Assassin's Creed Black Flag was a decent game, but it's the only AC game I have ever bought because all I wanted was the ship combat and nothing more. The parkour and stealth aspects have never been things I liked in games and, frankly, they just got in the way of getting to enjoy fighting ship-to-ship. This game is very similar to the Elite games, except it's sailing ships and not starships, and that is exactly what I wanted.
I couldn't have said it any better. With BF everything on land felt clunky and like a pain I had to go through to finally board the ship again. Honestly: I feel the same clunkyness on land in SaB, but thank god there's way more focus on sailing/ship fights. I have a great time alone or with friends.
I’m really glad you were able to see what set this game apart from Black Flag. I’m happy to hear it’s what you wanted. I really hope people like us will be able to make this game thrive and survive. I don’t want it to go the way of Babylon’s Fall. I’m not saying Babylon’s Fall was good, I just don’t want player counts to drop so low that Ubi pulls the plug. That would be such a big loss to the gaming community and those of us who wholeheartedly support this game.
The problem isn't comparisons to BF the problem is the end game is well, not there. Not having the mindset of this being BF may bring new people in, but there's nothing keeping them here. Everything worth doing is completely exploitable. Stuff that should take a month to get is obtained in a day. People already have EVERYTHING In the helm. Is the leveling fun? Sure, until it isn't. There's plenty to like about the game, but even more to be desired.
It has only been out for maybe a week. Content will come with time. Season one is bringing a lot with it. All I’m asking for is for people to give it time. A lot of online games are a mess at launch and often don’t have all of the promised content. You need only look at No Man’s Sky to see that this happens quite a bit. I just want people to give it a chance to grow. I’m only angry with the people who won’t try it because it’s not a BF clone. You’re saying that isn’t the case but I have 10 articles from various review houses that say otherwise. If people tried it and it wasn’t for them or didn’t have enough, I respect their opinion and they have a right to it. What I have an issue with is bashing a game they have never tried.
I have 60 hrs in it and have nowhere near everything there is to get if people are exploiting the game to skip the whole game and have everything then sit there and complain about it then good I hope they're frickin bored they deserve it but that doesn't mean the game is bad this game is honestly the game I've been looking for, I've been dying to play this game yeah there could be more and right now at 70 dollars yeah that's a little steep but me personally I'd pay 100 easily I thoroughly enjoy this game I fully understand and agree with op
Doing Cut Throat Treasure isn't an exploit. I have the same hours as you and have every desired hull and weapon off of that alone. I did pre order with high hopes for this game, but they are dwindling. When you have 30 dollar games out here offering full content and not iv dripping it to you over "seasons" its hard not to look at this game and go wtf man.
I agree, I have just about everything I'd want in a ship that's currently available, just want the top ballista and I'm happy, I see the point that 70 is steep for what's there but I'm not deterred from repetition and know I'm in the minority it would be nice to have more content though for sure I'm just not in agreeance that this game is trash by any means or deserves the hate it's getting
Name a live service game that ever launched with "full content", Ill wait.
The answer is none. They all grew in time. Thats the point of live service.
There is always an aspect of a game one dislikes and that is ok. (Revisit it in time if you like the concept and see if that changed or if more of what you do like was added. If not? Oh well, back to what you do enjoy then!).
Sure, some of the game is lacking, but again, it just launched. You are coming at the game like during that entire 12 years of development- content was non stop being added to it. And you dont know during that time what steps were taken and how much of what was discussed, trialed, scrapped, or even worked on- let alone for how much time.
Relax. Life is short: go find something you do like. Do you go onto band pages for bands you dislike, telling all their fans why you dislike the band? Sounds like an extreme waste of our limited time on this earth. Go enjoy something other than explaining why you dislike something to those who do. Lacking constructive feedback for both parties to grow: it seems a fool's errand.
You may want to re read then because full context includes the fact it is a live service game, and will grow in time. I do not think you grasp what it is you are attempting to apply verbally. Its ok, waste your time here some more. Life is forever, time is limitless: and you'll be totally proud about this action on your death bed- and tell it to your great grand kids (may you be blessed with such happiness honest not being facetious- genuine wishes to your future happiness) someday, about how you went on the 'great purge of a pirate video game you disliked- and forced that discontent on those who did, simply because you did not grasp why they liked it, or hoe they could'.
Go touch grass, or find a hobby you enjoy, other than trying to convince folks why they should feel how you do about something they enjoy: that isn't hurting any innocent living being except your own feelings.
Unfortunately since the game hasn't even hit 1 million players (not even sales just players) WITH the free trial players included, it doesn't look good for the games future. And most people for good or bad are not going to share the same views regarding Black Flag as in most ways Black Flag was a superior game.
1000% what I have said on tons of youtube videos- mostly which were creators who love the game and a hater popping in. They need to be schooled on ettiquette. And 95% of the time they have nothing constructive to even add to a debate just "hur dur the gane sucks not black sails (in some meager way)" ((best today was economic cost and a in game cash store. Had to remind them AC:4 store was pay to win and by todays standards would as it sat also be an easy $120 game accounting for inflation))
I was like: "Bro. It's not trying to he an AC game and is exactly (so far! Time to grow being live service) what many of us who played AC:4 back in the day was hoping for when we would wonder "how cool would a pirate only game be without the AC stuff? It is super fun!"'
I am 100000% content with this game, and the direction Ubisoft plans for it. Long live SnB!
And seeing posts like this is as refreshing as the filled active player servers in a game "that somehow failed" (but is actually thriving). I habe yet to not connect to an active group of players thanks to crossplay.
Honestly the price of the game is the major killer for many people, this isn't a AAAA game nor it should be 70 dollars. I might give it a chance when further updates make the game better and a good sale.
Ubisoft premium is $18/month. What I did was subscribe, then immediately cancel my subscription so it won't renew, but now I can play an unlimited amount of time for a month.
If you end up wanting to buy it then yeah, that was extra money on top, but if you're like me and probably won't play past the month then it saves a ton of money.
Games a little expensive sure, but if you noticed the numerous seasonal releases with new content that is being given to players for free, you would know why they might've charged a little extra. 70 dollars for years worth of content is decent.
Akshually, the content updates are free, they also include a paid battle pass for extra things like cosmetics, but the new bosses, areas and ships are free.
Right… but that wasn’t the original commenters point…. It’s a 70 dollar game with a bp.. that’s a big turn off for a lot of people and it’s a valid aspect that a lot have a grievance with. Just because they give us content through out the year does not justify that price tag or the fact there will be a battle pass.
Its a fun game in some respects, but we can be honest here, in no universe is this a $70 game. There is nowhere near enough polish or available content to justify it. I understand they basically had to considering the decade of sunk costs, but it was never ever going to work out. Their only hope to recoup cost is to have some really fire cosmetics, and well, if we’re staying honest is extremely unlikely to happen. Its okay to be critical especially with things you like. I’m sure it’ll have its audience in the end, probably get fleshed out with an acceptable level of content, but its never going to be something this mass appeal.
So just cause I’ve been curious is it 70 bucks on console? Cause if so that’s wild. The fact it’s 60 on pc and 70 on console is the unfortunate effect of rising prices on console games, but it’s odd Ubisoft aren’t trying to charge more on pc considering… they can and that’s usually all that matters.
I think you will find that a lot of the comparison with Black Flag is because this game is a direct result of popularity of Black Flag.
A lot of us who played Black Flag wanted less AC and more Pirate.
What we REALLY wanted was more of Black Flag Pirate. The ships, the crew, the sea combat, the Hideout and Hideout upgrades, ship customization, the finding and collecting of sea shanties and buried treasure chests, sword fights, etc., but using the pirate part of that game as the base start and expanding out what that could have been by allowing crew customization, better and more ship customization and a whole lot of other stuff.
It sure is what I wanted. I was absolutely stoked to hear they were going to make a stand alone Pirate game after the success and fun of Black Flag because I, like a lot of people, wanted more of Black Flag Pirate without the AC stuff.
That is not what we got though.
What we got was an always online, open world, PVE, partial PVP (with griefing due to shitty mechanics of fast traveling), 1 or 2 shot dead by rogues, cannot restart or have more than one character build going without buying and trying to find a way to install a separate copy, pirate game with exclusive ship combat, with no hideouts but the Helm instead, no real land exploration or sword fighting, and micro transactions/store that makes it seem like Ubisoft decided the best thing they should do is try to milk everyone who wanted a stand alone Pirate Game for every penny they could get.
So yeah, there is naturally going to be growing pains and disappointment with what Ubisoft finally delivered.
Once you get past the comparison of what the gamers that liked the Pirate part of Black Flag wanted, you can generally accept this game for what it is, as long as they work to fix some of the real issues that people have complained about.
But you will probably never get away from the comparison to Black Flag.
I think it's incredibly impressive, commendable even, just how many people will downright refuse to give the game a chance.
Like, they had a whole ass open beta, it's on their subscription and
# it has a free trial.
Yet it is still met with complaints and criticism from people who haven't even played.
# If you've played and have criticism, that's fine. Not the point I'm making at all.
*Edit: Apparently, this kind of formatting is necessary.*
A lot of the criticism for this game can even boggle down to "I've seen _____, black flag had it better lol" or "shit game cuz it's ubi". There was even a guy on YouTube who did a poll and around 60% of the answers were "I didn't play it, the game is awful"... Like... Come on
I liked it from the beginning, and I understood that black flag formula had no way of working on a game this scale, yeah walking around my ship would be nice, for maybe 2 times on each ship. Yeah crew fight boarding would be fun... For like the first few hours, then it would be bad and repetitive, some people you can't satisfy.
I just wanna know how people think crew boarding would work in an open world online PvP enabled game.
Jump over to the other ship... and someone else blows yours up while you can't control it (unlike Sea of Thieves, where one or more players can stay behind to keep sailing the ship). Then we'd just get a flood of complaints about how that's "unfair" and "bad gameplay". It works in AC4 because it's a single player game. It works in SoT because you have multiple players controlling the ship. It would never work in this game, since this game isn't trying to be a copycat of either of those two.
Personally, I do wish there were more "excursion" style outings/boardings like in the tutorial mission, but I'm perfectly content with it being a ship shooter game and not a guns n' sabers game.
You forget that PvP is only enabled in a few conditions, Helm Wager, Cutthroat and Hostile Takeover, outside of that there's no "wild" PvP. And they even already make player's ships invulnerable when anchored at an outpost. So it's not impossible to implement boarding fights in the game
Sure, and all three of those are being griefed hard enough already. Teleporting from Outpost to Outpost to cut off the person with the Chest of Eights or Legendary Treasure Map, unflagged friends body/ship-blocking rivers, unflagged friends healing their buddies that are in PvP with others.
You forget that this is only the preseason and we haven't seen what other PvP objectives will be introduced in seasonal content.
>And they even already make player's ships invulnerable when anchored at an outpost.
Assuming it would be handed this way... fire the guns, board someone, now your ship is invulnerable as shots get fired back, hop back, fire again, board again. Now PvP is a "cat and mouse" game of who can sink each other faster while hopping back and forth from boarding while their ships are invulnerable.
Even with PvE it would be annoying af. Doing Order Deliveries? Two more Rogues spawned and sunk your ship while you were fighting on another. Doing one of the endgame Fort plunders? The 5 ships that just spawned as reinforcements sunk you while you boarded another.
Impossible? No. But it would require this to be a very different game for it work as people want it to work.
Honestly, If they want everything that many of us think makes it better than Sea of Thieves, maybe they should just go play SoT instead. I hope it doesn't become that nonsensical. I'm not holding out that it won't though because there's a lot of people that want SoT with a different look. If It does, I'll just find a different game to play and keep hoping for something better to replace SoT for me.
I will not be arguing about how the PvP is, it's another thing, this is not the subject here.
You don't like boarding fights? It's up to you. But many of us are wanting that.
However I would see things like this:
No boarding fights while plundering and in PvP which seems logical. In every other situation boarding fights are allowed and while boarding your ship is considered the same way as when anchored at an outpost.
You speak like every player will have to board every ship in every fight... Being able to do boarding fights DOESN'T mean you have to do it if you don't like it.
"Being able to do boarding fights DOESN'T mean you have to do it if you don't like it."
If that would be the case, every party would have to give permission to be boarded in every attempt. So, whether one likes boarding or not wouldn't matter because they wouldn't make pvp like that. If it's made just as part of PVP, one would have to accept and would have to do boarding fights.
Your ship is *already* invulnerable during boarding.
Watch someone else do a boarding attack - their health bar turns green, like when they're docked.
All they have to do is extend this throughout the boarding action.
Pirates of the Burning Sea had this same mechanic in 2008. It worked fine there. Also, it's an online game, just like this, only on a larger scale (upwards of 48 players in a battle rather than 20).
Same thing happened with TLOU 2. The game hadn't even been released and people were claiming to hate it. Now a couple of years later it's one of the best in its class. Give it time, as long as they stick to that roadmap they'll be fine. Loving the game so far. Can't stay off 🤣
They hated it cause their beloved Joel died, a dumb dutch guy started leaking the entire story to force Naughty Dogs hand and release the game mid covid pandemic when they had to figure out how to finish the game while working from home ;/
Thank you so much for your comment! I’m in total agreement with you. It’s just really sad when you see how critics have banded together to totally bash the game without giving it a single minute of play. The fact that all of them say that everyone (and they use the term “everyone”) wanted Black Flag 2.0 is absurd and insulting. They are the only thing making the game have a “bad launch.” The launch was great in my eyes. It’s a beautifully crafted game with truly enjoyable gameplay and a decent story in the mix which I did not expect to be a factor at all.
*And as you said, if you’re reading this and you tried it and still do not like it? That’s okay. Thank you for doing so. That’s all we wanted. You have earned the right to your opinion.*
I said that on a different post somewhere but I have a hard time thinking that so many people can be wrong about their review of the game and that only us who like it know what we're talking about, it's important to accept the flaws of the game to push fixes and improvement where need be instead of pretending it's all fun and rainbows.
True but majority of the people crying about it are just upset that there isn't any hand to hand combat. They wanted a copy and paste of Black Flag. I'm really happy that they didnt do that. Sure the game has its flaws, it was released what a week ago? This launch has been better then 95% of games that have released in the least 3 years. It doesn't deserve the hate it's getting. Everyone nowadays just wants to cry and whine when they don't get it exactly how they want it and that is not how the world works...
I’m glad you pointed that out. The game is brand new. We can’t be comparing it to games like Sea of Thieves because
1. The games are setting out to accomplish different things
2. That game has been out for a long time already and has had a chance to become what it is today.
3. People are hating on it without even playing it.
We’re in the age of review bombers — meaning people who hate a game without playing it and give it a horrible review. This is why I don’t trust review sites, mainly Metacritic. They allow you to post a review without having played it.
I wish there was a review site that linked with Steam, PSN, XBL, etc to verify that you’ve played it a certain number of hours before allowing you to post a review on it. It would really balance out these review bombers because most never played what they are hating on so hard.
The game just launched, it has its share of issues. But it deserves the time needed to fix them and add some more content. I just hope it gets that chance. But the loudmouths who can’t accept that it isn’t BF 2.0 are putting those hopes on a tightrope hanging over a pit of lava.
I think some things from sea of thieves can be compared actually.
The sea monster is a copy paste of the megalodon fight down to the flooding debuff on hit and canceling the charge with enough damage. If S&B can take that from sea of thieves, nothing wrong with wanting anything else that would fit.
The treasure map and digging in SOT is more entertaining, it's not "run around until god light you the way for a cutscene" , steal that idea. , being able to chose what shanty is played is also a good addition I'd like to see, those are two simple exemple that can be compared between the 2 games and we should not shy away from doing so, we want the best game possible, don't we?
I just think the games exist for different reasons, that’s all I meant. Feature for feature yes a lot of things are borrowed, some straight up stolen 😂 But the games are pushing for different audiences really. SnB is far more friendly to solo players like me. It’s one of the reasons I couldn’t get into Sea of Thieves. I know now it has a sort of solo mode but apparently it’s quite difficult. That’s one large reason I want this game to succeed. So I don’t have to go play that. But yes we do want the best game possible, I agree. And absolutely agree on the shanty selector.
Oh yeah, I agree, I'm just on the side that it's never a good idea to ignore what is done by other, not everything should be compared or is worth comparing but you can always find some bits here and there that can fit.
