Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has a huge grinding and microtransaction problem - Sensationalist Headlines

I've been playing this since the 2nd and I've had no issues whatsoever levelling and playing the game, getting gear or anything. The only thing that I noticed is that resources are quite low in number when you collect things, so maybe it will impact late game with ship upgrades or upgrading your favourite bits of gear, I'd just recommend saving your resources as you level, since you get frequent gear drops if you sink ships and loot the chests there and when you replace gear dismantle your old stuff for more resources. But at level 20 with 20 hours play time and me just exploring the world, taking out each fort I come across and every side quest just taking time to just enjoy myself. I think most people want to speedrun everything these days and that's why this 'grinding' is tedious, because I can see it being a major problem if you wanted to B-line the story Killing NPC's above your level is stupidly easy, you climb a wall and Sparta kick them off or press your dodge button repetitively, the AI is trash at hitting you, but sure getting hit by a higher level character will hurt quite a bit but not enough to cause trouble. Besides the stealth is so bad in this game, you just break line of sight and crouch in a bush and they lose you, just rinse and repeat to kill really high level characters via assassination attempts. Either way I'm just trying to say the article is going OTT with the grindiness of the game, the microtransactions should not be there, I agree, and as with all microtransactions in singleplayer games, just find a cheat table or trainer to add in the resources

It sounds exactly like how they handled Ghost Recon: Wildlands. It has a store that lets you buy all the weapon collectibles and such. So you could drop like the price of the game a second time to just instantly have every weapon, camo, and weapon mod available immediately if you wanted. Or you could just spend the time collecting them in game. Ubisoft's microtransaction shtick has always been timesavers. They love to push things to save you time and effort.

Origin's flow was very normal. As long as you weren't trying to rush the campaign and did the side content you were pretty much flowing in xp and crafting materials. The only times I was underleveled was hunting the bounty hunters that are mini bosses in different regions. But they are supposed to be overleveled so you can avoid raising too much attention to attract them.

Far as I can tell, the content in the MTX store can not be obtained by just playing the game as normal. If it is anything like Origins, the only way you can grind for these items is to open lootboxes until you drop what you want.

look, the mtx's are dumb - but they've had "reveal the location of everything right now" microtransactions since like Black Flag.

What? All material in origins was gained by killing animals or looting bodies/boxes. Even the relic pieces could be farmed by finding precursor vaults or going into the pyramids. We don't know yet, but origin's map was filled out by doing a handfull of activities or by syncing with the leaps of fate.

Origins's lootcrates had a small chance of dropping items from the MTX store, some of which felt like they were taken out of quests specifically to be resold. The drop rate is so low that you'll only notice those items if you cheat in a fuckton of gold and buy like a hundred crates. Notably, in order to obtain the rest of the first civilization items the game has (besides the outfit that's given to you in a side quest), you have to either pay upfront or open a crapton of lootboxes until you get them. It really feels like they were intended to be given as a reward for that quest since they cover all aspects of the character's equipment. Origins was also really stingy on dropping the highest tier of upgrade materials, carbon crystals, which you had to either grind out via outposts or buy via the lootbox store (with an equally stingy IRL timer forcing you to come back often for more supply, alongside an absurdly high cost). Conveniently enough, the DLC areas have higher drop rates.

MTX which used to cost 5 times less back then and were a free thing you did in-game in previous titles.

literally the first part of my sentence was "the mtxs are dumb". i was responding to your claim of "they took out something every game since AC2 had", which I'm assuming is revealing the map and collectibles via high places (which was in 1 too), which is just plain false. my comment had nothing to do with the price of the mtx, i already think its dumb.

Carbon crystals litter the pyramids though, i think theres almost enough crystals on the pyramids/vaults to make every upgrade. Not to mention endgame outposts had a higher chance to drop them as well. Also the first civ pack is a cosmetic pack so of course its going to be locked behind MTX stuff. The outfit isn't even tied to the pack as well. Like crafter materials are used in origins as lvl/region blocks. You cant progress your gear until you are near the appropriate level and area to prevent stomping. Once you're in the area, farming them becomes extremely relaxed.

You can't get every weapon by playing the game in Wildlands. They have weapon packs which can only be unlocked with real money. They also have loot crates but AFAIK they're only for unlocking the shit you can unlock by just playing.

I specifically said "If you can't get this via normal gameplay", which you seem to have missed. You're also getting it wrong from the start as those collectibles don't appear by syncing, they appear by buying maps at stores with ingame currency. Syncing reveals points of interest, not collectibles. If the game still has maps you can purchase with gold then it's an abysmal MTX that's ten times as expensive as the exact same one that existed for a previous game. If those maps are taken out, then the game is now effectively removing features for monetization purposes. I don't know which it is because I do not have the game nor do I intent to purchase it with how awful it's treating its customers.

Seven menus of cosmetics on launch. Seven. Fuck you all of that should be accessible ingame.

they haven't had ingame maps like that since the ezio trilogy. in Black Flag/Rogue you'd collect the treasure maps, and then use the treasure maps to find the location of the collectible which fit thematically with the pirate/boat theme. In 3 I don't remember there being maps to collectibles, nor in Unity/Syndicate. you had to find them on their own. which is why I disagree with since they haven't had collectibles work like that in literal years. i will admit I was a bit mistaken by what you meant, as I was thinking back to Unity/Syndicate where things like cockades would often be shown on the map once you went to a tower.

They are cosmetic because all gear is random and tied to your current level. Its the same reason why you can take his starting sword/shield and pay gold to scale it to your current stats with the same damage values. Do you not understand the basics of gear in that game? A spear can look the exact same, but they have less damage or it doesnt have an elemental effect. You can get the same exact weapons from the pack by playing the game normally.

