The Retardation of Ubisoft on PC Gaming Continues

[Infraction Jack]

I wish more games were controller friendly.

 

[shortylickens]

How are they still alive as a corporation? Ubisoft has got to have the worlds SHITTIEST business pratices!

They cater to the console market, which is filled with people who willingly take it up the pooper, sans lube.

 

[sactoking]

Could be worse. They could require us to play using some sort of anally-actuated joystick. Which, come to think of it, is what dealing with Ubisoft games often feels like these days.

 

[Childs]

If someone was going to do this to a PC game, it would make most sense to do it with AC. Its not really about precision as it is with fluid movement, and this series was made with controllers in mind. Mapping the same functionality to the keyboard made the game somewhat awkward, but when I put in the controller it was smooth and made more sense. I know it would have just taken some time to get used to it, but its much easier to just to R1 or L1 + action key then memorize independent keys for the same functions.

 

[Infraction Jack]

Controllers are also more comfortable.

 

[Arg Clin]

"I think if you want to play on PC and you want to play Assassin's Creed, you have a controller."

Why not just stop supporting the PC platform then? Ok - I get it - time to convert us misguided PC gamers who think gaming should be about more than pressing the 'awesome button'. Shame on us.

Blah - I have no interest in anything Ubisoft makes.

 

[gladiatorua]

Ok. Now we need EA to buy Ubisoft and make AC4. It will be an UBER-SHIT of unseen magnitude and gaming world will implode.

But seriously. It's a stupid idea.
This is a perfect place to use marketing prowess. If they want more controllers on PC then partner up with some controller brand and sell special version of AC3 with controller included.
I hated how keyboard and mouse behaved in AC1. Like it wasn't meant to be played with a keyboard... duh.
Is it this much more work to make controls on PC not just playable but good?

 

[soccerballtux]

Gotta love how they announce they wont put much effort into the main control scheme for PC games.

It would be like releasing a PC FPS on the consoles and not focusing too much on the controller controls and they figure you should have a keyboard and mouse if you are into FPS' lol.

lol

 

[wuliheron]

In an ideal world all games could be played on any system using any controller you wanted. Guess what, this isn't an ideal world. In an ideal world ubisoft would be the perfect game developer willing to bend over and grease their butt for their customers. Guess what, this isn't an ideal world.

 

[JujuFish]

This has all of zero effect on whether or not I get Assassin's Creed III. I've used a controller for every game in the series and would use a controller with ACIII regardless of whether or not it supports keyboard+mouse.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Dumb things happens all the time these days like text chat in the PC version of ME3 MP completely taken out yet there are no shortage of gamers throwing money at imbecile devs. Talk about being part of the problem and not knowing it.

 

[DeadFred]

I bought the first one (after it hit the bargian bin) and tried to play it with M/KB but found it horribly lacking, I shan't buy another.

Now when they don't sell any copies they'll just blame it on piracy.

Hey Ubisoft, it's not the pirates; you're just shit.

^THIS!

and..........

Fuck ubisoft.

^THIS!

 

[videogames101]

lol, I'm actually in the same boat as Maximillian. Why would I ever play AC with a keyboard and mouse anyway? In a game like that, a gamepad is always going to be the superior control choice, regardless of how how much effort they put into the PC version. It's just designed for a gamepad.

But... I understand that if you're going to make a PC game, you need to make sure your KB+M controls work. So it's not like this really excuses them.

Idk, I've tried both and completely disagree.

 

[pw38]

Maybe because I use a 50" plasma as my monitor and sit on the couch but the controller thing doesn't really bother me. It could also be because after being a PC gamer I moved to consoles for about 10 years and have just moved back so I'm used to controllers. It would be nice to at least give people the option instead of forcing people to use something they might not want to use. Then again this is just a console port so what difference would it have made?

 

[Rifter]

Fuck Ubisoft

 

[rchiu]

Vote with your wallet, if you don't like Ubisoft, don't buy their product. I know I am not.

