I don't understand the grinding issue in Assassin's Creed Odyssey

[Deleted member 888]

People used to complain that side quests sucked in the past games and now that they fixed that we get complaints.

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.

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The only thing I'm interested in doing is explaining how some people feel and talking about more productive game design in open world games.

The usual passive aggression and dismissiveness in Ubisoft topics on Era don't faze me. Effort and thought goes into my posts. TW3 is far more progression gated than level gated even if it has levelling and some scaling.

Ubisoft's design is still more archaic and edging towards their ulterior motives which is selling XP boosters.

 

[BernardoOne]

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.

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AC Origins was more grindy and had no XP boosts whatsoever

The only thing I'm interested in doing is explaining how some people feel and talking about more productive game design in open world games.

The usual passive aggression and dismissiveness in Ubisoft topics on Era don't faze me. Effort and thought goes into my posts. TW3 is far more progression gated than level gated even if it has levelling and some scaling.

Ubisoft's design is still more archaic and edging towards their ulterior motives which is selling XP boosters.

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Yeah like all those xp boosters on Origins.
Oh wait they didn't exist. And nah, it's pretty obvious you never touched the game. You've constantly made claims that are factually incorrect in these threads.

 

[Yerffej]

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.

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I can't recall having to grind at all. I'm level 43 rn.

 

[Inkvoterad]

I can't believe i bought this game for 60 dollars and they want me to play it.

ITS NOT RESPECTFUL OF MY FUCKING TIME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

 

[jtb]

I had no problem with the leveling in the game because I just took every contract at every board (i.e. Kill X spartans or destroy X ships) which you'll passively finish just by playing the game and reward a bunch of XP. I don't like the game's flat XP system though -- critical path quests should be doling out way more XP than your five minute fetch quest. Would ameliorate some of the level gate issues imo

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.

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BioWare games waste your time like there is no fucking tomorrow. I don't know if it's a mandate from the higher ups in EA or if they just need to pad the hour count to get good review scores, but every EA-era BW game is bloated with padding, padding and more padding.

I'm not even sure whether to give them more or less credit for not trying to make money off of it lol

 

[False Witness]

Most people must not be picking up the contracts or something. They excessively reward you for doing things you're going to be doing in the game anyway. Also, doing a conquest battle once every 10 hours or so. These take less than five minutes and also reward you significantly.

 

[Richter1887]

The only thing I'm interested in doing is explaining how some people feel and talking about more productive game design in open world games.

The usual passive aggression and dismissiveness in Ubisoft topics on Era don't faze me. Effort and thought goes into my posts. TW3 is far more progression gated than level gated even if it has levelling and some scaling.

Ubisoft's design is still more archaic and edging towards their ulterior motives which is selling XP boosters.

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So you didn't play it? That tells me all I need to know.

All I am going to say is before you throw out conspiracy theories you need to know what you are talking about.

 

[Mars]

I had an quite with it, most of the side quest felt like "filler" and was used as artificial padding to force me to play them when I had zero interest in doing so. I call that boring — coupled with the what can feel at times tedious war conquest battling after some odd hours of playing just felt like a boring loop of nothing (but leveling), this along with origins just feel as if they should have been better as games separated from the Assassin's Creed universe and debuted as a new IP.

I definitely preferred the older titles, I thought Syndicate was a step in the right direction for the series after the Unity fumble.

So you didn't play it? That tells me all I need to know.

All I am going to say is before you throw out conspiracy theories you need to know what you are talking about.

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I think your post does everything to prove his point; even here it, on ERA, It boils down to sounding like two children yelling, "No, you're wrong and stupid!" at each other, which happens so often that you see Mod post edits more often than not to keep things civil.

 

[Deleted member 888]

BioWare games waste your time like there is no fucking tomorrow. I don't know if it's a mandate from the higher ups in EA or if they just need to pad the hour count to get good review scores, but every EA-era BW game is bloated with padding, padding and more padding.

I'm not even sure whether to give them more or less credit for not trying to make money off of it lol

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A lot of padding goes on because it's just lazy game design, it's the race to be as bloated as possible for the illusion of "more is better". Our game is bigger, look at all this value for money! It's why there was an industry-wide race to say "our game map is 5x the size of Skyrim". I then go back to asking everyone to check out completion trophy/achievement rates for a range of open world games and see where they sit (like the complete game on X difficulty trophy). In the ADHD-induced gaming world we live in, with thousands of games released every year, you shouldn't be shocked to see completion trophies are even poor for linear SP games.

Just go look at your own backlog and count up everything you've started but haven't finished. Most gamers have a serious issue with completion. Even something like God of War which is more what you could call a "linear open world game" is probably hovering around 50~60% completed. RDR2 will probably sit around the same, but probably lower given the millions of people that buy it due to hype/word of mouth. These are two of the highest reviewed games as well, and both, while they have varying levels of padding, have MSQs which aren't really gated. And people still struggle to finish them. Pacing is quite the issue in RDR2 mind you, it's pretty bloated.

So while completion and attention is a major issue for all games, those which lean very heavy into padding, Skyrim-like map markers every 2m and then possibly go a step further and somewhat push more of that as mandatory over optional, you're going to alienate some players.

