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Watch Dogs 2


Pic0o

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I'm going to play on PC so I have a wait until the 29th. Xbox One and PS4 released on the 15th. There are some bugs and stuff I wanted to start by mentioning.

Some TVs do not display the whole screen and cut off the HUD. I will link to the Known issues thread on the Ubisoft forums.
To condense the issue, it can be resolved if you can set your TV to Pixel mode / 1 to 1 / Disable Overscan. Similar to when I hook my PC up to a Samsung TV and it cuts off some of the desktop, along the bottom. Most games have the 'Resize display' option in their settings to handle this (for other TVs that do not handle these display options). Many users are hoping to see this option, especially for TVs without the Pixel mode options.

Multiplayer Co-Op works for 2 people (+1 and you) The drop-in multiplayer versus modes are disabled due to lag and sync issues, like car speed being glitched.
Also, some console installs are not working for single player due to timeout issues with the Ubisoft servers. You can set your console to Offline mode to let you play single player, but as a result, you would not be able to play co-op.

I'm reading around the forum to see any other game issues, but so far those are the big ones. If you want to see other game related info, the Reddit Watch Dogs is active with posts about the 2nd game. Be careful to avoid spoilers if that bugs you, granted those threads seem to be tagged as such.

I ordered the Gold Edition (DLC and Season Pass) with the (Physical real world item) Wrench Jr Robot. The Robot came today, so I will throw 6x AA batteries and play with that tonight. You control it over bluetooth with a mobile phone app, either for Android or iOS.

Promo items
On Twitch Prime, you can get an unlock code for in-game outfits and car skins. If you have an Amazon Prime account, Twitch Prime is included, you would need to link your Amazon to the Prime account though.

  • To break this down, once you link the Prime services, you should see 'Prime Loot' with a Watch Dogs 2 Item.
  • It will give you a code, that you can redeem on the Watch Dogs 2 Ubisoft Twitch promo site.
  • Entering this code from the Twitch Loot page, you will get a UPlay code. This actually unlocks the in-game item.

Kind of silly, but the rundown is you get the 1st code from logging into Twitch with a Prime account, Redeem it, then use this code to get the Promo code from Ubisoft promo page. Use the Ubisoft code to unlock on your Uplay (PC), PSN (PS4) or XBL (Xbox One) code to give you the content on that console.

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Actual Game time. (On Ps4)

This game is pretty fun. Interestingly one will also notice the story parodies real world events and groups. Not to spoil story content for you, be prepared to see some real-world critique of past events.

Travel wise, you can Run, Drive, or Quick Teleport to locations. Since stamina is seemingly infinite like the 1st game, I stick to running or picking up a motorcycle because they don't have anti-theft security alarms. Granted you can shake the warning calls pretty quick from a police call. In addition to the Camera area investigation, you can also use a RC Drone Car or also a RC Flight Drone. Money generation will be needed to get that flying drone, so you might want to delay buying extra guns when you start your game. It depends on the play style you are going for.

Since I am going to play long-term on PC (borrowing a PS4 currently), I have my skill trees I am going to focus my experience points in. Basically I'm rolling a spec in Drone Upgrades and Social Engineering. Jumping back to the Drone vehicles, the RC car is best for ground level physical access, while the flying drone is for information gathering of areas and activating high-up Access Points. I have to say the exploration in this game is pretty top notch. Lots of side activities and side operations, granted I am saving those for my PC Play-through.


This game DOES have multiplayer but all I know about it so far is light, since it just turned on, due to launch stability issues. Co-OP has been live for 1 other player to join you, and the multiplayer is drop-in, drop-out DM by Bounty mode, Hack opponents and as mentioned, co-op.
Seamless Multiplayer info @ Ubisoft Forums status thread.

I picked up a compatible Bluetooth adapter to link a PS4 gamepad to my PC, so I can be ready to juggle keyboard and mouse / trackball, for exploration mode on a controller.(PS4 pad Use on PC Guide) I cannot accurately explain this game and it's fun open world approach to playing a sandbox game about hacking via remote devices and jumping around camera networks. I'm glad I picked it up and think it may be a hit for my friend who I am giving the PS4 copy of the game for letting me use his console, before the PC launch. I enjoyed the 1st Watch Dogs game but this one stands on it's own merits, by a pretty large margin I would say from the 1st game.

