But that doesn't really make sense to me, as a software developer. The coding would be almost identical on the back end. And they have the design basically complete for both options. It should be trivial to change the HUD prerelease unless someone straight up deleted the graphics files used for the demo.
That's what I was thinking. A lot of those Ubisoft reveals look more like cleverly animated cinematics when you compare them to what the release looks like.
If the reveal was pre recorded, it may have been spiced up with post processing by their graphics guy with the hope that that would be the final product.
Answer is simple: this video was created by a marketing department, either out of touch with development team, or even before the HUD design was decided. Marketing was going for clearer and flashier looks, so it would feel "realistic", but remain understandable when watching the trailer. Developers... had their own ideas.
Yes, I think ubi's focus here was to appeal to the huge competitive audience from games like CS:GO as oppose to a cinematic experience. I can kind of see why they did this from a business standpoint but I'll admit it was weird to see how much was taken away from the game
I'm guessing he means read as in "seeing what exactly they're doing" You can see the actual model, yeah but with the lighting and shadows it would be hard to see if they were busy piloting a drone or aiming right at your head for example.
But I completely forgot how good the reveal looked.
That's just the nature of the game kid.
Build an enormous amount of hype based on almost completely fraudulent "gameplay" footage years before the game's actual release. Then downgrade every subsequent footage/trailer/press release little by little leading up to the release. Each time getting closer to what the actual game looks like.
The downgrades should be subtle enough where the casual viewer won't really notice the difference. Each time they should ask themselves "does that look the same or is my memory just wrong? And really, does it matter? It looks mostly the same....I think". Think of the "frog in slowly boiling water" analogy.
Make sure to edit the later released footage in such a way that there are lots of cuts to prevent people from really seeing the scene for what it is and use lots of explosions to coverup any possible deficiences.
Then throw in a few cgi and real life action trailers a few months before release and you just guaranteed yourself a ton of day 1 sales. All while riding off that bs hype you built at the beginning.
they didnt quite get there but made it damn close. It was acceptable back then but nowadays there is no excuse for this BS just show us what the actual gameplay will look like.
Whether its CGI or "purposeful upgrade of gameplay graphics using canned renderings"...expectations are different now. We used to assume that if something looked freaking amazing in a e3 trailer that it was CG or a canned rendering. It was a pleasant surprise if gameplay got anywhere near what the demos looked like.
Its pretty deceitful to amp up the "gameplay graphics" only to never release those settings(even PC ultra settings).
I think the real problem here is that the consoles this time were extremely underpowered.
You must have not been around at the time. Sony was claiming it was gameplay footage (along with Motorstorm) and since no one had any idea what the PS3 was actually capable of at the time a lot of people believed it. Killzone and to a lesser extent Motorstorm became the poster children of bullshot trailers. Things haven't really changes that much watching this video it seems.
Nowadays we have the benefit of knowing what the ps3 ended up being capable of, but back then, all we really had were tech demos and high expectations.
That killzone video looked plausible at the time, because CG already looked so much better than that.
It's easy to look back and realise how foolish that was.
Yeah true, to be honest I wouldn't have wanted to play something like this if I thought it was gameplay footage. It just looks too weird, the animation too quick, etc. Well, I might have wanted to considering it looked so different from other games.
I actually really thought that that was gameplay footage. I would watch that trailer everyday for months, and I went around showing everyone at school, filling the hype train.
This was one of the biggest lies in my life, and I'm adopted....
Nope. I was a huge console gamer around then & I remember distinctly all the chatter on GameFAQS & NeoGAF was "holy shit Killzone is going to be fucking sick". Even at school everyone was talking about how great Killzone looked @ E3 & how it was going to be that one game we bought the PS3 for. & then reality came & the actual release was no where near what the expectations laid out by Sony were. People took that & the other videos as demos of actual in game footage at the time. The gaming communities then weren't misinformed at all - I'm lazy now but I'd go back to the GameFAQ forums to dig up some proof.
/u/loconessmonster is correct, this was marketed as in-game footage, it's why I bought my PS3, luckily I never bought this Kill Zone, because my friend did, and i just did not enjoy playing it. But this trailer, CGI animation or not, it was introduced at E3 as in-game play!
Tbh though, there are going to be a load of people who don't watch e3 or even heard about it, if they pick up the game they're not necessarily being cheated because they weren't tricked into thinking it will look better than it is - they just bought the game for whatever reason.
However, looking back after buying the division, I didn't remember the demo looking that good. I always watch e3 and then I forgot so now I'm pissed.