Actually what happened in Origins and also likely happen in Odyssey is that there were attributes that made certain weapons inherently better than others. Usually these modifiers meant that those legendary weapons were also pimped out in making you kill things faster or surviving. And I also remember that there were none (or VERY few) weapons in the shop that didn't have incredible modifiers.

So they removed a feature (which was also in AC3 btw, so AC4 was the cutting point) and then threw it back in as MTX. AKA they gimped the game to further monetize it. Which is fucking bullshit, that should never be defended, and should be laughed at until it stops existing. Oh fuck off with that. The weapons have specific combinations of effects which are unique to each weapon, like getting health on parry or poisoning enemies or dealing more damage but having your health capped at 50%. The game doesn't have transmogs or a similar system. You want the effects on a weapon, you gotta use that weapon. The MTX have an effect on gameplay whether you want to admit it or not. Stop fucking around with awful mental gymnastics to try and justify the fact a game took away 34 weapons and shields (I fucking counted them) to resell them as MTX.

Its been a while since I’ve played AC3 so sorry for not remembering there being some random map? Especially since I do remember they switched up how map discovery worked in it (ie just going somewhere rather than using towers). but even then I still disagree with your interpretation that they “ripped out a feature” to sell it as an mtx. and also, you can find a bunch of weapons in vanilla origins with the same effects as the mtx ones (like health on parry, health on kill).

"The microtransaction weapons are completely different from the base game" "No, they can be randomly generated with the same exact stats if not better" "Well i can't make my looted weapon look like other weapons so its garbage" Welcome to every loot based rpg, mmo, darksouls game. The only game that has had total transmog was Nioh. Even then dlc skins are locked to dlc, why are you surprised?

Weapons in ACO are not "randomly generated", that's something people thought would happen due to marketing. The drops are random, with MTX content being exclusively obtainable ingame via lootboxes, but the stats and attributes they have are locked in place. They cannot be assigned random attributes meaning specific combinations (namely the ones in MTX content) are forever tied to those items.

Yes, and weapons you find by playing normally CAN HAVE THE SAME PERKS OR BETTER. Stop lying about the mtx weapons being unique, you can find the same shit in the wild.

You can't find the same combinations of attributes which is the important part. Weapons have a set number of attributes and legendaries are the only ones to have two of such things. Those combinations can be game-changing in how powerful or specialized they can get. Since the game does not allow you customize them yourself in any way, shape or form, some of those combinations become exclusive to MTX weapons. Which, once again, means gameplay content is locked behind paywalls or gambling.

Do young gamers today lack the basic technical skill of looking up mods & trainers online? I cannot fathom why anyone would pay $5-50 for this, on a single-player game nonetheless! (But this also applies to BS like GTA:O)

If the loot is randomized and loot can have random combinations of perks, its not unique. The only thing that makes it unique is the skin. I can find a electrical bow that gives health on headshot just like the mtx weapon. Same with the swords maces and whatever, because thats part of the game.

I never spent any money, but I literally have every legendary in the game...?

This is usually aimed at console players, and on top of that, right now the majority of players don't have much of a technical know-how when it comes to things like mods and trainers. The people who have the basic knowledge of stuff like mods and trainers always had been a minority in gaming, it just felt bigger back then at the time when gaming was more niche and the PC community is much more prominent (it's gaining back some popularity again thanks to Steam and competitive gaming, but it's nowhere near still the market power of consoles). It's still sizable but it's vastly outnumbered and considered as a minority compared to the current era of players who grew up with the 7th and 8th generation of consoles, where cheat codes and such are even a rarity and you'd be lucky to find one natively unlockable in-game. A lot of video game players recently legitimately weren't able to experience the magic of trainers and mods, and usually they'd go as far to believe many boogeymen stories like it's usually filled with viruses or will break your game and such. Marketing tactics and slapping a shiny and presentable UI on things are very attractive, and people usually don't have the incentive to further look into things from a technical perspective when it comes to video games, and it's why game companies are able to get away with it since it's very easy to sway casual observers to buy into their microtransactions. It's the same reason why annual sports games despite having high negative press and gameplay elements such as skill points and basic cosmetics are all tied to a currency system that directly affects gameplay, but still makes millions of sales every year because the new majority of players really just haven't gotten the opportunity to know things better.

Assassin's Creed origins has no randomized loot, for fucks sake. They drop at random. The weapons are always the same. MTX weapons have unique combinations which are powerful with some attributes which cannot be found anywhere else in some instances. A bit more than 30 legendaries are MTX and can occasionally (albeit rarely) be found in the lootboxes via complete and utter luck. I cheated a fuckton of gold onto my character and still could not manage to get every last legendary drops from DLC packs, albeit the vanilla ones dropped at least twice each.

Which ones?

No they are not, ive found the same exact weapons with random perks and stats. You can find 2 of the same spears with the same name and they have different stats ffs. https://m.ign.com/wikis/assassins-creed-origins/Weapons Unlike previous Assassin's Creed games, Origins has swapped out a small set of specialized weapons for a large array of randomized Weapons that mainly appear as loot drops to reward you for killing enemies, looting chests, or even crafting. Theres legendaries that are quest bound and premade like pearlescent guns in borderlands, but theres still random legendaries that have random perks.

That's not really related. There are some people who simply don't want to wait. In fact, a lot of people aren't looking for some progression mechanic or hunting down stuff. They just want a bunch of shit to play with right away. You and many others may like the experience of slowly working your way through the game slowly powering up, but there are a ton of players who want the exact opposite of that.