@XII_Sniper said:

Well it's a nice effort, but a little too late for me. The damage is done. I have zero desire to play Uncharted 3 ever again, it was just too frustrating. I banged my head against it until I capped off the campaign, but by then I was so frustrated that I considered selling it off to a used game store, which would have been a first for me. I eventually didn't, but that's not gonna change the fact that it's going into deep, deep storage.

I don't understand the frustration people had, i beat it with no problems.

@TheFrostedGamer said:

And everyday Klepek sucks more of the appeal out of this website with his pretentious articles. What used to be an off-center , fun gaming site run by Jeff Gerstmann is now a toilet of college essays, ala IGN Style. Shouts to everyone who funds this - in the end you got what you wanted.

Hrm. I guess I should think twice before rolling out my new website, essaytoilet.com.

Klepek articles are pretty college-y. They're interesting and informative, for the most part, but he needs to mature his writing style.

And since the changes weren't made until after the game was released, you'll still have the old problems if you try to play this game in a couple or few years, when it is a "retro" game and you can't download the patch for it.

@Styl3s said:

@XII_Sniper said:

Well it's a nice effort, but a little too late for me. The damage is done. I have zero desire to play Uncharted 3 ever again, it was just too frustrating. I banged my head against it until I capped off the campaign, but by then I was so frustrated that I considered selling it off to a used game store, which would have been a first for me. I eventually didn't, but that's not gonna change the fact that it's going into deep, deep storage.

I don't understand the frustration people had, i beat it with no problems.

Wow, really? I just beat the part on the ship and it had numerous extremely obnoxious sections with snipers, rocket launchers, and armored dudes that would NOT let up. This was all on Normal too, and I've beaten games like Gears of War on the hardest difficulty and didn't find them frustrating. Uncharted 2 actually had the same thing near the end (before the blue guys, of all things) with just way too many guys rushing me. I think it's really unbalanced in a lot of spots.

Good to see Im not the only person who felt the shooting was different in 3. Had no problem aiming in 2, but I couldn't shake the feeling all the way through Deception that something was off.

"Meyer said down with game director Justin Richmond and multiplayer programmer Travis McIntosh"

I'm guessing that "said" is supposed to be "sat". Man I hate being at school when reading articles, makes me want to spell correct and edit lol

I haven't finished the game. I was planning on beating it this week, but I guess Thanksgiving break will be Skyrim week. I'll wait for this patch to come out and then go back. Might be a Christmas break game considering I'll probably start over if it takes until then.

@LiquidPrince: It lets objects that are flying fast past the camera (any debris basically or things like grenades) be blurred individually, while keeping the rest of the shot in focus. Crysis was the first game to implement it. It definitely adds to the sense of 'speed' for the objects flying past the screen.

It's not a huge feature but, especially in all the crazy set pieces UC3 has, it certainly adds a nice little touch.

I still don't get what the big deal is. Naughty Dog neglected to ask the game testers about the aiming aspects during beta testing. This led them to release the game with 'unsatisfactory' aiming speeds, as well as a 'drag' to the aiming in general. The people complaining found the controls to be slower than Uncharted 2, which would eventually lead them to believe that the people wanted aiming controls similar to Uncharted 2.

Shouldn't the complaints be quickly remedied by a couple of guys pulling an all-nighter to dive back into the code and change a few variables around? I'm assuming variables like "xaim_speed" or "yaim_speed", which would be used to control the horizontal and vertical aiming speeds, respectively, are parented to the player character (i.e. there's no other character that uses these values), so all you'd have to do is increase them until they're satisfactory. Even better, just copy the values from Uncharted 2, paste them in the Uncharted 3 code, test it, and (when the code works in the way the coders think is satisfactory) ship it out in a patch the next day.

If it take 4 outsiders coming to your offices to basically tell you "Hey, we want the Uncharted 2 aiming speed. Can you do that for us?", then something is wrong with in the QA department, or something.

Note: I notice single valued variables wouldn't change much; you'd need an array or vector list to hold all the available speed values for each tick on the "Sensitivity" slider to make the proper difference, but the same thinking applies.

Meyer said down with game director Justin Richmond and multiplayer programmer Travis McIntosh to sketch out the changes made for Uncharted 3.

