Watch Dogs Graphics Downgraded on PC

[Spekio]

Oh god, Havok is channling Stark.

[bilateralrope]

People still play games on PC?

Tell me, what advantages do the Xbox One and Playstation 4 have over the PC ?
Exclusives are the obvious one. Maybe the only one.

Consoles aren't cheaper. Here's a PC build that's cheaper and more powerful than the Xbox One and PS4. Then there are Steam sales on top of that, which likely produce more savings than second hand sales (I don't have the numbers for second hand sales).

[The Vortex Empire]

People still play games on PC?

Er, yup.
http://www.dualshockers.com/2013/07/14/ ... handhelds/
Most gamers do both, looking at the numbers. I've barely touched my consoles since I built a gaming PC, and all of my friends since have switched from consoles to PC in the past few years. Mods, more power, what's not to love?

[Grumman]

People still play games on PC?

It's the demographic of people who love modding/mods, plus guys who invested in a high-end rig because it's a bigger dick.

Basically the same subset of guys who prefer their cars customized and tweaked, even if the performance of many stock vehicles is the same or better. And here I am thinking of my dad's 70 Hemi 'cuda and not some modern suburban kid's riced-up Civic.

...You realise you're talking about the platform that offers the most utility beyond playing video games, right? PC gamers is a demographic that includes my mom of all people, because if you already own a PC to do other things, the gaming platform is effectively free.

[Crazy_Vasey]

People still play games on PC?

Steam has several million people logged in at all times. It's probably not as big as the 360 or PS3, but it's a non-negligible market even if half the big publishers treat it like a red-headed stepchild for whatever reason.

[Lord Revan]

there's a reason why developers "hate" PC-gaming, every console is more or less identical to other consoles of tha same type, if you make a PS3 game you known exactly what the stats of the machine are. PCs on the other hand are all unique, you can have list that says "all PCs will have these stats" so you need to develop a game that works on a much larger stat range without looking like shit for the high end or having <10 FPS in the low end.

[TheFeniX]

It's the demographic of people who love modding/mods, plus guys who invested in a high-end rig because it's a bigger dick.

Basically the same subset of guys who prefer their cars customized and tweaked, even if the performance of many stock vehicles is the same or better. And here I am thinking of my dad's 70 Hemi 'cuda and not some modern suburban kid's riced-up Civic.

As opposed to the console guys who drive by and yell racial/sexual slurs at everyone? Besides, Minecraft is one of the best-selling games to-date. I know The Sims ranked #1 for many years even before all the "PC gaming is dead talk." The "Hardcore" guys have never been that important to PC gaming.

there's a reason why developers "hate" PC-gaming, every console is more or less identical to other consoles of tha same type, if you make a PS3 game you known exactly what the stats of the machine are. PCs on the other hand are all unique, you can have list that says "all PCs will have these stats" so you need to develop a game that works on a much larger stat range without looking like shit for the high end or having <10 FPS in the low end.

Except the Cell fucked Sony and it's developers hard and cross-platform games generally looked and performed better on 360. Really, it's quite easy to see why consoles are where developers want their games to be. What still gets me is the hilarity of shit like "this game is going to blow anything PC has away." Why'd the game turn out looking and playing so poorly? "Well, we had hardware limitations, but Overhyped game 2: Boogaloo will look even better because we found extra server-flops hidden in the gigajoules!" Yea, I get it. It's marketing. But marketing these days really just means "bald-face lie because no one goes to jail for defrauding people in the entertainment industry."

This is also why graphics settings exist. What's funny is to experience frame-rate drops on a console.

[Havok]

So here's what I'm getting from this...

Nerds are the PC Gamers AND they buy consoles so they can bitch about how much better their PC is while normal people buy consoles because they don't really care about things like frame rate and headlight shadows and if a game is disappointing them, they just don't play it anymore, not go onto nerd web forums to complain about the evil company that misled them in the ads they probably never saw.

PC Gamers count anyone that has ever played fucking Mine Sweeper on a work break as a "PC Gamer" which however would actually justify Bean's otherwise moronic statement that he backpedaled from of "couple billion" PC gamers.

Oh god, Havok is channling Stark.

I don't channel anyone homie.

[Jub]

So here's what I'm getting from this...

Nerds are the PC Gamers AND they buy consoles so they can bitch about how much better their PC is while normal people buy consoles because they don't really care about things like frame rate...

