PS4: YÜNG Frank (@tealsummernight) was our Grand Prize winner for PS4 with this beauty (the player jumping off the bridge was the icing on the cake for us):
Credit: @tealsummernight
Thanks to everyone who participated in this contest! We loved seeing all the chaotic and epic gameplay moments you managed to capture and share with us. For future contests and Watch Dogs 2 updates, be sure to follow our Twitter handle (@watchdogsgame)!
Sony PlayStation Music Shares a WD2 - Inspired Spotify Playlist
The Sony team at PlayStation Music put together this sweet playlist inspired by the music of Watch_Dogs 2. The playlist features music from our official soundtrack by Hudson Mohawke and Most Wanted DJs Thomas White, Ryan Playground and Dojo!
Feb 23rd: Most Wanted Livestream #2: ft. Sodapoppin & LegendaryLea
We’re heading back to crazy town with our second Most Wanted livestream, featuring Sodapoppin and LegendaryLea, on Thursday, February 23rd starting at 3pm EST. They’ll be hitting the streets of San Francisco, playing Bounty Hunter mode in co-op mode (and hopefully surviving for a reasonable amount of time). They’ll be backed by live DJ sets from Thomas White and Ryan Playground.
Once again, we’ll also be giving away a TON of raffle prizes during the livestream, including an NVIDIA GTX 1080 graphics card. Because we’re nuts and we love you.
Sodapoppin and LegendaryLea will be streaming on their own channels prior to the show, showing off some content from the Human Conditions DLC (launching on PS4 February 21st).
Watch_Dogs 2: February Community Activities
Hey hackers – February is an exciting month for us, as we’ve got plenty of community activities planned for you. Check back here for updates and to get more information and details on certain events or at @watchdogsgame. Without further ado, here’s what we have in store for you:
Spoiler Stream (Feb 16th – 1 PM EST): Our next DLC, “Human Conditions,” will be available on PlayStation 4 February 21st and for Xbox One and PC users a month after. In our spoiler stream, we’ll be checking out some of the new objectives and coop challenges. Join us at twitch.tv/ubisoft for a sneak peek and a chance to win some prizes!
Close Encounters (Feb 17th-19th): Hacking is about to get even riskier. For this weekend, we've made some changes to Online Invasions. The hacking radius is smaller, and the time to pull of the hack is shorter. You'll have to pick a decent hiding spot to pull off a successful hack. Hackers will get a 25% leaderboard point boost for participating, and targets will receive a 10% boost.
Watch_Dogs 2 Screenshot Chaos Contest #WD2ChaosContest (Feb 20th)– The winner from last month’s #WD2ChaosContest will be announced on Monday, February 20th. Follow us at @watchdogsgame to find out if you’re the lucky winner.
Most Wanted Livestream (Feb 23rd): Our second monthly Most Wanted stream kicks off on Thursday, February 23rd! In these streams, Comdevs Hanny and Chase will invite a few special guests to become the “Most Wanted” bounties – and the community’s job is to hunt them down in-game. There will also be raffles to win some sweet Watch_Dogs 2 gear from UbiWorkshop, codes, and more! We’ll be making further announcements about our Most Wanted stream at our Twitter @watchdogsgame.
Human Conditions Event Challenges (Starts Feb. 27th) – Get hyped for our upcoming Human Conditions DLC with two new Ubisoft Club challenges, the first starting February 27th. The first challenge, “Kill it With Fire,” tasks you with neutralizing ten gang members with explosions. Do this, and earn the exclusive Human Conditions Event bag and, next month, the Human Conditions Event Car Skin. You do not need to have the DLC to participate in this event!
Leaderboards Reset (Starts Feb. 27th): Season 6 begins Monday, February 27th – all Leaderboards will be reset and new rewards will be added. This Season’s rewards? Check out the “Sad and Lonely” sweater and fisherman’s hat!
Capture an epic moment from one of these events? Share your best videos and screenshots at our reddit /r/watch_dogs or @watchdogsgame!
In our last roundup, Sitara’s Tumblr blog had been hacked by rival hacker gang, Prime_Eight. After a brief investigation, Josh discovered that the person who had paid big bucks for the hack was a Blume employee and a member of New Dawn.