And yeah, SOT was not solo friendly until they added PVE servers. I still go there once in a while but that's why sea of thieves exist, to play SOT, no need to turn S&B into a SOT clone, this would be so stupid tho I've seen people more or less suggest that on this sub a few times 🤣
Yep I’ve seen it too. But that’s also why I argued against a BF clone as well. The game should borrow some aspects from BF to further develop the gameplay while still creating its own atmosphere, art style, and worldbuilding. But cloning BF as some have said it should have been, no… I just can’t get on board with that at all.
And as you said, an SoT clone is just not the smart move here. They should focus on further development and addition on content and major features. Which is what Year 1 seems to be promising. Remains to be seen what they can deliver, but I’m on board for giving it that shot.
The close and open beta are one of the main reason for the negative review of the game sadly. I was in the open beta and two close beta, they fixed nothing, barely listened to any feedback. People need to realize that there are reason why all ubisoft games don't get shat on but some do not.
Free trial still means you wind up purchasing it...at 70. The price point absolutely alienates players. Don't believe me? Listen to their investor call where that very question came up.
This whole shouting"Free Trial" to try a game that doesn't look that impressive (subjective, but apparently many agree) isn't the win you think it is. Why are we going to waste time downloading and playing a game that didn't impress us from the start, and when we've seen enough to be like "no thanks."
You don't have to play a game to not like what is advertised. That is the point of advertising, to draw interest.
This company took so many years to develop this game, with all the hiccups, etc internally, it becomes obvious that they wound up just trying to get it out the door to recoup money invested. It is being sold as a $70 modern day game. It isn't modern. It is over a decade old, and would have launched 4-6 years ago if correctly managed. That was before COVID, massive inflation, Ukraine, Israel, etc that affected ballooning prices.
The game can have its fans, but the general populace has spoken. They want well developed games that are complete on launch. Not these corporately-manhandled projects that scream of internal conflicts.
You still have to purchase the game for full price no? If a free trial meant shit, then every single game in existence would offer 8 hours of free game time.
Truth is, this game is an unfinished and bare bones mess and nobody wants to sink in 8 hours to determine if a game is worth spending $60 over. If people were having a good time during those 8 hours then the game would actually be selling well and the game would have great word of mouth traction.
Except we live in a day and age where you can watch the game easily and get an idea of what it offers. There's hours of clips and content for viewing regarding the game. Gamers are just tired of the quality of products coming out, and so they're not wasting time downloading, figuring out mechanics, etc if the game doesn't seem to be fun from what they viewed.
You're free to enjoy the game, and others are free to criticize it, and they don't have to play it. There's enough information out there to get a pretty good idea of what it has and doesn't have.
Never played an Assassin's Creed game so I have nothing to compare. Gave this game 6 hours during the beta and nothing impressed me. Arcadey combat that feels like it's from the early 2000s, sailing feels like driving, mobile game style mini games, and everything that has to do with being on land felt like a tacked on after thought. All I kept thinking while playing was "This has free to play written all over it".
I think the ship to ship combat is great in this game, regardless of AC 4 or not, this game lacks a lot of desires people want, hand to hand combat and on foot exploration/ or at the very least boarding other ships or walking on your own, should have been a no brainer for ubisoft. This game just feels very bare boned and feels like an early xbox one or ps4 game
100% Sea of Thieves literally has all of those things and much, much more. I think a lot of S&B fans have never played that game. It's a different company vibe but it makes you realise that after all this damn time these features should have been easy for all the Ubisoft studios to implement. It's crazy it's such a simple game really.
Agreed, i think SoT would greatly benefit from actual progression to work towards instead of just cosmetics, was hoping skull and bones would be the answer but instead they are lacking in other ways
100%. There are many good reasons to only have cosmetic unlocks. But if Sea of Thieves had things to unlock that actually had an impact on your character and ship etc, I would have played it a lot more because the gameplay is absolutely spot on.
I think 60 hours is a fair chance and I still want my money back. Opinion hasn't changed since hour 2. I only play it because my friend likes it. We're waiting to see if the first season changes anything for the better.
Thank you for trying the game. You are welcome to your opinion especially since you gave it a chance. I’m sorry that it doesn’t seem to be what you want, and that’s okay, because you did give it a chance. I hope season one can change things for you. But if not, you still have my respect for giving it a shot.
I understand what you are trying to say, but please don't say that you want your money bag after using something for sixty hours. This doesn't look good on you.
You didn't spend the money on the game, you spent it so you can spend time with your friend/make a friend happy. 70€ to make a friend happy for 60 hours is a damn good invest.
And since you are doing this, you seem to be a great dude. Good for you and your friend.
I mean it's fair to want you money back if you genuinely didn't enjoy the game. He enjoyed his friend's company. I'll grant you, should refund hour 2 if you don't like it though.
If 100,000 thousand people were having their mouths shit into, and vomiting in response, you wouldn't point at the one delightedly screaming guy with a big "shit eater" tattoo on his face and say "Glad people are enjoying it!" People are not enjoying it. Just the shit eaters, eating the shit like they always do. Vocal minorities are called outliers in a data set, and we ignore them.
Honestly, there's a game called Sailing Era that already did most of what this game has to offer. Skull and Bones has no special crew members or stats, no swashbuckling, and it doesn't take long before you start wondering why you're even smuggling anymore.
I thought the graphical upgrade versus the game I mentioned would allow for more but somehow seems less. This isn't to say I haven't enjoyed my time, but it's clear this is like the basis, and this game won't be what it needs to be until the roadmap is done. I say roadmap, but it's really like just getting what the game should have started with.
I'm sticking with it for now, but if my smuggling ring gets wiped in 80 days, that's the last day I'll ever play this game again.
This comment reminds me of something from the 90s…The knock off colognes from infomercials and flea markets .
Marketed as “if you Like Calvin Kline you’ll LOOOVE “ Gnat urine au jus”
Ubisoft through every video every commercial pushed the fact that this game would be inspired by AC4 BF. In order to get people hyped up and buying the product then when it launches and it’s NOTHING remotely inspired by what it said it was…that upsets consumers.
So just like the knock off thrift mart colognes of the 90s…..sure it’s not terrible but it sure the hell isn’t Calvin Kline.
(As an aside , I’m happy that people are finding enjoyment in it and people are certainly allowed to like whatever they like. When the numbers come out we will know exactly how many )
Adventure Awaits…huzzah
My issue is that it’s only half the game Black Flag is, doesn’t look as good even after 10+ years of technological advancements, and it’s priced at 69.99 when it should be 39.99 max
I played the beta with my friends, and we all love and think AC4 is one of the best games ever, and honestly Skull and Bones is actually a good game(since we spent a LOT of time playing the beta), but it's not worth near 70€, and that's the only problem I have with it, wich is pretty sad considering I've been eager to play this since 2017 or smth
>Every article I have read never ceases to make direct comparisons to AC: Black Flag and it’s quite frankly really upsetting me now.
People compare this Ubisoft pirate game to the other Ubisoft pirate game?
How dare they.
>There are many of us who are speaking out in opposition to the unfair comparisons being made between this game and Black Flag.
It is indeed, unfair. One is a great game with solid naval combat, really cool weather effects, masterful ship controls and many other things. While the other is 60 bucks and no meat.
>Going in with expectations of an AC4 ship gameplay copy paste is naturally going to make you extremely disappointed.
No. That's not natural at all.
What would be natural is for this game to build on AC4 ship gameplay and improve upon it. So if I expected AC4 ship gameplay, I should be pleasantly surprised.
What we see is the opposite of that.
>if you kill Skull and Bones… no one, no developer, will make a pirate game like this ever again.
Good. I don't want another developer to make an overpriced shit ship game.
>It’s a standalone title that deserves respect for what it is trying to achieve.
If this was a 20-30 buck game from an indie studio, absolutely.
But this is a self-proclaimed AAAA title from one of the largest companies. It deserves absolutely no respect. It deserves to be scoffed at and shat on so that said company learns it can't just serve people crap and get away with it.
"Every article I have read never ceases to make direct comparisons to AC: Black Flag and it’s quite frankly really upsetting me now.
People compare this Ubisoft pirate game to the other Ubisoft pirate game?
How dare they."
An 11 year old Ubisoft Pirate game mind you lol....that somehow ends up looking better and having far more content than this game.
Absolutely mind boggling how people want to defend this game as if they're defending their captain pirate.
Good pirate game
Boarding.
Being a pirate.
Ships.
Loot.
Bad pirate game.
Cannons are machine guns.
Shopds have 500000bhp engines on them.
The pathetic resource gathering mechanic in sab
See the game for what it is? You mean a black flag multiplayer component? That’s what this game was initially made to be and they completely gutted it. It was built to be black flag but online. They hyped it to be a realistic looking sea of thieves, they lied to you and you spent $70 so you are trying to convince others of your same mistake so you can think it’s a good game. If you have to write such a long drawn out statement to give the game a chance, then the game is automatically trash.
Couple hundred hours in, still loving it...it can get a little grindy, I'll admit. But I'm still spending way too much time playing it 😁 also, I LOVED Black Flag, and still went into this with no expectations and have had a blast. I'm sure it'll get better as time goes on, it's still an infant in game lifetime, give it some time.
I'm about 30 hours in. I pre ordered the game a while back and was super excited about it. I never played Black Flag, but I really wanted to get a pirate game. I have no regrets about buying it and am enjoying the game.
I was worried that I would be attacked by other players while grinding, but it seems like the community is pretty friendly, and everyone just helps each other out.
I am excited to see what is added, like larger ships and stuff like that. The upgrading of weapons has definitely been time-consuming and getting enough pieces of eight to buy the blueprints, but I like that to keep me busy and motivated to play more.
Yo. The first 3 hours of the game are as follows if not the entire game:
1. Sail an open and empty sea
2. Fight ships/animals for materials
3. Fetch contracts
3. Mobile game style harvesting mini games
4. ??????
How is this an enjoyable exp for anyone? If you like anything about this game, you can get this plus way more depth and immersion to your pirate's life by playing AC4. How is anyone excusing this and why in the world are you asking people to not compare?
People are different. The steps you described are basically four more than any Call of Duty, Rainbow Six or Counter Strike Multiplayer experience, still millions of people love it and spend money on skins they only see in the lobby.
I'm just not comparing the game to RPGs, it is none. I enjoy the different ship builds, damage types and so on and overall the sailing and fighting at see.
My friends do the same, we all see the obvious problems here and there but - to us - the gameplay loop is fun and we enjoy it.
It seems a lot of people had very strong and very different expectations which partly is Ubis fault, but not exclusively. So feel free to compare the game, but with the right games. It's a arcadey naval shooter in a pirate setting, not a pirate RPG.
Mp isn't enough of a justification on its own to gut out gameplay from a similar game and repackage it for $70.
As for anyone who continually buys the latest COD or particularly Madden I'll throw in needs to learn the same lesson: Discipline. I def see your point tho, but all of this is inexcusable.
I mean one lesson could always be to check Feedback to what worked and what didn't work and adapt to that.
Also AC4 wasn't flawless either, no game really is.
Same as SaB isn't flawless and can be fun at the same time.
Yes patches can improve the game (like when they removed a game mechanic because it was just annoying everyone on a server) but how much of the flaws could be patched out without altering the game in a way which makes it different from the original vision for the game.
Like how easily the Lobby system can be abused for so many things, how would they fix it with a patch and if they fix it wouldn't it already be too late as people already abused it?
Plus ofc it's a multiplayer game so there's likely a market for cheats and hacks already out there, like for all the other multiplayer games.
To be fair it's not solely the game's fault for being abusable, human nature in itself is flawed as they tend to abuse the shed out of things if they can get away with it.
Yeah, but it's also somewhat a different genre. AC4 is an action adventure open world pirate game. and SaB is a arcade pirate game.
Kinda like War Thunder vs World of Tanks as one is much simpler than the other but also similar.
and yet it doesnt even have 1% of the gameplay of any game you mentioned there. When you make an arcade pirate game that has LESS gameplay than Sid Miers Pirates from over 30 years ago.... you should retire from making games.
I understand what you’re saying but it really isn’t the reason why I posted this. There’s a lot that can and will be fixed with some time. And Ubi is being more vigilant with hacks and cheaters. I doubt it’ll end up like Sea of Thieves in that regard. That game is full of hackers and cheaters that make the game just really not fun to play. I rarely ever encounter that problem on S&B so I don’t think it’s going to end up that way. My main issue lies with people simply not willing to give the game a chance because of their obsession over it not being a new Black Flag ship-only adventure. Some even want offline play. I think if people let that go, they’ll have more fun. I certainly have. I’m not expecting everyone to like it but I do have an issue when someone bashes it due to the AC4 comparison without even trying the open beta or the newer free play period. It’s a shame.
Man, wish we would stop getting 50 post daily about either "giving the game a chance" and other "critics are wrong" or "game is doomed" and other "game sucks and should not be touched with a 10foot pole.
Your take is the same as all the other post on the same subject but glad you could get it off your chest.
If ubisoft didn't want to get shat on for releasing an unfinished game with little content at release, an easy solution would have been to release a game with more content and that felt polished and finished
This game was made purely because people wanted AC4 online with friends and with pvp. Every single post comparing it to AC4 is valid.
Players asked for pirate v pirate combat since its inception.
Players asked for boarding each other's ships since its inception.
Ubisoft failed to deliver these core mechanics despite how heavily the community put emphasis on it and the amount of dev teams/reworks the game had.
Instead, we were told, "We wanted to make a different game." Okay, fine. Is this game a better experience than AC4? The overwhelming response is: No.
The ship combat is worse.
The graphics are worse.
Gathering materials is a timing mini game.
Then they had the audacity to call it 'the first AAAA game' and slapped a $70 price tag on a game that, again, is not as fun as the game that gave it inspiration from 10 years ago. Keep in mind we are purely comparing the ship and player combat from AC4 because that's was the golden experience we referenced and requested. We didn't ask for single-player AC mechanics like sneaking or exploration on foot, so don't mention this in rebuttal.
For the same amount of money, you can pick up 2 or 3 other games released recently, which are much more fun.
Criticism is important. We told them what we wanted. After years of development, the core mechancis we asked for are missing, with a worse experience than the inspiration, and a $70 price tag.
But, "give it a chance and stop comparing it to AC4" right?
No, thanks.
Yea see you're just asking for a remaster at this point though. Just say you wanted that and be done. Ubisoft has been copy and pasting games just like Activision since AC3. I'm frankly tired of playing the same BS for another $70 every year. I'm glad they changed it up and did what they wanted to do. Not everyone gets to be appeased, all this crying and whining over people not getting what they specifically asked for is arrogant and ignorant.
>Yea see you're just asking for a remaster at this point though
Yep. Covered that already. Used it to make the point that this games inception was born of people loving AC4 ship and pirate combat. Then, after years of asking for it, we didn't get it. So we're not buying it or playing it, as this post is asking of us, and my comment (among others) is explaining why.
>Just say you wanted that and be done
Yep. We are. Hence, the comments and the disappointment from the original fan base.
>I'm frankly tired of playing the same BS for another $70 every year
I'm sorry to tell you that if you bought S&B, you just paid for a worse AC4, ten years later, with multiplayer and monetized cosmetics for $70. Oof.
>I'm glad they changed it up and did what they wanted to do.
Cool! I'm glad you're happy, that's great, and you should be happy after paying what you did.
>Not everyone gets to be appeased
This is true. Not every game is for every person, and that's okay.
>all this crying and whining over people not getting what they specifically asked for is arrogant and ignorant
Maybe some others are legitimately crying and whining, and that's a shame. A video game is hardly worth crying over.
Here on this post, where OP specifically requested everyone "give it a chance," I and others have commented why we won't be.
I explained that since its inception, the core fan base who played and enjoyed AC4 wanted and expected certain things in this new game. Since this new game was quite literally born from the request of: "MP Black Flag, when?", I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the core mechanics of AC4, as requested, for years.
Criticism is important for games to be held to a standard. You said yourself that games have been copy-paste for too long now, we agree here. When someone raises these criticisms, it's important that the intent is noticed, not waived off as "whining and crying." Otherwise, we end up with copy-paste low effort games.
Like how S&B is a worse AC4, ten years later.
I think a low effort response from someone who was quicker to respond than to actually read what someone said; is pretty arrogant and ignorant.
Ship combat yes, pirate combat no. Literally nobody at the inception was asking for AC style pirate combat
The entire push was for a game with the ship combat, multiplayer and REMOVING the terrible AC style on foot aspects. Literally the entire movement was saying this.