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PC Preload has been live for a day or two and we await the unlock. As seen in the PS4 Dualshock 4 on PC thread, I am getting a gamepad ready to supplement keyboard and mouse controls. If you didn't get a copy yet, the Ubisoft online store is having a BOGO (Buy One Get One) free sale. I pre-ordered and got the little Watcher Robot toy.

Briefly about that toy, the facial expressions are very dim, the movements and audio work, but on my Android Samsung S6 phone, the app seems to timeout frequently with it's bluetooth connection. I will be interested to see if anyone reverse engineers the app bluetooth command or modifies the LCD to be a higher brightness / quality facial display. As the robot toy is about 7 inches tall, my cats enjoy trying to figure out what the hell this thing moving around is doing.

Back to the game, here is a list of all the PC enhancements for the Watch Dogs 2 release. I will try 4K on my TV but suspect I will normally play @ 1080P with Max to near max settings. I was able to play GTA V @ 4K ~ 30 FPS but over that it got wonky and un-smooth.

I stopped playing on PS4 around Wednesday, since I had a good amount of hours and didn't want to feel bogged down repeating mainline quests again on PC. I have to say having played for maybe 20 hours and about 1/3 of the Main Operations / Story, I am more excited to continue playing than I was pre-release. There are some complaints from people who played the 1st game that this one can be too easy with 'NetHack'. I would say it depends on your mission and if you rely on using it all the time. NetHack is akin to 'Detective Mode' in the recent Batman games. I feel it has faults to using it all the time and have seen some cases where you miss the objective if not out of NetHack mode.

I briefly sampled multiplayer as Ubisoft fixed the issues with matchmaking. Someone joined my game and we defended against a hostile player invading and shot them to death and the invasion was over. Quick teleport waypoints work for teammates, so you don't have to wander endlessly to meet up at a location. I did not get to try to Co-Op missions, but you can hit me up on PC, as my Ubi player name is Pic0o420.

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PC play is going well. I installed the HD Texture pack and am playing @ 1080p on Very High (High: Terrain; Vegitation; Texture Resolution; Water; Reflections. No San Fran Fog.) settings. I had a couple of crashes to desktop in about 12+ hours of play, typically when switching equipment or getting into a menu as a 'cleared operation' message pops up. My memory usage on the above settings, looks to average around 3800 GB VRAM. There is a message about the High Res Texture Pack DLC having 6GB VRAM required for maximum settings. I stayed with largely default settings upon my new game startup.

Some folks were getting an issue on 1st startup not letting them play the game.

LaunchError DotLocal Dll Redirection Detected

. It looks like doing a full restart resolves this error, by guess that the dlls were in use when it first tried to run for the Anti-cheat utility. Here is the LaunchError Thread @ Ubi forums..

Other than the 2 desktop crashes, I have to say it's been smooth sailing. As mentioned above, when clearing a mission, your RC items return to your inventory. To avoid issues, try not to switch weapons before the clear animation plays atop the screen.

I am using DS4Windows to use a Sony DualShock 4 controller on PC (over bluetooth). It is working quite well. I did change the touchpad clicks, so I could get the phone and map up by a click, similar to how it is bound on PS4. The story is an interesting mix of real world events and game generated story. It's interesting to see the social parodies.

Edited by Pic0o
Config details Play setup
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I have about 36 hours of play in and what looks to be a remaining 2 side missions and 1 main story operation before I finish the story. I have not seen any other desktop crashes besides the 2 I mentioned in my previous post.

My online options will go up once I finish the story missions, as I saw some forum chatter the seamless online could be giving people microstutter issues. I have some FPS dips into the low 50 FPS range when driving but have been solid 60's and seemingly smooth the whole time. I may be skewed from playing this on PS4 some as well, but I think the game runs well.

Here is my running config for 1080p. Copied from an OCAU thread about the game.

