Current AC: Unity Build Suffers from Slowdown

Early reports indicate that the current demo build of Assassin's Creed: Unity suffers from frame rate issues on Xbox One.

[nX]

Shouldn't this be the final build by now? If this game is running at 900p AND plagued with slowdowns Ubisoft seriously dropped in reputation and quality.

[3-4-5]

Maybe they should scale the 30,000 people back to 20,000

[Blackleg-sanji]

More like 10,000 all those npc crowds are pretty pointless

[Ezz2013]

NOOOO, i will count them and will get mad angry over the missing 10.000 People. /s

nothing surprise me any more with Ubisoft

[AliTheSnake1]

It's not all about the overall resolution, Maybe they have high quality textures or high AA.

[Azmatik]

ouch this sounds like a issue 900p/30fps that's embarrassing plus I saw the trailers and gameplay theres no spectacular textures and I still see jaggies so theres no spectacular AA so whats the excuse? the draw distance? (which in a lot of current games I saw just as good draw distance) the NPC count? (possibly but if NPC are nerfing the overall image just for civilians to have somewhat of a loop brain then I don't want them) so what is it? the 4-player co-op? or the fact the companys making 2 games at once? or I hate to say it is it because of parity? you chose.

[ScottyHoss]

Their quality has been getting worse and worse.. Hopefully far cry 4 won't be plagued with issues such as this

[starchild]

@Azmatik

Wow, that is so untrue. The textures in AC Unity are fantastic, especially for an open world game. And I don't see any overly intrusive aliasing in the gameplay videos or trailers so they must be using some form of temporal anti-aliasing. It's never going to get rid of all shader aliasing or sub-pixel aliasing, similar to the way Infamous SS still had some of this kind of aliasing.

But where you really go off the deep end is when you act like Unity isn't doing anything special in terms of draw-distance and the numbers of NPCs. This is ridiculous because it is easy to see that AC Unity is pushing scale, draw distance, LOD quality and NPC counts to new heights. No other game compares to Unity in these areas. Nearly every preview I have read has gone out of its way to point out how incredible it is in these areas.

Here are a few comments from those that have played it at recent events:

"Scale of the city is unparalleled, though. Fucking immense."
-Blueninja

"The game really played well besides all that, i remember standing on top of the biggest building and just looking all around me. The whole city looked so big, i could hardly believe it."
-Pakoe

"The first thing I did was climb the building next to me. It wasn't so high but what I saw when I got to the top was insane. You could just see Paris spread out as far as the eye could see. The sense of scale was insane. It really felt like this huge city that was alive. The amount of people of the streets were also breathtaking."
-Jindrax
http://www.worldsfactory.ne...

[Eonjay]

According to the article, the game is very visual appealing but is suffering from performance. This is the xbox one version by the way. So what I find curious is that they said they were targeting 1080/60. How?

[NovusTerminus]

If you read, it is the current DEMO build that people are playing, previews and such. So those builds are normally not final.

That being said... AC games have often had issues, but never horrible, game breaking issues... Minus the first one, which had some of the most hilariously bothersome glitches ever.

Truth be told, I was not expecting a smooth framerate from this game.

[CertifiedGamer]

You know it is a month before release right, so that means that they are going to have to spend a lot of time fixing these issues. It is likely just an X1 problem though. PS4 version will have better frame-rate.

[Haru]

I was expecting 1080p 60/FPS tbh that's what they told me...

[AliTheSnake1]

1080p 60 fps is possible, but it will make the game looks like shit.

[Yetter]

Unless the game releases today it isn't the final build. Day one patches are commonplace for games these days

[nX]

Sure, judging by the delay they are working nonstop on it, AC:4 got a 1080p patch afterwards as well.
I just don't see the big improvements in their last few games while Shadow of Mordor does so many things better than AC. Watch Dogs was even a step back from AC:4.

[Future_2015]

They said 9 months ago both consoles were running the game at 9fps and it was a nightmare to get it up to 30fps at 900p

article: http://www.dualshockers.com...

[ScottyHoss]

Then they need to do their jobs better... The amount of time this game has been in development it shouldn't have been at 9fps 6 months ago.

[nX]

^Not only time, but man power as well. AC:Unity is being developed by 10 studios...
"Ubisoft Montreal leads the project, with the Toronto, Kiev, Singapore, Shanghai, Annecy, Montpellier, Bucharest, Quebec, and Chengdu studios contributing."
...what were these 500+ people doing during the last 3,5 years?

[Neo_Zeed]

In other words... their engine is pure shit and they suck at coding and optimization. Everyone working on this title should be fired.

[ainTgoTTime2bleed]

Parity is all I gotta say;(....

[geddesmond]

Seriously Ubisoft are cramming too many AI into the game when they offer nothing real towards the actual gameplay or story. Thousands of AI on screen. Ubi I wouldn't notice the difference between 100 and 1000 nor would I give a crap. A well wasn't buying the game anyway.

[d0x360]

So a 3 month old build of the game had issues...oh no! The dev did an interview just yesterday saying they only just got the frame rate locked at 30 2 weeks ago. Due diligence please.

