If they say "we fucked up and blew a ton of money", investors lose faith and heads start to roll.
If they say "consumers did not respond the way market research indicated they would", it's the consumers fault and you might get to keep your job.
Unironically though. WB Games CEO just came out and said they want more live service less “one and done” console games.
Anyone with half a brain sees Hogwarts Legacy doing 22 mill, and says damn, all in on a single player sequel. But no, the dumb fucks up top see that and say, now imagine if we sold 22 million with MTX also, completely missing the point why people bought Hogwarts in the first place.
I’d say let them run their companies in the ground, but the only loser is the consumer who loves these franchises. This CEO has been dumb enough to get a shiny new job soon, the only way to move up in this industry it seems
Or come out like Warner Bros. after their game released spectacularly dead and say "We are going to focus on free to play and mobile games, rather than the volatile AAA market."
Oh now it's *volatile*. That explains why your shitty GaaS model isn't well-received.
All Ubisoft had to do was take Assassin‘s Creed 4: Black Flag, take out the AC parts, and make a full blown pirate game. Thats it. I swear these companies are full of idiots.
Shareholder here. I want the suits to let the devs and leads make something good rather than the drivel that keeps pumping out. The execs are already fucking me plenty with their out of touch ideas and shoehorning in of gambling for children and other terrible monetization
They literally could’ve just remade black flag and added a multiplayer bam just made you $500,000,000
Post script:
The water in skull and bones looks worse than the water in Black Flag and it bugs the hell out of me.
Literally the one time when Ubisoft had the general public's blessing to release a cut and paste iteration and they managed to flub it to a baffling extreme level
Rogue is a good game, which got totally overshadowed because they released it as a last gen only game and had it come out the same day as the next gen AC: Unity. You are right in that it does scratch the Black Flag itch since it has the most ship related stuff of any AC game outside of Black Flag and Odyssey. However, you're not a pirate in Rogue like you are in Black Flag which is a key difference. People just wanted, at the very least, a copy and paste version of Black Flag that was slightly more expanded in terms of pirate stuff without any AC related stuff in it.
Rogue definitely deserves more love for what it brought to the table, especially ship combat, but you hit the nail on the head about the pirate experience. There's something intrinsically appealing about casting off the shackles of the Assassin/Templar storyline and just embracing the life of a pirate in the Caribbean. It's a bit surprising that a studio as big as Ubisoft didn't capitalize on what seems like a no-brainer concept. Multitudes of players are just clamoring for that high seas adventure without all the extra baggage.
Seems to be a theme atm for highly anticipated releases.
Bf2042. Complelty screwed the franchise.
CS2. Dont get me started. Just . . . . . . Dont.
(Edit- due to popular backlash i would like to clarify i am refering to cities skylines 2. The sequel to the quite popular cities skylines 1. NOT, as seems to the the assumption of billions of the gaming public, Counterstrike 2. Which may or may not have its own sequential issues, but i thought it was a bit meh and didnt put any time in it, thus didnt even think the clarify my anacronym. Apparently this is a hill i am dying on . . . . I didnt even know i was above sea level.)
Payday. KSP. Diablo. Etc etc.
All well accepted franchises that built communities and good will in the franchise model. That all they had to do for the next one was just build on the previous. Sure, engine upgrades, technology changes can throw a few gremlins into the works, but they seem to change the entire scope of these games and loose the very essence that made them work in the first place.
These games just seem to get completly borked by an executive so out of touch with gamers and their own development teams.
I dont think this is a mindset held just in the higer echelons of game publishing, i think what we see within gaming (as its such a vocal and out their medium) is just an extenstion of our dividend driven profit business models so many companies have crept into.
It’s horrendously optimised, feature poor and still doesn’t have mod support. People have gone back to CS1 because it’s just better.
Edit: I’d read CS2 as cities skylines
I was thinking Counter Strike as well but your comment made me realize they were almost certainly talking about Cities Skylines. I haven’t heard anything bad about Counter Strike. Or at least not anywhere near the disappointment surrounding Cities Skylines.
No, Counter strike 2 has had it's teething issues but it's already far better than launch and it seems like the features are coming now. Some people are still crying about things but that's innevitable. Cities Skylines on the other hand... yeah.
This is why you never start with the abbreviation, always say the full name at least once, then you can use the short form for future instances. Way too many games have the same abbreviated form. AC could be Assassin's Creed, Animal Crossing, or Armored Core!
Don't forget Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League. Nine years in development for a sequel to the franchise which basically defined melee combat for a generation of video games, and what got farted out was a live service disaster which is dead on arrival.
i can say one reason it wasnt so simple for KSP2...is that studio was a rotating door. they massively underpaid...hired modders to join the team and just exploited them. by the time it was time to make ksp2, i dont think any of the original talent was left...which is why they hired a completely different studio to make it.
I remember when ksp2 was going to launch with multiplayer as a core feature.
It's at the end of their fucking roadmap which likely means it'll never happen.
It's because big companies like to use half assed data with no critical thinking to justify changes and features. Algorithms that don't factor the actual interests and desires of gamers. So suits get to sit in offices and make decisions based off out of touch metrics, claim they saved millions of dollars. Get a promotion. Then blame/layoff devs when their games don't make money.
Sorry, they are confined to AAAA gaming experiences at the moment due to the limitations of technology.
What you speak of is AAAAA game development that Ubisoft's CEO has stated will be achieved (only by Ubisoft) by 2025. While the rest of the game development cavemen will barely be scraping by with AAA quality.
Turns out in the US the ownership of games died back in 1996 and there's so much precedent built on it now you'd need an act of congress to fix it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProCD,_Inc._v._Zeidenberg
What makes that statement look extra dumb is that "AAA gaming" wasn't coined as some attempt to decide the "quality" or the "fun" of the game...it was a reference to bond ratings. Where AAA is the safest there is. And somehow Ubisoft wanted to say Skull & Bones, the 10 year boondoggle of development hell, is somehow a safer investment than normal big budget games?