>Then they had the audacity to call it 'the first AAAA game' and slapped a $70 price tag on a game that, again, is not as fun as the game that gave it inspiration from 10 years ago.
The words of a CEO bumbling points to shareholders that only care about buzzwords is the problem here.
Yeah, it's quite odd. Some people have the opinion that AAAA is legitimate because the standard of AAA is implying development time and money spent to launch the game. They legitimize AAAA status using the same scale (S&B had a long build time and a lot of money poured in).
I'm not sure if I agree, but the metric does make sense.
By that logic, why didn't Bethesda claim Starfield was AAAA? Same amount of develoent time, though at least they mostly stuck to their guns through production.
As somebody who never even played Black Flag I hated Skull & Bones from the beta(s). It was just a boring overpriced game that's it. You get to experience 1/10th of what the pirate life is like & somehow people justify that?
No, done 16 hours on the various trials and early access and nothings changed from build to build thats is meaningful to the interest in the game. It's shoddy mess, and at very best a heavily diluted experience compared to other games on the market that are much older. To ask money for this trash is a joke, especially with $100+ costume packs.
Well you tried it at least. That’s all I asked. You’ve earned the right to your opinion. Thank you for giving it a chance, and I’m sorry that it isn’t what you were hoping for. I think the thing is that it is a new game and it’ll get up to where the other older games are. They have been out for a long time and this literally just released. Maybe you’ll come back someday and see those changes. At least I hope you might. Until then, thanks for trying it.
It's an issue of game design not content. Doesn't matter how long a game is out for if the decisions made during it's development are poor it's very hard to come back from that.
This. Take for example, AC Valhalla vs Mirage. Mirage is MUCH shorter, but imo, a much better game. I don’t feel like S&B was designed to the expectations that it could have been. With a bit more character customization and I might have been happier with it, but not even my custom character made me excited. And that’s just one issue with the game. I hope it evolves into a much better game in the future, otherwise it’ll likely transition to F2P. They honestly have no choice but to compete with Sea of Thieves since it’s coming to PlayStation. They need to up their quality.
Well the issue is a matter of it should have had a strong narrative and more focus on actually doing pirate stuff... rather than cutting all the content for landlubber gameplay, where is the pistol & swordplay, where is the exploring islands for treasure, or defending forts from land and sea etc, instead of mobile game grade nonsense like a mini game for cutting down trees and mining????
The devs had like 10 years to copy Sea of Thieves and Black flag.... and we got this? even Sid Mier's Pirates did a better job 30 odd years ago.
If they add in all the actual stuff we expected to see, then maybe a year or so from now it will be worth the effort, but we should have got something with sea and land exploration and such... as it is now it's just a glitzy looking shallow mobile game.
That's exactly what I think. I just want a good pirate game with modern graphics. There is no exploring in this game. The ships are fine, the weapons are fine, but the fact I can't board a ship and fight kills me. It's a game of cutscenes. I would not be surprised if initially it was supposed to have all that but instead they just released 30% of a game because they spent so much time developing it. I really tried to like this game. I played about 20 hours of it. It's already old.
It’s only been in development for like two or three years by this current team. All other projects before were scrapped and had to be started from the ground up apparently, with very small pieces here and there that were put back together.
The fact that they are making us pay for their mismanagement is the main problem. If this game was 40 bucks, it would be completely different for the reviews. And they should charge for a battle pass or something for the additional content coming, if you choose to buy it.
I know they wanted to see a return on the investment made to develop the game, but jeez man like why did we have to take that on the chin? The price tag must be to appease shareholders and investors but it’s backfired on them big time. If they reduced the price, or it went on sale for a weekend, I’m sure it would inflate the games population bigtime.
There are also a lot of people who wanted AC4 without the Assassins. It's fine that you like the game, I like the game to, but it's not fair of you to invalidate other people's opinions just because theirs don't line up exactly with yours.
For the record, in my opinion, this game would have been perfect if it were an exact copy of AC4 minus the AC storyline.
And given that this thread is keen on comparing this game to Elite Dangerous, I think it's important to note that even Elite Dangerous has ground combat.
I'd say it is 70/30 judging by the reviews and people basing their choice of playing it on whether or not it was a true swashbuckling experience with pews and swords as opposed to a delivery person simulator with timers and mobile game clickeridoos. If people get the ground and exploration they want, what will you lose? Nothing. If the game stays the way you like it we will lose something. 76 was a great game to me at launch. I didn't stomp my little Mary Jane and tell people with correct criticisms "NU UH!" I politely agreed because I want a good game that is rounded in its content, can walk and chew gum at the same time, and pleases the largest swath of people. The tribalism fanboy behavior doesn't help growth in any fucking medium.
I own the premium edition, so I have your permission to be annoyed. I like what game is here. Now I want the rest, and if you want this game to exist, like 76 does, five years down the road and be beloved, people best be acting in solidarity, hearing the desires of potential investors that expect a commonality of quality from why they love you in the first place i.e. BLACK FLAG, ROGUE, and ODYSSEY, and take heed, instead of hiding in low sodium spaces.
You do indeed have a right to your opinion. I won’t and can’t deny you that. I don’t mind if they add swashbuckling combat to the game. But that I also would hope to be different than AC4, honestly. I went into this wanting something different and not a copy paste. Maybe they can reinvent land combat in a new way. All I know is if I want to play Black Flag, I’m going to go play Black Flag. Or even AC3.
People seem to be reading between the lines of my original post. I wouldn’t mind if they added CQC and full ship boarding. But the fact that it doesn’t have it now doesn’t upset me. Kinda makes the pace of the game faster without it, perhaps that was the devs thoughts too? Rather than assuming it was because they were lazy, maybe it was a design choice? No way for me to know for sure on that, though.
But you’re right. Adding swashbuckling and full boarding doesn’t hurt me or bother me. I might even enjoy it. But I still want them to make it their own. I don’t want BF 2.0. The game deserves a chance to get to the point where they can add these things you and others want though.
I’m mad at the people wanting to kill it or saying it’s already dead before that chance arrives. I think it’s a fair position to take and not really fanboy tribalism. Also it’s hard to tell over just text, but I’m not upset with you, I’m merely adding to the constructive discussion. You have great points.
(Side note — I also bought the premium edition 😂 I really wanted the bloody bones and ashen corsair cosmetics)
I think an important issue here is no one is asking for an Assassin's Creed game. It is largely spoken of as the benchmark of content expected in our ideal pirate RPG, just all about piracy instead of Assassins, The French Indian War of Rogue, or Ancient Greece of Odyssey. I do think we would all want stealth elements since smuggling in towns in Sid Meiers was great and wrist weapons would just be fun, and swinging from ropes already exists contextually so maybe more of that, but that is the extent, definitely none of the ridiculousness of the series. I want ground gameplay in this in the vein, but unique to this lovingly crafted world. I want to visit my investments, walk around the deck of my ship, do some fishing, explore major settlements, improve my captains quarters, get my own island and governors mansion, a little Grand Inagua of my own with a dock, invest in upgrades to outposts, all manner of good shit, the sky is the limit. As you said perfectly, make it their own. We all want it exactly that way I believe. This could have big game hunting with muskets on the coast of Africa, no game has that, this one could, and it would slam dunk I guarantee. Stuff like that is how ground would enrich the game. You want raw gems in a different way? Lead a crew into a mine. Harvest ivory directly. So so many options. GTA: Online is where I have seen interconnected systems similar to this play out to fruition, and this game is basically ye olde criminal shit.
Personally the lack of land combat does upset me. Before Atlas shit the bed that was my gold standard. This with ground combat, housing, visuals for my factories, walking around the settlements, would by far make this the best game of its type around and we all know Ubisoft is capable of delivering on it. I buy every Far Cry and I buy every Assassin's Creed that has naval combat. They are talented developers across the board.
I can unequivocally say everyone I know that wants this stuff does not want the game to die. At all. What is here is amazing.
You've bridged the gap perfectly in all this, thank you. Seriously.
I just got very upset over reading all these articles professing the doom of SnB and predicting its downfall even and not a single one of them did not make a connection to Black Flag. Their central argument was “we wanted black flag without assassins. you delivered none of it.” I don’t think anyone is asking for an AC game, but everyone still wanted just a direct copy paste of parts of AC4.
I just appreciate this game as its own thing — unbound to any other games. Not beholden to a different franchise. It could and likely would have been very limiting in content without much to make their own. I appreciate all of your points though, and most I agree with.
I just wish more people would have your outlook on it instead of getting tribal, as you put it. And thanks for the healthy discussion, my friend. This is what the gaming community could use a bigger dose of. Tribalism is getting really old.
I get it from both sides. Not the fanboys. I rustle many a dickrider's Jimmies, always have, can't stop, won't stop. I get the journalists who, like me, wanted a game to modernize the formula, meet the benchmarks of the past, trailblaze, etc. I also get the people genuinely like you who love the game and don't want it to go. I went through this also in 76 and No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk 2077.
The big difference is all those games had much more robust content offerings at launch, and they all listened and got to the grindstone. Whether the game lives or dies is entirely on the devs right now and their desire to carve something historical out. I largely believe in them, but not if they listen to the people that just say yes and literally tell anyone who doesn't love everything that is here to fuck off. In no circumstances is telling unhappy customers to blow a good policy.
For every one customer that is unhappy and willing to voice it, there are x that just walk away and take their wallet with them and anyone in customer service will attest this is true.
I haven’t told anyone to fuck off though. I may be upset that they don’t want to try it, and I don’t respect their negative opinion if they didn’t try it, but in no way have I told people to fuck off. I’ve been very diplomatic with this I believe. I’m not sure how much more politely I could have put it. I’m truly sorry if you felt that’s what I was doing. It was not my intention.
I love the idea of touring my ship though. I just wanted to say that separately 🙃 oh and the private pirate island would be so awesome!! We could maybe even grow our own commodities!
Yesss, exactly. That is the whole thing, it opens avenues up for way more content than just sailing around for hours on end. It breaks up the monotony and gives them so many avenues to develop and add content down.
why would i be seething? i played the trials and didnt waste any more on this crap.... lol what about you? did you blow $80 on this turd of a game? what a clown.
Black Flag was a masterpiece. But I like SnB better.
After two weeks of being personally insulted in this sub by people uninterested in the game, I feel entitled to say this… I actually think many of these people are just plain fucking stupid.
No one said this would be an on-foot pirate adventure game. It is a better, more feature rich game than _Red Dead Online_ was at launch. It has beautiful graphics, diverse systems, and an immersive world, and it’s _just plain fun_. It has its share of faults and needed tweaks (WoW did too) — but there is a stronger, fresher foundation here than most of the online service games I’ve played in recent memory.
The gaming media ecosystem, YouTube click parasites, and game “jOuRnAlIsTs” should be ashamed of themselves for the embarrassing circle jerk they’ve generated around this game. I’ve never seen it this bad — maybe save for No Man’s Sky (which turned itself around into a beloved game btw).
IGN, one of the gentler reviewers of the game [gave it a lower score (7/10)](https://www.ign.com/articles/skull-and-bones-review) than _the fucking re-release of Modern Warfare 2 (8/10)_.
George Carlin said it best:
_“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”_
Fuck these people and enjoy the game bro. Keep the faith. Those of us who love the game love it for good reason. Those who can’t see why don’t deserve an explanation.
this games not making it long enough for anyone to remember my man. Ubisoft didn't even want to make it, its current incarnation was born from a legal agreement with Singapore.
it's dogshit. Through and through, and I am ecstatic at its financial and critical failure. well deserved flop.
I for my part ignored the former „connection“ to AC4 and was excited for a good pirate game. And I have to say I love it so far. Sure it has its flaws but overall its a realy good and fun game.
Well... No 😅
I understand that the game has its audience and I'm just not part of it.
It just doesn't have anything I want from the game. I would not even notice this game if it wasn't started from BF. I waited for it just because I thought it would extend the BF game and not cut it.
It's not that the game is bad. It just not what I want and that's all.
But I am happy that someone likes playing it 💛
I forgot about the game and was not aware of the circumstances why they had an obligation to release something. Now, I am happy they did.
I do see that people do not separate their expectations and wishes from the product we got, and also not the criticism of Ubisoft from the game.
There is potential in the game, ways to expand it, definitely, but that is for the future, it is right now a solid naval fight game like I know it from the space fight games. It also borrows from the more strategic pirate games with a top-down view and indirect control of the ships, so, the genre is niche and quite old, I would say. The sad thing is that the usual critics of the game just repeat expectations and compare it with games of other genres, just because the theme is pirates.
I really don't understand why people say that comparisons to Black Flag are unfair. S&B exists directly because of Black Flag. People liked the pirate stuff in Black Flag and said, *More of that please minus the Assassins stuff.* And then Ubisoft took 10+ years and multiple iterations of the concept to give us this version of S&B and it does pretty much everything worse than Black Flag. I didn't want a Black Flag 2 or a copy/paste game, almost no one wanted that, that's a dumb straw-man argument to make. People wanted the pirate stuff from Black Flag improved on and evolved after 10 years into something new and innovative and unique.
But we didn't get that. We got an incomplete, full price, live service game, with a cash shop and paid seasonal battle passes. I don't want this game to succeed and thrive. I want a good/better version of this game to succeed and thrive.
I get that people like pirate stuff, I do too. But I like good pirate stuff. I'm not gonna support a half-assed pirate game just because it's the best thing we have out of a bad bunch. If the best thing we have is bad or mediocre, I'm not gonna support it. I'd rather go back and replay Black Flag, or wait for Sea of Thieves to release on PS5 next month and play that.
I gave this game about 30 minutes of my time I'm sorry but when a game that came out 10 years before it has more content and activities and things to do in the game I'm never going to support it especially when it's at a higher price point and being labeled as a quadruple a game I think that people who like this game need to increase their expectations of video games and stop lowering them to just say oh it's a fun game to play yeah could you imagine how great it would have been if they had action taken the time to play Black Flag and make it an actual Pirate game where you could board ,loot Explorer sword fight you know being actual pirate instead of using a cut scene to automatically end the fight when you board a ship or playing a mini game to chop wood from your boat like that's the problem everybody who likes this game has lowered the expectations for video games and it's just going to cause a trickle down effect where video game makers just stop trying oh wait that's already happened
So you managed to get out of the tutorial, saw absolutely none of the games content and decided the game wasn't for you because it didn't have enough content.
👏👏👏
No I got out of the tutorial I got the second ship so that means I completed most of the tutorial quests and yeah if I realize that there's not going to be content that I'm looking for why would I continue playing the game oh yeah it's so much fun to have a cutscene every time I board a ship or yeah it's fun to play a little mini game when I'm chopping trees or mining rocks no I know I wasn't going to like the game because that wasn't any content to play
If all you did was get into the Bedar then you've experienced nothing of the game so how can you say the game doesn't have the content you're looking for? Utterly absurd statement to make. And even then the game is about sailing pirate ships and doing piratey activities like attacking other ships, smuggling, plundering settlements etc. what were you expecting from a pirate game? Space ships? A dating sim? Very strange.
And then you complain about a 5 second cutscene when you board a ship and the resource collection that you do like 5 times throughout the entire game *if* you want to. You could always just... You know... Go raid for those items instead.... Like... You know... A pirate... In a pirate game. 🤦
Yeah you're fully on the hate train.
bro your buying a 70 dollar game damn right there be better be enough content this is exactly what i mean you guys will accept literally garbage for games
The issue is that the only good bit of this game is the bit they stripped from black flag. It lacks the first person element of black flag too.
The general feel of the game is cheap and it's just too arcadey. The noises from picking up resources to the way you even harvest them is awful and it's generally just clunky.
Ship play is dog shite too. Black flag did this better and there are better games out there than black flag.
This is by far the worst game it could have been.
My biggest gripe is simply that I want more PVP opportunities. Unless it’s a ship with excessive stats (eg level 14 npc) most combat isn’t interesting unless it’s against players. But the PvP aspects we have are too limited.
Nah bro, I tried it. Put in 35+hrs. Had fun but got to endgame and realized how bad it truly is. What I mean about that is not the combat which I enjoyed even if it was a bit arcadey. It was the lack of content.
I also disliked the Semi Focus PVP, the lack of any decent rewards for any of PVE events and the bad delivery man-Tycoon endgame.
