Ubisoft: "It's Not True That We Don't Care About PC Optimization"

MercurySteam

Tastes Like Chicken!
Legacy
Apr 11, 2008
4,950
2
43
The intermittent flicker I get in Black flag with my SLI setup begs to differ. And still no proper support for screens with 16:10 aspect ratio. These are basic things guys.
 

GAunderrated

New member
Jul 9, 2012
998
0
0
Grabehn said:
"If you can see our game run at 4k resolution on PC, it's magical. It's beautiful," Yeah? And how does that changes that the game is implemented like shit? Or that games like AC run in the same engine, yet since Brotherhood they control worse and worse with keyboard and mouse? AND that Revelations needed more resources just because? Cuz it didn't look any nicer to me.
The funniest thing about that quote is it reinforces the opinion stated at the very article they are denying, that they don't need to optimize for the PC because people can just upgrade their hardware. So of course they tested it in 4k and didn't speak how well their lowest settings ran smoothly.
 

Sight Unseen

The North Remembers
Nov 18, 2009
1,064
0
0
IamLEAM1983 said:
Sight Unseen said:
I think that what he was referring to may not have been the optimization of the game so much as the quality of the port. The optimization of the game seems fine to me, the graphics are incredible and the game runs fine to me, but the inventory, crafting, and skill tree windows are absolute garbage on the PC. The shops are almost broken because it takes so long to buy or sell anything and crafting is way more cumbersome than it needed to be.
This isn't so much an optimization issue than a UI design issue. Poor optimization would reflect as your GPU needing more cycles to take care of fairly simple tasks, and your CPU encountering unreasonable bottlenecks. I'm no software engineer, but speaking as someone who has a seven year-old PC, FarCry 3's menu system seemed to run fairly well.

It wasn't *designed* in the most ergonomic way imaginable and nor was it exactly fun to navigate, but it didn't feel explicitly broken. At least, not to me.

As far as Black Flag's optimization is concerned; I can run the game on an utterly sub-par system and generally maintain an FPS that's in the upper fifties at low settings. I'm not chomping at the bit to upgrade my rig just yet, so I'll probably hold on for a month or two before considering that it's time to hang up the ol' dual-core.

And yes, I'm well aware that Black Flag is officially stated as needing a *quad* core as a minimum - but feel free to look at my Steam history. I've been playing it, it runs well enough for me to tackle everything there is to tackle, and I don't have any particular negative complaints. Loving it, so far.
Isn't that what I was saying? To me it seems like the biggest flaw with the PC version of Far Cry was the bad UI that was ported over from consoles rather than a flaw in optimization.
 

mrdude2010

New member
Aug 6, 2009
1,315
0
0
Drummodino said:
Adzma said:
Far Cry 3 would beg to differ...
What was wrong with Far Cry 3? I played it on PC and it was fine.
This. My graphics card is from 2011 and I could still play it on medium graphics and it never drops below 30 FPS.


That being said, some of their PC ports are a poorly optimized mess.
 

laggyteabag

Scrolling through forums, instead of playing games
Legacy
Oct 25, 2009
3,301
982
118
UK
Gender
He/Him
Assassin's Creed III is evidence to the contrary, that game runs horribly on AMD GPU's, as far as im aware they still haven't fixed it to this day, and now that Assassin's Creed IV is out I doubt it will ever happen.
 

Nathan Josephs

New member
Feb 10, 2012
97
0
0
ass creed 3 optimization was horrible. i could play revelations at max settings at full speed and cant get get 60 frames in towns at the lowest settings in 3.
 

Fulbert

New member
Jan 15, 2009
269
0
0
Sylvain Trottier said:
"If we didn't care about PC optimization, then we would not have such a big team dedicated just to the PC version in Kiev."
"If we didn't care about PC optimization, then we would not outsource PC ports to an Eastern European developer."
 

Pebkio

The Purple Mage
Nov 9, 2009
780
0
0
Ubisoft: It's not True That Our Company's Name Starts with U and Ends With "R JUST WALKING WALLETS TO US".

While we technically can say that Ubisoft (and other AAA publishers) care about PC Optimization... you would then also have to point out that they only care as far as being able to make it work. The thing about PC Optimization, real optimization and not the corner cutting nonsense Ubisoft is well known for, is that it takes more than one solution for any given problem. While one Xbox 360 is nearly identical to any other, the same can't be said for PCs.

So writing one piece of code and then "welp, this is now 100% optimized" isn't going to do the job. It'll work well enough but the end user might have to muck about a bit... so don't be all defensive when you see hate for you poor optimizations.
 

Neyon

New member
May 3, 2009
124
0
0
If it isn't that they don't care then they are incompetent instead, which isn't exactly an improvement.
 

Ushiromiya Battler

Oddly satisfied
Feb 7, 2010
601
0
0
I haven't really encountered this massively poor optimization people speak of, so I think they did a pretty good job actually.
 

Sigmund Av Volsung

Hella noided
Dec 11, 2009
2,999
0
0
Ubisoft, you so silly.

My system is above the recommended specs, high enough to play Far Cry 3 on max, a game that still looks better than AC IV(seriously, the textures, the post-fx, everything looks better than ACIV) and yet I struggle to get more than 50fps with FXAA, the lowest level of anti-alaising, running the game at high settings, even though I should be able to play at the highest(sans god rays, because that feature is a bit BS) at 60.

