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

People who don't want to wait use cheats, they don't fork over an incomprehensibly large amount of money for something so trivial in a video game.

That's arguably true, but paid timesavers is Ubisoft's big market for micro transactions. Which plays well with their standard game style of massive worlds with lots of little collectibles.

Sure, it makes them money, but I feel like a jackass whenever I pay for a game and still don't have complete freedom to play it how i want. Aren't some AAA companies moving towards cheating your way out of paying for time savers illegal?

Not that i know of? The only game that did that was T2 with gtaV's horseshit.

Maybe I haven't been into this game long enough, but I feel like this is pretty overblown. A lot of the stuffs in the mtx shop is pretty much just take 10-15 minute of game time to get without spending money and you are probably going to do them anyway just for the levels and stuffs. These mostly serve to exploit gullible players, which while I don't really approve of, but it doesn't affect the pacing of the game atm so I wouldn't say they are ruining the game. I am more on the tolerant side of grinding so I don't really feel that's a problem in this game, and right now I just feel like the 'grind' is just doing a few more filler quests just like in other games, and you get to choose which errands you want to do this time.

Thats what im wondering, I haven't seen someone try to compare it to origins yet. Origin's speed and grind was likable and easy to go with. The more Im hearing from others, the more it looks like the guy in question is avoiding all the side content that beefs your player up and is trying to bullrush through the campaign. Which any RPG is like that, Borderlands is a prime example. Me and a friend were getting tired of presequel so we rushed through the campaign and skipped all the side missions. You quickly get outleveled, and the game punishes you for doing so.

Every single weapon in AC:Origins has a set model, a set name, set attributes, and set stats. The wiki has a list of all the weapons with their exact stats and attributes. Anyone with half a brain (so not you, evidently) would notice after playing the game for maybe more than an hour that dropping the same weapon twice leads to the same results twice. There's absolutely no way someone can play that game and not see that. Either you're straight up fucking lying which would not surprised me or you're mixing up all the attributes with the damage value which is tied to the shield's level and, once again, always follows the same damage curve based on your current level at the time of dropping the weapon.

I watched a bit of gameplay and the guy is level 8, plays pretty well and clears a few level 8 camps, encountered level 9 wolf and gets immediatly destroyed. Same with any level 9 ennemies. Ennemies 1 level above you deal 70% of your healthbar in one hit and take dozens of hit to go down. Even if it's not balanced around the microtransaction and the grind, that's just ridiculous and boring. Borderlands and even Skyrims ennemy leveling and scaling systems are superior. It does make it feel they balanced key parts of the game to encourage buying the microtransactions.

I hated the leveling system of Origins, too. I like the idea that some areas of the map are more challenging than others, and that you can progress so that those areas become less challenging, but in these game everything 2-3 levels higher than you is practically locked off. Even if you dodge every attack you deal almost no damage to the enemies.

You don't know what you're missing on. People don't realize it these days, but Assassin's Creed is one of the most culturally significant series in the video game medium, and I will always defend Ubisoft for its creation and preservation. Not because they're "cool", "fun", or defend some kind of edgy ideology or because Ezio is the "best character evur", but because it's the only series that has consistently and with great effort always thrived towards making history alive and serving as both a looking glass on past customs and defining moments of the humankind, and serve as an introduction to learning humanity's past in greater detail. Of course I don't support Ubisoft with any microtransaction bullshit. But I do see some hypocrisy from the community. Everyone is rightfully up in arms when a game pushes microtransactions, but when a game doesn't, it gets plainfully ignored. You want to say "why should we praise a company for not being evil?" Lots of different reasons, but then why say "is anyone surprised at this?" Doesn't that imply that you believe microtransactions are the norm? People have pointed out that Origins got vastly ignored by both journalists and players when it got out, despite being arguably one of the best games of the year. It's relatable to how Call of Duty games come too often, but not entirely. When a new Call of Duty comes out, if players and journalists say that it's "actually good", everyone acts surprised and goes to buy it. When a new Assassin's Creed comes out, it is expected to be good and thus no one actually cares if it is. An actually bad Assassin's Creed would make more publicity than a good one. It makes me wonder if Ubisoft didn't bloat Odyssey with microtransactions with the exact intention of sparking an outcry and obtaining lots of coverage without comprimising the actual quality of the game, and they'll be free to lessen the microtransactions later on in an update to get two birds with one stone.

