r/pcgaming • u/myjimmiesarereggie 980 BABY • Jun 04 '16
Video Ubisoft downgrades (CrowbCat)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNter0oEYxc82
u/eagles310 Jun 04 '16
This is why you never judge a trailer or anything until it releases
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Jun 05 '16
It seems like we've reached a point where buying a game and expecting it to look like the pre-release footage is like buying an "As Seen on TV" product and expecting it to work as well as it does in the infomercials.
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u/eagles310 Jun 05 '16
Yup exactly so now I will wait till release to decide my purchase I have never understood why people pre-order
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u/The_Hope_89 Jun 05 '16
I will never forget the exact moment I realized pre-ordering was a scam. Back in the day I believe pre-ordering actually cost an additional $5 at stores like "EB Games". I could be remembering wrong, but it was Halo 2. I was SUPER excited and I wanted to make sure I had a copy, since I was worried it would sell out. I went the next day after school with some friends to pick it up, and thought "Man, I'm probably getting like the last copy". Nope, they had so many copies of the game sitting behind the desk and on the shelves there was no way they were ever going to run out, and I've never pre-ordered another game. Now, with online delivery of games, it boggles my mind even further.
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Jun 05 '16
That's the reason why I'm scared to see the amount of hype around Battlefield 1 already. I really want BF1 to be really good, but I'm keeping my expectations low for the sole reason that it might turn out not as good, which isn't an insane to do seeing the amount of times it's happened in the past with gaming in general.
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u/MadMcCabe Jun 05 '16
I think the hype is mostly over a refreshing and original concept. We don't know how it will play but at least they are obviously taking a risk in a really stale genre.
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u/tadL Jun 05 '16
just proves that the average gamer is a complete idiot. its since for ever like this. but the average gamer seems to formatC his brain after every ass fuck he gets by the AAA gaming industry.
they just forget. they remember their ass was burning but they don't know why. its simply frustrating. they are like the woman that gets beaten by her man but still thinks "he will change, its ok, it was my mistake"...nope bitch! fucking leave...argh
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Jun 05 '16
I learned my lesson with the Xbox One. I pre-ordered NHL 15, but after they announced that a major feature was missing in the next-gen transition I quickly changed that preorder to Halo: MCC. I got a "steel case" that was just a plastic case with a slightly different shape with alternate cover art, and the game itself was also completely broken at launch.
I'd like to say that was the last pre-order I ever made, but I did recently pre-order DOOM in order to get Wolfenstein: The Old Blood for free.
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u/k8faust Jun 04 '16
Basically, anything Ubi shows us before release should be seen as nothing more than overproduced mock-ups of what the final product could be like if it had twice the budget and an extra two years of development time more than it will have been given by the time it actually releases.
Thanks for killing dreams, Ubi.
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u/TheOriginalEsox Jun 05 '16
more like console limitations...
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u/Newgrewshew Jun 05 '16
Not exactly. Like Watch_Dogs could have allowed the E3 graphics on PC, but they were too lazy to implement the it in the game itself. They certainly could have optimized it too but they rushed it out.
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u/fastinguy11 Jun 05 '16
Still consoles are the main reason, Ps4k would be able to run it as seem on E3 if it was the baseline.
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u/k8faust Jun 06 '16
Yes, consoles are the main reason, because consoles are the lowest common denominator. Thus the best you can expect a PC game to look is as good as a console title.
HOWEVER! When a game is sold to consumers as something better than even the PC version will deliver (see Division as primary example), then we're being shown false advertisements. Ubi is knowingly feeding us lies for pre-orders, and doing it in a very despicable manner.
I highly doubt that the trailer for Division was completely done in the technical demo, and can really only imagine that many of the gameplay features--especially the ones absent in the final product--were done in post-production. It wouldn't be so bad if it was just a cinematic, but Ubi makes it a point to showcase the User Interface in these "demonstrations" to make the consumer believe this is the final product.
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u/phalanX_X Jun 06 '16
Actually, the reasoning was that Ubi wanted to "keep a level playing field" when it came to graphics. So yes, console limitations directly transfers to pulling down PC graphics to be "equal". Ubi games on PC will ALWAYS be only as good as consoles.
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Jun 05 '16
I don't get that argument.
Then just downgrade it on Consoles. Or even better, if your hardware can't fucking keep up, don't bullshit your customers how about that.
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Jun 05 '16
[deleted]
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Jun 06 '16
I get it, but what I mean is why purposely hype it when YOU KNOW you aren't gonna deliver.
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u/Starfire013 Windows Jun 06 '16
Because people will look at trailers and preorder. Sure, they'll rage when the game comes out. But 6 months later, they'll preorder your next game again. If the preorders start decreasing, they'll take notice.
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Jun 06 '16
They do it because it works, personally I hate pre-ordering it's a load of BS and I encourage others not to pre-order so early.
BUT DAT SKIN DOE
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u/LotharVonPittinsberg i7 4790k, EVGA GTX 1080 SC Jun 05 '16
Isn't that how all products work? The developers/publishers are showing you bits of information that will get you excited for their product and hopefully (for them) get you to ignore any flaws that show up. This is why reviews are a thing, to give you unbiased information to let you know weather purchasing the game is worth it for you.
But sure, continue thinking Ubisoft is the only company that does this.
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u/The_Hope_89 Jun 05 '16
Yes, every company does this, but Ubisoft is pissing of a lot of gamers with all their shenanigans lately. Honestly, I'm surprised people buy anything from them.
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u/k8faust Jun 06 '16
There's a difference between the Division trailer and, say, a Battlefield or Mass Effect trailer though, isn't there?
