I'm not sure where I said that pushing games out with bugs was acceptable. All I was addressing was the "why is it so hard?" question. Anyone who has ever shipped a game should know the answer to that.
I'm not sure where I said that pushing games out with bugs was acceptable. All I was addressing was the "why is it so hard?" question. Anyone who has ever shipped a game should know the answer to that.
Ok, you were misunderstanding the point then. No one was suggesting it was an easy job to make the game. I'll rephrase skyline's statement; why is it so hard to wait until the game is completed, before releasing a game?
The problem is, most recent titles have been utter garbage, on launch. Quick patches are made, and the game usually moves up to 'tolerable', until everything else can be addressed.
It's hurting the industry, and the reputation of games. I remain baffled that studios keep making this same mistake. These issues overshadow potentially amazing games.
For me, I had a sense that the engine rework, for AC:U, was going to result in issues, so I held off on purchasing it. My friends have confirmed my fears (and posts here added to that confirmation). It would have been my first AC, since AC:Brotherhood. I don't have much of a budget, to buy games, so now I'm going to wait on AC:U, and most likely, by the time it's fixed, I'll have purchased something else, and AC:U will be out of mind.
Ok, you were misunderstanding the point then. No one was suggesting it was an easy job to make the game. I'll rephrase skyline's statement; why is it so hard to wait until the game is completed, before releasing a game?
The problem is, most recent titles have been utter garbage, on launch. Quick patches are made, and the game usually moves up to 'tolerable', until everything else can be addressed.
It's hurting the industry, and the reputation of games. I remain baffled that studios keep making this same mistake. These issues overshadow potentially amazing games.
For me, I had a sense that the engine rework, for AC:U, was going to result in issues, so I held off on purchasing it. My friends have confirmed my fears (and posts here added to that confirmation). It would have been my first AC, since AC:Brotherhood. I don't have much of a budget, to buy games, so now I'm going to wait on AC:U, and most likely, by the time it's fixed, I'll have purchased something else, and AC:U will be out of mind.
Exactly, thanks. I meant no disrespect as to the difficulty we all know how hard it is
Firstly... Congrats to the team behind the work.. holy cow is this game amazing looking. Just the amount of work that went in i bet was insane, and it shows some really good quality. I like just roaming and looking at stuff so far. Playing on PS4, and i am quite happy with the game. But have only played for like 30 mins.
So Adam, you guys should get a pat on the back.
As far as the game is concerned, its quite disappointing the state in which it was shipped. no stable fps, the pop in and weird changes of color and hair and LODs at a close distance can be distracting. Hope its patched. Have not tried the game without internet connection to see if it improves FPS... and i kinda don't feel like disconnecting my ps4 for that matter. I guess i'll just wait for a patch. I am still excited to play the game and see what its all about. But i doubt it will surpass Black Flag. That game was the best imo.
Yeah, when you've been around awhile and you see how marketing campaigns line up with press tours which line up with the games release date you realize that the "when it's done" days are gone. You can't do that anymore unless you're willing to dump a ton of cash down the drain rescheduling everything that was planned and already bought.
And as Will said, it's not going to hurt them in the end. A handful of people online will vow never to buy another Assassin's Creed game again (which is untrue) and life goes on.
Yeah, when you've been around awhile and you see how marketing campaigns line up with press tours which line up with the games release date you realize that the "when it's done" days are gone. You can't do that anymore unless you're willing to dump a ton of cash down the drain rescheduling everything that was planned and already bought.
And as Will said, it's not going to hurt them in the end. A handful of people online will vow never to buy another Assassin's Creed game again (which is untrue) and life goes on.
May I point you and Will to exhibit B... Battlefield 4. That game was an abortion of issues, and as a result, you can see the repercussions with Battlefield Hardline. Look at how venomous the comments are, any time they post about Hardline, on social media.
I agree, these issues with Unity, will not deter Ubisoft sales, for upcoming titles, but I do think it's going to hurt future AC sales. The franchise was already starting to suffer from over exposure; this didn't help.
May I point you and Will to exhibit B... Battlefield 4. That game was an abortion of issues, and as a result, you can see the repercussions with Battlefield Hardline. Look at how venomous the comments are, any time they post about Hardline, on social media.
I agree, these issues with Unity, will not deter Ubisoft sales, for upcoming titles, but I do think it's going to hurt future AC sales. The franchise was already starting to suffer from over exposure; this didn't help.
