• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Assassin's Creed Unity |OT| Liberté, égalité, parité

Paganmoon

Member
I just spent forever beating AC Rogue and I rather enjoyed BF and Freedoms cry, but in this game, the amount of collectables is staggeringly large. one of the first thing I do in an AC is find the eagle viewpoints and the amount of items and missions I see on the screen is ridiculous and makes it seem like a second job to get them all. It seems to me it was done on purpose to say... this is going to take alot of time purchase some stuff to make it faster/easier. Level up in initiates! Play our companion app!

I have never been so turned off by the concept of collecting things and doing side missions as I see in this game. I have yet to finish sunset overdrive and tackle Far Cry 4 so I guess I am going to be collecting stuff for quite some time. I had to stop and think recently why does this still exist? Do people find collecting a megaton of items fun?

Just fyi, the viewpoints don't even show all chests and cockades on the map :)
 
The only thing putting me off the platinum trophy is the co-op synced assassinations. Seems like it would be a massive pain.

Don't know about anyone else, but I got that Trophy by accident just while I was playing through all the co-op missions. Always playing with randoms, never actually trying to do it. I don't think it requires any timing or coordination, you just kind of fight a bunch of guys while your co-op partners are nearby and eventually you'll stab the same guy a few times.
 
About two-thirds through at the moment. Liking it far more than AC3, not nearly as much as Black Flag. Thoughts:

LOVED:

1) Setting is fantastic - both in terms of aesthetic and interest
2) Arno is a great character and having the option to set the dialogue to French is a nice touch
3) Parkour up/down makes running around more enjoyable
4) Secondary objectives aren't as annoying and generally more enjoyable
5) Co-op is surprisingly good fun
6) Viewpoints not showing all chests + cockades (I think?). Running into a few hidden ones
7) The dynamic street objectives are fairly enjoyable, if a little samey
8) The open-ended nature of the actual assassinations

HATED:

1) The glitches, obviously. Not been too frequent but it definitely feels too rough around the edges.
2) It's still too easy - I focused on upgrading the cafe first, which meant I could get the best weapons and gear early on thanks to the stupid amount of money I earned from the cafe, which made the game far too easy…
3) …as do Berserk Darts. Again. I appreciate that they're now limited in number compared to AC3 but having the Phantom Blade alongside them… I don't know. I think points 2) and 3) make it too easy to circumvent the game design in Unity. Felt like I was cheating too often.
4) Every time the story veers away from the French revolution and into the Abstergo/modern stuff, I cringe. It's beyond dreadful.
5) The map is far, far, far too cluttered without nearly enough options to untangle the mess of icons on it
6) The chests that can only be unlocked with apps or whatever. Awful.
7) The fact that it doesn't flag up how difficult chests will be to unlock until you get there, which is annoying until you get Advanced Lockpicking.

I think the main thing it's missing for me is that Black Flag's sailing was the perfect distraction away from the main game - unlocking songs, upgrading the ship, attacking forts or just sailing around the choppy sea. There's nothing in Unity that's really serving as the equivalent of that - co-op is too bitty to feel naturally integrated into the main game - and that's why it's not hitting the same notes for me.

Still enjoying Unity a lot.
 

Savantcore

Unconfirmed Member
Don't know about anyone else, but I got that Trophy by accident just while I was playing through all the co-op missions. Always playing with randoms, never actually trying to do it. I don't think it requires any timing or coordination, you just kind of fight a bunch of guys while your co-op partners are nearby and eventually you'll stab the same guy a few times.

Ah ok, I'll give it a look when I've done mopping everything else up.
 

Stallion Free

Cock Encumbered
How do the amount of chests and cockades in the game relate to micro-transactions?
Viewpoint syncing doesn't reveal all collectables. Most will get revealed anyways by just playing the game, but I'm left with about 5 cockades missing and a couple chests and no way to find then other than running around the specific district with eagle vision on which isn't efficient. The only real solution is to just buy the completed map with micro transactions (there are achievements tied to the collectables too).
 