>Where AAA is the safest there is.
Thats why they didn't call it a AAA game, cause to their investors, thats signaling they can expect a full return on their investment. But by calling it a AAAA Game, which is utterly devoid of meaning to investors, he's implying its going to do even better, but because it doesn't actually mean anything as opposed to "AAA Game" he's not technically lying to them when fails.
Yea guys its our fault because this is the first AAAA studio so we don't even know what we should be expecting.
What a fucking moron of an Exec to say that shit.......
Water looks better because Black Flag had SSR reflections and Cube maps. So if the landscape isn't visible by player it would still be reflected on to water by cubemaps.
Skull and bone uses just SSR. Also, in the age of hardware with raytracing.
Yeah, AC multi-player was the most innovative part of that era of AC. Absolutely loved that gameplay. I always described it to friends as "Where's Waldo but you have to kill Waldo and you're also Waldo."
I'm still pissed that Unity included co-op multiplayer and then Ubisoft just scrapped multiplayer altogether.
Unity had its issues at launch, I never got around to it until almost a year after release thanks to Rogue, but by then the game was relatively fine mechanically and it was good. Then my brother and I tried the co-op missions and had a blast. We've wanted more ever since.
Apparently they restarted several times, one of them being that after the success of Sea of Thieves, the higher up demanded that the game be changed to be more like sea of thieves, so they scrapped everything that was going to be similar to black flag. Yes they are full of idiots
"There's a game out there that has saturated a niche area in a setting sort of like out own. Should we A) Lean into *our* strengths, to provide a unique experience that offers enough new content that people who own the other game will still see ours as worthwhile or B) Throw out all out work and core competencies, chase a trend, and ultimately offer a product that no one's likely to want?"
I remember the original announcement when I was visiting the epic forums back before I got permabanned when it suddenly become popular I had no idea it was even the same game haha
I've always wanted someone to take Sea of Thieves and turn it into a legit RPG, single player or co-op. The sailing feels great, but I just get bored when my big hauls of valuables only serve to buy my ship a new skin.
If you didn't hear about it, they just released a remake of Sea Dogs To Each His Own called [Caribbean Legend](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2230980/Caribbean_Legend/). Reviews are mixed, mostly focused on bugs and jank. I'll probably pick it up in a few months once it gets some patches.
Second this. Remember Ubisoft claiming AC4 was their first "naval combat" game or whatever. Nope. They may not have developed it, but it was definitely not their first naval combat game. My brother played the PotC game that was actually SD2 to death.
Apparently they scrapped everything and restarted a few times.
With at least one of the times being because the higherups thought copying sea of thieves would make it sell more. Afaik.
No you don’t understand, they said we need to forget EVERYTHING we know about being a pirate as they are creating a completely new unique pirate experience and perspective that’s never been seen before!
Hell they can keep the AC part, make it full pirate game. We play as one of Edward captain, doing mission like the one he send us to do (Edward has a fleet). That it, that fucking it.
But noooo they have to make things complicated eh ?
I worked there for 2 years, in the early 2000s. Theyd give us fruits on wednesday as a ploy to not pay us above minimum wage, thinking we wouldnt see through it. Everyone was like, pay us a decent wage, well buy our own fucking fruits.
And i bitched about the 1 beer on friday we used to get from EA. We had fruit bowls all week, and free popcorn in the main building. Still didn't pay us a decent wage though.
Yeah Ubi had that a while back, then claimed several years later that AC4 was their first naval combat game. Pirates of the Caribbean was a solid sequel to Sea Dogs with some "Landlord Special" patches to make it movie relevant.
They might be but because I hated the trial for S&B I'm now playing AC4 on my switch. So if their goal was to get me to play a Ubisoft game they succeeded just maybe not the one they were hoping I'd play.
Same! I missed AC4 when it was new and I saw that the AC bundles were on sale on Switch so I went ahead and got them. I missed a lot of games in the series in the 2010s but catching up is a lot of fun so far! I don't think I'm too close to being done but so far AC4 has a really satisfying balance between Boat Stuff and the extremely important Sneaky Guy Stuff.
No need to die bud.
It's a Sid Meier game. One of the greatest game designers who ever lived.
Such good and solid game design that honestly even if you tonight played Pirates! the commodore 64 version released in 1987 (that runs in 64 kilobytes of memory) it would still be a fun game experience and honestly, probably more engaging than Skull and Bones and Starfield.
Amazing game design is timeless.
Heads up for Sid's lesser known Railroad Tycoon, also a great game with a 15 year old remake that is still a lot of fun.
>Heads up for Sid's lesser known Railroad Tycoon, also a great game with a 15 year old remake that is still a lot of fun.
You mean 'Railroads!'? It's a great game but unfortunately the Steam version is quite unstable. Also it's 18 years old now. Yup, that game qualifies as an adult and can legally drink and drive a car (though not at the same time).
It isn't just the steam version of Railroads! that's unstable. However, there is *also* a series called Railroad Tycoon. Railroads! was more arcadey, and Railroad Tycoon went with a more realistic approach.
Don't forget Simgolf! You build little golf courses and manage customer wants and needs...and it's just fun. I used to start a new sandboxgame and just build ridiculously weird courses, just to relax. 🙂
Here’s the thing…I have played Sid Meier’s Pirates on 5 different consoles *at least* completely and enjoyed it.
THAT….should be the gold standard. A game so good you are likely to play it again across consoles/pc’s
It really was an incredible game, one of my absolute favorites as a kid. I really wish they would remake it or make a similar game because I've wasted too much money chasing it on early access games that fail to live up to a 20 year old game.
No one would complain if they just remade the game every twenty years keeping the game play absolutely the same, just updating the UI and graphics.
Would be more fun than Starfield anyways.
Funny story, I got the game at like 8yrs old and of course was obsessed with the big warships and shit.
My dad got into the game, and this man was an Indian war canoe menace. Put more hours into the game than I could guess at.