I don't think the problems of BF4 will make much of a difference to the sales of Hardline though. Only the most "active" gamers will bother leaving nasty remarks on social media, the large majority of gamers are probably busy playing games, or doing other things (considering most sales come from "casual" gamers).
btw, from guru 3d: "Assassin's Creed Unity not running well on AMD hardware"
And though this is a console port, Ubisoft blames AMD for the technical issues in Assassins Creed Unity. Kinda weird since all the consoles run an AMD APU eh ? AMD Radeon users report texture issues, low frame rates and overall glitching problems. Ubisoft claims the issues are related to select AMD CPU and GPU combinations, which points to a lack of testing on AMD hardware. So all of the sudden its AMD's fault ...
The main root cause of the issue isn't AMD or for that matter Nvidia who's mid-range products run into issues as well, it's Ubisoft. The DX11 game currently is pushing roughly 50,000 draw calls on the DirectX 11 API. DX11 is designed to handle ~10,000 peak draw calls. Mantle and DirectX 12 are designed to handle that number, but not DX11.
A handful of people online will vow never to buy another Assassin's Creed game again (which is untrue) and life goes on.
I won't say that I will never buy another Assassin's Creed because I tend to judge games based on their own merits but seeing people talk about all the errors and framerate issues caused me to buy a different title this week. Granted I'm just one guy, but at the same time I'm sure other people had a similar thought process.
What I find more concerning is the fact that it's becoming increasingly common to ship games that are broken and rely on a post release patch to clean them up. At what point might consumers lose confidence in your product and what effect will it have as people see a growing trend and get sick of it?
If the game gets patched later I might pick it up but it things like this give me pause on buying games when they come out. It's getting to the point where there are very few companies I'm willing to trust to buy day one releases. It is especially unfortunate because the environment art on this game looks absolutely beautiful. I hope it gets fixed soon.
I never played AC or anything and don't intent to but the artwork seem pretty epic, some of the screenshots posted in earlier pages are rather well composed. Kudos to who ever worked on this title.
Of course dev budgets aren't infinite, but we're talking about Ubisoft here, the same company that will happily waste a shitload of money on multiple needless CGI trailers.
The fact is AAA development is insanely bloated and for the sake of the long term health of the industry consumers need to be given a product that actually works. The amount of broken AAA releases this generation has been ridiculous, and is simply not acceptable.
EDIT: I should note I am not criticizing any actual developer. I know full well what it's like having an unfinished product released, having worked hard on awful games such as 007 Legends. My issue is with company management/publisher, who seem happy with releasing unfinished products in order to appease shareholders and investors, despite the fact that such practices will damage our industry in the long term by nuking consumer confidence.
Oh man, reading this thread has utterly depressed me. On a Friday too!! First off, I'm having a blast with AC:Unity (PS4). It looks AMAZING and, this being an game art forum (at least it was the last time I checked) I have to doff my hat to those who worked on it. It's an achievement. Be very proud of it. I've played all of this AC games and this one is up there with the best of them.
Does the game have it's issues? Yeh, sure it does. Are these issues enough to detract from my experience and lead me to vow never to buy another Ubisoft game? Nope.
Why are games shipped in "unfinished" states that needs patching after launch? Please, get a job and work a while in an actual AAA studio. Some fan-made mod or "I made a crate that appeared in this AAA game" doesn't count. Until then, you literally have no idea what happens during the development of a game or why things are the way that they are.
I'm feeling ranty now. I demand an art dump to calm me down.
No-one is criticizing the people who worked on this, they are simply saying they needed more time. Given the current trend of broken games being released, consumer confidence is at a low, and if this continues the AAA bubble WILL burst. There is a difference between a game having some issues and a game being unfinished.
You may have not experienced that many issues but it's undeniable that a disproportionate amount of people have, and if you consider that normal for AAA then obviously the norm needs to change. I would argue that this is not normal, but from a consumer perspective a worrying trend for this generation has emerged, and that is ultimately what matters.
I don't understand why some artists who worked on the game are getting jittery on the feedback or dissing of customers.
Maybe instead of blowing steam in this direction, blow off some steam at your own tech team in studios that worked on the game with you, or the head honchos if they pushed out the product too early?