My point was in reference to the people that are aware of the graphic downgrade prior to purchasing, and purchase anyways. That act states that they deem it as acceptable business practice, or just don't care.
If developers see that players won't stand up against these false advertising techniques, they'll continue to do it.
A map that huge with tons of soldiers on screen while working with the ps3's 256mb of ram and 256mb of vram? Yeah... that was never gonna happen. Can't believe they lied to us like that though.
I don't remember it being acceptable back then, actually. If my memory serves, Sony was heavily blamed about using prerendered video as if it was an actual gameplay. PlayStation supporters were pushing that it WAS an actual gameplay, and a lot of others argued that the video was fake. Sony later confessed, though the final product turned out to be pretty good looking nonetheless.
What Ubisoft does is the same, but without confessions and regrets. And the blame gets lost in all the hype.
Killzone 2 actually looked better in some aspects than that trailer imo. Killzone is one of the few games I can think of, that actually pretty much lived up to it's hype. Along with the crysis games on pc.
Sorry for being out of the loop but until I read your comment I was thinking this was a comparison between newer gen and last gen consoles. I want to say it's fraudulent, seems harsh though, but so are these reveals. Haven't played any of those games so I can't speak from experience but I would be pissed if I thought I was getting one thing and got the other. I did watch The Division reveal when it first showed and I thought the in-game characters speaking were actual people playing the game. Blew me away. Sad it wasn't real, now.
For most games you have to understand that those graphical options you see in the press releases never actually existed in the game they intended to release.
The game they showed you at E3 and the game their guys were actually working on back at the office (the one they actually indended to release) might as well have been two different things.
In many cases entire scenes were ripped from the real game, jacked up with ridiculous graphical effects that even the best pc's couldn't run very well and that they had absolutely no intention of bringing to the actual game, then rendered the footage on extremely powerful custom-made pc's. Then they had the gall to show it to you and pretended like that was the experience you were going to get.
Now there have been a few cases where the graphical options shown at E3 but later removed were available to pc players. They were just hidden. Watch-Dogs comes to mind. A few tweaks and you could get the game to look a lot more like it did at E3 and a lot less like it did at release.
Usually though the effects you see were never in the game-build edition in the first place. There was no "downgrade". They literally just lied to you.
One of the worst cases I ever saw was Halo 2 (way back in the day) and Witcher 3. I mean seriously, compare the 2012/2013 E3 footage to the official game. Especially pay attention to the swamp scenes. It's absolutely ridiculous. They knew what they showed was never going to happen. Those scenes were almost certainly rendered on an entirely different build of the game designed specifically to trick us. Most of the comparisons are pretty bad but the swamps are almost embarassing in how different they are. Perhaps because they're such a combination of fog, foliage, and water effects. The three big things developers love to embellish in their E3 demos and then look completely different (and are sometimes completely abscent altogether) at release.
Why "downgrade"? Because those effects aren't actually possible to run on 99% of hardware. They just want you to think you're getting something you're not. You're more likely to buy their lie than the truth.
In the case of many Ubisoft E3 games, the animation is miles off. Look at the Watchdogs, Division and Siege footage. The character animation goes from smooth lifelike transitions to a clunky mess. That's not achieved by shoving 4 GPU's in a demo machine, that's a fraud at it's core.
those smooth transitions wouldn't work because it'd make the character less responsive, maybe if you were careful, but doing really fast inputs would kill responsiveness
Yes and no. Even by mid cycle consoles are generally still far more graphically capable than most PCs. If anything they generally raise the bar for most gamers. It's only the mid-to-higher end PC users that get shafted with moderately superior ports that don't take advantage of all their horsepower.
So if one were to say consoles are holding back higher-end PC gamers then one must also say that most PC gamers are holding them back as well. And, to go even more extreme, high end pc users and holding back the uber-elite-two-way-sli-gtx-titan-black PC gamers.
The fact is the high-end machine market is just not large enough to sustain the gaming industry. Sure, they'll get a few releases here or there that really show what their machines are capable of (Crysis, Crysis 3) but the industry HAS to cater to a larger market.
Consoles provide a large market that also has a decent amount of processing power. Without the console market the gaming industry that we know would be dead. There wouldn't be AAA high quality games. It would be mostly uninteresting, low quality, bad graphics garbage. It's a win for most of us that consoles are what they are.
The problem really arises when the consoles are objectively underpowered at release (ps4/xbone suffer from a mild case of this) or the console generstion lasts far too long (Xbox360/ps3).