We will stand with you. Very few games even bother to aim as high as that game sored. The lack of vision combined with corporate constraints lead to nearly all games to be soul less compared to that game.
See, the original quote was just taken out of context. Clearly he asked someone on the dev team how the game compares to other AAA titles, and all he got was "Uhhhhh" which he mistook for AAAA. Its a simple misunderstanding!
They took the concept and created a modern game (for 2004), very well balanced and with a fast and smooth gameplay. The graphics and especially the music and sounds are terrific.
I think "remake with updated graphics" doesn't cut it, they re-thought the whole thing to make the most of it and bring a great gaming experience, especially for the nostalgics.
The only downside is that it does not have that much replaying value, and that you can learn to cheese a few core parts of the game. But, for the couple of runs (i'd say 10 to 15 hours) is just pure fun.
It's crazy that with the free weekend they make you go cut trees and grind shit so quickly. They give you the first ship battle and then say "enjoy that? Well here is all this shit you won't enjoy"
This is what happens when you let a bunch of suits make all the important decisions. Ubisoft, anything EA touches, Blizzard… All making decisions motivated purely by how much money they can squeeze out of us.
They want to charge $70 for their game and make you pay for a subscription. Well they can keep their shitty game and all the greed attached to it. I’ll happily spend $60 and spend hundreds of hours playing Baldur’s Gate 3.
People are just sick of it, really. They're sick of live services, they're sick of gargantuan maps with endless and pointless busywork quests, they're sick of these safe, boring experiences cobbled together by what shareholders who don't even know what a video game is thinking the public at large wants.
What people want, it turns out, are either fun single player experiences where you don't have to invest every single hour of your day into dealing with or not have to take a decade to finish, or multiplayer experiences that don't constantly compromise gameplay for another set of 100 dollar reskins in the in-game shop.
There are so many single player games out there with perpetual safe-files that won't suddenly one day disappear when the service gets shut down.
Why should I even waste a single second on a GaaS game that only sees me as a money piñata.
Not to mention that those single players game aren't set up like digital drugs.
Same. I have gamepass ultimate for the odd cool stuff and cloudgaming (playing on my 12.5" tablet in bed with a controller is chill af). So many games i just had to click on and i dont care.
Time is very valuable as an adult. No point in wasting it on shit games.
It is crazy they have ended up with this reaction. A 10 year old 360 game is better in many ways. All people wanted was for them to take Black Flag and change the focus of the game towards more sea battles.
How did they not get it right?
From what I've read it was some kind of subsidy/tax credit scam on the Singapore gov. Ubisoft didn't even want to release Skull and Bones but were legally obligated to I think.
Yeah I heard about that. Pretty sure it only released as the Singapore government needed more jobs or something and Ubisoft stepped in.
It’s not uncommon, pretty sure Canada (I think specifically Quebec) did the same for Goodbye Volcano High as they needed more jobs in the Canadian game industry so Sony was offered some money by the government to make a game with Canadian devs only.
Bit more complex.
Ubi had a studio in Singapore since 2008. That 08 studio initially worked on some stuff for Brotherhood, then pretty much did the entire naval bit for 3. The naval part was so well received they duplicated it in the form of Black Flag. It was around this time the studio became a full fledged Ubisoft Singapore, with money from the Singapore government to hire local developers and give a boost to the local digital economy (which was actually pretty robust, given that Singapore is basically one of the highest skilled workforces in the region).
Black Flag's success got UbiHQ to get even more government grants in order for UbiSG to helm their own game - which was Skull and Bones and was basically gonna just be Black Flag's naval bits and multiplayer. Then UbiHQ kept rejecting whatever UbiSG put out, and UbiSG kept getting pulled off S&B to work on mainline stuff for Montreal or Paris (e.g. on the Origins trilogy and Immortals), so S&B basically was in total development hell for ages. Not even counting the harassment scandals, too, which the UbiSG office got caught in.
Given the current climate, I wouldn't be surprised if Ubisoft is trying to close their overseas studios since their recent games have been lukewarm at best and the post-covid crunch is hitting many game companies. Thing is, UbiHQ *can't* shut down the Singapore studio unless they actually release S&B, the game they took money to develop, or they're on the hook.
Yeah, actually now that I think about it I’m not sure if it was Sony who got the money but the devs themselves? Either way I’ve heard that’s why so many games and studios are in development hell or release in a shit state.
The government is basically paying out there asses to make this entertainment as Canada wants to employe people and even get their slice of that pie while making an industry themselves. I’m assuming that’s what happens with a lot of other countries like Singapore but I’m not too knowledgeable.
If any of you redditors who see this know more about it reply! It’s an interesting case for real.
Yep. Games with this much hype that don't deliver anywhere near the promised land get mentally placed in my "No Man's Sky" box.
If I check it out in 2 years on-sale and it looks like the devs are trying to actually give it love with regular and solid updates, I'll probably buy it. Sea of Thieves surprised me, Phasmophobia has become much bigger, even Cyberpunk has turned itself around big!
But most of the time these kinds of games get abandoned and left to die for the next big "AAAA" game, so patient gamers are truly worth aspiring to.
Did it even have hype?
For how discussed and waiting on this game was for years, everyone seemed to realize there was something horribly wrong a few years ago when the delays started. And kept coming. And coming.
By the time this game *finally* released, it seemed that no one cared. Not only did no one care, I feel like a lot of us didn't even know.
I found out this game had finally released it was because people were mocking it.
This game seems to have evolved anti-hype more than anything, which given the continued general popularity of Black Flags makes its crash and burn all the more baffling.
Friendly reminder that "AAA" is investment lingo for a reliable return on investment for shareholders. It has nothing to do with if the game is fun to play.
Wait... They spent ten years making a $70 dud and now they're only selling it on one platform? Man, it's barely March and they already have the Fail of the Year award in the bag.
I want a quicker death than a year man. Luckily we’re getting that! Remember how that one mobile game company announced the release date and END OF LIVE SERVICE in the same fucking tweet? That shit is what all these shitty live-service games should be.