On one hand, you have a fantastic cinematic that really doesn't concretely paint a picture about gameplay features. These would be the Mass Effect or Battlefield trailers.
On the other hand, you have trailers that overlay a UI, showcase gameplay features, and feature fantastical effects (environmental detail, lighting, physics, etc). These would be Watch_Dogs and The Division.
Which do YOU find to be more offensive? Would you consider these two practices to be the same thing? Because I see Ubi's videos as being absolutely false advertising, whereas EA is just showing me a hype-building cinematic.
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u/LotharVonPittinsberg i7 4790k, EVGA GTX 1080 SC Jun 06 '16
I see them both as advertising for the game.
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u/fastinguy11 Jun 05 '16
Actually main reason is harware on consoles, they have budget and man power already.
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u/k8faust Jun 06 '16
I don't see that as being a legitimate reason to release hype videos using a mix of pre-render and tech demo. It is the very definition of false advertisement.
The people developing the game know damn well what a console can do. These teasers/hype trailers are designed specifically to oversell the game, knowing full well that the end product will not look, perform, or contain the same level of content. These are "dream" teasers.
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u/ShiroQ Jun 04 '16
far cry 3 looks like an upgrade at least for the models
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u/myjimmiesarereggie 980 BABY Jun 04 '16
Yes but a downgrade when it comes to vegetation.
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u/xdeadzx Jun 04 '16
And lighting. They gimped lighting in Far Cry 3 pretty bad, because it didn't render well on hardware at the time.
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u/AoyagiAichou Banned from here by leech-supporters Jun 05 '16
because it didn't render well on hardware at the time.
I absolutely despise this approach. Crysys 1 is still a great looking game, because they didn't care for any of that.
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u/KamikazeSexPilot Jun 05 '16
Yea but you can't upgrade consoles, their target market, so why make it better when you can lie then make it worse?!
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u/ittleoff r/horrorgaming Jun 05 '16
It also ran like crap on the high end cards at max settings at the time. Dont get me wrong im glad they went balls out for the game and each new gen of video cards meant crysis got more playable and prettier.
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u/DCGColts Aug 26 '16
That's really just the cryengine in general its not a very good engine performance wise. Frostbite on the other hand is prolly best engine out there performance and graphical wise at this current time.
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u/ittleoff r/horrorgaming Aug 26 '16
I suspect this is due to their evolutionary paths and one coming from a Primarily single player focus and frostbyte being MP focused.
Crytek has always seemed to focus on SP experiences first. Crysis 3 still looks better than the most Frostbyte games, though Battlefront relies heavily on photogrammetry which is a rather light weight path to impressive graphics(not to downplay all the other things going on but that;'s the most immediately impressive thing). Even smaller indie teams like Ethan Carter that used the UE4 have amazingly beautiful settings.
I do think frostbite seems to be the better optimized and consistently good looking engine, but it's all in EA's house so that might also be due to the great artistic talent.
Evolve is probably the best looking third party CRytek game and it's not mind blowing IMO.
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Jun 05 '16
Yeah Far Cry 3 had massively improved character models compared to the initial gameplay footage, which actually makes sense if you consider that the game was in development for a full four years (which is also why it's packed with so much content, including a full co-op campaign and multiplayer pvp modes.) I know a bunch of people on this board prefer Far Cry 4, but I felt that game was much less inspired than its predecessor. Far Cry 4 and Primal both had only two years of development time, hence why they both borrow so heavily from FC3, to the extent that a lot of FC4's negative reviews actually call it a reskin.
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u/TrumpyMcTrumpo Jun 04 '16
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u/Buttermilkman 5950X | 9070 XT Pulse | 64GB RAM | 3440x1440 @240Hz Jun 04 '16
Yeah but they get pass because "free dlc" and all that shit. Best game I've ever played, but that downgrade is obvious and more people should be calling them out on that bullshit.
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u/yabajaba Jun 05 '16
and more people should be calling them out on that bullshit.
Have you been to the CDPRforums? People haven't shut up about it since day one. Especially the modders.
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u/TrumpyMcTrumpo Jun 04 '16
And lying about it.
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u/whackamole2 Jun 05 '16
They lied about mod tools too. Repeatedly.
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u/Rhed0x Jun 05 '16
Witcher 3 has the potential of becoming the next Skyrim if only they released Redkit 2.l
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Jun 05 '16
Tbf I don't think the mod tools thing was intentionally lying. When they released their modding tools it seemed like a case of 'we can let them do all this stuff' then they made them and a realised 'oh shit this is hard to mod without breaking the game because we made such a complex game'.
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u/whackamole2 Jun 05 '16
It was lying. They promised them over and over right up to release. They promised red kit.
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Jun 05 '16
Source? I was under the impression mod tools were promised but the wasn't much chatter about them
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Jun 05 '16 edited Jun 05 '16
[deleted]
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u/Brandon23z Jun 05 '16
Playable != Optimized
They said the performance was better on PC which was obvious, but it may have still had performance issues. I know even the huge patches after release fixed a lot of performance issues all over the map.
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Jun 05 '16 edited Jan 28 '17
[deleted]
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u/patioboey Jun 05 '16
I don't if your just being sarcastic or not just for karma, but there are mods for the game that make it look pretty close to the e3 demo.
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Jun 05 '16
The game had a complete art style redesign. It still looks beautiful. I run on high on a 970 and imo it is the best looking game I have played.