Western open-world game design has long and continually needed critique because it's not all equal and it's not all as "progressive" as some imply. More-so, trying to critique certain franchises or developers is like kicking a beehive at times. I hold no illusions I'm biased towards what I personally enjoy playing, but the OP kicked off this topic seemingly confused at others opinions on AC, so if they really want to consider another viewpoint there are plenty of good posts that explain why some people, myself included, prefer a different take on open-world. Or, what we feel is a more balanced or thoughtful take on open world.

I still haven't completed Skyrim OR Fallout 4. I've played large chunks of them, but my god I get bored and burnt out. I did however complete Morrwind and it's still my favourite TES game. I completed New Vegas too, and while it still had that Bethesda-feeling, it's quality of writing was enough to get me through. Probably because it was only published by Bethesda.

So you didn't play it? That tells me all I need to know.

All I am going to say is before you throw out conspiracy theories you need to know what you are talking about.

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Respond to others then that meet your gated requirements for "this person knows what they're talking about".

 

[Laughing Banana]

So i don't understand the grinding issue in this game. Many players are still complaining about this.
I m currently at Lvl 42, and i just had "THAT" sad scene in Athens after meeting Xenia, Hippcrates and the girl in Corinthia.

That Corinthia zone is a 22-25 lvl zone (but in my game, enemies are same lvl as me) . I'm 20 levels above what's necessary in that region, and i'm playing on Hard Difficult.
I do every side quests that i find. I don't go in a new region if i didn't cleared the one i'am currently. I do every day the daily quest for orichalcum...
So i can understand that i may have a higher level.
But 20 levels above??? I mean what did some players here to feel a grinding wall in this game??

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Many people assume that they should be able to just streamline the main quest, apparently unaware that in an RPG playing side content is just simply part of the genre.

 

[Count of Monte Sawed-Off]

Because there isn't one for the type of game it is. Some people wanted to treat it as one of the old AC games which it clearly isn't. Others saw that you could pay money and just assumed that there was a grind because Ubisoft is greedy or some shit. And others heard about it from popular youtube personalities who had barely played the game and just took their word for it. Then there was the new phenomenon of some people calling doing unique sidequests a grind.

The game throws experience points at you constantly for just about any little thing you do. If you just go out and explore and play the game there's a ton of ways to level up. There was at least one person on here post about how the game was grindy when they had literally turned it into a grind by just killing animals for their XP instead of exploring and doing sidequests.

If Ubisoft did make a mistake it was probably providing too many avenues for experience and some people just got stuck on doing one thing to get their experience. I saw a lot of people complain about the message board quests which were just random Skyrim-style bullshit quests. Maybe some people thought that was the grind others talked about and kept doing them because they figured that was how you got experience. They were completely unnecessary though and you could get more than enough experience doing other things.

Anyway, I don't remember as much complaining about Origins and it was pretty much the exact same. I think most people just saw or heard about the microtransaction and assumed the worst.

 

[Deleted member 32309]

Maybe game with multiple main quests and some relying on exploration is not for everybody (especially if you like rushing your games).
But it's good thing for diversity, not every game need to please this audience.

 

[Railgun]

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

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Skyrim is an odd comparison as it doesn't level gate you throughout the main story.

 

[BernardoOne]

A lot of padding goes on because it's just lazy game design, it's the race to be as bloated as possible for the illusion of "more is better". Our game is bigger, look at all this value for money! It's why there was a race to say "our game map is 5x the size of Skyrim". I then go back to asking everyone to check out completion trophy/achievement rates for a range of open world games and see where they sit (like the complete game on X difficulty trophy). In the ADHD-induced gaming world we live in, with thousands of games released every year, you shouldn't be shocked to see completion trophies are even poor for linear SP games.

Just go look at your own backlog and count up everything you've started but haven't finished. Most gamers have a serious issue with completion. Even something like God of War which is more what you could call a "linear open world game" is probably hovering around 50~60% completed. RDR2 will probably sit around the same, but probably lower given the millions of people that buy it due to hype/word of mouth. These are two of the highest reviewed games as well, and both, while they have varying levels of padding, have MSQs which aren't really gated. And people still struggle to finish them. Pacing is quite the issue in RDR2 mind you, it's pretty bloated.

So while completion and attention is a major issue for all games, those which lean very heavy into padding, Skyrim-like map markers every 2m and then possibly go a step further and somewhat push more of that as mandatory over optional, you're going to alienate some players.

Western open-world game design has long and continually needed critique because it's not all equal and it's not all as "progressive" as some imply. More-so, trying to critique certain franchises or developers is like kicking a beehive at times.



Respond to others then that meet your gated requirements for "this person knows what they're talking about".

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Hilarious that you say this, because AC Odyssey and Witcher 3 have the same 40%(on PSNprofiles) of people that completed the story.

 

[Chirotera]

--> does every single sidequest in the game

"I don't understand the grinding issue"

Well some people don't give a shit about the filler sidequests.

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"I like the game, but I don't actually like playing the game."