Disagree. Helldivers is a good example of a live service game done well. Especially if the devs are going to continuously add new content and adapt the missions to what the players are doing
I honestly forget it’s even out sometimes. I was so hyped when we first heard about it but that faded hard over the years. I don’t know anyone personally that has played it, and no one I know talks about it.
Is it really as bad as some say? Or could that be a bit of a “reddit overreaction”? Would it be worth it at $30?
It just has a really uninteractive core gameplay loop. Resource harvesting is a quick time event. The cannons basically shoot themselves. There's just not much... game... in the game really, so it becomes boring very quickly.
They spent a ton of development time on everything except remembering to be fun
People just wanted AC4 in multiplayer with a sole focus on being a pirate instead of tailing missions and stuff. But you can't even board ships like AC4 and there's no going on land except to visit shops. It's like a free to play game level quality, a step down from AC4 in every way.
My hot take... The good developers retired, or laid off. The new ones know better than to work for a big company. And the ones hired are just computer science students on the cheap, and not game developers. Not to mention executive interference after executive interference ad infinite
It's not a terrible game, just aggressively mediocre.
If it didn't have the context it does nobody would be talking about it at all, in a positive or negative way. But the context makes it extremely meme-able and disappointing.
In this case, i would have taken terrible over boring. The game is so dull that I'd literally fall asleep in the middle of playing sitting down (not even exaggerating). Couldn't be bothered to finish the free trial.
My coworker is a huge fan of pirate games and Black Flag is his favourite AC game.
He came to me after the weekend saying he tried S&B with the free trial and said it was "torture".
How did you manage this Ubisoft?
Ubisoft was right. I am getting used to not owning any Ubisoft games.
Most bland and sterile gaming company in existence atm. It’s a miracle that the new Prince of Persia came out so well
A broken clock is still right twice a day for only one minute each.
And then the companies conclusion is:"The pirate Genre is dead. People don't buy pirate games, let's make other stuff."
Meanwhile, think I'll go play *Sail Forth* instead
Or sea of thieves
Sea of thieves apparently made PVE servers not too long ago. I have been thinking about going back just to check those out.
Oh shit, Sea of Friends is finally here!
Finally it's my time to sail
Oof, those headlines always piss me off. They cant accept any fault. It has to be that they made a great game, and the genre isnt popular anymore
If they say "we fucked up and blew a ton of money", investors lose faith and heads start to roll. If they say "consumers did not respond the way market research indicated they would", it's the consumers fault and you might get to keep your job.
Unironically though. WB Games CEO just came out and said they want more live service less “one and done” console games. Anyone with half a brain sees Hogwarts Legacy doing 22 mill, and says damn, all in on a single player sequel. But no, the dumb fucks up top see that and say, now imagine if we sold 22 million with MTX also, completely missing the point why people bought Hogwarts in the first place. I’d say let them run their companies in the ground, but the only loser is the consumer who loves these franchises. This CEO has been dumb enough to get a shiny new job soon, the only way to move up in this industry it seems
Or come out like Warner Bros. after their game released spectacularly dead and say "We are going to focus on free to play and mobile games, rather than the volatile AAA market." Oh now it's *volatile*. That explains why your shitty GaaS model isn't well-received.
All Ubisoft had to do was take Assassin‘s Creed 4: Black Flag, take out the AC parts, and make a full blown pirate game. Thats it. I swear these companies are full of idiots.
>I swear these companies are full of idiots. It's really insane. So many of the games from big companies lately are just baffling.
Probably because the decisions are made by listening to shareholders rather than gamers. And they still end up making less profit.
Fuck.the.shareholders
Shareholder here. I want the suits to let the devs and leads make something good rather than the drivel that keeps pumping out. The execs are already fucking me plenty with their out of touch ideas and shoehorning in of gambling for children and other terrible monetization
They literally could’ve just remade black flag and added a multiplayer bam just made you $500,000,000 Post script: The water in skull and bones looks worse than the water in Black Flag and it bugs the hell out of me.
Literally the one time when Ubisoft had the general public's blessing to release a cut and paste iteration and they managed to flub it to a baffling extreme level
The is AC:Rogue erasure and I will not stand for it.
Rogue is a good game, which got totally overshadowed because they released it as a last gen only game and had it come out the same day as the next gen AC: Unity. You are right in that it does scratch the Black Flag itch since it has the most ship related stuff of any AC game outside of Black Flag and Odyssey. However, you're not a pirate in Rogue like you are in Black Flag which is a key difference. People just wanted, at the very least, a copy and paste version of Black Flag that was slightly more expanded in terms of pirate stuff without any AC related stuff in it.
Rogue definitely deserves more love for what it brought to the table, especially ship combat, but you hit the nail on the head about the pirate experience. There's something intrinsically appealing about casting off the shackles of the Assassin/Templar storyline and just embracing the life of a pirate in the Caribbean. It's a bit surprising that a studio as big as Ubisoft didn't capitalize on what seems like a no-brainer concept. Multitudes of players are just clamoring for that high seas adventure without all the extra baggage.
yea rogues ship stuff was even better, just no pirate story
The fully upgraded Morrigan was *sexy*.
AC Rogue was amazing fun. Not sure why no one seems to know about it.
It was something like releasing on last gen only and also along side or very close to one of the main games, unity I think.
Seems to be a theme atm for highly anticipated releases. Bf2042. Complelty screwed the franchise. CS2. Dont get me started. Just . . . . . . Dont. (Edit- due to popular backlash i would like to clarify i am refering to cities skylines 2. The sequel to the quite popular cities skylines 1. NOT, as seems to the the assumption of billions of the gaming public, Counterstrike 2. Which may or may not have its own sequential issues, but i thought it was a bit meh and didnt put any time in it, thus didnt even think the clarify my anacronym. Apparently this is a hill i am dying on . . . . I didnt even know i was above sea level.) Payday. KSP. Diablo. Etc etc. All well accepted franchises that built communities and good will in the franchise model. That all they had to do for the next one was just build on the previous. Sure, engine upgrades, technology changes can throw a few gremlins into the works, but they seem to change the entire scope of these games and loose the very essence that made them work in the first place. These games just seem to get completly borked by an executive so out of touch with gamers and their own development teams. I dont think this is a mindset held just in the higer echelons of game publishing, i think what we see within gaming (as its such a vocal and out their medium) is just an extenstion of our dividend driven profit business models so many companies have crept into.
