Ben-DutkaWell, that wasn't much of a delay.
Not long after Ubisoft announced the delay of Assassin's Creed Unity 's "Patch 4," they've revealed that it's now available.
That's really only 48 hours late, so it's nothing to get in a twist about. This massive patch weighs in at 6.7GB because the developers actually had to replace entire portions of the Paris map; specifically, those that faced frame rate issues:
"Part of the team's effort to enhance frame rate for players involves replacing and updating portions of the Paris city map where we are seeing issues. This explains the large size of this title update (6.7 GB). However, since a large portion of the patch replaces existing files the net increase to the game’s overall size will be less than 6.7 GB."
The patch addresses a huge number of issues beyond frame rate: Crashes, navigation, connectivity, matchmaking, etc. If you've experienced problems when playing Unity , you'll probably want to download this update immediately. It will make for smoother and less frustrating experience, that's for sure.
With games so broken at launch it makes me wonder their method of quality testing, or if they don't bother much with it knowing they can just update it.
I think some things could be avoided with better testing, for sure. But with the complexity in programming, you're bound to find a lot more issues with 3 million gamers playing the crap out of your games than you are with your internal team of 20 testers.
And yet these issues that they're 'fixing' weren't hard to find bugs that would happen once in a full moon.
No, these were issues that were so hard to ignore that they would practically slap you in the face the moment you started playing the game. NPC's would magically appear a few meters from you. Or they would transform from peasants to rich bastards in a blink of an eye. The framerate would drop even if they wasn't anything in the area that would cause it.
So its irrelevant how many testers Ubi had and how many people played it in the wild. The problems were there and Ubi knew about them. But they had a DEADLINE to meet. And they also figured that AssCreed fans are mostly of the sheeple variety. And that they would buy the game DAY ONE. Regardless of in what shape the game arrived on stores.
And that's why they keep pushing their half-baked games on us. Because they know that we will buy them regardless. And that they can always try (if they want – they already have our money) to fix it later.
In this case, they're fixing the game because AssCreed comes out every year. So they want people who bought Unity, to buy the next one. So they're not really doing it for you and me. But because this sort of crap could actually damage their bottom line in the long run.
Last edited by Bonampak on 12/18/2014 5:55:19 PM
Yikes…
Well, they still reviewed well. I don't believe you or I know what testing is like vs. real world exposure. And probably, you didn't realize it was developed by Ubisoft Toronto… a brand new studio that has almost nothing on it's plate since it was established a few years ago EXCEPT for Unity and a tom clancy game.
My point is that I'm 100% confident there's a lot you don't know. You are probably right on some scale in regards to what they should have found, but I bet you're mostly misguided.
Patches are getting ridiculous I swear.. PS2 Days will never be forgotten..
Yeah with patch sizes reminding you what size PS2 games were.
I'm sorry any patch that's larger than mb is clearly fixing a game with major issues, its ridiculous and when you have to patch in parts of a map it's clear the game wasn't ready. This is getting stupid.
Patches are single handedly making developers either lazy or in a mind set that this is okay. There's obviously a lack of QA now that patches exist.
Last edited by bigrailer19 on 12/16/2014 10:52:06 PM
yeah i might be starting to make them quite lazy and this is unacceptable
Heard it makes NPC pop-in WORSE… so much for playing it tonight, unless of course, that's just a rumor. Can anyone confirm?
I can really feel a difference on roof tops so far. The game feels like it handles itself better than AC3 did on PS3 (my last point of reference on PS3).
I've hit about 4-5 viewpoint synchronizations and all but one of them was solid and smooth without hiccup. Before it seemed more often than not, as the camera panned out the frame rate always took a hit. It's not so noticeable now.
I do think I see greater LOD pop-in though. It seems the game pops higher detailed models and shadows in from a closer proximity. Likewise it pairs back detail more aggressively as the camera pans out. This would alleviate CPU load.
Though, I could just be experiencing a placebo effect now that I'm looking for changes.
All in all it's definitely improved and well worth the download.
And as I said before, from a purely performance stand point, it feels to perform better than AC3 did before it.
Last edited by Temjin001 on 12/16/2014 11:06:58 PM
doh. just tried to start sequence 5 mission 2 and my PS4 seized up.
reloaded and it's been fine ever since. i'm still noticing some oddness now and again but nothing too nasty.