That's how this sounds to me everytime I hear it. I also did everything, never felt bored or like I had to grind.

 

[jtb]

Skyrim is an odd comparison as it doesn't level gate you throughout the main story.

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Imo that's one of the worst things about Skyrim

 

[Deleted member 46948]

Ubisoft's design is still more archaic and edging towards their ulterior motives which is selling XP boosters.

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You're pushing the "ulterior motive" narrative hard since AC Odyssey came out despite zero evidence.

 

[Darkstorne]

Witcher 3 has a setting same as Origind and Odyssey that brings lower level enemies up to your level.

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There is now, but that was only added with the final expansion, Blood and Wine. When I played through the game it wasn't an option, and Odyssey's scaling felt so much better by comparison. Similarly Odyssey now has a patch that lets you customise the way scaling works, making low level enemies even easier, or harder.

 

[Patitoloco]

Imo that's one of the worst things about Skyrim

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... giving the player the option of deciding how to play the game instead of limiting a path is the worst thing on Skyrim?

Really?

 

[Xevross]

I wish it wasn't the case, but I'm quite an impatient gamer when it comes to following the main story of a game. In my first playthrough I usually just want to get on with the story and see what happens. Games like Odyssey, then, forcing me to often play for hours without any main story just don't click with me, unless I'm really loving the gameplay. Sure, some of the side quests were interesting and I enjoy doing at least some side content, but I think the amount of it that was basically required for Odyssey was just off-putting

Origins hit just the right balance in this regard for me, it was around half-way through it was starting to drag for me so I just decided to ignore side content and went ahead to see the story. I played about 10-15 hours straight of the story without having to stop to level up with side quests. I couldn't do that with Odyssey.

I really enjoyed the first island in Odyssey, but as the story became more and more spread out I rapidly lost interest. If I liked the new gameplay style a bit more I think I would have stuck with it, but I'm one of the small minority who prefer old AC.

I don't know if I'd describe it as a grind, and it certainly isn't bad game design. It just isn't for me.

 

[jtb]

... giving the player the option of deciding how to play the game instead of limiting a path is the worst thing on Skyrim?

Really?

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Yes. The whole game is bland and unmemorable because all the encounters scale up or down to your level. You don't get stronger, you don't have to put any thought into your build, there's no loot incentives. It's better than Oblivion, but only barely.

Hard level gating like Witcher 3 and AC: Odyssey is not the ideal implementation, but there should still be areas and quests that you can't complete because your character is too weak. It's an RPG after all. Leveling mechanics are only meaningful if the game puts some kind of weight on them.

 

[OrangeNova]

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.

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A lot of the side quests in Odyssey ties into the main story, though.

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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.

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I mean, side quests by their nature are not required, and main quests are all I really cared about for the story. If there was good/required story in them, it shouldn't have been optional.

I also wasn't a fan of the shift to the RPG level ups.

 

[Deleted member 888]

Imo that's one of the worst things about Skyrim

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Not really, in one sense it allows the true freedom to do what you want.

The major problem with Skyrim is bloat, padding and overly aggressive level-scaling. There is a far better balance to doing level-scaling than what Skyrim did. Where it almost makes a challenge in the game feel meaningless. Or progression feels meaningless. It's supposed to make it so that you aren't doing a level 4 MSQ at level 40 because you fucked off and did 40 hours of other stuff 1 hour in rather than the MSQ. However, it has great consequences to the overall game design that produces the marmite feeling around Skyrim.

That ties into the desire for Western open world RPGs to homogenize and not trust the player. Constant hand-holding. Constant fear and worrying. Constant babying of the player. The treadmill of you see one open world game, you've seen them all. Crack open that map and clean it up.

The two options don't need to be Dark Souls kick your ass/get better bro. Or Skyrim, we'll scale everything to you so those rats go from level 1 to 50 too. I do know when you try to create worlds as big as Bethesda does, the illusion of hand-crafting/hand-placement and so on gets eroded. Todd's "we hand-crafted 100 dungeons" doesn't really fucking matter when it all feels the same, and loot/content is all tied to what level you are because everything is level-scaled. It's often the trade-off for when you go bigger. But it could probably still be tackled better than Skyrim did it.

Or, ultimately, it's why some of us are asking for more dense "linear open world" games. Where you get a reasonably sized world, but it feels more hand-crafted and thoughtful than wide open space with generic randomly generated content or fetch quests or just nothingness.

But in terms of gating, Skyrim is like the absolute opposite. For that alone, it arguably handles things better for the kind of player who genuinely wants to do what they want when they want. They're not going to be turned away by a quest giver who says "Sorry, you're only level 14 and I won't talk to you until level 16". But that can come with other trade-offs and IMO Skyrim is the best example of a game that magnifies those trade-offs.

 

[BernardoOne]

... giving the player the option of deciding how to play the game instead of limiting a path is the worst thing on Skyrim?

Really?

Click to shrink...

Skyrim is a garbage RPG with very little thought put into it. You can have higher and lower level areas without making a linear path through them. New Vegas did exactly that and it's 100 times better than Skyrim.

