Watch Dogs Graphics Downgraded on PC

[bilateralrope]

TotalBiscuit isn't happy about Ubisoft's announcement. Unsurprisingly, he is not happy. But he compares the glitches introduced by activating these effects with the problems Watch Dogs had at launch. The launch problems are worse.

But the justifications for Ubisoft disabling this effect make little sense:
- PS4/Xbone holding back the PC. The lack of performance hit makes me think the PS4/Xbone won't have a performance hit either, so I can't see why they can't run the same effects.
- Not polished enough to release. Doesn't fit with the quality of what they did release on PC.
- PS3/360 holding everyone back as they can't handle the disabled effects. I can't see why anyone involved would want this.

All that's left is incompetence. First in deciding to cut these effects. Then in leaving them in. Then the PR response trying to resolve the issue without admitting fault.

[salm]

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.

Then I guess we know very different kinds of people and probably consider very different things normal.
The people I know might argue about which system is better but I´ve never seen the ridiculous hostility in people who aren´t nerds or teenaged idiots.
It just seems like a waste of energy as well as pretty embarassing to get excited or agitated about the fact that someone might have insulted "your" system.

If someone calls you a "fag" for using or doing something, be it a PC, Linux, VW Golf, Xbox, playing Baseball or whatever I think it´s quite embarassing to even react to them. If you get baited into getting agitated about nonsense like this you just act embarassingly.

The point of a gaming divice is to have fun. If a certain device works for a certain person the mission is accompolished. No matter if other people find other devices better or your device a "fag" device.

[Lagmonster]

I don't see a problem with Ubisoft's decision from a business perspective. Releasing a game that looks the same across all platforms, when the game already looks competitively good for its generation, makes sense. Giving a clear 'better on PC' label could be seen as harming the brands of Microsoft and Sony, and they're a larger market than a handful of PC videophiles.

Frankly, everyone deals with this phenomenon at every job they've ever had; there's always a minority of customers who KNOWS your business/industry/store/department can do *something* better, and they will not accept your reasons for not doing so, let alone that sometimes the answer is 'because good enough for positive profit and negative brand impact is good enough'.

[DaveJB]

PC games looking significantly better than their console counterparts has been the case since roughly 2009, though. Even taking into account that the PS4 and Xbone have narrowed the gap considerably, I don't think it would have really surprised anyone that the PC version would have been the best-looking one.

[Lagmonster]

...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.

I don't think I'd call it "free". There is still a several-hundred-dollar difference between the laptop my wife uses for productivity and casual gaming, and the rig I use to play AAA titles.

As an aside, I was under the impression that casual productivity is rapidly moving off of the desktop PC and onto tablets and ultralight laptops and smartphones. Which would seem to serve only to isolate desktop PC users back to their pre-2000 niche market status, no?

[Purple]

As an aside, I was under the impression that casual productivity is rapidly moving off of the desktop PC and onto tablets and ultralight laptops and smartphones. Which would seem to serve only to isolate desktop PC users back to their pre-2000 niche market status, no?

Yes and no. It all depends on how you define casual productivity. If you mean stuff like reading your email than sure. But you can't exactly use a word processor to type out a report or CV on your smartphone.

[Mr Bean]

As an aside, I was under the impression that casual productivity is rapidly moving off of the desktop PC and onto tablets and ultralight laptops and smartphones. Which would seem to serve only to isolate desktop PC users back to their pre-2000 niche market status, no?

Yes and no. It all depends on how you define casual productivity. If you mean stuff like reading your email than sure. But you can't exactly use a word processor to type out a report or CV on your smartphone.

This goes back to the great divide inherent made obvious in Windows 8. The operating system can be see as divided into Content Consumers (The Metro interface with one window open at a time) and Content Creators (The classic Desktop). There are a vast majority of jobs you simply can't do off a smartphone or tablet. A laptop it depends but desktops are required in lots of industries because you need the ability to have fiddly control that a smartphone or tablet makes impossible.