Except that console gamers are actually starting to care about frame rate now that so many games are struggling to reach even 30fps at sub 1080p resolutions on this 'next gen' hardware while PC gaming is getting ready for 4k resolutions and already has 120 and 144hz monitors. Go ahead and claim that games don't play better at higher frame rates or that people can't tell the difference between 720 and 1080 resolutions, you'd be lying in both cases, but feel free to claim that console buyers don't care about it.

Normal people buy consoles for one simple reason, the games. If I didn't need to buy consoles to get certain exclusives I'd be more than happy sinking that console money into keeping my PC at a nice level. Add in the extra $10 saved on new release PC games because they avoid licensing fees, steam sales, GOG, and humble bundles, and I'd be so far ahead it wouldn't even be funny.

and headlight shadows and if a game is disappointing them, they just don't play it anymore, not go onto nerd web forums to complain about the evil company that misled them in the ads they probably never saw.

You think that we don't look at the ads and see the reviews that people like TotalBiscuit put out? PC gamers and those tech savvy enough to appreciate the extra tools and PC gives them tend to be among the top media consumers out there. We see the ads and we see the way PC gamers get treated by companies.

PC Gamers count anyone that has ever played fucking Mine Sweeper on a work break as a "PC Gamer" which however would actually justify Bean's otherwise moronic statement that he backpedaled from of "couple billion" PC gamers.

Why shouldn't we? They played a game on a PC, if they played hearts on a console you'd call them a console gamer wouldn't you?

[The Vortex Empire]

Found some data here, from the research firm Newzoo: http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertain ... 4017.story

Of the 900 million PC gamers around the world, Newzoo found that 227 million are considered core PC gamers that play at least once a week and spend at least $5 per month on games. North America has the highest number of core gamers at almost 40 million, followed by China with 37 million. In relative terms, this means 32 percent of North American and 24 percent of Chinese PC gamers can be defined as core. Latin America boasts the highest percentage of core PC gamers (35 percent) of all regions. In comparison, there are 137 million core console gamers. Globally, 25 percent of all PC gamers can be considered core, while 18 percent of console gamers are core.

[DaveJB]

Until the PS4 and Xbone were released six months ago we weren't talking just some minor difference in graphics capability that you'd need a magnifying glass to notice. Even the modest GPUs incorporated into Intel's and AMD's recent processors are something on the order of 5x more powerful than the graphics chips in the PS3 and 360, and a reasonably powerful discrete card just flat-out humiliates the last console generation.

There's also the fact that in a lot of games, a keyboard and mouse is a much better control scheme than the clunky auto-aim systems incorporated into a lot of modern console shooters. Granted, it works both ways - I wouldn't want to play a racing or fighting game with a keyboard - but it's another big advantage that PC gaming has for certain genres.

[Vendetta]

Until the PS4 and Xbone were released six months ago we weren't talking just some minor difference in graphics capability that you'd need a magnifying glass to notice. Even the modest GPUs incorporated into Intel's and AMD's recent processors are something on the order of 5x more powerful than the graphics chips in the PS3 and 360, and a reasonably powerful discrete card just flat-out humiliates the last console generation.

There's also the fact that in a lot of games, a keyboard and mouse is a much better control scheme than the clunky auto-aim systems incorporated into a lot of modern console shooters. Granted, it works both ways - I wouldn't want to play a racing or fighting game with a keyboard - but it's another big advantage that PC gaming has for certain genres.

Ironically, the games that use the power of the PC are generally not the ones that are contributing to it being a widespread gaming platform. There are significant PC markets which people don't consider because they're not the stereotypical image of a gamer. Those 225 million "core" PC gamers? Half of them are middle aged women playing hidden object games. There are hundreds of those games, they're popular and profitable and they're almost entirely invisible to the traditional gaming market. Then there's behemoths like LoL and Minecraft, which capture a significant element of the market in a monogaming culture.

PC is not a popular gaming platform because it can be powerful or because mouse and keyboard is better for certain games (though not as many as you might want to think), the overwhelming majority of home PCs are laptops these days with minimal gaming power. It's a popular gaming platform because everyone's got one anyway for their emails and office and internet and they buy the odd game on it as well, but those games are generally not the ones you are thinking of.

[DaveJB]

Oh yeah, I won't dispute for a minute that the vast majority of PC gaming is done with Facebook apps, MMOs and the like. I was really talking more about why PC gaming had been regaining traction among the core gamers over the last few years after seeming pretty much dead in the mid-late 2000s.