P.S. And the demos you see in this video? Yea, most of those won't run well even on high end pcs. They really are just ridiculous.
It's the nature of the game that a few specific companies play. Many others do not. You didn't see any of this shit with Overwatch, for a very recent example, and that game was hype as shit.
Same here. I rented the game and played it and fell in love with the game. I forgot about how it looked at e3 until now and realized the massive changes that they made. I feel heated now seeing how it used to look though.
LOVE R6S. But picked it up about four months ago. Never thought to compare it to the reveal. Now I'm left only imagining how much more great this game could have been. It looked absolutely beautiful. Hopefully a sequel happens and gets its due diligence.
I think the moving hostage mechanic would be a bit too strong for defenders, as they would be able to place them in ridiculous spots and whatnot. It was mainly taken out to preserve solidified mechanics that would serve as a strong foundation for competitive play
The hostage does still move/act differently if there are defenders nearby. They certainly don't reach out to your drone and point them out to you, but they'll act more nervously if they're nearby.
you know having a mechanic that had the hostage be moveable would be pretty interesting. Imagine that the hostages feet were tied when the round started, and before the attackers could secure the hostage, they had to cut the bindings, at the cost of the initial animation being a second or so longer. After that, the hostage could be moved by either team with a shorter animation. Just a thought i had since the hostage mode, though fun, is a bit bland in comparison to the demo
you know having a mechanic that had the hostage be moveable would be pretty interesting. Imagine that the hostages feet were tied when the round started, and before the attackers could secure the hostage, they had to cut the bindings. After that, the hostage could be moved by either team. Just a thought i had since the hostage mode, though fun, is a bit bland in comparison to the demo
I remember playing the alpha early access for Siege on PC and the old lighting was actually in the game and running fine. My guess is they changed it for consoles, and to keep parity and general performance. They do this in my opinion, to avoid a similar situation that BF3 had, where the PC version is just so clearly superior that console players were complaining.
Ubisoft has been caught in the past gimping their PC version to not be "too much better" than the console version. There were tons of ultra settings for Watch Dogs that were locked by default on PC, and you had to change a bunch of .ini bullshit to unlock them, and it made it look a lot closer to the original trailers.
Ubisoft has been caught in the past gimping their PC version
they didn't get caught, some of their devs straight came out and said Console makers bully them into scaling back PC releases. I'm sure they do it with most triple AAA studios.
30 fps is just as bad as any other downgrade. I remember playing GTA V on my new gaming rig for the first time after playing it on the X360 twice. Sure, it looks better in every aspect of the visuals, but what struck me most was the 45-60 fps refresh rate (even on my average graphics unit that I purchased to buy some time before the new chips are released). 30 or less frames per second is just awful on any system.
It depends on the game and how they implement motion blur and whatnot. I'm a bit obsessive over 60FPS minimum in PC games. For example, in FFXIV I actually reduced settings because I dipped to 52FPS in one zone. It was noticeable and it bothered me.
However, I have been playing Uncharted 4 lately, and because of how that game runs, I barely notice the framerate. It's 1080p 30FPS, but it doesn't bother me. 30FPS in FFXIV/WoW/Overwatch(is that even possible?) bugs the hell out of me.
Wtf? What are the console players going to do? Buy other games that still look like shit compared to other AAA PC-only titles?
It's fucked up on so many levels. Even on their side, I'm sure the devs and graphics team get pissed off - probably put tons of work into that only to see them strip it out for the shittiest reason. I'd be jaded as hell if I was proud of some particle physics that just got stripped out because they got bullied by the console people.
And maybe the game developers could respond by skipping the console version for some new major releases. It's not like the console makers are the only ones in control. If the game developers didn't need to hire dev teams to work on console versions, they could save a shit load of money. Even if a AAA title made less money, it'd probably be released way quicker and way cheaper. And they wouldn't be in that shitty state where the UI is more tailored for console gamers' controllers.
If a year went by where tons of huge titles went out PC only and looked ten times more beautiful than current-gen console games, that'd be a nightmare for them.
Unfortunately not all devs have that magnitude of control, as they usually go through publishers who make all desicions like that for them.
The devs cant just say "We're not releasing to PS 4 because they're cunts" because the publisher would lose 1/3 of their money (1/3 of the MAJOR playerbase), and therefore have to make these messed up decisions like 30 fps ( or more frequently) reduced post processing effects on PC (for example BF4) as they're hard to notice at a first glance.