I work in the medical industry where such divides are obvious. The rich private practices will have tablets so the doctors can walk around reviewing patent history, review previous treatment notes (Consuming) but when it comes time to enter notes they can either try typing on the virtual keyboard which they will do only for the shortest of notes or grab a desktop and type things in... the oldest of them still write it down on memo pads and hand them to nurses to enter in. And yes they do use the tablet as a writing surface to write notes on the memo pad in ink to hand to someone.

That aside it's not just the medical industry as anything from advertising to Warehouse and transportation you will see smartphone or tablet apps that takes what people on desktop create so workers can skip the step of running back to check the computer for the next order or destination. That's the breakdown where a worker needs to do only one thing at a time a tablet can make sense but the instant you start talking multiple things all needing to be visible a desktop pretty much is required.

[bilateralrope]

I don't see a problem with Ubisoft's decision from a business perspective. Releasing a game that looks the same across all platforms, when the game already looks competitively good for its generation, makes sense. Giving a clear 'better on PC' label could be seen as harming the brands of Microsoft and Sony, and they're a larger market than a handful of PC videophiles.

I think most people would be happy if Ubisoft came out and said that they, while the PC can handle more, they won't be doing the work because they prefer doing stuff that benefits everyone over stuff that only benefits one platform. A lot of things PC users demand (resolution options, FOV, changing the framerate cap) come down to menus to adjust values in the configuration files*, which doesn't sound like it would take much work. Or there are things which would also apply to consoles, like being able to skip cutscenes that exist before the main menu.

Few complain about games that don't have PC specific features that take a lot of work, like a higher resolution texture pack.

Ubisoft's problems here are:
- People saw that the graphics had been downgraded since E3. Then Ubisoft tried to claim that the graphics hadn't been downgraded. Apparently expecting us to believe Ubisoft over our own eyes.
- Ubisoft made a big deal about Watch Dogs getting 1080p, 60FPS on the PS4. Right up until May 12. On May 13 it was suddenly downgraded to 900p, 30FPS. To justify this sudden change in promises, Ubisoft used bullshit like "Resolution is a number, just like framerate is a number" and "dynamism is everything".
- Along came this mod. First it proved that the E3 graphics did exist, and that Ubisoft had lied when the said that the graphics weren't downgraded. Second, it showed that the E3 graphics were not something that would require a lot of work, but only something that required a few changes to the configuration files.
- Then came Ubisoft's BS response saying that they disabled the E3 effects for a "variety of reasons" including possible problems. Not problems anyone observed, but problems that were merely possible. Despite the problems Watch Dogs shipped with being worse than what anyone has observed from the E3 effects. While leaving the implication that there are other, unstated, reasons why Ubisoft disabled the E3 graphics.

In short, all of Ubisoft's problems come down to being caught lying.

*At least when the game is coded well. When it's coded badly things get stupid, like increasing the framerate increasing the speed the speed of everything (skip to 5:30 to get past the unskippble cutscenes).

[bilateralrope]

A developer working on The Division, another Ubisoft game, has come out and said that it has also had it's PC version downgraded. Because of pressure from Ubisoft to reduce the gap between PCs and consoles.
What If Gaming

The Division Developer Insider: “We Already Downgraded A Few Things”
We will not reveal our source dev (whose employment we confirmed and vowed we would not reveal the identity of) but the info should be taken with a grain of salt as a result. Today, I have the ultimate displeasure to inform the public that apparently the E3 demo of The Division was running on a PC and will be downgraded overall. Developers often overshoot for the moon and end up delivering next to nothing in terms of the visual garbage that the final retail copies end up becoming (Far Cry 3, Watch Dogs, Dark Souls II in comparison to their non-downgraded counterparts). This sort of false advertising and marketing absolutely has to stop. It is a vile and dementedly sick way of companies to make money off of people who obviously preorder because the game is visually impressive. Yes – some may claim “gameplay weighs in more” but this is arguable.