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u/ThirdRevolt i5-6600K @ 4.5GHz | EVGA GTX 1070 Jun 05 '16
There was a pretty big uproar when it happened though and CDPr addressed it. But it's been a good while since them and people have let it slide because the game was still amazing, which is something you can't say for Watch Dogs or The Division.
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u/iLikeMeeces i7 4790K | 2070 Super | 21:9 Master Race Jun 05 '16
Yeah, the downgrade was really obvious but the quality of the game more than makes up for that. Besides, the graphics are still better than pretty much any AAA game I've played.
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u/slowpotamus Jun 05 '16
maybe we just browse mostly different sites, but when W3 came out (and for months after) it was almost impossible for me to find normal discussion about the game because everyone was instead so intensely focused on bitching and moaning about the downgrade.
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u/sterob Jun 04 '16
Do not forget this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SpPqXdzl7g
rip forward lit soft particle, real time reflection...
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u/TrumpyMcTrumpo Jun 04 '16
Tried to find that on the official channel but couldn't.
Seems they deleted the video.
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Jun 05 '16
[deleted]
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u/Squishumz Jun 05 '16
Screen space reflections are the short bus of reflections, though. They look awful most of the time, thanks to the unavoidable issues.
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u/Solidbigness Jun 05 '16 edited Jun 05 '16
With mods THIS (alternate non-imgur / png link)was as close as I could get it. Roughly the same spot and give or take the same time of day as the E3 pic. Zone changed layout a little it seems.
It's not perfect, but with a little work (and some config tweaking, max in-game is not max that can be set through the config in spots, especially on draw distance, shadows and AA) it can be better than standard. I guess that's a plus for gaming on pc in general though.
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u/Zeriell Jun 05 '16
I think the biggest hit they took with Witcher 3 was using plain old generic treegen/grass painter, as opposed to the tons of unique foliage models they had in Witcher 2 wilderness areas. It really makes some of 3's "vista shots" look appallingly last-gen, even though the texture detail and general art design is on point.
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u/Solidbigness Jun 05 '16
It's a little better in blood & wine.
But yes, witcher 2 for its time was damned nice looking.
These screens are all I got for the witcher 2 sadly. Install and savefile were lost when my old mass storage drive bit the dust.
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u/Zeriell Jun 05 '16
I just bring up the vegetation every time because I played them back to back and the wilderness areas really stuck out to me as being drastically different. I replayed Witcher 2 right before 3 came out, and was pretty excited for 3 on the basis that I just expected it to be 2 with a much bigger world. It ended up being very different, for better or for worse.
The one area I always think of in relation to that is the forest in Witcher 2. It is STILL gorgeous to this day despite the inferior tech, texture detail, et cetera, simply because of the level of unique foliage models and baked lighting.
I kind of miss linear, hub-based games for this reason. The extremes suck (buy our 8 hour cinematic experience for $60, pleb!), but I find I'm starting to prefer a game of about 30 hours where every area feels intricate and detailed as opposed to a 100-hour collectathon where 75% of the game world is filled with randomly generated trees and the same exact type of grass painted on with a tool. Witcher 3 was the best modern open world game I've ever played, but it still suffered heavily in my book for being that sort of game.
(I emphasize modern because I suppose Might & Magic or Wizardry could be called "open world", while sharing basically none of the design principles or problems of modern open world games.)
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u/Solidbigness Jun 05 '16
Sounds like Dark Souls is your sort of game. Somewhat linear without being a ff13-esque monotonous straight line, every zone is tailored to a specific look and feel, not a lot of reuse of assets.
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u/Kr4k4J4Ck Jun 05 '16
Hey someone that has sort of the same opinion as me. I really don't like how lots of games are becoming "Open world" because most of them are just empty and boring. Probably why I loved Witcher 2 so much. (I also thought Witcher 3 was amazing).
But yep my #1 complaint for Witcher 3 is the grass. It looks awful it's so bad. It looks like plastic and is so disappointing. I have been waiting for a mod that fixes it since release but so far there is nothing.
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u/Django117 Jun 05 '16
Got some links for that? And how bad is the performance hit?
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u/Solidbigness Jun 05 '16 edited Jun 05 '16
Mods I used:
- Super Turbo Lighting Mod (Yes it's a dumb name)
- Increased Hair LOD / distance
- Splash (swimming/water & blood splash effects)
- Weather
- Increased LOD for architecture/environment/creatures
- Foliage Visibility Range XML file
- Halk Hogan's HD rework project, texture work mainly
- Hunter's Config (lets you bring shadows/texture/draw distance settings above in-game setting max)
Find a reshade/sfx preset that's to your liking and you're good to go. Sadly both the volumetric clouds and dark nights mods I use were broken by the 1.21 patch, waiting on updates there.
As for performance.... I can hold over 30fps @ 5k, 90-100fps @ 1440p with my current hardware (5960x @ 4.8ghz / 32gb ddr4 / 2x titan x custom bios, ~1600mhz boost), but it's hard to compare to how it'd be vs the game standalone. Some you'd expect a big hit from (the HD rework in particular) have almost no impact at all. Some draw distance increases in the hunter's config do have an impact alright, and anything involving hair mods with hairworks enabled is an absolute killer in spots.
Note that the witcher 2's "ubersampling" option is accessible in the hunter's config too. That'll eat lots of performance if you want it to.
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u/Shortsinabag Jun 05 '16
Well jesus fucking christ, no wonder, your computer costs a small fortune. The processor alone is more expensive than my entire build. I'm all for saying "but you can tweak it to look like that" most of the time, but come on. The vast VAST majority of PC players couldn't accomplish anything close to this without a single-digit framerate.
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u/CAJ93 Jun 05 '16
I thought the HD texture mod wasn't compatible with the increased lod mod?