Paganmoon

Member
Oh dear god...


I really must fix this slight OCD of mine. I will do my best to try to avoid collecting everything. :(

Hmm, being a completionist isn't the best of things at times, at least it's easy and only takes time.

Viewpoint syncing doesn't reveal all collectables. Most will get revealed anyways by just playing the game, but I'm left with about 5 cockades missing and a couple chests and no way to find then other than running around the specific district with eagle vision on which isn't efficient. The only real solution is to just buy the completed map with micro transactions (there are achievements tied to the collectables too).

I haven't spent a single € for Helix points and I think I had over 1000 of them at one point. I think you get a few hundred just by connecting your account to Uplay. Not sure who really needs the microtransactions anyway.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
I don't get the problem with the lockpicking tbh. Level 3 upgrade to lockpicking, equip a belt with extra lockpicks, just in case, and it's easy as hell.
Then you clearly don't have slow reflexes like people like me do. It's not ADD, but its slightly related to it. I can assure you those level 3 lockpicks were a struggle for me.

Being condescending doesn't help anyone. I'm glad that you don't have to deal with this issue and it's why I am fucking tired of mini-games that require decent reflexes.
 

Kuldar

Member
Viewpoint syncing doesn't reveal all collectables. Most will get revealed anyways by just playing the game, but I'm left with about 5 cockades missing and a couple chests and no way to find then other than running around the specific district with eagle vision on which isn't efficient. The only real solution is to just buy the completed map with micro transactions (there are achievements tied to the collectables too).
Or watch a collectibles walkthrough, there are videos for each district. So for a missing cockade in a specific district you only have to watch a video during 2 or 3 minutes.
 

Paganmoon

Member
Then you clearly don't have slow reflexes like people like me do. It's not ADD, but its slightly related to it. I can assure you those level 3 lockpicks were a struggle for me.

Being condescending doesn't help anyone. I'm glad that you don't have to deal with this issue and it's why I am fucking tired of mini-games that require decent reflexes.

I'm sorry if I came of as condescending, wasn't my intention, was just commenting on the difficulty of the lockpicking. And my reflexes aren't exactly super either, but I don't have any ailments that make it difficult for me.

I mean, I should be able to comment on the difficulty of a game or mini-game without being afraid of stepping on peoples toes right?

I guess I can believe that. They entice people to buy the chest map by not revealing all of them when you reach sync points. They also require you to get all of them by tying a trophy to them. The previous games didn't have a trophy tied to collecting chests and therefore they were skippable (to me). The cockades added absolutely NOTHING to the game other than the sole purpose of providing busy work, but they at least didn't take long to get.

So yeah, I guess I can believe the microtransaction model played a role. I would have much rather them tied trophies to finishing up Paris Stories and Murder Mysteries. I have the platinum trophy and have little incentive to after them.

Collecting those chests and cockades added one whole day of meaningless play time.

No comment on the microtransactions, but collectathons aren't something new to AC games, feathers in AC2, and animus shards in AC:R (also hidden on map, but iirc, after collecting a specific amount, all others were revealed). Though I don't recall if all collectathons were trophy related or not, Feathers were though if I'm not completely mistaken.

But I agree with you that Paris stories and Murder Mysteries would've made better trophies than cockades and chests.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
This is because of the forced implementation of microtransactions. It directly affected the currency of the game. Goes to show that even "optional" design will significantly affect the development. AC relied too much on this but decided to push that further to freemium style grind. Disgusting.

I guess I can believe that. They entice people to buy the chest map by not revealing all of them when you reach sync points. They also require you to get all of them by tying a trophy to them. The previous games didn't have a trophy tied to collecting chests and therefore they were skippable (to me). The cockades added absolutely NOTHING to the game other than the sole purpose of providing busy work, but they at least didn't take long to get.

So yeah, I guess I can believe the microtransaction model played a role. I would have much rather them tied trophies to finishing up Paris Stories and Murder Mysteries. I have the platinum trophy and have little incentive to after them.

