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Assassin's Creed needs to focus


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46 minutes ago, arsenal4life1471 said:

@Voland44 rogue and syndicate where some of the best games i feel

yeah, i like them two. point is, that those game were unpopular AC titles for a reason.

 

On 12/28/2020 at 2:28 PM, Slipknot_Fan007 said:

I don't think people would complain as much if this game didn't require 100% completion for the platinum 

aside from this forum, most ppl actually dont care about platinum :) and honestly rarely ubisoft making "true 100%" for their platinums. nowadays they even more casual. anyway, platinum never should stand in way of gaming enjoyment, imo

 

On 12/28/2020 at 2:28 PM, Slipknot_Fan007 said:

besides, I'd rather pay full price for a game that has too much to do rather than not enough. 

yeah, i dont get whats the point of decreasing "optional" content. you get bored? skip this and go for main story, thats all. its not game problem if you cant resist.

 

On 12/22/2020 at 7:12 AM, DoomsdayVivi said:

I just plat'd AC: Syndicate. It took about 40 hours and the map was just London. That game was from 2015, so the recent mega-open world thing is pretty new. 

Unity was bigger than Syndicate almost 3x(content wise)

 

in fact, almost all major new AC is bigger and bigger, since AC2. 

 

AC2 is bigger than AC1

AC3 is bigger than AC2

AC4 is bigger than AC3

AC Unity is bigger than AC4

AC Origins is bigger than AC Unity

AC Odyssey is bigger than AC Origins

 

so yeah, that totally NOT a "new thing". also AC Valhalla isnt bigger than AC Origins, btw

 

but anyway, i highly doubt that AC NextGen(not crossgen) would be bigger than Odyssey. in fact, i think Odyssey would be biggest AC for a pretty long time. i think with Origins/Valhalla they find that perfect size. big but not too big. 
 

 

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On 12/22/2020 at 9:43 AM, sepheroithisgod said:

That's a fair point, but what is counted as filler is very subjective. For instance, I don't quite understand why people have turned against fetch quests. They've always been a part of gaming since the get-go. Heck, Death Stranding is basically a game dedicated to fetch quests.

 

Luckily, that isn't AC Valhalla. They purposely cut out a lot of the fat from Odessey. Replacing the hundreds of throw away quests with much more focused mysteries. While the OP argues Valhalla isn't focused, I have to disagree, it's definitely the most focused out of the new styled AC games. Each region is separate and fits the story nicely.

 

I can't speak to Assassin's Creed Valhalla, but fetch quests are one thing... it's the whole open world fad the industry (and Ubisoft in particular) is on that never sat well with me.  Open world games will inherently have weaker stories IMO than shorter, more linear, tightly designed narratives.  Even if the side content is better, and there's less of it, there's still no sense of urgency or investment in what's happening when the entire game is you going at your own pace.  The individual smaller stories may be fine in their own respects... but the bigger picture, the reason for doing it all, is dull as dishwater and spread way too thin.

 

Death Stranding, like Zelda Breath of the Wild, is an interesting exception because it made the world its gameplay.  It's all fetch quests (and cutscenes)... but it's not about the fetch quests.  Walking, with it's weight management and balance, planning routes and moment to moment decision making trying to get there with your cargo intact, is the games core gameplay loop... and the fetch quests are just the reason to make you do it.  If you find some entertainment in those elements, the game is very fun and unique.  If you don't, it's a huge swing and a miss.

 

In most open world games though it's the other way around, even the ones that try to spice it up with fun little flying abilities and stuff... traversal is easy and there's literally nothing to it other than to look pretty and hit a quota of identical combat encounters along the way.  The gameplay loop isn't the process of getting where you're going... it's whatever you're doing when you get there.  And if it's all just semi-interesting side stories and fetch quests, the journey isn't that great and the destination isn't much better.

Edited by Dreakon13
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On 22/12/2020 at 3:15 PM, Carol said:

I don’t mean to offend anyone, but, for me, Odyssey was one of the worst games I’ve ever played and a game that I fully regret spending money on. I will never understand how it’s such a loved game. The open-world is beautiful and that’s about it; the content of the missions is extremely superficial. It just seems a shameful imitation of The Witcher 3, where, everything, from the story, to the characters, dialogues, missions and gameplay, is so rich and interesting.

And I love all the other AC games! I have all the unique AC platinums (with the exception of Valhalla) and most of the games were solid and fantastic!

 I understand that things have to change and evolve, but what happened to AC is not exactly what I call an evolution. I will play Valhalla someday and I really hope it’s a better experience, but I have my doubts...

 

Exactly my thoughts. But I think you'll like Valhalla because at it's core it's an AC game, not like Odyssey.