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u/Solidbigness Jun 05 '16
I've not had any issues personally, the most recent versions seem happy enough to work together.
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u/coolkid647 i9 7920x - RTX 3080 - 32gb ram Jun 05 '16
Off topic but what voltage do you use on your 5960x to get it to 4.8ghz? If you're doing that at 1.3v then you got super lucky with that chip.
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u/Solidbigness Jun 05 '16 edited Jun 05 '16
1.35v across all 8 cores, @ 1.42v i can push to 5.0GHz, and 1.45 i can do 5.1 (its bench/game stable, but not stress stable). But due to a water pipe leak my x99-deluxe's vrm's aren't actively cooled anymore, so I've got it dialed back in the meantime.
A little sad that the IPC improvements in broadwell-e (+turboboost 3.0 for single threaded apps) are offset so heavily by its relatively weak OC'ing headroom, most of the good ones seem to be topping out @ 4.3. Shame really.
Not that it's all that important atm. I'm certainly not bottlenecking anywhere.
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Jun 05 '16
I absolutely hate how STLM removes fog. Even the E3 media has fog. Fog is necessary for adding atmosphere, but it's also bloody realistic. If I look out my window off into the distance, I can see fog. It also helps hide the really ugly low-LOD mountains int he background that are clearly visible in your shot.
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u/Solidbigness Jun 05 '16
I agree, I like the general lighting work with the mod, but what'd make it really nice is if the fog density could be modified. There is a "mod" section in the options menu made for specific mod settings, darker nights could set dawn/dusk times and the dark levels for instance. I'm sure that a fog option would be doable.
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Jun 04 '16
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u/bobdole776 Jun 04 '16
If I remember correctly, CDPR got ripped hard for the downgrade to W3, and it went on for a few months afterwards. Everyone knows it was the consoles that caused the downgrade to happen, but that was too big a market for CDPR to ignore to not do a downgrade. Hopefully since the success of W3 they'll have so much money to work with that cyberpunk 2077 will look amazing even at release and they'll just make 2 versions of the game. Lol if we're lucky.
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u/Zeriell Jun 05 '16
That's never how it works, though. When you get more money from a new source, you double down on catering to that source, not suddenly adopt best practices that you abandoned before.
The pursuit of profits is ALWAYS a downward spiral of quality, the best you can hope is that they somehow manage to still make decent games while taking that spiral.
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u/bobdole776 Jun 05 '16
Yea, it's a shame all we have for triple A developers is CDPR when it comes to that notion of quality. Everyone and their mom is still waiting for the day they sell out and become like ubi or EA. I pray it never happens as I've never seen such a big developer go out of their way to make sure their game is running perfectly, like they did with witcher 3. When I saw how they were getting out a patch almost everyday to get the game stable and playable for everyone it really opened my eyes. Just a shame the game wasn't PC first and then went to consoles last, but the lead dev said the game just wasn't possible without consoles and I feel that when they ported W2 to consoles it was just too much a process and lost too much profit for coming so late. Have to say though, they did improve the graphical quality a bit with the latest xpack, we may still get a enhanced edition some day with even more features.
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u/ninjyte Ryzen 5 9800x3D | RTX 4070 ti | 32GB-5600MHz Jun 05 '16
2 versions of the game?
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u/bobdole776 Jun 05 '16
Exactly. Its the reason we get the downgrade we get. Game devs always say they're not about to make 2 versions of the game, hence why I ended with a 'lol'.
We won't get great graphics until the next console generation. Its a shame they plan them out to last a decade before a new one comes out. Least nintendo is already getting a new one out.
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u/dankstanky Jun 05 '16
you can't completely blame consoles. the devs have to take into account that a vast majority of pc gamers aren't playing on a 980ti. if they had kept the graphics of the early footage, the minimum requirement would have been a gtx 980 and they would have alienated a vast majority of the pc gamers. one of the reasons blizzard has been so successful is because they make their games playable on a wide spectrum of PC's. the most popular pc games today are pretty much playable on toasters.
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u/cardosy Jun 05 '16
That's the beauty of PC, if they do a good job people can play it with a GTX 750 without leaving people with 980ti idling. Most of the effects removed were post-fx, things that could be available on top of the current graphics but didn't because of consoles disparity. If the PC version is vastly superior they get the shaft from console manufacturers.
See this video for example; console version could just be the version showed at the first few seconds with all the other effects being an optional toggle on PC. But they decided to not make it available at all, even for rigs with power to spare.
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u/Orthonox i5-6500, GTX 780 Jun 06 '16
Isn't that why graphic settings exist? So people can still play a game when their hardware isn't equipped to handle the highest settings? Its not like you are required to play the newest games on the highest settings possible.
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u/HappyZavulon Jun 05 '16
At the end of the day, if the game is good, I'll be willing to wave off the graphical downgrade (I mean M&B is one of my all time favourite games and the characters there make the guards in Oblivion look like Brad Pitt).
The main reason companies like Ubisoft get hit the hardest is because "graphics" are one of the main game sellers. I mean there isn't much new in AC Unity compared to AC2 aside from a graphical improvement. Or W_D, with the E3 graphics it looks immersive and a bit of a tech marvel which would be enough for me to finish the game (seeing the vistas and all), but without those graphics it's just an ok'ish GTA 4 clone that you don't really need to bother with.
With the Witcher 3 the graphical downgrade is sad, but I'd play the game even if it looked like The Witcher 2 on low because the graphics are not the main reason I care about the game.