Collecting those chests and cockades added one whole day of meaningless play time. However, I fully accept that is on me. I didn't HAVE to get the platinum trophy, but I wanted it and my OCD got the best of me once again.
 

Kuldar

Member
I guess I can believe that. They entice people to buy the chest map by not revealing all of them when you reach sync points. They also require you to get all of them by tying a trophy to them. The previous games didn't have a trophy tied to collecting chests and therefore they were skippable (to me). The cockades added absolutely NOTHING to the game other than the sole purpose of providing busy work, but they at least didn't take long to get.
Not really for nothing. You unlock a new color scheme for your outfit every 20 cockades. ^^
 
Then you clearly don't have slow reflexes like people like me do. It's not ADD, but its slightly related to it. I can assure you those level 3 lockpicks were a struggle for me.

Being condescending doesn't help anyone. I'm glad that you don't have to deal with this issue and it's why I am fucking tired of mini-games that require decent reflexes.

It would have been cool if they had a level IV lockpicking perk that was the most expensive, but you just opened every chest without the tedium of the minigame. Like maybe you just see his animation of fiddling with the lock and it opens. To me, that minigame feels like something you should be able to upgrade out of. Or after a story mission/in the upgrades menu give Arno a special 'Assassin's Pick' that never breaks. Seems like a reasonable thing for a sneaky murdering group to give out to their people.

On a related subject, how bout a perk where if you hold R or something you can do a super fast like side-run through crowds without getting stopped/slowed down a bunch. Sometimes, like when you're going after all the collectibles, you just want to jam from place to place
since it's faster than 'fast traveling'
.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Not really for nothing. You unlock a new color scheme for your outfit every 20 cockades. ^^

In otherwords, for nothing.... :p

But the cockades didn't really bother me too much since they didn't require taking out guards and rarely required you going into buildings.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
It would have been cool if they had a level IV lockpicking perk that was the most expensive, but you just opened every chest without the tedium of the minigame. Like maybe you just see his animation of fiddling with the lock and it opens. To me, that minigame feels like something you should be able to upgrade out of. Or after a story mission/in the upgrades menu give Arno a special 'Assassin's Pick' that never breaks. Seems like a reasonable thing for a sneaky murdering group to give out to their people.

On a related subject, how bout a perk where if you hold R or something you can do a super fast like side-run through crowds without getting stopped/slowed down a bunch. Sometimes, like when you're going after all the collectibles, you just want to jam from place to place
since it's faster than 'fast traveling'
.

Yeah, a level 4 lockpicking as you describe would have been great and could have easily replaced something like disguise (or stun grenades since they effectively do the same thing as smoke bombs) which was pretty useless.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
I have never been so turned off by the concept of collecting things and doing side missions as I see in this game. I have yet to finish sunset overdrive and tackle Far Cry 4 so I guess I am going to be collecting stuff for quite some time. I had to stop and think recently why does this still exist? Do people find collecting a megaton of items fun?

I can't think of a series that makes collecting items less fun and more pointless than the Assassins Creed series. Very rarely is the payoff worth the effort.

AC2: Collecting 100 feathers got you a cape that made you notorious.
AC:B: The flags at least got you a cape that made you immune to the law, but you couldn't get it until so late in the game that it barely mattered.
AC:R: can't remember
AC3: never has a game had more pointless sidequests/collectibles than this game. Most sidequests didn't even give you in game currency!
ACIV: Collectibles were better and there was some benefit to doing them in that you got armor. This game seemed to be on the right track.
AC:Unity: Cockades and Nostradamus gave you aesthetics and nothing more. No super weapons. Chests gave you currency, but by the time you could unlock Level 3 chests (sequence 9) you most likely had acquired more than enough currency to get all the weapons/armor you wanted.


AC really needs to take cues from the Farcry series in that sidequests provide you with additional XP and/or currency and is needed to unlock weapons. I love doing side quests for those reasons. While in AC I do it for trophies and achievements.
 