[starchild]

Well, the build they have shown at events obviously isn't final, so the framerate could still improve.

Either way, as I've said before, Ubisoft tends to be a little over ambitious at times and their games can be pretty demanding to run. Look at how most of the Assassin's Creed games ran on the PS3 and 360 last generation. None of them had a completely steady framerate and many of them were also plagued with screen tearing, especially on the PS3.

If the XB1 version has some framerate issues it won't be surprising given the incredible scale and dynamism of the the game. I still think the PS4 version may have a performance advantage.

This game looks absolutely incredible and the scale of the city and the number of NPCs is unrivaled.

[Locknuts]

I blame the crappy hardware. They're unable to realise their vision because of it.

[Neo_Zeed]

With only two sets of fixed hardware they can optimize the hell out of consoles despite their specs. That's what good developers do. Good developers optimize their games to push the hardware beyond it's limits.

[Marked]

Saddest thing...this is nothing new with this series. On PC, no matter what the resolution, there is just parts of the game they never optimize. I would be running a solid 60fps, system utilization below 60% and the frames would drop to 42 fps.
Most of these companies are going to try and reuse their crap old gen engines...modified for current gen but, still have old gen limitations.

[retro_]

Saw it on XB1 running at EGX and the frame rate was a bit rubbish in places as was the slightly ropey 'crowd' animation (a bit robot!) and hilarious NPC clipping solid objects bugs. Clearly the code wasn't the finished article or at least, I hope it wasn't.

Apart from all that, It could well be a brilliant game I just hope the PS4 version is able to stretch it's muscles and smooth things out a little.

[Neo_Zeed]

Ubisoft is no longer known for quality. Ubisoft is only good at mass producing thrsame product yearly.

[SaveFerris]

I wonder what this might mean for the PS4 version?

[Findingcrybabies]

Look at other games from the developer. or even better look at the multilayer stability and technical issues from previous games...especially watch dogs and other AC games. Paints a picture that makes this unsurprising.

[ScottyHoss]

You have a massive point sir, almost makes me ashamed to be Canadian...

[Blackleg-sanji]

My god ubisoft what are you doing this gen

[Marked]

Trying to use an old gen modified engine. Their BS is going to ruin an endless potential. They need to pull up their pants and do it right.

Hell their PC versions of AC would have slow downs and there was no evidence of limitations on my PC...plenty of overhead!

[trywizardo]

so , more downgrades -_-

[RG_Dubz]

Lower the resolution to 720p, because we all know that all X1 will be able to handle when it comes to actual current-gen games, it can barely handle 900p on these cross-gen BS games we've been getting..

Why do you think they didn't call it XBOX 720? Because they know all their actual current-gen games will be 720p/30fps, I don't think they liked the nickname XBOX 720p it actually comes off and makes the system look much worse the then nickname XBONE ever could.. Even with the performance boost from not using the kinetic, it's struggling @ 900p.

Lets face it we all know the PS4 can easily run this game at 1080p/30fps, but the PS4 version is being held back, same way EA did with EA Sports UFC, it's locked at 900p/30fps on both consoles even though the PS4 can easily run it at 1080p/60fps (unlocked)

[turdburgler1080]

Your probably one of those people who thinks xbox one still requires a internet connection to do mandatory check in for DRM and Don mattrick still is the head of xbox. Nobody's holding your ps4 back so stop with the conspiracy theories.

[kevnb]

I hate the term slowdown, just say frame rate issues. By the way, all ubisoft games have framerate issues going back as far as I can remember.

[TheGrimReaper0011]

Frame rate issues and slowdown are different things

Frame rate issues is when a game is dropping in frames, but the game is still running at a speed of the default frames per second. Borderlands 2 on vita has lots of frame rate issues.

Slowdown is when the game actually slows down, wheter it be for the framerate to catch up or the system overloads and has to slow the game down to load everything as intended. The first example that I can think of is in Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 in the jungle level. Check it out here at 1:41
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[kevnb]

The framerate dropping will cause the game to feel like it's slowing down, that's what you are seeing. Or do you mean pop in?

[DallasTrout]

I get the feeling Ubisfot might not be the best developers. Like they trade these high res textures and tons of NPC for frame rate and resolution.

[Yetter]

They want to make a game that best represents the setting and are trying to achieve gameplay features that have not been done before. I would argue they are great developers. Anyone pushing innovation should be welcome in the industry

[DallasTrout]

But it's not innovation for innovation's sake. It's to convince us it not the same old Assassin's Creed. Ubisoft releases the same cut and paste games every year with a few "innovations" thrown in. The innovation they promised in Watch Dogs was pressing X to hack.

[Volkama]

But that is surely better than trading gameplay and features for resolution, and you know that's going on across the industry right now...

[bleedsoe9mm]

thats why all this nitpicking over very minor differences in resolution is so dangerous , they might actually listen , dumb down game mechanics to make sure the resolution is there . framerate is much more of a legit gripe because if its too bad the game is not playable .

