Watch Dogs finally gets patch from Ubisoft

[Wyzak]

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).

GTA V was only on two consoles, and it was launched without the multi-player part which launched much later. And as pointed out today, they still haven't delivered on the online heists.

Patch does seam ridiculously small. Let's hope it's not the full patch yet.

Edit: For what it's worth my game seams to be running very nicely after the patch. Running at 1600x1200, use to run at a lower resolution until I ran geforce experience and asked it to optimize the game. I then lowered the resolution from 1920x1080 to 1600x1200. Also, I am not currently running the watch dogs drivers, I am running the drivers just prior to Watch Dogs. My World of Tanks becomes unplayable after 30mins to an hour with the Watch Dogs driver, so I'm not convinced that those drivers are the best drivers currently available.

Signed up for online-tailing and was drafted within 10 seconds. Update: I've never been able to sign up for online-tailing / hacking this fast before. Just did about 10 matches and the longest one took 1 minute to join, the average was 10-20 seconds. My game feels smoother than before.

[Graal]

It's very obvious what happened here. Ubisoft ran out of time to finish this project, so they disabled some features, skipped playtesting and shoved it out the door. That's why issues that practically everyone on the PC platform was experiencing (stuttering) were not fixed by release. If they had the time to playtest it properly, it would have been picked up within the first hour of playtesting.

This is what Wyzak is defending and it's bloody ridiculous. We should be angry because we get served slops at release, but instead we're just told "lolol you shouldn't have pre-ordered if you didn't want slops" and "all games have slops at release."

[The Joker]

Well I've uninstalled the game, a Ubisoft mod confirmed that the small patch we got was the actual patch and not some pre patch..patch.
I am actually quite sad about this, A lot of people think I have downer on the game but I don't...I would have loved it if it worked properly..even put the whole graphics downgrade thing behind me and still got the game.

I honestly don't know how there are some people that actual defend this abomination.
Wyzak what's the excuse this time? The patch did nothing, made stuttering worse in tunnels.

Eh whatever, I won't bother with Far Cry 4...pisses me off because its one of my fav game series but eh Ubisoft doesn't give a shit about pc gaming...so why should I give a shit about them.

[to0kenZA]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/06/20/wa...-says-ubisoft/

“The dev team is completely dedicated to getting the most out of each platform, so the notion that we would actively downgrade quality is contrary to everything we’ve set out to achieve,” a Ubisoft spokesperson wrote on the Watch Dogs website. “We test and optimize our games for each platform on which they’re released, striving for the best possible quality.


Haha...this spokesperson needs to be fired. He's exposing the truth! Actually also think I'll give Far Cry 4 a big ol' skip. Best stick with the indie games then. These big companies just wants to go all out console gaming, so screw them then. They can keep their games.

[Wyzak]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/06/20/wa...-says-ubisoft/

“The dev team is completely dedicated to getting the most out of each platform, so the notion that we would actively downgrade quality is contrary to everything we’ve set out to achieve,” a Ubisoft spokesperson wrote on the Watch Dogs website. “We test and optimize our games for each platform on which they’re released, striving for the best possible quality.

Haha...this spokesperson needs to be fired. He's exposing the truth! Actually also think I'll give Far Cry 4 a big ol' skip. Best stick with the indie games then. These big companies just wants to go all out console gaming, so screw them then. They can keep their games.

There's nothing that they can say that will appease you guys. So why even bother reading their articles just to get worked up over and over again

The bold part is the correct approach. If you aren't happy, vote with your wallet and support the guys who make games that you enjoy. Or wait 6 months and then buy the patched game at a good price. Either way, better for your health.

[Isengard]

There's nothing that they can say that will appease you guys. So why even bother reading their articles just to get worked up over and over again

The bold part is the correct approach. If you aren't happy, vote with your wallet and support the guys who make games that you enjoy. Or wait 6 months and then buy the patched game at a good price. Either way, better for your health.

Thing is we shouldn't need to wait six months after release for a game to be finished...

[Wyzak]

Thing is we shouldn't need to wait six months after release for a game to be finished...

Unfortunately that is an unrealistic expectation when it comes to 100 million dollar+ projects with thousands of people working on them.

The publisher/developer will always push the envelope and will introduce new features if the game is 100% stable a few months before release. It's a trade-off that happens, but the game will be released with bugs that are hopefully not too major. The fact that no games of this magnitude are released entirely bug free should tell you something.