M.W.

Member
Unlocked the cafe last night. I guess I'll stick to doing those missions so I can purchase better gear and weapons.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Don't know about anyone else, but I got that Trophy by accident just while I was playing through all the co-op missions. Always playing with randoms, never actually trying to do it. I don't think it requires any timing or coordination, you just kind of fight a bunch of guys while your co-op partners are nearby and eventually you'll stab the same guy a few times.

Yeah, it should come pretty naturally.
 

Matush

Member
assassinscreedunity_2jakzb.jpg


One and done. Enjoyed the game, it is my 2nd or 3rd favorite AC game so far. Had around 95% of total synch. Too bad for poor optimalization.

Also, I'm posting 3 glitch videos that happend to me if anyone is interested. Thank god for Share button. :)

Assassin's Creed Unity - Obnoxious NPCs Interrupt Cutscene 2nd edition
Arno meeting Elise, ghost edition
Assassins Creed Unity glitches galore
 

Loakum

Banned
Also have tons of Livres, and nothing to spend them on, cause all high level stuff is locked behind Co-op missions... damn it...


You can play co-op mission solo. You can unlock all of those weapons, and it's like you're playing a single player mission.
 
I'm baffled by the exclusion of certain things which were present in AC3,4:

1) Can't pick up dead bodies
2) Whistling to attract guards to hiding places
3) Using another guard as a shield against a gunshot, just rickroll all over
4) No secondary weapon mini-weapon
5) Stuck with fighting only with the main weapon, can't select blades
6) Can't pickup dropped enemy weapons
7) Lockpicking replaced with dumb test your reflexes game
8) Disarm and fist fighting is gone

These are just off the top of my head :-/
 

Muffdraul

Member
That was replaced with the firecracker thing.

Which almost never works for me. In Revelations you could throw a cherry bomb 100 yards away from a guard and it would lure him over. In Unity it's like if it's more than 20 feet the guard is too deaf to notice. Are you supposed to just drop them at your own feet or something?
 
I'm baffled by the exclusion of certain things which were present in AC3,4:

1) Can't pickup dead bodies
2) Whistling to attract guards to hiding places
3) Using another guard as a shield against a gunshot, just rickroll all over
4) No secondary weapon mini-weapon
5) Stuck with fighting only with the main weapon, can't select blades
6) Can't pickup dropped enemy weapons
7) Lockpicking replaced with dumb test your reflexes game
8) Disarm and fist fighting is gone

These are just off the top of my head :-/

Yeah I would be really interested to hear the reasons behind some of these. The easy answer is "140 million people from 98 studios worked on it" but there has to be more to the story. At some point, I feel like someone in charge had to be like "Uh yeah, take out the disarm thing. Oh and picking up weapons too."

I mean it's not like they started over from scratch with all the systems, is it? And enough veterans have to still be around for someone to have been like "Hey the disarming system wasn't ported over to this one. We should get on that." Maybe there wasn't time to port everything? It's not like there's different buttons/controllers to deal with either, like if they were missing the buttons they needed to still have that stuff. Seems like certain things were simply forgotten, or taken out, but then in some cases replaced with weird stuff like the firecrackers for some reason. Were the French well known for throwing firecrackers around during that period? Were they as common a sound on the streets of Paris as a whistle?

Overall I've enjoyed my time with the game, but it's left me with many questions. A gamasutra-style post mortem would be an interesting read.
 
Yup, by the end of the game I had over a million francs, with nothing to spend it on (already bought every item). I'd argue that the Theatre missions actually break the game's economy, heh.

I tried to do most of the theater missions ASAP when I could (only the last 3-5 was hard). I upgraded all my equiptments to the 125k versions right around the time I finish all the optional assassins missions. So I would say the economy scale is about right.

I think in pretty much every Assassins and theater missions, its easier to just spam smoke bombs and kill every moving red body than doing it in stealth.
 