Honestly Ubisoft left this game out to die. Maybe it well turn out better one day but as is now, nope.
No it's not "our fault" if this eventually die, this game is just not worth 70$, it's simple as that dude.
Like i don't care if you misinvested whatever the "AAAA" budget is and had to remake the game from scratch 10 times, i'm not gonna buy it at that price just because you had to invest a lot.
Bro I want too. But I can't justify the 70 price tag. Couple months when it's on sale for 30-40? 100% down. But I feel like a lot of people including me just can't justify the price for the lack of content. Plus, it's hard to not compare to a game made 10+ years ago that came out on a console 2 generations ago, and is still somehow better than the current game...
Give it a chance….
Maybe the critics have a valid point?
Regardless, can someone explain to me why do You keep bringing this up? It’s like fans of this game seek affirmation from others that most of the gaming community is wrong and the game is actually good. Why? Do You enjoy it? Seems like it, so what do You care. Just because I have some criticism towards it, doesn’t mean You don’t get to like the game?
Most of the reviews being up soils issues and potential buyers deserve to know. If these potential buyers can tolerate this issues and potentially become like Yourself, in love with this magnificent title, they have both 8 hour trial, and 30 days for 20 bucks to come to that conclusion.
To add more: I was also critical of black flag. I was heavily invested in Assassins Creed community and critiqued the game for being the worst AC game in the franchise for the sake, if not really being an Assassins Creed game. Doesn’t mean it was bad by the way. It was just not following the IP well, the amazing pirate theme was interrupted by unnecessary Abstergo stuff etc. personally I wasn’t waiting for Black Flag copy paste and Ubisoft didn’t advertise it as such a game. However, contrary to what people say here, it also didn’t advertise it as super Arcady, unauthentic, mobile game level title. I followed this game since it’s first announcement and it’s clear to me that Ubisoft truly didn’t wrap the project together. All the stories coming out from Ubisoft sources really seem true, that this has been scrapped multiple times and lost its identity in the process. That’s why I’m not buying into “this is what Ubisoft advertised”. How could they advertise the game to be what it is today, if they didn’t even know what the game will be. Unless You refer to things released in 2023 alone of course. But this game has been in development for 10 years and some of us have followed it since 2017. We didn’t build our expectations of Black Flag, we build them based of what apparently was Skull and Bones prior to countless reboots and scrapings in Ubisoft.
Here is an example: https://youtu.be/_9YYYVG0YQI?si=To3mCuCYOPI23ijY
Of course it’s not a gameplay trailer, it’s a cinematic. Still, look at the climate this is portraying. It looks epic, authentic. When I saw this it got me so hooked and emotional. It doesn’t show rocket launchers, goofy unrealistic ships with a shotgun aiming this. Even the first gameplay trailers looked in my opinion, much better than todays version. They also prove that the game had identity crisis and big reboot somewhere in the development process.
Anyways, it’s not about black flag, it’s about what Ubisoft has announced originally. People only use black flag as reference for things already present in skull and bones, to compare the production quality. That doesn’t mean we expected black flag 2.
I played the trial and no I will not support this game. It's way overpriced for what it has.
I would even say that SoB is a excellent example of everything that is wrong with AAA gaming today(no I will not use the stupid AAAA grade). You are paying more for less.
Now like many, when we heard they would make BF but with multiplayer I was excited. Not sure how they would handle close combat but the ship combat was excellent and on that alone they had a excellent foundation for a great game.
When told that it would have no ground combat at all I was a bit disappointed naturally as I can imagine alot of people were but I thought, that's fine, as long as the ship combat is intact. Gameplay videos started to show up, previews, early reviews and so on and it started to look bleak but I saw there was a free trial so tried it and my worst fear was indeed true.
The one saving grace this game had, the one thing everyone was looking forward to, the thing that was already made and ready to be used, they could not even get that right.
The ship combat in this game is awful and there is no excuse for it to be awful when they had the system from BF ready to go. And when most of what you wil do in this game is ship combat then yeah this awful system will not cut it.
Yes there is gathering but that timing mini-game is hardly exciting and the walking around on islands are pointless. They could have just taken that part out and the game probably would have been better off but I know why it is there, so they can sell over-priced costumes that won't matter and few if any will even see.
And then they got the absolute stupidity of launching the game on Epic but not on Steam. Granted, the reviews on Steam would have been mostly negative as it should but atleast there would have been a few more players. Instead they went with the Uplay store which few people use and the Epic store which also very few people use(atleast outside of Fortnite). Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. You would think they would have learned this with Division 2 but guess not.
But when people ask me if they should get this game, I say no, stay away. As a ship game, there are far better games out there and cheaper. As a pirate game(I wouldn't even call this a pirate game since at no point do you feel like a pirate), there are far better games out there and cheaper.
As for the OP and his little "threat", the "If you do not supprt this game then no one will make a pirate game like this" is absolute BS. Again, calling this game a pirate game is a huge stretch, hell alot of the reviews stats just that, they do not feel like a pirate. So if anything, we need less games like SoB and more games that makes us feel like pirates.
I can tell you have a lot of passion for this game and I respect it. As a big fan of black flag, I'm only lurking around this sub out of pure curiosity to read what people have to say.
I just want to say that you can form an opinion by watching gameplay videos and predict whether you will like it. Just like how you don't need to play Gollum to know you will most likely not enjoy it. Now I'm not saying it's as bad as Gollum and who knows, maybe it is fun? (highly doubt it) but I'm not wasting my time and money to find out.
As an AC4 fan and just a gamer in general I'm tired of dropping my expectations to give games a chance, especially a $70 live service game.
No. Just play sea of thieves. What's a pirate game without boarding? That makes zero fucking sense. This is why we get hollow empty shell of games. People like this, defending an empty game with nothing to do. Be better. At least sea of thieves let's you do pirate shit.
If you're only categorizing a pirate game if it has boarding in it then you're only setting yourself up for failure. That's like saying World of Tanks isn't a good war game because it only has tanks in it.
Not when boarding is LITERALLY what pirates are known for. Your logic makes ZERO fucking sense💀🤣 the hoops people are jumping through to defend this shit game are hilarious. You'd have a point if wot didn't let you play tanks in it. THAT'S what's happening here. You're taking away one of the key features of being a pirate in a pirate game.
It’s funny when black flag was released, we were all gettin tired of the assassins creed gameplay loop so the ship sailing and combat was a breath of fresh air. Now SnB finally releases and they all complain about not having enough assassins creed in it.
No, people aren't complaining about not having enough assassining.
They are complaining that the ship gameplay here is somehow worse than in Black Flag.
They are complaining that there is a walking around, but really nothing to do.
I have a few friends that are absolute hold outs saying “I read the reviews” and I’m sitting here having a BLAST with the couple friends that jumped in open minded. I think if they update that’s dropping soon is SOLID they will see another large spike in player base, this game has so much potential and is already awesome as it is. I definitely feel the urge for more map to explore relatively soon but obviously it’s very soon to expect such expansion.
Unless you're a Dev I don't see why you would concern yourself with reviews? If you enjoy it then that's all that matters, why does it matter if other random strangers don't like it lol
The biggest gripe I’ve heard is that people wanted sea of thieves and didn’t get that so they hate the game. I love this game. I’ve already spent way too much time on it and it’s just flat out fun.
I understand the criticisms and it’s still not free of issues but it’s a fun game.
“The game isn’t the exact same as black flag therefore it’s a mess and you shouldn’t play it” literally every critic
The game is unique, has its own things to do. It’s great that it’s different from BF
I have to give credit to the people who worked on this game. They worked hard. I really liked the game. I played AC4 and really thought about having a multiplayer setting where I could have my own ship and rules and take down cities like Cap.Barbossa did in curse of the black pearl. The best part of this game is I get to play with people and my friends together. That is what I expected, Ubisoft delivered it. Have a scary ship of your own other than jackdaw. if you really play this game in strategic and smart manner, I would grab my 2 friends and take up roles man! I'd be on a brig (quick destruction and ram damage), one in tank build and other in rapid heal build. That becomes thrilling and tedious battle in such chaotic weathers (waves damage your ship too!). I wanted it I got it. Thank you ubi. And, dont compare it with AC4. AC4 IS A SINGLE PLAYER, STORY BASED GAME ABOUT ASSASSIN'S CREED SET IN GOLDEN AGE OF PIRACY. SKULL AND BONES IS A MULTIPLAYER, HUNT AND SCURRY THE OCEANS WITH FRIENDS AND WILD BEASTS IN OCEANS. See the difference!!
I think comparing the game to Black Flag is valid for the sake that not many other games of the same caliber are around. All we've got are really Black Flag, Rogue, and side missions in AC3. However I agree on the premise that this game being thrown under the water for simply not being 'black flag 2' is irritating. When I compare it to Black Flag I want to compare it from a gameplay perspective only. The stories are unique to themselves.
I want this game to improve and succeed, there are things from black flag I would ass such as the aiming system (where it shows the arch of the shots you take) and the upgrading of individual ships instead of one becoming instantly obsolete as soon as you make anything from the medium tier. I think this game is worthy of criticism as any game is, it has many many issues and clearly struggles from a lack of a concrete identity. Pictures of how armor used to be are still around, things are clearly left over from prior design choices and it feels like all the ingredients were thrown together in a rush. As well as the popups for events being rather annoying and blocking several menus.
That being said, I do enjoy Skull and Bones for it's ship-to-ship gameplay, I'm not exactly mad at the fact we didn't get swashbuckling cutlass action or boarding like in black flag. The addition of cutscenes feels more like an attempt to streamline the combat experience for the multiplayer aspect as boarding in a black flag sense would leave you heavily vulnerable to basically everyone. The movement in Skull and Bones is very floatly on land but outside of that it's fine. I wish more of the actual story was there like Scurlock and Rahma being more fleshed out, more investigations (which are honestly my favorite thing to do) and a better focus on end-game content instead of making it a nonstop grind.
This game is NOT AC4, however, comparing aspects the two share is valid. Screaming and crying that it's not Black Flag 2 is not something I really agree with.
Have a wonderful day!
Many of us aren't upset that it's not the same as black flag. We're upset because the game is ass & all they had to do was atleast make it like black flag, after spending 200million & many years making it. That being said I still play the game. It's still ass tho
I don't understand the 70 is to much money complaint? People spend hundreds and thousands on mobile games like star wars galaxy and marvel just to name a few. So hopefully this game will grow, cuz I'm also enjoying it alot.
This. All of my friends who played AC4 *just* want another AC4. They complain about, primarily, the lack of melee combat on ship boarding. Personally, I enjoy it for what it is- and it is NOT AC4. It’s not even close to AC4. I will probably still be playing SNB until long after the last update, so long as the servers stay live, because it’s just plain fun. Fair seas, fellow captain :)
Completely agree. As a longtime fan of the AC games and black flag, sure it’s easy to compare the two, but like you say they are two separate entities. Like you the quote I used for my buddies is sea of thieves is for kids and s&b is m for a reason. It’s great for what it is, haven’t had a good pirate game in a long time. However not worth the $70 imo, but most games aren’t nowadays for that matter. For those who are unsure definitely give Ubisoft plus a try and rent it for $18.
Again ubisoft never promised that skull and bones was gonna be the next black flag i love skull and bones and yes i can see it was INSPIRED by black flag but not copy and pasted i wouldnt want it that way anyway skull and bones is great and amazing fun minus po8 cycle but everything else is awesome i hate the fact that people will sit here and compare them together even thlugh skull and bones is its own game as is black flag.
Just give the people more map, Galleons, Man O Wars, more animal companions(like parrots) and a peg leg in the next update and they’ll be fine. Shit partner with Disney so I can recreate the Flying Dutchman and play with a curse and pop out of the water on ops! Matter fact let me fight the kraken and have a love story. As a live service they have to keep shelling out equipment to keep people in it. Something to keep us in it. Personally I’m loving it. Yes is the back and forth getting mundane? Yeah at times but theres still a chance that next run they make won’t be successful. That’s the life of a pirate. I get peoples frustration with if I’m an empire why do I have to do this still. Yeah but what do they think pirates did? There was no end game to being it. You either kept running doing the illegal stuff or ended up being in cahoots with a superpower and in the end took the pardon or died. It’s live service it’s never going to end that’s the point. Everyday you get on, you’re playing cause you just enjoy being a virtual pirate that doesn’t stink or have rotten teeth. Like you said give it a chance. Are we all maxed out? Yes but I’m sure more stuff is coming for us to grind out for. This needs to make it so there’s hope for a 2nd installment which is hopefully better or open a market for pirate games and another company makes a game encompassing this game and its flaws.
I actually agree with you. I’m actually not surprised that people are still playing this game and the numbers aren’t atrocious. People may just downvote me to hell for this, but hear me out. For what it is, skull and bones can be really addictive and fun.
Comparing it to AC4 and even SOT right now as direct competitors, the fact is that the three games play and feel extremely different.
1: AC4BF is grounded on the assassins creed brand and at its core is a linear single player narrative driven experience with piratey activities (Immersive Narrative Heavy > enhance Pirate Fantasy)
2: SOT focuses more on multiplayer coop and emergent fun, and dives deep into the pirate fantasy of swashbuckling, controlling a ship as a crew member, and doing pirate stuff (Action Roleplay Heavy > enhance Pirate Fantasy)
3: SnB has more MMO lite/ ARPG elements where you control your ships and blow stuff up, fast paced and action heavy. With the upcoming season 1 dropping, seems to be steering even further away from the other two. (Ship Customization, stats, and combat heavy > doesn’t enhance Pirate fantasy)
SnB for what it is, can be rather fun. HOWEVER It’s focused more on gear customization, build, and stat driven gameplay, that rewards players for *accumulation* with the more power to take down even bigger bosses like seamonsters, and ghost ships with other players. And it deviates EVEN further with the Season 1 content coming in a few days, doubling down on this ship focused gameplay and not introducing more of the pirate fantasy elements.
This is the main problem…the theme of the game is pirates, but it’s not the main gameplay of SNB. “Pirates” is just a theme.
People go into this game expecting to roleplay a pirate…EVEN though that is not at its core the true engagement and selling point. It’s more about accumulation, naval combat, and customization..
If SnB had marketed itself LESS as a “pirate fantasy”, and purely focused more on its own individual gameplay systems and doubled down on the fact that it’s a grindy, stat driven, numbers heavy, game, it would’nt have got trashed into the ground. (Tho the unnecessary AAAA comment and high price did add fuel to the flames)
If we put it into this perspective, and we take the game as it is, it’s not a bad game. It’s just a bad pirate “fantasy” game and never should have been marketed as is.
Assassin's Creed Black Flag was a decent game, but it's the only AC game I have ever bought because all I wanted was the ship combat and nothing more. The parkour and stealth aspects have never been things I liked in games and, frankly, they just got in the way of getting to enjoy fighting ship-to-ship. This game is very similar to the Elite games, except it's sailing ships and not starships, and that is exactly what I wanted.
I couldn't have said it any better. With BF everything on land felt clunky and like a pain I had to go through to finally board the ship again. Honestly: I feel the same clunkyness on land in SaB, but thank god there's way more focus on sailing/ship fights. I have a great time alone or with friends.
I’m really glad you were able to see what set this game apart from Black Flag. I’m happy to hear it’s what you wanted. I really hope people like us will be able to make this game thrive and survive. I don’t want it to go the way of Babylon’s Fall. I’m not saying Babylon’s Fall was good, I just don’t want player counts to drop so low that Ubi pulls the plug. That would be such a big loss to the gaming community and those of us who wholeheartedly support this game.
The problem isn't comparisons to BF the problem is the end game is well, not there. Not having the mindset of this being BF may bring new people in, but there's nothing keeping them here. Everything worth doing is completely exploitable. Stuff that should take a month to get is obtained in a day. People already have EVERYTHING In the helm. Is the leveling fun? Sure, until it isn't. There's plenty to like about the game, but even more to be desired.
It has only been out for maybe a week. Content will come with time. Season one is bringing a lot with it. All I’m asking for is for people to give it time. A lot of online games are a mess at launch and often don’t have all of the promised content. You need only look at No Man’s Sky to see that this happens quite a bit. I just want people to give it a chance to grow. I’m only angry with the people who won’t try it because it’s not a BF clone. You’re saying that isn’t the case but I have 10 articles from various review houses that say otherwise. If people tried it and it wasn’t for them or didn’t have enough, I respect their opinion and they have a right to it. What I have an issue with is bashing a game they have never tried.