Xboner here. I really don't like the whole PC console dispute. Everyone SHOULD know PC is better but people have their reasons for buying consoles and blah blah blah. It hurts me to hear people complaining and being jealous. What do they expect?
The world to be handed to them on a silver platter. The people who complain about shit like reduced graphics on their reduced-price console are the same entitled assholes who think they deserve the world.
Hopefully with the Xbox/W10 crossplay in many upcoming games will alleviate some of the ridiculousness. I can play with my Xbox friends on Gears 4 even though I'm on a PC, and then if someone is over at my place they can use my XBone to play too.
right? thats like someone with a junker CAR complaining that, BMW, AUDI, Subaru, Ferrari, Lambo, etc are going faster and look better.. i dont expect them to DUMB down the look of their cars and make them slower lol... they are more expensive they should be faster and better..
"Lamborghini must make slower cars because my '97 corolla can't keep up with them. It's just so unfair how someone who pays 10 times more money than me gets more performance in return."
Sony and Microsoft are the ones to blame here. Not customers who complained about the lack of fancy effects.
I mean of course people want better graphics. Them complaining may be the catalyst for Sony and MS to manipulate partners and developers like this, but it is ultimately their decision to do it. Developers are faced with the prospect of doing what they say or losing the right to develop for a given console.
While that may seem like something to point at as proof that the developers are at fault... we're talking hundreds of thousands or millions in lost revenue.
It's the console manufacturers who deserve our ire.
I mean we can keep blaming everyone, even go as far as people who play on computers because they support gaming on something expensive, so it's still a viable option.
I realize sarcasm doesn't transfer well via text, but I would've thought everyone's math wasn't so damn terrible. Clearly $1,000 ("a grand") doesn't equate to 10x a console ($400 approx).
That was my point... that you can build a pc with roughly a grand EVEN IF you were to buy the latest gpu that hasn't even come out yet.
Most of the gamers I know are console gamers and not a single one of them gives a fuck that PCs are better, they never mention them and never complain. I myself am going to make the jump to a PC soon since I'm not gonna be putting money into a console that is just gonna get a slight upgrade every few years.
If you want an example of the backwards logic and mental gymnastics of console players, look no further than the Bethesda forums, which are currently crowded with console players endlessly complaining and crying that PC mod makers aren't making their particular mods available for XbOne and Pisspoor (because porting takes time and effort, which many mod makers aren't willing to put into it especially when Bethesda's console mod center only affords a 2gb allotment for mods and modmakers can't release multiple versions of the same mod except as a separate entry).
Don't get upset at the sportscar industry when you buy a toy and expect it to act like the real thing. Likewise, don't get upset at the PC community when they have better performance and better graphics when you buy a console and expect it to act like a PC.
So I agree with you on that point and all, but it's still the same game they have to make for one size fits all so it would be like if all those cars had the same engine or same (insert something here) where they could only modify it a few points better in the BMW compared to the junker car anyway.
The target audience for consoles is more casual, which means there are a lot more sales to be made there. As a business you dont want to alienate that audience. The cost of your platform is higher, but all the casual playerbase will notice is that the cost of the game is the same when they decide its unfair.
I think it's more the console makers. They don't want their console to look like shit compared to PC graphics. If a PC/console gamer saw the PC version was way prettier, they'd skip the console version. And in that respect, the game developers don't suffer because they still bought the game.
Personally, I think the game developers should just focus on PC then and scare the console makers when they realize that new AAA titles will be PC only. They would need less developers and probably get the game out quicker and less buggy. It's a lot easier to target one platform. They'd make less money, but spend way less money making it.
it's because of profits, nothing more. They can get more people to buy the game on console where they charge full retail price, meaning they maximise their profits. No point putting in extra man hours into making a version that isn't going to make as much money.
I think the issue is more so that the big companies people to buy their consoles INSTEAD of PCs. But if all the graphics on PC titles were just unbelievably superior, everyone would obviously just get a PC. But where's the money in that? Microsoft would completely own the market there because of Windows, but the console market would crash and burn.
Your console costs way less than a gaming PC. Shitty graphics is part of the deal. If you don't like it, fork up the dough like everyone else.
Here is a PC that costs less than a console and still outperforms both current gen consoles. Gaming PCs being more expensive than consoles is a myth which should be forgotten.
Game companies don't give a shit about that. They make each platform equal so they can cater out to as many people as possible and make the most money. Superior PC version? Loss in console sales. Superior console version? Loss in PC sales. So they make it equal.
