Ubisoft boss says it knows players think it has an 'inconsistency in quality,' so it delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows to flip that script (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 12 hours ago by Rider@eviltoast.org to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 34 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Ubisoft games have such a weird "design by committee" feel to it. Like they poll the internet every few weeks and make decisions off of that. New hot game has battle pass? WE HAVE BATTLE PASS.

They also seem to follow a checklist of mediocrity. Every game needs a dozen collectable items. Every game needs to have the same l types of quests that GTA3 had. Every game has to have a massive open world. Every game needs a online component and live service. Every game needs a incredible hook, which then they Marvel-safe it to avoid offending online babies.

Their games come off with 7/10 energy. Ubisoft games don't move the needle. They're pretty adequate as a game. But when I have thousands of games to choose from every year... Ill pass.

[-] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 7 points 6 hours ago

I think the problem is that they use the same open world formula that they started, but others have taken and improved it and they haven't kept up with the times. Shadow of Mordor/war scratch the same itsch as assassin's creed with more interesting mechanics. Those aren't even new games at this point. Horizon zero dawn and forbidden West offer a more action focused experience with a better open world, again not super modern games.

It's like Bethesda, they are still putting out games that are straight from 2010.

[-] Uruanna@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Shadow of Mordor/war scratch the same itsch as assassin's creed

??? It's the first time I'm hearing Shadow of Mordor allows you to run around famous places in ultra popular historical periods.

[-] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 hours ago

What's more iconic than Mordor?

[-] Katana314@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago

They CAN still be fun. General fact of the matter is that the games we find fun aren’t always necessarily innovating much. Sometimes it’s just a comfortable routine.

Absolutely not going to fault anyone that finds their games boring though.

[-] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

7/10 doesn't mean it sucks. Just means adequate.

I played the Division 2, Ac Valhalla and FarCry 6 for 100+ hours. They helped me during the worse times of the pandemic.

But if I was talking to friends or making recommendations, we'd be taking about games that are better than that. The Elden Rings or the Ghost of Tsushima

[-] bennel@lemmy.world 91 points 12 hours ago

I disagree. Ubisoft has been very consistently trash for a while.

[-] BonerMan@ani.social 15 points 11 hours ago

Not really, look at anno for example. Its just the big titles that are regarded as not good.

[-] olicvb@lemmy.ca 5 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Yea, I mean Watchdogs 2, The Division, Steep, I know some friends loved For Honor and R6: Siege is amazing (idk how the game looks today tho with all the updates they made).

Seems people tend to see ubisoft as AC and FarCry only.

[-] Harvey656@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago

All of those games you just picked are quite old, watchdogs 2 came out in 2016, these games no longer are the ubishit standard, they are far above it. Plus Ubispft doesn't make sequels to those games anymore, for whatever reason.

[-] Katana314@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

I still applaud Watch Dogs 2 for integrating offline and online play much better than Dark Souls did. You can still pause the game, for instance.

[-] BonerMan@ani.social 4 points 9 hours ago

Some people love to shit on ubisoft when others are way worse.

[-] ech@lemm.ee 3 points 8 hours ago

I have enough shit to go around.

[-] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 hours ago

1602 was the best Anno. Fight me.

[-] BonerMan@ani.social 4 points 9 hours ago

OK, I personally think 1404 with the interesting and challenging campaign including the Venice dlc was the top, afterwards I think 1800 is the next best. My most controversial opinion is that both 2070 and 2205 where good and well made games, with some flaws of course but that doesn't mean its bad. Shure some disliked the setting and I was septic as well.

[-] donuts@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I agree on 2070 and 2205. I really enjoyed them and I chalked it up to me liking sci-fi enough to be able to bear it.

[-] BonerMan@ani.social 1 points 6 hours ago

Yeah a setting change like that was very risky, but the next is also going to be very interesting going into the opposid direction.

I quite like SciFi so the setting itself wasn't a problem for me. 1800 goes into the steampunk direction, would appreciate a full on Steampunk Anno. And a Dieselpunk version would be cool as well.

[-] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Never played the futuristic ones. What appealed to me with the anno games was the atmosphere of sails and settlers.

[-] BonerMan@ani.social 2 points 8 hours ago

They bring that atmosphere to the future settings very well actually

[-] icecreamtaco@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

Their current Monopoly game is infamously bad

[-] BonerMan@ani.social 4 points 9 hours ago

OK, but who gives a shit about a monopoly game? Either play it like a normal person, when drinking with friends or don't.

[-] icecreamtaco@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago

I’ve watched huge vtubers play it multiple times and every single time the game ends early from a crash. Or the game accidentally bankrupts a player. It’s bad publicity

[-] BonerMan@ani.social 3 points 8 hours ago

HM... Yeah thats Bad publicity.