 

[JPS]

There is no problem. If you do most of the interesting side quests (not the random ones) you have no problem to reach max level. No need for daily/weekly quest or grinding territory or ship battles. I skipped most bandit camps, did almost no territory battles and only a few ship battles and reached max level far before finishing the three main stories. Using XP/Gold boosters would have made the experience worse, because I would have finished leveling up at half time.

You only get problems if you don't want to do any side quest, but why do you play open world games, if you only want to follow a linear story? Side quests are no grind, they're essential in open world games and AC:OD has many good ones. You don't play open world games for the story, you play them for exploration and game play.

Only bad open world games are story focused (RDR2), the good ones like Zelda:BOTW and AC:OD have reduced stories and offer exploration and/or RPG elements instead.

Yeah like all those xp boosters on Origins.
Oh wait they didn't exist. And nah, it's pretty obvious you never touched the game. You've constantly made claims that are factually incorrect in these threads.

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Are you sure? Even Black Flag and AFAIR every AC since then had boosters. Maybe Jim didn't need attention back then.

 

[Richter1887]

Respond to others then that meet your gated requirements for "this person knows what they're talking about".

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I expect people to have at least played the game or know what they are talking about to criticize it. Yet here you are talking about things you don't know about. Bringing up Witcher 3 as an example for a good design when AC O has the same design is laughable.

 

[Fiel]

I think the problem should probably from that people play it wrong way. They play and expect that this game is not rpg game and try to rush through it. It takes time for rpg game to build up xp to make character better.

I dont find this game a grind though. I have play worst. Wait til you play korean mmorpg.

 

[Kattlauv]

Do you guys read? It depends on the difficulty. Look at the difference in xp:


Player level: 46
Quest: Escort Service
Reward: Legendary XP
Easy (42): 12.5K XP
Normal (44): 23.8K XP
Hard (45): 30.1K XP
Nightmare (46): 37.1K XP

 

[Wulfram]

BioWare games waste your time like there is no fucking tomorrow. I don't know if it's a mandate from the higher ups in EA or if they just need to pad the hour count to get good review scores, but every EA-era BW game is bloated with padding, padding and more padding.

I'm not even sure whether to give them more or less credit for not trying to make money off of it lol

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All the Mass Effect games can be completed quickly if you decide to focus on the critical path. And the Dragon Age games are following the tradition of Baldur's Gate 2, which was a seriously long game.

 

[Deleted member 888]

I expect people to have at least played the game or know what they are talking about to criticize it. Yet here you are talking about things you don't know about. Bringing up Witcher 3 as an example for a good design when AC O has the same design is laughable.

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It's not exactly the same, TW3 is less aggressive in its gating. It should be pretty fucking obvious if you read every one of my posts in here I've repeatedly spoken about how different games handle the balance differently. There's no perfect formula, there are lots of developers all trying their own balances around open world design. There's a reason though on Era the handful of people who post topics about Odyssey grinding/gating exist, but not as much did on Era for TW3. So consider that when your rebuttal to me is simply "TW3 and Odyssey are exactly the same". I never said TW3 is perfect, I merely implied I believe it balanced more towards what I call progression based gating, versus more strict/archaic level based gatting.

But as I said, simply go speak to other posters you feel are more qualified to speak to you on this matter.

 

[Torpedo Vegas]

Yes. The whole game is bland and unmemorable because all the encounters scale up or down to your level. You don't get stronger, you don't have to put any thought into your build, there's no loot incentives. It's better than Oblivion, but only barely.

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I don't know about that, I fell into a crafting play through and my mostly blacksmith, Enchanter, Alchemist was royal screwed at around level 30 or 35

 

[danhz]

im lvl 30 and havent even been in athenas.

 

[Spehornoob]

I played the game and personally did feel the grind. I made it to the second large area of the game on Normal, did every quest I could find (though some of the bounty board quests expired on me) and still ended up a level under the main quest. But I think it was compounded by the fact that level matters way too much in fights. Enemies just one or two levels above you become way too spongy and are much harder to stagger. I should go back again with level scaling on and see if it feels better, because I really like how the game played.

Basically I wouldn't mind the level gating and emphasis on exploration in sidequests if I wasn't worried I would run into a guy two levels above me who I have to attack with a wet cloth for forever in order to kill. Hell, Baldur's Gate is one of my favorite games ever, and that game is almost entirely exploration and sidequests.

 

[BernardoOne]

It's not exactly the same, TW3 is less aggressive in its gating. It should be pretty fucking obvious if you read every one of my posts in here I've repeatedly spoken about how different games handle the balance differently. There's no perfect formula, there are lots of developers all trying their own balances around open world design. There's a reason though on Era the handful of people who post topics about Odyssey grinding/gating exist, but not as much did on Era for TW3. So consider that when your rebuttal to me is simply "TW3 and Odyssey are exactly the same". I never said TW3 is perfect, I merely implied I believe it balanced more towards what I call progression based gating, versus more strict/archaic level based gatting.

But as I said, simply go speak to other posters you feel are more qualified to speak to you on this matter.