To kickstart her blog back up again for the new year, Sitara issued this:
State of the Union: I’m back. Been a lot going on around here. Got a new member, hacked a bunch of a**holes, you know the drill… Welcome to the DedSec State of the Union address.
Marcus is the new guy. Some of you might know him as Retr0. He’s another case of ctOS targeting someone incorrectly, and potentially ruining their life. Potentially. But our boy is an excellent hacker. We met while he was correcting his ctOS profile. Nice bit of work. Now he and Wrench are in the middle of an epic bromance.
Aside from recruitment, we’ve been pursuing some leads on your favorite corrupt tech giants. Most leads that come our way don’t pay out, but some… some do. And we’ve done good work.
As for our goals for the New Year? We’re hearing whispers that Nudle has some fancy s*** planned for their key note in February, so we’ll be looking into that. Also been hearing about disappearances around the old trainyards and in the homeless encampments. (If you have any info about that, please send it our way.) I’m sure we’ll unearth even more work for DedSec.
Peace out.
In which Sitara discovers a disturbing development about one of DedSec’s previous members, Benicio:
Happy New Year!
We celebrated in typical DedSec fashion: loud and proud. Pretty sure Wrench and Marcus still have hangovers. You really gotta keep hydrated, kids.
A bunch of leads poured in after our last post. We’re loving it, so keep ‘em coming. We also got a lot of questions about how we work, so I figured I’d explain a bit.
We each pick our own ops to research and then pitch them to the group. Whoever is interested joins in. Those who aren’t interested, don’t. Sometimes there’s not enough to keep more than one or two people busy on a single op, even if a lot of people want to do it. If there’s a lot of interest, and a lot to do, that’s when the whole group throws in on something. It’s different each time.
Right now Wrench is following up on the Nudle stuff. Josh picked up on some strange noises coming out of Prime_8 (the jerks). Marcus and I are following up on the disappearances. One of our own disappeared a while back, so this one hits close to home. Kid named Benny. Benicio. He’s a good guy, and not the kind to just drop off the grid without warning. All of us are really invested in this one. I’m sure you can understand why. For now it’s just Marcus and me working on it because we don’t have enough for the others to do yet.
I think we’re dealing with a couple different causes on this one. The disappearances are too random. Whoever is taking the homeless isn’t the same person (or people) taking tech savvy college kids. I’m betting on something sketchy with one of the tech giants. Marcus is betting on the mafia. Could be both. Or neither.
For those of you who keep sending us messages saying it’s The Shuffler, or The Hook, or Bigfoot… please stop. Those are urban legends and just waste our time.
Again, happy New Year, guys! Here’s to 2017 being a good one.
A photo of ex-DedSec member, Benny and Ai Li, taken in 2016:
Sitara’s getting pretty sick of disenfranchisement:
#NoMoreLies
Josh stumbled on something really interesting while he was looking into Prime_Eight’s police file. Looks like the PD has been suppressing reports of a fatal shooting. Cop shot an unarmed black kid. A witness recorded it on their cell phone, which the cops of course confiscated for evidence.
You’d think this would be a huge f!@#$%$ deal, but someone over at WKZ massively edited the released footage and most of the other media outlets don’t seem to know about it. It looks like ctOS flagged the vic (Mike Nassan) as high threat. Just like they flagged Marcus. And just like with Marcus, so far we aren’t finding any actual evidence of dangerous behavior in the boy’s background. We won’t know more until we get a hold of the rest of that footage—and trust me, we will—but it looks like a cover-up.
This can’t stand. We can’t let it stand.
Because the truth matters.
Hacker Group Exposes Police Shooting
The released footage shows a police officer approaching a young African American man identified as Mike Nassan. The encounter quickly escalated with the officer throwing the young man to the ground and the young man pushing the police officer in return. There were two shots fired and paramedics said the young man was dead before they arrived on the scene.
Amidst accusations of corruption, the police department released a statement declaring they “deeply regret this tragic event” and they offer their heartfelt “sympathy to the young man’s family and community.” They refuse to release the name of the officer involved.
DedSec claims the death was a result of poor police training, which allowed the incident to escalate, and erroneous ctOS information. Nassan was apparently marked as a high risk criminal in his ctOS profile, although there is no record of him committing any crime and, indeed, he appears to have been a promising high school athlete. The hacker group claims the police officer was primed to consider Nassan a threat because of the ctOS profile.