But that never happened to me, and I played both games for over 200 hours each. I even played them on Linux through emulation and it didn't happen.

[-] li10@feddit.uk 20 points 11 hours ago

Assassins creed has been consistently disappointing me since Black Flag.

AC2 used to be my favourite game and the modern titles are unrecognisable. They’re all just a bunch of generic, drawn out, mass appeal, play it safe bollocks.

[-] Squizzy@lemmy.world 6 points 9 hours ago

The most upsetting thing is that they threw out anything resembling a decent narrative to draw out the series with diminishing returns. We never got closure on the templars and modern storylines are ignored now. We could have had closure and then just had everything in animus after.

[-] li10@feddit.uk 2 points 9 hours ago

It kinda bothers me that they didn’t at least go all in with switching up the story.

At this point the whole “assassin’s creed” part kinda holds the narrative and story back, I think they should just drop it entirely and have each game be its own thing.

I loved the assassin thing when I was 12, but it’s kinda cringe now.

[-] SuperSaiyanSwag@lemmy.zip 3 points 9 hours ago

Unity had a rough launch, but that was the most “assassin” feeling assassin’s creed imo

[-] li10@feddit.uk 2 points 8 hours ago

Yeah, I do wonder about giving that another go.

[-] Sundial@lemm.ee 6 points 11 hours ago

Odyssey was pretty dam good in my opinion.

[-] guylacaptivite@sh.itjust.works 10 points 10 hours ago

It was. Most of it's criticism comes from the fact that it's not really an assassin's creed game anymore. It was mostly far cry: ancient greece

[-] Sundial@lemm.ee 2 points 9 hours ago

Which is not a really good criticism in my opnion. It still had a lot of the core elements of AC, they just tried some new things. And a lot of it worked out.

[-] guylacaptivite@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

Agreed. As a game it was one of the best Ubi has done maybe ever imo.

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[-] NOOBMASTER@lemmy.ml 13 points 10 hours ago

just don't buy their games. it's that simple. go sailing.

[-] djsoren19@yiffit.net 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

You don't even need to go sailing, you can just stop at not buying their games. Ubisoft has not put out any game I'd really consider a must-play in over a decade. The last interesting Ubisoft open-world game was Black Flag in 2013. Even if you're an absolute glutton for open-world designed by committee slop, Sony basically ate Ubisoft's lunch with Ghosts of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Spiderman. Pirate those instead.

[-] Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 10 hours ago

That's easy, you can't buy them because according to Ubisoft you won't own them.

[-] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 9 hours ago

If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.

[-] Katana314@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

And I’ll say it again, dumb “quotation” because it only referred to convincing people to try Ubisoft+; which is very explicitly a game rental system.

(Setting aside the change going in through California law where ALL retailers must stop referring to sales as ownership. That affects Assassin’s Creed just as much as your next indie Roguelike)

[-] Vittelius@feddit.org 3 points 10 hours ago

And that will improve the quality of the games how?

[-] Aedis@lemmy.world 12 points 10 hours ago

It won't but you also won't be disappointed by it if you never play them!

[-] Vittelius@feddit.org 3 points 8 hours ago

Sure, but he didn't advocate for a boycott, he talked about "going sailing" a.k.a. piracy

[-] Aedis@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Oh. Missed that lol.

[-] GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 7 points 9 hours ago

They'll go out of business and a more competent company will arise to replace them.

[-] LouSlash@szmer.info 5 points 9 hours ago

It will over time. They will notice that sales are going downhill so (hopefully) they will start to listen to community complains, maybe also firing some staff until that point because of "financial struggle".

If sales will stay the same (or be even better) then they will not try to change anything because "if it works, don't fix it"

[-] garretble@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

It seems like to me some of their games simply just need another two months in the oven.

There were lots of little bugs in Star Wars Outlaws, but I found that game to be really fun, and largely pretty solid. But then they dropped updates a month out or so that fixed a lot of those little bugs. I wonder if they had just had that extra month to polish it up if it'd have gotten slammed as hard. People may still have wanted different things storywise or whatever, but on a technical level just one extra month could have helped.

[-] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 5 points 8 hours ago

Polish isn't going to help change the Ubisoft reputation of churning same looking games filled with massive bloaty copy-paste open worlds where you do generic fetch quests, collect hundreds of feathers, and watch watered down PG-13 storytelling that's tamer than a Marvel movie.

[-] garretble@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Outlaws looked great, and had you go to interesting locations, and fly in space. There were no towers to open up maps. The outlaw system wasn't super amazing in the end, but it didn't detract from anything.

I don't disagree it has a reputation, but Outlaws was a fun break from the super boring Assassin's Creed games of late.

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