Assassin's Creed Unity = Complete Disaster

Hi,

So yesterday Ubisoft released the most recent Assassin's Creed game: AC Unity, set in Revolutionary France (actually, just Paris). This thread will address 3 main topics:

1. Where did they go wrong with Unity? Why is it such a disaster for Ubisoft?
2. Review embargoes and preorder bonuses.
3. Micro transactions and companion apps.

I will conclude by describing by strategy with Ubisoft and EA games. I have just recently purchased ACIV: Black Flag, after having played it many times before.

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1. What's wrong with Unity?

Read the comments. Nuff said.

Unplayable framerate: some people with dual 290x's are getting under 20fps average. The situation does not improve if you put all settings as low. The only thing which increases the framerate significantly is dropping the resolution. To spend $1600 on hardware and still have unplayable frames isn't just poor game design, it's defective.

Texture pop-in: wall and floor textures pop-in very slowly, especially if you turn around a lot. Companies need to stop forcing the computer to re-render everything when you turn your back. Render the world, and let us deal with the frames. I'd much prefer a lower, more consistent experience than a muddy, variable 20fps.

Bugs: completely unacceptable on a AAA title. Crowds appear out of nowhere and exhibit irrational behavior. Crashes and blue screens are frequent (as they were in Black Flag). Developers and publishers need to do substantial beta testing and refrain from releasing new games every 11 months. Get it working before release, so your stock doesn't drop 10% overnight.



The animus: this one is a bit more of an opinion than clearly unacceptable behavior. They need to get rid of the modern day entirely and make AC a historical fiction game. Black Flag worked so well because it go rid of all that supernatural/modern day whack.

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2. Review embargoes and preorders

Ubisoft gives out review copies a few days prior to release. This is done on the condition that none of the reviewers publish their thoughts on the game until 12 hours after the game's release. While I don't think this is coercive, it shows how much they despise their customer base and are perfectly happy with releasing broken games.

As usual, everyone preorders to get the extra bit of DLC they've taken out of the game and extorted back to you. There being no official reviews until 12 hours into launch means most of the people who bought the game on launch day did so without knowing about the above.

Unacceptable. Abolish your review embargoes and make the condition that they aren't allowed to spoil the plot.

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3. Microtransactions and companion apps.

It's not enough to spend $75 for the game, you have to pay $110 for the privilege of not having parts of the game sold back to you. Proper DLC is great: Fallout 3 was probably my favorite game for that. They actually made extra missions, adding almost as much gameplay as the original game. Ubisoft does not do this: they're in the habit of taking things out of the complete game, and selling them separately. Again, not coercive - but abusive of their customer base. In addition, with Black Flag the season pass doesn't even give you all the DLC. So even if you spend $110 on the "season pass" gold edition, they still reserve the right to sell you DLC further down the line.

Parts of the game are also reserved for their companion smartphone app. If you don't get the app, you can't access that part of your game. Stop it with the gimmicks.

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4. My strategy for dealing with Ubisoft and EA.

They do this with practically every franchise. Thing is, once they fix the game and bring it up to where it was supposed to be at launch (and would be if management didn't force a yearly release schedule), they're actually fantastic games.

Take Black Flag, the previous game. I did not buy the game at launch, when it was plagued with bugs and other issues. Instead, I obtained the game from a Swedish friend of mine By the time their next game in the series releases, I've forgotten my first few playthroughs and am ready to drop $30 on the title. That's a reasonable price for the whole game (DLC included), and it's been patched so it runs at a somewhat reasonable framerate now. Huzzah!

NEVER PREORDER GAMES, ONLY PURCHASE FINISHED GAMES

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So, in conclusion, Ubisoft have really dropped the ball. So much so that Unity is unplayable and defective. If it were any physical product we would demand a refund, we should do no different here. Apparently the market agrees with me, because Ubisoft's stock plummeted 10% overnight.

What do you guys think? Did any of you buy Unity? What's your opinion on their development and release philosophies?

 

I almost never buy games shortly after their initial release and I never pre-order (there is one deeply beloved game in my collection that I bought early-access in its alpha phase, though). I still haven't even played AC3 yet. It's more a side effect of there being to many good games and too little time to play them but as a result I generally get a game when it's finished and most bugs have been patched out.

When I read that a game is not allowed to be reviewed until after release, I know that this game will suck, period. There can be no other reason for that kind of policy. Ubisoft is a regular offender.

 

The only games I play these days are Mush (a free to play asynchronous game), Rocksmith (I'm learning guitar) and XCOM (rarely these days since it's been out for awhile). So I don't have to deal with these issues. The gaming industry has lost something with the addition of big money. A game is supposed to be fun, not OMG AAA.

DLC is Rocksmith is great, you just buy songs you like. XCOM DLC is pretty tame too. I'm pretty satisfied with these offerings and don't need to buy a super gaming rig either, it was fun to build them for awhile there though.

