Watch Dogs thread (new story trailer and release date announced!)

[gorcorps]

The side missions are a lie and clones of each other:

- Serial killer final mission: profile and whack like every other random crime.

- Human trafficking final mission: get the guy who has a convoy route like every other convoy side mission.

- Weapons investigation final mission: Survive waves of enemies. Like that other story mission in Act III.

- Fixer missions: 4 different types (as far as I could see) involving you doing pointless driving stuff with the sloppy driving controls for a progress bar and cash you don't need.

- Hacking: Hacking driving where Ubisoft feels like it and only 4 types - bollards, steam pipes, lights, and bridges. And jumping only where are hydraulic lifts. Why does Chicago have all these hydraulic lifts? Coding in jumps would have been too heavy?

I finished the game and some of the side missions but otherwise have forgotten about it. Why would you bother with side missions if they offer you nothing meaningful? As for GTA V this also suffers from one similar issue, the buildings are empty and most you can't even go into or interact with. Its a pretty city with nothing underneath. If you did buy this I'd form a class action and sue Ubisoft. It really is that rubbish.

LOL

sue Ubisoft because the game isn't flawless... What a stupid thing to say

 

[Carfax83]

There's a rumor going around that yesterday's patch was just a preliminary patch, and not the actual patch that's going to actually fix stuff..

The rumor has some validity I suppose, because yesterday's patch was only 58mb in size. I think it was mostly to fix the most game breaking bugs, like the save game corruption issue..

But the actual performance enhancing stuff is still to come....or so I'm hoping! :\

 

[sze5003]

The side missions are a lie and clones of each other:

- Serial killer final mission: profile and whack like every other random crime.

- Human trafficking final mission: get the guy who has a convoy route like every other convoy side mission.

- Weapons investigation final mission: Survive waves of enemies. Like that other story mission in Act III.

- Fixer missions: 4 different types (as far as I could see) involving you doing pointless driving stuff with the sloppy driving controls for a progress bar and cash you don't need.

- Hacking: Hacking driving where Ubisoft feels like it and only 4 types - bollards, steam pipes, lights, and bridges. And jumping only where are hydraulic lifts. Why does Chicago have all these hydraulic lifts? Coding in jumps would have been too heavy?

I finished the game and some of the side missions but otherwise have forgotten about it. Why would you bother with side missions if they offer you nothing meaningful? As for GTA V this also suffers from one similar issue, the buildings are empty and most you can't even go into or interact with. Its a pretty city with nothing underneath. If you did buy this I'd form a class action and sue Ubisoft. It really is that rubbish.

Thanks for spoiling those lol. I haven't finished the game yet. At least here you get points towards unlocks for things whereas in gta v you maybe got a little money for doing them. A lot of the times you didn't get anything.

We can't really expect some revolutionary open world game where you can do everything. Even gta is the same open world game it has been since it was created. Granted the physics are a lot better and you can fly planes and explore, you only do so much until you've seen it.

I feel like at least with watchdogs and the hacking there was more variety as to how to complete some of the missions.

 

[Homer Simpson]

There's a rumor going around that yesterday's patch was just a preliminary patch, and not the actual patch that's going to actually fix stuff..

The rumor has some validity I suppose, because yesterday's patch was only 58mb in size. I think it was mostly to fix the most game breaking bugs, like the save game corruption issue..

But the actual performance enhancing stuff is still to come....or so I'm hoping! :\

Yeah, i read that but the watchdogs twitter acct and ubi support forums both indicated this was the patch. so i guess either their definition of performance enhancements differs from the rest of known mankind or they were just providing lip service.

 

[Homer Simpson]

yeah, it doesnt really help much. the microstutter which ive never really noticed before with SLI is pretty apparent with it enabled and in fullscreen. i do find that borderless smooths that out over full screen. problem is, when i run it that way, when i launch into the game, the gamma or something is setup stupidly low; like there is a heavy black filter on the screen. its not remotely playable. to fix, i have to change to full screen, go into the game world, then back to the menu and change it back to borderless. every. time.

the "regular" stutter that everyone is familiar with is still there SLI or not. the big .5 or 1 second stutters, especially at intersections.

just wanted to correct myself a little here. ive tried so many different things at different times with different combos on two different computers i think i overlooked a few things. first thing, i went back to 337.88 (from 340.43) just now on my 780ti system and the stuttering decreased a boatload, SLI or single. at the moment, on the 780ti system, i have the 337.88 drivers, SLI off, and modified patch.dat/.fat files from TheWorse thread over at guru3d. its a combo of the the ubi patch, the .7 version of The Worse mod and some additional tweaks by another user that lessened the DoF effect. with HIGH textures and SMAA the game is almost perfectly smooth; albeit at a lower framerate: 40s-50s. there's a few small stutters but i would call it playable. just changing to SLI creates more stutters but a higher framerate: 60s-70s. ULTRA too many stutters to be playable in any driving bits. if i get motivated enough, i might try these settings on the 4GB 670's and see if they can handle ultra or not. i should not have to work this hard to make a $60 game playable on top end hardware.

also, rolling back to 337.88 seems to have fixed the gamma or whatever problem i was having with borderless.

