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Deakul posted:Even better: scrap the Assassin's Creed brand and make a new series that lets you be a parkour time traveller. If I can't sprint up to a couple dudes and stab them while barely breaking stride, then what is the point?
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May 13, 2015 16:40
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khy posted:At the same time the developers need to acknowledge that if there are mistakes made it's something they need to own up to. The guy saying "Nobody's happy when four years of work is imaged with a bug", but WHY did that bug manage to slip out despite four years of hard work? How could the developers have let that past? Did the game not go through QA? Did they not spend enough time on QA? Did QA catch it and the developers ignored the reports? Because they had to release the game in time for the holiday season. Screaming about "why didn't you do better" doesn't really work when the answer is "it has to be released at a specific time and once that deadline is hit there is nothing we can do because we are not funding the game nor in control of its release schedule." It sucks and they shouldn't be proud of the game being released in the state it was, but it's pretty hard to fix something when the answer is "it's being shipped now short of literally killing systems and maybe even then." khy posted:You CAN blame the publisher for rushing a shipping date. Most people should be blaming Ubisoft instead of whining about how sad it is their beautiful baby is being mocked and derided. They should be saying to Ubi execs "THIS is why the extra month or two is worth the lack of a holiday release!" It isn't and it won't ever be from a publisher perspective. Releasing in time for a holiday is incredibly important. It would take a lot more than a buggy game to get a delay past holiday season. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 16:52 on May 13, 2015 |
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May 13, 2015 16:40
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Every time something like that gets posted people can suddenly understand where the devs are coming from as if putting years of work into an entertainment product that can end up being bad is a new thing you should consider and it should really make you think man. As if exactly the same pattern didn't exist for hundreds of years with books and for decades with cinema. Newsflash, these people work on something that is supposed to entertain, if it fails to entertain then cry me a river, it fails at the basic reason for its existance. I say it as somebody who actually works in a creative industry and has to handle outside criticizm every single day. It's part of the job, it's one of its basic principles and there's no reason to feel sorry for those people or relate with their poor poor souls. As a professional to me it sounds like baby's first blow to ego after years of living in some corporate bubble being told that everything is awesome, we're the best in the world woohoo. Well, it isn't and you aren't and customer feedback is actually a very valuable resource in an industry where, you know, customers are everything that matters and not a reason to whine how bad you have it. Palpek fucked around with this message at 16:55 on May 13, 2015 |
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May 13, 2015 16:53
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Palpek posted:Every time something like that gets posted people can suddenly understand where the devs are coming from as if putting years of work into an entertainment product that can end up being bad is a new thing you should consider and it should really make you think man. Exactly. I work in TV. You see a lot of people who drink the koolaid far too much and think they're working on the next Breaking Bad or the next Survivor or whatever. Then it comes out and it tanks and everybody's wondering what happened. It's because they were living in their own creative bubble and weren't aware of what their audience actually wanted. With AC: Unity I can bet there was some executive who thought that people would eat up the microtransaction premium currency, the tablet connectivity, etc. because that's what's all the rage on Facebook now! I don't have a huge amount of sympathy for it either.
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May 13, 2015 17:00
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Palpek posted:As if exactly the same pattern didn't exist for hundreds of years with books and for decades with cinema. Newsflash, these people work on something that is supposed to entertain, if it fails to entertain then cry me a river, it fails at the basic reason for its existance. I say it as somebody who actually works in a creative industry and has to handle outside criticizm every single day. It's part of the job, it's one of its basic principles and there's no reason to feel sorry for those people or relate with their poor poor souls. That's a hilariously narrowminded viewpoint that basically boils down to "gently caress other people." v  vYou can criticize a product and also understand that the person making that product is a human being. The inability to divorce one from the other is why a lot of criticism boils down to angry screaming and lovely comments. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 17:06 on May 13, 2015 |
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May 13, 2015 17:04
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Wiggly Wayne DDS posted:You should all be ashamed of yourselves: http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/video-ubisoft-says-it-will-learn-from-assassin-s-creed-unity-mistakes/0149386 "I worked on that turd for 18 hours and no one applauded when it got stuck in the toilet  "
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May 13, 2015 17:08
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Why should I see them as a human being when they saw me as a walking wallet who wants to pay microtransactions on top of a full priced game? I'll have sympathy for them when they stop showing contempt for me. And change up the gameplay a little. I couldn't give a poo poo about pop-in and view distance but shanking the same guys to take over an enemy base, climbing a tower to reveal the map... eh.
