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[Gaz_RB]

Seems like a completely reasonable statement to me.

 

[Drakendodertje]

I'm not sure wether Ubi is trutful with their statement or not, but i do think they need to get their priorities straight in making statements. The stuttering or lack of optimization experienced by a ridiculous amount of PAYING customers seems far more pressing to be responded to than some mod. Their silence on that matter, but responding to this, is very insulting to the community imho.

 

[Nokterian]

Ubisoft..just stop..just no don't say anything next time. Seeing the reports that this new patch made it even worse baffles me. And why the mods are even more improving performance is more mindblowing.

 

[Armaros]

Ubisoft cares so much for the 'quality' and performance of the unreleased graphics to not caus problems with the game.

That's why they made sure the vanilla game isn't a stuttery mess with pretty terrible performance on many high end systems. /s

Ubisoft is well known for their Q/A on PC games.

 

[Hawkian]

It's mindboggling to me to read a statement like this, consider it rather accurate and inoffensive, and immediately encounter this reaction:

What a load of mealy-mouthed bullshit.

I don't even know where to start. I can break down a bit of this here pretty easily.

The dev team is completely dedicated to getting the most out of each platform

This is essentially the only aspect I might accept a claim of "bullshit" about, but it's pretty standard PR. It's obvious that if they had only developed the game for release on PC it would look and play differently.

There is a world of difference between that and intentionally removing features that objectively improve the game for a reason other than stability, performance or gameplay impact.

The PC version does indeed contain some old, unused render settings that were deactivated for a variety of reasons, including possible impacts on visual fidelity, stability, performance and overall gameplay quality.

Exactly what my guess would have been. With more dedicated testing time they might have been able to refine and include them, but that didn't happen.

the mod in question (which uses those old settings) subjectively enhances the game's visual fidelity in certain situations but also can have various negative impacts

Quite a bit of the major graphical distinctions with TheWorse's tweaks are indeed subjective changes. The higher, constant DoF, intensified bloom, and day/weather/population density aspects are all certainly a matter of personal preference. The ones that anyone might argue are actually objective improvements all carry caveats with them which might make them not worthwhile to the end user, again a subjective determination, which brings us to...

Those could range from performance issues

The higher-quality rain, which does look quite nice, carries a performance hit along with it on many PCs; users' mileage will of course vary. The new, shadow-casting headlights look great, but also introduce an occasional glitch when they pop on screen and flicker a couple of times before appearing (like the driver was switching their lights on and off quickly).

to difficulty in reading the environment in order to appreciate the gameplay

I see this comment being mocked mercilessly as though it's meaningless. The intensified DoF, especially in the versions pre 0.7 as well as certain situations more than others, could obfuscate the environment a half-block away or even less- merely distracting or even visual pleasing, depending on your tastes, but in scenarios like online hacking where spotting unusual movement or singling someone out from far away are critical, it could legitimately affect the appreciation of gameplay. This has been improved in 0.7 but is currently still not configurable to the end user and nowhere near perfect.

to potentially making the game less enjoyable or even unstable.

There exists a glitch with certain indoor environments that seems to sometimes render indoor lighting sources inert, resulting in exceedingly dark rooms even if it's bright daylight outside. This happened to me during a mission and I was essentially forced to play looking at only the outlines of enemies I tagged with video cameras. I could literally walk outside an open garage door and watch the brightness pop back up, turn around and go back in and have it fade to completely darkened inside (despite the light from the outside world and wall lights in the building). This absolutely made the game less enjoyable.

All and all the statement reads to me not only as a pretty inoffensive analysis of the situation, but a lot like somebody at Ubisoft actually installed TheWorse's files and played for a few hours in a variety of situations and just delivered an honest advisory for anyone thinking about trying it.

Personally, I do think it makes the game look better, but I recognize that my viewpoint on this is subjective (the DoF is a particularly polarizing effect, and how dense you want the streets of Chicago and how often you want it to rain are pure personal taste) and that the closest things to objective improvements (better rain and headlights) have legitimately apparent performance issues.

So, anyone who considers what they said "mealy-mouthed bullshit": based on what I have described here, what's actually wrong with it?

Should've just made them optional toggles. PC gamers like to fuck around with the settings.

They aren't ready. At all. TheWorse is doing a phenomenal job and I hope he keeps it up and tries to squeeze every last bit of graphical goodness the game's files have to offer, but if Ubisoft had merely included toggles for these settings- even the versions found in the most recent iteration of the "mod"- then the thread would instead be about "how shitty and unstable the PC-only graphics features in Watch_Dogs are."

I have gathered that "defending" Ubisoft is akin to defending wanton murder around here, but they really cannot win on this issue. Maybe the "downgrade controversy" is, something worth talking about, I don't know. But I'm of the opinion that with regard to these mods, we should just appreciate the work being done by community members to improve the look of the game, hope it continues to get better, and leave it at that.

 

[HoodWinked]

And for the record, absolute maximum settings (1920x1080) possible both in-game and Nvidia Control Panel/NVinspector... WITH the AMAZING mod...

When you aren't doing as I said in my first post, THIS is what the game looks like.

reminds me of mafia 2s visuals

 

[Sinecat]

I tried it with mods, and the game is just ugly not only in graphics but in terms of style. Just really plain, especially in daylight. If I could, I would disable daylight in this game completely. The stutters are the worst though. Ugh

 

[Bulzeeb]

Wait for Watchdogs game of the year edition this time with E3 graphics

 

[wildfire]

The mod improves performance and reduces stuttering, Ubi's patch makes it worse, how is what I said disingenuous?

You said the modder did work in 24 hours that Ubi couldn't do in a month.

All the modder did was enable code Ubi themselves did during that month. So he wasn't the one who did most of the work that lead to performance improvements in the first place.

 

[mechphree]

I seen the mod in question, it looks nothing like the E3 2012 reveal. Sorry. Those details along with textures are gone. The best thing this mod did from what I seen is add a few shaders and increase performance a bit. But to go around saying it now looks comparable to 2012 reveal...no.

 

[JordanN]

Having better textures is like the bare minimum really.

Not to bring up diminishing returns (everybody knows I disagree with this term and graphics can be better) but, texture sizes are pretty close to max. Next gen consoles have caught up to what is considered standard in big budget movie CG (2k x 2k maps).

It's actually pretty surprising the PC still shows that advantage, in a game like COD...

 

[Gbraga]

I don't even care about the effects the mod added, judging from screenshots I think the game looks kinda bad anyway tbh, but what's up with people having better performance with the mod and more importantly, what's up with the patch making it worse?

 

[Nethaniah]

I don't even care about the effects the mod added, judging from screenshots I think the game looks kinda bad anyway tbh, but what's up with people having better performance with the mod and more importantly, what's up with the patch making it worse?

Magic, Ubisoft magic.

 

[heyf00L]

I'll translate:

When we realized we had to scale back effects for the new consoles, we stopped development and testing on those effects. Although some are still in the game, if you use them, it could lead to glitches and stability issues.

 

[hooijdonk17]

I have a new pet theory.. They were saving all the E3 2012 footage graphics options for the inevitable Remastered Watch_Dogs for PS5?

 

[Hubble]

I'll translate:

FTW