 

[Carfax83]

just wanted to correct myself a little here. ive tried so many different things at different times with different combos on two different computers i think i overlooked a few things. first thing, i went back to 337.88 (from 340.43) just now on my 780ti system and the stuttering decreased a boatload, SLI or single. at the moment, on the 780ti system, i have the 337.88 drivers, SLI off, and modified patch.dat/.fat files from TheWorse thread over at guru3d. its a combo of the the ubi patch, the .7 version of The Worse mod and some additional tweaks by another user that lessened the DoF effect. with HIGH textures and SMAA the game is almost perfectly smooth; albeit at a lower framerate: 40s-50s. there's a few small stutters but i would call it playable. just changing to SLI creates more stutters but a higher framerate: 60s-70s. ULTRA too many stutters to be playable in any driving bits. if i get motivated enough, i might try these settings on the 4GB 670's and see if they can handle ultra or not. i should not have to work this hard to make a $60 game playable on top end hardware.

also, rolling back to 337.88 seems to have fixed the gamma or whatever problem i was having with borderless.

I can confirm what Homer here is saying. I reverted back to 337.88 and the game is running MUCH smoother now. It still stutters, but it's definitely playable compared to how it was running with the 340 drivers..
I'm running with SLI turned on, temporal SMAA and ultra textures though, as I refuse to downgrade my gaming experience..

I can actually see the effects of the performance increase in the patch. It's just too bad that they never fixed the stuttering problem.

 

[DigDog]

Wow this game was disappointing. GTA clone all the way, but somehow trying to be all serious n' stuff.
I'd rather have a GTA with its quirky sense of humour (humor for ya Yanks) than this poorly written lightshow.

Great graphics, sure.

But .. that writing. Man the writing is so bad, it makes me want to go on the internet to yell out just how bad it is.

 

[finbarqs]

graphics are stuff crappy, even after the mod. The shallow DOF is definitely distracting (don't know how to turn it off) Daytime graphics are just meh.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Wow this game was disappointing. GTA clone all the way, but somehow trying to be all serious n' stuff.
I'd rather have a GTA with its quirky sense of humour (humor for ya Yanks) than this poorly written lightshow.

Great graphics, sure.

But .. that writing. Man the writing is so bad, it makes me want to go on the internet to yell out just how bad it is.

I actually enjoyed the story in Watch Dogs more than GTA V because it appeared to me that most of the story in GTA was pointless nonsense like a cartoon and Watch Dogs felt more grounded.

How is it a GTA clone when in GTA you can only outrun police by driving fast when in this game you actually have to think about your path and use the environmental hacks? It's not a clone. You probably think every open world game is trying to copy GTA. The fact that is is more or less open world, in a city, with cars you can drive doesn't make it a GTA clone.

 

[sze5003]

I actually enjoyed the story in Watch Dogs more than GTA V because it appeared to me that most of the story in GTA was pointless nonsense like a cartoon and Watch Dogs felt more grounded.

How is it a GTA clone when in GTA you can only outrun police by driving fast when in this game you actually have to think about your path and use the environmental hacks? It's not a clone. You probably think every open world game is trying to copy GTA.

To be honest a lot of people think this. The evasion of police in watchdogs is much more difficult and forces you to be creative to escape. They also don't just randomly show up. You are tracked, located then they show up. Loosing them using hacks is even tough and takes a bit of thinking.

 

[gorcorps]

To be honest a lot of people think this. The evasion of police in watchdogs is much more difficult and forces you to be creative to escape. They also don't just randomly show up. You are tracked, located then they show up. Loosing them using hacks is even tough and takes a bit of thinking.

It doesn't really take much thinking. You drive until you hear the sound indicating you can take down a car, then hit the button. The audio clues are obvious enough that you could almost do it blind. I enjoy it, but let's not kid ourselves here.

 

[sze5003]

I found it kind of tough in some areas. But I also suck at driving in this game.

 

[escrow4]

To be honest a lot of people think this. The evasion of police in watchdogs is much more difficult and forces you to be creative to escape. They also don't just randomly show up. You are tracked, located then they show up. Loosing them using hacks is even tough and takes a bit of thinking.

