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I don't understand how/why games take so many steps backwards in newer releases (LTTP: AC: Origins)

Swift_Star

Banned
I don't know why anyone would need to grind, boost levels or buy XP multipliers especially for Origins, to me it was the easiest of the last 3 AssCreeds. I for sure liked Origins with Bayek and Aya much better than Valhalla and Eivor. I loved Odessey the most playing as Kassandra. She was a fantastic character. The voice actor for Deimos sucked apparently.

I really liked all 3 of the AC RPG-like games and I'm not sure why people love to hate on the series so much. I've never spent a cent on MTX and I don't even notice them in the games. I have bought the season passes for Origins and Odessey and they were well worth the money. They had tons of content, great stories and wee much better than so many full games. Fate of Atlantis was awesome.
If you don’t do side quests, the main quests have enemies several levels higher than yours and they kill you with a few hits. You simply can’t fight enemies outside a certain level range.
 
D

Deleted member 471617

Unconfirmed Member
After replaying Origins last summer and Odyssey a week ago, in my opinion, Origins > Odyssey > Valhalla.

Valhalla was good for the story/characters, visuals and open world but Origins/Odyssey look at least equal if not better, story/characters are better and combat/gameplay/stealth is far better. I played through the story campaign and Raids in Valhalla but that's it where as I did everything in Origins/Odyssey twice.

Valhalla was disappointing for me coming off Origins and Odyssey. Hoping the next main line AC game gets back to what Origins/Odyssey were.
 
I feel like a lot of games do this, but I can usually understand some of the thought processes behind it. Skyrim's leveling system I thought was a downgrade from Oblivion, but I can kinda understand the appeal of simplifying it for a wider audience.
Will never understand the defenses of Oblivion's leveling system. It is the worst system ever implemented in any game that I've ever played.
 

01011001

Banned
I decided to give up on AC after being really disappointed with AC: Valhalla. I put about 50 hours into it as it was the first game I got with my XSX (had XSX since day 1)

saw that Origins was on gamepass so decided to give it a go given that I love ancient Egypt. Pretty much everything the game does, it does better than Valhalla. I HATED the loot system in Valhalla. Origins, on the other hand, handles it beautifully.

the same happened with AC3, every classic style AC game after the Ezio trilogy had worse combat and worse stealth mechanics than Brotherhood or AC2.
 

Hoppa

Member
Yeah I really liked Origins, loved that it was set in Egypt. Odyssey felt reductive after it and Valhalla was bland. Be cool for them to make a game based in ancient China for some interesting architectural/environmental variation at least. Japan would be cool too but Ghost of Tsushima already beat them to it
 

dDoc

Member
As far as I'm concerned Black Flag is the only legit good one. I was so bored playing the others. I didn't even pretend I was gonna play Unity after the launch debacle, and I've ignored the series since. I find the fact I still hear about it on a regular basis hilarious, mostly because it seems like people subject themselves to the mediocrity and are flabbergasted.

I played and never finished both Ass Creed 1 and 2, and dropped the series then. I will never forget the hype I had for the very fist game. From the awesome trailers and then the games released- what a snooze fest. Wow what a disappointment that was.

Ubisoft has been dead to me for years.
 

Boss Mog

Member
Companies chase profits above all else sadly so they always wanna change things up because they think it'll lead to more profits but they rarely realize that there's a much greater chance of fucking something up rather than improving it when you change it ; even more so when the changes are meant to increase profitability. It's as if the devs and publishers don't ever talk to gamers or realize what makes their games successful.

Take Ghost Recon Wildlands, it was a surprise hit for Ubisoft because it was a fun open world game with good mechanics but instead of building upon that to create a succeeful sequel they went ahead and added a bunch of live service, RPG and loot elements that nobody wanted so it flopped.

EA and Dice got the BF formula down with BF4 but then made each sequel subsequently worse than the last culminating in BF 2042 which is a complete disaster.

Competitive FPS games like CoD or Apex Legends are now all developed with E-Sports in mind, they cater the game to the pro players, even though a lot of the changes they make are bad for 95% of their player base which is why those games slowly decline ; regular players just get fed up with being an afterthought after a while and move on.
 
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I really enjoyed Origins and Odyssey. The combat was far more fun than any of the other games, and the settings are amazing periods of history.

As with all RPGs, levelling up can make it a bit silly if you look at it through a real life lens. Having wiped out a Spartan camp by myself, with little difficulty, at times I then have to tiptoe through the area next to it, because the local wild boar is several levels higher than me.

RPGs are full of silly things like that. Take Skyrim. Bandits can be brandishing ebony weapons and armour, which sell for good money in the nearest towns. If they just sold their weapons and armour at the blacksmith, they could retire to a nice house. But no, that doesn't make for a very fun game, so they live in the open air in a ragged bandit camp, trying to ambush travellers to add to the 17 gold in their chest.
 

Reizo Ryuu

Member
I don't recall that the Odyssey or Valhalla DLC lets you do that
In odyssey and valhalla you can boost your level if you decide to play the atlantis or ragnarok dlcs right away, however they aren't true level boosts, they only work for the dlc and not the main game.

For valhalla it doesn't really matter since it doesn't really have level gating and you can murder anyone you want at any level.
I don't know why anyone would need to grind, boost levels or buy XP multipliers especially for Origins
You are forced to do side quests, ignoring them and doing the main quest only will have enemies become damage sponges and one shotting you, because you always be several levels below them.
but Origins/Odyssey look at least equal if not better, story/characters are better and combat/gameplay/stealth is far better.
Don't understand how anyone can say stealth is better, when assassinations aren't even guaranteed and wholly beholden to your stats/level/gear; in valhalla you can kill anyone like the older games, it even brought back the blending in mechanic so you can kill the target unseen.

