I would say that maybe 20% of the side quests in this game are "good".
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I don't understand the grinding issue in Assassin's Creed Odyssey
- Thread starter Kylo Rey
- Start date
I would say that maybe 20% of the side quests in this game are "good".
i see Odyssey like Skyrim, there really isn't a main plot to follow. There's atleast 4 main threads to follow. Go forth and adventure! :D
That's the rub right there. You get significantly more xp for playing on harder difficulties. I played on hard too and never found myself blocked by level content but I imagine that folk on normal or easy might have had a different experience. Ubisoft could have saved themselves a headache if they just scaled up the amount of xp the lower difficulties received so keep the progression speed vaguely the same across all difficulties.
I'm really sad for you if you only play the main quest in games, even the witcher 3 side quests are way better than the main story, regions in Odyssey litterally have their own contained stories
So like with Skyrim I would never finish the game. I can see your point and that is a lot of fun for many people, but Assassins Creed was always different for me. : ) Maybe they will find a balance.
No need to feel sad for someone who doesn't want to waste their time. Reading my post you could also see that I did indeed played Witcher 3s sidequests (well many of them), but those were most of the time way more interesting than the stuff I did in AC Odyssey.
Not in this game they don't.
They expect you to do the "side" content. You can decide what quests you want to do but everything is a part of the story. The game is designed like a slice of life TV series. Instead of following a tight story you are following the character on their quest to fulfill their main goal. The adventure is the meat of the story.
Yes I do buy many games (well two a month?) cause I go to work and have the money nowadays. I also don't understand what has this to do with the side quests? Some people just don't want to do this stuff. Also it's not 60 dollars anymore since a few weeks. You can easily get the Gold Edition in Germany for 30€.
OP
OP
I don't know
I work too but if i buy a game i want to complete it
Completing means something different for you than for me. In your case completing means doing absolutely everything where as in my case it's just the main story.
So next time around they will make all of these side quests mandatory, and instead of having to do 80% of them, you will have to do all of them. Just to remove these types of complaints.
Given the usual trophy completion stats about 50% of people can't even be assed completing your average open world game these days. Anyone involved in game design, story writing and so on should always be "concerned" with poor completion rates. Watch even the first 30-60 seconds of the video below for a general summary.
I'd say most people dabble in side content and fetch quests, but the number of players who act like a vacuum and suck up all the quest markers will be a minority. Especially considering how generic and run of the mill most of it is.
OP, given your posts in the AC topics I doubt you'll listen to anyone, but some of us aren't impressed with the gameplay direction Ubisoft is taking to gate off main quests behind arbitrary gating.
I'll drop in one of my favourite "short" watches to show how classic PC RPGs handled open-world game design
If the above is claimed to be "too simple" (even although it's built around trusting the player and smart map/enemy design and placement to direct you), then other open world RPGs that have sensible level-scaling systems, so you're never gated, the quests just scale up/down to your level. TES, Skyrim especially, takes level-scaling to the extreme which I hate as well, but at least you can play everything whenever.
Then you can also look to adventure games like Read Dead which doesn't gate quests behind levels, but it's progression-gated. When it makes narrative sense to play something, you can play it. No come back later once you've killed another 100 bad guys.
There is far far far far far better game design than what Ubisoft is doing with such archaic and basic level gating. The reason they won't get rid of it though is that they have a microtransaction store in a SP game selling XP boosters.
That's as simple as it is, even if some vocal on Era have a real difficulty accepting any diverging opinion on AC with this matter.
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Or let people play through the main story without the necessity of finding Alcibiades' socks, or finding the stolen collar of the woman at the port, or killing this evil general at the fort.
It sounds crazy, I know.
Dude you have to be joking.
I enjoy ACOD but it's still a grindy mess.
And it's not an Assassin's Creed. There are no Assassins or Templars in the base game. You've got to pay extra for them.
Yeah, I'm playing Assassins Creed for the story not side quests, I got stuck in Odyssey because I was horribly under leveled... and then I just stopped caring and traded the game in.
If you were playing it for the story, you should have been playing the golden sidequests too, which are well enough to level you up.
