Was that in low graphics too?

 

The PC Version is out.

 

And I won't be buying it. A quick look at the official Ubisoft forums tells me that it suffers from the same low-fps, unoptimized bullshit as AC3. I think we can safely say that Assassin's Creed is a console-only franchise from now on. The PC ports are just substandard and not worth the price of the game.

 

Very few graphically intensive AAA games are optimized for PC these days. It's in the publishers' best interests to make sure the games run as well as possible for the majority of the market.

It's really weird, when you think about it. The things are made on PCs, and while I'm no programmer or 3D artist, I don't understand the headaches with porting between the different platforms - especially in this new generation, when they're all more alike than ever.

There are exceptions, of course (Blizz & Bethesda games eg.), but that doesn't change the fact.

I'm not confused why they choose to optimize for consoles - that's obvious - I'm more baffled why it's an issue in the first place.

 

So it was because of the low FPS and not my computer's fault. Still the game reminded me of Sid Meier's Pirates, which was a game I absolutely adored.

Do you have guys have any idea about how to fix that?

 

I've had no fps troubles since nvidia updated its drivers the day after AC4 came out.

 

Yeah also had no problems with the graphic, everything runs smoothly. The game is much better than AC3 but it is also more of an exploration game with less focus on stories and the different characters. It could have used a bit more polish/variation but that is not surprising considering how fast Ubisoft churns those games out.

 

Agreed the smoothest any Assasins creed has played for me, no lag at all.

 

The only graphics problem I've had so far with AC4 is the occasional freezing, where a bunch of green snow type stuff appears all over my screen and I have to alt tab out and close the program. I have that problem with most recent Ubisoft games though and I've mostly fixed by turning up the core voltage of my graphics card (GTX590).

I'm enjoying the ship mechanics despite not being a huge fan in AC3, which was a nice surprise. Thankfully they've cut out a fair bit of the extraneous shit that was bogging down some of the previous AC games but for some reason the core combat just feels a bit awkward to me. I don't know, something about countering attacks is different maybe?

Story wise the game has been incredibly boring so far, but I'm not really surprised. I haven't truly been entertained by an Assassin's Creed storyline since AC2. Seriously though they really need to hire some better writers - I'm pretty far into the story and I still feel extremely directionless, I don't remember most of the characters I met five minutes ago and I haven't been surprised yet. At this point the only story I care about is the stuff with Caroline. At least I didn't have to sit through a 2~ hour prologue like in AC3 though.

 

The thing I'm most interested about is getting Sea shanties and upgrading my ship to go up against larger ships. Other than that I only continue with the mission when I'm bored.

 

I have a love/hate relationship with Legendary Ships. They keep sinking me, yet I keep coming for more.

 

Lol, figuring out a good strategy for each legendary ship is one of the best things in the game. Sadly, in ACIV you can only repeat story missions, so you can never go back and fight them again without starting over from scratch.

 

Regarding the Legendary Ships: I haven't tried to take one on yet, but can you take them the sneaky way like you can other ships? I snuck on to a man'o war and killed everyone on board, went back to my ship and then shot it once. It was instantly ready for boarding, and I did so. If you can take Legendary Ships the same way...well.

Actually, are the Legendaries automatically aggressive? If that's the case, nevermind then.

 

They are automatically aggressive. If you enter a huge zone around them, they rush you. One bastard is a man-o-war that fucking rams you.

Edit: It may be a brig in name, but it is beyond even a man-o-war in anything else.

 

They are automatically aggressive, and there is no boarding for legendary ships, you have to destroy them utterly.

 

Yeah, I tried to board one early on... They cannonball you out of the water insta death style.

I tried to fight one yesterday now that I can 1v3 man o wars and got my ass raped anyways D:

 

Been playing this since I have a break from work this week. I'm really enjoying this, the most I've enjoyed any AC game so far. I haven't noticed any lag issues.

It hasn't hit that wall of boredom that other AC games hit for me. There's more to the game than sneaking and one-hitting everyone or failing that, chain-countering 40 enemies to kill them all. Between the naval combat, quad-pistols being useful, and reinvigorated story, I haven't gotten bored yet.