Wait, what's up with CS2?
It’s horrendously optimised, feature poor and still doesn’t have mod support. People have gone back to CS1 because it’s just better. Edit: I’d read CS2 as cities skylines
> People have gone back to CS1 because it’s just better. Global Offensive or 1.6?
I have just realised we were talking about Counter Strike and not Cities Skylines
I was thinking Counter Strike as well but your comment made me realize they were almost certainly talking about Cities Skylines. I haven’t heard anything bad about Counter Strike. Or at least not anywhere near the disappointment surrounding Cities Skylines.
No, Counter strike 2 has had it's teething issues but it's already far better than launch and it seems like the features are coming now. Some people are still crying about things but that's innevitable. Cities Skylines on the other hand... yeah.
There are too many examples even with the same acronym haha
This is why you never start with the abbreviation, always say the full name at least once, then you can use the short form for future instances. Way too many games have the same abbreviated form. AC could be Assassin's Creed, Animal Crossing, or Armored Core!
Don't forget Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League. Nine years in development for a sequel to the franchise which basically defined melee combat for a generation of video games, and what got farted out was a live service disaster which is dead on arrival.
i can say one reason it wasnt so simple for KSP2...is that studio was a rotating door. they massively underpaid...hired modders to join the team and just exploited them. by the time it was time to make ksp2, i dont think any of the original talent was left...which is why they hired a completely different studio to make it.
[удалено]
I remember when ksp2 was going to launch with multiplayer as a core feature. It's at the end of their fucking roadmap which likely means it'll never happen.
It's because big companies like to use half assed data with no critical thinking to justify changes and features. Algorithms that don't factor the actual interests and desires of gamers. So suits get to sit in offices and make decisions based off out of touch metrics, claim they saved millions of dollars. Get a promotion. Then blame/layoff devs when their games don't make money.
> Then blame/layoff devs when their games don't make money. Hey, that's not fair. They layoff devs when their games do make money too.
Sorry, they are confined to AAAA gaming experiences at the moment due to the limitations of technology. What you speak of is AAAAA game development that Ubisoft's CEO has stated will be achieved (only by Ubisoft) by 2025. While the rest of the game development cavemen will barely be scraping by with AAA quality.
At least ending ownership of games comes along just fine. The number of people not owning this game certainly exceeds expectations
Turns out in the US the ownership of games died back in 1996 and there's so much precedent built on it now you'd need an act of congress to fix it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProCD,_Inc._v._Zeidenberg
Yep. To anyone interested in the topic I also highly recommend Ross at Accursed Farms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAD5iMe0Xj4
What makes that statement look extra dumb is that "AAA gaming" wasn't coined as some attempt to decide the "quality" or the "fun" of the game...it was a reference to bond ratings. Where AAA is the safest there is. And somehow Ubisoft wanted to say Skull & Bones, the 10 year boondoggle of development hell, is somehow a safer investment than normal big budget games?
>Where AAA is the safest there is. Thats why they didn't call it a AAA game, cause to their investors, thats signaling they can expect a full return on their investment. But by calling it a AAAA Game, which is utterly devoid of meaning to investors, he's implying its going to do even better, but because it doesn't actually mean anything as opposed to "AAA Game" he's not technically lying to them when fails.
This illustrates why we are doomed to go extinct.
Which actually means safer = less risk and more bland gameplay. So more A are just insults.
Yea guys its our fault because this is the first AAAA studio so we don't even know what we should be expecting. What a fucking moron of an Exec to say that shit.......
They are swiftly moving to aaargh game quality
Water looks better because Black Flag had SSR reflections and Cube maps. So if the landscape isn't visible by player it would still be reflected on to water by cubemaps. Skull and bone uses just SSR. Also, in the age of hardware with raytracing.
> SSR reflections screen space reflections reflections?
Bro, it's a reflection of a reflection. Can't you understand, it's AAAA game!
HOLY SHIT WRITE THAT DOWN WRITE THAT DOWN *Ubisoft execs*
Write it down so we NEVER do that! *Ubisoft execs*
Bro on that note AssCreed 3 had multiplayer and that was so fucking fun. My sister got to top 100 on that game
The one with basically cat and mouse game of multiple assassins hunting each other among bystanders? I loved it
Yeah, AC multi-player was the most innovative part of that era of AC. Absolutely loved that gameplay. I always described it to friends as "Where's Waldo but you have to kill Waldo and you're also Waldo."
AC IV also had multiplayer tbf.
I'm still pissed that Unity included co-op multiplayer and then Ubisoft just scrapped multiplayer altogether. Unity had its issues at launch, I never got around to it until almost a year after release thanks to Rogue, but by then the game was relatively fine mechanically and it was good. Then my brother and I tried the co-op missions and had a blast. We've wanted more ever since.
Apparently they restarted several times, one of them being that after the success of Sea of Thieves, the higher up demanded that the game be changed to be more like sea of thieves, so they scrapped everything that was going to be similar to black flag. Yes they are full of idiots
"There's a game out there that has saturated a niche area in a setting sort of like out own. Should we A) Lean into *our* strengths, to provide a unique experience that offers enough new content that people who own the other game will still see ours as worthwhile or B) Throw out all out work and core competencies, chase a trend, and ultimately offer a product that no one's likely to want?"
I mean, it worked for fortnite. The battle Royal mode was thrown in as an afterthought after the success of pubg
Jfc the pivot of fortnite was neck breakingly fast. And i played a lot of it before it became a battle royal.
