Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2014]

[pjbliverpool]

Surprisingly at this point the PS4 version would be even preferable than the stuttering PC version.

At any point did they say the PC version stutters at high settings and 900p with TSMAA while frame locked and vsynced to 30fps?

Because if not then I'm not following your logic above.

 

[-tkf-]

Another example of how crappy the PC gaming platform is handled. This game has been in development since ages, and yet, very obvious flaws shows up shortly after launch.

So now we wait for a patch and then we wait for a round of optimized drivers and then we have the final PC experience..

If it weren't for DF i might have bought this game and felt frustrated and annoyed about those flaws.

 

[Cyan]

Digital Foundry were very quick.

Lately, they seem to be way too quick, as people have been mentioning in this thread. Rushed articles are no good when there is no need for that, and they have literally no competition save from a single webpage.

It's getting tiresome. :/ Not to mention the final verdict which doesn't let players decide, as if we were silly.

Let players choose, they are smart enough to know which version suits them better after reading DF articles without the judgement. I am starting to feel like I shouldn't be bothered with that at all.

I feel bad sometimes when I read those articles and see the Xbox One version left out because they nitpick here and there.

Abide by the facts.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Another example of how crappy the PC gaming platform is handled. This game has been in development since ages, and yet, very obvious flaws shows up shortly after launch.

So now we wait for a patch and then we wait for a round of optimized drivers and then we have the final PC experience..

If it weren't for DF i might have bought this game and felt frustrated and annoyed about those flaws.

I think the only real issue (other than the massive downgrade of course) was giving PC gamers the option of "Ultra" textures. They don't offer much over high and no-one would have noticed if they never launched with that setting and changed "High" to "Ultra" and so on down the line.

That would have resolved most of the "stutter" issues that everyone is complaining about and made the game appear to be much better optimised.

Personally I prefer higher options settings even if they are unplayable on virtually all hardware, it allows the game to scale into the future. But the feedback on WD as with the original Crysis has proven once again that PC gamers for the most part don't really understand how their platform works so it's down to developers to dumb down our options to avoid negative feedback.

 

[taisui]

There is a difference between choosing my settings too high so that I can't run smoothly versus the game had a crazy spec requirement that I simply can't run it smoothly.

 

[TheWretched]

There is no "too high" if the target is moving.

 

[taisui]

It is "too high" when the system requirement hurt sales.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

And Watchdogs has already broken Ubisoft's first-day sales record.

 

[taisui]

Is it a PC only title? Wanna bet that the majority of the sales came from consoles? It must be a coincidence that the PC port is of inferior quality...one wonders.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

It still looks like a pretty strong launch on all platforms. All the youtube videos of the PC version have to come from somewhere.

 

[taisui]

I'm sorry but I fail to see your point.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

It seems like a lot of people have bought it on PC despite any hw issues. There's a lot of interest in videos, many tech sites are publishing articles to get hits, and so on. The timing also seems to work well with no other major multiplatform release around.

 

[taisui]

So we agree on that coding issues/bugs are different than the title itself targeted for an uberly unrealistic system specs then.
In the case of WD, it's easy to see that it's a bad port regardless how powerful the system it's running on, it still runs crappy.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

PC gamers were willing to tolerate Crysis and countless other games running badly at fill settings at their release, I don't see why Watch Dogs should get a different response...

 

[taisui]

You might want to look up how "well" Crysis had sold.
Crysis runs badly for people because it had ridiculous system requirement.
In the case of WD, which runs badly even with a uber system.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I am aware of it but it was still enough - and it had no console versions to rake in the money. WD will make a nice profit on those. But the PC problems weren't an issue before and they won't be either, after all it's still much better than GTA4.

 

[taisui]

Hence, there's no need to "dumb down" the settings for PC gamers to begin with.

 

[Shortbread]

PC gamers were willing to tolerate Crysis and countless other games running badly at fill settings at their release, I don't see why Watch Dogs should get a different response...

I will post some PC performance numbers and pictures when I get a chance this week. As of now, WD runs fairly smooth with max settings on my PC.

My R9 295x2 shows 37-44% utilization in most cases, nothing above 48% (using older drivers - haven’t loaded the new ones). CPU utilization across 12 threads is also quite good… mostly 23-38% usage, per thread. I wished UBI could have implemented dual socket multithreading though… I would love to see all 24 threads at work.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

PC gamers were willing to tolerate Crysis and countless other games running badly at fill settings at their release, I don't see why Watch Dogs should get a different response...

These launch day/week/month issues are what pushed me to game almost entirely on consoles except for anything PC exclusive, or RTS/MMOs. I just want to start the game and have it work well. I look at a lot of people on GAF having issues with WD on PC, suggesting certain drivers, tweaks to settings etc. I remember those days and I'm glad I don't have to tolerate them now.

Sure, the PC will eventually have an unparalleled experience, even for people with more moderate systems, but probably not until after I've finished the game and moved on.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Bad PC ports for console games are pretty par for the course. I was always under the assumption that it is simply the cross you have to carry when you choose to game on PC, since there is no effective platform holder and so no-one to stringently enforce TRCs or QA on a game release. It sucks for PC gamers but there you go.

WD however doesn't even seem to bad on PC. Nothing like some of the jank PC gamers have had to endure from other releases.

I however am playing it on PS4, since after revealing the specs and thinking my rig wouldn't cope, I already pre-ordered it on PS4. Glad I did now considering the result.

Devs are notoriously bad for not bothering to patch known issues from PC games (Bioware and Dragon Age:Origins says hi).