[Lord Revan]

yeah it's cause developers noticed that you can't beat piracy By killing a platform with "anti-piracy" methods that hurt the actual players who paid for your games more then the pirates.

and I the only who thinks of 2990s when you hear late 2000s.

[salm]

I think normal people just get whatever system they want to for whatever reasons they have.
Nerds argue about it on the internet whereas normal people don´t give a damn what other people think about a platform.

It´s like with cars. Normal people don´t care if other people think that their VW or Honda is a piece of shit.

[bilateralrope]

If you buy a console for its exclusives, that's fine. Tastes are too subjective for any further argument to be possible.

But when you ignore the exclusives, I don't see what advantages consoles offer.

So here's what I'm getting from this...

Nerds are the PC Gamers AND they buy consoles so they can bitch about how much better their PC is while normal people buy consoles because they don't really care about things like frame rate and headlight shadows and if a game is disappointing them, they just don't play it anymore, not go onto nerd web forums to complain about the evil company that misled them in the ads they probably never saw.

Are you saying that it's a good thing that console users don't care that companies are lying to them ?

As for the framerate issue, what gets me most is all the lies about the issue. Things like "the human eye can only see 24 frames a second" or "30 fps is more cinematic" or 'dynamism'. All to justifying the devs increasing screenshot quality at the cost of gameplay.

[Gaidin]

Maybe I'm weird but I'm not understanding what the big deal is when on my high(NOT ultra-high) level PC I can't play at ultra high settings unless I get insane with customizations anyway(read: get crazy with shadows and reflections and other high resource things and tone them down like a bitch). God knows what these settings would be like. Would I then be limited to 'medium' settings in the game? I'll shrug and move on.

[Purple]

Are you saying that it's a good thing that console users don't care that companies are lying to them ?

As for the framerate issue, what gets me most is all the lies about the issue. Things like "the human eye can only see 24 frames a second" or "30 fps is more cinematic" or 'dynamism'. All to justifying the devs increasing screenshot quality at the cost of gameplay.

Honestly I think the framerate thing is a technical desire that gets spun toward marketing and not the other way around. From a programing perspective I want a game I make to run at 30 or 40 FPS smoothly even though the human eye can't notice because that way I know that on an inferior platform it will still run smoothly at the rates it can notice. And than of course the marketing department gets a hold of that and spins a story "blast processing" style.

[bilateralrope]

even though the human eye can't notice

You seem to be claiming that the human eye can't perceive framerates above x FPS. Please back that up with evidence.

Then explain why I can see a difference between 30 and 60 FPS on these websites:
http://www.30vs60fps.com/
http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html

[Mr Bean]

Honestly I think the framerate thing is a technical desire that gets spun toward marketing and not the other way around. From a programing perspective I want a game I make to run at 30 or 40 FPS smoothly even though the human eye can't notice because that way I know that on an inferior platform it will still run smoothly at the rates it can notice. And than of course the marketing department gets a hold of that and spins a story "blast processing" style.

You can easily tell the difference between 10/20/30/40/50/60 FPS as the higher it is the smoother it looks. After 60 FPS you get into human variance with some people able to tell that 70 fps is smoother than 65 fps while others top out at 62 to 65 but 70 is a good hard cap for the human eye.

[Purple]

Honestly I think the framerate thing is a technical desire that gets spun toward marketing and not the other way around. From a programing perspective I want a game I make to run at 30 or 40 FPS smoothly even though the human eye can't notice because that way I know that on an inferior platform it will still run smoothly at the rates it can notice. And than of course the marketing department gets a hold of that and spins a story "blast processing" style.

You can easily tell the difference between 10/20/30/40/50/60 FPS as the higher it is the smoother it looks. After 60 FPS you get into human variance with some people able to tell that 70 fps is smoother than 65 fps while others top out at 62 to 65 but 70 is a good hard cap for the human eye.

I was making more of a generic point about the principal than actually referencing any particular numbers.

[bilateralrope]

Honestly I think the framerate thing is a technical desire that gets spun toward marketing and not the other way around. From a programing perspective I want a game I make to run at 30 or 40 FPS smoothly even though the human eye can't notice because that way I know that on an inferior platform it will still run smoothly at the rates it can notice. And than of course the marketing department gets a hold of that and spins a story "blast processing" style.

You can easily tell the difference between 10/20/30/40/50/60 FPS as the higher it is the smoother it looks. After 60 FPS you get into human variance with some people able to tell that 70 fps is smoother than 65 fps while others top out at 62 to 65 but 70 is a good hard cap for the human eye.