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What a stupid ass rebuttal. There are no threads about AC Origins "grinding" despite the fact that it's more grindy than Odyssey, but I guess number of threads made invalidates actual facts. That's absolutely hilarious.
Especially considering ERA wasn't even a thing when Witcher 3 came out.

 

[Dr. Mario]

Yes. The whole game is bland and unmemorable because all the encounters scale up or down to your level.

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No they don't. This was the case with Oblivion indeed, where the DDA implementation made the leveling up somewhat muted in its effect (though you still got improved perks, new skills, better spells etc.), leading to people not getting this empowerment sense of overleveling.

Ever since Fallout 3 however, Bethesda games have mitigated this by creating DDA adjusted zones with minimum and maximum boundaries to the difficulty adjustment. (So one area of the map would scale enemies between level 10-20, another between 20-50, etc.) If you're level 6 and encounter dragons or deathclaws, you're still going to end up dead.

However, in the critical path of the main story, if you manage to sneak through these sections without getting attacked, all the bosses do level scale that you can finish the game without level gating.

Another game that does this very well (thankfully, because the side quests are trash) is Xenoblade 2. In the fields there will be a lot of creatures that ream you, but if you manage to slip through all the bosses have the perfect challenge for your level. In Torna Expansion they made the side quests compulsory as currency to gate the main quest and goddamn does it kill the pacing. The former is 70 hours and I finished happily, the latter is 16 hours and I ragequit after 10.

 

[Richter1887]

It's not exactly the same, TW3 is less aggressive in its gating. It should be pretty fucking obvious if you read every one of my posts in here I've repeatedly spoken about how different games handle the balance differently. There's no perfect formula, there are lots of developers all trying their own balances around open world design. There's a reason though on Era the handful of people who post topics about Odyssey grinding/gating exist, but not as much did on Era for TW3. So consider that when your rebuttal to me is simply "TW3 and Odyssey are exactly the same". I never said TW3 is perfect, I merely implied I believe it balanced more towards what I call progression based gating, versus more strict/archaic level based gatting.

But as I said, simply go speak to other posters you feel are more qualified to speak to you on this matter.

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I read your posts and even watched that video you sent a second time and yet I still don't see what's the difference between Odyssey or TW3.
They both feel the same and have a very similar progression. Not only that, I found Odyssey to be more enjoyable to progress through the game. You keep on getting stronger and keep on getting more abilities all the time.

Perhaps I should stop engaging with you because all I am getting is walls of posts based on an idea that you feel AC O is.

 

[Deleted member 888]

I read your posts and even watched that video you sent a second time and yet I still don't see what's the difference between Odyssey or TW3.
They both feel the same and have a very similar progression. Not only that, I found Odyssey to be more enjoyable to progress through the game. You keep on getting stronger and keep on getting more abilities all the time.

Perhaps I should stop engaging with you because all I am getting is walls of posts based on an idea that you feel AC O is.

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They are similar, but they are not tweaked exactly the same.

As I said above Odyssey is a game that has brought up a lot of debate

https://www.resetera.com/threads/im...ems-to-grindy-for-questionable-reasons.90425/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/between-origins-and-odyssey-which-is-truly-the-better-game.97352/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/po...-grinding-and-microtransaction-problem.72652/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ji...ssey-its-grindy-its-greedy-its-ubisoft.72963/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/sk...eed-odyssey-long-spoilers-inc-mtx-talk.74514/

To which there is a vocal minority on this forum that seemingly cannot accept anyone talking about how Ubisoft is choosing to deploy their open world design. Including the OP that seems to package all discussion as "hate" https://www.resetera.com/threads/we-need-to-adress-the-hate-about-assassins-creed.72480/

Just because I feel I have some insight into why some posters in those topics above feel like they do, is not invalidated because you don't agree. Maybe some food for thought that when a sizeable number of people feel how they do, or debate as they do, for them "how they feel" a game is, might just be how it is for them. Just in the same way many might enjoy Skyrim, others can spend time arguing why they think the level-scaling of it went too far. Your enjoyment of a game is not or should not be at the mercy of approval from other people. These topics exist as feedback for Ubisoft as to why some players feel how they do.

In an industry that constantly says it listens to feedback and it's important, some of you ironically do your best to "gatekeep" feedback to only what you want to hear. It's like creating a topic and being told "Sorry bro, your opinion isn't a high enough level yet, please come back later when you are better levelled like I am".

 

[Zafir]

I mean is it really that surprising that people play games differently to you? lol

At least in my experience I did all the side quests I came across. Like as I went through areas for the story, I'd do all the side quests, and if the side quests took me to a place I'd do side quests there too. However even then I'd get to points in the main story where I still wasn't high enough level. Meaning I basically had to go out of my way to designated side quest islands for my level bracket since I ran out of side quests in the areas I'd already been through. Frankly it felt like a MMORPG in its structure in that respect, I can't think of many other RPGs where I had to look at the map to see which area I should go to level up. Now being underlevelled wouldn't be a massive issue in some games but when you combine it with how the levelling structure works, where even just being a few levels under means there is a decent damage to health disparity, it does become a bit of an issue.