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I agree with the OP. As a long time fan of the AC series and having played all of the AC games on PC originally then switching to console, I’m finding it really hard to engage with AC Valhalla. I’m finding myself starting to skip all dialogue, even main missions, just to wrap the game up and move onto my next one. Combat is too easy even on hardest setting and I’m finding stealth is not necessary at all, you can either slaughter everyone or run just away with no consequences.

 

Playing Ghost of Tsushima last year, I thought this is a better Assassins Creed in all aspects. Movement felt better and more fluid, combat was better and more tense, riding the horse felt better and the environment look prettier, even stealth felt much better. Less weapons in GoT make combat a more polished and challenging experience.

 

Everything in AC Valhalla feels watered down in comparison. I’m not talking about the size of the world, number of quests etc. More the number weapons and skills. AC Valhalla has dozens of weapons and countless skills to unlock. Skills do not seem to do too much. Combat and stealth do not feel polished or focused. You become OP very quickly and the challenge disappears. I no longer worry about parrying or what type of enemy I am facing, it’s just stab, stab, stab until adrenalin fills up, jump attack, repeat.

 

Reducing the number of weapons, skills will allow for a more focused and polished combat and stealth experience, I think.

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On 24/12/2020 at 3:32 PM, steel6burgh said:

absolutely spot on with your analysis.  long travel times between destinations, fetch quests that have no meaning, endless locations, and vintage points.  80 hours of these things and only 20 to 30 of the story.   The assassins creed world could be great if they made them more story and linear.  I could imagine how good a Assassins Creed could be made if it were made like a naughty dog game such as last of us.  To me this would be a welcome change for the franchise.  The open world formula needs to be eliminated not made bigger.  They should take 3 years off and reinvent the franchise entirely.

 

yeah the map is big just to be big.... exploring northern Norway, where the wall is, there's maybe 1 wealth item, 1 way point,  and an artifact. Then the wall braziers i guess. But all the other items are lower. Most of the northern area is empty as empty can be.

 

Also a horse works most times but its same issue as Death Stranding, tho not as bad. You can speed up travel time by horse.... unless in mountains/rocky terrain which seem to be a lot of areas in the end. Death Stranding imo had 0 reasons for vehicle. I could never get anywhere with it. too many rocks/uneven ground. 

 

rumor is AC is doing greece next or something? i read rumored areas but i forgot exactly lol.

like i haven't finished Valhalla yet but what exactly is so "stealth" or assassins about it? Gone are the missions where you have to not be spotted while you take out an enemy leader... instead you can just go axes throwing (which is fun but 65% done story, (asgard left, wincester, essex, collecting stuff), im power level 381.... I'm not even grinding for any stats.

 

Honestly Ubisoft should take a break again from AC. Unfortunately they need to release something every year and aside from Immortals, idk any new IP of theirs. But i say 2021, bring back Splinter Cell. Valhalla DLC. 2022 Beyond Good and Evil 2, Ghost Recon, Division 3, fall 2023 new AC...

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  • 2 weeks later...

What got Ubisoft in hot water to begin with was their annual releases of Assassin's Creed. It was becoming another Call of Duty with the same rinse and repeat plotlines, same boring style, etc.

 

I'm a fan of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, but not because of being an assassin, as a matter of fact the assassins don't really do much in that game storywise until the very end. This was the point where Ubisoft really started to stop caring about the Assassin vs Templar conflict.

 

Starting with Origins there is this much unneeded focus on Layla Hassan, who is supposed to be the present day replacement for Desmond Miles who practically helped carry the Assassins from AC 1 thru 3. The present day is a complete mess, and I wish Ubisoft tosses it out for good since everyone knows the historical settings and timelines were the big draw.

 

This company never got things straight after the series starting going downhill with Revelations and Assassin's Creed III. I had to spend a good two - three days opening all the chests in Assassin's Creed Unity, which was torture because it was a complete disaster on top of having a forgettable story because Arno Dorian practically said 'Fuck All' anyway. They tried to change things a bit in Syndicate, but the story was medicore, just nothing really interesting and the open world was just a laundry list of shit you had to do. Origins I feel is quite a bit better than either Unity or Syndicate, but again, much of your time is spent going from marker to marker. Side content was once more boring filler with nothing substantial.

 

I think it's because Ubisoft themselves are a faceless corporation because a number of their games just look and feel uninspired. They look appealing the first time you play them, then you realize you're practically doing the same shit you did back on Assassin's Creed 2 and Far Cry 3. Around a decade's worth of games, some are good, but for the most part I can't consider any of them masterpieces.

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11 minutes ago, Spaz said:

What got Ubisoft in hot water to begin with was their annual releases of Assassin's Creed. It was becoming another Call of Duty with the same rinse and repeat plotlines, same boring style, etc.