If the artist isn't at fault, then poke the people who are, you have the power get something done, lifting your hands and saying "it happens, we can't do anything" is a very defeatist attitude which frankly, is getting tiresome, and if you're going to take that attitude, then don't bother saying anything, because you're not part of the solution, you're only the aggravation towards the people who bought your game (next time you wonder where 'trolls' come from, remember they are created, not born).
I need to remind you, that your average consumer is a University/College student, who is working a shitty in-house Uni job, that is paying them 600-800 a month. Some of these people are putting 10% of their money on your product on promise of it working as advertised.
And before anyone says "no one is forcing them to buy, they can wait for a discount", I need to remind you, that if everyone did that, many companies that we have now wouldn't even be around by the end of the year.
Sorry for being snarky, but the amount of 'distance' some dev's put between them and their consumer is ridiculous, you're not an untouchable Deity who found the cure to 7 kinds of cancer, you're a dev who's consumer base is scrapping the barrel sometimes, and the barrel is pretty finite as well.
You may have not experienced that many issues but it's undeniable that a disproportionate amount of people have, and if you consider that normal for AAA then obviously the norm needs to change. I would argue that this is not normal, but from a consumer perspective a worrying trend for this generation has emerged, and that is ultimately what matters.
I haven't played the game myself but it seems like a large majority, if not all the of the errors that cause the game to be unplayable are exclusive to PC. If that is the case, then this isn't really a unique problem. PC gamers have been getting shafted for many years now and that isn't going to change anytime soon because it would cost a lot of extra money to help a very small amount of people. Sure, it'd be great to have a perfect game on every platform, but realistically speaking, tough decisions need to be made by those in charge.
I don't understand why some artists who worked on the game are getting jittery on the feedback or dissing of customers.
Maybe instead of blowing steam in this direction, blow off some steam at your own tech team in studios that worked on the game with you, or the head honchos if they pushed out the product too early?
If the artist isn't at fault, then poke the people who are, you have the power get something done, lifting your hands and saying "it happens, we can't do anything" is a very defeatist attitude which frankly, is getting tiresome, and if you're going to take that attitude, then don't bother saying anything, because you're not part of the solution, you're only the aggravation towards the people who bought your game (next time you wonder where 'trolls' come from, remember they are created, not born).
The idiots on the internet that are blatantly insulting a development team that clearly poured their heart into a project aren't part of the solution either. Ideally, nobody should be blowing steam at anybody else, and I don't know a single person who would yell at their upper management bosses (that's how you get fired, or get thrown in a negative light next time an unemployment wave hits.)
You have to remember, games aren't made by mindless robots. There was a human development team behind this game, a team with feelings and emotions just as any other person. When a person spends a lot of time and effort into something only to have it called garbage by others, it is going to hit hard no matter what.
I need to remind you, that your average consumer is a University/College student, who is working a shitty in-house Uni job, that is paying them 600-800 a month. Some of these people are putting 10% of their money on your product on promise of it working as advertised.
And before anyone says "no one is forcing them to buy, they can wait for a discount", I need to remind you, that if everyone did that, many companies that we have now wouldn't even be around by the end of the year.
Sorry for being snarky, but the amount of 'distance' some dev's put between them and their consumer is ridiculous, you're not an untouchable Deity who found the cure to 7 kinds of cancer, you're a dev who's consumer base is scrapping the barrel sometimes, and the barrel is pretty finite as well.
I'm going to assume that a person making $600-$800 a month already has their basic necessities taken care of because if they don't, then they should probably reconsider buying games. I don't even know how one could pay rent with that much money, their yearly salary is about the price I pay for the right to attend a semester of university (not including food, transportation costs, books, extra help, etc.)
Assuming they do have their necessities taken care of though, $600-$800 that can be blown off on things unnecessary to survival sounds pretty great. Even if they only spent $60 a month, that still works out to a new AAA release every month which I can already say is far better than my own entertainment budget.
I'm not defending broken games, but the development team isn't getting high every day of the week when they spend 8+ hours a day trying to get the game made, they are actually developing the game. As stated above somewhere, budgets aren't infinite. If they delayed the game for another year, they would have to pay a lot of employees another year's salary, if that happens, then the profit expectations of the game will increase exponentially. If the game fails to meet those new expectations, then you can bet your ass some people will lose their jobs and we might not even see future installments to the franchise.
You can read the rest there. The comments are also interesting.