------------
Mysterious Disappearances Haunt Oakland
It’s been a year since Richard Jackson disappeared and still we have no new information, just more disappearances. The young man was reported missing in January 2016 by his girlfriend, Seema Mashruwana, who herself went missing four months later. A well-known street artist, she was last seen working near the train tunnels in south-east Oakland. Two other members of the same social circle have also disappeared.
Were all of these young adults kidnapped? Is this all some elaborate hoax? Friends and family are bewildered. Mariana Jackson, Richard’s mother, says she “just wants to know what happened” even if it turns out her son is dead. “There’s no closure,” she says, “and you find yourself wondering all the time if he’s okay. If he’s hurting…”
Wrench takes over the blog …
IT’S REAL!
THE SHUFFLER IS REAL! Don’t let Sitara FOOL you.
Okay. Sitara told you all about Benny, right? College kid. SMART. Bit of a doofus. All around great DedSec member. He disappeared. DISAPPEARED! And so did his BEST BUDDIES. Him and three other kids. The Shuffler 4.
I KNOW he was looking into the Shuffler when he disappeared. He was KEEPINg NOTES and making MAPS of the CITY and s @#$. We STILL have his computer with some of his files. Kid encrypted them pretty good, but I’m SURE we’ll find some INTERESTING s@#$ in there.
Some people are saying it’s just a bunch of flakey kids RUNNING AWAY and they’ll show up again. Well, they WON’T. Not unless we find them! I mean, shit. Even THEIR FAMILIES are GIVING UP on them now. We went to Benny’s FUNERAL. They didn’t even have a body!
The TRUTH is out there, and we’re gonna FIND IT.
For updates and content from Sitara, you can follow her DedSec Hackerspace Tumblr blog directly (please note that it is in English only).
As always, feel free to create your own DedSec-inspired art and messages using our DEDSEC_DESIGNS kits and share them with us using hashtags #DedSecCreations or #JoinDedSec.
Title Update 1.11: Patch Notes
This patch introduces several free content updates, tweaks to online gameplay, improvements, and bug fixes and will be pushed to all platforms soon. It will also prepare the San Francisco Bay Area for the arrival of the Human Conditions DLC.
Because the Bay Area is very large, this patch is pretty hefty. As all of our online activities take place in a seamless world, we need to make sure everyone has the update so that we don’t split the community. The patch will be about 10 GB on both PS4 and XB1, and 14 GB on PC (PC-specific updates in this patch can be found at the bottom of the article).
As a final note, we’d like to add that all present and future online DLC content is available in Guest Mode. If you don’t own the DLC, but your friend does, you can experience that content with them by having them invite you through the multiplayer app.
Now, on to the free updates, gameplay tweaks, improvements, and bug fixes included in this patch:
New Content and Features
• New Dances – Marcus loves to get down to his favorite tunes, and we thought it was unfair that he only had one move to express himself. We’ve added new variations to his dance emote that can be triggered by wearing different types of clothing.
• New Emotes – We’ve added two new emotes, Mock and Laughing, to give you more ways to communicate with other players. Just try not to, you know, be too much of a jerk about it.
• New Clothing – Speaking of expressing yourself, we’ve added 12 new clothing items across various shops, and 4 DedSec clothing items. Feel free to turn your swag on accordingly.
• New Ubisoft Club Rewards (For Honor & Ghost Recon: Wildlands)– Two new outfits will be available in the Ubisoft Club, featuring designs celebrating the upcoming For Honor and Ghost Recon: Wildlands games.
• Bounty Hunter Respawn – We want to keep you in the fight a little longer. As a hunter, you’ll now be able to respawn once if killed while in pursuit of a target. You’ll respawn a safe distance away to rejoin the chase, should you choose that option.
• Narrative – Without spoiling all of the fun in the patch notes, we’ll just say that if you’ve finished the story you should replay the last mission to watch a little extra something at the end.