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May 13, 2015 17:10
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Silentgoldfish posted:Why should I see them as a human being when they saw me as a walking wallet who wants to pay microtransactions on top of a full priced game? I'll have sympathy for them when they stop showing contempt for me. And change up the gameplay a little. I couldn't give a poo poo about pop-in and view distance but shanking the same guys to take over an enemy base, climbing a tower to reveal the map... eh. Because this is narrow and reductionist? Do you really think the guy working on graphic design was the same guy who decided to include a lovely microtransaction system in the game? It's possible, especially with a game team as large as Assassin's Creed, that not literally every single person on the staff sat around in a circle jerking off about how much they hate customers? Video games are not the creation of a single person who presses a magic button and good things come out. It's entirely possible people did their jobs well and entirely properly and still ended up with their work in a lovely game. That doesn't mean the criticism is invalid but you can both feel you did a good job and be disappointed by how it was received, especially when the product is 1/500th yours. Edit: And this seriously isn't an iota of defense of Unity as a while, which was a completely inexcusably bad game on almost every level. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 17:16 on May 13, 2015 |
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May 13, 2015 17:12
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Silentgoldfish posted:Why should I see them as a human being when they saw me as a walking wallet who wants to pay microtransactions on top of a full priced game? I'll have sympathy for them when they stop showing contempt for me. And change up the gameplay a little. I couldn't give a poo poo about pop-in and view distance but shanking the same guys to take over an enemy base, climbing a tower to reveal the map... eh.
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May 13, 2015 17:12
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Wiggly Wayne DDS posted:They were proud enough to admit their mistakes by giving season pass holders a free game. Oh sorry, it was to sidestep class-action lawsuits and make sure their reliable market would buy the next release. lol at the idea that class-action lawsuits would have gone anywhere but laughed out of the court. It wouldn't even be an issue of settling to reduce costs because they wouldn't have to do anything before the case got dumped, which wouldn't actually happen because there is no case. The second part is correct though. ImpAtom posted:Because this is narrow and reductionist? Do you really think the guy working on graphic design was the same guy who decided to include a lovely microtransaction system in the game? It's possible, especially with a game team as large as Assassin's Creed, that not literally every single person on the staff sat around in a circle jerking off about how much they hate customers? Yeah, this. I'm probably biased because my brother used to work in video games until recently, but the "stupid loving suits want us to add this annoying feature to maximize appeal/revenue/etc I wish they would just shut up" is totally a thing. And it sucks when something good gets dragged down by things that aren't. Ultimately all the different features of a game will add up when it comes to the player's reaction to it, and they should, but it's still silly to think that the entire team is a group of evil cackling moneygrubbers. Only some of them are. The video is all marketing anyway. They didn't make it to generate sympathy so that bruised egos could feel better, they made it so they could point out that they recognize the issues people had with Unity, but that they are also a skilled team with the drive to fix those problems and do better with the next game, so please oh please give Syndicate a chance.
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May 13, 2015 17:29
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effervescible posted:The video is all marketing anyway. They didn't make it to generate sympathy so that bruised egos could feel better, they made it so they could point out that they recognize the issues people had with Unity, but that they are also a skilled team with the drive to fix those problems and do better with the next game, so please oh please give Syndicate a chance. This is also true. They've literally done the "We know (x) was bad, but it will be good next time" for every single AC after the first and it's only been sometimes true. There's basically no way to know short of the game being released if they mean what they say. Anyone who buys AC:S prior to it being released is kinda being a fool.