He tells us the following:

We really loved the reception to the demo we showed on the PC version at E3. Currently as it stands, there is definitely a lot of push coming from publishers to not make the experience so different on consoles as to alienate people into thinking that next generation is not as powerful as PC. This is probably what happened at Ubisoft Montreal. I think that while making stability changes is definitely important, it does not completely obliterate a lot of enhanced rendering applications.

Right now we already took out quite a lot of screen space reflections from the game and are working on asset management the best we can given consoles have that great unified memory. Naturally we will also be using online servers and have to produce a synchronization that higher graphics add to the latency so it had to be turned down. To me it still looks good, but not as good as the original reveal. I am sure as we get closer to launch and the actual console versions of the game featuring SD (Snowdrop) that it will start to seem all too obvious to people especially those on PCs. I just wanted to write and let you know that it definitely is not just stability but marketing politics plays into this a lot as well.

UPDATED 2nd Response from The Division Developer: Truth be told in regards to your question that while ‘Yes’ the lead platform is the PC, we simply cannot have such a big gap. As you know when the first WATCH DOGS Review was published by that one site, Ubisoft called it a “false review” and I am sure everyone can see how bad that sounded when they saw the game did look marginally better than something that was a last generation GTA IV. But no, they will not admit that they practice this or actively downgrade a game. It is much easier to say they removed things for stability which is often a lie as you can tell by the post-issues which are expected in any production we do.

Also to answer your 3rd question, no…they will never fully disclose what was removed from what build as no laws ask them to do so in terms of consumer rights. If we as developers published that information in very real terms for the consumer such as “Replaced particle fog simulation with 2d layer simulation in 3d space, removed particles from all explosions, lowered explosion volume multiplier by 20x, removed X # of trees and civilians, etc.” we would be out of a lot of sales and probably it would actually require too much time to deliver on the current hype that a lot of downgraded games see which look incredible with a vertical slice. I do share this in the hope’s that my colleagues and publishers and a lot of people who make false promises and do demonstrations which wrongfully create too much hype that they cannot deliver on ultimately stop doing such things. I want to see the industry actually move forward and not be so full of itself by promising too much and delivering too little. Regards

Our insider who is currently in the graphics technical division at Ubisoft Massive in Sweden contacted us because he too is sick of the practices that a company like Ubisoft has become all too known for. If Ubisoft denies downgrades have not happened and uses the lame excuse that “it is for the gamers and stability we did what we did” then there is certainly no reason for the PC/console parity to exist because currently the downgraded Watch Dogs runs sub-par still which is an utter joke. Everyone knows “next generation” currently as it stands is utter marketing BS. Of course, a lot of the uneducated folks out there feel this is more. Next gen, means next gen! If this is the case, PC raw throughput has the greatest power of any console despite having lower development focus (due to piracy). Essentially if it is not obvious by now: Next Gen has diminished any chances of making graphics leaps for the marketers to make more money on “next-gen” until the next next-gen comes out. It is a great marketing hype that is all too common in the gaming industry.

Bottom line: Publishers and developers – stop lying and rely on actual gameplay that is close to the real thing to do your marketing for you. And if you did remove a lot of features that affected the stability of the game, make sure to release a full disclosure of what this is before the game comes out. Oh wait…but then you would not see as many sales. Tsk tsk.

[TheFeniX]

Few complain about games that don't have PC specific features that take a lot of work, like a higher resolution texture pack.

Hi-res textures aren't exactly "PC specific." Sure, there's no reason to include 4K textures in a system that will only ever pull 1080p (or even most PCs at this point), but it's easier to create higher res textures, then compress them after the fact. This is what they did for Watchdogs and what I assume they did for Skyrim considering how quickly they released the official texture pack.

Really, I was hoping we'd be at a point where graphics might take a hit to develop more persistent worlds and believable NPCs, but I suppose shitting out textures and models is a lot easier than AI that isn't dumb as rocks.

