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Watch Dogs 2

So the game appears to be unlocked for everyone except people with promo keys (Samsung, Nvidia, etc).
 
Fun times since I got mine from Samsung, though the funny part is that the online form didn't ask me for the promo code & still gave me a copy on Uplay.
 
Yikes, this is not a good port.
CPU intensive, GPU intensive, all kinds of intensive. Even with temporal filtering enabled.

edit: According to Reddit, the new Nvidia drivers help a lot. I'll give those a try.
 
So the only way to even attempt 60fps in this game, regardless of your specs mostly, is with Temporal Filtering enabled ("upscaling").
It looks alright but it creates this weird dotted-line effect around edges. It looks like screen door dithering or something, it's really annoying. If you can get past that then 60fps might be attainable, but you're also limited to SMAA or FXAA ONLY with that setting enabled.

Turning temporal filtering off opens up a bunch of AA options including MSAA and TXAA, and the dotted lines go away, but performance tanks.

You will also need an i7, probably overclocked, to even maintain 60fps while driving. Anything else and there are a lot of stutters.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
So the only way to even attempt 60fps in this game, regardless of your specs mostly, is with Temporal Filtering enabled ("upscaling").
It looks alright but it creates this weird dotted-line effect around edges. It looks like screen door dithering or something, it's really annoying. If you can get past that then 60fps might be attainable, but you're also limited to SMAA or FXAA ONLY with that setting enabled.

Turning temporal filtering off opens up a bunch of AA options including MSAA and TXAA, and the dotted lines go away, but performance tanks.

You will also need an i7, probably overclocked, to even maintain 60fps while driving. Anything else and there are a lot of stutters.
Click to expand...
Even the first game needed an i7 not to stutter in places. I had tested that game with and without HT and it was not even playable at times with HT disabled on my 4770k due to hitching. Of course some folks here will tell you how their 2500k is not a limitation for any game...
 
I know this guy who comes into the store at Night I swear to god he's playing Watch Dogs in real life he buys stuff returns it at the service Desk and doesn't open it he does weird stuff while looking at his phone hours on end maybe some kinda electronic hacking harassment game or the kid is just short a few. I ask this kid if he needed help finding anything and how it's going and I just get a blank stare or a few mumbled words.
 
rezerekted said:
You need to get Far Cry Primal then. Think of the movie Quest For Fire and that is what FC Primal is basically.
Click to expand...
is FC Primal worth a damn? I totally skipped over it because of how much I hated FC4.
 
delita said:
is FC Primal worth a damn? I totally skipped over it because of how much I hated FC4.
Click to expand...
It's the same style of gameplay but I found the game world more fun to play in. Cave exploration can be challenging but the rest of the game is pretty easy.
 
Even at the $25 these codes are going for, I am hesitant to pick this game up...sounds like a bad port to me.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Yikes, this is not a good port.
CPU intensive, GPU intensive, all kinds of intensive.
Click to expand...

That's not inherently a bad thing, or indicative of a good or bad "port"

This game definitely has PC specific graphics features, and to use some of those features, you for sure need an enthusiast CPU and GPU.
 
MavericK said:
Even at the $25 these codes are going for, I am hesitant to pick this game up...sounds like a bad port to me.
Click to expand...

Then you are missing out on a fun game.

If you played the first one, you'll like this one.

FYI, I'm experiencing smooth gameplay, no stuttering on my system playing this game.
 
GamersNexus has a good look at some settings with 11 cards. They also talk about some of the reason why performance might be low.



Short version: The game is rendering a ton of stuff at one time and seems to use a pretty advanced lighting system that requires a lot of work from the system. From their article:

GamersNexus said:
Watch Dogs 2 is an abusive game on hardware. The shadow and lighting complexity alone makes for lower framerates at 1080p than might be expected of high-end hardware, and that's reinforced when screen-space aware reflections come into play.

Fortunately, for all of its intensity, Watch Dogs 2 is also not as demanding of a high framerate as some more competitive titles. We found Watch Dogs 2 to be generally "playable" (without immersion-breaking stutters) within a range of ~40~45FPS AVG. This isn't a game that demands 60FPS for a good time; you'll get by just fine sub-60, though much lower than 40-45 and it does become a bit of a stutter-fest.

Frametimes are consistent across the board, sans 2GB devices when tested with medium to high texture resolutions.
Click to expand...

While a lot of games are poorly optimized I think a lot of times we tend to ignore what else a game is doing outside of just shoving pretty textures in your face.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Then you are missing out on a fun game.

If you played the first one, you'll like this one.

FYI, I'm experiencing smooth gameplay, no stuttering on my system playing this game.
Click to expand...

First one was alright.

What specs are you running on your rig?
 
Some Notes on Image Quality and Performance In Watch Dogs 2

As I continue to test the game today, and write up an article, here are some of my notes as I've been testing that may help.

Image Quality - This game does have an Official High Resolution Texture Pack, can get it via Uplay or Steam. if you don't think the graphics live up to snuff, download this high res texture pack and then see what you think. Be warned, this texture pack recommends a 6GB video card, or better. In my personal experience, I suggest an 8GB video card for the smoothest gameplay with the high resolution texture pack.