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May 13, 2015 17:31
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ImpAtom posted:It isn't and it won't ever be from a publisher perspective. Releasing in time for a holiday is incredibly important. It would take a lot more than a buggy game to get a delay past holiday season. I'm genuinely curious as to how much importance publishers put on things like review scores, metacritic scores, etc. compared to the release scheduels. For example, if a publisher KNOWS that a february release would result in a 90 and a november release would result in a 70, just how much do they take that into consideration? I mean we all suspect that the publisher knew it was going to be a turd from the get go, what with the horrible review embargo they had in place and all. But if Ubisoft knew just HOW bad it was going to be would they have pushed the release back?
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May 13, 2015 17:37
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khy posted:I'm genuinely curious as to how much importance publishers put on things like review scores, metacritic scores, etc. compared to the release scheduels. For example, if a publisher KNOWS that a february release would result in a 90 and a november release would result in a 70, just how much do they take that into consideration? If I remember right Obsidian lost a bonus because New Vegas didn't get a 90 or some poo poo on Metacritic.
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May 13, 2015 17:40
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khy posted:I mean we all suspect that the publisher knew it was going to be a turd from the get go, what with the horrible review embargo they had in place and all. But if Ubisoft knew just HOW bad it was going to be would they have pushed the release back? I'm no expert, but I suspect they thought they could fix the tech issues a lot faster than they ultimately were able to. When it functions correctly as a game, many aspects of Unity are subjective (ex. some people liked the story, some didn't) but everyone could agree that the glitches and tech problems were objectively bad poo poo. Plus people were less willing to give a pass to smaller negatives of the game that they would have shrugged off if they were having fun with everything else. So if the game had run as intended at launch, it might not have been labeled The Bestest Asscreed, but reaction would probably have been more positive and not bad enough to warrant a delay. If they had a crystal ball to see exactly what would happen...that would depend on a lot of factors but I bet a delay would be more likely.
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May 13, 2015 17:44
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Palpek posted:Every time something like that gets posted people can suddenly understand where the devs are coming from as if putting years of work into an entertainment product that can end up being bad is a new thing you should consider and it should really make you think man. Yes but you're not a very nice person are you
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May 13, 2015 17:45
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khy posted:I'm genuinely curious as to how much importance publishers put on things like review scores, metacritic scores, etc. compared to the release scheduels. For example, if a publisher KNOWS that a february release would result in a 90 and a november release would result in a 70, just how much do they take that into consideration? It depends on the publisher and game. The thing is that missing holiday season means that your quarterly earnings take a huge hit. Some publishers are willing to do that to keep their IPs strong while others aren't willing to do it. The thing with AC is that it's such a strong IP that it can afford a bad release and still expect to sell next time. (AC:R also probably helped with this for being a relatively stronger release at the same time.) They've had it happen more than once even. It's not a great long-term strategy because you risk burning your fanbase but the yearly releases make it clear they're not interested in AC being a long-term franchise. Ideally they'll push AC:S to be of a higher quality just to keep things strong. That's ideally. I don't got great hope for it based off the video but who knows? I expected AC:B to suck hard and it probably the one I enjoyed the most. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 17:56 on May 13, 2015 |
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May 13, 2015 17:45
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Thinking about Syndicate and it's setting and I'm struck by something pretty obvious that I haven't seen brought up yet. Is the whole game going to be grey, black and brown? I hate to keep bringing this up but Black Flag is amazing because even just going from point A to B you are constantly looking at white sandy beaches, the various blues and greens of the ocean and the overgrown islands dotted around the map. In Victorian London you have sweatshops, slums and the occasional manor. I'm having a hard time imagining how they're going to pull that off from a visual perspective alone.
