Watch Dogs 2 Patch 1.04 Released, But Seamless Multiplayer Is Still Deactivated

The one fly in the ointment of an otherwise excellent sequel is that Watch Dogs 2’s seamless multiplayer had to be shut down just prior to launch, as Ubisoft discovered a serious bug that at best introduced lag into the game and at worst caused it to crash. At the time, Ubisoft said they were confident of being able to fix the game in time for launch on Tuesday, but that didn’t pan out. Now today a new patch has been released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One today, but again, it does not include a fix to get the multiplayer up and running.

The patch notes open by saying:

Title Update 1.04 to the live environment to fix a few known issues that have been identified since launch. This patch does not include a fix to the seamless online issue that we are currently focusing on, more info will be available on that soon.

The fixes that are included are as follows:

• [XB1/PS4] [Bug / Glitch] Emote Wheel Swap – Bug where emotes and weapon wheel become intermixed is now fixed
• [XB1/PS4] [Bug / Glitch] Explicit NPC Model – We’ve updated one NPC model that was previously explicit. Nudity on other male and female NPCs has not been changed
• [XB1/PS4] [Bug / Glitch] Phone App Disappears – Some players encountered a bug causing their phone apps to disappear. The fix will recover the missing apps
• [XB1/PS4] [Performance] Graphics / Low FPS / Nudle – Framerate during the “Limp Nudle” mission has been improved
• [PS4] [Performance] Graphics / Low FPS / PRO – PS4 Pro performance should be improved with this patch

With the removal of that NPC model, it’s one scandal down, one to go for Ubisoft.

The most recent update about multiplayer came overnight on Thursday 17th:

As you know, we’ve been prioritizing finding a solution to the online connection frame rate issue, so we can activate the seamless multiplayer feature in the game. We’re currently conducting extensive internal testing of a solution to ensure it causes no regression to the core single player experience, as well as smoothly integrates into the seamless multiplayer.

If the solution works as intended, we would begin deploying the fix in a patch and turn on seamless multiplayer as soon as this weekend. This is the scenario that we are all hoping for. But if during these tests we see that the game’s stability with seamless multiplayer still needs work, seamless online will remain deactivated and we will continue to investigate and test solutions.

We sincerely appreciate your support and patience during this process. Meanwhile, you still have full access to the open world, campaign, side activities and the opportunity to play Co-op missions or free roam with your friends.

That’s an important point to remember. While the seamless multiplayer – Invasion and Bounty Hunt mode – are offline, you can still team up with a friend and tackle co-op missions. In the grand scheme of things, we don’t see the seamless multiplayer as the main draw of the game, but rather a nice and potentially quite fun addition.

Source: Ubisoft Reddit [1, 2]