But understand Ubisoft is a business, they are not in business to choose PC or Console, they go where the money is. They don't want to develop two different interface, they think the Console controller interface give them the biggest bang for their buck, that's a business decision they gotta make.

What we can do is vote with our wallet to prove them wrong.

 

[Pia]

But understand Ubisoft is a business, they are not in business to choose PC or Console, they go where the money is. They don't want to develop two different interface, they think the Console controller interface give them the biggest bang for their buck, that's a business decision they gotta make.

It's a design decision, not just a business one. KB+M controls do not fit all games. If they did, we'd have no need for gamepads, arcade sticks, steering wheels and pedals, high-end joystick-throttle sets, flight sim pedals, TrackIR, and so on.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Fuck ubisoft.

They make it awfully difficult to have any other opinion of them than the one above.

But then Assassins creed while impressive the first time around, honestly hasn't been a particularly interesting series of games, it's just the same old rubbish over and over, and the control method has always had forced mouse acceleration which makes mouse control absolutely awful anyway so I don't really see any huge change there...

 

[Rhezuss]

Wow, stating they won't put much effort in controls they already put some efforts on the last ACs...

LOL, Ubi can biaf...

 

[darkewaffle]

Point and click with pixel precision with a stick? Lol.

stick: press and hold stick, and wait.

mouse: turn 180 degs in the flick of the wrist.

I don't know how people can tolerate "press and hold" turning in console FPS games. Analog stick or not, it's as bad as keyboard turning.

I don't know why the thumb sticks on controllers haven't been replaced with thumb sized trackballs yet... would be a huge improvement in point-click stop-start on a pixel precision. You turn as fast as you want to turn, not at JOY_X / 128 * MAX_TURN_SPEED. I also don't like the auto centering and the need to hold the stick under tension to freeze your point of aim, as when looking at the sky. This too is a limitation of the sticks finite range unlike the infinite range and wrap around of a mouse/trackball and the inability to recenter a stick as you would when you pick up a mouse and set it back down.

Third person is irrelevant. It's just the camera backed out and a player model drawn on screen, play is damn near the same in that you generally ignore your player avatar and focus on the crosshair centered on the screen as you would a FPS.

You're looking at one specific example in that camera movement is centered around one singular point, the aiming reticle/crosshair; which independent control of is much better with a mouse of course. However in games like Prince of Persia, Darksiders, Bastion, Ocarina of Time, God of War, Assassin's Creed, and others where you do not have manual camera control (essentially your reticle is nothing more than where the camera is pointing) it creates a situation where you do need to have less limited control of your character.

If you do have complete camera control, then WASD is a perfectly acceptable movement scheme. However if the camera is automated than WASD is nothing more than a glorified D-Pad limiting you to only moving in one of eight directions at any given time. A joystick in that same scenario removes this limitation, which is why it's more precise compared to KB/M in some games.

Never used a track ball though, but I feel like as long as you have enough room to move your mouse I would prefer the tactile 'feedback' of the actual movement.

Edit: Also at no point in the article does it say "Keyboard and mouse will not work at all". Not investing in it simply means it won't be undergoing a lot of development, so you may have to deal with a lousy default control scheme, lack of buttons being correctly referenced (eg: "attack button" instead of "q key"), or support for fewer mapping options (eg: Bastion supported gamepads, keyboard, and click to move by default). But I think there's no way they'd disable support for keyboard/mouse entirely, assuming that would be the case is even more retarded than the idea itself.

 

[zinfamous]

I tried playing AC2 on m&KB, couldn't get through the intro. It is absolutely dreadful.So, I've still only played AC1 on PS3 and these games really are designed for gamepad.

I don't see why they should favor a system that simply doesn't work as well with the type of game; and with the 360 gamepad and other options from logitech, I really see no reason for action-oriented games like this to ever consider working with KB&M.

 

[KaOTiK]

they don't need to favor KB/M but they should still be putting effort into making the controls good since it is the primary control input for the PC. Letting them slack off and do a half ass job on the controls simply because the game plays better with a controller is inviting even more issues to come later on when they want to cut corners somewhere else and we all know they will try and cut corners somewhere else.