Yeah just rigging numbers against you, not fair or interesting difficulty at all.

Ok AC games can be pretty good and interesting but "one of the most culturaly significant game series" is a bit much. They're nowhere near a Mario series, a Doom, a Half Life, which all proved more was possible in the medium when they came out and defined and inspired a generation of games. They made a lot of AC games, and they're popular but they never have been innovative or ground breaking, just games that consistently sold well and were safe. Taking the map of Paris in french revolution times and copying it accurately in your game is very impressive and a huge reconstitution effort, but it didnt influence game level design like the levels of Dark Souls 1 did, for instance. Reproducing the real world accurately is very cool (and probably is one of the safest way to attract an audience as wide as possible) but it doesnt make a huge impact on video games as a whole.

You misunderstand my point. Apart from the first game, Assassin's Creed isn't innovative, that's true, but they're still culturally significant because of their ambition and their vision. The Mario series was ground-breaking, but you can't look at a level from Mario and say "wow, this is incredible". Artistically, they're nothing special. I'm just talking about a different kind of culturally significant.

This isnt specifically about Odyssey but in couple of years they will start being more exploitative and put even more bullshit being paywall if everyone gets accustomed to shitty business practices because it doesnt seem like a big deal or doesnt effect them right now, to the point where everyone's experience is ruined unless you pay up That sounds kinda absurd but we came from Oblivion's Horse armor being ridiculous, Dead Space 3's MTX messing up the game and now we have "live services" running like its a mobile game , down to the long grind, while demanding 60$, season pass, deluxe editions and whatever else they can shove in to make more money

I have to really agree with this. I played the first ass creed back when it came out and it was such an amazing piece of art. I looked forward to a sequel every day. The last AC game that I still enjoyed was Black Flag and after that is when the cognitive dissonance of playing a popular AAA title from Ubisoft started to feel really apparent. I can't finish any of their games anymore, and to be honest, I can't stand Origins. I love AC games due to the amount of hard work that goes into making them. It pays off - the locations, the characters, all of it combined is something worthy of plentiful praise. But then you notice how much content is locked away behind a paywall (Ubisoft isn't the only company that gets the spotlight regarding this), as well as how much effort goes into designing the game to play like a mobile game instead of actually trying to innovate with unique and creative gameplay.

It's true that it might get even more worse as seen in history of AAA developments, but it can't be denied that the MTX of Odyssey right now doesn't really affect the experience of the game unless you are a huge completionist who are aiming for absolutely everything in the game. It would be pretty unfair to say MTX 'ruined' Odyssey imo. Meanwhile 60$ for the base game is pretty much the standard for AAA game these days so I am not complaining about it. Season Passes for games nowadays, especially Ubi's, usually pack with enough content comparable to the expansion packs of the old days, and you can always wait to see if the things in it satisfy your expectation before getting it. Deluxe edition existed for quite a long time, and white I understand some people might feel it's bullshit to lock some content away from the base game, it's usually just a few piece of gear that doesn't really hurt the core experience and mostly serve as a bonus for people who paid more so I guess that's what you get. I agree that the AAA industry has gone to shit these days but at least in Odyssey's case the shitty business practice isn't really interfering with the game itself yet so I would give them credit for it. I can see why people don't like the RPG-esque level system Origin has gone for and it's fine, but I enjoyed how they are willing to change up the formula for once. Plus the world kept my attention long enough running errands and leveling up to prepare for the main story. Origin and Odyssey (from what I've seen so far) are still beautifully crafted games with a lot of hard work behind them, and there aren't really all that much locked away behind DLC and stuff imo. Origin had got me satisfied enough and I really look forward to Odyssey being able to satisfy me like its predecessor.

TBH the RPG mechanics are a step in the right direction. I can't put my finger on what's wrong but I couldn't enjoy the leveling in Origins at all.

It's probably the lack of difficulty combined with the repetitive gameplay failing to provide a proper challenge to players, at least that's what I've felt about the game. Odyssey right now feels like its leaning even more toward RPGs with the dialogue options and the classes with skill trees. It's nice to see them trying to balance the stat vs skill gameplay but the AI is the biggest drawback to the experience from what I've seen right now.