Travis is the lead programmer, not a multiplayer programmer.

I thought I was losing my mind during that big gunfight in the castle level. I really did feel like I could just not get my reticle on the guys at all. I finished the gam and liked it, but the gunplay took a bit to get used to. Now that they're fixing it I am definately going to go back and play the story over again. Definately one of my favorites of the year!

An excellent read!

I'd love an explanation from Naughty Dog about what exactly it is that happened.

Having played 2, but not 3 yet, I can say 2 felt great. The control felt silky smooth, and I'm surprised it was changed.

1 didn't feel good to me, although I'm not sure how much was the control, and how much was just the grind-y-ness of the combat. EVERYTHING about 2 was sooooooooooo much better than 1...

@Vitor said:

@LiquidPrince: It lets objects that are flying fast past the camera (any debris basically or things like grenades) be blurred individually, while keeping the rest of the shot in focus. Crysis was the first game to implement it. It definitely adds to the sense of 'speed' for the objects flying past the screen.

It's not a huge feature but, especially in all the crazy set pieces UC3 has, it certainly adds a nice little touch.

Ah, okay.

In the beta and subway MP I always knew something was off, but I thought it was just me. Good to know that they're going to make it closer to U2 which I thought had pretty great shooting controls.

Naughty Dog: Work with the community, get players involved, work towards solution. Awesome.

Bethesda: Community cuts out the middle man (PC crowd).

Basically, next generation better add mod support to console games. Will never happen, but imagine, a version of a game where everyone would be happy! Just force restrictions to make multiplayer verify file cache and disc check and bingo.

...people actually give that much of a shit about a $60 video game that they would spend that amount of time and effort just to have aiming in the game changed? I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

I definitely noticed something off about the aiming when I played through it.

Bethesda should take a page out of Naughty Dog's book and see if they can get fans to fix the PS3 version of Skyrim.

I have not played any Uncharted games so coming into this with fresh eyes.

From the videos I have just watched through reading this post , for me, I can clearly see it is a lot stiffer in uncharted 3. That outside looks is always vital for the company I work for making and designing websites and web applications. Fresh eyes do not have any bias either end.

The interesting thing here for me is that again Naughty Dog show they are an awesome developer - Every uncharted game I have seen looks amazing, If I was to buy a PS3 I would be all of these to play.

BUT

That first blog post - Saying it is exactly the same and then seeing a patch to make the same (because its not) is coming out. If the values are the same how can they make a patch? It would have been great to add to this article what exactly did they find out and what they are changing?

@kerse said:

I definitely noticed something off about the aiming when I played through it.

Glad I'm not the only one! I thought I was just rusty, but something definitely felt off about it.

Kudos to Naughty Dog for taking the steps to get more in touch with their fanbase and actually listening to them.

I've played and platinum-ed all three Uncharteds. I didn't have huge concerns with 3, but I did notice one thing that bugged me a little; not being able to move my aim left or right fast enough whilst being flanked at close-to-mid range.

I love Naughty Dog for paying attention to the community and doing this. They could have just stuck their heads in the sand and pointed at the "I don't think there is anything wrong, stop complaining" posts. I think a lot of developers prefer to ignore problems, I recall hearing on one podcast or another that the overall cost of developing and getting a patch onto PSN is something like a minimum of $10,000.

If only Sony/Team ICO/Bluepoint Games would listen to the community over the Shadow of the Colossus HD grip mess.

Great article, Patrick. I've been following this year and there, but it is nice to have it all nicely written up in one spot like this.

You have got to give it to Naughty Dog for not just digging in their heels and continuing to tell the fans that were wrong and just ignoring their concerns. They addressed the issue from their perspective immediately when that didn't settle it they continued to communicate and get feedback from the community. Well played Naught Dog, well played.

Aiming in this game does suck.

Wow give ND some props for listening to their fans

I played the game on hard before the comments about aiming started surfacing and I have to say I had no problems at all with it. Still it's nice for those that aren't enjoying it that these changes are being made.

Good work Naughty Dog. This is a great gesture on their part to say "okay, enough people feel we've made a mistake changing the aiming system, let's try and offer those people an alternative they'll be happy with."

I have never seen a game so good get so crapped on. Kudos for them fixing something that the community had an issue with. Great game made by great devs.