Don't get me wrong I still like the game, and I will go back and finish it at some point, but the reason I've complained about the structure is because I wish I didn't have such a problem with it. I wish I loved it as much as all the defenders seem to, but I just didn't.

Bottom line is, considering so many people had these complaints, I think it's fair to say the structure of the game is a bit controversial if nothing else. It's fine for some, disappointing for others.

 

[oni-link]

... giving the player the option of deciding how to play the game instead of limiting a path is the worst thing on Skyrim?

Really?

Click to shrink...

They're two extremes

If you make all the quests available at any time and they're able to be completed at any level, the players sense of progression feels dull, as what's the point of doing half this stuff when you can just mainline the main quest

Obviously players that love exploration will love this kind of game, but if you play for challenge and a sense progression and pacing then you'll find a lot of the game aimless

AC:O has the opposite problem, in that you're not given the choice of playing the main story quests at certain points unless you go away and play the less story driven/polished content

This is fine if you like doing that anyway, and it gives the player a tangible sense of progression as they wander off and level up before undertaking the next slice of story. However this is obviously not going to appeal to people who are mainly interested in the story and are less interested in the lesser content (even though a lot of the side quests are good, there are tiers of content with the main story missions being the best)

No one seems to question the idea that people might not like Skyrim or how it structures it's game, but people lose their minds when people say they dislike how AC:O structures itself

Grinding is doing anything you don't necessarily enjoy for the sake of being able to get something you do. No one likes grinding levels in a JRPG, but they do it so the boss they're stuck on doesn't stomp them

If you don't like levelling up via side content in AC:O, and you only do it to get to the next story mission, then side content or not, it's grinding

I don't think anyone is actually saying it's a bad game. Even the loudest voices that are critical of the game do seem to enjoy it, they just have valid issues with some aspects of it.

The baffling thing to me is the level of hostility from people who refuse to acknowledge any criticism against the game

 

[NoTime]

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.

Click to shrink...

This is a stupid argument. If you don't have time to play 100h games then don't play them. I thought people PLAYED games to actually play them. You can play something like Hellblade or whatever if you like short games.

I can't believe i bought this game for 60 dollars and they want me to play it.

ITS NOT RESPECTFUL OF MY FUCKING TIME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Click to shrink...

This

 

[Zafir]

Another game that does this very well (thankfully, because the side quests are trash) is Xenoblade 2. In the fields there will be a lot of creatures that ream you, but if you manage to slip through all the bosses have the perfect challenge for your level. In Torna Expansion they made the side quests compulsory as currency to gate the main quest and goddamn does it kill the pacing. The former is 70 hours and I finished happily, the latter is 16 hours and I ragequit after 10.

Click to shrink...

Bosses have specific levels in Xenoblade 2 I thought? The game has other systems to get XP though(as you say, a good thing because the side quests are awful and a massive step back from X). Personally I found the dungeons near the end game to drag like crazy, like one dungeon spans like 3 chapters or something I swear. Consequently I started running past enemies to get through it, but it didn't matter. Due to the overkill system on bosses it meant you could get back your xp through taking advantage of the systems smartly.

 

[BernardoOne]

They are similar, but they are not tweaked exactly the same.

As I said above Odyssey is a game that has brought up a lot of debate

https://www.resetera.com/threads/im...ems-to-grindy-for-questionable-reasons.90425/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/between-origins-and-odyssey-which-is-truly-the-better-game.97352/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/po...-grinding-and-microtransaction-problem.72652/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ji...ssey-its-grindy-its-greedy-its-ubisoft.72963/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/sk...eed-odyssey-long-spoilers-inc-mtx-talk.74514/

To which there is a vocal minority on this forum that seemingly cannot accept anyone talking about how Ubisoft is choosing to deploy their open world design. Including the OP that seems to package all discussion as "hate" https://www.resetera.com/threads/we-need-to-adress-the-hate-about-assassins-creed.72480/

Just because I feel I have some insight into why some posters in those topics above feel like they do, is not invalidated because you don't agree. Maybe some food for thought that when a sizeable number of people feel how they do, or debate as they do, for them "how they feel" a game is, might just be how it is for them. Just in the same way many might enjoy Skyrim, others can spend time arguing why they think the level-scaling of it went too far. Your enjoyment of a game is not or should not be at the mercy of approval from other people. These topics exist as feedback for Ubisoft as to why some players feel how they do.

In an industry that constantly says it listens to feedback and it's important, some of you ironically do your best to "gatekeep" feedback to only what you want to hear. It's like creating a topic and being told "Sorry bro, your opinion isn't a high enough level yet, please come back later when you are better levelled like I am".

Click to shrink...

To have an opinion you kinda have to be informed instead of keeping spouting random factually innacurate shit all day, though.

 

[ShapeGSX]

There is no grinding issue. It's a great game.

I'm 74 hours in, and level 31. The early hours were tougher because you don't have any powers yet, but I haven't felt like they were stingy with the leveling. The fact is that the game scales with you, so, there's really no "grind" to it. I'm skipping all of the message board stuff. But I'm doing the rest, which feels like any other Assassin's Creed game. Do a mission. Bring up the map. Go to a few question marks and do some fun stealth stuff. Then do another mission. Rinse, repeat...

