Watch Dogs Legion PS4

[NARMAK]

I personally think Ubisoft games overall are solid games, but tbh i have found myself more and more not buying them at launch and picking them up on sales o4 far after launch. Playing them at a much lower price point rather than full RRP makes them more forgivable for any issues imo and Ubisoft have a record for smoothing out their games post launch, sometimes quite aftee with patches.

I actually wonder if Mav despite his joke might be onto something and Ubisoft may remaster Watch_Dogs in the future and maybe do the game justice.

[Zivouhr]

What's interesting, is so far, this game is not being clearly stated to be online or offline as an option. In WD2, they made it clear from the start on their own website and videos. This might be online only as my concern.

Originally Posted by NARMAK

When Watch_Dogs was first announced. The concept was amazing imo. The idea of hackers taking control of and meddling with people in this ever connected digital age. It's just the execution seemed really bland and generic in the end. I think the story kind of suffered for the games animations in some areas ending up poor. The driving was really bad. That said, i thought the story itself if it had been done properly was actually an intriguing thing to explore. Especially now in a post Facebook era and where we're even more digitally than connected.

Personally, i think they're not going down that route again. That said, i think this will offer its own flavour of fun.

Many cars in WD1 did control poorly for the sportscars especially. So I'd be driving and trying to make gradual turns, but the car would overturn and it caused more problem than a real car ever would. I would intentionally drive the slower cars since they controlled better.

The bikes control perfectly in WD1 and 2 thankfully. The cars improved too.

Originally Posted by Bishop_99

That's right, I had completely forgotten about that awkward camera view in WD 2. That was another annoyance I had with it.

Yes, plus in WD2, the weapon wheel was completely abandoned from WD1. Suddenly, you could only carry about 2 weapons. Terrible, they should have give the choice to be a tech guy or a gunman whenever you wanted as in WD1. They intentionally forced the player to be a tech person.

[A Tortured Duckling]

Originally Posted by partridge

The only thing that appeals to me about this game is the virtual (if slightly futuristic) rendering of London to play around in. But I ignored the previous two, so I'm only likely to pick this up when it's on sale. Like under 9.99 cheap.

I agree with the London bit. There are a few cities I would like to see as the setting for an open world video game, and London is one of them. Definitely not in the Watch Dogs franchise, and definitely not from Ubisoft, though.

Originally Posted by GeneticMutation

Ubisoft games usually drop in price pretty quickly so we shouldn't have to wait too long before it's on sale for a decent price

This is true, and that's a good thing. The vast majority of their games are absolutely not worth full price, considering most of them are, like CoD for instance, the same game in a different coat of paint.

Originally Posted by Talal86

I think ubisoft games are good in small doses, meaning I only get 1 or 2 installments of their main games in a single generation

for example this gen I bought: Assassin's Creed Origins, Far Cry Primal and The Division, and had blast with all of them, Origins was probably my favorite game that year, and I put +100 hours in The Division

This seems like a sensible approach, for sure. If it works for you, it works for you. As long as you don't feel gypped out of your money, it's all good.

Personally, I have a strong dislike for Ubisoft because I know where they came from and I have witnessed the decline in the quality of their releases. I also find it absolutely disgraceful and utterly insulting that this particular company has made it a regular thing to show us something cool at E3, only to deliver a product that's not even half of what was shown or promised, and then taking a year or more to "fix" it after people have already paid full price for a half-assed game. Ubisoft wasn't always this way, but they have slowly destroyed their own credibility as a developer with these shenanigans. It's dirty, it's unfair and it's deliberately tricking people into giving them their money.

This kind of thing bothers me so much I simply pay them no mind and refuse to give them any of my money ever again. I feel the same about EA, Activision, and now all of the publishers who sold out to EPIC games after promising their fans (who had already pre-ordered the games, and even kickstarter backers ) that their games would release on Steam and GOG.

Still, visiting these threads and engaging in discussion is fun. I am glad that many people don't feel the way I do, and do enjoy Ubisoft's games for what they are. I just wish I could be one of them again, for these guys were high up on my favorites list back in the day.