Hell, if I check THE NVIDIA OPTIMISATION GUIDE FOR AC IV, it says that EVEN TITANS SHOULD NOT GO ABOVE FXAA.

If the company that you worked with to optimise the game with thinks that you did a crap job, then cannot go about releasing false statements such as these.

Honestly, it feels like the next gen will be worse for PC, as two out of three next gen AAA titles(CoD Ghosts, Battlefield 4, AC IV, thankfully Battlefield has an amazing PC version) run like arse on even the best PCs.
 

Hero in a half shell

It's not easy being green
Dec 30, 2009
4,286
0
0
Steven Bogos said:
"If we didn't care about PC optimization, then we would not have such a big team dedicated just to the PC version in Kiev."
You know who else sent a big dedicated team to Kiev?

Hitler. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kiev_%281941%29

I might actually have considered getting some Ubisoft games for my laptop; I loved Splinter Cell on my old Xbox and Assassins Creed does look enticing, but I refuse to have anything to do with Uplay and all its DRM restrictions datamining and always online bollocks that could easily make a return.
 

Sigmund Av Volsung

Hella noided
Dec 11, 2009
2,999
0
0
Hero in a half shell said:
Steven Bogos said:
"If we didn't care about PC optimization, then we would not have such a big team dedicated just to the PC version in Kiev."
You know who else sent a big dedicated team to Kiev?

Hitler. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kiev_%281941%29

I might actually have considered getting some Ubisoft games for my laptop; I loved Splinter Cell on my old Xbox and Assassins Creed does look enticing, but I refuse to have anything to do with Uplay and all its DRM restrictions datamining and always online bollocks that could easily make a return.
That made my day.

Seriously though Ubisoft, nvidia convinced me that your games were why I bought a gtx 670, and now both don't really work(Blacklist was just a mess for me; missing files, weird un-changeable key bindings) at least AC IV is playable, and I am enough of a fan to see past the poor optimisation, but it still bugs me.

Ubisoft, get your shit together.
 

Barbas

ExQQxv1D1ns
Oct 28, 2013
33,804
0
0
Damn. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and, according to our sources on the street, it tastes like they neglected to read the baking instructions, threw it all in the microwave and nuked it for thirty minutes, then served.
 

weirdee

Swamp Weather Balloon Gas
Apr 11, 2011
2,634
0
0
I'll just put this one next to the other one about how they aren't going to delay the PC release, and the one about being a WiiU launch title.
 

Baresark

New member
Dec 19, 2010
3,908
0
0
Meh, Ubisoft gives a mixed bag. I don't play a lot of their games because I don't care for UPlay. I put up with it for good games though... if only I gave a shit about Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. I am just completely uninterested in that game... completely. I think people have a hard time understanding that a lot of gamers don't have issues with some ports. I saw a post earlier complaining about Far Cry 3, a game that was by all accounts, still incredibly good, even if the UI was subpar. Oh no, an extra 5 seconds in the store screen or an extra 15 in the crafting screen... it's not a big deal and that is just the definition of nitpicking. It's always funny to see the extremes that people will go through to have an issue with any game. If it's incredibly good, then the things that are bad are amplified 100 fold by the people who didn't like it. The interface in Far Cry 3 is one example. Another example in Far Cry 3 is the... what was it called, like the white savior trope or some shit. Everyone acted like the story was a crime because the hero of the story is a white guy on an island of decidedly non-white people. And this literally ruined an otherwise excellent game for some people because.... well, lets be honest, for no good reason other the people decided they didn't like it and then had to find reasons they didn't like it.

It was the same for the most recent Tomb Raider game. It was a great game (and I was one of the first people to complain about the combat-centric feel of the game and the decidedly severe lack of tombs to explore). But, if you take it for what it is, then it as a great game with strong combat, a pretty good story, and a surprising amount of actual exploration. But it suffered from... haha, I'm having a hell of a time here with remembering what some of these things are called... that element where there is a feeling of dissonance between the story and the gameplay, or at least in the this case, the character and the gameplay. Sure, it made the story feel like it was pandering to the crowd that over emphasizes the need for a female to fit a feminist ideal of what women are, but who cares. It was a good game, in my opinion and most people's opinion.

Eh... I'm rambling. It's OK to not like a game, you don't need reasons to not like something, contrary to popular belief... but real quick: There is a reason for that. People have a need to be consistent, and since people in general have good reasons for not liking something, then to be consistent they must always have a good reason to not like things. The reality is, they don't need a good reason. It's OK to just not like something.

OK, that's it, I said my piece. So PEACE!
 

Atmos Duality

New member
Mar 3, 2010
8,473
0
0
Well, thanks to the shared architecture, ridiculous shit like this can be shared between all platforms.


Optimized for hilarity. Clearly.
 

4Aces

New member
May 29, 2012
180
0
0
Optimized but not Beta tested?

How does a large team even factor into optimization anyway? Oh, these are the same 75 people that have been half-assing all the PC ports of ass-creed? Well that is fine then. I mean, by now they must be professional (screw-ups) right? I am sure that the PC users will not retaliate with even higher piracy rates for your upcoming releases. Just like I am sure that U-B-Kiev is going to do better next time.

Only a fool of a company would burn 1/3 of their market on such as consistent basis. Probably why I do not buy Ubisoft games.
 

Blaster395

New member
Dec 13, 2009
514
0
0
Atmos Duality said:
Well, thanks to the shared architecture, ridiculous shit like this can be shared between all platforms.


Optimized for hilarity. Clearly.
That's just the new submarine mode.