A lot of the side quests in Odyssey ties into the main story, though.
Seems like that. Also apparently easy difficulty gives less XP, so it can be a factor too.
I'm just like the OP was pretty much 10-15 levels above required from the get-go and 25-30 closer to mid-end game.
In term of complaints, I've seen some stupid shit like the guy going to the minotaur island when he was lvl 20 and complaining that they game level-gated him.
I see people still don't know what the word 'grind' means. A hint: It does not mean "doing side content".
There are 4 main story arcs in the game and one or two of them open when you do a quest which looks like a sidequest. Also, the quality of sidequests is above and beyond previous AC games.
It's been like 4 months now, people have repeatedly spelled out what the problem is, how game length has ballooned over the years with "side content" being practically mandatory and we still have people going
"That's completely ridiculous, I just don't understand how anyone could be underleveled!"
There's an argument to be made in favour of the Origins/Odyssey template and people certainly seem to be enjoying the new format well enough. But if you still don't understand why someone might not enjoy this whereas they enjoyed the previous games, you don't want to understand.
Great post
If they deem these quests important for the story then I would be fine with it. Now it's side quests...which you could do by the side. If they are really that important and have such great storys in them then Ubisoft should have made them mandatory, but I guess it would be too much bloat for the main story which would force them to do things differently.
That's funny because, yeah sidequest can be grinding too (ever heard of dailys? :P) and the first thing you get by looking up "grind sidequest" is Assassins Creed Odyssey.
Is this a "please make content I want to skip mandatory" request?
This.
Back in my day, it meant doing the same thing over and over to get XP or cash. But now apparently it is playing the game like the developers intended.
If you're remotely interested in doing the sidequests, especially some of the quest chains that are on some of the islands, it really is a non issue.
Even people who want the old AC back (I'm torn on that) have to agree that discovering elaborate and somewhat important content on your own is kind of neat. It fit the "odyssey" theme of this game especially well.
Even people who want the old AC back (I'm torn on that) have to agree that discovering elaborate and somewhat important content on your own is kind of neat. It fit the "odyssey" theme of this game especially well.
I didn't play yet, can you go to the end chapter without doing fetch quests and "Ubisoft quests" (like cleaning the map for things that don't matter just to keep the game longer) ?
I only do meaningful side quests and main quest because AC and ubi games in general is not my thing
And if is required to play a lot for banile quests to me it decreases a lot how much I want to pay for a game
I only do meaningful side quests and main quest because AC and ubi games in general is not my thing
And if is required to play a lot for banile quests to me it decreases a lot how much I want to pay for a game
I don't know what you want, but it's a "please include important story bits in the main quest like it's suppose to be" request for me if they are able to.
If you do the golden diamond quests it's absolutely doable according to most people.
some people dont got a lot of time to spend on their games. there is no reason to not allow them to enjoy the game because they cant waste time on meaningless side missions/quests and would rather just go through the story.
this is a big problem in modern open world games, they do not respect the player's time.
Yes. Most of my time was just doing the golden quests and it has been a pretty great experience so far.
The game tells you what is busy work and what is meaningful.
What makes you feel your take on how "it's supposed to be" is actually how it's supposed to be? Open world RPGs count on side quests for you to get xp and appropriate loot, it's been that way in Witcher games, Dragon Age games, Mass Effect and others, why are people pulling Surprised Pikachu now?
Well, you're required to be in the last level to get the endings of some of the storylines. Not sure if that was changed in a patch or not (I know they raised the level cap, but I'm not sure if the missions are still capped at level 50).
I'm not 100% sure if the now called "main side quests" are all you need to get there.
AC is a RPG now, an this is a staple of most RPGs. People are justl yellingIt's been like 4 months now, people have repeatedly spelled out what the problem is, how game length has ballooned over the years with "side content" being practically mandatory and we still have people going
"That's completely ridiculous, I just don't understand how anyone could be underleveled!"
