayer component was clearly not sufficiently developed as they are still struggling with it to this day (however, kudos to Rockstar for being smart enough to market that as if it was a free addition rather than the core of the title; plus they communicated that it would not be perfect at launch).

Sleeping Dogs had its minor glitches, but even for a title nearly lost to development hell, it came out rather well polished and perfectly playable at launch.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a number of titles I've played over the last couple of years, but the point is that plenty of other developers and publishers have managed to ship games that ostensibly work fine with only minor bugs and glitches (relative to the glaring problems experienced by Watch Dogs).

I don't think there is really any dancing around and justification for the fact that Ubisoft botched this one.
 
Well, having applied the patch I drove and ran around for 30 minutes and it's done bugger all to fix any problems for me. Whether I run it on all low settings @ 720p or high settings @ 1080p, the performance is the same; choppy and inconsistent with wildly fluctuating frame rates. Stuttering problem is not fixed at all.

The chaps over on the Ubisoft forum aren't happy either.

http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/892700-Watch-Dogs-Patch-(6-18-14)/page15

Complaints rolling on over on Reddit.

http://www.reddit.com/r/watch_dogs/comments/28kdex/patch_is_up_for_pc/

At this point its debatable as to whether this was a full patch or some sort of pre-patch.
 
James said:
Well, having applied the patch I drove and ran around for 30 minutes and it's done bugger all to fix any problems for me. Whether I run it on all low settings @ 720p or high settings @ 1080p, the performance is the same; choppy and inconsistent with wildly fluctuating frame rates. Stuttering problem is not fixed at all.

The chaps over on the Ubisoft forum aren't happy either.

http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/892700-Watch-Dogs-Patch-(6-18-14)/page15

Complaints rolling on over on Reddit.

http://www.reddit.com/r/watch_dogs/comments/28kdex/patch_is_up_for_pc/

At this point its debatable as to whether this was a full patch or some sort of pre-patch.
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Well dude, 40 mb. That's hardly a patch. They probably just took a shot in the dark with some band aids and a couple of config tweaks. Hardly enough to fix the problems. Guess it's up to the PC modding communities to fix this one up.
 
James said:
Well, having applied the patch I drove and ran around for 30 minutes and it's done bugger all to fix any problems for me. Whether I run it on all low settings @ 720p or high settings @ 1080p, the performance is the same; choppy and inconsistent with wildly fluctuating frame rates. Stuttering problem is not fixed at all.

The chaps over on the Ubisoft forum aren't happy either.

http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/892700-Watch-Dogs-Patch-(6-18-14)/page15

Complaints rolling on over on Reddit.

http://www.reddit.com/r/watch_dogs/comments/28kdex/patch_is_up_for_pc/

At this point its debatable as to whether this was a full patch or some sort of pre-patch.
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Yip tested it, still stuttering and stuttering now seems worse in tunnels...lol
Good Job Ubisoft...really...
 
Eugene said:
I didn't pre-order the game, in fact I got it as a birthday present. What do you say to that? Your "don't pre-order" nonsense is not applicable here, so how about that?
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Lol, well obviously that doesn't apply to you then. Oh and happy birthday. Moenie 'n gegewe perd in die bek kyk nie.
 
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