Was invited back for the second beta testing period for "The Crew". While I didn't post anything in the official forums, they seem to have taken into consideration anyone playing well below spec. There were quite a few players doing exactly that, and they were considerably louder than I would be. And because of that, the new build was considerably easier to play. Definitely more on the arcade-style racer. Still rather slippery, but a lot easier to control. There's still a bit of the input lag, but it's a lot better than before. My fps still sucked rather spectacularly, usually hitting around the 15~20 range. But during those few bits of running at 30fps? It felt pretty awesome.
Didn't have a lot of time to play since I was playing a little bit more Ingress than expected during the week, but I did manage a few things that I wanted to do since the first beta. One of them was actually getting past the first mission. Which I did. With time to spare even though I made quite a few mistakes. Barely played through any of the story missions, which is fine. It's not like there's much to it in the beta in the first place. Focused on the driving and a little poking at my car. Didn't get that many upgrades due to the poor performance actively screwing with adjusting and steering. Even with a few small upgrades and changing the spec on the car was enough to give it a different feel.
So where did I drive to? Hung around Detroit for a little while before checking the map to see what's available around me. Then I set off to Chicago, finding a couple of satellites along the way. The waypoint guide system is pretty broken. A lot of the time it would either disappear or tell me I'm going the wrong way even though I had been following it correctly just seconds before. It seems to have trouble when there are multiple routes you could take. After hitting Chi-town and driving around there for a few skill games, it was trying to get to Seattle. Instead, I ended up in Las Vegas. It was along the way. Struggled a bit to find the satellite there, then decided to fast travel since the beta was going to be ending quite soon. Found the Space Needle, and it wasn't marked as a landmark. And with that, I set off to San Francisco. Made it there pretty quickly and without much issue since the path was pretty straight. Found the Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge. Those weren't marked either. Then again, beta. Might be marked in the final release.
I can definitely see myself liking the game quite a bit. I would've liked to have formed a crew during the beta, but what can you do. None of my friends were in it, and I don't think my laptop would've been able to keep up. At least I know 2 of my friends are interested, and one had asked what I thought of the beta when it was first available. Kinda wonder about the story... is anyone going to even bother with it?
Showing posts with label The Crew. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Crew. Show all posts
9 Sept 2014
25 Jul 2014
Still no Crew
There was a patch released earlier today, and while it did increase performance... I still can't get past the second checkpoint. I did it ONCE. Then I hit something, which warranted a restart, because the game wants practically perfect runs. Then I was back to square 1 with the "can't get past second checkpoint" problem.
Was getting a few more frames out of the game though, which was good. It was also slightly more responsive, so turning was easier. Still disappointing that it's stuck on that... Really hoping that I have something better to use when another beta comes around. Would've loved to add to the server strain earlier today, but not being in free roam kills it.
Still looking forward to it, but definitely not Day 1.
ETA: And I definitely missed the tail end of the beta. Oh well. I still have the data on my drive. We'll see what some hackers can do with it...
Was getting a few more frames out of the game though, which was good. It was also slightly more responsive, so turning was easier. Still disappointing that it's stuck on that... Really hoping that I have something better to use when another beta comes around. Would've loved to add to the server strain earlier today, but not being in free roam kills it.
Still looking forward to it, but definitely not Day 1.
ETA: And I definitely missed the tail end of the beta. Oh well. I still have the data on my drive. We'll see what some hackers can do with it...
Can't really run with a Crew right now...
...Because my laptop can't handle it.
It can probably pump out about 14~20 fps while I'm driving, but it's not enough. I can't even get to the second checkpoint during the first mission because of that. And because of the poor performance, I can't get to the free roam aspects or even to the damn story. Oh, and Alex? Voiced by Troy Baker. I heard the voice and it was just "...Troy? Freeman? When did you learn to talk?". ...I had looked up what I was missing since I couldn't get past the intro. He sorta looks like a weird Gordon Freeman. Or to some, Walter White/Heisenberg.