[Bishop_99]

Originally Posted by NARMAK

I personally think Ubisoft games overall are solid games, but tbh i have found myself more and more not buying them at launch and picking them up on sales o4 far after launch. Playing them at a much lower price point rather than full RRP makes them more forgivable for any issues imo and Ubisoft have a record for smoothing out their games post launch, sometimes quite aftee with patches.

I actually wonder if Mav despite his joke might be onto something and Ubisoft may remaster Watch_Dogs in the future and maybe do the game justice.

I honestly doubt it. They have abandoned each Watch Dogs game fairly quickly, probably do to low sales. They never even released an Xbox One X patch for Watch Dogs 2 and left it running at 900p/30fps, even though that console was released only one year later.

Yet we see Massive provide a PS4 Pro upgrade for The Division 1 and long time later, they provide an Xbox One X patch for the first game.

Personally, I think Watch Dogs 3 will sell poorly and even when the new Console's are released only 8 months later, they will not bother upgrading it or anything. They seem to want to forget about the Watch Dogs games a few months after they are released.

It won't be like Assassin's Creed Syndicate that randomly received a PS4 Pro patch.

[NARMAK]

Originally Posted by Bishop_99

I honestly doubt it. They have abandoned each Watch Dogs game fairly quickly, probably do to low sales. They never even released an Xbox One X patch for Watch Dogs 2 and left it running at 900p/30fps, even though that console was released only one year later.

Yet we see Massive provide a PS4 Pro upgrade for The Division 1 and long time later, they provide an Xbox One X patch for the first game.

Personally, I think Watch Dogs 3 will sell poorly and even when the new Console's are released only 8 months later, they will not bother upgrading it or anything. They seem to want to forget about the Watch Dogs games a few months after they are released.

It won't be like Assassin's Creed Syndicate that randomly received a PS4 Pro patch.

Tbh, i don't think it's a Ubisoft exclusive trend but it's a slight concern only for older PS4 gen titles to probably not get patches quickly unless they're very popular and the devs/publishers wanna push some extra sales. It becomes a case of prioritising other things rather than trying to upgrade performance on older titles with little to no financial return on the table.

Maybe at some point Ubisoft may allow small internal teams at the studios to try and patch the stuff to take advantage of better hardware like Pro, X and the whole next gen. That said, i think it's probably not gonna happen quick. Most will switch focus to making these cross gen games play adequately before ramping up fully to spec on next gen only games.

[Zivouhr]

That does make sense, that Watch Dogs 1 could finally get the upgrade for PS5 that so many complained about the downgrade it got on PS4, compared to the E3 previews with the special effects that probably slowed down the framerate.

Odds it'll happen? 2/10.

[A Tortured Duckling]

Originally Posted by Zivouhr

That does make sense, that Watch Dogs 1 could finally get the upgrade for PS5 that so many complained about the downgrade it got on PS4, compared to the E3 previews with the special effects that probably slowed down the framerate.

Odds it'll happen? 2/10.

Not just PS4. Every platform, including PC. It is what they have been doing for a long time now.

I keep my PC up to date in terms of hardware, which means I upgrade about once a year on average. It's unnecessary and overkill, but it's what I enjoy doing so I pretty much always have a top of the line, beast-mode PC. Taking that into consideration I can honestly tell you that even in 4K, with everything cranked to the max, none of Ubisoft's games ever look as good as they do in their E3 presentations. I'd say Watch Dogs, Siege and The Division are the three biggest offenders in this case (because they quite simply look like shit compared to what was shown when they were announced) but all of their games receive this treatment. On top of the visual downgrades, many of their demos often show cool features that simply never make it to the retail code, whether it be at release or a significant amount of time and patches later.

They're not the only one doing it, but they are definitely the one doing it the most. It's a damn shame and, in my opinion, this kind of bait and switch bullshit should be illegal and studios who do this to us should be held accountable for it.

[Zivouhr]

Originally Posted by Autumn Shroud

Not just PS4. Every platform, including PC. It is what they have been doing for a long time now.