Viewpoint syncing doesn't reveal all collectables. Most will get revealed anyways by just playing the game, but I'm left with about 5 cockades missing and a couple chests and no way to find then other than running around the specific district with eagle vision on which isn't efficient. The only real solution is to just buy the completed map with micro transactions (there are achievements tied to the collectables too).

Wow, this is fucked up.
 

bede-x

Member
There was a picture recently that compared Unity to one of the older Assassin's Creed games and that demonstrated the enormous difference in the amount of activities you had to do in the new game. Anyone got a link to that? Couldn't find it by googling. It was of the map screen.
 

Skux

Member
Any word of AC initiates being fixed yet?

Initiates is now 100% working for me, my full profile migrated over and has all the correct completion rates for my other games, and I got a couple extra levels thanks to the XP from those being calculated correctly.

I'm baffled by the exclusion of certain things which were present in AC3,4:

1) Can't pick up dead bodies
2) Whistling to attract guards to hiding places
3) Using another guard as a shield against a gunshot, just rickroll all over
4) No secondary weapon mini-weapon
5) Stuck with fighting only with the main weapon, can't select blades
6) Can't pickup dropped enemy weapons
7) Lockpicking replaced with dumb test your reflexes game
8) Disarm and fist fighting is gone

These are just off the top of my head :-/

I don't actually miss a lot of that stuff apart from moving bodies.

2 is replaced by cherry bombs, which are now limited by your belt, which I think is a good design decision that players have to spec into if they want those advantages, rather than making it unlimited.

3 felt extremely sluggish in AC3 and I'm glad there's just a dodge button.

4 I do miss, changing up the fighting style was fun.

5 makes sense. They want you to have a weapon. Fighting with the blades looked super cool but also meant you never had to interact with the game's economy.

6 and 8 being gone is mainly the result of streamlining the customisation options (and of course tying them to optional microtransactions).

7 I have no problem with.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Yeah I would be really interested to hear the reasons behind some of these. The easy answer is "140 million people from 98 studios worked on it" but there has to be more to the story. At some point, I feel like someone in charge had to be like "Uh yeah, take out the disarm thing. Oh and picking up weapons too."

I mean it's not like they started over from scratch with all the systems, is it?
That's exactly what they did actually. They revamped pretty much everything instead of just reusing old assets. A good amount of the things on the list were criticized for making the game too easy.
 
That's exactly what they did actually. They revamped pretty much everything instead of just reusing old assets. A good amount of the things on the list were criticized for making the game too easy.

OK. Even though I enjoyed using it, I can definitely concede that whistling made things ridiculously easy. I guess my follow-up question then would be, why not leave that other stuff in the game as upgrades, but create some enemies that repel your ability to use all of them at once, in order to promote variety during fights. Worked for Batman. Like, maybe you wouldn't be able to bullet shield "Heavy" guys, can't disarm a guy until he's "stunned" with smoke, etc. It's kind of a bummer that the fix is "Eh, take it all out."
 

Skux

Member
So I've basically maxed out the companion app now, sitting on a full assassin roster and 30,000 nomad points and am now dispatching guys to the final 2 locations for the Tailored Phantom gear and the Altair outfit.

Some of these missions take 18-24 hours O_O
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
OK. Even though I enjoyed using it, I can definitely concede that whistling made things ridiculously easy. I guess my follow-up question then would be, why not leave that other stuff in the game as upgrades, but create some enemies that repel your ability to use all of them at once, in order to promote variety during fights. Worked for Batman. Like, maybe you wouldn't be able to bullet shield "Heavy" guys, can't disarm a guy until he's "stunned" with smoke, etc. It's kind of a bummer that the fix is "Eh, take it all out."
Well ever since AC3 they've been leaning toward a more batman-esque system that still feels like AC. They should really capitalize on the good points of Unity with AC 2015. As in fast and fluid combat that feels looks realistic. Wouldn't even mind an even smaller parry window. http://gfycat.com/UnpleasantJoyfulAnkolewatusi But not too difficult because sometimes I do wanna feel like a trained assassin who gets shit done. http://gfycat.com/ReasonablePowerfulHoatzin I assume they didn't wanna add more "bloat" to the combat while revamping it, back when AC3 came out they had to make tutorial videos because a good amount of the fanbase never realized how many options there were.
 