Saying that 70 is a good hard cap is just as bad as people saying that 24 FPS is all the human eye can see. It's still a claim without evidence to back it up.

I was making more of a generic point about the principal than actually referencing any particular numbers.

Lets pull up your previous post:

From a programing perspective I want a game I make to run at 30 or 40 FPS smoothly

Those look like specific numbers to me.

[bilateralrope]

Ubisoft has posted a response. Yes, it is dated 7 days from now.

06.27.2014
11:53 am
1x1 Pixel
Watch Dogs PC Update

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. We test and optimize our games for each platform on which they’re released, striving for the best possible quality. The PC version does indeed contain some old, unused render settings that were deactivated for a variety of reasons, including possible impacts on visual fidelity, stability, performance and overall gameplay quality. Modders are usually creative and passionate players, and while we appreciate their enthusiasm, the mod in question (which uses those old settings) subjectively enhances the game’s visual fidelity in certain situations but also can have various negative impacts. Those could range from performance issues, to difficulty in reading the environment in order to appreciate the gameplay, to potentially making the game less enjoyable or even unstable.

Thanks for playing Watch Dogs and stay safe on the mean streets of Chicago.

-The Watch Dogs Team

Possible impacts on isual fidelity, stability, performance and overall gameplay quality. Not things Ubisoft observed themselves.

[AniThyng]

Ubisoft has posted a response. Yes, it is dated 7 days from now.

Someone must have misconfigured the animus :p

In any case, if we're talking about performance differences across platforms, how marked were the differences between the PS4/XBone Black Flag and the PC version for example? I had a ATI 7950 + i5 and it started jerking noticably during battles in heavy storms

70 FPS is not meaningful if you have your monitor refreshing at 60Hz anyway...I can notice the difference between 30 and 60 FPS easy, but what's really important is that the FPS is >constant<, i'd rather have the game locked at 30 or 60 than have it swing wildly between 20 and 80 depending on what I'm looking at. (As for using V-Sync, yes, but then it's important that it does not swing from 15 and 60, now THAT is terrible)

[TheFeniX]

Nerds are the PC Gamers AND they buy consoles so they can bitch about how much better their PC is while normal people buy consoles because they don't really care about things like frame rate and headlight shadows and if a game is disappointing them, they just don't play it anymore, not go onto nerd web forums to complain about the evil company that misled them in the ads they probably never saw.

The hilarity that is going on would be like if HBO stopped offering anything in HD because a large portion of their viewers didn't a way to display it. HD isn't a selling-point anymore when you're already paying a premium. People expect it or they just don't know any better. Nothing Watchdogs was showing should crater even an older PC, but downgrade it anyways because we can't expect Ubisoft (a major developer) to release a modern product on a time-table. I mean, I know Ubisoft is a shitty developer, but it's nice when they're upfront about it.

That you don't give a fuck about "nerd shit" is irrelevant. There's always a few things marketers push like drug dealers. Mainly, graphics, AI, and storytelling. Console games (most games actually) manage to deliver sub-par everything, but graphics is the one that isn't nearly as subjective. At least on PC, I can force most of these games to run at 1080p, even though garbage ports like Burnout: Paradise get angry about it. They'll generally push 60FPS too, unless they're locked like Dark Souls. And just that can make a huge difference.

See, it used to be, marketers at least tried to obfuscate without resorting to loads of bullshit. But now, they've got a whole new class of person willing to brow-beat people concerned with quality who will come out with shit like "lol nerds" and he'll somehow think he's so fucking original and not sounding like a brain-dead high-school kid. They can say shit like "there's no difference between 30FPS and 60FPS" and not only does the majority of consumers believe them, they'll insult people who point out their ignorance.

I think normal people just get whatever system they want to for whatever reasons they have.
Nerds argue about it on the internet whereas normal people don´t give a damn what other people think about a platform.

Please, the "normal" folk are just as quick to try and justify their purchase as the most insane of PC enthusiast. I don't know much about PSO, but on Xbox live I could bait people into saying shit like "PC gaming is for fags" just by saying something like "CoD runs better on PC." To hear my friends, none of whom have any experience with anything related to "not-xbox" gaming, the Xbone has 8 million terrawatts more power than any PC that doesn't cost $5k and that I'm a fool for not getting one and instead sticking with my decision to go back to PC gaming.

The only real difference is "nerds" know they're being bent over a barrel.