I keep my PC up to date in terms of hardware, which means I upgrade about once a year on average. It's unnecessary and overkill, but it's what I enjoy doing so I pretty much always have a top of the line, beast-mode PC. Taking that into consideration I can honestly tell you that even in 4K, with everything cranked to the max, none of Ubisoft's games ever look as good as they do in their E3 presentations. I'd say Watch Dogs, Siege and The Division are the three biggest offenders in this case (because they quite simply look like shit compared to what was shown when they were announced) but all of their games receive this treatment. On top of the visual downgrades, many of their demos often show cool features that simply never make it to the retail code, whether it be at release or a significant amount of time and patches later.

They're not the only one doing it, but they are definitely the one doing it the most. It's a damn shame and, in my opinion, this kind of bait and switch bullshit should be illegal and studios who do this to us should be held accountable for it.

You have a point, in that if they're going to make a game, present it as it will be in the final product, rather than amping it up but 30% better graphics and details, only to remove that in the final product. Considering your efforts to improve your PC to its best, I can understand why you'd be concerned about it.

Had they not done that, the reception would be more positive. Even so, Watch Dogs 1 was the best selling game in the franchise so far. Watch Dogs 2 was said to not have met their expectations to match the sales of WD1.

I still play WD1, but just wish it had 1080p and brought back the rest mode for PS4 that they removed and refuse to re-implement. 900p is okay, but for PS4, it could've hit 1080p as with WD2 and 3.

[Zivouhr]

https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.ph...net-connection
This ubi forum user asks if a constant internet connection is required to play Watch Dogs Legion. If it's playable offline.

Ubisoft's member said: 06-11-2019 UBI-Zuzu
No, there is no always online requirement in Watch Dogs Legion.


That's a relief. They don't clearly state it anywhere else, other than on amazon's page, they suggest you can take your recruits online. That suggests they're playable offline, but why don't they just spell it out, since there can be so many ways around not being direct with the gamer, and then secretly finding out it's online required.

[Ocean H]

YouTube

[NARMAK]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o07a...ature=youtu.be

Fair to say this is a strong possibility of what a PS5 version or patch up could look like with RTX?

Looks pretty sweet how RTX really does visually improve things in this open world. There's gonna be some insanely pretty images next gen from games.

[Bishop_99]

Originally Posted by NARMAK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o07a...ature=youtu.be

Fair to say this is a strong possibility of what a PS5 version or patch up could look like with RTX?

Looks pretty sweet how RTX really does visually improve things in this open world. There's gonna be some insanely pretty images next gen from games.

That setting will be extremely taxing even on a current RTX 2080Ti. At least with that graphics card, gamers have to make sacrifices to get it stable above 30fps. It feels like the next gen of graphics card may be able to handle Ray Tracing better.

I would be very surprised if the PS5 truly would be capable of that, in real time. I guess Sony would have to come up with some solution to replicate that, unless there is an off chance AMD has perfected Ray Tracing for their Navi GPU’s and they are only releasing it on the next gen Console’s along side their then, new GPU’s.

I guess is possible if Sony sacrifice other graphics or they and the developers would give the players settings to turn on and off some features. Also Ubisoft game are generally poorly optimized on PC, the trailer was limited to 30fps, The Division games are well optimized though.

Again, I would be surprised if this was patched in, unless the game would be a massive hit. In reality, the “next gen” version of “Legion” could have been developed for the PC version, then the ground work would have been in place for a proper patch. I get that game developers won’t do that though, it won’t happen until the next gen Console’s launch and then magically the PC versions are developed with the same “next gen design.”

Although I doubt sales for Legion will be that impressive and Ubisoft will likely be focused on the next AC game for next gen Console’s, I doubt they would patch up Legion at that point. I would like to be proven wrong, but I don’t see such long term support for this game.

[NARMAK]

Well, apparently Microsoft is using dedicated hardware for Ray Tracing and if Sony is gonna do the same, that should in theory make it a LOT easier to run by taking the chore off the GPU.

I know this isn't quite the same thing, but Bitcoin mining etc. used to be done via GPUs predominantly until people realised they could just make custom hardware specifically for that task. Ray Tracing dedicated hardware could theoretically do something similar too for games.