I don't really differentiate between the main story missions and the side story missions. It's all good stuff to me. Just not the daily message board quest stuff. I have no need for that.

 

[Richter1887]

They are similar, but they are not tweaked exactly the same.

As I said above Odyssey is a game that has brought up a lot of debate

https://www.resetera.com/threads/im...ems-to-grindy-for-questionable-reasons.90425/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/between-origins-and-odyssey-which-is-truly-the-better-game.97352/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/po...-grinding-and-microtransaction-problem.72652/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ji...ssey-its-grindy-its-greedy-its-ubisoft.72963/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/sk...eed-odyssey-long-spoilers-inc-mtx-talk.74514/

To which there is a vocal minority on this forum that seemingly cannot accept anyone talking about how Ubisoft is choosing to deploy their open world design. Including the OP that seems to package all discussion as "hate" https://www.resetera.com/threads/we-need-to-adress-the-hate-about-assassins-creed.72480/

Just because I feel I have some insight into why some posters in those topics above feel like they do, is not invalidated because you don't agree. Maybe some food for thought that when a sizeable number of people feel how they do, or debate as they do, for them "how they feel" a game is, might just be how it is for them. Just in the same way many might enjoy Skyrim, others can spend time arguing why they think the level-scaling of it went too far. Your enjoyment of a game is not or should not be at the mercy of approval from other people. These topics exist as feedback for Ubisoft as to why some players feel how they do.

In an industry that constantly says it listens to feedback and it's important, some of you ironically do your best to "gatekeep" feedback to only what you want to hear. It's like creating a topic and being told "Sorry bro, your opinion isn't a high enough level yet, please come back later when you are better levelled like I am".

Click to shrink...

Here is the thing, If you had so much insight then why were you saying things as it forces you to do "busy work" when it is known for most people that the game tells you what is "work" and what is story? So yes you aren't qualified to talk about it if you get so many things wrong. Perhaps some people don't like the direction, that is very possible and it happened to me with game series I used to love but that doesn't mean I can start throwing around conspiracy theories like you have been doing in this thread. Criticize everything you want but you need to be speaking the truth and have experience instead of hearing what other people are saying then echoing them. Just doing this will not help Ubisoft improve like you are saying because it is based on nothing. Feedback needs to be the truth and your truth is baseless.

And who exactly is gatekeeping? I am fine with people who played the game to complain and criticize it. What I am not fine is when people like you attempt to speak the "truth" when all they know is something you read that could be false. When Far Cry 5 came out people were talking shit about it that turned out to only be bullshit after I played it because it became clear they didn't play it. Either they read some hyperbole somewhere and took it as "truth" or said something out of their ass.

You know what? It is clear we won't agree on this so I am going to leave whatever you replay to somebody else to tackle because you can't debate someone on something if they don't know anything about it or think they know something about it.

 

[ShapeGSX]

Even if you get the XP booster, you're still going to have to "grind" some. You need to take down the cult to level the spear, which allows you to get the top tier abilities. I haven't once felt compelled to get the booster, though.

 

[GamingRobioto]

I do every side quests that i find.

Click to shrink...

This is the issue. Not every gamer wants to do the sidequests, or has the time to do them. But in order to meet inflated level requirements (to coax you into bbuying filthy XP boosters) you have to do these mundane tasks.

For someone like you and I, who game a lot (I'm assuming!), it's not an issue. But for gamers which have less time on thier hands it's a major issue and IMO it's completely unacceptable to have this kind of practice in any single player game.

 

[Bricktop]

They are similar, but they are not tweaked exactly the same.

As I said above Odyssey is a game that has brought up a lot of debate

https://www.resetera.com/threads/im...ems-to-grindy-for-questionable-reasons.90425/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/between-origins-and-odyssey-which-is-truly-the-better-game.97352/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/po...-grinding-and-microtransaction-problem.72652/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ji...ssey-its-grindy-its-greedy-its-ubisoft.72963/

https://www.resetera.com/threads/sk...eed-odyssey-long-spoilers-inc-mtx-talk.74514/

To which there is a vocal minority on this forum that seemingly cannot accept anyone talking about how Ubisoft is choosing to deploy their open world design. Including the OP that seems to package all discussion as "hate" https://www.resetera.com/threads/we-need-to-adress-the-hate-about-assassins-creed.72480/

Just because I feel I have some insight into why some posters in those topics above feel like they do, is not invalidated because you don't agree. Maybe some food for thought that when a sizeable number of people feel how they do, or debate as they do, for them "how they feel" a game is, might just be how it is for them. Just in the same way many might enjoy Skyrim, others can spend time arguing why they think the level-scaling of it went too far. Your enjoyment of a game is not or should not be at the mercy of approval from other people. These topics exist as feedback for Ubisoft as to why some players feel how they do.

In an industry that constantly says it listens to feedback and it's important, some of you ironically do your best to "gatekeep" feedback to only what you want to hear. It's like creating a topic and being told "Sorry bro, your opinion isn't a high enough level yet, please come back later when you are better levelled like I am".