Origins/odyssey are loot-combat-rpg simulators, valhalla is the actual stealth/assassination game (yes you can do raids in stealth).
 

drganon

Member
Yeah, I enjoyed orgins alot, was frustrated by odyssey, and ended up hating Valhalla.
 
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thegame983

Member
I think they took backwards steps because they tried to improve things, but just failed.

For example they probably thought that their spiders web style leveling/ perk system in Valhalla was cool. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

They had the noble idea of removing a lot of the map markers from the map. Unfortunately they just replaced them with these dumb shimmering things.
 
I want them to go back to how AC was pre origins. Expand upon unity. The assassination missions in that game were awesome. You felt like an actual assassin.
 
Vahalla is horrible. Theres legit a talking squirrel in this game. Series has completely lost its identity and ubi have totally lost the understanding why people liked it in the first place. Valhalla literally could of been a different ip. The traces of it being an AC title are scarce.
 
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b0uncyfr0

Member
Its always about money - they went back to the drawing board for Origins (which is pretty good in my opinion) but then did a shitty carbon copy and applied it to Odyssey and Valhalla.

Valhalla being the worst, its just unnecessarily big and plays like shit. Ubi only re-invent once, then expect to live off that for awhile. This makes sense to continue too, cause Valhalla *apparently* was one of their best sellers. How that happened blows my mind...

Quantity over quality... its a shame.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
I haven't personally played the new AC games, but it seems like they over do the RPG systems to monetize. If they just scaled back and stop being greedy(I know) it would alleviate a lot of bloat and monotony. Just make a game and not an ATM is what I'm saying.

Yep. It’s there so they can monetize the leveling aspect.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Although i think Valhalla is a good game, and a good entry for AC since it went more open world RPG, Origins and Odyssey are considerably better games imo.
I always got the sense when playing Valhalla that somuch was either streamlined, or taken out completely, almost like Ubisoft were really struggling to get the game ready for its release date

GIF by One Chicago
 

ANDS

King of Gaslighting
I don't understand how/why they decide to fuck something up like this. What is the thought process that goes behind this? why not improve upon the already great system, instead of swapping it out for something vastly inferior. was this done intentionally to motivate people to buy weapons through DLC/ubisoft store? they couldn't possibly think Valhalla was an upgrade in that department.

ORIGINS has the exact same monetization as OYD and VAL - all they did (or tried to do) in VAL was make the loot system more focused than it had been in the previous AC games. You are no more steered to the games DLC/Store in the last two AC out of a lack of power/options than you are in VAL.

I really liked all 3 of the AC RPG-like games and I'm not sure why people love to hate on the series so much.

Because UBISOFT is an easy, lazy target. You risk nothing by calling out AC (or FC) and no one will call out any suspect observations.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
If you don’t do side quests, the main quests have enemies several levels higher than yours and they kill you with a few hits. You simply can’t fight enemies outside a certain level range.

That’s partly the player’s problem. If you’re buying an Assassin’s Creed game to blow through the main story, then you done fucked up. You should’ve read up on the game or at least watched some reviews. Hell, you should be doing that with every game you buy.

Assassin’s Creed is an investment of your time, much like other open world games. It expects you to play it - which means doing the side missions as well.

If you allow yourself to get into it’s world, then you’re not going to have a problem with leveling. If anything you’ll be overleveled, for your current missions.
 

Swift_Star

Banned
That’s partly the player’s problem. If you’re buying an Assassin’s Creed game to blow through the main story, then you done fucked up. You should’ve read up on the game or at least watched some reviews. Hell, you should be doing that with every game you buy.

Assassin’s Creed is an investment of your time, much like other open world games. It expects you to play it - which means doing the side missions as well.

If you allow yourself to get into it’s world, then you’re not going to have a problem with leveling. If anything you’ll be overleveled, for your current missions.
Level gatekeeping is shitty game design. The side quests also barely give you good XP and you know it. You have to make lots of them. It’s really not a good game.
 

Dr.brain64

Member
I loved ac4 and rogue. The controls were perfect (ps4/5).

I tried ac unity and I really hate the controls. Dropped the game. May never return sadly.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Level gatekeeping is shitty game design. The side quests also barely give you good XP and you know it. You have to make lots of them. It’s really not a good game.

You have to play the game. You play the game and you’ll be fine. AC Origins took me around 70hrs to finish, and I left a few areas unexplored.

If you want to argue that level gatekeeping is bad design, I
agree. RDR2 is the best open world imo, and there’s zero leveling.

I still enjoyed my time with Origins and Odyssey. The loop itself was fun enough that I didn’t mind doing the side missions, and scavenging for loot. Origins especially had some badass weapons, and free Legendary armor sets to collect.
 

CatLady

Selfishly plays on Xbox Purr-ies X
You are forced to do side quests, ignoring them and doing the main quest only will have enemies become damage sponges and one shotting you, because you always be several levels below them.

I will admit I did do a lot of side quests because I actually liked them, but I was able to take on enemies several levels higher than me often by range and/or stealth. I couldn't kill the red marked enemies without getting closer to them in level though; you can't even damage them usually until they drop down to orange or less. I played on only the 2nd highest difficulty so maybe people playing on the highest couldn't take on higher level enemies without sidequests and leveling up.
 

brian0057

Banned
Assassin's Creed should've been a Hitman style series set in ancient times, instead of whatever the fuck it's supposed to be now.
 
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