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May 13, 2015 17:56
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fennesz posted:Thinking about Syndicate and it's setting and I'm struck by something pretty obvious that I haven't seen brought up yet. Is the whole game going to be grey, black and brown? What I would really like to see is the whole world change perspective when you're on the rooftops above the smog. Have it be dark, dreary, and depressing down below. Then climb up to the rooftops and suddenly be treated to bright, warm sunshine. Have it look like you're jumping from one sooty cloud to another when you're up top. ImpAtom posted:The thing with AC is that it's such a strong IP that it can afford a bad release and still expect to sell next time. (AC:R also probably helped with this for being a relatively stronger release at the same time.) They've had it happen more than once even. It's not a great long-term strategy because you risk burning your fanbase but the yearly releases make it clear they're not interested in AC being a long-term franchise. Ubisoft didn't have a great time last year though. Bad press about Unity bugs, bad press about microtransactions, bad press about that 'female protagonist' E3 PR flop, bad press about Watch Dogs, etc. At this point I think they need a strong AC game with high scores to get people thinking of the company in a positive way again. In that regard I would honestly be amazed if they were willing to risk another rush job and even more bad press as a result. khy fucked around with this message at 18:03 on May 13, 2015 |
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May 13, 2015 18:00
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khy posted:Ubisoft didn't have a great time last year though. Bad press about Unity bugs, bad press about microtransactions, bad press about that 'female protagonist' E3 PR flop, bad press about Watch Dogs, etc. At this point I think they need a strong AC game with high scores to get people thinking of the company in a positive way again. In that regard I would honestly be amazed if they were willing to risk another rush job and even more bad press as a result. the game will probably not sell as well as the other big releases this year and Ubisoft will need to announce, like, Beyond Good + Evil 2 at E3 to restore any hope. They already just made a Far Cry and a Trials game so idk what their conference will be about besides Dance Dance and AssCreed.
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May 13, 2015 18:14
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khy posted:What I would really like to see is the whole world change perspective when you're on the rooftops above the smog. Have it be dark, dreary, and depressing down below. Then climb up to the rooftops and suddenly be treated to bright, warm sunshine. Have it look like you're jumping from one sooty cloud to another when you're up top. What is weird is that pretty much every game that Ubisoft publishes under their independent label has been border line fantastic. It is their AAA offerings that are suffering. In my opinion, it is just too much bloat. Too many people, too many ideas on where to take the franchise, too many ideas on where to take the games...they need to simplify and break it back down. Unity was a great looking game, the city had great graphics and sound design, but the controls were janky, the camera is still an enemy, and the plot was not memorable in the slightest (I literally finished the game a month ago, and can't remember anything from it other than the ginger bites it ), and the person that green lit all of those collectibles needs to be shot.
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May 13, 2015 18:22
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ImpAtom posted:That's a hilariously narrowminded viewpoint that basically boils down to "gently caress other people." v Palpek fucked around with this message at 19:02 on May 13, 2015 |
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May 13, 2015 18:58
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I get that there are people who worked hard for a long time on Unity who didn't get a say in all of the bad decisions that went into it, and that its reception sucked for them. It just isn't clear to me what we're supposed to do with that.
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May 13, 2015 18:59
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TheScott2K posted:I get that there are people who worked hard for a long time on Unity who didn't get a say in all of the bad decisions that went into it, and that its reception sucked for them. It just isn't clear to me what we're supposed to do with that. Death threats, obviously.
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May 13, 2015 19:02
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Crappy Jack posted:Death threats, obviously.
