Watch Dogs Multiplayer Guide: All you need to know
Here is the Watch Dogs Multiplayer guide to help you find all you need to know on how to best start playing the mode and how to survive it as therhe different ways to play multiplayer.
He grabbed a few quotes from Watch Dogs lead gameplay designer Danny Belanger who says, “We don’t talk about it in terms of single-player and multiplayer. It’s all online. It’s seamless. You continue your game. That aspect, for me, is crucial because otherwise it’s a break in the experience. It all feels like one experience.”
In addition to free-roam, there are four different online modes players can participate in; Intrusion, Decryption, Tailing, and Racing. Here’s the description of each, according to the Ubiblog:
Intrusion
Belanger describes this as a “techno high-and-seek where you need to steal data from your opponent and get away. He can actually stop you if he finds you with the profiler.”
Decryption
Those who want a highly competitive team-based throwdown will find it with this four-against-four PvP mode. It’s fast, it’s intense, and it’s fully integrated into the open-world Chicago. See it in action in the video above.
Tailing
“If you enter someone’s game, you can follow and observe him. The goal is to gain valuable information before escaping. As Belanger explains, both the tailing and intrusion gameplay are built to ‘create a neutral-positive dynamic between two players that’s in the universe of Watch Dogs. If someone comes into your game just to kill you, it’s not fun.’”
Racing
“As straightforward as it sounds. Players can use different cars and race on different tracks, all set within the game’s world.”
Rewards and Risks
With the seamless online, it’s all about Notoriety. In order to track how well you’re doing with the various multiplayer modes, the game has a Notoriety rating that moves up and down in relation to your activities. “It’s your fame,” Belanger says. “It’s your rank as a hacker. If you are hacked you’ll lose a bit of notoriety.”
As Belanger says, Notoriety works like a thermometer. When it goes up you can gain skills – meaning that the seamless online isn’t just fun but also provides a benefit. There are even specific Notoriety skills in the skill tree.
Belanger is quick to point out that for most players, acquiring the skills gained through the seamless online gameplay should be easily achievable. “We didn’t want it to be frustrating or a punishment,” he says. “The goal was just to create a cool dynamic with something at risk, but not something that will make you upset and angry.”
Where Notoriety becomes a true gauge, though, is when a player really embraces the more competitive aspects of multiplayer. “The more you participate, the further you go – and then Notoriety becomes a leaderboard,” Belanger says. “You can remove some points from people and that will affect the leaderboard. People will be competing to be the best.”
Master Hacking in Watch Dogs
The seamless online gameplay is there for you to enjoy, but how you play is totally up to you. “You can be disconnected and there’s still a very big action-adventure open-world game,” Belanger says. “This just gives you more choice. It’s the same for the companion app. If you’re online there’s more gameplay you can enjoy.”
Having tried out several of the online modes, I’m happy to affirm that the seamless online multiplayer does indeed feel natural to the Watch Dogs experience and fully integrated into the world. What’s more, it created a real push-pull, where I either wanted to protect myself from any threats or strut my stuff by hacking into someone else’s game. And that’s one of the primary goals for the seamless online.
“Someone could come into your game and hack you,” Belanger says. “To me, you feel invaded so there’s this sense of honor. This guy is in your game and you want to track him down. It’s the fantasy of surveillance. Aiden Pearce is a master hacker and he has all these tools, but as a player, if you’re not living the fantasy of someone watching you, there’s a piece of the puzzle missing.”
Watch Dogs hits PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC May 27.
courtesy of Ubisoft
