Ubisoft - How much longer can they get away with this 'downgrading'?

Incidentally Batman: Arham Knight may have been "completely broken" on release - Though not enough to stop me completing it in full before the first patch even hit.

But, it runs absolutely fine now. I've completed it twice. Originally on release and then around August last year when I got a 3440:1440 monitor - Looked really good.
 
If we're being super-nitpicky, it was developed by Massive Entertainment, Ubisoft Reflections, Ubisoft Annecy, and Red Storm, all Ubisoft studios ;)

I know, but Massive are the primary dev, and the others helped with weapons, maps, etc :)

Fun fact - Red Storm was founded by Tom Clancy.
 
I don't notice any graphics quality lies in this for instance.
And much of the gameplay trailer footage is cinematised.
I can't find any extended footage of gameplay as the player would see it.

That is my point :p

Fallout 4 footage before release looked just like the final product and as pottsey said, it in fact, got improved textures etc. after release.

I'm not going to watch 21 minutes but had a quick flick through the video and there seemed to be plenty of footage showing of the gameplay mechanics from a players point of view.

Again, maybe it some of it is "cinematic" but they haven't shown any areas where the graphics are significantly better than ubi, ubi show a game from a players point of view that is vastly different:



Would you rather have a cinematic trailer, which shows an accurate representation of what the final graphics and features will look like as rockstar, bethasada etc. have done or would you rather be shown "gameplay" footage, which has nothing but lies for the graphics and features?

So it's ok to create cinematic trailers and add motion blur and effects because it's using the game engine, even though it never looks like that ingame, but it's not ok to show effects which ultimately for whatever the reason get left out of the final game?

Is there even a difference? Rather than trawling through old videos trying to find disclaimer text that you know wont be there, why cant you just treat these e3 vids as not being representative of the final product just like that gta5 trailer wasnt? It'd be much easier, you know...

Except GTA 5's etc. graphics do like that in the final game... A bit of blur and depth of field with slow motion effects is not going to change the textures, remove graphical features etc. EDIT:

And it isn't just using the in game engine, but it is recording in gameplay footage using their in game cinematic recorder (which is also a feature of the game, at least on the PC side, don't think the consoles have it)

And as for the reason for effects etc. being removed/downgraded, see what the ubisoft employer said in the article linked a page or 2 back and see the watch dogs fiasco with the code being left behind with most of the graphical effects/features turned off, they were even labelled "e3 xxxxx setting"....

And see above reply to safety trousers for the rest of the point.

Incidentally Batman: Arham Knight may have been "completely broken" on release - Though not enough to stop me completing it in full before the first patch even hit.

But, it runs absolutely fine now. I've completed it twice. Originally on release and then around August last year when I got a 3440:1440 monitor - Looked really good.

Likewise, once I used kaiden's fix, the game ran superbly and now with all the fixes, it is superb in terms of optimisation and graphics, instead of just removing graphical effects/features to make the game stable and run better, they actually took their time to make sure they got everything working as it should.
 
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Likewise, once I used kaiden's fix, the game ran superbly and now with all the fixes, it is superb in terms of optimisation and graphics.

I didn't even do that, I just used brute force.

SLI wasn't working (and still doesn't I think) so I set one my my Maxwell 2 Titan X's as a dedicated Physx card and the other as the Primary GPU. It ran pretty good.

Not as good as it does now, but playable enough to complete without issues.
 
I can see where you are coming from Agnes but I have been a gamer since the ZX Spectrum days where images on a cassette case were very different to the game on the tape. I love jaw dropping visuals in games but the main aspect is playability for me, so as long as it has that element, I am not overly fussed when a game has downgraded gfx.

Edit:

And just to add, I still feel that The Division has some of the best GFX I have seen in any game.
 