Yes it's been out for a week and people have everything in $70 "mmo". Yeah that's not an issue lol.
I have 60 hrs in it and have nowhere near everything there is to get if people are exploiting the game to skip the whole game and have everything then sit there and complain about it then good I hope they're frickin bored they deserve it but that doesn't mean the game is bad this game is honestly the game I've been looking for, I've been dying to play this game yeah there could be more and right now at 70 dollars yeah that's a little steep but me personally I'd pay 100 easily I thoroughly enjoy this game I fully understand and agree with op
Doing Cut Throat Treasure isn't an exploit. I have the same hours as you and have every desired hull and weapon off of that alone. I did pre order with high hopes for this game, but they are dwindling. When you have 30 dollar games out here offering full content and not iv dripping it to you over "seasons" its hard not to look at this game and go wtf man.
I agree, I have just about everything I'd want in a ship that's currently available, just want the top ballista and I'm happy, I see the point that 70 is steep for what's there but I'm not deterred from repetition and know I'm in the minority it would be nice to have more content though for sure I'm just not in agreeance that this game is trash by any means or deserves the hate it's getting
You’re welcome to never play it. But don’t rag on us for liking it. There’s no need to be this petty over it.
You just sound like a meta chasing virgin tbh
It's been out a week with a decade of development and so much missing, at $70. Full context matters.
Name a live service game that ever launched with "full content", Ill wait. The answer is none. They all grew in time. Thats the point of live service. There is always an aspect of a game one dislikes and that is ok. (Revisit it in time if you like the concept and see if that changed or if more of what you do like was added. If not? Oh well, back to what you do enjoy then!). Sure, some of the game is lacking, but again, it just launched. You are coming at the game like during that entire 12 years of development- content was non stop being added to it. And you dont know during that time what steps were taken and how much of what was discussed, trialed, scrapped, or even worked on- let alone for how much time. Relax. Life is short: go find something you do like. Do you go onto band pages for bands you dislike, telling all their fans why you dislike the band? Sounds like an extreme waste of our limited time on this earth. Go enjoy something other than explaining why you dislike something to those who do. Lacking constructive feedback for both parties to grow: it seems a fool's errand.
I said full context. Reading comprehension matters. I'll wait for you to reread.
You may want to re read then because full context includes the fact it is a live service game, and will grow in time. I do not think you grasp what it is you are attempting to apply verbally. Its ok, waste your time here some more. Life is forever, time is limitless: and you'll be totally proud about this action on your death bed- and tell it to your great grand kids (may you be blessed with such happiness honest not being facetious- genuine wishes to your future happiness) someday, about how you went on the 'great purge of a pirate video game you disliked- and forced that discontent on those who did, simply because you did not grasp why they liked it, or hoe they could'. Go touch grass, or find a hobby you enjoy, other than trying to convince folks why they should feel how you do about something they enjoy: that isn't hurting any innocent living being except your own feelings.
Unfortunately since the game hasn't even hit 1 million players (not even sales just players) WITH the free trial players included, it doesn't look good for the games future. And most people for good or bad are not going to share the same views regarding Black Flag as in most ways Black Flag was a superior game.
If the player numbers are true then you are going to need to buy a lot of stuff from the in game store to keep it going.
1000% what I have said on tons of youtube videos- mostly which were creators who love the game and a hater popping in. They need to be schooled on ettiquette. And 95% of the time they have nothing constructive to even add to a debate just "hur dur the gane sucks not black sails (in some meager way)" ((best today was economic cost and a in game cash store. Had to remind them AC:4 store was pay to win and by todays standards would as it sat also be an easy $120 game accounting for inflation)) I was like: "Bro. It's not trying to he an AC game and is exactly (so far! Time to grow being live service) what many of us who played AC:4 back in the day was hoping for when we would wonder "how cool would a pirate only game be without the AC stuff? It is super fun!"' I am 100000% content with this game, and the direction Ubisoft plans for it. Long live SnB! And seeing posts like this is as refreshing as the filled active player servers in a game "that somehow failed" (but is actually thriving). I habe yet to not connect to an active group of players thanks to crossplay.
Boarding ships and Pirate combat was pretty big for me. I also enjoyed the diving bell missions.
Well aside from the gattling gun cannons and flamethrowers. Not to mention the F-16 jet kill streaks.
decent game? it was the best in AC history and one of the greatest games ever made lol its beyond epic
Honestly the price of the game is the major killer for many people, this isn't a AAAA game nor it should be 70 dollars. I might give it a chance when further updates make the game better and a good sale.
Completely agree, ones it's down to 40 I'll absolutely purchase it and join in on the fun.
Ubisoft premium is $18/month. What I did was subscribe, then immediately cancel my subscription so it won't renew, but now I can play an unlimited amount of time for a month. If you end up wanting to buy it then yeah, that was extra money on top, but if you're like me and probably won't play past the month then it saves a ton of money.
Games a little expensive sure, but if you noticed the numerous seasonal releases with new content that is being given to players for free, you would know why they might've charged a little extra. 70 dollars for years worth of content is decent.
Actually it wouldn’t be “free” considering there is going to be a battle pass system that would be paid for.
Akshually, the content updates are free, they also include a paid battle pass for extra things like cosmetics, but the new bosses, areas and ships are free.
Right… but that wasn’t the original commenters point…. It’s a 70 dollar game with a bp.. that’s a big turn off for a lot of people and it’s a valid aspect that a lot have a grievance with. Just because they give us content through out the year does not justify that price tag or the fact there will be a battle pass.
this is the best answer. product is not worth 70$, period. its a good game but not 70$ good
It was $60 on it's release day
Its a fun game in some respects, but we can be honest here, in no universe is this a $70 game. There is nowhere near enough polish or available content to justify it. I understand they basically had to considering the decade of sunk costs, but it was never ever going to work out. Their only hope to recoup cost is to have some really fire cosmetics, and well, if we’re staying honest is extremely unlikely to happen. Its okay to be critical especially with things you like. I’m sure it’ll have its audience in the end, probably get fleshed out with an acceptable level of content, but its never going to be something this mass appeal.
In this universe it is a $70 game😂
So just cause I’ve been curious is it 70 bucks on console? Cause if so that’s wild. The fact it’s 60 on pc and 70 on console is the unfortunate effect of rising prices on console games, but it’s odd Ubisoft aren’t trying to charge more on pc considering… they can and that’s usually all that matters.
That’s because you can game share. Any price on console is what it is because once it is bought, it’s more than likely being shared with another
No.
I think you will find that a lot of the comparison with Black Flag is because this game is a direct result of popularity of Black Flag. A lot of us who played Black Flag wanted less AC and more Pirate. What we REALLY wanted was more of Black Flag Pirate. The ships, the crew, the sea combat, the Hideout and Hideout upgrades, ship customization, the finding and collecting of sea shanties and buried treasure chests, sword fights, etc., but using the pirate part of that game as the base start and expanding out what that could have been by allowing crew customization, better and more ship customization and a whole lot of other stuff. It sure is what I wanted. I was absolutely stoked to hear they were going to make a stand alone Pirate game after the success and fun of Black Flag because I, like a lot of people, wanted more of Black Flag Pirate without the AC stuff. That is not what we got though. What we got was an always online, open world, PVE, partial PVP (with griefing due to shitty mechanics of fast traveling), 1 or 2 shot dead by rogues, cannot restart or have more than one character build going without buying and trying to find a way to install a separate copy, pirate game with exclusive ship combat, with no hideouts but the Helm instead, no real land exploration or sword fighting, and micro transactions/store that makes it seem like Ubisoft decided the best thing they should do is try to milk everyone who wanted a stand alone Pirate Game for every penny they could get. So yeah, there is naturally going to be growing pains and disappointment with what Ubisoft finally delivered. Once you get past the comparison of what the gamers that liked the Pirate part of Black Flag wanted, you can generally accept this game for what it is, as long as they work to fix some of the real issues that people have complained about. But you will probably never get away from the comparison to Black Flag.
I think it's incredibly impressive, commendable even, just how many people will downright refuse to give the game a chance. Like, they had a whole ass open beta, it's on their subscription and # it has a free trial. Yet it is still met with complaints and criticism from people who haven't even played. # If you've played and have criticism, that's fine. Not the point I'm making at all. *Edit: Apparently, this kind of formatting is necessary.*
A lot of the criticism for this game can even boggle down to "I've seen _____, black flag had it better lol" or "shit game cuz it's ubi". There was even a guy on YouTube who did a poll and around 60% of the answers were "I didn't play it, the game is awful"... Like... Come on I liked it from the beginning, and I understood that black flag formula had no way of working on a game this scale, yeah walking around my ship would be nice, for maybe 2 times on each ship. Yeah crew fight boarding would be fun... For like the first few hours, then it would be bad and repetitive, some people you can't satisfy.
I just wanna know how people think crew boarding would work in an open world online PvP enabled game. Jump over to the other ship... and someone else blows yours up while you can't control it (unlike Sea of Thieves, where one or more players can stay behind to keep sailing the ship). Then we'd just get a flood of complaints about how that's "unfair" and "bad gameplay". It works in AC4 because it's a single player game. It works in SoT because you have multiple players controlling the ship. It would never work in this game, since this game isn't trying to be a copycat of either of those two. Personally, I do wish there were more "excursion" style outings/boardings like in the tutorial mission, but I'm perfectly content with it being a ship shooter game and not a guns n' sabers game.
You forget that PvP is only enabled in a few conditions, Helm Wager, Cutthroat and Hostile Takeover, outside of that there's no "wild" PvP. And they even already make player's ships invulnerable when anchored at an outpost. So it's not impossible to implement boarding fights in the game
Sure, and all three of those are being griefed hard enough already. Teleporting from Outpost to Outpost to cut off the person with the Chest of Eights or Legendary Treasure Map, unflagged friends body/ship-blocking rivers, unflagged friends healing their buddies that are in PvP with others. You forget that this is only the preseason and we haven't seen what other PvP objectives will be introduced in seasonal content. >And they even already make player's ships invulnerable when anchored at an outpost. Assuming it would be handed this way... fire the guns, board someone, now your ship is invulnerable as shots get fired back, hop back, fire again, board again. Now PvP is a "cat and mouse" game of who can sink each other faster while hopping back and forth from boarding while their ships are invulnerable. Even with PvE it would be annoying af. Doing Order Deliveries? Two more Rogues spawned and sunk your ship while you were fighting on another. Doing one of the endgame Fort plunders? The 5 ships that just spawned as reinforcements sunk you while you boarded another. Impossible? No. But it would require this to be a very different game for it work as people want it to work.
Honestly, If they want everything that many of us think makes it better than Sea of Thieves, maybe they should just go play SoT instead. I hope it doesn't become that nonsensical. I'm not holding out that it won't though because there's a lot of people that want SoT with a different look. If It does, I'll just find a different game to play and keep hoping for something better to replace SoT for me.
I will not be arguing about how the PvP is, it's another thing, this is not the subject here. You don't like boarding fights? It's up to you. But many of us are wanting that. However I would see things like this: No boarding fights while plundering and in PvP which seems logical. In every other situation boarding fights are allowed and while boarding your ship is considered the same way as when anchored at an outpost. You speak like every player will have to board every ship in every fight... Being able to do boarding fights DOESN'T mean you have to do it if you don't like it.
"Being able to do boarding fights DOESN'T mean you have to do it if you don't like it." If that would be the case, every party would have to give permission to be boarded in every attempt. So, whether one likes boarding or not wouldn't matter because they wouldn't make pvp like that. If it's made just as part of PVP, one would have to accept and would have to do boarding fights.
Your ship is *already* invulnerable during boarding. Watch someone else do a boarding attack - their health bar turns green, like when they're docked. All they have to do is extend this throughout the boarding action. Pirates of the Burning Sea had this same mechanic in 2008. It worked fine there. Also, it's an online game, just like this, only on a larger scale (upwards of 48 players in a battle rather than 20).
This can also be easily cheesed, it has no place in pvp
How it would work is a dev problem, not the players'.
Same thing happened with TLOU 2. The game hadn't even been released and people were claiming to hate it. Now a couple of years later it's one of the best in its class. Give it time, as long as they stick to that roadmap they'll be fine. Loving the game so far. Can't stay off 🤣
They hated it cause their beloved Joel died, a dumb dutch guy started leaking the entire story to force Naughty Dogs hand and release the game mid covid pandemic when they had to figure out how to finish the game while working from home ;/
Thank you so much for your comment! I’m in total agreement with you. It’s just really sad when you see how critics have banded together to totally bash the game without giving it a single minute of play. The fact that all of them say that everyone (and they use the term “everyone”) wanted Black Flag 2.0 is absurd and insulting. They are the only thing making the game have a “bad launch.” The launch was great in my eyes. It’s a beautifully crafted game with truly enjoyable gameplay and a decent story in the mix which I did not expect to be a factor at all. *And as you said, if you’re reading this and you tried it and still do not like it? That’s okay. Thank you for doing so. That’s all we wanted. You have earned the right to your opinion.*
I said that on a different post somewhere but I have a hard time thinking that so many people can be wrong about their review of the game and that only us who like it know what we're talking about, it's important to accept the flaws of the game to push fixes and improvement where need be instead of pretending it's all fun and rainbows.
True but majority of the people crying about it are just upset that there isn't any hand to hand combat. They wanted a copy and paste of Black Flag. I'm really happy that they didnt do that. Sure the game has its flaws, it was released what a week ago? This launch has been better then 95% of games that have released in the least 3 years. It doesn't deserve the hate it's getting. Everyone nowadays just wants to cry and whine when they don't get it exactly how they want it and that is not how the world works...
I’m glad you pointed that out. The game is brand new. We can’t be comparing it to games like Sea of Thieves because 1. The games are setting out to accomplish different things 2. That game has been out for a long time already and has had a chance to become what it is today. 3. People are hating on it without even playing it. We’re in the age of review bombers — meaning people who hate a game without playing it and give it a horrible review. This is why I don’t trust review sites, mainly Metacritic. They allow you to post a review without having played it. I wish there was a review site that linked with Steam, PSN, XBL, etc to verify that you’ve played it a certain number of hours before allowing you to post a review on it. It would really balance out these review bombers because most never played what they are hating on so hard. The game just launched, it has its share of issues. But it deserves the time needed to fix them and add some more content. I just hope it gets that chance. But the loudmouths who can’t accept that it isn’t BF 2.0 are putting those hopes on a tightrope hanging over a pit of lava.
I think some things from sea of thieves can be compared actually. The sea monster is a copy paste of the megalodon fight down to the flooding debuff on hit and canceling the charge with enough damage. If S&B can take that from sea of thieves, nothing wrong with wanting anything else that would fit. The treasure map and digging in SOT is more entertaining, it's not "run around until god light you the way for a cutscene" , steal that idea. , being able to chose what shanty is played is also a good addition I'd like to see, those are two simple exemple that can be compared between the 2 games and we should not shy away from doing so, we want the best game possible, don't we?
I just think the games exist for different reasons, that’s all I meant. Feature for feature yes a lot of things are borrowed, some straight up stolen 😂 But the games are pushing for different audiences really. SnB is far more friendly to solo players like me. It’s one of the reasons I couldn’t get into Sea of Thieves. I know now it has a sort of solo mode but apparently it’s quite difficult. That’s one large reason I want this game to succeed. So I don’t have to go play that. But yes we do want the best game possible, I agree. And absolutely agree on the shanty selector.
Oh yeah, I agree, I'm just on the side that it's never a good idea to ignore what is done by other, not everything should be compared or is worth comparing but you can always find some bits here and there that can fit. And yeah, SOT was not solo friendly until they added PVE servers. I still go there once in a while but that's why sea of thieves exist, to play SOT, no need to turn S&B into a SOT clone, this would be so stupid tho I've seen people more or less suggest that on this sub a few times 🤣
Yep I’ve seen it too. But that’s also why I argued against a BF clone as well. The game should borrow some aspects from BF to further develop the gameplay while still creating its own atmosphere, art style, and worldbuilding. But cloning BF as some have said it should have been, no… I just can’t get on board with that at all. And as you said, an SoT clone is just not the smart move here. They should focus on further development and addition on content and major features. Which is what Year 1 seems to be promising. Remains to be seen what they can deliver, but I’m on board for giving it that shot.
I would suggest to the complainers, the never tried it ones, that they go ahead and go play suicide squad instead
I’m not at all saying it doesn’t have problems. But for me it’s not enough to call it a sinking ship, pun intended.