I see what people are saying in the comments, but just because the control's are different doesn't make them 'wrong' and need fixing.

I cant say I've payed the latest in the series, but it certainly relieves me to see that it is an option and not a complete change.

Otherwise I'm sure that would have caused even more issues :)

@Gareff said:

I see what people are saying in the comments, but just because the control's are different doesn't make them 'wrong' and need fixing.

I cant say I've payed the latest in the series, but it certainly relieves me to see that it is an option and not a complete change.

Otherwise I'm sure that would have caused even more issues :)

This isn't a Killzone matter of them intentionally making changes to the aiming to portray a different feel to it. There are tangible, objectively worse attributes to the aiming in single player that make it perform worse as compared to U2 and even multiplayer U3. The aiming controls are literally different between multiplayer and singleplayer modes.

I'ts nice to see that Naughty Dog cares enough about its games to continually try to refine them.

What I find most surprising is that this didn't come up in any of the reviews for the game and that this game had an even higher average rating that Uncharted 2. Shooting is the game mechanic used most often in this series (I had almost 500 enemies shot and the time spent shooting greatly outweighed the platforming, puzzles, etc.) so how could it rate better than the last one when the most basic game mechanic was demonstrably worse than the previous release?

I suspect when we look back on this Holiday Season in about 6-8 months the general consensus will be that the enthusiast press over-rated quite a few games...

@Gareff said:

I see what people are saying in the comments, but just because the control's are different doesn't make them 'wrong' and need fixing.

I cant say I've payed the latest in the series, but it certainly relieves me to see that it is an option and not a complete change.

Not different. Worse. The shooting seriously was shit.

That's cool of ND.

This could explain why I found Uncharted 3 a bit more difficult and frustrating than 2. Or it could just have been the dudes with shotguns continually flanking you while dudes on balconies launched rockets at you, while men on the ground spammed you with grenades.

@RsistncE said:

...people actually give that much of a shit about a $60 video game that they would spend that amount of time and effort just to have aiming in the game changed? I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Well, they got something out of it. Which is more than we can say about your post.

For some reason I felt like the enemies were also different in Uncharted 3. Unlike in Uncharted 2, they don't seem to react to getting hit with bullets. Was that frustrating for any of you? I hated it and haven't felt like finishing the game due to that and the aiming.

Now if some smart fans can fix the Giant Bomb videos and we can get some HD video for trailers and developer blogs.

I can honestly say I never noticed a problem in aiming with Uncharted 3. One change I DID notice is that you could no longer change which side you shoot from by pressing R3, something I dunno why they got rid of. But I think the patch would be much better if it could somehow fix the terrible nonssensical storyline...

I'm happy as long as Naughty Dog don't get pressured into making the multiplayer aspect more like Uncharted 2. It was the strangest feeling when I came back to U2 after a few months of playing other games. At first I thought I was just rusty, but then I found out that since I'd played it Naughty Dog had changed a bunch of the core values (health, speed, etc) making it feel ... different. I couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was, but the end result was pretty prevalent. Firefights were over before they started, there was never a back-and-forth struggle, and grenades were king.

I'm fine with them listening to the community and making improvements, as long as they keep the core game intact.

Kudos to Naughty Dog. I felt there was something definately different with the gunplay this time round but it wasnt a game breaker for me. Will be really interested to see how the patch effects my uncharted skills though :)

@Roomrunner: Nicely done.

Good job Naughty Dog on this, it's nice to see developers actually care and reach out to the community. Seems like a very "Valve" move in a way. Much respect to Arne Meyer but, ugh, wasn't he the guy in one of the Uncharted 3 videos who had that disgusting moustache?

Now they just have to remove about 50 armored shotgun enemies and 20 RPG-shooting enemies, and stop them all from constantly trying to charge in and melee you, and the combat in this game will be great.

Naughty Dog (focus groups were ok with the shooting) and Eidos Montreal (focus groups were fine with the bosses), stop trusting your focus group testing!

Killer article man. It was a really fun read.

@PieGuy said:

Great developers.

Class act people

@habibyjohnson: I think you can somehow, as in the stats it says times switched shoulder or something along those lines. I'm not sure myself how to do it and never actually found myself needing to, but I think it is there somewhere.