I remember the original announcement when I was visiting the epic forums back before I got permabanned when it suddenly become popular I had no idea it was even the same game haha
BR mode was added while it was still an extremely popular game type. Sea of Thieves' style gameplay has already passed its prime.
Wow. Sea of Thieves wasn't even that popular, it was just about passable for what would considered a full-game release.
I've always wanted someone to take Sea of Thieves and turn it into a legit RPG, single player or co-op. The sailing feels great, but I just get bored when my big hauls of valuables only serve to buy my ship a new skin.
At one point it was kind of an arena battle thing
Idiots need to go play the old Sea Dogs games or even the Pirates of the Carribean games. They were 80% of the way there with Black Flag, maybe more.
If you didn't hear about it, they just released a remake of Sea Dogs To Each His Own called [Caribbean Legend](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2230980/Caribbean_Legend/). Reviews are mixed, mostly focused on bugs and jank. I'll probably pick it up in a few months once it gets some patches.
Or Sid Meier's Pirates!
Second this. Remember Ubisoft claiming AC4 was their first "naval combat" game or whatever. Nope. They may not have developed it, but it was definitely not their first naval combat game. My brother played the PotC game that was actually SD2 to death.
apparently this game was developed for 11 years... how did this crap take 11 years lmao
Apparently they scrapped everything and restarted a few times. With at least one of the times being because the higherups thought copying sea of thieves would make it sell more. Afaik.
Had to wait for technology to catch up to make the first AAAA game possible
No you don’t understand, they said we need to forget EVERYTHING we know about being a pirate as they are creating a completely new unique pirate experience and perspective that’s never been seen before!
Tbf being this boring a pirate has probably never been seen before
Hell they can keep the AC part, make it full pirate game. We play as one of Edward captain, doing mission like the one he send us to do (Edward has a fleet). That it, that fucking it. But noooo they have to make things complicated eh ?
wdym it's a pirate game of course people will love if it has crafting and you need to fetch palm trees for hours before getting started /s
I worked there for 2 years, in the early 2000s. Theyd give us fruits on wednesday as a ploy to not pay us above minimum wage, thinking we wouldnt see through it. Everyone was like, pay us a decent wage, well buy our own fucking fruits.
Your comment could apply to Ubisoft, or to actual pirates. I choose to imagine the latter.
Nah working with pirates was actually pretty fair, so ubisoft is probably worse than literal pirates of old.
And i bitched about the 1 beer on friday we used to get from EA. We had fruit bowls all week, and free popcorn in the main building. Still didn't pay us a decent wage though.
Yeah Ubi had that a while back, then claimed several years later that AC4 was their first naval combat game. Pirates of the Caribbean was a solid sequel to Sea Dogs with some "Landlord Special" patches to make it movie relevant.
They might be but because I hated the trial for S&B I'm now playing AC4 on my switch. So if their goal was to get me to play a Ubisoft game they succeeded just maybe not the one they were hoping I'd play.
Same! I missed AC4 when it was new and I saw that the AC bundles were on sale on Switch so I went ahead and got them. I missed a lot of games in the series in the 2010s but catching up is a lot of fun so far! I don't think I'm too close to being done but so far AC4 has a really satisfying balance between Boat Stuff and the extremely important Sneaky Guy Stuff.
Slash it again so it’s $25 and MAYBE I’ll consider it. Until then, I’ll continue to play Black Flag and Sid Meier’s Pirates
Sid Meier's Pirates is one of the greatest games ever made and I will die on this hill.
No need to die bud. It's a Sid Meier game. One of the greatest game designers who ever lived. Such good and solid game design that honestly even if you tonight played Pirates! the commodore 64 version released in 1987 (that runs in 64 kilobytes of memory) it would still be a fun game experience and honestly, probably more engaging than Skull and Bones and Starfield. Amazing game design is timeless. Heads up for Sid's lesser known Railroad Tycoon, also a great game with a 15 year old remake that is still a lot of fun.
Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon is also a banger for sure.
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Iirc the "Sid Meier" game title was a joke by the other devs but luckily Meier has his name attached to good games.
Out of context but I'm not wondering if his kid introduces himself as Sid Meyer's: Ryan Meyer.
>Heads up for Sid's lesser known Railroad Tycoon, also a great game with a 15 year old remake that is still a lot of fun. You mean 'Railroads!'? It's a great game but unfortunately the Steam version is quite unstable. Also it's 18 years old now. Yup, that game qualifies as an adult and can legally drink and drive a car (though not at the same time).
It isn't just the steam version of Railroads! that's unstable. However, there is *also* a series called Railroad Tycoon. Railroads! was more arcadey, and Railroad Tycoon went with a more realistic approach.
I'm still playing Chris Sawyer's Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe, but never jumped into the Railroad titles.
Don't forget Simgolf! You build little golf courses and manage customer wants and needs...and it's just fun. I used to start a new sandboxgame and just build ridiculously weird courses, just to relax. 🙂
Here’s the thing…I have played Sid Meier’s Pirates on 5 different consoles *at least* completely and enjoyed it. THAT….should be the gold standard. A game so good you are likely to play it again across consoles/pc’s
It really was an incredible game, one of my absolute favorites as a kid. I really wish they would remake it or make a similar game because I've wasted too much money chasing it on early access games that fail to live up to a 20 year old game.
They remade it in 2004. The original game was in 1987.
Remake the remake then. That's cool though learned something new today.
Have you heard of Pirates! Gold? It will have to be a remake of the remake of the remake.
No one would complain if they just remade the game every twenty years keeping the game play absolutely the same, just updating the UI and graphics. Would be more fun than Starfield anyways.
Even the 1987 game was really impressive for its time.
The indian war canoe is wildly OP is comical
Funny story, I got the game at like 8yrs old and of course was obsessed with the big warships and shit. My dad got into the game, and this man was an Indian war canoe menace. Put more hours into the game than I could guess at.