A developer working on The Division, another Ubisoft game, has come out and said that it has also had it's PC version downgraded. Because of pressure from Ubisoft to reduce the gap between PCs and consoles.
What If Gaming

The Division Developer Insider: “We Already Downgraded A Few Things”

Go figure. But I guess complaining at this point is pretty much moot. Graphics are being gutted just to keep consoles on even footing. Blizzard had to also gut (what little it had) AI for Diablo 3 and simplify the game even more to make it viable on console. But at least it was a PC-first title and at least Blizzard recognized the limitations of the system and corrected them. Other developers are just going to keep conserving resources in other areas just make the game look as shiny as possible.

Memory limitations for console kept your gun out in later ME titles and the controller itself lead to 1-2 buttons performing multiple actions. Rather than making the PC version a bit different, you got stuck with it.

I'm interested in Witcher 3 this next year. CD Project is promising a whole lot and developing primarily on PC and claiming to be taking advantage in the AI and NPC persistence area. We'll see how they do. This also means I need to finish up W1 and start on 2.

[bilateralrope]

Really, I was hoping we'd be at a point where graphics might take a hit to develop more persistent worlds and believable NPCs, but I suppose shitting out textures and models is a lot easier than AI that isn't dumb as rocks.

That's a lot to ask when Ubisoft thinks that playable female characters are too expensive to add to
Assassin's Creed Unity. While the animation director of AC3 thinks it should only take a few days.

Graphics are being gutted just to keep consoles on even footing.

I wonder if that can be kept up in the long term. Or if there will be enough developers that don't care about console parity that more people will see the gap between PC and console and start asking why some publishers are holding back.

I'm interested in Witcher 3 this next year. CD Project is promising a whole lot and developing primarily on PC and claiming to be taking advantage in the AI and NPC persistence area. We'll see how they do. This also means I need to finish up W1 and start on 2.

We shall see.

[TheFeniX]

That's a lot to ask when Ubisoft thinks that playable female characters are too expensive to add to
Assassin's Creed Unity. While the animation director of AC3 thinks it should only take a few days.

I ran across that a little while ago and just laughed it off. I know I bring it up all the fucking time and should stop, but it's really the only batshit crazy modding community left: but the guys who crank out models and animation for Beth games are pretty damned good for guys working out of a basement. Just some of the updated walking, running, and combat animations added in with a few hours work is hilarious: it's scores above the vanilla stuff.

This shit is just not hard anymore. I'm not saying everyone can be an expert, but so many programs exist, both open-source and retail, that a kid can pickup and learn to use semi-professionally within a few weeks. It's insane. Some Beth guy, as part of that "crazy week we let our development guys do whatever they want" added in spears, with all the required animations and hit coding. One guy > a week.

But poor poor Ubisoft can't repurpose a female model and crank out a few outfits. Pfft. A crying shame because the Rainbow 6 games had no issues and are pretty damn good games.

I wonder if that can be kept up in the long term. Or if there will be enough developers that don't care about console parity that more people will see the gap between PC and console and start asking why some publishers are holding back.

It depends on how long the market holds out for them. If even the "casual" (for lack of a better term) console players start to feel like they're being shafted and vote with their wallet, then the bottom kind of falls out. It's starting to happen a bit what with CoD going from smashing records to merely selling extremely well because they are tired of the same old shit with a new coat of paint. Most developers catering to the mainstream market have set them selves up for either record breaking sales or total failure. There's way too much money being invested in marketing and that money has to be made back.

Once publishers can't make money hand over fist by releasing sub-par games, it's going to get interesting at the least. And the current trend of AAA games being released broken and presenting us with graphics and gameplay so dated even review sites are complaining is even better.

We shall see.

Burn. That reminds me of those Japanesse developer tweets when people are like "this game is too hard:" Too bad.

[bilateralrope]

But poor poor Ubisoft can't repurpose a female model and crank out a few outfits.

If you wanted to make a female character for minimum cost, would you bother with female specific animation ?