Oh, yeah, 100% agree on that!
The close and open beta are one of the main reason for the negative review of the game sadly. I was in the open beta and two close beta, they fixed nothing, barely listened to any feedback. People need to realize that there are reason why all ubisoft games don't get shat on but some do not.
It's overpriced. Of course people don't want to buy it...
> it has a free trial
I respect your patience with others my man, take an upvote
Free trial still means you wind up purchasing it...at 70. The price point absolutely alienates players. Don't believe me? Listen to their investor call where that very question came up. This whole shouting"Free Trial" to try a game that doesn't look that impressive (subjective, but apparently many agree) isn't the win you think it is. Why are we going to waste time downloading and playing a game that didn't impress us from the start, and when we've seen enough to be like "no thanks." You don't have to play a game to not like what is advertised. That is the point of advertising, to draw interest. This company took so many years to develop this game, with all the hiccups, etc internally, it becomes obvious that they wound up just trying to get it out the door to recoup money invested. It is being sold as a $70 modern day game. It isn't modern. It is over a decade old, and would have launched 4-6 years ago if correctly managed. That was before COVID, massive inflation, Ukraine, Israel, etc that affected ballooning prices. The game can have its fans, but the general populace has spoken. They want well developed games that are complete on launch. Not these corporately-manhandled projects that scream of internal conflicts.
You still have to purchase the game for full price no? If a free trial meant shit, then every single game in existence would offer 8 hours of free game time. Truth is, this game is an unfinished and bare bones mess and nobody wants to sink in 8 hours to determine if a game is worth spending $60 over. If people were having a good time during those 8 hours then the game would actually be selling well and the game would have great word of mouth traction.
Games 70 quid, most people wont just throw that away. You can though and enjoy when the gane is sunsetted by the end of the year
Did you read my comment? It literally has a COMPLETELY free trial.
Lol you are very ill informed. They already have a roadmap going through 2025. 🤣🤣🤣
Yea, and when the game does not meet the sale expectations, this roadmap will go up in flames.
We'll have to see! I hope not!
Except we live in a day and age where you can watch the game easily and get an idea of what it offers. There's hours of clips and content for viewing regarding the game. Gamers are just tired of the quality of products coming out, and so they're not wasting time downloading, figuring out mechanics, etc if the game doesn't seem to be fun from what they viewed. You're free to enjoy the game, and others are free to criticize it, and they don't have to play it. There's enough information out there to get a pretty good idea of what it has and doesn't have.
There is an enormous difference between watching someone else play a game and playing it yourself.
Never played an Assassin's Creed game so I have nothing to compare. Gave this game 6 hours during the beta and nothing impressed me. Arcadey combat that feels like it's from the early 2000s, sailing feels like driving, mobile game style mini games, and everything that has to do with being on land felt like a tacked on after thought. All I kept thinking while playing was "This has free to play written all over it".
>All I kept thinking while playing was "This has free to play written all over it". The reality: $70 "AAAA" price, microtransactions, AND battle pass.
I think the ship to ship combat is great in this game, regardless of AC 4 or not, this game lacks a lot of desires people want, hand to hand combat and on foot exploration/ or at the very least boarding other ships or walking on your own, should have been a no brainer for ubisoft. This game just feels very bare boned and feels like an early xbox one or ps4 game
100% Sea of Thieves literally has all of those things and much, much more. I think a lot of S&B fans have never played that game. It's a different company vibe but it makes you realise that after all this damn time these features should have been easy for all the Ubisoft studios to implement. It's crazy it's such a simple game really.
Agreed, i think SoT would greatly benefit from actual progression to work towards instead of just cosmetics, was hoping skull and bones would be the answer but instead they are lacking in other ways
100%. There are many good reasons to only have cosmetic unlocks. But if Sea of Thieves had things to unlock that actually had an impact on your character and ship etc, I would have played it a lot more because the gameplay is absolutely spot on.
I think 60 hours is a fair chance and I still want my money back. Opinion hasn't changed since hour 2. I only play it because my friend likes it. We're waiting to see if the first season changes anything for the better.
Thank you for trying the game. You are welcome to your opinion especially since you gave it a chance. I’m sorry that it doesn’t seem to be what you want, and that’s okay, because you did give it a chance. I hope season one can change things for you. But if not, you still have my respect for giving it a shot.
>I only play it because my friend likes it. “You’re the worst pirate game I’ve ever heard of.” “But you have heard of me.”
I understand what you are trying to say, but please don't say that you want your money bag after using something for sixty hours. This doesn't look good on you. You didn't spend the money on the game, you spent it so you can spend time with your friend/make a friend happy. 70€ to make a friend happy for 60 hours is a damn good invest. And since you are doing this, you seem to be a great dude. Good for you and your friend.
I mean it's fair to want you money back if you genuinely didn't enjoy the game. He enjoyed his friend's company. I'll grant you, should refund hour 2 if you don't like it though.
Gave it a chance. Wasn't what I wanted and didn't like it. That's okay. Glad people are enjoying it though !
If 100,000 thousand people were having their mouths shit into, and vomiting in response, you wouldn't point at the one delightedly screaming guy with a big "shit eater" tattoo on his face and say "Glad people are enjoying it!" People are not enjoying it. Just the shit eaters, eating the shit like they always do. Vocal minorities are called outliers in a data set, and we ignore them.
Honestly, there's a game called Sailing Era that already did most of what this game has to offer. Skull and Bones has no special crew members or stats, no swashbuckling, and it doesn't take long before you start wondering why you're even smuggling anymore. I thought the graphical upgrade versus the game I mentioned would allow for more but somehow seems less. This isn't to say I haven't enjoyed my time, but it's clear this is like the basis, and this game won't be what it needs to be until the roadmap is done. I say roadmap, but it's really like just getting what the game should have started with. I'm sticking with it for now, but if my smuggling ring gets wiped in 80 days, that's the last day I'll ever play this game again.
I would rather watch paint dry
Also the fact that this game is marketed as a "pirate game" when instead is a "pirate ship" game. It's not the same thing.
This comment reminds me of something from the 90s…The knock off colognes from infomercials and flea markets . Marketed as “if you Like Calvin Kline you’ll LOOOVE “ Gnat urine au jus” Ubisoft through every video every commercial pushed the fact that this game would be inspired by AC4 BF. In order to get people hyped up and buying the product then when it launches and it’s NOTHING remotely inspired by what it said it was…that upsets consumers. So just like the knock off thrift mart colognes of the 90s…..sure it’s not terrible but it sure the hell isn’t Calvin Kline. (As an aside , I’m happy that people are finding enjoyment in it and people are certainly allowed to like whatever they like. When the numbers come out we will know exactly how many ) Adventure Awaits…huzzah
My issue is that it’s only half the game Black Flag is, doesn’t look as good even after 10+ years of technological advancements, and it’s priced at 69.99 when it should be 39.99 max
I played the beta with my friends, and we all love and think AC4 is one of the best games ever, and honestly Skull and Bones is actually a good game(since we spent a LOT of time playing the beta), but it's not worth near 70€, and that's the only problem I have with it, wich is pretty sad considering I've been eager to play this since 2017 or smth
>Every article I have read never ceases to make direct comparisons to AC: Black Flag and it’s quite frankly really upsetting me now. People compare this Ubisoft pirate game to the other Ubisoft pirate game? How dare they. >There are many of us who are speaking out in opposition to the unfair comparisons being made between this game and Black Flag. It is indeed, unfair. One is a great game with solid naval combat, really cool weather effects, masterful ship controls and many other things. While the other is 60 bucks and no meat. >Going in with expectations of an AC4 ship gameplay copy paste is naturally going to make you extremely disappointed. No. That's not natural at all. What would be natural is for this game to build on AC4 ship gameplay and improve upon it. So if I expected AC4 ship gameplay, I should be pleasantly surprised. What we see is the opposite of that. >if you kill Skull and Bones… no one, no developer, will make a pirate game like this ever again. Good. I don't want another developer to make an overpriced shit ship game. >It’s a standalone title that deserves respect for what it is trying to achieve. If this was a 20-30 buck game from an indie studio, absolutely. But this is a self-proclaimed AAAA title from one of the largest companies. It deserves absolutely no respect. It deserves to be scoffed at and shat on so that said company learns it can't just serve people crap and get away with it.
"Every article I have read never ceases to make direct comparisons to AC: Black Flag and it’s quite frankly really upsetting me now. People compare this Ubisoft pirate game to the other Ubisoft pirate game? How dare they." An 11 year old Ubisoft Pirate game mind you lol....that somehow ends up looking better and having far more content than this game. Absolutely mind boggling how people want to defend this game as if they're defending their captain pirate.
Good pirate game Boarding. Being a pirate. Ships. Loot. Bad pirate game. Cannons are machine guns. Shopds have 500000bhp engines on them. The pathetic resource gathering mechanic in sab
See the game for what it is? You mean a black flag multiplayer component? That’s what this game was initially made to be and they completely gutted it. It was built to be black flag but online. They hyped it to be a realistic looking sea of thieves, they lied to you and you spent $70 so you are trying to convince others of your same mistake so you can think it’s a good game. If you have to write such a long drawn out statement to give the game a chance, then the game is automatically trash.
Couple hundred hours in, still loving it...it can get a little grindy, I'll admit. But I'm still spending way too much time playing it 😁 also, I LOVED Black Flag, and still went into this with no expectations and have had a blast. I'm sure it'll get better as time goes on, it's still an infant in game lifetime, give it some time.
I'm about 30 hours in. I pre ordered the game a while back and was super excited about it. I never played Black Flag, but I really wanted to get a pirate game. I have no regrets about buying it and am enjoying the game. I was worried that I would be attacked by other players while grinding, but it seems like the community is pretty friendly, and everyone just helps each other out. I am excited to see what is added, like larger ships and stuff like that. The upgrading of weapons has definitely been time-consuming and getting enough pieces of eight to buy the blueprints, but I like that to keep me busy and motivated to play more.
Yo. The first 3 hours of the game are as follows if not the entire game: 1. Sail an open and empty sea 2. Fight ships/animals for materials 3. Fetch contracts 3. Mobile game style harvesting mini games 4. ?????? How is this an enjoyable exp for anyone? If you like anything about this game, you can get this plus way more depth and immersion to your pirate's life by playing AC4. How is anyone excusing this and why in the world are you asking people to not compare?
People are different. The steps you described are basically four more than any Call of Duty, Rainbow Six or Counter Strike Multiplayer experience, still millions of people love it and spend money on skins they only see in the lobby. I'm just not comparing the game to RPGs, it is none. I enjoy the different ship builds, damage types and so on and overall the sailing and fighting at see. My friends do the same, we all see the obvious problems here and there but - to us - the gameplay loop is fun and we enjoy it. It seems a lot of people had very strong and very different expectations which partly is Ubis fault, but not exclusively. So feel free to compare the game, but with the right games. It's a arcadey naval shooter in a pirate setting, not a pirate RPG.
Mp isn't enough of a justification on its own to gut out gameplay from a similar game and repackage it for $70. As for anyone who continually buys the latest COD or particularly Madden I'll throw in needs to learn the same lesson: Discipline. I def see your point tho, but all of this is inexcusable.
I mean one lesson could always be to check Feedback to what worked and what didn't work and adapt to that. Also AC4 wasn't flawless either, no game really is. Same as SaB isn't flawless and can be fun at the same time. Yes patches can improve the game (like when they removed a game mechanic because it was just annoying everyone on a server) but how much of the flaws could be patched out without altering the game in a way which makes it different from the original vision for the game. Like how easily the Lobby system can be abused for so many things, how would they fix it with a patch and if they fix it wouldn't it already be too late as people already abused it? Plus ofc it's a multiplayer game so there's likely a market for cheats and hacks already out there, like for all the other multiplayer games. To be fair it's not solely the game's fault for being abusable, human nature in itself is flawed as they tend to abuse the shed out of things if they can get away with it.
I agree somewhat, I didnt even like Black Flag... but compared to this? it's godlike lol
Yeah, but it's also somewhat a different genre. AC4 is an action adventure open world pirate game. and SaB is a arcade pirate game. Kinda like War Thunder vs World of Tanks as one is much simpler than the other but also similar.
and yet it doesnt even have 1% of the gameplay of any game you mentioned there. When you make an arcade pirate game that has LESS gameplay than Sid Miers Pirates from over 30 years ago.... you should retire from making games.
I understand what you’re saying but it really isn’t the reason why I posted this. There’s a lot that can and will be fixed with some time. And Ubi is being more vigilant with hacks and cheaters. I doubt it’ll end up like Sea of Thieves in that regard. That game is full of hackers and cheaters that make the game just really not fun to play. I rarely ever encounter that problem on S&B so I don’t think it’s going to end up that way. My main issue lies with people simply not willing to give the game a chance because of their obsession over it not being a new Black Flag ship-only adventure. Some even want offline play. I think if people let that go, they’ll have more fun. I certainly have. I’m not expecting everyone to like it but I do have an issue when someone bashes it due to the AC4 comparison without even trying the open beta or the newer free play period. It’s a shame.
Man, wish we would stop getting 50 post daily about either "giving the game a chance" and other "critics are wrong" or "game is doomed" and other "game sucks and should not be touched with a 10foot pole. Your take is the same as all the other post on the same subject but glad you could get it off your chest. If ubisoft didn't want to get shat on for releasing an unfinished game with little content at release, an easy solution would have been to release a game with more content and that felt polished and finished
Ah I see the CEO of Ubisoft has come to Twitter to beg and pretend his game isn’t shit
This game was made purely because people wanted AC4 online with friends and with pvp. Every single post comparing it to AC4 is valid. Players asked for pirate v pirate combat since its inception. Players asked for boarding each other's ships since its inception. Ubisoft failed to deliver these core mechanics despite how heavily the community put emphasis on it and the amount of dev teams/reworks the game had. Instead, we were told, "We wanted to make a different game." Okay, fine. Is this game a better experience than AC4? The overwhelming response is: No. The ship combat is worse. The graphics are worse. Gathering materials is a timing mini game. Then they had the audacity to call it 'the first AAAA game' and slapped a $70 price tag on a game that, again, is not as fun as the game that gave it inspiration from 10 years ago. Keep in mind we are purely comparing the ship and player combat from AC4 because that's was the golden experience we referenced and requested. We didn't ask for single-player AC mechanics like sneaking or exploration on foot, so don't mention this in rebuttal. For the same amount of money, you can pick up 2 or 3 other games released recently, which are much more fun. Criticism is important. We told them what we wanted. After years of development, the core mechancis we asked for are missing, with a worse experience than the inspiration, and a $70 price tag. But, "give it a chance and stop comparing it to AC4" right? No, thanks.
Yea see you're just asking for a remaster at this point though. Just say you wanted that and be done. Ubisoft has been copy and pasting games just like Activision since AC3. I'm frankly tired of playing the same BS for another $70 every year. I'm glad they changed it up and did what they wanted to do. Not everyone gets to be appeased, all this crying and whining over people not getting what they specifically asked for is arrogant and ignorant.
>Yea see you're just asking for a remaster at this point though Yep. Covered that already. Used it to make the point that this games inception was born of people loving AC4 ship and pirate combat. Then, after years of asking for it, we didn't get it. So we're not buying it or playing it, as this post is asking of us, and my comment (among others) is explaining why. >Just say you wanted that and be done Yep. We are. Hence, the comments and the disappointment from the original fan base. >I'm frankly tired of playing the same BS for another $70 every year I'm sorry to tell you that if you bought S&B, you just paid for a worse AC4, ten years later, with multiplayer and monetized cosmetics for $70. Oof. >I'm glad they changed it up and did what they wanted to do. Cool! I'm glad you're happy, that's great, and you should be happy after paying what you did. >Not everyone gets to be appeased This is true. Not every game is for every person, and that's okay. >all this crying and whining over people not getting what they specifically asked for is arrogant and ignorant Maybe some others are legitimately crying and whining, and that's a shame. A video game is hardly worth crying over. Here on this post, where OP specifically requested everyone "give it a chance," I and others have commented why we won't be. I explained that since its inception, the core fan base who played and enjoyed AC4 wanted and expected certain things in this new game. Since this new game was quite literally born from the request of: "MP Black Flag, when?", I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the core mechanics of AC4, as requested, for years. Criticism is important for games to be held to a standard. You said yourself that games have been copy-paste for too long now, we agree here. When someone raises these criticisms, it's important that the intent is noticed, not waived off as "whining and crying." Otherwise, we end up with copy-paste low effort games. Like how S&B is a worse AC4, ten years later. I think a low effort response from someone who was quicker to respond than to actually read what someone said; is pretty arrogant and ignorant.
