Well hello again there – I would like to think again at any rate, though I have no idea whether there is even anyone who frequents this page. Anyway today no intros (do I ever do intros?), I’ll simply jump right in. Yesterday L3gendary92 posted the above video, in which he rather accurately touches upon a few points.
Quite frankly when I listened for the first time last night I had decided to write a post much like my first; one that touches upon the flaws of the game, but one that was to remind myself and the people who read this that there is a reason we still play this game, which would’ve been that we love it. That we want it to be fixed so badly is because we already love it and we don’t want to give up on it. I think this is still true. However, I played again today and I just came to a rather shattering realization; that there are not only bugs and flaws in this game that need to be fixed, but rather concepts that need changing as well.
What do I mean by that? Well it’s really quite simple. We all know of Revelations’ flaws. Jumping out of stuns/kills for no good reason, poison not having the proper range, entire matches lagging like mad, the matchmaking system… Those are just a few of the flaws that could and -should- be fixed by Ubisoft.
On these points L3gendary92 makes excellent arguments: we -are- the consumers, and we can excercise power over the designers by not buying their games. And I absolutely agree that the cost of the DLC (both times) was ridiculously high. I do have my doubts, as expressed in the post about the boycott, about the effectiveness of not buying the DLCs. The developers have the money for the main game after all. I think that not buying DLCs is not going far enough, and in the end you’re depriving yourself of content, even if the price is steep relatively, it’s nothing compared to the price of the game itself.
But the game, the multiplayer rather, has issues in the core of its design, or rather of its ability-design as well. It is a -fact- that some ability sets are more effective than others for instance. Give me a defensive set without smoke bomb (and possibly even mute) and the set will simply be less effective. There is always charge, but there is no ability that affords the clear window of invulnerability that smoke bomb does. There is no counter, there is no way of nullifying the effect; only shortening it, but then it’s often too late. That second or two in a smoke bomb, you have free reign. This in itself is flawed, simply because of the extent to which it affects the game.
If half the abilities currently in the game were taken away, surely people would complain and people would cry. But if smoke bombs instead were taken away, I have no doubt that the repercussions would be much, much greater. Actually thinking about it now, that ability is the single most complained about ability that I know of, even by me. And I nor you can even realistically blame players for using it offensively because it DOES give you an advantage. It gives you the greatest advantage of all, and how can someone not take it? Not using smoke bomb almost always puts you at a disadvantage. That’s like someone refusing to use a computer because finding the answer in a book is more ‘skillfull/rewarding/whatever’ – That might be true, but the person who does use a computer is still going to be ahead.
So my question, my wondering of this ‘episode’, is whether we should not attempt a rather more effective and well planned form of boycott. There have been an increasing amount of complaints about various aspects of the multiplayer and the community feels unheard. And how can they not? Not a single issue has been fixed, not that I know of. We had a beta and even some of those issues made it through into the current game. Instead the developers busy themselves with rehashing old maps and using existing textures/buildings to create new ones. (Imperial/Dyers? Not exactly inspired if I may say so.)
What would be more effective you ask? A proper boycott on the next Ubisoft game. Now I don’t mean this as an attack on the company itself but as L3gendary92 pointed out, we have a voice. We need to make ourselves heard. Ubisoft has upcoming games. We should make it our duty to warn future customers against the lack of service that at least most of the Assassin’s Creed community has experienced. If a campaign was started to actively reduce the amount of customers for future Ubisoft games until -proper- support is given to the games that are already out, we could surely have a much bigger impact. After all, let us assume one game is roughly 65$. One DLC is 10$. If one person does not buy the DLC they’re only missing out on 10$ revenue. If one peson doesn’t buy a game, they’re missing out on *six-and-a-half* times the revenue of the DLC. You’d need to reach a smaller audience to have a bigger impact.
I by no means have it in me to begin such a thing, but I wonder how committed people are to making developers listen to them – To us. Because we need a bigger gesture than what we, the AC community, alone can do in regards to this game. We need to find a better way to demand that existing games are fixed before new ones are developed. We need to find a way to make it clear that we prefer good, quality games over broken, rushed ones every year. We just need to find a good way of doing this, so it’s best to get those brains working and settle on a way, because complaining on their forums and happily going on playing is clearly not working.