Technically using OpenGL4 or DirectX12 and Bindless Resources, you can push milions of draw calls in miliseconds. Since with bindless model you are no longer limited by CPU speed. GPU binds resources on it's own (in OpenGL it's only for textures, I dunno if this has been extended to support geometry data as well).
I'm sorry to hear you consider them to be needless.
If it's any consolation I've watched the E3 trailer dozens of times now and I think it's one of the best pre rendered cinematics I've ever seen. Money well spent as far as I'm concerned.
Oh man, reading this thread has utterly depressed me. On a Friday too!! First off, I'm having a blast with AC:Unity (PS4). It looks AMAZING and, this being an game art forum (at least it was the last time I checked) I have to doff my hat to those who worked on it. It's an achievement. Be very proud of it. I've played all of this AC games and this one is up there with the best of them.
Does the game have it's issues? Yeh, sure it does. Are these issues enough to detract from my experience and lead me to vow never to buy another Ubisoft game? Nope.
Why are games shipped in "unfinished" states that needs patching after launch? Please, get a job and work a while in an actual AAA studio. Some fan-made mod or "I made a crate that appeared in this AAA game" doesn't count. Until then, you literally have no idea what happens during the development of a game or why things are the way that they are.
I'm feeling ranty now. I demand an art dump to calm me down.
Just want to point out that there are people criticising who HAVE worked on a AAA title, in house, but with a very different experience from what you're describing.
And people are absolutely not wrong when they say "it's right to expect a shipped title to work without needing a day one (or close to) patch to correct a bunch of broken stuff that should have been QA'd before the game even went gold". These are core issues of bad management of both deadlines and manpower, inflated scope vs deflated or underestimated ability to achieve.
The art looks fantastic, i think everyone can agree on that. I think almost all of the criticism so far is down to technical issues, technical issues that should have been picked up on and fixed a long time before the game launched.
Let's put this in perspective here - if this were an MMO launch, you'd have a shit ton of people unsubscribing and never looking back (remember Warhammer Online?). The fact that this is an up-front ยฃ60 purchase (yes, that's ยฃ, sterling, real money), and every review out there is either negative or trying extremely hard to be neutral... that's a bad thing. The fact that they all point out the same issues, issues that shouldn't exist... that's a bad thing.
I would love to say that Ubisoft just had a bad release after over-reaching a little... but that's not the case. It's an emerging pattern in their products, everything from recycled gameplay (let's be honest, the core gameplay between assassins creed, watchdogs, and farcry are all the same... climb a tall building, unlock a section of the map, do a couple of mini quests to get a weapon upgrade, repeat) which has been systemic for at least 5 years now... All of the issues surrounding UPlay and their shitty (forced) connectivity, and now finally "micro" transactions and forced inter-app connections just to 100% the game? and those last two aren't even technical issues, they're fucking money grabs! Then when you add onto all of those things, issues like peoples games crashing after 15 mins because they're connected to the internet (let's not forget that Ubisoft supported always-online gaming lol) or people falling through the floor because their character didn't connect with a jump properly in a game that is 100% designed around parkour... the list goes on.
TL : DR -
Everyone needs to take a step back here and think objectively a little.
Yes there are a lot of people who don't know the insides of AAA dev commenting on the game. But their concerns are still fairly legitimate, AND TO BE CLEAR HERE - i'm not talking about redditors or random assholes from the interwebs, i'm talking about polycounters who in one way or another have some dev experience. And there are also those who know the situation very well who are making the same comments.
But what's quite painful to see here, is people working in the big houses, looking down and saying "you don't know what it's like", and doing their best to ignore the feedback for that one reason alone. That's what's bad, that's what needs to change. Maybe you've spent so long inside that system that you really don't see how wrong it is?
I'd rather have more QA for game, for that money. If game broken upon launch then yeah. All those cinematics are waste of money. Period.
More than likely that money came out of the marketting budget and without the cinematic would have just been diverted into more advertising. So I highly doubt it made any difference in the development of the game.
If it's any consolation I've watched the E3 trailer dozens of times now and I think it's one of the best pre rendered cinematics I've ever seen. Money well spent as far as I'm concerned.
They were stunning, but I wonder if the game would've sold less without them? It's Assassins Creed, it gets hype from name alone. The point was it comes off as disingenuous if a publisher complains about the development budget of a game whilst also spending money on that.
I am generally fine with the CG/PR stuff so long as the final product is released in a decent state. I do wonder though in the case of a huge established IP, if such things are beneficial, or are simply preaching to the choir.