Or would you just use the male animations and hope that nobody cares ?

Because the truth is that I don't think I'd notice any differences unless someone went out of their way to make sure I noticed them. Which I'm not sure I'd like as it's bound to be sexist.

It's starting to happen a bit what with CoD going from smashing records to merely selling extremely well because they are tired of the same old shit with a new coat of paint.

Are they tired of the same gameplay, or have they just realized that they can get it from what they already own ?

[Metahive]

CoD went down in popularity because the IWZombies regressed the series after BlOPs2 dared to have a semblance of innovation like a voiced protagonist, branching missions and a semi-interesting villain. Ghosts has a boring, non-descript and completely mute protagonist, a lame, nonsensical story, a one-note villain-sue who is worse than the already shitty Makarov and an uncritical America-Fuck Yeah attitude which even MW (or the WW2 titles for that matter) didn't have in this form. It's like they were making the straw-CoD the haters often make the series out to be.

[Elheru Aran]

How different do female animations have to be from male, anyway? Apart from nuances resulting from the proportional differences in height, build, weight and relative strengths, I doubt most standard video-game motions would vary that widely.

Honestly the only things I can think of are: walking stances (men and women do have different gaits due to hip width and different distribution of body weight), standing/at-rest stances (same), and maybe boob-jiggle (if you've got the firepower to throw that in and it'd be noticeable on the specific model).

As such I really don't see much excuse to not have female PC's in a game if the option is available. Purposefully disregarding the option is pretty lame when it's merely a matter of having a few extra skins drawn up.

[Lord Revan]

there's plenty of cases of women disguising themselves as men to do things women were not allowed to do, so explain that she's disguised as a man and you more or less reuse the male animations and out of disguise use a generic female model (unless they intend to have to female NPCs what so ever un Unity).

[salm]

How different do female animations have to be from male, anyway? Apart from nuances resulting from the proportional differences in height, build, weight and relative strengths, I doubt most standard video-game motions would vary that widely.

Honestly the only things I can think of are: walking stances (men and women do have different gaits due to hip width and different distribution of body weight), standing/at-rest stances (same), and maybe boob-jiggle (if you've got the firepower to throw that in and it'd be noticeable on the specific model).

As such I really don't see much excuse to not have female PC's in a game if the option is available. Purposefully disregarding the option is pretty lame when it's merely a matter of having a few extra skins drawn up.

It really depends on the way they built the male animation rig. If they built it with feminizing the animation later on in mind it might be rather easy to change the animation. If they didn´t it can be allmost as much work as creating new ones. There´s really no way of knowing this for this specific situation without knowing more detail.

[Vendetta]

there's plenty of cases of women disguising themselves as men to do things women were not allowed to do, so explain that she's disguised as a man and you more or less reuse the male animations and out of disguise use a generic female model (unless they intend to have to female NPCs what so ever un Unity).

Or, y'know, they could put in the effort that it is not unreasonable to expect for a flagship AAA title from a major publisher...

[Lost Soal]

How different do female animations have to be from male, anyway? Apart from nuances resulting from the proportional differences in height, build, weight and relative strengths, I doubt most standard video-game motions would vary that widely.

Honestly the only things I can think of are: walking stances (men and women do have different gaits due to hip width and different distribution of body weight), standing/at-rest stances (same), and maybe boob-jiggle (if you've got the firepower to throw that in and it'd be noticeable on the specific model).

As such I really don't see much excuse to not have female PC's in a game if the option is available. Purposefully disregarding the option is pretty lame when it's merely a matter of having a few extra skins drawn up.

It really depends on the way they built the male animation rig. If they built it with feminizing the animation later on in mind it might be rather easy to change the animation. If they didn´t it can be allmost as much work as creating new ones. There´s really no way of knowing this for this specific situation without knowing more detail.

They had females in other AC games, it can't be that hard to import one of those and mod it surely.