 

I'm a fan of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, but not because of being an assassin, as a matter of fact the assassins don't really do much in that game storywise until the very end. This was the point where Ubisoft really started to stop caring about the Assassin vs Templar conflict.

 

Starting with Origins there is this much unneeded focus on Layla Hassan, who is supposed to be the present day replacement for Desmond Miles who practically helped carry the Assassins from AC 1 thru 3. The present day is a complete mess, and I wish Ubisoft tosses it out for good since everyone knows the historical settings and timelines were the big 

 

Origins I feel is quite a bit better than either Unity or Syndicate, but again, much of your time is spent going from marker to marker. Side content was once more boring filler with nothing substantial.

im 

ehhh i have to agree on a lot, however for the most part, all real world outside animus crap i couldn't give two shits about. Layla, Desmond, Basim, don't give a damn.

 

However i do like the rpg elements, but the game needs to revamp some side quests (cairns.... really?), as well as add more stealth sections. Yes in Valhalla you can change the difficulty of pulling off a stealth kill but i mean pure full on stealth segments. They seem so few by this new Trilogy. 

 

example:

Take out the leader of a camp or Order member only using stealth and no alerts from other guards? seems like a good challenge. 

 

reality:

meh just run in axes and arrows, kill all in sight. No challenge. 

 

But yeah id like to see AC take 2 years off AFTER the final DLC releases for Valhalla. Revamp the series again, tweak it, whatever. Next AC, fall 2023. Even 2 years apart the fatigue of these games is unreal. As well as map size, why the fuck does every game need to be "the biggest". Especially in Valhalla, i found Norway to be empty af. Same with the 3 other areas you venture to that arent named England.

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  • 1 month later...

Couldn't agree more. It is a obvious point that these grinding and repetitive tasks within the game has the only objective to make you stay on the game and keep playing over and over as a way to enlarge the game's lifespan and thus, do not let you play anyting else.

Assassin's creed's move to a more rpg-like design was a fairly good surprise with Origins (2017) and it was pretty much straightforward. Things got worse with Odyssey: huge map with repetitive tasks and dialogues. 

Ghost of Tsushima was perfect on this aspect: even the sidequests were pleasant to do and the history itself made me play it without a rush, due to focus and enrichement of the history itself at each chapter

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  • 8 months later...

Going to resurrect this old thread in the hopes there will be some replies. Maybe, maybe not.

 

With second year DLC coming for Valhalla, I think Ubisoft is getting too far into the 'bigger is better' business model. It makes perfect sense why they are dragging their feet with Prince of Persia and failing to even give Rayman a notice (his anniversary was this year as a matter of fact). It's because those kinds of games aren't profitable anymore, which is a shame. Granted, they were popular back when the gaming audience was mostly computer geeks and guys still going to school, me being one of them. But with the industry long since abandoning that audience and trying to cater to the masses, Ubisoft is basically throwing DLC, microtransactions, in-game advertising right in our faces. Because they know there are plenty of people out there with good pocketfuls of money to spend.

 

I don't think that is so much the vision of the developers or what they had planned. It's the publishers calling the shots, and when you're as big and powerful as Ubisoft you're basically going to set strict deadlines.

 

I already said enough things about Odyssey, but simply put there was too much filler. Too many clear the bandit camp side quests, same boring objectives over and over for clearing locations, the list goes on. There wasn't enough mythology to make things interesting, for every Cyclops and Minotaur fight there were literally dozens upon dozens of boring side quests. Layla Hassan as the present day protagonist is boring, short tempered and unlikable. Her stupid companions/friends were just as bad.

 

Odyssey definitely lacked the polish and charm of The Witcher 3. A lot of weapon and armor sets started to look the same after a while, and it didn't really matter what set you used since everything was a sponge anyway. Increasing the difficulty just made enemies more of a pain in the ass to deal with, unlike The Witcher 3 which actually had a fair and rewarding difficulty system that allowed you to take on enemies several times your own level. In Odyssey, an enemy two - three levels above me was more than likely to murder me in a few quick swipes.

 

Valhalla does look fantastic from a presentation standpoint and the protagonist (male or female) isn't bad at all. But I'm annoyed with the seemingly endless amounts of filler, and you actually have to go and hunt all those boring collectibles if you want the platinum. Main story does look promising and some of the ancients you will be hunting down have their own stories, which was one of the things I really liked about Odyssey.

 

Bigger isn't always better. But since Assassin's Creed has such a divided fanbase considering all the games it has you cannot please everybody. I prefer the more compact, more polished open world in contrast to an open world that is filled to the brim with content.

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15 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

I prefer the more compact, more polished open world in contrast to an open world that is filled to the brim with content.