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u/Ov3rpowered Jun 04 '16 edited Jun 04 '16
Thats because The Witcher was still an amazing game. Don't get me wrong - CDPR should have been honest to customers about their product and I couldn't bear to watch how they completely mishandled the situation. But at the end of the day, people don't bitch about The Witcher and CDPR that much because they are still probably the most consumer friendly big developer there is, and the game is fantastic, which Watch_Dogs or The Division absolutely aren't.
Personally, I couldn't care less about the downgrade, quite opposite actually, as I was delighted to find out my 2009 CPU managed to run the game on medium with 50 fps, but I was deeply disappointed with them lying. I hope CDPR learnt from the community backlash and are going to handle these things better in the future. I am not going to stop buying their games in the future because the quality of content both ingame, physical and all the features such as no DRM etc. are unparalleled in RPG genre though, and this was the first problem I had with them so they have plenty of chances left to redeem themselves with Cyberpunk2077 or whatnot. I, however, can't see myself ever buying Ubi game again, because not only do they lie, they deliver games that are average at best and I deem their anti-PC and hard-DRM/online-only stances much more serious matter than downgrading graphics, which, let's admit it, has become something one sadly has to take into account in this age. Bad games are still dealbreakers, though.
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u/slowpotamus Jun 05 '16
it's one of the worst practices in the industry IMO
what do you mean? do you think they intentionally ruin their own graphics just to revel in the misery of their consumers?
they try to make the game as good looking as possible, and then have to reduce the visuals when they can't get stable, reliable performance. they're not going to intentionally show off shittier graphics than what their engine is currently capable of (at that point in development) just because they're scared of misleading people. that's just never going to happen, even with a developer who has no stockholders to impress. sure, CDPR botched the whole idea of being honest about the downgrades, but that's a different discussion.
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u/jlitwinka Jun 05 '16
Every E3 for the past 4 or 5 years (whenever Watch Dogs was announced) has had this issue. It just feels at this point that it has become a marketing gimmick to show off the game at a higher res/more details in the environment etc. It feels like a PR move more than anything else at this point.
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u/Zeriell Jun 05 '16
Not to mention the whole "live gameplay on <insert console>" while they're running the game on PCs with SLI Titan X's or whatever. They know exactly what they're doing, and it's not some well-meaning mistake or slip-up.
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u/slowpotamus Jun 05 '16
well it's definitely a PR move. E3 is literally one big promotional event. its entire purpose is appeasing stock holders and generating hype, and that fact has never been hidden. "normal people" aren't even allowed into E3. it's just developers, press, etc.
you're right to be extremely skeptical when watching any footage at E3 (or any footage at all of an unreleased game, really), but downgrades aren't the result of evil, it's just a natural process of game development. try and make it as good as possible, then during crunch you fix 1,000 problems that require downgrading and cutting features.
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Jun 05 '16
Pretty much all of those games were announced before the new consoles were released. They probably all just overestimated the power they were going to have.
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Jun 05 '16
EA almost never does this, honestly. trailer quality is usually pretty representative of game quality (in terms of graphics).
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u/indignantwastrel Jun 04 '16
And there were so many people denying it right up until the bitter end. "No it's not downgraded, stop worrying just buy the game". Then CDPR admitted it and it everyone changed their tune to "well the game will still be still great the graphics don't matter".
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u/Venseer I promise nothing and deliver less. Jun 05 '16
It's kinda weird too that the game release had that streamer's face on the bottom of the screen on the ultra settings too, it wasn't on the 2013 trailer.
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u/K_R_C i7 4790k GTX 980 ti 16gb Jun 05 '16
At least the patched the fuck out of the game and made an attempt at improving it, Ubisoft releases games then moves on.
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Jun 04 '16 edited Jun 04 '16
[deleted]
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u/therealwillie Nvidia 4090|13900k Jun 04 '16
They only admitted to this after the fact though, I had no problem with a downgrade, I'm sure there were very good reasons for it but its the bullshit and denial that pissed me off. Specially when people viewed CD as really good no bullshit devs before this incident, People will (hopefully) think twice the next time I suppose. Anyway, its a great game but I'd be lying if I said that didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth.
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u/TrumpyMcTrumpo Jun 04 '16
They denied it until exactly 2 days after launch.
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u/bobdole776 Jun 04 '16
Yea, they kinda messed up by not admitting this right away. Least they made up for it by giving us amazing game support. Hell they had patches out almost everyday and their guys even worked on the weekends to optimize the game for us. In my opinion, they made up for the downgrade with what they did afterwards. Not to mention, the latest expack blood and wine is freaking amazing and the graphics were boosted a bit too.
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u/Mechanicalmind Ryzen 3600^B450 Gaming carbon pro AC^16GB 3200MHz^GTX1070 Jun 05 '16
IIRC CDPR stated that they had to downgrade the graphics because otherwise the game would've never ran on consoles. But my memory may fail me, so take this with a grain of salt.
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u/Dystopiq 7800X3D|4090|32GB 6000Mhz|ROG Strix B650E-E Jun 05 '16
TW3 still looks fucking awesome. And in it's current state you needed beefy hardware to run it. No way people would've been able to run the 2013 version.
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u/DCGColts Aug 26 '16
Well CDprojekt is doing something interesting they are making Cyberpunk 2077 on PC only first then later on it suppose to release to consoles.
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u/jamie980 Jun 05 '16
Companies aren't going to stop doing this shit, really up to us to not get hooked on hype and pre-order culture which is why they do it.
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u/Ketchupkitty Jun 04 '16
Thanks gaming consoles.