From what I've played though, I did have some fun with it. You begin by driving a truck offroad onto farm land with the police on your tail. It would be fine and all, considering that you have access to nitrous boosting, and the charge rate isn't all that bad. Looks to be some vehicular damage at play as well since the police also attempt to ram you from the sides. The "track" was definitely slippery, and I'm not too familiar with offroad driving, so I don't know how to deal with dirt as opposed to regular asphalt. It was a little annoying sliding around, drifting when I didn't want to. But that can probably be attributed to my lack of experience with that sort of racing.
The driving physics did feel rather familiar though. Turns out I wasn't completely crazy. Ubisoft Reflections is one of the studios collaborating on the project, with Ivory Tower. When I looked up who everyone was (didn't do any prior research before signing up for the beta; go me!), no wonder. Ivory Tower was made up of devs that worked on Test Drive Unlimited. Reflections did the Driver series, and also worked on Watch_Dogs. Adjusting to the somewhat slippery, arcade-y, controls was easy enough. Adjusting to the input lag though? Way worse than the missed input polling while playing WD. At the very least in WD, I had other ways of dealing with the objective (unless it was chasing a helicopter, but that was one time). It doesn't quite work when you're dealing with checkpoints and the timer be global rather than tied to actual game speed. I can understand some input latency when sending the signals via USB, wireless, or Bluetooth, but really? That much of a delay is unacceptable. Racers practically require tight controls.
Speaking of which... I can understand why the timer isn't affected by your fps: it's essentially an online game. An open world racing "MMORPG", with drop-in drop-out multiplayer. Everyone has to be running on the same timer or else it wouldn't work. The problem with that is it interferes with what's actually going on in-game. As noted above, my laptop runs the game rather slow. The game speed is tied to my fps. If it were uncoupled, then I could potentially compete and help out fellow teammates. I would experience a hell of a lot of stuttering and may make it an unplayable mess, but at least I wouldn't be desynced with what should be happening.
The graphics options look pretty standard. For some reason, it wouldn't let me set it lower than 1280*720, which would likely increase performance on my laptop. It did say on the requirements page what was needed to for 1280*720 at minimum, and 1080p for recommended. Was hoping that you could set it lower. Oh well. Might be possible if I had something to force it. Since I can't really do much with the graphics, no way to play around with the different AA settings. In fact, I haven't done any of that since forever anyways! V-sync was off since it would've been worthless and pointless. Can't lock my fps to 30 (or 60 if I edited a config file) anyways. For controls, it can be customized quite nicely. About the only thing I would change would be getting rid of the gear up/gear down lock to the right analog stick. Would prefer to map it to the shoulder buttons and map the view change to something else (d-pad?). I don't even remember what L1 does! Haven't tried out keyboard controls since it's a racing game. I don't do K+M when it comes to certain types of games. I don't have a wheel either, so can't provide feedback on that. But all the options present to tweak it? Nice.
Reading on the forums, there were a few strange things going on. Some weren't able to complete the first mission because of having too many input devices plugged in. That's a rather strange reason to fail... So they disconnected whatever they had and went with K+M, passed the initial mission. Didn't help my case, and quite a few others, since our problem was game speed. TXAA is apparently broken. Textures are messed up. Loading to a black screen. Amongst other things. Hopefully they're reading all of the feedback and working to fix things. I'll have to check back a little bit later to see if they've updated the build for the beta. Maybe I'll have something better for another testing session. I do want to play it with a couple of friends. I know that one is a racing enthusiast, and another expressed interest by asking for my impressions.
About the only thing I want is an offline option... Just cruising around the USA without any outside interference. And if I want to jump in with a crew, then I'll just do that.
Gotta ask though. Why is there a story...?