Tweaks & Balancing;
Leaderboards
We realized the leaderboard interface and user experience was not optimal, and some players were confused about how it works. For example, some people wonder why their rankings are reset - it’s because there’s a new Season every 3 weeks with new rewards to win. You can read this blog post explaining the leaderboard system in detail, but here’s what we’ve done to improve the overall experience:
• An end-of-season debrief message will display when you open the app for the first time after the season ends. It will show the rank you’ve achieved and the reward you earned for that Season.
o There will also be a notification in your phone when the Season ends
• We’ve also reworked the overall clarity and legibility of the Leaderboard App. We’d be here all day if we listed every specific tweak, but you should see a noticeable improvement.
Multiplayer
• [Online Invasions] Display Online Invasion download zone before it begins – We want the hacker to be able to visualize the download zone when the attack is initiated. This will give the hacker a tool to be more strategic in their approach, helping to further balance the mode.
• [Online Invasions] No more Online Invasion radius trolling – Previously, hackers could pop in and out of the search radius without penalty to avoid being detected by the victim. This is a frustrating loophole that we’ve closed by adding a decreasing delay to return to the zone each time the hacker exits the radius (or goes into the water).
• [Bounty Hunter] Reduced co-op respawn advantage in Bounty Hunter – We applied the same respawn timer to Bounty Hunter targets that is present in Co-Op Missions. This should make the gameplay more balanced when there are two targets.
• [Bounty Hunter] Removed escape disadvantage for targets in Bounty Hunter – The police AI are no longer given the last known position of the target when a hunter enters their session. Previously, this made it very difficult to escape the police in this mode. Escape time has also been reduced once the target loses line-of-sight from their pursuers.
• We nerfed shotties – We discovered through extensive playtesting and data analysis that automatic shotguns were overpowered in PvP modes. We’ve reduced the effective range to 40m to make it function more like an actual shotgun instead of a medium-range random sniper headshot generator. This adjustment also affects single player gameplay.
• IED/ElectroShock Notifications – You’ll hear a small noise when approaching either of these devices if they were placed by another player. You’ll still probably die if you’re close enough to hear it, but at least you’ll know what happened.
• Hackerspace camping addressed – It was possible for a player to barricade themselves in the shop adjacent to the SF Hackerspace since there’s only one entrance. Objects, a junction box and camera have been added to this area to minimize camping.
Other
• Shooting polish – We’ve made numerous improvements to the feel of shooting in the game, but nothing that impacts gameplay. Improved recoil experience, tweaks to bullet tracers, sound improvements, and more. Let us know what you think.
• Improved Car On Demand – Car on Demand vehicles will now spawn closer and in more convenient locations. Additionally, they’ll no longer spawn in redzones or mission layouts.
Bug Fixes & Performance
Stability / Crashs / Performance
• Improved performance and stability
AI
• When honking behind a car in the road, the car will switch lanes if there’s enough room
• Bug fix for AI sometimes entering wrong state of combat a non-lethal takedown
Game Systems
• Fixed an issue where the Bounty Hunter in the Bounty event would not be rewarded followers if the event was cancelled
• Fixed an issue where the player could get stuck inside the boats if he was hijacked by another player
• Fixed numerous edge-case scenarios where the player could fall under the map
• Fixed an issue where the Auto-Hack bullets would not always work as intended
• Fixed an issue where some of the hacking options became momentarily unavailable after distracting a civilian
• Using the Mass Vehicle Hack as a car passenger will now clear the way in front of the driving player
• Tweaks on controllers trigger ratios for vehicle acceleration
• Fixed minor graphical issues on some vehicles
Missions
• Fixed an issue where the introduction cinematic would not play when replaying operation W4tched
• Fixed a problem that made it possible to order a car on the barge in operation Shanghaied
Localization
• Multiple Localization fixes
Online
• Exploit : Fixed an issue that allowed players to hack vehicles without consuming Botnets
• Exploit : Fixed an issue that allowed coop partners to reveal the location of the hacker in specific conditions
• Multiple Leaderboard Fixes
Side Activities
• Fixed a visual issue with circuit terminal path visual in the Greenhouses Coop mission layout
• Fixed an issue that prevented some users from completing the side operation Zodiac Killer
• Fixed an edge case issue where a prisoner in a specific coop mission couldn’t be freed
World / 3D / Graphics / HUD / Menus
• Fixed an issue where two specific pairs of pants in the Stach & Vine shop (Corsaire - Blanc + Cendre) were not added to the inventory after purchasing
• Fixed collision issues in Alcatraz
• Fixed numerous minor graphic issues in the world
• Fixed multiple HUD and interface related issues
• A ton of world issues fixed. (Out of map, misplaced items, floating, etc.)