[Zizi]

Last year's Assassin's Creed has stuttering issues though that does not take away the experience.

Watch Dogs rarely stutters, except when there are too many things going on the screen, such as explosions.

[skulz7]

I'm just happy that every preview has been incredibly positive, in terms of the gameplay.

The game looks beautiful.

[Meltic]

hmpff downgrade now ??

[AD705]

less than a month away and this is their final build?

[mhunterjr]

Definately not the final build. It's a demo build, could be months old..

[GetSomeLoGiK]

Not surprised, even in their demos they showed off there was framerate drops (forget which video but it was when he was climbing up a tower, it stuttered pretty bad)

[hennessey86]

Ubisoft could have been to ambitious for the power of these consoles.

[MasterCornholio]

Let's wait until we see the PS4 version before coming to that conclusion.

Aliens is an example of a game that runs almost flawlessly on the PS4 but suffers frequent framerate drops on the Xbox One. The same could happen here.

You can read the article here in case your interested.

http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...

However that's not to say that what you said isn't true though. I'm just bringing another possibility to light.

[hennessey86]

from what I have seen it looks incredible, I was even wondering if my PC would cope with it to be honest. With it being open world, you can't really compare it to alien isolation.

[MasterCornholio]

"With it being open world, you can't really compare it to alien isolation."

I understand what you mean. All I'm saying is that the developers said that both versions would look the same and run at the same resolution. We all know that the PS4 is the most powerful system of the two so its only logical to assume that the framerate would be better on it. If both consoles were equal I would agree with you but since there not I can't agree with the two versions running the same.

[RG_Dubz]

If you're having framerate drops in a game that's linear running on XBOX 1, what do you think an open world is going to do to the system?

I bet the first things downgraded is the amount of NPC's on screen and draw distance.

[DoubleM70]

Totally totally different game. Tons and tons of NPC open world game.

[ainTgoTTime2bleed]

I know, I think 720p would've been enough for the xbone;)...

[bleedsoe9mm]

this means nothing in a world where games get multi-gig day 1 patches

[Predaking77]

I cancelled my pre order days ago. May play the game when it is @ $20.

Not supporting Ubisoft with their practices and how they are penalizing PS4 owners because the limitations of the X1.

[ATi_Elite]

Pointless article as it is the demo build. Xb1 version will be locked at 30 fps for release.

Just goes to show you that real next gen games are already too much for the underpowered xb1 and ps4.

Seems to me that the xb1 and ps4 were designed to run x360 and ps3 games at 1080p 60fps and not real next gen games.

I'm excited about the thousands of NPC and advanced Ai as it brings about better variable game play and a more realistic and unpredictable atmosphere sorta like the stalker series on Pc.

Having to lower not on consoles is due to both systems having sub 2ghz CPU that are about worthless and underperform and that's from Amd mouth

So I hope the pc version gets everything the devs wanted and not a console Gimping

Core i7 North of 4ghz with hyperthreading is boss and awaits any challenge.

[Ra3030]

Wait, wait wasn't it just last week the Ubisoft game developers were saying "The PS4 is the console holding us back to this bullshit 900p resolution"? And that was the reason the game would be released at 900P not 1080P.
I really don't see this frame rate issue as a problem with the recent history at Ubisoft and down grating resolution or down grating anything. They should and I'm guessing they will drop the resolution from 900P to 720p to up the frame rate and then of course make up a reason to put the blame on some fault of the PS4 but that will be expected with Ubisoft being bed buds with Microsoft and all.

[lolosgolos]

This is not news, from one user out of how many who have played the demos around the world? It was in SA also at rage and it run smoothly. PS4 guys shouldn't worry if it drops 5 frames on X1 which is like zero on PS4

[jhoward585]

ESRAM is too small. that's the problem.

[bigtrucknd]

Maybe they should take some time off with AC. They should quit rushing these games into an annual release. Quality over quantity.

[AgentSmithPS4]

As long as the drones keep rushing to buy their games they will keep spreading themselves too thin and spreading the cheeks of their victims ;).

[ion53]

Irrelevant point. They've been making this game for 4 years

[CptVimes]

Maybe we should all wind our necks in and wait till the game is released and judge for ourselves, bloody internet, never had this bollocks on the spectrum 48k ;-)

[marioJP87]

This company can not produce a stable assassin's creed game to save their butts.

[Knightshade]

You guys DO realize that the builds shown were months old right? There is a code train moving forward to certification, there is a code train being polished for demos, and those are not the same builds. The game industry has been doing this for literally decades. This isn't news.

[BobBelcher]

I wonder if submitters of articles like these get goose bumps when they find articles like this.

[CertifiedGamer]

Next announcement from Ubisoft is going to be and I quote " We have Assassins Creed we had Unity running on 1980P@ 60 fps per second on PS4 3 months ago then Microsoft paid us to keep up with the PS4 version but it wasn't enough so we pimped the PS4 by dropping the frame rate below 30 like X1.

[oWOLFo]

is the Ubisoft employee pissed out of their tree? 1980p?? 60fps per second??