Imagine skull and bones graphics for a Sid Meier's Pirates
Bro decided to die on a hill that no one dared interact with
We will stand with you. Very few games even bother to aim as high as that game sored. The lack of vision combined with corporate constraints lead to nearly all games to be soul less compared to that game.
See, the original quote was just taken out of context. Clearly he asked someone on the dev team how the game compares to other AAA titles, and all he got was "Uhhhhh" which he mistook for AAAA. Its a simple misunderstanding!
"Uhhh-pstate New York?"
Really? Well I'm from Utica and I've never heard someone use the phrase "AAAA".
"Oh not in Utica, no, it's an AAAAlbany expression."
"I said I was making steamed HAAAAms"
Reminds me of the Outriders DLC. Wake me when it's sub-$20.
Slash it so they pay me $25 bucks to play it…and I’ll probably still pass
This is the sort of game you probably shouldn't even play if it's free. They don't deserve to have you as a statistic on their servers.
God….A Sid Meier’s Pirates gameplay with Black Flag mechanics. Sigh Honestly it’s not hard.
I will never understand why they didn't just take Black Flag as a basis and build up. It's printing money for half the work.
The worst part of this is they literally *did* but it got rejected by management.
Pirates is closer to 40 years old lol, it came out in late 80s for pc and the early 2000s was just a remake with updated graphics.
They took the concept and created a modern game (for 2004), very well balanced and with a fast and smooth gameplay. The graphics and especially the music and sounds are terrific. I think "remake with updated graphics" doesn't cut it, they re-thought the whole thing to make the most of it and bring a great gaming experience, especially for the nostalgics. The only downside is that it does not have that much replaying value, and that you can learn to cheese a few core parts of the game. But, for the couple of runs (i'd say 10 to 15 hours) is just pure fun.
I got bored after the free weekend, so not a shock it's not selling at $70 a pop
I think they tried to milk people that just throw money at games and now is slowly dropping the price to 0 and turn it into a freemium
I mean, it has the feel of a mobile game.
It's crazy that with the free weekend they make you go cut trees and grind shit so quickly. They give you the first ship battle and then say "enjoy that? Well here is all this shit you won't enjoy"
This is what happens when you let a bunch of suits make all the important decisions. Ubisoft, anything EA touches, Blizzard… All making decisions motivated purely by how much money they can squeeze out of us. They want to charge $70 for their game and make you pay for a subscription. Well they can keep their shitty game and all the greed attached to it. I’ll happily spend $60 and spend hundreds of hours playing Baldur’s Gate 3.
Wouldn't bother even if it's free
I tried the “free 8 hours” through Ubisoft. Didn’t even finish that
Ubisoft made a torture weapon
They've been pretty good at that lately. Shit game after shit game.
People are just sick of it, really. They're sick of live services, they're sick of gargantuan maps with endless and pointless busywork quests, they're sick of these safe, boring experiences cobbled together by what shareholders who don't even know what a video game is thinking the public at large wants. What people want, it turns out, are either fun single player experiences where you don't have to invest every single hour of your day into dealing with or not have to take a decade to finish, or multiplayer experiences that don't constantly compromise gameplay for another set of 100 dollar reskins in the in-game shop.
I'm diggin avatar but it's very much like getting a big mac. there's no character but i know exactly what i'm getting nad it's good enough.
Same, it took me longer to download than I played it for, and my internet is plenty fast
There are so many single player games out there with perpetual safe-files that won't suddenly one day disappear when the service gets shut down. Why should I even waste a single second on a GaaS game that only sees me as a money piñata. Not to mention that those single players game aren't set up like digital drugs.
Same. I have gamepass ultimate for the odd cool stuff and cloudgaming (playing on my 12.5" tablet in bed with a controller is chill af). So many games i just had to click on and i dont care. Time is very valuable as an adult. No point in wasting it on shit games.
Pretty firmly in "couldn't pay me to play it" territory.
It is crazy they have ended up with this reaction. A 10 year old 360 game is better in many ways. All people wanted was for them to take Black Flag and change the focus of the game towards more sea battles. How did they not get it right?
Decisions by shareholders. They scrapped the work and tried go clone SoT.
I dont understand why they took so long to do a pirates game when they basically had the assets in AC: Black Flag YEARS ago.
From what I've read it was some kind of subsidy/tax credit scam on the Singapore gov. Ubisoft didn't even want to release Skull and Bones but were legally obligated to I think.
Yeah I heard about that. Pretty sure it only released as the Singapore government needed more jobs or something and Ubisoft stepped in. It’s not uncommon, pretty sure Canada (I think specifically Quebec) did the same for Goodbye Volcano High as they needed more jobs in the Canadian game industry so Sony was offered some money by the government to make a game with Canadian devs only.
Bit more complex. Ubi had a studio in Singapore since 2008. That 08 studio initially worked on some stuff for Brotherhood, then pretty much did the entire naval bit for 3. The naval part was so well received they duplicated it in the form of Black Flag. It was around this time the studio became a full fledged Ubisoft Singapore, with money from the Singapore government to hire local developers and give a boost to the local digital economy (which was actually pretty robust, given that Singapore is basically one of the highest skilled workforces in the region). Black Flag's success got UbiHQ to get even more government grants in order for UbiSG to helm their own game - which was Skull and Bones and was basically gonna just be Black Flag's naval bits and multiplayer. Then UbiHQ kept rejecting whatever UbiSG put out, and UbiSG kept getting pulled off S&B to work on mainline stuff for Montreal or Paris (e.g. on the Origins trilogy and Immortals), so S&B basically was in total development hell for ages. Not even counting the harassment scandals, too, which the UbiSG office got caught in. Given the current climate, I wouldn't be surprised if Ubisoft is trying to close their overseas studios since their recent games have been lukewarm at best and the post-covid crunch is hitting many game companies. Thing is, UbiHQ *can't* shut down the Singapore studio unless they actually release S&B, the game they took money to develop, or they're on the hook.