PC-Specific Updates
• [Video Options] SMAA T2x – This patch adds new Post-Process Anti-Aliasing mode – SMAA T2x, improved version of SMAA with a temporal component. As SMAA T2x uses temporal techniques, it doesn’t work with Temporal Filtering turned on.
• [Video Options] Dynamic Particles – This patch adds a new video option that allows you to turn off dynamic particles, like leaves and effects of bullet hits.
• [Controls Options] Camera auto-centering – This patch adds two new mouse & keyboard options that allow you to turn off camera auto-centering while driving and sprinting. Some default bindings were changed: [F9] and [F10] are now used for Mock and Laugh emotes. Song Sneak action is now assigned on [Backspace], and Tutorial action is assigned on [Home].
• Fixed various minor issues with flickering, multi-monitor modes, UI, text and gamepad controls.
If you continue to experience any of these or other issues, please report on the official forums or contact us directly via customer support.
Watch Dogs 2 DedSec Character Birthdays
Several months ago back in September, we held a Twitter video Q&A with senior scriptwriter, Lucien Soulban (#AskDevLucien). One of the questions asked by our very own Inner Circle community member, Vanade (@veetwentythree), was to let the community know of the birth dates of the DedSec crew.
Surely enough, Lucien got together with the rest of the narrative team and was able to come out with some birth dates for each of our beloved DedSec members.
Here they are:
We encourage you to share your cosplays, fan arts, videos and all that good stuff with us on Twitter @watchdogsgame and on our Reddit to wish ‘em happy birthday! We love to see your awesome work!
Watch_Dogs 2 Twitter Screenshot Chaos Contest Starts Now
From Jan.30th- Feb.10th, tweet your most chaotic screenshots from Watch_Dogs 2 to win great prizes!
As a member of DedSec, Marcus is tasked with taking down CtOS and Blume. And what better way to do that than with a little bit of chaos?
From January 30th to February 10th, we want to see your best chaotic gameplay moments from Watch_Dogs 2, captured via a screenshot or a selfie and shared on Twitter. Full contest rules here.
The more creative you can get, the better! We’ll be choosing our favorites as the winners of our Watch_Dogs 2 Chaos Contest and sending those winners some sweet Watch_Dogs 2 goodies.
Here’s what you need to know to enter this contest:
• To enter the contest, share your screenshot on Twitter with the hashtag #WD2ChaosContest and a hashtag of the platform you captured the screenshot on (#Xbox, #PS4, #PC). Your screenshot must be a photo within your tweet.
Example: an entrant playing on PC would tweet their screenshot out with hashtags “#WD2ChaosContest” and “#PC” in the tweet with their entry.
If you don’t use these two hashtags, we can’t find your submissions and the entries will be considered invalid!
• Entries must be in the form of an in-game selfie or screenshot from Watch_Dogs 2 shared via a tweet on Twitter.
• Screenshots must be your own creation. Do not use other players’ content.
• You can post up to 10 screenshots per day for the duration of the contest. Choose your favorites, don’t spam.
• Entrants must be at least 17 years of age to participate in this contest.
• This contest is open world-wide. For the full list of countries that can participate, see the official contest rules.
What can you win?
Each Grand Prize Winner will be getting:
- WD2 bomber jacket, WD2 t-shirt, WD2 hoodie, WD2 cap, WD2 sunglasses, DedSec leather wallet, two sets of WD2 pins, Marcus figurine
Each Runner-Up will be getting: - WD2 t-shirt, WD2 cap, two sets of WD2 pins, DedSec leather wallet
• Each platform will have one (1) Grand Prize Winner and two (2) runner-ups.
[LIST]
<*>PC: one (1) Grand Prize Winner, two (2) Runner-ups
<*>PS4: one (1) Grand Prize Winner, two (2) Runner-ups
<*>Xbox One: one (1) Grand Prize Winner, two (2) Runner-ups
[/LIST]
After Title Update 1.09 we noticed there were a few issues in the PC community that we were able to fix quickly, so we'll be pushing this minor patch on Monday for PC only. Details are as follows:
• BUG FIX: ScoutX App Reset - Some players lost their ScoutX progress after the last update. This patch will restore that progress.