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May 13, 2015 19:08
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Darth Ballz posted:What is weird is that pretty much every game that Ubisoft publishes under their independent label has been border line fantastic. It is their AAA offerings that are suffering. In my opinion, it is just too much bloat. Too many people, too many ideas on where to take the franchise, too many ideas on where to take the games...they need to simplify and break it back down. Unity was a great looking game, the city had great graphics and sound design, but the controls were janky, the camera is still an enemy, and the plot was not memorable in the slightest (I literally finished the game a month ago, and can't remember anything from it other than the ginger bites it ), and the person that green lit all of those collectibles needs to be shot. the problem is Unity feels a lot like AC 1. Great looking and interesting concepts, but not that memorable except for a few moments. Ubisoft does a great job of creating big open worlds that are alive as hell and empty as gently caress at the same time. Unity for example. Its awesome to just wander down the street and watch the NPC do poo poo, but all the dynamic events you participate in are boring. The assassinations are fun, but the stealth is still meh and the crappies of the combat (even when fully upgraded) doesn't allow for a combat choice. Far cry 4 has been the only ubisoft game to get the open world feeling right to me. AC is my yearly game purchase, so i will probably pick this one up. I love the victorian era and i always thought the AC games handled general time periods (AC 2, AC 4) better then specific events (AC1, AC3, AC:U) so maybe it will work. i will probably just wait for christmas to buy it.
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May 13, 2015 19:15
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Wiggly Wayne DDS posted:You should all be ashamed of yourselves: http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/video-ubisoft-says-it-will-learn-from-assassin-s-creed-unity-mistakes/0149386 I mean, I get it - you put in four years of long hours, tons of effort and it all turned out to be crappy. I'd feel frustrated too in the same position. But while I can understand their feelings I also don't feel sympathy. At all. In their place I wouldn't expect anyone else to throw me a pity party. Make a better product so you don't have to whine so much. It's not the consumer's fault or the media's fault or ~the internet's~ fault you failed to launch a worthwhile product. I can only hope that Ubisoft learns from massive fucksups like this (haha nope) and gives me something that doesn't make me want to break my keyboard in frustration.
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May 13, 2015 19:19
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Watching that gameplay video, I didn't see ropes or whatnot strung across the roads between buildings, so I wonder if this is just a "pre-alpha" thing or if your batclaw is going to be good enough to get you across the streets, else the parkour will be as frustrating as AC3.
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May 13, 2015 19:33
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Palpek posted:And you hilariously simplified what I wrote. I didn't say "gently caress other people" at all, I said that what they experience is a very important part of the process and seeing them whine about it shows to me that they're utterly missing the point. Did you miss the part where I wrote that I'm actually experiencing the same thing they do at my job? It's a thing that comes with the job description, outside criticizm is a given and actually a helpful resource and there's absolutely no reason to feel sorry for them - it's not a bad thing to have that sort of feedback in an industry that relies on people's enjoyment of entertainment products. You take that information, work it into your future projects and life goes on. Yes. You're also allowed to have emotions about that. Thus why I said it doesn't invalidate the criticism and you can still have opinions and thoughts about it. You can even feel empathy towards someone by understanding how those mistakes and errors happened while still criticizing them! Unless you're taking what they said incredibly weirdly there was nothing there where they stated "you shouldn't make criticisms because it makes us feel bad."
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May 13, 2015 19:44
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Having watched the syndicate video this is the only thing that came to mind.quote:Ubisoft has been a master of creating eye-catching, buzz-building cinematic trailer for their games, using actual pre-rendered CGI, but also stylized gameplay. But the problem is now, the gameplay shown at events like E3 simply doesn’t match the final product. That was most prominently on display with Watch Dogs, but it’s already happening again with The Division, which seems to get less visually impressive the closer it gets to becoming a reality. The issue now is that Ubisoft can show any kind of visually spectacular footage and be met with claims of “well it won’t look like that at launch.” How much of this or any video Ubisoft ever releases can I trust? Given their track record I wonder if there will even be top hats in the game by the time it launches. khy fucked around with this message at 20:01 on May 13, 2015 |
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May 13, 2015 19:53
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i would say this one slightly more because they just showed in-workprogress gameplay and 1 semi gameplay trailer.
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May 13, 2015 20:31
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pengun101 posted:i would say this one slightly more because they just showed in-workprogress gameplay and 1 semi gameplay trailer. YOU SAY THAT NOW. What happens in six months? quote:Speaking in an interview with Polygon, Syndicate creative director Alex Amancio said that while they originally planned to include top hats, the "reality of production" made adding the additional headwear too costly.