My In-game Graphic Quality settings (Using VRAM 2978 / 3944 MB) are as follows:
Graphics Quality: Custom
Geometry: Very High
Terrain: High
Vegetation: High
Texture Resolution: High
Texture Filtering: Very High
Shadows: Very High
Headlight Shadows: Your car
Water: High
Reflection: High
Screenspace Reflections: Very High
San Francisco Fog: Off
Depth of Field: On
Motion Blur: Off
Bloom: On
Ambient Occlusion: HMSSAO
Temporaral Filtering: Off
Multisample Anti-Aliasing
Post-Process Anti-Aliasing: SMAA

Running 1920x1080 with Normal V-Sync Resolution. The vertical chops were pretty extreme with V-Sync off. Ranges from approx 70 to 50 FPS. Pixel Density: 1.00
Field of View: 70 degrees

Bouncing around sites, people are not getting good SLI scaling with multiple cards. I am on a single 980 GTX running Windows 8.1 Pro x64 with 32 GB of RAM and nvidia driver 376.09.
3488 MB in-use with Ultra Texture Pack at above settings. While in starting HQ loaded, tabbed out to this post update.

inRootHQ01.gif

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I wrapped up all the side quests and main story missions. I have about 45 hours on my save game and 100%.
I also played a few rounds of co-op today. One player was very smooth connection wise, while another was janky and teleporting around. I also had a previous session where someone invaded while playing co-op, but we smoked the rival pretty quick.

In respect to online missions / operations, They will shuffle ops between the 3 game modes for online:
Co-op
Bounty Hunter
Hacking Invasion.

There are also DedSec events that pop up occasionally. From what I see, they are variants of the above 3, including uploading viruses while not being detected by npcs.

I enjoyed myself, am looking forward to the DLC content, and think the online is pretty interesting. Well worth picking up a copy and I'm not upset for having paid regular price for it. Legit enjoyable. The RC exploration is fun, as is exploring the world map on foot.

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  • 2 months later...

Thread bump in the name of a 14 GB patch and the upcoming Human Condition DLC (Live on PS4 now, PC and XB1 available on 3/23).
Current patch version is 1.11 (Patch Notes) and this was a large patch indeed. I mentioned in the Razer Blade 1060 thread that I was briefly playing this game on the laptop but that it did not run as nice as my desktop with a 980 GTX (4GB Gen1) video card. I will go through my settings to clean up the performance to try and resolve the 35 FPS dips when in vehicles. I am also planning to travel in a few weeks and will be playing on my laptop over vacation too.

I see in the patch notes, it suggests replaying the final mission for extra information. I'll give that a go after tuning the laptop performance. Also around some review sites, I have seen your CPU directly scales to FPS increases for the same video cards. The gains seemed pretty significant and didn't seem to be skewed. Seen in this GamerNexus article. I have an Intel i5 4690k in my desktop and that performance looks pretty consistent to when I played the main story through. I'll be using this guide to tune the laptop, since they spend the labor ironing out the performance sink settings and what most beats on thread usage on your CPU.

I will add my settings once I hammer out an acceptable frame rate on the laptop. If you don't feel like reading the GamerNexus article, the TL;DR is: More cores = more FPS. i5's run well and you'll get some boosts from an i7. i3 will be fairly shitty.

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If you want to play on the Razer Blade 1060 V5 (late 2016), I had everything on High, with the exception of:
Geometry to medium
Ambient Occlusion to SSBC

Linking back to my laptop review thread, we see the GPU is 100% utilized, yet the memory goes little over 55% utilization on the GPU memory. At 1080p you will get close to 60 FPS steady, but you will see some dips into the 40 FPS and potentially 30s when in tree heavy areas. The salt mines region is also a fine place to do performance peak testing. I was mostly fond of driving a motorbike, with nitro boost through wooded areas. Not really a spoiler, but the final mission will be largely 60 FPS the whole time you are playing. Like I said, the fans will be humming because this game will work that laptop, while still looking pretty awesome.

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  • 1 month later...

I tend to play this on my desktop PC, as the 980 GTX and Desktop CPU fair much smoother and get me a little higher graphic options than on the laptop.

I played through the DLC story (Human Conditions) content this weekend and had fun for a few hours on the missions. 3 main quests with about 3 side-quests to finish each one. The additional enemy jammer types added a little more challenge but aren't too hard to mitigate. I also saw there are some free content updates running over the summer, including an increase to 4 player co-op, from the current limitation of 2 total / 1 other player.
There will also be new game modes (multiplayer), player outfits, and the 2nd story DLC will release in May for PC and Xbox One (April for PS4).

I attached the roadmap image and here is the post with roadmap details on the game's website.

WD2_April17.png

WD2_MayJune17.png

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