Click to shrink...

I love that anyone who doesn't agree with you is a "vocal minority" but the same people, posting the same shit, in a dozen different threads is "sizable". In fact, it's not just the same people in every Odyssey thread, it's the same people in virtually every thread about every Ubisoft game. GTFO with that nonsense.

I also love the fact that half the people in this thread cannot read, and keep jumping on the "you did all the sidequests" nonsense, when he clearly stated that he is 20 levels above the recommended, which lines up pretty much with a lot of people's comments on their playthroughs. If he is 20 levels ahead doing all the side stuff, in a game the base game that caps at 50, you could easily skip a ton of content and still out level the recommended levels.

Finally, to the Op, here is the problem, you have a bunch of people who play the game that is, and they don't have an issue, but you also have a bunch of people who play the game that they want it to to be, and they are always the ones complaining. Tons of people play the game like it's a past AC game, and it's not, so they have a bad time and complain about grinding. Those of us who understand how the series has changed, and don't skip 90% of the content, had no issues whatsoever, and were literally in exactly the same boat as you. I did main quests and the gold side quests. I skipped ALL randomized quests. I also grabbed the billboard quests because they are completed with ZERO interaction or deviation from regular play. I was higher than the recommend level 3 zones into the game, and I was level CAPPED at 50% completion, which means pre-expansion I would have played half the game at the level cap.

There is no grinding. There are people who want to skip content and people who don't. End of story. I'm sorry people feel the need to buy a game and then bitch and moan they can't skip 90% of it, but that's just the way it is. P.S. don't even bother with the "xp boost" shit, because there was no XP boost in Origins, the game was laid out the same way, and people knew well before release that Odyssey was basically Origins in a different location.

 

[Pedrito]

I understand the criticism. What I don't really understand is why someone would buy/play an AC game just to speedrun the main campaign. It's usually the weakest part of the game IMO. Can you imagine playing Black Flag just do the tailing missions one after the other and calling it quit?

Also, the definition of "grinding" has really evolved over the year. I remember when it meant spending hours in the same 3x3 patch of forest in FFVI to fight the exact same T-Rex over and over again.

 

[Zafir]

There is no grinding. There are people who want to skip content and people who don't. End of story. I'm sorry people feel the need to buy a game and then bitch and moan they can't skip 90% of it, but that's just the way it is.

Click to shrink...

You're being just as disingenuous suggesting everyone wants to skip 90% of the content.

 

[Deleted member 888]

Here is the thing, If you had so much insight then why were you saying things as it forces you to do "busy work" when it is known for most people that the game tells you what is "work" and what is story? So yes you aren't qualified to talk about it if you get so many things wrong. Perhaps some people don't like the direction, that is very possible and it happened to me with game series I used to love but that doesn't mean I can start throwing around conspiracy theories like you have been doing in this thread. Criticize everything you want but you need to be speaking the truth and have experience instead of hearing what other people are saying then echoing them. Just doing this will not help Ubisoft improve like you are saying because it is based on nothing. Feedback needs to be the truth and your truth is baseless.

And who exactly is gatekeeping? I am fine with people who played the game to complain and criticize it. What I am not fine is when people like you attempt to speak the "truth" when all they know is something they read that could be false. When Far Cry 5 came out people were talking shit about it that turned out to only be bullshit after I played it because it became clear they didn't play it. Either they read some hyperbole somewhere and took it as "truth" or said something out of their ass.

You know what? It is clear we won't agree on this so I am going to leave whatever you replay to somebody else to tackle because you can't debate someone on something if they don't know anything about it or think they know something about it.

Click to shrink...

I'm speaking my opinion and fleshing out what others may think when they talk about design. With open world game design, developers are going to come across a wide range of played experiences. That is simply how it is. A linear game has everyone experience the same thing. An open world game has a wide range of feedback coming in for how Joe experienced things compared to Sally.

So both Joe and Sally, unless they are lying, are speaking their own "truth". That's how it will always be for something that gives a choice to an end user and isn't set down a strict path. You cannot force everyone to have the same truth as you simply because of your experience.

A major issue in debate in these topics is individuals concepts of what "grinding" is. Historically there is a very written in stone perception of it, primarily experienced through the lens of JRPGs where you simply could not defeat a progress-blocking boss without going and killing boars for 2 hours to get from level 20 to level 25. Or a Korean MMO where you have to spend 6 days out of a week doing the same shit over and over just to slightly progress. That's what most of us grew up on, as Western games tended on average to be more linear, and it was the JRPGs boasting 100 hour playthroughs and mass grinding.

Grinding as a concept is multi-faceted though. Especially with the last few generations of the rise in Western open world RPGs on console (the PC was home to strategy and WRPGs for a while - Your isometric top downs). So not everyone means the same thing with grinding or even the same level of intensity. If someone can explain their thought process and played experience sincerely, then some of you need to cool it with being soo hostile to a player saying they felt "grind" to a detrimental extent but you simply didn't. All of this is supposed to be varied feedback, because as I said in designing an open world game the played experience is varied.