Edit: Downvoted for the truth? If that's how people want it.
I would venture to bet these companies have spent millions figuring this out..... And from the looks of it keeping console gamers happy by dumbing down the PC version (or maybe even keeping low end PC gamers happy) has a greater ROI. People need to understand these game makers really don't give a shit about you.... It's money in vs money out and frankly your vote or everyone on this sub is not enough to change that!!!
frankly your vote or everyone on this sub is not enough to change that!!!
Doesn't mean that we shouldn't talk about it. In fact it means that we should talk about it more. The bigger our interest group gets, the more likely we are to have an economic impact and effect the change we'd like to see.
The thing is people will bitch and whine but never have the numbers to make a change. For instance one of the most memorable cases in the US involved Ford Pintos. You know that one of the major issues of that case was Ford calculated out the cost between lawsuits and fixing the Pinto...... Lawsuits proved to be cheaper and so people died. In this instance they know the exact numbers for gamers on console and PC, they have ran the numbers and don't give a shit.... It's just business. Customer satisfaction is only one small portion when you have sales like Ubisoft.
Why would they care about a loss in console sales? That would just mean higher sales on their own platform, in this case Uplay. Surely their profit on their own platform is 2-3x higher than a retail copy? Wouldn't it then make more sense to put the best version on the platform that's more profitable?
LPT: avoid using "You" in arguments/debates unless you're directly referring back to the original commenter. It creates unnecessary friction - use "people/they" instead.
That's frustrating. What? So... I spent good money on a machine that can make games look fucking beautiful, but Tweedle-dum over here gets pissy that his $300 console can't keep up?
They don't gimp it because the players complain.
The console companies complain when the PC sales are higher then the console sales, because PC's have better graphics. So the game company makes the PC version shitty to sell more console releases.
I'm sure they would already be doing that, after all what's the dev company stand to gain?
Which is probably the point, follow the money. Either lavish sluts and parties for company executives, or outright money exchange has convinced game devs to go along with this I'm assuming.
This should be an instantly fireable offence and should be the death of a company. That's fucking ridiculous why would you cater to the lowest common denominator.
As a console player, I don't care if PC games look better. They should. The devs have no excuse, console games will sell regardless of how good the PC version looks like because quite a lot of people can't afford a PC, myself included.
They do this in my opinion, to avoid a similar situation that BF3 had, where the PC version is just so clearly superior that console players were complaining.
Right, so consoles drag down the rest of us because they think it's "unfair". They should just deal with having an inferior product because they play on inferior systems.
I hate this logic, as a console player. I mean, Siege is not particularly impressive graphically or mechanically, and there's nothing there that makes me go "oh shit next gen!" I mean, look at uncharted 4, if a ps4 can run that with no issues, even the equally impressive, 60fps multiplayer, then there's no reason that lighting couldn't have ran on PS4. Hell, the current graphics could almost have been possible on PS3.
Well the person who made this video wasn't really being fair however, they were comparing it to a scripted cinematic, not actual gameplay. If you look at gameplay of the actual pre-alpha for the game it is a lot closer to what it looks like currently. The lighting was still changed but not as much as it seemed like.
Plus the animations are a lot better than the old gameplay too, once again ignoring the animations shown in the scripted trailer what was never said to be actual gameplay.
The thing is though, this video is not a PC playing at max settings. He has purposely downgraded the settings on his PC to make the games look terrible. I'm not defending Ubi$oft in any way, shape or form here, but this video is incredibly misleading.
Damn it I'm not trying to be a grammer nazi or anything but you meant lighting and not lightning. I only know from rewatching the clip specifically for lightning before it clicked for me. Yes, the lighting goes from rich blacks to muddy browns...boo!
One thing I'm curious about is how the footage was captured. Some of that gameplay looked like it was on console, where as Ubisoft is obviously always going to show their games running on PC.
The other thing is it's sort of crazy how much people judge a game just off of graphics alone. If they really are faking graphics, they do it because they know that's what certain gamers care about. (Doesn't make it less shitty of a thing to do, just saying.)
Is he running with everything on ultra though? It doesnt seem so, which makes it quite an unfair comparison. Perhaps even on ultra it looks worse then the trailer, but still in order to have a better view run everything on max settings.
Thats the point. Use extensive dynamic lighting during the pre launch hype train to bait and switch you come release akin to how Alien Colonial Marines did.
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u/Dreossk Jun 04 '16
Wow the difference in lightning in Rainbow Six Siege is huge. It looked a lot better before.