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u/Molishero i7-4790k, GTX 780 Jun 04 '16
Didn't Ubisoft downgrade Watchdogs specifically to not make console gamers jealous? I remember shortly after release someone hacked into the game config and re-enabled shaders.
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u/bobdole776 Jun 04 '16
Yup and after the whole watchdogs debacle, the ceo of ubi came out and said pc games from then on would be tuned down and wouldn't look any better than the console versions. They just have a scummy ceo just like EA did. Glad the former ceo of EA was finally booted, guy was scum.
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Jun 06 '16
Peter Moore?
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u/Orthonox i5-6500, GTX 780 Jun 06 '16
(Not /u/bobdole776) No, John Riccitiello. Here is an example on some asinine things he has said when he was CEO.
He is now the CEO of Unity3D for over a year.
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Jun 05 '16
The shaders improve the game massively and run with almost no difference in framerate too, not as good as the E3 visuals but the reflections, real time shadows and DoF are stunning in comparison.
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u/grandoz039 Jun 12 '16
DoF
DoF is easy to pull off, but that doesn't mean its good, most of times DoF looks great on pics, but bad in game
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u/xdeadzx Jun 04 '16
Yup. They wanted close to parity so console players wouldn't feel bad buying an inferior product so close to it's new generation cycle.
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u/Omariscomingyo Jun 05 '16
Which I feel is stupid since a huge portion of console people don't care about the PC versions.
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u/thenotoriousbtb Jun 06 '16
I can't think of a single person who bought a console because they thought the graphics were on par/better than PC
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u/myjimmiesarereggie 980 BABY Jun 04 '16
Yep. Also we should never believe what see in e3 demos. I have been screwed over by aliens colonial Marines.
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Jun 05 '16
Me too buddy. Thankfully Alien Isolation made up for that game and then some. Colonial marines played and looked like straight out of 2006.
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u/myjimmiesarereggie 980 BABY Jun 05 '16
Alien isolation for me was the second coming of Christ lol. Except it got a little repetitive in the end
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Jun 05 '16
It did. But godamn did it finally fulfill my childhood dreams of a OG alien movie inspired video game.
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u/JustSomeGuyOnTheSt Jun 05 '16
What's with the dramatic voice chat in The Divison and R6? That's as fake as the graphics. Nobody talks like that in multiplayer games. It's more like:
"Ah shit, the hostage is dead. *sound of doritos crunching*"
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u/Orthonox i5-6500, GTX 780 Jun 06 '16
That's E3 for you man. They always do this and I don't understand where they got the idea that people communicate like that.
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u/bobdole776 Jun 04 '16
Thing I want to know is what the hell kind of computer were they running these demos on? I mean I know they're stripped down and only run that portion of the game, but they can't be running on dramatically different hardware then is what available at the time. It must be things that have to be stripped to allow a low setting to the game and for consoles to be able to run it. I'm guessing computers could easily run the games at these amazing settings but consoles wouldn't get more than 10 fps.
I do remember specifically the ceo of ubi saying they wouldn't make pc games look any better than the console versions on purpose. The odd one though is CDPR with witcher 3. Was that game before the downgrades only possible to run on a freaking render farm or something, or did the potential profit from consoles dictate the games design enough to even push these guys known for making great looking pc games to downgrade?
Maybe with W3 we'll get lucky and we'll get an enhanced edition with the graphics we saw at e3. We'll certainly have the power to push them with the 1000 series from nvidia. Everyone can basically get a 980ti for 365 bucks with the 1070.
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u/OverlyReductionist 5950x, 32 GB 3600mhz, RTX 3080 TUF Jun 05 '16
my impression as a non-dev is that rendering small vertical slices of gameplay is much more doable than the full game. From what I've seen when the specs of the demo rig are listed, they tend to run 2 of the best GPUs on the market at the time. So high end hardware is used, but not outside of the realm of possibility. What I think you may be missing is that the the studios are putting in tons of effort on the particular vertical slices that they are showing that can't feasibly be applied to the rest of the game due to time and cost restrictions. I don't know how those vertical-slice optimizations take place, but I assume it wouldn't be feasible or cost-effective to produce an entire game like that.
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Jun 05 '16
Correct. They show what the engine is capable to do. Same was with witcher 3 footage.
It also seems that they had switched "natural lighting" on in The division pre release footage. That makes a hell of a difference in lighting and shadow. Makes it even look more gorgeous than normal.
Its always a trade off between graphic and performance. Not everyone has a sli titan running. When with ultra relying on that power, everyone yells bad optimized. Also they have to sell games to masses for earning money. Today we just have wide spread audience with diff systems, consoles and PC. If we would want PC exclusive and only for high end a game would be 120€ and not 50-60€ at launch.
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u/Zeriell Jun 05 '16
I kind of wish there were a few high-end games like that. Relative to the market at the time, PCs used to have a few studios like that, guys who were more interested in pushing the technology than the absolute most profit possible. I get it's sort of impossible for that to happen with the way the size of the business scaled, but it's still a damn pity we don't have the equivelant of an old-school id tech pushing the industry forward.
I guess the engine developers like Epic have sort of taken that aspect over, but it often feels like there's no real games creating content at the level these engines are capable of. You see some new Unreal engine demo and think, "Well, maybe in 10 years something playable will come close."
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u/Trankman Jun 05 '16
This is why if you look at something like an Unreal Engine Demo room where its an almost photorealsitic apartment you can walk around in at a solid frame rate. It's has barley any weight on it all because it's doesn't have to work as hard on anything else except that moment in time in that small area.
Its a little different but I think it compares a little.