As far as legendary ships. I beat HMS Prince and gave an attempt at beating HMS Fearless/HMS Sovereign but got my ass handed to me. HMS Prince I beat by doing my best to stay at its backside and firing chain shots/mortars/ramming it. I will give them another attempt after I upgrade my ship because right now I have none of the elite upgrades.

 

Got this for Christmas on ps4 and didn't stop playing until i beat it 100%.

What a game.

Seriously. Only gripes, ironically, is that it needs less 'Assassins' stuff, like the shitty parkour system - your ship is filled with ropes and ledges, trying to move anywhere with style is pointless - and that it needs some QoL changes.

Things like more a intuitive embarking and disembarking mechanic, a 'craft all' option and the rope dart much, much earlier.

Oh, and 'trailing' quests need to die in a fire.

I read somewhere that ubisoft sent out a survey after ac4 was released asking if players would be interested in a new pirate IP made by them.

Fuck yes.

Just thinking of a game like that with this as a foundation, where you can sale all of the seven seas (as instanced maps. AC4s world map would be the 'carribbean' map for instance) and have a much more in depth ship/ town building and naval combat systems...

Awesome sauce.

It would need much, much more pirate outfits and ship customising options though!

 

Something that bugs me about the game is that it's too busy, too crowded, and too action-packed. Maybe this is just my love of age of sail fiction (including The Republic of Pirates, that allegedly the story of AC4 drew heavily from) getting in the way of things but the reason pirates were so effective in the Caribbean is that the vast majority of ships were undermanned merchant ships, with the bare minimum number of crew and barely-adequate at best cannons to maximize profits. With a bit of luck and the element of surprise a hand-made canoe full of pirates could capture a merchant ship meandering past their island, and then use that merchant ship to capture a bigger one, and then use that to go nuts, and eventually they stumble across a merchant ship big and well-built enough that they could refit into a proper warship.

Blackbeard's ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, was originally a huge French slaver called La Concorde that he refitted with 40 cannon. Sam Bellamy (who Edward is pretty much based on) had a merchant ship, the Whydah, he refitted with 26 cannon. Black Bart called all his flagships Royal Fortune, but the biggest of which - the one that Black Bart died on - was a frigate being used as a troop ship when Bart captured it.

And yet merchant traffic is completely absent in this bizarro Caribbean. Every ship is a fully-manned warship of the Spanish or English Navy, or are privateers going after Kenway. And the capture of a prize, even a big, fully-loaded prize, is just another notch in the belt instead of an accomplishment of any real meaning, and if you scan the horizon there'll be at least two other ships you can go immediately after. And as for the size of those ships? The man-o-wars in the game, which pop up everywhere if you get into the bottom half of the screen? There existed less than 100 of them in the entire British Navy, of which somewhere between none and damn near none would be in the Caribbean at any given time. In the British system, a ship with more than 80 cannon was known as a 'first-rate', of which the British possessed five around the time of AC4. Let me reiterate: Britannia, who Ruled the Waves, who had an Empire that the Sun Never Set Upon, had five. And they damn near never left port in times of peace. And yet you can't turn around twice in the southwest without smacking into one of them.

And then there's the scale. 342.99 km^2 is the preview boast, which sounds big, but if you do the maths that's about 18km a side. You could fit it inside the real-life Jamaica. Thirty times over. This version of the Caribbean is claustrophobic, crowded and crawling with heavily-armed and fully-manned warships. It's basically the complete opposite of what the Caribbean actually was.

Not to say that it's bad... it's just not the shiny new next-gen within-at-least-shouting-distance-of-historical-accuracy Pirates! that, in my heart of hearts, I was stupidly hoping for. It's a pirate-themed Assassins Creed game. And that'll have to be enough.

 

So wait, let me see if I understand you. You would have preferred a a fucking gigantic map, as big as the actual Caribbean sea, full of merchant ships that basically surrender themselves, and with no big ships to oppose you?

And you would have preferred that?

Well I guess there's a person for everything.