There is also a detail slider at the top of the graphics settings, by default it's on 0, if you really want to boost the detail in the game, max it out, but watch your framerate plummet. The thing is, the options are there to improve IQ, you just have to manually turn them on, but, beware, you need a beefy system.

This is a description of what the texture pack includes:

"Download the Ultra Texture Pack and be amazed by the incredible amount of additional detail! Take full advantage of your 4K display and prepare for a next-to-reality experience.

Contains:
- Over 10,000 4k compliant textures
- Detailed characters, buildings, and vegetation
- Ultra resolution decals
- Huge normal and surface maps"

Performance - Some may complain about stutter or pausing in the game (i personally haven't experienced this yet) Besides the game needing an enthusiast CPU and GPU, one component that may benefit things like this is the hard drive. This game loads a ton of assets quickly, it's a huge world, and constantly loading in new objects and detail and textures. If you have the high resolution texture pack installed, even more so. If you are running this game on a mechanical hard drive, and having pauses or stutter, this could be your culprit. An SSD is likely to smooth out some of those asset loading issues. It's something to try at least, and see if it improves for you. I am running this game on SSD, and have not had any stutter or pausing. The other thing that can help alleviate this is loads of VRAM on your video card, this game loves it, especially with the high resolution textures.

Otherwise, just know this game is demanding not because it's a "poor port" as people might claim, but simply because the game uses advanced, forward looking, graphically intense graphics features. It's lighting system is very intense. It supports not only PCSS shadows, but HFTS shadows as well, very incredibly demanding options. It supports HBAO+, it supports may other things and a lot of different AA options. There is also a detail slider option at the top, at default this is at 0, you can turn it up to max, but watch your framerate plummet, but the detail added is real nice. If you are having performance issues, make sure the slider is on 0.

Remember, if the game isn't performing to your liking, just turn down the graphics settings! It's that easy. There is a global option that turns everything down in pre-set settings.
 
Last edited:
Brent_Justice said:
Some Notes on Image Quality and Performance In Watch Dogs 2

As I continue to test the game today, and write up an article, here are some of my notes as I've been testing that may help.

Image Quality - This game does have an Official High Resolution Texture Pack, can get it via Uplay or Steam. if you don't think the graphics live up to snuff, download this high res texture pack and then see what you think. Be warned, this texture pack recommends a 6GB video card, or better. In my personal experience, I suggest an 8GB video card for the smoothest gameplay with the high resolution texture pack.

There is also a detail slider at the top of the graphics settings, by default it's on 0, if you really want to boost the detail in the game, max it out, but watch your framerate plummet. The thing is, the options are there to improve IQ, you just have to manually turn them on, but, beware, you need a beefy system.

This is a description of what the texture pack includes:

"Download the Ultra Texture Pack and be amazed by the incredible amount of additional detail! Take full advantage of your 4K display and prepare for a next-to-reality experience.

Contains:
- Over 10,000 4k compliant textures
- Detailed characters, buildings, and vegetation
- Ultra resolution decals
- Huge normal and surface maps"

Performance - Some may complain about stutter or pausing in the game (i personally haven't experienced this yet) Besides the game needing an enthusiast CPU and GPU, one component that may benefit things like this is the hard drive. This game loads a ton of assets quickly, it's a huge world, and constantly loading in new objects and detail and textures. If you have the high resolution texture pack installed, even more so. If you are running this game on a mechanical hard drive, and having pauses or stutter, this could be your culprit. An SSD is likely to smooth out some of those asset loading issues. It's something to try at least, and see if it improves for you. I am running this game on SSD, and have not had any stutter or pausing. The other thing that can help alleviate this is loads of VRAM on your video card, this game loves it, especially with the high resolution textures.

Otherwise, just know this game is demanding not because it's a "poor port" as people might claim, but simply because the game uses advanced, forward looking, graphically intense graphics features. It's lighting system is very intense. It supports not only PCSS shadows, but HFTS shadows as well, very incredibly demanding options. It supports HBAO+, it supports may other things and a lot of different AA options. There is also a detail slider option at the top, at default this is at 0, you can turn it up to max, but watch your framerate plummet, but the detail added is real nice. If you are having performance issues, make sure the slider is on 0.

Remember, if the game isn't performing to your liking, just turn down the graphics settings! It's that easy. There is a global option that turns everything down in pre-set settings.
Click to expand...

I definitely want to see some screens with the high res texture pack, cuz everything I've seen so far looks like doodoo.

As far as poor port goes, yeah....everyone already knew that'd happen. Best people can pray for is some updates that will fix things and maybe the game will be worth a buy 3-6 months down the road at a huge discount.
 
delita said:
I definitely want to see some screens with the high res texture pack, cuz everything I've seen so far looks like doodoo.

As far as poor port goes, yeah....everyone already knew that'd happen. Best people can pray for is some updates that will fix things and maybe the game will be worth a buy 3-6 months down the road at a huge discount.
Click to expand...

Have to disagree on both points.