[Graal]

Wyzak, is there nothing we can say that can make you see reason? Are you that far down the rabbit-hole? No matter what we say, you just keep parroting that we should vote with our wallets. Here's the thing, buyer beware is a terrible excuse for bad videogames.

"Vote with your wallet" is the biggest cop-out intended to silence criticism. "Oh, you don't like this game? SHUT UP VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET." "Oh, you're complaining because you got sold a buggy mess? SHUT UP AND VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET." Well, it doesn't work that way because those of us who are informed enough to vote with your wallet are in the minority. Not everyone in the gaming industry is informed enough to know that apparently if they don't want to buy a broken piece of shit, they shouldn't buy it on release.

Granny Smith down the road doesn't know who the bloody hell Ubisoft is, much less what PC gaming entails when she buys a new computer game for Little Johhny's birthday. Dudebro #22 living on the 4th floor of the Dagbreek residence sees an advertisement for the newest game and goes out to buy it, completely oblivious to any of the politics going on on MyGaming, just for him to get home and struggle with a buggy piece of shit. You and I know not to pre-order these games, but these people aren't as informed as you and I. And you know what? There are many more of these people than there are of us who visit gaming forums and stay informed, and they're not to blame for buying buggy games. Ubisoft is to blame for selling them a buggy piece of shit in the first place and that is inexcusable.

Selling games with massive performance optimization issues is inexcusable. Telling people that "all games release with bugs, deal with it" is a pretty weak excuse from a fanboi. Take that weak shit elsewhere, because in the land of people who have common sense, we can spot the difference between releasing an unoptimized piece of shit and releasing a game with a few minor bugs. There is no excuse for releasing a game that is in such a sorry state as Watchdogs was (is) at release and any attempts at justifying it is just the prattling of blinded fanbois. If you playtest your games properly before release, then this kind of thing doesn't happen. The magnitude of the project is completely fucking irrelevant, because with a more complex project it simply means you need to spend more time playtesting and optimizing it. This is just another story in a long history of Ubisoft spitting on PC gamers.

I might now know to never buy a game from Ubisoft again, but my next-door jock neighbor doesn't and for that very reason I will remain vocal whenever the gaming industry screws gamers over like this. Releasing games with severe bugs and optimization issues is not excusable and it should be called out and I will continue to call it out for as long as developers/publishers think they can get away with it.

No matter what anyone says, we should not have to put up with games not working as intended on release and nobody has the right to tell anyone else they should shut up and vote with their wallets. The idea that it is unrealistic to expect properly working games at release is fucking moronic at its core.

And that's my 2c. I'm out because I'm not going to continue getting involved in an argument where someone keeps trying to tell us why we're wrong for being angry that we got sold a broken game at release. Especially not when the game in question isn't even good.

[James]

Unfortunately that is an unrealistic expectation when it comes to 100 million dollar+ projects with thousands of people working on them.

The publisher/developer will always push the envelope and will introduce new features if the game is 100% stable a few months before release. It's a trade-off that happens, but the game will be released with bugs that are hopefully not too major. The fact that no games of this magnitude are released entirely bug free should tell you something.

Actually no, a sensible developer will lock down features at a relatively early to mid-term stage of development because they then need to work on marrying all the elements together and ensuring things run correctly. I highly doubt that an experienced developer will allow Pierre from the AI division pitch a whole new gameplay mechanic in the months or even year leading up to launch because that require a cascade of development work.

This doesn't just apply to game development, and I'm sure the programmers among us on the forum will confirm that locking down features after a certain stage is bog standard practice.

The reason we get frustrated with such Ubisoft statements is because they are clearly talking out their arse. They and other big publishers have a history of doing this because they don't really care about the core issue, just protecting their public facing reputation.

Also, the "don't buy the game before launch and wait for it to get patched and go on special" is really becoming a broken record now.

[to0kenZA]

Furthermore, upon what Graal said, I think it is our duty as the "informed" gamers to let the others out there know about this shit, and helping them circumvent these broken games. If anything, at least do your fellow gamer a service and BE vocal about things like this, because it IS wrong, and no, there is no excuse.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

If we just sit back and come up with sentiments like "Oh but you should have known"; "All games are buggy"; "Vote with your wallet"- it does absolutely nothing to stop these companies from abusing the less informed gamers. And I feel quite strong about this, and I will not recommend anyone I know to buy shit like this.

Don't suppress this blunder, I say talk about it everywhere you can, and expose these issues to people so they know to stay away from these developers' games. I think these companies deserve it to have people not buy their games if they're going to try and get away with this shit each and every time.