I don't really think it's a big issue, but it's an example I gave because publicly it gives the impression that Ubisoft cares more about PR than the quality of AC:U. Do I actually believe that to be the case? No, but that's how it looks to consumers.
Warren... you're kind of a good example of what i was talking about in my earlier post. You have the privilege/benefit of working for somewhere that's largely self contained, and most importantly is run by someone with a passion for games. Ubisoft are almost the exact opposite, they're run by faceless, almost nameless men in suits and ties who only care about $$, and you can very clearly see that roll down into some of the decisions that get made.
Do you honestly think that "Joe Public" would care if Assassin's creed became a biennial release as opposed to annual? if it meant they got a better, more polished game, with greater depth in plot and mechanics, without these silly (and they really are silly) bugs? Because i'd be willing to bet they'd enjoy that more.
Large title games always get leaked out early, system sellers end up on the internet weeks before they are available for purchase. I remember seeing an entire playthrough of The Last of Us on PS3 a whole month before release, and I remember Gears of War 3 got leaked out like 3+ months in advance, it's nothing new unfortunately.
Nintendo is the only company I've seen that actively tries to take serious action against leakers. I recall reading about how somebody got a copy of some Pokemon game on the 3DS early and Nintendo actually went to the trouble of tracking the guy down through his gloat-posts on the internet, and then they sent a representative to retrieve the game from him otherwise he would risk going to court.
This is an amazing looking game. I can't speak to the technical issues yet as I've not played it long enough to comment. But, in terms of visuals it's definitely one of the most impressive game worlds I've seen yet. There's a great deal to be excited by, particularly with regard to the lighting and materials. I'm really enjoying just walking around Paris and seeing all the subtleties.
The visuals are pretty amazing. The lighting and materials is something I'm very fond of personally. Overall, I'm really glad that we are finally starting to see games that push the visual boundaries. The first wave of next gen titles wasn't as groundbreaking visually as I had hoped, although that's understandable given the initial skepticism of publishers towards next-gen consoles. Now that cross-gen titles are on the way out, it seems like we can expect good things to come
However, I also have to echo some of the comments regarding the technical state of the game. While I have not played the game yet, the amount of problems that I have seen is putting me off purchasing it. While it's easy to dismiss comments on Reddit or online forums as toxic it's also worth remembering that many of these posters have encountered such issues times and times again in a variety of different games. I can understand how one might feel when met with such critical feedback, but I think it's really important that as an industry we start taking such criticism seriously, regardless of how aggressive it may be.
It's worth mentioning that putting out a game in an unfinished state has implications not only on the publisher/developer in question, but also on the rest of the industry. It damages the credibility of AAA development and makes consumers increasingly wary of pre-orders. Given that pre-orders constitute a large share of copies sold it would be really damaging if that model was to fall apart. In fact, Activision mentioned seeing a big drop in pre-order sales and initial predictions for COD:AW sales based on pre-order numbers suggested a potential 40% drop in relation to Ghosts.
However, I also have to echo some of the comments regarding the technical state of the game. While I have not played the game yet, the amount of problems that I have seen is putting me off purchasing it. While it's easy to dismiss comments on Reddit or online forums as toxic it's also worth remembering that many of these posters have encountered such issues times and times again in a variety of different games. I can understand how one might feel when met with such critical feedback, but I think it's really important that as an industry we start taking such criticism seriously, regardless of how aggressive it may be.
Yeah, I usually throw out some criticism, because some people are just too angry these days, and just simply can not be pleased. For instance, I really enjoyed Watch Dogs, but I know it receive criticism, because it didn't meet expectations. I don't know what the expectations were, but I suspect too many people allowed their expectation to reach an unrealistic level.
But in this case, I have several friends that bought Unity, and two of them were desperately trying to complete the game, this weekend, so they could get rid of it. They love the game, when it isn't bugging out, but they aren't willing to wait until it gets resolved. I'm not even sure why they are completing it, because they are yelling about it the whole time. One of them has even started laughing in hysteria, because the glitches have gotten so ridiculous. It's definitely enough to solidify my decision to avoid the purchase.
I'm curious if Ubisoft realizes the long term effects of this. Not only are players going to be hesitant to order future titles, but with gamers selling them back so soon, that means there will be also less interest in DLCs.