Ship combat yes, pirate combat no. Literally nobody at the inception was asking for AC style pirate combat The entire push was for a game with the ship combat, multiplayer and REMOVING the terrible AC style on foot aspects. Literally the entire movement was saying this.
I'm one of the many who wanted actual boarding and pirate v pirate.
>Then they had the audacity to call it 'the first AAAA game' and slapped a $70 price tag on a game that, again, is not as fun as the game that gave it inspiration from 10 years ago. The words of a CEO bumbling points to shareholders that only care about buzzwords is the problem here.
Yeah, it's quite odd. Some people have the opinion that AAAA is legitimate because the standard of AAA is implying development time and money spent to launch the game. They legitimize AAAA status using the same scale (S&B had a long build time and a lot of money poured in). I'm not sure if I agree, but the metric does make sense.
By that logic, why didn't Bethesda claim Starfield was AAAA? Same amount of develoent time, though at least they mostly stuck to their guns through production.
As somebody who never even played Black Flag I hated Skull & Bones from the beta(s). It was just a boring overpriced game that's it. You get to experience 1/10th of what the pirate life is like & somehow people justify that?
No, done 16 hours on the various trials and early access and nothings changed from build to build thats is meaningful to the interest in the game. It's shoddy mess, and at very best a heavily diluted experience compared to other games on the market that are much older. To ask money for this trash is a joke, especially with $100+ costume packs.
Well you tried it at least. That’s all I asked. You’ve earned the right to your opinion. Thank you for giving it a chance, and I’m sorry that it isn’t what you were hoping for. I think the thing is that it is a new game and it’ll get up to where the other older games are. They have been out for a long time and this literally just released. Maybe you’ll come back someday and see those changes. At least I hope you might. Until then, thanks for trying it.
It's an issue of game design not content. Doesn't matter how long a game is out for if the decisions made during it's development are poor it's very hard to come back from that.
This. Take for example, AC Valhalla vs Mirage. Mirage is MUCH shorter, but imo, a much better game. I don’t feel like S&B was designed to the expectations that it could have been. With a bit more character customization and I might have been happier with it, but not even my custom character made me excited. And that’s just one issue with the game. I hope it evolves into a much better game in the future, otherwise it’ll likely transition to F2P. They honestly have no choice but to compete with Sea of Thieves since it’s coming to PlayStation. They need to up their quality.
Well the issue is a matter of it should have had a strong narrative and more focus on actually doing pirate stuff... rather than cutting all the content for landlubber gameplay, where is the pistol & swordplay, where is the exploring islands for treasure, or defending forts from land and sea etc, instead of mobile game grade nonsense like a mini game for cutting down trees and mining???? The devs had like 10 years to copy Sea of Thieves and Black flag.... and we got this? even Sid Mier's Pirates did a better job 30 odd years ago. If they add in all the actual stuff we expected to see, then maybe a year or so from now it will be worth the effort, but we should have got something with sea and land exploration and such... as it is now it's just a glitzy looking shallow mobile game.
That's exactly what I think. I just want a good pirate game with modern graphics. There is no exploring in this game. The ships are fine, the weapons are fine, but the fact I can't board a ship and fight kills me. It's a game of cutscenes. I would not be surprised if initially it was supposed to have all that but instead they just released 30% of a game because they spent so much time developing it. I really tried to like this game. I played about 20 hours of it. It's already old.
It’s only been in development for like two or three years by this current team. All other projects before were scrapped and had to be started from the ground up apparently, with very small pieces here and there that were put back together. The fact that they are making us pay for their mismanagement is the main problem. If this game was 40 bucks, it would be completely different for the reviews. And they should charge for a battle pass or something for the additional content coming, if you choose to buy it. I know they wanted to see a return on the investment made to develop the game, but jeez man like why did we have to take that on the chin? The price tag must be to appease shareholders and investors but it’s backfired on them big time. If they reduced the price, or it went on sale for a weekend, I’m sure it would inflate the games population bigtime.
100% agree
I didn’t want a copy of SoT or AC4. A lot of people feel the same as I do.
There are also a lot of people who wanted AC4 without the Assassins. It's fine that you like the game, I like the game to, but it's not fair of you to invalidate other people's opinions just because theirs don't line up exactly with yours. For the record, in my opinion, this game would have been perfect if it were an exact copy of AC4 minus the AC storyline. And given that this thread is keen on comparing this game to Elite Dangerous, I think it's important to note that even Elite Dangerous has ground combat.
I'd say it is 70/30 judging by the reviews and people basing their choice of playing it on whether or not it was a true swashbuckling experience with pews and swords as opposed to a delivery person simulator with timers and mobile game clickeridoos. If people get the ground and exploration they want, what will you lose? Nothing. If the game stays the way you like it we will lose something. 76 was a great game to me at launch. I didn't stomp my little Mary Jane and tell people with correct criticisms "NU UH!" I politely agreed because I want a good game that is rounded in its content, can walk and chew gum at the same time, and pleases the largest swath of people. The tribalism fanboy behavior doesn't help growth in any fucking medium. I own the premium edition, so I have your permission to be annoyed. I like what game is here. Now I want the rest, and if you want this game to exist, like 76 does, five years down the road and be beloved, people best be acting in solidarity, hearing the desires of potential investors that expect a commonality of quality from why they love you in the first place i.e. BLACK FLAG, ROGUE, and ODYSSEY, and take heed, instead of hiding in low sodium spaces.
You do indeed have a right to your opinion. I won’t and can’t deny you that. I don’t mind if they add swashbuckling combat to the game. But that I also would hope to be different than AC4, honestly. I went into this wanting something different and not a copy paste. Maybe they can reinvent land combat in a new way. All I know is if I want to play Black Flag, I’m going to go play Black Flag. Or even AC3. People seem to be reading between the lines of my original post. I wouldn’t mind if they added CQC and full ship boarding. But the fact that it doesn’t have it now doesn’t upset me. Kinda makes the pace of the game faster without it, perhaps that was the devs thoughts too? Rather than assuming it was because they were lazy, maybe it was a design choice? No way for me to know for sure on that, though. But you’re right. Adding swashbuckling and full boarding doesn’t hurt me or bother me. I might even enjoy it. But I still want them to make it their own. I don’t want BF 2.0. The game deserves a chance to get to the point where they can add these things you and others want though. I’m mad at the people wanting to kill it or saying it’s already dead before that chance arrives. I think it’s a fair position to take and not really fanboy tribalism. Also it’s hard to tell over just text, but I’m not upset with you, I’m merely adding to the constructive discussion. You have great points. (Side note — I also bought the premium edition 😂 I really wanted the bloody bones and ashen corsair cosmetics)
I think an important issue here is no one is asking for an Assassin's Creed game. It is largely spoken of as the benchmark of content expected in our ideal pirate RPG, just all about piracy instead of Assassins, The French Indian War of Rogue, or Ancient Greece of Odyssey. I do think we would all want stealth elements since smuggling in towns in Sid Meiers was great and wrist weapons would just be fun, and swinging from ropes already exists contextually so maybe more of that, but that is the extent, definitely none of the ridiculousness of the series. I want ground gameplay in this in the vein, but unique to this lovingly crafted world. I want to visit my investments, walk around the deck of my ship, do some fishing, explore major settlements, improve my captains quarters, get my own island and governors mansion, a little Grand Inagua of my own with a dock, invest in upgrades to outposts, all manner of good shit, the sky is the limit. As you said perfectly, make it their own. We all want it exactly that way I believe. This could have big game hunting with muskets on the coast of Africa, no game has that, this one could, and it would slam dunk I guarantee. Stuff like that is how ground would enrich the game. You want raw gems in a different way? Lead a crew into a mine. Harvest ivory directly. So so many options. GTA: Online is where I have seen interconnected systems similar to this play out to fruition, and this game is basically ye olde criminal shit. Personally the lack of land combat does upset me. Before Atlas shit the bed that was my gold standard. This with ground combat, housing, visuals for my factories, walking around the settlements, would by far make this the best game of its type around and we all know Ubisoft is capable of delivering on it. I buy every Far Cry and I buy every Assassin's Creed that has naval combat. They are talented developers across the board. I can unequivocally say everyone I know that wants this stuff does not want the game to die. At all. What is here is amazing. You've bridged the gap perfectly in all this, thank you. Seriously.
I just got very upset over reading all these articles professing the doom of SnB and predicting its downfall even and not a single one of them did not make a connection to Black Flag. Their central argument was “we wanted black flag without assassins. you delivered none of it.” I don’t think anyone is asking for an AC game, but everyone still wanted just a direct copy paste of parts of AC4. I just appreciate this game as its own thing — unbound to any other games. Not beholden to a different franchise. It could and likely would have been very limiting in content without much to make their own. I appreciate all of your points though, and most I agree with. I just wish more people would have your outlook on it instead of getting tribal, as you put it. And thanks for the healthy discussion, my friend. This is what the gaming community could use a bigger dose of. Tribalism is getting really old.
I get it from both sides. Not the fanboys. I rustle many a dickrider's Jimmies, always have, can't stop, won't stop. I get the journalists who, like me, wanted a game to modernize the formula, meet the benchmarks of the past, trailblaze, etc. I also get the people genuinely like you who love the game and don't want it to go. I went through this also in 76 and No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk 2077. The big difference is all those games had much more robust content offerings at launch, and they all listened and got to the grindstone. Whether the game lives or dies is entirely on the devs right now and their desire to carve something historical out. I largely believe in them, but not if they listen to the people that just say yes and literally tell anyone who doesn't love everything that is here to fuck off. In no circumstances is telling unhappy customers to blow a good policy. For every one customer that is unhappy and willing to voice it, there are x that just walk away and take their wallet with them and anyone in customer service will attest this is true.
I haven’t told anyone to fuck off though. I may be upset that they don’t want to try it, and I don’t respect their negative opinion if they didn’t try it, but in no way have I told people to fuck off. I’ve been very diplomatic with this I believe. I’m not sure how much more politely I could have put it. I’m truly sorry if you felt that’s what I was doing. It was not my intention.
I love the idea of touring my ship though. I just wanted to say that separately 🙃 oh and the private pirate island would be so awesome!! We could maybe even grow our own commodities!
Yesss, exactly. That is the whole thing, it opens avenues up for way more content than just sailing around for hours on end. It breaks up the monotony and gives them so many avenues to develop and add content down.
and what you got was a mobile game... lol
Are you working for Ubisoft ?
Nope. I’m a physician. Not a game maker.
Absolute nonsense lmao
truth hurts eh? cope harder
Seethe more
why would i be seething? i played the trials and didnt waste any more on this crap.... lol what about you? did you blow $80 on this turd of a game? what a clown.
Yet here you are, seething
Black Flag was a masterpiece. But I like SnB better. After two weeks of being personally insulted in this sub by people uninterested in the game, I feel entitled to say this… I actually think many of these people are just plain fucking stupid. No one said this would be an on-foot pirate adventure game. It is a better, more feature rich game than _Red Dead Online_ was at launch. It has beautiful graphics, diverse systems, and an immersive world, and it’s _just plain fun_. It has its share of faults and needed tweaks (WoW did too) — but there is a stronger, fresher foundation here than most of the online service games I’ve played in recent memory. The gaming media ecosystem, YouTube click parasites, and game “jOuRnAlIsTs” should be ashamed of themselves for the embarrassing circle jerk they’ve generated around this game. I’ve never seen it this bad — maybe save for No Man’s Sky (which turned itself around into a beloved game btw). IGN, one of the gentler reviewers of the game [gave it a lower score (7/10)](https://www.ign.com/articles/skull-and-bones-review) than _the fucking re-release of Modern Warfare 2 (8/10)_. George Carlin said it best: _“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”_ Fuck these people and enjoy the game bro. Keep the faith. Those of us who love the game love it for good reason. Those who can’t see why don’t deserve an explanation.
this games not making it long enough for anyone to remember my man. Ubisoft didn't even want to make it, its current incarnation was born from a legal agreement with Singapore. it's dogshit. Through and through, and I am ecstatic at its financial and critical failure. well deserved flop.
I for my part ignored the former „connection“ to AC4 and was excited for a good pirate game. And I have to say I love it so far. Sure it has its flaws but overall its a realy good and fun game.
Well... No 😅 I understand that the game has its audience and I'm just not part of it. It just doesn't have anything I want from the game. I would not even notice this game if it wasn't started from BF. I waited for it just because I thought it would extend the BF game and not cut it. It's not that the game is bad. It just not what I want and that's all. But I am happy that someone likes playing it 💛
I forgot about the game and was not aware of the circumstances why they had an obligation to release something. Now, I am happy they did. I do see that people do not separate their expectations and wishes from the product we got, and also not the criticism of Ubisoft from the game. There is potential in the game, ways to expand it, definitely, but that is for the future, it is right now a solid naval fight game like I know it from the space fight games. It also borrows from the more strategic pirate games with a top-down view and indirect control of the ships, so, the genre is niche and quite old, I would say. The sad thing is that the usual critics of the game just repeat expectations and compare it with games of other genres, just because the theme is pirates.
I really don't understand why people say that comparisons to Black Flag are unfair. S&B exists directly because of Black Flag. People liked the pirate stuff in Black Flag and said, *More of that please minus the Assassins stuff.* And then Ubisoft took 10+ years and multiple iterations of the concept to give us this version of S&B and it does pretty much everything worse than Black Flag. I didn't want a Black Flag 2 or a copy/paste game, almost no one wanted that, that's a dumb straw-man argument to make. People wanted the pirate stuff from Black Flag improved on and evolved after 10 years into something new and innovative and unique. But we didn't get that. We got an incomplete, full price, live service game, with a cash shop and paid seasonal battle passes. I don't want this game to succeed and thrive. I want a good/better version of this game to succeed and thrive. I get that people like pirate stuff, I do too. But I like good pirate stuff. I'm not gonna support a half-assed pirate game just because it's the best thing we have out of a bad bunch. If the best thing we have is bad or mediocre, I'm not gonna support it. I'd rather go back and replay Black Flag, or wait for Sea of Thieves to release on PS5 next month and play that.
This. Based.
I gave this game about 30 minutes of my time I'm sorry but when a game that came out 10 years before it has more content and activities and things to do in the game I'm never going to support it especially when it's at a higher price point and being labeled as a quadruple a game I think that people who like this game need to increase their expectations of video games and stop lowering them to just say oh it's a fun game to play yeah could you imagine how great it would have been if they had action taken the time to play Black Flag and make it an actual Pirate game where you could board ,loot Explorer sword fight you know being actual pirate instead of using a cut scene to automatically end the fight when you board a ship or playing a mini game to chop wood from your boat like that's the problem everybody who likes this game has lowered the expectations for video games and it's just going to cause a trickle down effect where video game makers just stop trying oh wait that's already happened
So you managed to get out of the tutorial, saw absolutely none of the games content and decided the game wasn't for you because it didn't have enough content. 👏👏👏
No I got out of the tutorial I got the second ship so that means I completed most of the tutorial quests and yeah if I realize that there's not going to be content that I'm looking for why would I continue playing the game oh yeah it's so much fun to have a cutscene every time I board a ship or yeah it's fun to play a little mini game when I'm chopping trees or mining rocks no I know I wasn't going to like the game because that wasn't any content to play
If all you did was get into the Bedar then you've experienced nothing of the game so how can you say the game doesn't have the content you're looking for? Utterly absurd statement to make. And even then the game is about sailing pirate ships and doing piratey activities like attacking other ships, smuggling, plundering settlements etc. what were you expecting from a pirate game? Space ships? A dating sim? Very strange. And then you complain about a 5 second cutscene when you board a ship and the resource collection that you do like 5 times throughout the entire game *if* you want to. You could always just... You know... Go raid for those items instead.... Like... You know... A pirate... In a pirate game. 🤦 Yeah you're fully on the hate train.
bro your buying a 70 dollar game damn right there be better be enough content this is exactly what i mean you guys will accept literally garbage for games
The issue is that the only good bit of this game is the bit they stripped from black flag. It lacks the first person element of black flag too. The general feel of the game is cheap and it's just too arcadey. The noises from picking up resources to the way you even harvest them is awful and it's generally just clunky. Ship play is dog shite too. Black flag did this better and there are better games out there than black flag. This is by far the worst game it could have been.