I do not think the default textures are doodoo.

I do not think this is a poor port.

What fixes are you claiming you are waiting for to make this game worth a buy? I don't know what "things" are.
 
Driving kills my framerate, it seems to be a CPU bottleneck which is hardly surprising(i7 920@stock) but it's interesting that I never saw it go above 60-80% cpu utilization on any of the cores until I started driving and then it was 100% on all cores. It's a shame that MSAA tanks performance because FXAA doesn't look that great and the game definitely needs some form of AA.

Gameplay is similar to the first game so far but it does seem a bit more polished, I'm not sure if I like the contextual hacking controls when using KB/M though. Hopefully there's a patch that improves fps while driving but I might just need to get a new cpu cooler and OC it again.
 
misterbobby said:
How the heck do you check the framerate? Afterburner is not working for me in this game...
Click to expand...

There's an option in Uplay's settings that enables it in the corner.


As for the game. The default textures do look pretty bad. Haven't fired it up after installing the 4k texture pack. Overall, it doesn't seem to look as nice as I had expected.

Driving is improved, but they still have some goofy arcade mechanics .. like rearending someone on the left or right side will send their car out of your way like you have a giant wedge on your bumper. It was more severe in the original, but still there. In the original, if you recorded it and slowed it down, you could see that your vehicle actually clipped through theirs.
Bumping cars from the side tends to ignore physics briefly and jumps them 1ft over.

The new character is way better. He has more charisma/personality in the opening scenes than the entire episode of the Debbie Downer from before.

Settings for audio are laughable.
 
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Brent_Justice said:
Have to disagree on both points.

I do not think the default textures are doodoo.

I do not think this is a poor port.

What fixes are you claiming you are waiting for to make this game worth a buy? I don't know what "things" are.
Click to expand...

Just from the benchmark videos. The graphics aren't great compared to some titles that have been out for well over a year, and the game struggles to maintain 60fps at 1440p with a 1080. That has bad port written all over it, does it not? Not sure if patches can "fix" this kind of issue but for someone like myself playing at high res, it's an automatic "no" for me right off the bat.
 
delita said:
Just from the benchmark videos. The graphics aren't great compared to some titles that have been out for well over a year, and the game struggles to maintain 60fps at 1440p with a 1080. That has bad port written all over it, does it not? Not sure if patches can "fix" this kind of issue but for someone like myself playing at high res, it's an automatic "no" for me right off the bat.
Click to expand...

Remember, there is more to a game and how it runs than just pretty textures. Looking at the same benchmarks it looks like the game is rendering a lot at once. From objects, so the rather impressive lighting system, and so on. All of that stuff can be very hard on a system and isn't as easy to notice as say super high res textures. As PC gamers we need to move past the idea that the only thing to graphics and performance is texture work and things that can easily be shoved in the player's face. There is more focus being put on lightening systems, shadows, physics, and so on in games these days and less in dramatically increasing texture or model quality.
 
Derangel said:
Remember, there is more to a game and how it runs than just pretty textures. Looking at the same benchmarks it looks like the game is rendering a lot at once. From objects, so the rather impressive lighting system, and so on. All of that stuff can be very hard on a system and isn't as easy to notice as say super high res textures. As PC gamers we need to move past the idea that the only thing to graphics and performance is texture work and things that can easily be shoved in the player's face. There is more focus being put on lightening systems, shadows, physics, and so on in games these days and less in dramatically increasing texture or model quality.
Click to expand...
It mostly just reminds me that these games were made 100% with the console in mind and the PC was an afterthought and not much time was spent optimizing the way the game performed outside of the xbone/ps4. I'm not mad at all, it's Ubisoft after all.
 
delita said:
It mostly just reminds me that these games were made 100% with the console in mind and the PC was an afterthought and not much time was spent optimizing the way the game performed outside of the xbone/ps4
Click to expand...

Of course they're made with consoles in mind. That's probably why the focus is being put on things other than textures and character models. Doesn't mean it's not optimized though. A game can be optimized and still be taxing on hardware. They are not mutually exclusive things.
 
delita said:
Just from the benchmark videos. The graphics aren't great compared to some titles that have been out for well over a year, and the game struggles to maintain 60fps at 1440p with a 1080. That has bad port written all over it, does it not? Not sure if patches can "fix" this kind of issue but for someone like myself playing at high res, it's an automatic "no" for me right off the bat.
Click to expand...

So you haven't actually played the game, and are judging the graphics and performance based on someone else's recorded compressed videos, gotcha.

I've actually played the game and have first hand experience on performance and image quality in the game.
 
Brent_Justice said:
So you haven't actually played the game, and are judging the graphics based on someone else's recorded compressed videos, gotcha.

I've actually played the game.
Click to expand...
It's not about the graphics just being "not good" - the graphics look fine. I'm just saying, there are games with better graphics that run far better than what people are saying about this game. This game could have the best or worst graphics on the market, have the absolute best gameplay of any game of all time, and I still wouldn't buy it if it ran like shit. Why? Because I'm not giving my money to a developer for something that can run just fine on a PS4 but not on a PC.
 
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