• NEW FEATURE: FPS limit slider - Some of you have asked for the ability to limit FPS on your machines, so we've added this in the display options.
• BUG FIX: Fixed an issue where shadows were sometimes missing from characters in cutscenes.
If you continue to experience any of these or other issues, please report on the official forums or contact us directly via customer support.
--------------------------------
Thanks for your feedback, we wanted to respond to some of the most common comments below:
Will this patch fix my stuttering/FPS issues? This patch included tweaks to RAM Usage Optimization and Screenspace Reflections optimization, as well as minor fixes with flickering. However, due to the nature of the platform, players will experience these fixes in different ways across different PC builds. We encourage anyone still experiencing severe stuttering and framerate issues to try the following steps in this FAQ and, if that does not help, to get in touch with our Customer Support team for further assistance.
Why was Yourboyserge nerfed so severely? Yourboyserge had so much power that it killed gun variety in PvP. Even at close-range, Yourboyserge was the best option because you could 1- or 2-shot players behind-cover due to massive damage and cover penetration. With six bullets in the magazine and a decent fire rate and reload speed, Serge was the answer to every problem.
We wanted to increase gun variety but still keep serge’s niche: A very powerful sniper that can shoot through some covers. We thus reduced the magazine size to one bullet. At long range, it’s still a powerful and dangerous weapon; but now, at close range, it’s risky. If you miss your shot, you must reload after each bullet; thus making assault rifles and other close range weapons a safer, more reliable choice in these situations.
Today we’re releasing Title Update 1.09 for PC. Xbox One and PS4 received this patch last week.
Below are the fixes you can expect from this PC patch:
• [Performance] RAM Usage Optimization – This patch optimizes a system memory usage which improves the game’s performance on systems with low RAM amount.
• [Performance] Screenspace Reflections Optimization – This patch improves the overall performance of Screenspace Reflections and adds two new lower quality levels (Medium and High).
• San Francisco Fog – The algorithm of the San Francisco Fog (aka “Karl”) appearing is improved with this title update.
• Visual – The maximum value of the Pixel Density slider has been changed from 1.25 to 1.5 with this patch.
• Sound – We have added a Music Volume slider.
• Controller – Added support for the newer DualShock 4 controllers (ZCT2U models).
• YourBoySerge Nerf – This .50 Cal sniper rifle has been the subject of some debate in the community, and is considered to be overpowered in online play. In this patch, we’ve reduced the number of rounds in the magazine from 6 to 1, and we will continue to monitor and balance this beasty rifle.
• Fixed various minor issues with flickering.
• Fixed various minor issues with incorrect window modes behavior.
• Fixed various minor issues with the UI and text.
If you continue to experience any of these or other issues, please report on the official forums or contact us directly via customer support.
--------------------------------
Thanks for your feedback, we wanted to respond to some of the most common comments below:
Will this patch fix my stuttering/FPS issues? This patch included tweaks to RAM Usage Optimization and Screenspace Reflections optimization, as well as minor fixes with flickering. However, due to the nature of the platform, players will experience these fixes in different ways across different PC builds. We encourage anyone still experiencing severe stuttering and framerate issues to try the following steps in this FAQ and, if that does not help, to get in touch with our Customer Support team for further assistance.
Why was Yourboyserge nerfed so severely? Yourboyserge had so much power that it killed gun variety in PvP. Even at close-range, Yourboyserge was the best option because you could 1- or 2-shot players behind-cover due to massive damage and cover penetration. With six bullets in the magazine and a decent fire rate and reload speed, Serge was the answer to every problem.
We wanted to increase gun variety but still keep serge’s niche: A very powerful sniper that can shoot through some covers. We thus reduced the magazine size to one bullet. At long range, it’s still a powerful and dangerous weapon; but now, at close range, it’s risky. If you miss your shot, you must reload after each bullet; thus making assault rifles and other close range weapons a safer, more reliable choice in these situations.
Why am I suddenly/still experiencing crashes after installing the patch? If you are experiencing crashes after the latest patch, please try the following steps in this FAQ.