 

Don't have a next gen console so I won't be able to play Unity for some time but seeing some of this really surprises me. Ubisoft was shaping up to be a major player in the gaming industry and now they seem to have thrown all of that to the side in favor of a quick buck. I had seen comments comparing them to EA but I dismissed them thinking it was from the crowd of gamers who don't get every bit of resolution that they think they should have. It appears though that they were actually right. I suppose I'm just going to have to hold off on any future Ubisoft games until they decide they want to be a real game company again. As an added side note, for the past few years my avatars have been nothing but Assassin's Creed. I suppose I'll start changing that up as long as this company continues to behave this way. Back to Big Boss/Solid Snake avi for me then.

 

Would also like to say that more and more companies seem to be releasing their games incomplete, riddled with bugs, and locking disc content until you pay for it(again). If this keeps up it's going to hurt and quite possibly kill the gaming industry.

 

It's become standard policy now, I guess in part so you don't know it'll be rushed.

I remember looking up Rocksmith, looked pretty handy. How does it work in practice?

Unfortunately, if you don't have good relative pitch you're not going to learn the upright bass anyway :/ Would be ideal for electrics though.

What's your opinion on the Animus and modern/supernatural main story? Seems they're slowly erasing it with every title, which is a good thing. AC would be out of this world amazing if it was just a historical fiction series. The modern day was a big part of the reason AC3 was so much of a let down.

I play on PC, don't have a next-gen console either. Next-gen games are commonly produced on PC first anyway, the PS4 and XB1's design really facilitates the PC, which is a positive.

Or people will smarten up and purchase games based on word of mouth, and pirate them in all other instances. That's the way to do it: try before you buy (or just try, whatever).

 

Probably OT, but is Rocksmith actually helping you with learning to play? I know it is played with a real guitar, but I was under the impression that you just follow the songs the game throws at you, note for note, or does it have a mode where it explains chords, scales and techniques?

 

I figure if it gets you playing regularly then it's a good thing. If you learn how to play chord progressions, scales, etc with some degree of proficiency, then the theory comes more easily.

Sure, you've just got to know the theory if you want to be a good musician, but the biggest hurdle for most when starting out is getting regular practice in. For that, Rocksmith sounds great.

 

TES and Fallout series, Hello Kitty, Borderlands, Mount and Blade and Far Cry 4 and a couple others are the only games I payed full price for over the last couple of years. I bought some indie games at full price but they are generally cheaper to begin with.

I never got into Assassin's Creed. The combat was so obnoxiously bad in the first two games that I didn't even finish the second one and never bothered with the third and later games. Dishonored and Deus Ex run circles around AC with ease. My big disappointment was Dragon Age 2 which was just awful. Even though the new gameplay videos for 4 look pretty good I am still waiting for a week to make sure that I can get actual gamer feedback...........that and I will be busy with Far Cry 4 anyways since they release on the same day.

 

Hi guys, Rocksmith is helping me learn how to play and it is meant for an electric guitar. I've read it will work with an electric bass or a fretless electric bass though using an upright bass might be pushing it. It does NOT work with an acoustic electric as I found out the hard way. It needs pickups to hear the notes correctly.

As for how it works, look up YouTube videos and buy DR Neon strings. Rocksmith colors each string and then moves fret markers in the corresponding color towards a target area, you play the string/fret as it enters the target area. It's honestly a weird system since there's no logic to the color scheme of the strings, yellow and orange aren't next to each other which confused me for weeks, but I found that if I use guitar strings of the corresponding color (DR Neons, again) it is a lot easier to get used to.

Rocksmith does teach you chords, bends, slides etc.

My other advice is to pick up and practice guitar tabs as well. If you overdo it playing Rocksmith, I found it difficult to play later without rocksmith and so doing some tabs on your own, simple things like Christmas songs to start, can avoid that problem.

 

Don't worry, while the microtransactions didn't work properly upon release Ubisoft rushed out a patch so that while you can't actually play the game you can still buy ingame items for real money.

 

So what has Ubisoft (*)(*)(*)(*)ed up this year apart from ACU?

Watch Dogs. Turns out that all the ingame vids they released were pretty much rendered and made pretty. Not to mention that half the (*)(*)(*)(*) they talked about you being able to do in the game was completely untrue.

 

They disabled much of that to make parity between the consoles and PCs. My 4 year old PC with the exception of my RAM is superior to the new consoles. You can still reenable the ultra graphics though with a hack or ini edits or somethings. They were still in the game and some modder figured out how to turn them back on.

 

I actually never minded the events that took place outside the animus. It meant I was able to get more of the story from an angle that I wouldn't have been able to from inside. I'm one of the few who found the idea of it intriguing but also understand why so many people didn't care for those segments.

I just Redboxed Rogue and that's actually a lot better then I was expecting. Shay is turning out to be a very captivating character, neither of which Connor or Edward were in my opinion. I haven't beaten the game yet and will probably return it soon but in my opinion it's better then 3 and 4.

 

People have different priorities I guess. I've never much cared for the series-wide storyline in AC, I guess I prefer the historical fiction aspect.

I am glad that they've made it mostly optional.

 

Well considering they made Desmond irrelevant by having anyone jump into the memories their really doesn't need to be a modern day aspect at all.

But I'm also one of the few guys who never complained about the cut scenes in the Metal Gear series. The length and quantity of them never bothered me.