No, it isnt. This thread is about e3 trailers creating unrealistic expectations of the final game. You're talking about a feature being broken after the game was released (and not broken for most people i'd add - nobody else here seemed to know it was even a problem) causing display issues, one which had a simple work around (by using AO ultra which looks better anyway)

If it's a pretty drastic difference then i'm not seeing it. HBAO is pretty comparable to AO Ultra but most people prefer the later. Did you realise that gif i posted had 3 frames? AO off, AO Ultra and HBAO. The only drastic difference is when you switch AO off.

Either way, it's not what the OP is talking about.



So it's ok to create cinematic trailers and add motion blur and effects because it's using the game engine, even though it never looks like that ingame, but it's not ok to show effects which ultimately for whatever the reason get left out of the final game?

Is there even a difference? Rather than trawling through old videos trying to find disclaimer text that you know wont be there, why cant you just treat these e3 vids as not being representative of the final product just like that gta5 trailer wasnt? It'd be much easier, you know...
That’s not true lots of people reported it the Steam and main forums are full of posts on how broken it was. Yes I missed the fix but it’s still the type of thing we are talking about. We get all the hype, trailers and websites talking about the enhanced graphics but for a very long time those enhanced graphics didn't work. It doesn’t matter if you preferred the enhanced graphics turned down the fact is the enhanced graphics didn’t work.

I don't have a problem with something coming out 2 years before the games is finished and not representing the finial game. Things change over development.

I was not aware that Massive Entertainment was owned by Ubusoft.
 
what some may not know is many games like dev builds may look better than the build that goes out. also many trailers and such are done with dev tools so you wont get any ingame similar anyway.
 
Nexus18 said:
Would you rather have a cinematic trailer, which shows an accurate representation of what the final graphics and features will look like as rockstar, bethasada etc. have done or would you rather be shown "gameplay" footage, which has nothing but lies for the graphics and features?

Both amount to the same thing but ,come on, less of the hyperbole please? 'nothing but lies' is a massive overstatement isnt it? The division trailers showed us what the game play would be like. What the environment would look like. How NPCs would react. They showed us what the OSD was intended to look like, but im sure i remember Massive saying it was scrapped because it was too awkward to use and the mobile device-controlled drones obviously didnt work out... does that mean Massive were lying because they intended to have it in there and gave it a go? That's stretching.

Look, people get up in arms when racers are sold on the quality of their 'photo modes' but that's what that GTA trailer is. I cannot understand why anybody would treat it any differently.

Pottsey said:
That’s not true lots of people reported it the Steam and main forums are full of posts on how broken it was. Yes I missed the fix but it’s still the type of thing we are talking about. We get all the hype, trailers and websites talking about the enhanced graphics but for a very long time those enhanced graphics didn't work. It doesn’t matter if you preferred the enhanced graphics turned down the fact is the enhanced graphics didn’t work.

I didnt say it didnt happen, i said nobody else here noticed it. To be absolutely clear this time, HBAO is one of two AO methods that The Division supports and most people prefer AO Ultra to HBAO in The division anyway, so there no need to spend so much effort complaining about HBAO being broken (when it worked fine for most people anyway.....) when a subjectively better method is available anyway. It's a pointless endeavour. Waste of time.
 
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The way Ubisoft tends to work with the size of their teams is that one core team is making a completely different build of the game to be used as a target render and the base concepts. This then get's diluted as the game has to be ported to multiple platforms and the resources/time runs out to meet all of the target renders qualities.

But as above has said, if you aren't happy with this practice then just don't buy the game.

I don't see the issue with it all that much as the target renders are usually shown off way in advanced then before the game comes out you can find hundreds of hours of real gameplay on Youtube/Twitch and more recent trailers, so you should be able to make a consumer decision based on that content rather than a trailer 2 years prior.

Target renders are tricky when you are showing a game a year or two before release as most of the core game is no where near polished enough to show off so you have to split into another branch/build of the game which gets some extra love from the teams and they implement features into the engine they expect to use. But when it comes to optimisation and multi platforms something has to give.
 