You blow up the helicopter, walk up to the L-train, hit Q and get away. Coppers are too stupid to follow you up some stairs. And the writing is laughable. Stock gravelly voiced white protagonist loses someone important, goes vigilante, and er that's it. Because. The missions revolve around go there, hack that with Q, shoot that, cutscene. There is no development and no choices. The supporting characters are some of the worst I've ever seen. Jordi is in like three missions, and Lucky Quinn is in like 2. The game's plot really goes nowhere.

 

[cmdrdredd]

What game doesn't have missions revolving around "go here and do that"? That is as dumb an argument as I have ever heard.

 

[sze5003]

Gta is similar. Go to a place, find the guy, kill him or prepare to chase him down or take out him and his goons. There isn't any game that doesn't repeat itself up until now. At least the side missions give you points towards unlocks and when I'm bored I can enter someone's game and hack them or accept other online challenges.

One thing I like about this game is the seamless mp entrance and exit. No long waiting screen, and you are right back into your own game.

I'm pretty sure the next one will have a better story.

 

[gevorg]

Easiest way to escape high star police chase is to drive to the nearest harbor and sail in the water. Then just snipe or hack the helicopter. This is a cheat-like tactic though.

 

[DigDog]

I actually enjoyed the story in Watch Dogs more than GTA V because it appeared to me that most of the story in GTA was pointless nonsense like a cartoon and Watch Dogs felt more grounded.

How is it a GTA clone when in GTA you can only outrun police by driving fast when in this game you actually have to think about your path and use the environmental hacks? It's not a clone. You probably think every open world game is trying to copy GTA. The fact that is is more or less open world, in a city, with cars you can drive doesn't make it a GTA clone.

Ah, but!

Zero Punctuation agrees with me! And disagrees with you!

My good sir, i win this internet argument!

(and some more exclamation marks)!!!!1

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/9351-WATCH-DOGS

 

[escrow4]

What game doesn't have missions revolving around "go here and do that"? That is as dumb an argument as I have ever heard.

Most games that go hear and do that try and spice it up. Watch Dogs doesn't bother. Go here, press Q, escape. Repeat.

 

[sxr7171]

I installed Ubisoft's patch in hopes the stuttering would go away, instead it got worse.


Just as I was about to call it a $60 write off, I decided to go for broke and install "The Worse" mod. This was a suggestion by a user on the Ubisoft support forums.

Now the game plays (relatively) smooth as butter. It does stutter a bit here and there but my gosh the game is completely playable now at Ultra settings 4xTXAA. Mind you this is a patch that is not even finalized and one that Ubisoft says will break the game.

I can't say it looks better, it probably does, but I can say it made the game playable. While Ubisoft's own patch just screwed it up even worse. With Vsync off I even get 80fps. I have a feeling the final 1.0 release will get rid of all stutters seeing how much reduced they are in the 0.7 patch.

I can only speculate that Ubisoft crippled the PC version. Why they would do that is beyond me.

 

[finbarqs]

okay with the mod, I gotta say, day time is the most boring, night time isn't all that great either. BUT, the rain looks incredible, day or night! Kind of makes it a bit more interesting now...

 

[Jeff7181]

Has anyone tried the DLC yet?

 

[sxr7171]

Now that The Worse mod has made this game playable, I have to say it's a pretty great game. Lots of things to do.

 

[Homer Simpson]

Now that The Worse mod has made this game playable, I have to say it's a pretty great game. Lots of things to do.

yeah, after countless hours (or as steam says, about 10hrs) of jacking around trying to get rid of stuttering, now that i can finally play the game without constant stutters, i ran through a couple missions the other night and its pretty fun. although now ive picked up some other games in the steam sale that may eat up my game hours. not sure if ill get around to finishing WD now. definitely feel like i wasted my money on this one given i paid full price. oh well.

 

[BrightCandle]

Its a Ubisoft game, you have to expect it wont actually be all that fun to play in practice and be a technical mess for months after release, and might never actually work properly. For some reason in all the excitement about what we thought the game was and would be we forgot we were buying from the devil we already knew. It'll be a long time before Ubisoft gets to pull that trick again.

 

[sxr7171]

yeah, after countless hours (or as steam says, about 10hrs) of jacking around trying to get rid of stuttering, now that i can finally play the game without constant stutters, i ran through a couple missions the other night and its pretty fun. although now ive picked up some other games in the steam sale that may eat up my game hours. not sure if ill get around to finishing WD now. definitely feel like i wasted my money on this one given i paid full price. oh well.

I'm having problems again. Apparently somehow textures were set to high and AA to temporal. Putting them back to Ultra and 4x TXAA brings back the stutter.

Also one huge issue is how the game goes to 1080i for me in fullscreen. Only borderless plays at 1080p. Then I also lose V-Sync. I don't understand this. I can't find anyone else with this issue to try to fix it.