 

Couldn't agree more.  Bloated, unpolished in all aspects and stuffed full of unnecessary filler. I used to be a big fan of the franchise but Valhalla has thrown me off completely. The trailer and marketing look great, and I fell for it again hoping this one would be different.

 

Looking at the trophy completion percentage for finishing the game (on PSN not PSN profiles) only about 20% of people finish the story.

 

Compare that to Ghost of Tsushima which is a similar style of game but much more focused and polished...and shorter, 50% of all gamers on PSN finished the game.

 

 

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I can't really comment about Valhalla yet, but this is something that caused me to stop playing Odyssey on two occasions.

 

I am the type of player that likes to do everything in a game, not just looking at the trophies.

So, that means going after every question mark, and doing all of the activities.

And doing all of that the moment I can, before I continue with any of the main story.

 

But doing it was such a drag in Odyssey, the same outposts and camps over and over and over and over and over again.

By the time that I was finally done with that, I was already so done with the game that I didn't even continue the story.

 

If Valhalla is like that, then I'm going to think twice about ever starting that one.

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2 hours ago, Rando-Calrisian- said:

Couldn't agree more.  Bloated, unpolished in all aspects and stuffed full of unnecessary filler. I used to be a big fan of the franchise but Valhalla has thrown me off completely. The trailer and marketing look great, and I fell for it again hoping this one would be different.

 

Looking at the trophy completion percentage for finishing the game (on PSN not PSN profiles) only about 20% of people finish the story.

 

Compare that to Ghost of Tsushima which is a similar style of game but much more focused and polished...and shorter, 50% of all gamers on PSN finished the game.

 

If these Assassin's Creed games were more like the length of Watch Dogs 1 & 2, I wouldn't have such an issue. But they keep making everything longer and more bloated as time moves forward.

 

I enjoyed the inFamous games, so I have no doubt Sucker Punch delivered with Ghost of Tsushima. When I get around to it, which won't be for a pretty long time.

 

2 hours ago, JusttJD said:

I can't really comment about Valhalla yet, but this is something that caused me to stop playing Odyssey on two occasions.

 

I am the type of player that likes to do everything in a game, not just looking at the trophies.

So, that means going after every question mark, and doing all of the activities.

And doing all of that the moment I can, before I continue with any of the main story.

 

But doing it was such a drag in Odyssey, the same outposts and camps over and over and over and over and over again.

By the time that I was finally done with that, I was already so done with the game that I didn't even continue the story.

 

If Valhalla is like that, then I'm going to think twice about ever starting that one.

 

I'm the same. I did most of everything in Origins, including the side stuff in the DLC. In Odyssey, I practically gave up once I entered Athens.

 

The Witcher 3, and even Fallout 4 to a lesser extent had more unique locales, more interesting stuff to do than just the clear the bandit camp objective. In Odyssey, practically every location was like that. Kill this wild animal that is a little tougher than the regular wild animals. Rinse and repeat.

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Oh they'll focus allright. Focus on turning it into a live service game.

 

Ubi's master plan is to have casual gamers spend hundreds of hours in each of their games and eventually cave in and spend more money on microtransactions (skins/loot/shortcuts).

 

At least I take it as a win that gamers downvoted the hell outta their NFTs announcement.

Hope everyone keeps holding that line. Otherwise it's a whole new world of bad news for gaming.

 

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  • 1 month later...

can someone explain, whats the problem just to stop playing when you have "enough"? Side content is OPTIONAL for a reason. You can drop it anytime. Apart from "i need platinum every game" mindset ofc.

 

 

 

On 13.12.2021 at 4:10 AM, LastMinuteSavior said:

Oh they'll focus allright. Focus on turning it into a live service game.

 

Ubi's master plan is to have casual gamers spend hundreds of hours in each of their games and eventually cave in and spend more money on microtransactions (skins/loot/shortcuts).

 

At least I take it as a win that gamers downvoted the hell outta their NFTs announcement.

Hope everyone keeps holding that line. Otherwise it's a whole new world of bad news for gaming.

 

 

Actually their games have way to unlock mtx stuff ingame. Meaning more you playing - more chances that you already unlocked what you want for free.

Edited by Voland44
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1 hour ago, LastMinuteSavior said:

 

What!?!?

 

They'll give you credits to buy 1 or 2 of the cheapest skins out of the hundreds on their cosmetics store. At best.

 

 

You can earn premium in-game currency in special missions/challanges, which can be used to buy mtx stuff. In some games you can earn even mtx currency, instead.

 

Obviously to unlock everything in the mtx store is time consuming, but thats possible. And pretty much easy when you want something particular. Honestly, such system is actually much better than DLCs since they CANT be earned in-game at all. In the end, all those casuals who always eager to spend money on "flashy" cosmetic stuff, would spend them anyway.

Edited by Voland44
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