Both amount to the same thing but ,come on, less of the hyperbole please? 'nothing but lies' is a massive overstatement isnt it? The division trailers showed us what the game play would be like. What the environment would look like. How NPCs would react. They showed us what the OSD was intended to look like, but im sure i remember MAssive saying it was scrapped because it was too awkward to use.

Look, people get up in arms when racers are sold on the quality of their 'photo modes' but that's what that GTA trailer is. I cannot understand why anybody would treat it any differently.

Seriously, you think that the above watch dogs and division e3 vs final footage is the same thing as using the built in game cinematic recorder to record in gameplay footage of a game? One is showing the game in a cinematic way with accurate representation of the graphics etc., the other is showing false footage, not in a cinematic way but in a way, which is what us the players will be seeing when playing the game. Maybe if ubi did a cinematic trailer instead of a POV gameplay, I and others could over look it....

As for the division, no it is vastly different looking. Here is another video showing the entire trailer:


- the entire map is different
- the entire UI (yes I agree it looks awkward to use but there is no reason why they couldn't have kept the same style and improved upon it)
- the tablet/drone mode was removed
- far too many graphical effects to list but little things such as the snow melting, bullet impacts, debris/objects from the streets, worse textures etc. were removed/downgraded. Even the animations looks better in the e3 version

The only thing that remained the same was the core gameplay mechanics.

What are your thoughts on film trailers? Do you think that they should instead show 5-10 minutes of the actual film i.e. not cut scenes or would you rather have the cinematic version that is the norm?

And again, for GTA 5 is there really any need to show gameplay considering EVERY GTA game has the exact gameplay i.e. stealing vehicles, shooting people with various weapons, wanted by the cops/army, cruising around an open world?

Target renders are tricky when you are showing a game a year or two before release as most of the core game is no where near polished enough to show off so you have to split into another branch/build of the game which gets some extra love from the teams and they implement features into the engine they expect to use. But when it comes to optimisation and multi platforms something has to give.

And this is my other point, don't bother wasting time, resources and money for that separate build for trailer purposes, instead put all of that into the main game and then maybe they will be able to have the final game look and perform as what they had originally planned. If that means no trailer until 1 year or even 2-4 months before final release, then so be it imo.

But then again, this point is mute as it leads back to watch dogs and them leaving the e3 graphic settings in their config files, which could be turned on just by changing "false" to "true"...

The ubisoft employee really did put it best:

I do share this in the hope’s that my colleagues and publishers and a lot of people who make false promises and do demonstrations which wrongfully create too much hype that they cannot deliver on ultimately stop doing such things. I want to see the industry actually move forward and not be so full of itself by promising too much and delivering too little.
 
Whats the point of a target render if they end up stripping out a lot of the graphical effects? Yeah it might be nice to have something to show but comparisons are always going to be made after the fact, especially these days.

Crysis took a lot of flack for the dx jungle fight videos and the final game looking pretty flat in comparison, yes the game can look that good but it doesn't out of the box.

 
Seriously, you think that the above watch dogs and division e3 vs final footage is the same thing as using the built in game cinematic recorder to record in gameplay footage of a game? One is showing the game in a cinematic way with accurate representation of the graphics etc., the other is showing false footage, not in a cinematic way but in a way, which is what us the players will be seeing when playing the game. Maybe if ubi did a cinematic trailer instead of a POV gameplay, I and others could over look it....

Neither is achievable in game. that's what it boils down to. And i dont care about either :o

Nexus18 said:
As for the division, no it is vastly different looking. Here is another video showing the entire trailer:



- the entire map is different why does that matter?
- the entire UI (yes I agree it looks awkward to use but there is no reason why they couldn't have kept the same style and improved upon it) ...because it was awkward? I think the OSD they ended up with is brilliant, imo.
- the tablet/drone mode was removed yes, i mentioned that
- far too many graphical effects to list but little things such as the snow melting, bullet impacts, debris/objects from the streets, worse textures etc. were removed/downgraded. Even the animations looks better in the e3 version the animation was better? bit like that GTA trailer then




What are your thoughts on film trailers? Do you think that they should instead show 5-10 minutes of the actual film i.e. not cut scenes or would you rather have the cinematic version that is the norm?