There's an argument to be made in favour of the Origins/Odyssey template and people certainly seem to be enjoying the new format well enough. But if you still don't understand why someone might not enjoy this whereas they enjoyed the previous games, you don't want to understand.
at what the game advertised itself to be. Don't buy a RPG if you don't want to play one
Grind, in its simplest form, means doing the (usually mundane) stuff you don't want to do in order to do the stuff you do want to do later. So grind means different to different people, but some people still want to attach a universal definition to it that applies to everyone.
To be fair, both The Witcher 3 and Horizon have the same RPG template, and I never felt missing as many (or any) levels as in Assassins Creed. I definitely had to do way less side content in those games in comparison to Odyssey and Origins.
I don't think it has to do with MTX or whatever as some people want to pivot this discussion, but I really think Ubi has problems with its progression balance, at least in AC. And it surprises me, because Origins and Odyssey are made by two different studios, and the rest of the Ubi games of this "new era" (Wildlands, Far Cry 5, etc) don't have this problem.
Japanese RPG grind and what is broadly being spoken about here are two different things. I continue to be amazed on supposedly one of the internets largest gaming forums people are purposefully or ignorantly conflating "I grinded in Final Fantasy to level 99" with discussing what is generally Western open-world RPG formulas.
Even the recent JRPGs have adapted to be less grindy as they used to be, now more favouring optional bosses or dungeons as what may require grind, not so much the MSQ.
Grind comes in many different forms, and having to or feeling obligated to clean up generic quest markers, towers, radiant quests, picking plants or whatever mundane task it is to keep up with a level-gated MSQ is perceived as grind whether some of you like it or not. It's archaic design. It's often clumsy, cheap and not organic. This isn't an MMO, it's a SP game and the design ethos behind a SP game should ALWAYS be about favouring the player.
It attaches to what can often be referred to as open world bloat in many Western RPGs that have been pumped out in the last 5~10 years. The further rustling of jimmies here is when people perceive said bloat to start shifting into the "mandatory" rather than the "waste time doing this shit if you want". I don't personally care if you want to 100% the AC map, that's up to you. The design balance for a multi-million unit selling franchise, however, should consider not everyone necessarily wants to spend weeks 100% every generic thing on a map. Not to mention any developer or designer who cares about their product should always be considering the level of quality of put into it, from writing to repetition, to how mundane something is.
Again, I implore anyone wanting to seriously explore game design around open world concepts to watch that video I posted above and also re-look at games like Morrowind, or even TW3. Take off any blinders around how much you personally enjoyed the latest AC games, or Ubisoft open world games and try and understand it's okay to critique the path Ubisoft is going down.
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TW3 ? You need to complete side quests in that game to properly keep up with the main quest in that game too, what hell are you talking about?
This is such a big complaint for Origins and Odyssey because these are the first games in the series where you have to do side content to progress the main story. What's the harm in having a different mode that caters to long time series fans while also having the normal game for RPG fans?
Witcher 3 has a setting same as Origind and Odyssey that brings lower level enemies up to your level.
IMO the use of the word "grind" isn't hugely applicable to this game.
I agree that you shouldn't have to complete side quests to advance in the story, they should just be bits you can do if you want.
But Odyssey hardly had you literally GRINDING enemies a level or two above you to earn XP to reach a certain level MMO style...
I agree that you shouldn't have to complete side quests to advance in the story, they should just be bits you can do if you want.
But Odyssey hardly had you literally GRINDING enemies a level or two above you to earn XP to reach a certain level MMO style...
Its not true in Mass Effect, the games fully scale to level. Its not true in DA2 either, and I don't think its true in DA:O - DA:O has limits on level scaling but I think you'll be OK if you follow the right order of main quests, particularly since .
Mandatory side quests were a thing in DAI, and it was a mistake - the game is absolutely better if you don't get bogged down too much in the open world stuff. But Bioware weren't selling XP boosters, so it just looks like a questionable design decision rather than attempt to extract more cash.
You do know that you can just play the golden quests right? These have the same quality as the main missions and give you good rewards. They are not busy work.
Hell the game itself tells you what is busy work and what isn't. I never once felt pressured into doing anything I don't want to do. In fact it was very similar to TW3. Something tells me you didn't even play the game to educate us on this subject.