Dog of War does not work. This appears to be a flaw in the coding. | Forums

[Sashamorning]

Several months ago, I looked through the Ubisoft forums for help with Dog of War. For those of you who aren't familiar, Dog of War requires you to win as all 3 factions in Theater of War, while playing 10 missions as each. It's something that would legitimately take a year or more for a player to earn on his/her own, working consistently toward this incredibly difficult achievement. It's also something that if someone were to spent a year or more and not pop the achievement, they probably wouldn't realize that there was a problem with the coding, but rather that the player made a mistake. However, I believe that we have proven otherwise.

A group of about 20 of us worked diligently for over 2 months, spending several hours per day, to win campaigns 32, 33 and 34 (Russia, Europe and the US respectively) on the Xbox. We started in late July, and finished in late September. When we finally won the third campaign on the 63rd day, the achievement did not pop. Intense disappointment. We chronicled our attempt here: http://www.trueachievements.com/foru...hreadid=911160

I contacted Ubisoft support with a long and detailed explanation of what had happened, and the response I was given was a form letter:

"Thank you for contacting Ubisoft Technical Support. Unfortunately, the issue you are having is related to general gameplay hints and tips that is either covered in the manual, or is available via another source such as the Ubisoft forums (http://www.ubi.com/US/Community/ForumBrowser.aspx)."

I responded that this was not in fact the case, and that it was possible that no one had actually achieved this without hacking due to the difficulty of winning campaigns. 2 1/2 years passed from the release of EndWar through the end of the 34th campaign. Compounding the problem is the fact that Ubisoft changed the Theater of War victory conditions soon after the game's release. In my explanation to Ubisoft, I said that it was possible that the requirements for the achievement were now incorrect, since the original victory conditions required capturing all 3 capitals AND securing 30 territories, which was lowered to capture ONE capital OR secure 27 territories. This rule change, we suspect, led the game to discount any victory on our part.

Several months after we failed in our attempt, despite fulfilling the conditions (which describe only winning the campaign with all 3 factions), another user looked through the code of the game. It appears that the EndWar title update that modified the victory conditions in-game did not modify the victory conditions for the achievement, which was completely overlooked. I believe that it was an honest oversight on the part of the developers, but an oversight nevertheless.

There are a lot of achievement hunters like me out here. Dog of War is one of the Grails out there, along with the GRAW leaderboards an several others. It's almost a crime to not patch this, even now. I've been waiting for another response from Ubisoft regarding this, but I've never gotten one. The development crew has probably long since disbanded, and there are probably very few that care about this, but I do, and I guarantee that others do as well.

I hope that someone at Ubisoft reads this and takes the time to understand what I'm saying. Achievements and trophies help sell games, and this experience has left be quite disenchanted with Ubisoft as a whole. I'm willing to redo the requirements for Dog of War, spending months to do so if need be, if I could get assurances that it will actually unlock at the end of the 2-3 months it would take.

Thank you for your time.

~Sashamorning

[Whovian Omega]

Dog of War is broken on XBox, and probably on PS3 as well. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever earned it legitimately.

There are other glitched achievements, too. For example, Down to Size works properly on PS3, but is broken on XBox and requires one to purchase ALL the upgrades in one trip to the barracks. There are certainly others, so you may as well set your expectations a little bit lower.

The bottom line is that Ubisoft abandoned support for this game several months after launch. The codebase is an unsupportable mess, and it usually takes over a week for them to bring the servers back online whenever they go down. With all that in mind, if you're actually expecting them to fix the broken achievements, you're going to be very bittterly disappointed.

To be honest, if they were still supporting this game at all, I'd rather they spent their time fixing the lobby system or re-balancing the maps and factions. That won't happen, but it's certainly more important to me than achievements that are more trouble than they're worth to earn.

Hope that helps.

[Sashamorning]

You're absolutely correct, there are other things wrong with the game. I know the issue with Down to Size, and was fortunate enough to have known about that before I tried it. And while I know that there are other issues with the game, I don't consider the Dog of War glitch to be trivial. I've done everything else in the game, playing casually, playing hardcore, and earning every achievement except that one.

Do I expect them to fix it? No, not really, but then again if they broke it with their own title update, then it would be more than nice. In fact, if my suspicions are correct, the actual coding would be relatively quick. At least you can get Down to Size. Dog of War is completely broken... AND it was the hardest achievement in the first place. I agree that rebalancing would be nice, but on the other hand a number of us actually did attempt an achievement that was more trouble than it was worth to earn (Seriously 3.0, anyone?), and it didn't pop.

All that I'm asking is that if Ubi coded something as an unlockable in the game and advertised it in the achievement list, then code it so that it pops. I don't think that's so much to ask.

[Whovian Omega]

All that I'm asking is that if Ubi coded something as an unlockable in the game and advertised it in the achievement list, then code it so that it pops. I don't think that's so much to ask.

But it is unreasonable...from Ubisoft's point of view. They already have your money. You are not a "customer"--you are (in circus parlance) a chump: your sole purpose in life is to continuously cough up cash in anticipation of things you are promised but will rarely ever see.

In fairness, there are a few dedicated people in Ubisoft customer support, but Ubisoft as a company has zero interest in you, this community, or the game itself. They already have your money; all they want is for you to buy their next dreck-fest, not to actually maintain a positive customer relationship with you. If you run out and buy the next pointless installment of <insert moronic title here>, then the marketing people all get bonuses. Otherwise, the marketing people get a stern talking-to, and start planning the next game that appeals to the lowest common denominator of Cheeto-eating, sloped-forehead idiots who can barely count to twenty with their shoes on, but who will happily spend money on any game where spawn-camping with sniper rifles is considered a "strategy."

Three years after the game was launched, Ubisoft hasn't even managed an articulate response on when Double XP starts and stops. If you think they have, try reading back through the forums and realize just how vague and uninformative their reponses have been. Remember, kids: capitalism means never having to give an honest answer to a reasonable question, and globalization means you don't even have to give clear instructions in a chump's--uh, I mean "customer's--native language.

If this sounds like a rant, it is. But at least I realize that Ubisoft as a company doesn't care, so it's mostly an exercise in commiserating with my fellow Endwar players, who are (by definition) smarter than the people running Ubisoft's Customer Elimination Program.

[Sashamorning]

...and this is pretty much why I've sworn not to buy another Ubisoft game again. I know others who feel the same way. It's a shame, because there are other development teams putting out excellent products (Your Shape, Assassin's Creed), but I won't spend another dollar on Ubisoft products the way that things stand.