I'm not the one complaining about this? cut scenes vs no cut scenes bears no relationship to what's being discussed in this thread.

Look at this way; do film trailers have better CGI than the actual release? no. did that GTA trailer look better than ingame does? yes. See the difference? (i still dont care though, not me complaining remember....)


And this is my other point, don't bother wasting time, resources and money for that separate build for trailer purposes, instead put all of that into the main game and then maybe they will be able to have the final game look and perform as what they had originally planned. If that means no trailer until 1 year or even 2-4 months before final release, then so be it imo.

you're assuming the same amount of effort goes in to putting a trailer together as it does to add all that graphics stuff to the game and still end up with a polished product the runs well. I think that's optimistic at best.


But then again, this point is mute as it leads back to watch dogs and them leaving the e3 graphic settings in their config files, which could be turned on just by changing "false" to "true"...

The ubisoft employee really did put it best:

they were buggy as hell. I've not addressed this point every time you've mentioned it so far but i will now - some of those 'features' just plain didn't work. And i was one of the fortunate ones who the game ran very well for as well (had a 7950 at the time, none of the stuttering issues that newer cards had)

I don't know why you're trying to convince anybody. It's a waste of time. Some people will object to silly stuff like this, the rest dont care and I can't keep going round in circles with you explaining that. If you think UBI are no good and put out trailers full of 'nothing but lies' then don't watch them, vote with your wallet and don't buy them...like you said you dont (except when you do [watchdogs 1 & 2, The division, what else?]). It's such an insignificant thing to get upset about. Not worth it :)
 
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As far as I'm concerned, Ubisoft were caught red handed with those "secret" E3 settings in Watch Dogs. If they were buggy, they should've been fixed during the lengthy delay period during which they appeared to do little else but "optimise" the game aka. balance the visuals for consoles and dumb it down. And no; removing them altogether doesn't count as fixing it. The E3 settings are irrefutable evidence that Ubi are hostile toward the PC platform.
 
And this is my other point, don't bother wasting time, resources and money for that separate build for trailer purposes, instead put all of that into the main game and then maybe they will be able to have the final game look and perform as what they had originally planned. If that means no trailer until 1 year or even 2-4 months before final release, then so be it imo.
:

For core development teams that are hitting 300 employees a target render is almost essential especially for new IPs on new engines. Without them the team struggles to work on a unified goal and the top creative team won't know their limitations and the coders won't have tasks to focus on.

So target renders and builds are needed for development and they save a hell of a lot of development time when dealing with massive projects that span multiple studios.

They shouldn't however be as polished as they are or used for marketing material. I think that is mainly due to the issue of new-gen lagging behind and publishers needing something to show off for investors etc. Which is why you see a lot of games shown off at least a year before a release and if not early when it is a new IP.
 
edit - nm

PS.

Still waiting for answers to these questions:

Why you think all the claims about division being downgraded were false...

Why some other developer companies can show an accurate version of their final game 1+ years before release yet ubi (and other companies like CDPR) can't...

Neither is achievable in game. that's what it boils down to. And i dont care about either :o

I'm not the one complaining about this? cut scenes vs no cut scenes bears no relationship to what's being discussed in this thread.