My Sam Fisher graduate skills got me through the first mission in sequence 6 on my first try.
gotta love the berserk darts. got done listening to a meeting under the floor and I had to get out of there but there were 3 dudes blocking my path. The other path was through a locked door but I suck too hard at unlocking doors Madden-punt-kick-style (was only lvl 1). So from hiding I shot a berserk dart at one of them dudes and he wiped out his two comrades and then after boasting of himself for killing his own buddies with "haha! I knew I could take you!" he then fell over dead.
good stuff.
Lockpicking is easy. Just remember you can't unlock any door above your current Lockpick skill. In other words, if you're only Lv. 1, you can't deal with two- and three-pin locks.
thanks Ben. And here I thought if I was crazy fast I could still pick those higher level locks.
Before I called it a night last night I upgraded my lockpick skill to lvl 2 so I'm expecting the meter to slow down to a more humanly possible speed.
Ben, BS! I've actually lock picked a level 3 when I was just level 1. It is hard but not impossible. It was pure luck.
Will wait for the Game of the Year "Extended" edition with the extra 20GB of patches they need to release to fix this mess LOL
yeah all these patches are going to add up to quite alot and this crap needs to stop its getting rediculous
Thank you for the update. I purchased the game yesterday and will remember to make myself dinner before the patch finishes downloading.
Ac4 is my last ac game
they can piss off if they think i'm spending full whack for a game that clearly DID'NT go through the QA process
NEVER AGAIN
yeah i doubt it went through QA but i'm think rogue on the ps3 might be worth a chot since i still have my ps3 what do u think
Wow that's a pretty large file. I really hope this patch stops the game from crashing bc I'm at the point of just getting rid of the game altogether
Last edited by Deathb4Dishonor on 12/17/2014 8:49:20 AM
That's 2 times the size of Ground Zeroes… this patches and installs are quite intimidating in size. I only have 4 PS4 games so far and I'm getting cautious already. If games take up this much space then they should place a bigger HDD in the consoles.
Agreed. Having the option for a larger hdd upon purchasing would have been a great option. At least 1tb. I know the patch is 6.7gb, but am not sure how much of it is "swapped" data. Hopefully 6.65gb. 😛
Honestly, it's getting to the point where we should be able to send in our discs and get newer, fixed ones back. And redownload a fresh whole game for our digital brethren.
Makes me begin to regret getting this game. Like maybe I should cancel before Amazon ships.
Last edited by Ather on 12/17/2014 2:26:51 AM
I can see your point regarding the physical media, specially when we're talking about "changing portions of the map" I mean with game patches being the size of a PS2 game. But it doesn't need to go as far with the digital copy. They can just program the patch to delete the unused files and install the new ones and be done with it, without the need to download the game yet again.
@Vivi_Gamer They could give bigger HDDs. But they'll insist on charging us for them.
yeah they will they will try milk us for the HDD space
happy gaming
but a massive freaking download thought thats anoiying i would have to look forward to that if i decide to get unity next year some time.
on a side note, the last i for the ps4 that i might get is the crew cos that what my friends are playing
and i just finished driveclub and i'll probably trade that cos i really didn't enjoy it that much compared to the racing games i played on ps3 which i clock most of them and enjoyed doing it this was more of a relief to finish than a joy and an accomplished which was quite disappointing but the trophies are a nice bonus for all the anoiyance
happy gaming
There are full games that are smaller than that.
Regarding the patch file size, here's how it works…
The files from the core game that are affected are REPLACED with a NEW version of that same file with the patches applied.
Therefore, the overall increase in game size is fairly minimal. I'd say maybe just a few MBs at most.
So, just because it's 6.7GB doesn't mean it will use up that much additional space on your HD.
I don't know if anyone is bothered by the amount of hdd space… at least I know I'm not. What concerns me is that they are releasing a patch this size in general. It's obvious the game wasn't finished, especially noting that they had to replace parts of the map.
I know what you mean, and I agree. If fans didn't create a huge fuss over the framerate and bugs, Ubisoft would have just left it as is.
That would have set a huge precedence to the type of quality developers are OK with releasing to the market as a final product!
To add to what bigrailer said, you still need to download that much data. I'm not worried because a) I don't own the game and b) I have no capped bandwidth, but I know there are capped markets out there and 6.7GB for a patch is a hard pill to swallow if you live with a cap on data.
yay!