Replies
Ok, you were misunderstanding the point then. No one was suggesting it was an easy job to make the game. I'll rephrase skyline's statement; why is it so hard to wait until the game is completed, before releasing a game?
The problem is, most recent titles have been utter garbage, on launch. Quick patches are made, and the game usually moves up to 'tolerable', until everything else can be addressed.
It's hurting the industry, and the reputation of games. I remain baffled that studios keep making this same mistake. These issues overshadow potentially amazing games.
For me, I had a sense that the engine rework, for AC:U, was going to result in issues, so I held off on purchasing it. My friends have confirmed my fears (and posts here added to that confirmation). It would have been my first AC, since AC:Brotherhood. I don't have much of a budget, to buy games, so now I'm going to wait on AC:U, and most likely, by the time it's fixed, I'll have purchased something else, and AC:U will be out of mind.
Exactly, thanks. I meant no disrespect as to the difficulty we all know how hard it is
Budgets aren't infinite.
Customer trust is even less finite. I say Ubisoft is done right now. Unless they figure out way to compensate all those issues (;.
So Adam, you guys should get a pat on the back.
As far as the game is concerned, its quite disappointing the state in which it was shipped.
Anyways... when can we see an art dump?
I'm willing to bet that within a week or two we'll stop hearing about this.
Besides, they've got Farcry 4 coming out, with which they're quite confident about.
And as Will said, it's not going to hurt them in the end. A handful of people online will vow never to buy another Assassin's Creed game again (which is untrue) and life goes on.
May I point you and Will to exhibit B... Battlefield 4. That game was an abortion of issues, and as a result, you can see the repercussions with Battlefield Hardline. Look at how venomous the comments are, any time they post about Hardline, on social media.
I agree, these issues with Unity, will not deter Ubisoft sales, for upcoming titles, but I do think it's going to hurt future AC sales. The franchise was already starting to suffer from over exposure; this didn't help.
btw, from guru 3d: "Assassin's Creed Unity not running well on AMD hardware"
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/assassins-creed-unity-not-running-well-on-amd-hardware.html
You can read the rest there. The comments are also interesting.
I won't say that I will never buy another Assassin's Creed because I tend to judge games based on their own merits but seeing people talk about all the errors and framerate issues caused me to buy a different title this week. Granted I'm just one guy, but at the same time I'm sure other people had a similar thought process.
What I find more concerning is the fact that it's becoming increasingly common to ship games that are broken and rely on a post release patch to clean them up. At what point might consumers lose confidence in your product and what effect will it have as people see a growing trend and get sick of it?
If the game gets patched later I might pick it up but it things like this give me pause on buying games when they come out. It's getting to the point where there are very few companies I'm willing to trust to buy day one releases. It is especially unfortunate because the environment art on this game looks absolutely beautiful. I hope it gets fixed soon.
The fact is AAA development is insanely bloated and for the sake of the long term health of the industry consumers need to be given a product that actually works. The amount of broken AAA releases this generation has been ridiculous, and is simply not acceptable.
EDIT: I should note I am not criticizing any actual developer. I know full well what it's like having an unfinished product released, having worked hard on awful games such as 007 Legends. My issue is with company management/publisher, who seem happy with releasing unfinished products in order to appease shareholders and investors, despite the fact that such practices will damage our industry in the long term by nuking consumer confidence.
Does the game have it's issues? Yeh, sure it does. Are these issues enough to detract from my experience and lead me to vow never to buy another Ubisoft game? Nope.
Why are games shipped in "unfinished" states that needs patching after launch? Please, get a job and work a while in an actual AAA studio. Some fan-made mod or "I made a crate that appeared in this AAA game" doesn't count. Until then, you literally have no idea what happens during the development of a game or why things are the way that they are.
I'm feeling ranty now. I demand an art dump to calm me down.
You may have not experienced that many issues but it's undeniable that a disproportionate amount of people have, and if you consider that normal for AAA then obviously the norm needs to change. I would argue that this is not normal, but from a consumer perspective a worrying trend for this generation has emerged, and that is ultimately what matters.
Maybe instead of blowing steam in this direction, blow off some steam at your own tech team in studios that worked on the game with you, or the head honchos if they pushed out the product too early?
If the artist isn't at fault, then poke the people who are, you have the power get something done, lifting your hands and saying "it happens, we can't do anything" is a very defeatist attitude which frankly, is getting tiresome, and if you're going to take that attitude, then don't bother saying anything, because you're not part of the solution, you're only the aggravation towards the people who bought your game (next time you wonder where 'trolls' come from, remember they are created, not born).