[Purple]

there's plenty of cases of women disguising themselves as men to do things women were not allowed to do, so explain that she's disguised as a man and you more or less reuse the male animations and out of disguise use a generic female model (unless they intend to have to female NPCs what so ever un Unity).

Or, y'know, they could put in the effort that it is not unreasonable to expect for a flagship AAA title from a major publisher...

Low quality rushed garbage that looks and works like an alpha and comes with restrictive DRM? Sounds like a reasonable thing to expect.

[TheFeniX]

It's starting to happen a bit what with CoD going from smashing records to merely selling extremely well because they are tired of the same old shit with a new coat of paint.

Are they tired of the same gameplay, or have they just realized that they can get it from what they already own ?

Who knows. It could be a combination of the two. They buy the new game (at least in smaller numbers) because it's what they're supposed to do, but go back to older games because they just play better.

On the animation front: it's not all that hard or time consuming anymore. You can crank out animations in a few hours. The biggest time-sink is testing them. 3D modelling has really streamlined this process over 2D where each sprite animation had to be done by an artist. Now anyone with a few Blender add-ons, patience, and an understanding of timing can do it.

Sure, making it look "right" is an art-form in of itself, but if guys who mess around with this in their spare-time can do it in hours, I laugh in the face of a professional who claims "it's time consuming." And it likely a marketer saying it anyways. Some Beth guy added spears and relevant animations into Skyrim in less than a week when the marketing gurus were saying the engine wouldn't support it.

[salm]

They had females in other AC games, it can't be that hard to import one of those and mod it surely.

That doesn´t mean a lot. The new rig could be unsuitable for importing old animation.

I´m not saying that it´s a big task for an AAA studio to implement a new character which I highly doubt. I´m just saying that without further knowledge about this specific character it is impossible to tell if making a female version is just a few tweaks or means pretty much building an entire new character.

[TheFeniX]

I'm pretty sure the entirety of the Creed games run off the same Anvil engine. I don't know how many changes to the skeletons they've made since the original, but I doubt there's been so many changes to them different animations couldn't be easily modified to work.

Even I could get an old Jedi-Outcast model working in Jedi-Academy with little issue other than some wonky mesh tearing during certain animations and I know dick-all about modelling and animation. Tim did it the "right way" in a few hours and ported all our old character models over in a few hours. Creating this stuff from scratch is tedious, but porting meshes, skeletons, and animations over is pretty damn easy and quick since most all of it made by your company is likely to all be in one program like 3DSMax.

It's not like men and women in Ass Creed have wildly different anatomy and rigs.

[salm]

They run on different iterations of the Anvil engine. The current iteration being named AnvilNext. It seams unlikely that simply importing animation from an old rig would do the job. Newer characters will probably use more bones so you´d at least have to do the ones that weren´t existant in the old version by hand.

Apparently it has Autodesks HumanIK integrated which among other things is a software for retargeting character animations to other rigs. This makes it very likely that it would be rather easy to integrate a female character, at least from a technical perspective.

On the other hand part of the Assassig Creed game is the eye candy you get. I could imagine that they´d want the animations to be extremely well done, so simply retargeting is probably not going to do the job.

[Mr Bean]

They run on different iterations of the Anvil engine. The current iteration being named AnvilNext. It seams unlikely that simply importing animation from an old rig would do the job. Newer characters will probably use more bones so you´d at least have to do the ones that weren´t existant in the old version by hand.

Apparently it has Autodesks HumanIK integrated which among other things is a software for retargeting character animations to other rigs. This makes it very likely that it would be rather easy to integrate a female character, at least from a technical perspective.

On the other hand part of the Assassig Creed game is the eye candy you get. I could imagine that they´d want the animations to be extremely well done, so simply retargeting is probably not going to do the job.

I'll remind Sam that one of the people saying it would be easy to do and take three days tops was the director of animation for AC3.

From what I've seen of animation work it would be less than a week of work. They just cut corners to save time and did not understand how it could be a foolish place to save time considering the backlash.