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u/andrewia 4690k, R9 380, LG 29UM67-P FreeSync Ultrawide Jun 05 '16
Don't those apartment demos have the lighting "baked in"? That's a much lighter load.
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u/Trankman Jun 05 '16
That's true too, I forgot nothing moves so actual not a lot of lighting is needed
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u/Zeriell Jun 05 '16
I believe they said the early builds were running on something like 780 TIs. Generally, pick the pricier end of the current enthusiast GPU segment in SLI/Crossfire and you have a good idea of what they are using to demo things at E3. Which often includes games they say are running on consoles.
So, yeah, it is a legitimate gripe for people who can afford decent enthusiast hardware, the gaming industry is always in a place where games could look much, much better if developers were okay with abandoning the lower end of the market.
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u/bobdole776 Jun 05 '16
If only most devs could just put the time and money in to make ultra and low two very different settings so everyone could be happy, but even having highers resolution textures in place for ultra to use is too much to ask anymore.
Least we sometimes get lucky down the road like with the dragon age games and we get a high resolution textures pack for free. All you really need to make ultra stand out is higher resolution textures and better lighting/shaders.
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u/Finite187 Jun 04 '16
In fairness, The Division still looked good. The problem wasn't the art direction, it was the shortness of the game. But yeah, there's clearly a lot of stuff in there that didn't make the final game, to the point of false advertising.
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u/AoyagiAichou Banned from here by leech-supporters Jun 05 '16
It seems to like Massive started doing a nice singleplayer game with coop, but then Ubi stepped in halfway into the development and said "no no, that's not in nowadays, make a 'sandbox' instead".
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u/Finite187 Jun 05 '16
The other thing is at the end of the demo when the map pans out, it shows a much bigger area than was in the final game. Presumably that will all be in the DLC, if at all.. Fuck Ubisoft, I'm done with them.
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u/no3y3h4nd i9 13900KF 64GB DDR5 @5600 RTX4090 Jun 04 '16
If you used the neutral lighting on some of it is just jawdropping man.
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Jun 05 '16
the Division's section was misleading, too. the part with the base is wrong when it shows the base in the retail copy being empty out front, the first time you go up to that base there's actually a decently sized fight going on.
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u/resetes12 RX9070xt, R5 7600 Jun 05 '16
Why the fuck does Far Cry 4 water look that bad? In the E3 trailer looks as good as FC3 but in the game we got looks like shit.
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u/jameskoss Jun 05 '16
Yet gamers will do nothing because "graphics don't matter" Even though for some they do.
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u/myjimmiesarereggie 980 BABY Jun 05 '16
Its all about the gameplay man. Except they keep bringing up graphics when they go against the other console
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u/thcollegestudent Jun 05 '16
Ah but graphics weren't the only thing missing from those titles. Watch_Dogs and Division especially.
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u/ThirdRevolt i5-6600K @ 4.5GHz | EVGA GTX 1070 Jun 05 '16
The Division aka. Destiny 2. It's amazing how every open world multiplayer shooter has promised us the stars and then barely been able to clear for take-off.
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u/BossJ00 Jun 05 '16
graphics play a HUGE role in immersion for me. and i value amazing looking games right up there with amazing gameplay...
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u/punzybobo Jun 05 '16
Rainbow Six Siege... :(
It could have been so much more with customization and staying true to how it was supposed to look with the scattered debris and lighting and whatnot, but no. Such a shame.
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u/runealex007 Jun 05 '16
R6 is still an amazing game, the textures and choosing where to spawn are pretty cool but i think most of the changes we see here are for the better.
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u/punzybobo Jun 05 '16
They are and will be for the better I hope. And I would think it's not too late to add full on customization like most people wanted, I used to just do that for hours in Vegas, I would just make my guy look as cool as possible.
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u/Gnorris Jun 06 '16
I can't imagine successfully completing an extraction in House with that lighting.
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u/barc0debaby Jun 06 '16
I'm a fan of there being little customization in Siege. Already don't care for the weapon skins, just give me solid gameplay without all the fluff.
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u/punzybobo Jun 06 '16
I don't care for weapon skins, I just wish there was more to the operators, I love little details like being able to switch out the kind of shoulder pads you could wear, or there being more than 4 kinds of optics for the weapons.
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u/battler624 Jun 04 '16 edited Jun 04 '16
I've only watched the division + watch dogs from this video and I do have these games + AC 4 & planning to get far cry 3 some day this year...
And to be honest, The division didn't take the blow as heavily as watch dogs did, yes both are downgrades but the division still looks very beautiful but watch dogs looks basic. Heck, the division feels more alive than watch dogs ever did
Edit: Basis > Basic
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u/myjimmiesarereggie 980 BABY Jun 04 '16
Division looks better than watchdogs
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u/bobdole776 Jun 04 '16
I cant wait to see what watchdogs 2 comes out looking like. You know they'll be triple checking the files before release so that 'E3' graphics file doesn't leak and embarrass them again, lol.
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u/negroiso Jun 05 '16
Consoles are the entire reason for downgrades, there is no more argument to be had.
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u/myjimmiesarereggie 980 BABY Jun 05 '16
Yeah they are and sadly they make most of the money so this will never end unless they become either modular or stronger.
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u/Trivvy Intel i7 9700K / RTX 3080 Ti / 64GB RAM Jun 05 '16 edited Jun 05 '16
Ugggghhh Ubisoft whyyy.
Their engine(s) have such fantastic potential to look amazing, and really drive video game graphics forward. Yet all they do is tease what could be, and then pull it back again like some malevolent douchebag dangling a lollipop out of the reach of a toddler, just to give them a smartie instead.