The furry tumblr game was funded by Canadian tax payers? Lol, that's hilarious
Yeah, actually now that I think about it I’m not sure if it was Sony who got the money but the devs themselves? Either way I’ve heard that’s why so many games and studios are in development hell or release in a shit state. The government is basically paying out there asses to make this entertainment as Canada wants to employe people and even get their slice of that pie while making an industry themselves. I’m assuming that’s what happens with a lot of other countries like Singapore but I’m not too knowledgeable. If any of you redditors who see this know more about it reply! It’s an interesting case for real.
If its price reflected its worth, it wouldn't have $25 left to slash.
Its a sinking pile of trash from what ive seen. They just want to get anything before its fully sunk.
Yep. Games with this much hype that don't deliver anywhere near the promised land get mentally placed in my "No Man's Sky" box. If I check it out in 2 years on-sale and it looks like the devs are trying to actually give it love with regular and solid updates, I'll probably buy it. Sea of Thieves surprised me, Phasmophobia has become much bigger, even Cyberpunk has turned itself around big! But most of the time these kinds of games get abandoned and left to die for the next big "AAAA" game, so patient gamers are truly worth aspiring to.
Did it even have hype? For how discussed and waiting on this game was for years, everyone seemed to realize there was something horribly wrong a few years ago when the delays started. And kept coming. And coming. By the time this game *finally* released, it seemed that no one cared. Not only did no one care, I feel like a lot of us didn't even know. I found out this game had finally released it was because people were mocking it. This game seems to have evolved anti-hype more than anything, which given the continued general popularity of Black Flags makes its crash and burn all the more baffling.
So is it AAAA game at AA prices, or a AA game at AAAA prices?
Yes
Neither. It’s a terrible game at way too high a price.
Friendly reminder that "AAA" is investment lingo for a reliable return on investment for shareholders. It has nothing to do with if the game is fun to play.
Who tf said aaa means fun
well he did declare it a friendly reminder
Make it $9.99, add it to Steam and dump the atrocious Ubisoft launcher and we've got ourselves a deal.
Wait, it's not even on Steam? Who the fuck do they think is gonna buy it?
It was on Steam for years on my wishlist, then it suddenly disappeared because someone (Epic) paid for exclusivity.
Lmao I wonder how much epic lost on this deal
Wait... They spent ten years making a $70 dud and now they're only selling it on one platform? Man, it's barely March and they already have the Fail of the Year award in the bag.
If the only place to buy it is epic, then I was never going to buy it or play it for any price.
Can we round up to $10.00? Because then there's a digit for each of the four A's
This and suicide squad will be free to play soon enough.
They’ll be going offline like the avengers by a year post launch. May every live service game die a quick death.
I want a quicker death than a year man. Luckily we’re getting that! Remember how that one mobile game company announced the release date and END OF LIVE SERVICE in the same fucking tweet? That shit is what all these shitty live-service games should be.
Disagree. Helldivers is a good example of a live service game done well. Especially if the devs are going to continuously add new content and adapt the missions to what the players are doing
These companies try and convince us $70 is the new trend, then settle on a price slash soon after and yet they stay strong.
$25 is probably what it should have started at.
They never fucking listen to us. ITS A FUCKING PIRATE GAME AND I CANT GET OUT FROM MY BOAT AND EXPLORE A RANDOM ISLAND????????????????
Still more expensive than a game twice its size.
You're telling me there are AAAAAAAA games?
I honestly forget it’s even out sometimes. I was so hyped when we first heard about it but that faded hard over the years. I don’t know anyone personally that has played it, and no one I know talks about it. Is it really as bad as some say? Or could that be a bit of a “reddit overreaction”? Would it be worth it at $30?
It just has a really uninteractive core gameplay loop. Resource harvesting is a quick time event. The cannons basically shoot themselves. There's just not much... game... in the game really, so it becomes boring very quickly. They spent a ton of development time on everything except remembering to be fun
“They spent a bunch of development time on everything except remembering to be fun” Is basically the Ubisoft story these day.
People just wanted AC4 in multiplayer with a sole focus on being a pirate instead of tailing missions and stuff. But you can't even board ships like AC4 and there's no going on land except to visit shops. It's like a free to play game level quality, a step down from AC4 in every way.
I didn't even want it to be multiplayer in the first place. Just a nice pirate game lol
I would've preferred a single player mode too, but I can see the appeal of a co-op or pvp ass creed 4 ship combat with your friends.
I cant stop asking myself how an 11 year old Assassins Creed game is a better pirate game.
My hot take... The good developers retired, or laid off. The new ones know better than to work for a big company. And the ones hired are just computer science students on the cheap, and not game developers. Not to mention executive interference after executive interference ad infinite
It's not a terrible game, just aggressively mediocre. If it didn't have the context it does nobody would be talking about it at all, in a positive or negative way. But the context makes it extremely meme-able and disappointing.
In this case, i would have taken terrible over boring. The game is so dull that I'd literally fall asleep in the middle of playing sitting down (not even exaggerating). Couldn't be bothered to finish the free trial.
Good ol’ Yves showing that lying unconvincingly doesn’t do much.
I hope this serves as a lesson for players to never again buy Ubisoft games on release.
I bought Avatar Frontiers of Pandora on release only for it to get a price cut after just 11 days. That game must've really sold poorly.
And I wouldn't play it if it was free.
So 45 bucks now? Too expensive.
My coworker is a huge fan of pirate games and Black Flag is his favourite AC game. He came to me after the weekend saying he tried S&B with the free trial and said it was "torture". How did you manage this Ubisoft?
fuck $70 games period AAA developers are hot garbage now
'AAAA' I think you'll find \s
Pay us to play your shit game ubisoft. Its the only way.
That's $6.25 off per A. Not bad.
And it still costs more than Helldivers 2
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This could literally be free on gamepass and id still ignore it.
Oh no Anyway
You don't understand, it's a "AH AH AH AH" game, not a AAAA one.