I need to remind you, that your average consumer is a University/College student, who is working a shitty in-house Uni job, that is paying them 600-800 a month. Some of these people are putting 10% of their money on your product on promise of it working as advertised.
And before anyone says "no one is forcing them to buy, they can wait for a discount", I need to remind you, that if everyone did that, many companies that we have now wouldn't even be around by the end of the year.
Sorry for being snarky, but the amount of 'distance' some dev's put between them and their consumer is ridiculous, you're not an untouchable Deity who found the cure to 7 kinds of cancer, you're a dev who's consumer base is scrapping the barrel sometimes, and the barrel is pretty finite as well.
I haven't played the game myself but it seems like a large majority, if not all the of the errors that cause the game to be unplayable are exclusive to PC. If that is the case, then this isn't really a unique problem. PC gamers have been getting shafted for many years now and that isn't going to change anytime soon because it would cost a lot of extra money to help a very small amount of people. Sure, it'd be great to have a perfect game on every platform, but realistically speaking, tough decisions need to be made by those in charge.
The idiots on the internet that are blatantly insulting a development team that clearly poured their heart into a project aren't part of the solution either. Ideally, nobody should be blowing steam at anybody else, and I don't know a single person who would yell at their upper management bosses (that's how you get fired, or get thrown in a negative light next time an unemployment wave hits.)
You have to remember, games aren't made by mindless robots. There was a human development team behind this game, a team with feelings and emotions just as any other person. When a person spends a lot of time and effort into something only to have it called garbage by others, it is going to hit hard no matter what.
I'm going to assume that a person making $600-$800 a month already has their basic necessities taken care of because if they don't, then they should probably reconsider buying games. I don't even know how one could pay rent with that much money, their yearly salary is about the price I pay for the right to attend a semester of university (not including food, transportation costs, books, extra help, etc.)
Assuming they do have their necessities taken care of though, $600-$800 that can be blown off on things unnecessary to survival sounds pretty great. Even if they only spent $60 a month, that still works out to a new AAA release every month which I can already say is far better than my own entertainment budget.
I'm not defending broken games, but the development team isn't getting high every day of the week when they spend 8+ hours a day trying to get the game made, they are actually developing the game. As stated above somewhere, budgets aren't infinite. If they delayed the game for another year, they would have to pay a lot of employees another year's salary, if that happens, then the profit expectations of the game will increase exponentially. If the game fails to meet those new expectations, then you can bet your ass some people will lose their jobs and we might not even see future installments to the franchise.
Technically using OpenGL4 or DirectX12 and Bindless Resources, you can push milions of draw calls in miliseconds. Since with bindless model you are no longer limited by CPU speed. GPU binds resources on it's own (in OpenGL it's only for textures, I dunno if this has been extended to support geometry data as well).
I'm sorry to hear you consider them to be needless.
I'd rather have more QA for game, for that money. If game broken upon launch then yeah. All those cinematics are waste of money. Period.
Just want to point out that there are people criticising who HAVE worked on a AAA title, in house, but with a very different experience from what you're describing.
And people are absolutely not wrong when they say "it's right to expect a shipped title to work without needing a day one (or close to) patch to correct a bunch of broken stuff that should have been QA'd before the game even went gold". These are core issues of bad management of both deadlines and manpower, inflated scope vs deflated or underestimated ability to achieve.
The art looks fantastic, i think everyone can agree on that. I think almost all of the criticism so far is down to technical issues, technical issues that should have been picked up on and fixed a long time before the game launched.
Let's put this in perspective here - if this were an MMO launch, you'd have a shit ton of people unsubscribing and never looking back (remember Warhammer Online?). The fact that this is an up-front ยฃ60 purchase (yes, that's ยฃ, sterling, real money), and every review out there is either negative or trying extremely hard to be neutral... that's a bad thing. The fact that they all point out the same issues, issues that shouldn't exist... that's a bad thing.