It can probably pump out about 14~20 fps while I'm driving, but it's not enough. I can't even get to the second checkpoint during the first mission because of that. And because of the poor performance, I can't get to the free roam aspects or even to the damn story. Oh, and Alex? Voiced by Troy Baker. I heard the voice and it was just "...Troy? Freeman? When did you learn to talk?". ...I had looked up what I was missing since I couldn't get past the intro. He sorta looks like a weird Gordon Freeman. Or to some, Walter White/Heisenberg.
From what I've played though, I did have some fun with it. You begin by driving a truck offroad onto farm land with the police on your tail. It would be fine and all, considering that you have access to nitrous boosting, and the charge rate isn't all that bad. Looks to be some vehicular damage at play as well since the police also attempt to ram you from the sides. The "track" was definitely slippery, and I'm not too familiar with offroad driving, so I don't know how to deal with dirt as opposed to regular asphalt. It was a little annoying sliding around, drifting when I didn't want to. But that can probably be attributed to my lack of experience with that sort of racing.
The driving physics did feel rather familiar though. Turns out I wasn't completely crazy. Ubisoft Reflections is one of the studios collaborating on the project, with Ivory Tower. When I looked up who everyone was (didn't do any prior research before signing up for the beta; go me!), no wonder. Ivory Tower was made up of devs that worked on Test Drive Unlimited. Reflections did the Driver series, and also worked on Watch_Dogs. Adjusting to the somewhat slippery, arcade-y, controls was easy enough. Adjusting to the input lag though? Way worse than the missed input polling while playing WD. At the very least in WD, I had other ways of dealing with the objective (unless it was chasing a helicopter, but that was one time). It doesn't quite work when you're dealing with checkpoints and the timer be global rather than tied to actual game speed. I can understand some input latency when sending the signals via USB, wireless, or Bluetooth, but really? That much of a delay is unacceptable. Racers practically require tight controls.
Speaking of which... I can understand why the timer isn't affected by your fps: it's essentially an online game. An open world racing "MMORPG", with drop-in drop-out multiplayer. Everyone has to be running on the same timer or else it wouldn't work. The problem with that is it interferes with what's actually going on in-game. As noted above, my laptop runs the game rather slow. The game speed is tied to my fps. If it were uncoupled, then I could potentially compete and help out fellow teammates. I would experience a hell of a lot of stuttering and may make it an unplayable mess, but at least I wouldn't be desynced with what should be happening.
The graphics options look pretty standard. For some reason, it wouldn't let me set it lower than 1280*720, which would likely increase performance on my laptop. It did say on the requirements page what was needed to for 1280*720 at minimum, and 1080p for recommended. Was hoping that you could set it lower. Oh well. Might be possible if I had something to force it. Since I can't really do much with the graphics, no way to play around with the different AA settings. In fact, I haven't done any of that since forever anyways! V-sync was off since it would've been worthless and pointless. Can't lock my fps to 30 (or 60 if I edited a config file) anyways. For controls, it can be customized quite nicely. About the only thing I would change would be getting rid of the gear up/gear down lock to the right analog stick. Would prefer to map it to the shoulder buttons and map the view change to something else (d-pad?). I don't even remember what L1 does! Haven't tried out keyboard controls since it's a racing game. I don't do K+M when it comes to certain types of games. I don't have a wheel either, so can't provide feedback on that. But all the options present to tweak it? Nice.
Reading on the forums, there were a few strange things going on. Some weren't able to complete the first mission because of having too many input devices plugged in. That's a rather strange reason to fail... So they disconnected whatever they had and went with K+M, passed the initial mission. Didn't help my case, and quite a few others, since our problem was game speed. TXAA is apparently broken. Textures are messed up. Loading to a black screen. Amongst other things. Hopefully they're reading all of the feedback and working to fix things. I'll have to check back a little bit later to see if they've updated the build for the beta. Maybe I'll have something better for another testing session. I do want to play it with a couple of friends. I know that one is a racing enthusiast, and another expressed interest by asking for my impressions.
About the only thing I want is an offline option... Just cruising around the USA without any outside interference. And if I want to jump in with a crew, then I'll just do that.
Gotta ask though. Why is there a story...?
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