There's actually a lot of different things consoles can pull off imo with their custom design and designer ingenuity compared to what's possible on a PCs open system where a LOT of the hardware potential imo gets wasted. Same reason console games look better and better as time goes by on the same hardware but PCs generally don't unless you upgrade GPUs etc.

For me, i think we just need to hang tight till a full reveal of specs to see how much Ray Tracing PS5 can pull off. Also bear in mind, the PS3s CELL processor was doing Ray Tracing stuff all the way back then.

[Bishop_99]

Originally Posted by NARMAK

Well, apparently Microsoft is using dedicated hardware for Ray Tracing and if Sony is gonna do the same, that should in theory make it a LOT easier to run by taking the chore off the GPU.

I know this isn't quite the same thing, but Bitcoin mining etc. used to be done via GPUs predominantly until people realised they could just make custom hardware specifically for that task. Ray Tracing dedicated hardware could theoretically do something similar too for games.

There's actually a lot of different things consoles can pull off imo with their custom design and designer ingenuity compared to what's possible on a PCs open system where a LOT of the hardware potential imo gets wasted. Same reason console games look better and better as time goes by on the same hardware but PCs generally don't unless you upgrade GPUs etc.

For me, i think we just need to hang tight till a full reveal of specs to see how much Ray Tracing PS5 can pull off. Also bear in mind, the PS3s CELL processor was doing Ray Tracing stuff all the way back then.

Good points.

I guess I wouldn’t want them to use too much CPU power and compromise the possibility of 60fps as being the norm. Ray Tracing in it’s current state is really demanding. I would like to see some solution that won’t eat up to much resources, similar to the 4K checkerboarding which looks great. Even if it’s not the same as the current PC version, something that gets close.

If they have dedicated hardware just for the Ray Tracing, that would be great, although it will be interesting to see how they build it on a SoC as is used on Console’s.

Yes, I would need to upgrade my GTX 980ti to get Ray Tracing, but I’m not doing that for a long while, at least until next gen starts getting more established. I tend to game more so on the PS4 Pro, as I don’t like buying digital media as much as physical. PC is basically all digital. I will buy it if it’s a game I really want to play at 60fps and at the highest quality.

As for the Powecell and the PS3 and Ray Tracing, forgive my complete ingnorance, but I stopped gaming in 1995 and didn’t get back into gaming until I bought a PS4 in 2015. I followed the PS3 close enough because of the Blu-Ray support, but I assumed all games were 1080p back then lol. I had no idea about Ray Tracing with that chip or which games. I’ll have to read up on that to see how it worked, good information.

[NARMAK]

PS3 Ray tracing was a tech demo with very few if any examples of actual games using it. I think the closest was a Gran Turismo demo using just the CELL to generate the image with elements of ray tracing. CELL had an immense power in that area due to its design. x86 isn't as suited to it. Hence needing a custom chip that the system could access which is what i think Microsoft has already confirmed by saying dedicated hardware for Ray Tracing.

Knowing we're sticking to x86, it means PC like CPU & GPU set ups BUT the closed system of console allows manufacturers with their partners to make some very unique hardware set ups where Ray Tracing dedicated chips etc. can all be set up imo that are all at the availability of the custom OS and dev tools whilst retaining x86 compatibility with PS4 for BC. Remember, they need simply turn off or patch up the titles to let the software access the extra hardware.

[Bishop_99]

Good info on the Power Cell chip on the PS3, I didn't know much about it really. Sounds like it was a good chip, just mainly taken advantage of by first part studios?

Yeah it's going to be easier for backwards compatibility with the PS5, I expect The Last Of Us II to fully take advantage of it and patch it up properly, like a lot of the first party studio games. Watch Dogs Legion? I'm still not a believer that they will lol, but we'll see if Ubisoft steps up even if sales are very low by November 2020.

As for Ray Tracing, this discussion changed my opinion on how the PS5 may use it. I'm still skeptical, but more so open to the idea that it may turn out to be better than what I expect.