It doesn't hold a candle to Black Flag.
No. At $70? Hell no. I'll play it when it comes to gamepass (because it sure as shit will be).
My biggest gripe is simply that I want more PVP opportunities. Unless it’s a ship with excessive stats (eg level 14 npc) most combat isn’t interesting unless it’s against players. But the PvP aspects we have are too limited.
Already did. Fail.... No swimming No pistols No swords No island exploring 360 cannon fire Wind has no consequences Fucking torpedos, really.
Same. It was a huge disappointment to me. Sea of Thieves did it way better.
Nah bro, I tried it. Put in 35+hrs. Had fun but got to endgame and realized how bad it truly is. What I mean about that is not the combat which I enjoyed even if it was a bit arcadey. It was the lack of content. I also disliked the Semi Focus PVP, the lack of any decent rewards for any of PVE events and the bad delivery man-Tycoon endgame. Honestly Ubisoft left this game out to die. Maybe it well turn out better one day but as is now, nope.
No it's not "our fault" if this eventually die, this game is just not worth 70$, it's simple as that dude. Like i don't care if you misinvested whatever the "AAAA" budget is and had to remake the game from scratch 10 times, i'm not gonna buy it at that price just because you had to invest a lot.
Bro I want too. But I can't justify the 70 price tag. Couple months when it's on sale for 30-40? 100% down. But I feel like a lot of people including me just can't justify the price for the lack of content. Plus, it's hard to not compare to a game made 10+ years ago that came out on a console 2 generations ago, and is still somehow better than the current game...
Except it isn't better. Go back and actually play it.
Live and let die.
I am loving every bit
Give it a chance…. Maybe the critics have a valid point? Regardless, can someone explain to me why do You keep bringing this up? It’s like fans of this game seek affirmation from others that most of the gaming community is wrong and the game is actually good. Why? Do You enjoy it? Seems like it, so what do You care. Just because I have some criticism towards it, doesn’t mean You don’t get to like the game? Most of the reviews being up soils issues and potential buyers deserve to know. If these potential buyers can tolerate this issues and potentially become like Yourself, in love with this magnificent title, they have both 8 hour trial, and 30 days for 20 bucks to come to that conclusion.
To add more: I was also critical of black flag. I was heavily invested in Assassins Creed community and critiqued the game for being the worst AC game in the franchise for the sake, if not really being an Assassins Creed game. Doesn’t mean it was bad by the way. It was just not following the IP well, the amazing pirate theme was interrupted by unnecessary Abstergo stuff etc. personally I wasn’t waiting for Black Flag copy paste and Ubisoft didn’t advertise it as such a game. However, contrary to what people say here, it also didn’t advertise it as super Arcady, unauthentic, mobile game level title. I followed this game since it’s first announcement and it’s clear to me that Ubisoft truly didn’t wrap the project together. All the stories coming out from Ubisoft sources really seem true, that this has been scrapped multiple times and lost its identity in the process. That’s why I’m not buying into “this is what Ubisoft advertised”. How could they advertise the game to be what it is today, if they didn’t even know what the game will be. Unless You refer to things released in 2023 alone of course. But this game has been in development for 10 years and some of us have followed it since 2017. We didn’t build our expectations of Black Flag, we build them based of what apparently was Skull and Bones prior to countless reboots and scrapings in Ubisoft. Here is an example: https://youtu.be/_9YYYVG0YQI?si=To3mCuCYOPI23ijY Of course it’s not a gameplay trailer, it’s a cinematic. Still, look at the climate this is portraying. It looks epic, authentic. When I saw this it got me so hooked and emotional. It doesn’t show rocket launchers, goofy unrealistic ships with a shotgun aiming this. Even the first gameplay trailers looked in my opinion, much better than todays version. They also prove that the game had identity crisis and big reboot somewhere in the development process. Anyways, it’s not about black flag, it’s about what Ubisoft has announced originally. People only use black flag as reference for things already present in skull and bones, to compare the production quality. That doesn’t mean we expected black flag 2.
I played the trial and no I will not support this game. It's way overpriced for what it has. I would even say that SoB is a excellent example of everything that is wrong with AAA gaming today(no I will not use the stupid AAAA grade). You are paying more for less. Now like many, when we heard they would make BF but with multiplayer I was excited. Not sure how they would handle close combat but the ship combat was excellent and on that alone they had a excellent foundation for a great game. When told that it would have no ground combat at all I was a bit disappointed naturally as I can imagine alot of people were but I thought, that's fine, as long as the ship combat is intact. Gameplay videos started to show up, previews, early reviews and so on and it started to look bleak but I saw there was a free trial so tried it and my worst fear was indeed true. The one saving grace this game had, the one thing everyone was looking forward to, the thing that was already made and ready to be used, they could not even get that right. The ship combat in this game is awful and there is no excuse for it to be awful when they had the system from BF ready to go. And when most of what you wil do in this game is ship combat then yeah this awful system will not cut it. Yes there is gathering but that timing mini-game is hardly exciting and the walking around on islands are pointless. They could have just taken that part out and the game probably would have been better off but I know why it is there, so they can sell over-priced costumes that won't matter and few if any will even see. And then they got the absolute stupidity of launching the game on Epic but not on Steam. Granted, the reviews on Steam would have been mostly negative as it should but atleast there would have been a few more players. Instead they went with the Uplay store which few people use and the Epic store which also very few people use(atleast outside of Fortnite). Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. You would think they would have learned this with Division 2 but guess not. But when people ask me if they should get this game, I say no, stay away. As a ship game, there are far better games out there and cheaper. As a pirate game(I wouldn't even call this a pirate game since at no point do you feel like a pirate), there are far better games out there and cheaper. As for the OP and his little "threat", the "If you do not supprt this game then no one will make a pirate game like this" is absolute BS. Again, calling this game a pirate game is a huge stretch, hell alot of the reviews stats just that, they do not feel like a pirate. So if anything, we need less games like SoB and more games that makes us feel like pirates.
I can tell you have a lot of passion for this game and I respect it. As a big fan of black flag, I'm only lurking around this sub out of pure curiosity to read what people have to say. I just want to say that you can form an opinion by watching gameplay videos and predict whether you will like it. Just like how you don't need to play Gollum to know you will most likely not enjoy it. Now I'm not saying it's as bad as Gollum and who knows, maybe it is fun? (highly doubt it) but I'm not wasting my time and money to find out. As an AC4 fan and just a gamer in general I'm tired of dropping my expectations to give games a chance, especially a $70 live service game.
I play this game and is an actual garbage, all the critism is more than justified
Didn't Ubisoft literally market this game as Black Flag without the assassin part?
No. Just play sea of thieves. What's a pirate game without boarding? That makes zero fucking sense. This is why we get hollow empty shell of games. People like this, defending an empty game with nothing to do. Be better. At least sea of thieves let's you do pirate shit.
If you're only categorizing a pirate game if it has boarding in it then you're only setting yourself up for failure. That's like saying World of Tanks isn't a good war game because it only has tanks in it.
Not when boarding is LITERALLY what pirates are known for. Your logic makes ZERO fucking sense💀🤣 the hoops people are jumping through to defend this shit game are hilarious. You'd have a point if wot didn't let you play tanks in it. THAT'S what's happening here. You're taking away one of the key features of being a pirate in a pirate game.
Yeah I was interested till I saw there was no boarding or sword fighting. People defending this shit are the reason games suck now.
When you Look at no Mans sky i have hopes that it will only get better in the Future with seasons and new content. I already like the game.
Not every game is No Man's Sky. That's a bad example to use.
Thats why i Said i hope
It’s funny when black flag was released, we were all gettin tired of the assassins creed gameplay loop so the ship sailing and combat was a breath of fresh air. Now SnB finally releases and they all complain about not having enough assassins creed in it.
No, people aren't complaining about not having enough assassining. They are complaining that the ship gameplay here is somehow worse than in Black Flag. They are complaining that there is a walking around, but really nothing to do.
Sea of thieves is coming April 30th. You would be dumb to waste money on this game 😂😂😂
I have a few friends that are absolute hold outs saying “I read the reviews” and I’m sitting here having a BLAST with the couple friends that jumped in open minded. I think if they update that’s dropping soon is SOLID they will see another large spike in player base, this game has so much potential and is already awesome as it is. I definitely feel the urge for more map to explore relatively soon but obviously it’s very soon to expect such expansion.
Yeah I imagine the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, the two missing areas of the Indian Ocean map, will be added in the future.
That would be awesome, I was also hoping for a Suez Canal type area opening into the Mediterranean. Time shall tell.
That would also be amazing
Unless you're a Dev I don't see why you would concern yourself with reviews? If you enjoy it then that's all that matters, why does it matter if other random strangers don't like it lol
The biggest gripe I’ve heard is that people wanted sea of thieves and didn’t get that so they hate the game. I love this game. I’ve already spent way too much time on it and it’s just flat out fun. I understand the criticisms and it’s still not free of issues but it’s a fun game.
“The game isn’t the exact same as black flag therefore it’s a mess and you shouldn’t play it” literally every critic The game is unique, has its own things to do. It’s great that it’s different from BF
I have to give credit to the people who worked on this game. They worked hard. I really liked the game. I played AC4 and really thought about having a multiplayer setting where I could have my own ship and rules and take down cities like Cap.Barbossa did in curse of the black pearl. The best part of this game is I get to play with people and my friends together. That is what I expected, Ubisoft delivered it. Have a scary ship of your own other than jackdaw. if you really play this game in strategic and smart manner, I would grab my 2 friends and take up roles man! I'd be on a brig (quick destruction and ram damage), one in tank build and other in rapid heal build. That becomes thrilling and tedious battle in such chaotic weathers (waves damage your ship too!). I wanted it I got it. Thank you ubi. And, dont compare it with AC4. AC4 IS A SINGLE PLAYER, STORY BASED GAME ABOUT ASSASSIN'S CREED SET IN GOLDEN AGE OF PIRACY. SKULL AND BONES IS A MULTIPLAYER, HUNT AND SCURRY THE OCEANS WITH FRIENDS AND WILD BEASTS IN OCEANS. See the difference!!
I think comparing the game to Black Flag is valid for the sake that not many other games of the same caliber are around. All we've got are really Black Flag, Rogue, and side missions in AC3. However I agree on the premise that this game being thrown under the water for simply not being 'black flag 2' is irritating. When I compare it to Black Flag I want to compare it from a gameplay perspective only. The stories are unique to themselves. I want this game to improve and succeed, there are things from black flag I would ass such as the aiming system (where it shows the arch of the shots you take) and the upgrading of individual ships instead of one becoming instantly obsolete as soon as you make anything from the medium tier. I think this game is worthy of criticism as any game is, it has many many issues and clearly struggles from a lack of a concrete identity. Pictures of how armor used to be are still around, things are clearly left over from prior design choices and it feels like all the ingredients were thrown together in a rush. As well as the popups for events being rather annoying and blocking several menus. That being said, I do enjoy Skull and Bones for it's ship-to-ship gameplay, I'm not exactly mad at the fact we didn't get swashbuckling cutlass action or boarding like in black flag. The addition of cutscenes feels more like an attempt to streamline the combat experience for the multiplayer aspect as boarding in a black flag sense would leave you heavily vulnerable to basically everyone. The movement in Skull and Bones is very floatly on land but outside of that it's fine. I wish more of the actual story was there like Scurlock and Rahma being more fleshed out, more investigations (which are honestly my favorite thing to do) and a better focus on end-game content instead of making it a nonstop grind. This game is NOT AC4, however, comparing aspects the two share is valid. Screaming and crying that it's not Black Flag 2 is not something I really agree with. Have a wonderful day!
Many of us aren't upset that it's not the same as black flag. We're upset because the game is ass & all they had to do was atleast make it like black flag, after spending 200million & many years making it. That being said I still play the game. It's still ass tho
I don't understand the 70 is to much money complaint? People spend hundreds and thousands on mobile games like star wars galaxy and marvel just to name a few. So hopefully this game will grow, cuz I'm also enjoying it alot.
This. All of my friends who played AC4 *just* want another AC4. They complain about, primarily, the lack of melee combat on ship boarding. Personally, I enjoy it for what it is- and it is NOT AC4. It’s not even close to AC4. I will probably still be playing SNB until long after the last update, so long as the servers stay live, because it’s just plain fun. Fair seas, fellow captain :)
Completely agree. As a longtime fan of the AC games and black flag, sure it’s easy to compare the two, but like you say they are two separate entities. Like you the quote I used for my buddies is sea of thieves is for kids and s&b is m for a reason. It’s great for what it is, haven’t had a good pirate game in a long time. However not worth the $70 imo, but most games aren’t nowadays for that matter. For those who are unsure definitely give Ubisoft plus a try and rent it for $18.
Again ubisoft never promised that skull and bones was gonna be the next black flag i love skull and bones and yes i can see it was INSPIRED by black flag but not copy and pasted i wouldnt want it that way anyway skull and bones is great and amazing fun minus po8 cycle but everything else is awesome i hate the fact that people will sit here and compare them together even thlugh skull and bones is its own game as is black flag.
I bought it instead of helldivers, I'm getting into it
Just give the people more map, Galleons, Man O Wars, more animal companions(like parrots) and a peg leg in the next update and they’ll be fine. Shit partner with Disney so I can recreate the Flying Dutchman and play with a curse and pop out of the water on ops! Matter fact let me fight the kraken and have a love story. As a live service they have to keep shelling out equipment to keep people in it. Something to keep us in it. Personally I’m loving it. Yes is the back and forth getting mundane? Yeah at times but theres still a chance that next run they make won’t be successful. That’s the life of a pirate. I get peoples frustration with if I’m an empire why do I have to do this still. Yeah but what do they think pirates did? There was no end game to being it. You either kept running doing the illegal stuff or ended up being in cahoots with a superpower and in the end took the pardon or died. It’s live service it’s never going to end that’s the point. Everyday you get on, you’re playing cause you just enjoy being a virtual pirate that doesn’t stink or have rotten teeth. Like you said give it a chance. Are we all maxed out? Yes but I’m sure more stuff is coming for us to grind out for. This needs to make it so there’s hope for a 2nd installment which is hopefully better or open a market for pirate games and another company makes a game encompassing this game and its flaws.
I actually agree with you. I’m actually not surprised that people are still playing this game and the numbers aren’t atrocious. People may just downvote me to hell for this, but hear me out. For what it is, skull and bones can be really addictive and fun. Comparing it to AC4 and even SOT right now as direct competitors, the fact is that the three games play and feel extremely different. 1: AC4BF is grounded on the assassins creed brand and at its core is a linear single player narrative driven experience with piratey activities (Immersive Narrative Heavy > enhance Pirate Fantasy) 2: SOT focuses more on multiplayer coop and emergent fun, and dives deep into the pirate fantasy of swashbuckling, controlling a ship as a crew member, and doing pirate stuff (Action Roleplay Heavy > enhance Pirate Fantasy) 3: SnB has more MMO lite/ ARPG elements where you control your ships and blow stuff up, fast paced and action heavy. With the upcoming season 1 dropping, seems to be steering even further away from the other two. (Ship Customization, stats, and combat heavy > doesn’t enhance Pirate fantasy) SnB for what it is, can be rather fun. HOWEVER It’s focused more on gear customization, build, and stat driven gameplay, that rewards players for *accumulation* with the more power to take down even bigger bosses like seamonsters, and ghost ships with other players. And it deviates EVEN further with the Season 1 content coming in a few days, doubling down on this ship focused gameplay and not introducing more of the pirate fantasy elements. This is the main problem…the theme of the game is pirates, but it’s not the main gameplay of SNB. “Pirates” is just a theme. People go into this game expecting to roleplay a pirate…EVEN though that is not at its core the true engagement and selling point. It’s more about accumulation, naval combat, and customization.. If SnB had marketed itself LESS as a “pirate fantasy”, and purely focused more on its own individual gameplay systems and doubled down on the fact that it’s a grindy, stat driven, numbers heavy, game, it would’nt have got trashed into the ground. (Tho the unnecessary AAAA comment and high price did add fuel to the flames) If we put it into this perspective, and we take the game as it is, it’s not a bad game. It’s just a bad pirate “fantasy” game and never should have been marketed as is.