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May 13, 2015 20:42
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The thing is, Unity could have come out this year instead if it was in that dire a shape. They released another loving Assassin's Creed game alongside it that was much more polished and better received, even if it was just more of the same as Black Flag but improved. Even if Unity was a perfectly great game with no bugs, Rogue coming out at the same time must have cut into their profits. Were Ubisoft really expecting people to double dip across platforms when games are expensive enough as it is?
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May 13, 2015 20:42
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Mr. Fortitude posted:The thing is, Unity could have come out this year instead if it was in that dire a shape. They released another loving Assassin's Creed game alongside it that was much more polished and better received, even if it was just more of the same as Black Flag but improved. They weren't. It was the first real year of next-gen. They wanted to keep marketing to the people who stuck with last gen and get the people utterly desperate for a next-gen exclusive for their new systems. If someone double dipped then all the better.
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May 13, 2015 20:45
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fennesz posted:Thinking about Syndicate and it's setting and I'm struck by something pretty obvious that I haven't seen brought up yet. Is the whole game going to be grey, black and brown? This probably won't go a long way to fixing that issue but the player's allied gang wears green and enemies wear red, so you can expect at least a liiiittle more color. They also mentioned that to a certain extent customization is making a return, so hopefully I can continue to be amusingly garish without attracting much attention.
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May 13, 2015 23:13
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macnbc posted:Exactly. I work in TV. You see a lot of people who drink the koolaid far too much and think they're working on the next Breaking Bad or the next Survivor or whatever. Then it comes out and it tanks and everybody's wondering what happened. It's because they were living in their own creative bubble and weren't aware of what their audience actually wanted. With AC: Unity I can bet there was some executive who thought that people would eat up the microtransaction premium currency, the tablet connectivity, etc. because that's what's all the rage on Facebook now! This is why "executives" should have absolutely no say in the creative process because they're as in touch with the times as that 96 year old granny who's still having trouble wrapping her head around electrickery
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May 14, 2015 01:08
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CitrusFrog posted:This is why "executives" should have absolutely no say in the creative process because they're as in touch with the times as that 96 year old granny who's still having trouble wrapping her head around electrickery Besides that, none of them got to where they are by wasting time with video-games. 
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May 14, 2015 02:46
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I love that in that "mea culpa" video, the in-game footage of Paris still stutters along at 20 fps  There's a huge amount riding on Syndicate I think, given the reaction to Unity last year. If Syndicate one bombs as hard as Unity, it could easily be the last AC game for a while (and honestly that probably isn't a bad thing).
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May 14, 2015 05:07
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They need to scrap the engine and make a new one from scratch because it's completely useless. Anvil was developed for Assassin's Creed 3 and it was a buggy barely working piece of poo poo that made buidings and NPCs pop in really badly and made the framerate chug. They used it again for Black Flag and Rogue and it worked better, mostly because most of the games were set on the seas and the cities weren't too large. Then they upgraded the engine slightly for Unity and it's the problems we've seen in Assassin's Creed 3 multiplied tenfold. They managed to code an engine for Assassin's Creed games that doesn't handle cities or large NPCs and parkouring well, which is what the series is known for. They absolutely need to take a break from making AC games, examine what they want to do with the series during that time and use a much better engine for their games.
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May 14, 2015 10:00
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I didn't mind no competitive multiplayer last year because I'm still trolking the four (!) last ones to unlock everything like a utter goon but no multiplayer this year either make me worry they are ditching this aspect of the games altogether. Which would be sad.
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May 14, 2015 10:02
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Kuiperdolin posted:I didn't mind no competitive multiplayer last year because I'm still trolking the four (!) last ones to unlock everything like a utter goon but no multiplayer this year either make me worry they are ditching this aspect of the games altogether. Which would be sad. The question is will they keep the enforced Co-op in the game.... I doubt it given how much crap they've been getting.
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May 14, 2015 10:11
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