[NARMAK]

Originally Posted by Bishop_99

Good info on the Power Cell chip on the PS3, I didn't know much about it really. Sounds like it was a good chip, just mainly taken advantage of by first part studios?

Yeah it's going to be easier for backwards compatibility with the PS5, I expect The Last Of Us II to fully take advantage of it and patch it up properly, like a lot of the first party studio games. Watch Dogs Legion? I'm still not a believer that they will lol, but we'll see if Ubisoft steps up even if sales are very low by November 2020.

As for Ray Tracing, this discussion changed my opinion on how the PS5 may use it. I'm still skeptical, but more so open to the idea that it may turn out to be better than what I expect.

I think the very nature of the CELL meant it was a very powerful CPU and hell, even governments used em in clusters for super computers BUT the way they were designed wasn't quite as dev friendly as everybody was so used to x86 architecture from PC. So by changing the PS4 to that from CELL in the PS3, it made it significantly easier for devs to optimise games and imo once again continue BC as well as let Sony have a wider range of options when it comes to CPU and GPU choice. So it was the right way to go as the benefits in a console outweighed the cons of staying with CELL.

I think Ray Tracing could either end up a small gimmick next gen if the hardware support isn't really there or come into its own a lot later on into the life cycle of PS5 in 1st party titles and only properly manifest in PS6. Either way, i do think Sony and MS are both aware they'll need it in some capacity and they're gonna add it in but maybe we might see mid gen refreshes for Pro and X versions that push the RT further again with better hardware. That said, i feel like Ubisoft should theoretically be able to just take the PC stuff for Ray Tracing and mold it into the console versions with a bit of a tweak, then release the patch.

[Zivouhr]

I'll probably consider giving this game a try since it offers offline play, which is a relief instead of Ubisoft going always online which would suck as with Breakpoint Ghost Recon.

[Bishop_99]

Originally Posted by NARMAK

I think the very nature of the CELL meant it was a very powerful CPU and hell, even governments used em in clusters for super computers BUT the way they were designed wasn't quite as dev friendly as everybody was so used to x86 architecture from PC. So by changing the PS4 to that from CELL in the PS3, it made it significantly easier for devs to optimise games and imo once again continue BC as well as let Sony have a wider range of options when it comes to CPU and GPU choice. So it was the right way to go as the benefits in a console outweighed the cons of staying with CELL.

I think Ray Tracing could either end up a small gimmick next gen if the hardware support isn't really there or come into its own a lot later on into the life cycle of PS5 in 1st party titles and only properly manifest in PS6. Either way, i do think Sony and MS are both aware they'll need it in some capacity and they're gonna add it in but maybe we might see mid gen refreshes for Pro and X versions that push the RT further again with better hardware. That said, i feel like Ubisoft should theoretically be able to just take the PC stuff for Ray Tracing and mold it into the console versions with a bit of a tweak, then release the patch.

interesting facts about that CPU. I’ve read about why BC was so hard for the PS3 games, but that even lead back to the games being developed for that System. I thought the costs or production issues use to be tied in for the Blu-Ray support.

We’ll see how the PS5 supports ray tracing, they have plenty of time to work on it from now, it will just be a long while before it is revealed to us. Seeing how it is used and evolves on the PS5 over time will be nice to see. It would be easy for Ubisoft to patch in ray tracing for those playing the game on the PS5 if they can just port it over basically, I would just think that Ubisoft would focus more on the newer games and bringing in the new features there.

Originally Posted by Zivouhr

I'll probably consider giving this game a try since it offers offline play, which is a relief instead of Ubisoft going always online which would suck as with Breakpoint Ghost Recon.

it was surprising pleasing to see that this game won’t require an online connection at all times, it seemed as if Ubisoft was heading that way. I’m glad that they made this choice so you can freely unplug the Ethernet or wi-if and continue to play the game, not being concerned if their servers might go down in the middle of your play through.

Also it will be different knowing enemies have health levels and health bars, for a Watch Dogs game. I would hope it’s just limited to certain areas around a mission and not in general areas of the map.

[i007spectre]

Guess I need to cancel my preorder for this game now that it will be cross gen.