Look at this way; do film trailers have better CGI than the actual release? no. did that GTA trailer look better than ingame does? yes. See the difference? (i still dont care though, not me complaining remember....)

you're assuming the same amount of effort goes in to putting a trailer together as it does to add all that graphics stuff to the game and still end up with a polished product the runs well. I think that's optimistic at best.

they were buggy as hell. I've not addressed this point every time you've mentioned it so far but i will now - some of those 'features' just plain didn't work. And i was one of the fortunate ones who the game ran very well for as well (had a 7950 at the time, none of the stuttering issues that newer cards had)

I don't know why you're trying to convince anybody. It's a waste of time. Some people will object to silly stuff like this, the rest dont care and I can't keep going round in circles with you explaining that. If you think UBI are no good and put out trailers full of 'nothing but lies' then don't watch them, vote with your wallet and don't buy them...like you said you dont (except when you do [watchdogs 1 & 2, The division, what else?]). It's such an insignificant thing to get upset about. Not worth it :)

Except what rockstar showed is gameplay, it is not rendered. It is using their cinematic recording feature that is present in the game. Look on youtube and you will see hundreds of end players making cinematic videos using the same built in recording feature that R* have used to make their cinematic trailer, like this i.e.


Granted those end users have probably modded the game to look better and have additional vehicles etc. Rockstar did not mod the graphics etc. to look better in their cinematic trailers than the final game though.

With the division, nothing of what ubi showed is possible, there is no way for us to get the original map back, the original graphics, the original UI etc.

And yes I agree, cut scenes/cinematic trailers are not the same as showing gameplay footage with misleading graphics etc.

Again, how does GTA 5 look better in that official "cinematic" trailer, the added blur, fancy camera angles, slow motion are "post processing" effects like what instagram has to offer. They have not touched the textures, lighting, shadows or/and removed features or/and removed objects/features in the final game.

I'm not complaining, I am just flabbergasted that people are either completely blind and/or have no principles when it comes to false advertising in e3 "gameplay" trailers, if said company want fancy graphical looking trailers then at least do it in a cinematic way with NO gameplay footage.

I and others have shown all the hard evidence there is:

- video comparisons showing drastic differences with no mention in the video about it changing for final game
- ubisoft employee admitting the reason for downgrades and how he wants this stance to change
- you and others have not shown any direct comparisons to show me how gta 5, fallout 4, batman etc. were "downgraded"

The fact that I can type into google certain ubi games along with "downgraded" and get tons of links showing comparisons etc. about graphics being downgraded but nothing for the likes of fallout 4, gta 5 says it all...

I never said the same amount of effort goes into the false e3 trailers as the final game, I said it is wasted time, resources and money trying to whip together a false gameplay trailer for a presentation show.

Well I enabled/installed the mods from neogaf for watch dogs and there were no issues on my end, maybe there was an odd graphical glitch with regards to the wind but it still looked a lot better than the untouched game.

Most importantly, how about ubi fixing the minor issues with those features rather than just disabling them completely? You didn't see rocksteady remove graphical effects/features from batman arkham knight in order to get the game running well and being stable, did you?

So not are you only trying to debunk my claims but you are also debunking what the ubisoft employee has said about the division downgrade as well then?

PS. I didn't buy watch dogs 1 or 2.

EDIT:

Emmm, they showed a far larger scale of what was playable in the e3 trailers i.e. PVP/DZ fighting in Brooklyn yet Brooklyn was only a tutorial area at the start in the final game. And well, you can see for yourself, the drastic difference in the scale of what they showed to be as playable in the e3 map. That is like Rockstar showing various areas of LS but limiting us to the downtown area for the final game.

The new UI is fine in terms of control but it could have looked so much better whilst still having the same functionality as well being just as easy to use.

The animation for GTA 5 looked the same to me as the final game. Again it might look better initially because of everything being in slow motion and smoothed out but this is a post processing effect, not something that alters the game itself.

EDIT:

I am not trying to convince anyone of anything, why do I need to do the convincing when there is already all the evidence out there for people to see what is what with their own eyes? Only a small handful in here are defending misleading e3 trailers, as I showed early, there are plenty of people that do care as shown with just one video having 7+ million views (more than what any ubi game has sold except the division), there are also tons of forums with tons of threads with pages discussing topics like this, heck reddit is the biggest source for it all.
 
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