I would love to say that Ubisoft just had a bad release after over-reaching a little... but that's not the case. It's an emerging pattern in their products, everything from recycled gameplay (let's be honest, the core gameplay between assassins creed, watchdogs, and farcry are all the same... climb a tall building, unlock a section of the map, do a couple of mini quests to get a weapon upgrade, repeat) which has been systemic for at least 5 years now... All of the issues surrounding UPlay and their shitty (forced) connectivity, and now finally "micro" transactions and forced inter-app connections just to 100% the game? and those last two aren't even technical issues, they're fucking money grabs! Then when you add onto all of those things, issues like peoples games crashing after 15 mins because they're connected to the internet (let's not forget that Ubisoft supported always-online gaming lol) or people falling through the floor because their character didn't connect with a jump properly in a game that is 100% designed around parkour... the list goes on.
TL : DR -
Everyone needs to take a step back here and think objectively a little.
Yes there are a lot of people who don't know the insides of AAA dev commenting on the game. But their concerns are still fairly legitimate, AND TO BE CLEAR HERE - i'm not talking about redditors or random assholes from the interwebs, i'm talking about polycounters who in one way or another have some dev experience. And there are also those who know the situation very well who are making the same comments.
But what's quite painful to see here, is people working in the big houses, looking down and saying "you don't know what it's like", and doing their best to ignore the feedback for that one reason alone. That's what's bad, that's what needs to change. Maybe you've spent so long inside that system that you really don't see how wrong it is?
Not sorry to hear that
I am generally fine with the CG/PR stuff so long as the final product is released in a decent state. I do wonder though in the case of a huge established IP, if such things are beneficial, or are simply preaching to the choir.
I don't really think it's a big issue, but it's an example I gave because publicly it gives the impression that Ubisoft cares more about PR than the quality of AC:U. Do I actually believe that to be the case? No, but that's how it looks to consumers.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc-thread-gallery.php?tid=190016
Yes. It's management fault. Doesn't meant it can't be changed.
Yeah, industry wide change of practices. SO easy. If only we'd just get off our butts and do it! So lazy...
Do you honestly think that "Joe Public" would care if Assassin's creed became a biennial release as opposed to annual? if it meant they got a better, more polished game, with greater depth in plot and mechanics, without these silly (and they really are silly) bugs? Because i'd be willing to bet they'd enjoy that more.
far cry 4 has been leaked.
Nintendo is the only company I've seen that actively tries to take serious action against leakers. I recall reading about how somebody got a copy of some Pokemon game on the 3DS early and Nintendo actually went to the trouble of tracking the guy down through his gloat-posts on the internet, and then they sent a representative to retrieve the game from him otherwise he would risk going to court.
Again, it's a shame the game is getting hurt by the bugs/glitches. I was really looking forward to the game, but I'm passing on this one.
However, I also have to echo some of the comments regarding the technical state of the game. While I have not played the game yet, the amount of problems that I have seen is putting me off purchasing it. While it's easy to dismiss comments on Reddit or online forums as toxic it's also worth remembering that many of these posters have encountered such issues times and times again in a variety of different games. I can understand how one might feel when met with such critical feedback, but I think it's really important that as an industry we start taking such criticism seriously, regardless of how aggressive it may be.
It's worth mentioning that putting out a game in an unfinished state has implications not only on the publisher/developer in question, but also on the rest of the industry. It damages the credibility of AAA development and makes consumers increasingly wary of pre-orders. Given that pre-orders constitute a large share of copies sold it would be really damaging if that model was to fall apart. In fact, Activision mentioned seeing a big drop in pre-order sales and initial predictions for COD:AW sales based on pre-order numbers suggested a potential 40% drop in relation to Ghosts.
Yeah, I usually throw out some criticism, because some people are just too angry these days, and just simply can not be pleased. For instance, I really enjoyed Watch Dogs, but I know it receive criticism, because it didn't meet expectations. I don't know what the expectations were, but I suspect too many people allowed their expectation to reach an unrealistic level.
But in this case, I have several friends that bought Unity, and two of them were desperately trying to complete the game, this weekend, so they could get rid of it. They love the game, when it isn't bugging out, but they aren't willing to wait until it gets resolved. I'm not even sure why they are completing it, because they are yelling about it the whole time. One of them has even started laughing in hysteria, because the glitches have gotten so ridiculous. It's definitely enough to solidify my decision to avoid the purchase.
I'm curious if Ubisoft realizes the long term effects of this. Not only are players going to be hesitant to order future titles, but with gamers selling them back so soon, that means there will be also less interest in DLCs.
I'll buy this game only for environement art tho i hate AC licence and ubisoft games in general.