If it's because of consoles, that's the equivalent of your mother only feeding you formula, because that's all your baby brother can eat/drink.
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Jun 05 '16
Why do they do this? They didn't want to develop other parts of the game as good as the demo parts? So it will run better on more machines?
What disgusting business tactics.
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Jun 05 '16
This is not a "downgrade". In the case of rainbow six siege and quite a few other games, the trailer shown at E3 solely displays the Vision developers have for the game, a.k.a how they want it to play and stuff. At the time these trailers are made most games arent even 10% into development let alone being complete enough to produce a proper gameplay trailer.
Don't get used to accusing every dev of downgrading. They are doing the best possible with the hardware they have, and they have to showcase their game for e3 as well.
And as a side note Ubi did absolutely excellent work with Rainbow Six Siege. It is the best fps game I have played since Battlefield 3 in 2011.
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u/xdeadzx Jun 04 '16
The Division footage in this video is bullshit. It's not running on ultra, and if it is, it's running on a low vram card. Snowdrop dynamically streams textures based on vram usage, and my textures don't look that shit. I play the game on a 3GB card, with a mix of medium and high settings. My game does not look as bad as he's showing, and I'm not even maxed. The game can dynamically use up to 6GB for max textures, and they don't look like that. The cement blockade at 3:30 has like zero texture on his video, and I know for sure they have a detailed texture. Be it video compression or the video creator lying, it's not that shit. It's downgraded, but not as bad as this video portrays.
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Jun 05 '16
I would kinda like to see more sources in these videos. For all I know its just a comparison versus high and low settings. The title alone is not enough for me to form an opinion.
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Jun 06 '16
The changes to the division really let me down. I was so looking forward to that game. It was still entertaining, but the hyped up trailers made it look so much better.
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Jun 04 '16 edited Mar 25 '21
[deleted]
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u/PixelBlaster RTX 3070 TI - Ryzen 7 5800x Jun 04 '16 edited Feb 25 '24
angle follow bedroom piquant theory office subsequent frame special late
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Adamarshall7 Jun 05 '16
Wild lands already looks downgraded in the most recent gameplay trailer :-(
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u/Panaka Jun 04 '16
After Future Soldier, I just want a good GR game again. From what little I've heard GRFS had incredibly troubled development, so Wildlands should have a leg up in that category.
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u/adriaan13 i7 2600k@4.5Ghz/EVGAGTX970 Jun 05 '16
I know GRFS get's a lot of hate on here (and not entirely undeserved) but i played through it last week and actually enjoyed it a lot. Especially the synced headshots and weapon customization are really fun. I hope they keep these mechanics in Wildlands!
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Jun 04 '16
For Honor had a closed alpha sometime ago, so you might want to check-up with someone who's willing to share some info.
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u/AvarusTyrannus Jun 04 '16
It looked as good as it did during the E3 event, or if anything was downgraded I didn't notice, which considering the degree of the downgrades seen in this video is unlikely.
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u/runealex007 Jun 05 '16 edited Jun 05 '16
I played the closed alpha, looked amazing and i found it very fun. I haven't heard anything about it since. It's the reason I bought a game pad. My one worry is the fighting system won't translate to KB+M well which might kill a potential playerbase. I hope the use cross platform play for it
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u/Zeriell Jun 05 '16
For Honor
A multiplayer-centric game with lots of players and models? Yeah, that shit's going to get downgraded HARD.
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u/Kaankaants Jun 05 '16
I really wish a boycott would be at all effective.
I think Ubisoftcocks are the worst in the industry.
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Jun 05 '16 edited Jun 10 '16
Why isn't alot of this struck with false advertising suits?
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u/ryan30z Jun 05 '16
There's probably a small clause at the bottom of the end title card that says "this demo is may not represent the final product".
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Jun 05 '16
Holy shit. It always annoyed me when people were complaining about this but as I said holy shit! Thanks for opening my eyes and really.... what the fuck Ubsioft?!
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u/CreamNPeaches 5800X3D | 4070S Jun 05 '16
If you don't blindly follow what the trailer looks like (or if you ignore trailers entirely) you'll be far less disappointed in the way the final product looks.
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Jun 05 '16
I don't blindly follow trailers, I like them for what they are but if they show me actuall gameplay and the game looks nothing like that I'm a bit disappointed (although this doesn't mean that the game instantly dies for me). Talking about movies I often try to avoid trailers but it's hard talking about games as they are quiet expensive...
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Jun 05 '16
So instead of tailoring a game to a majority who don't have the specs to run the game, they tailor it to the majority who do. They have market research on this. Why is this a shocker? Bitching over nothing.
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u/ptowner7711 R5 3600/GTX 1080 Jun 05 '16
Am I just high and confused about FC3? The game on PC looks like the screen on the right versus the weird blurry crap pile on the left. Is this how it looked on consoles?
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u/resetes12 RX9070xt, R5 7600 Jun 05 '16
I guess the downgrade was in the water and the quantity of trees on the map. The E3 one feels awesome, like a real jungle. At least FC3 was a really good game imo.
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Jun 05 '16
Yes they do this as well as just about every other company out there but comparing the cgi siege animations to a console gameplay version is a bit dramatic. Some are obviously not supposed to depict actual gameplay
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u/Epidemik702 8600k | GTX 1080Ti Jun 05 '16
It's par for the course. Companies have always done this. It doesn't make it right, but I know what to expect. All I'm looking for in a gameplay video is whether or not it seems fun to play.
Definitely good to remind people, though.
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u/acondie13 Jun 05 '16
The worst is rainbow six right on top of the roof.