Lizardus

Member
So I own most Ass Creed games but I have download them again and connect to initiates manually? I thought this was what cloud save would be used for.
 
I don't really get why I STILL run up and get stuck on things when I'm pressing run. Just run with no other button. Wasn't that supposed to be solved with the "up/down" mechanic?
 
completely done with the game, but I go back for a couple minutes just about every day to pick up an app chest or do a companion mission...so I will look forward to the patch for those couple minutes lol
 

DemonFox

Neo Member
I enjoyed the game for what it was. Can't say too much about it, except....
this games cured me of my OCD of doing everything in a game.
Screw that. I'm not going to collect and do everything that is offered to me on the map.
Most of the stuff I locked for me anyway for not playing the Android/ios game.
Thanks Ubisoft for curing me.
 
So I've basically maxed out the companion app now, sitting on a full assassin roster and 30,000 nomad points and am now dispatching guys to the final 2 locations for the Tailored Phantom gear and the Altair outfit.

Some of these missions take 18-24 hours O_O

I could have been there, but my app reset lol. I bought premium to speed up my progress for the third go around on this app. It reset when I linked my game for the first time, then reset when the update came out. Whenever u get done, let us know if thats really what counts for the last 1% in the progress tracker, dont think anyone really knows yet
 
Well ever since AC3 they've been leaning toward a more batman-esque system that still feels like AC. They should really capitalize on the good points of Unity with AC 2015. As in fast and fluid combat that feels looks realistic. Wouldn't even mind an even smaller parry window. http://gfycat.com/UnpleasantJoyfulAnkolewatusi But not too difficult because sometimes I do wanna feel like a trained assassin who gets shit done. http://gfycat.com/ReasonablePowerfulHoatzin I assume they didn't wanna add more "bloat" to the combat while revamping it, back when AC3 came out they had to make tutorial videos because a good amount of the fanbase never realized how many options there were.

You make that 1st gif with some kind of machinima? Guards don't line up like that, where is the one taking shots at you off cam?
I'm not kidding, i really don't believe for a moment that is real.
 
not as far into the game as I wanted to be cause of work

I'm at

just finished sequence where you team up with Elise for the first time

but does the story ever actually use the French Revolution to the full effect? So far they've haven't really taken advantage of the awesome backdrop they've got, Arno's story just exists without any context to the history around.
 

Loakum

Banned
assassinscreedunity_2jakzb.jpg


One and done. Enjoyed the game, it is my 2nd or 3rd favorite AC game so far. Had around 95% of total synch. Too bad for poor optimalization.

Also, I'm posting 3 glitch videos that happend to me if anyone is interested. Thank god for Share button. :)

Assassin's Creed Unity - Obnoxious NPCs Interrupt Cutscene 2nd edition
Arno meeting Elise, ghost edition
Assassins Creed Unity glitches galore


Welcome to the Brotherhood. (I'm stuck at 99% total sync, thanx to that broken ass companion app.)

Oh3qMU5l.jpg

zbfGT4Il.jpg
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
I'm baffled by the exclusion of certain things which were present in AC3,4:

1) Can't pick up dead bodies
2) Whistling to attract guards to hiding places
3) Using another guard as a shield against a gunshot, just rickroll all over
4) No secondary weapon mini-weapon
5) Stuck with fighting only with the main weapon, can't select blades
6) Can't pickup dropped enemy weapons
7) Lockpicking replaced with dumb test your reflexes game
8) Disarm and fist fighting is gone

These are just off the top of my head :-/

Good list. It really is kind of baffling what they decided to remove.

Really, the gameplay in this just isn't very good at all. It's really just an amazing technical showcase. That and the setting are enough to carry me to the end, but overall it leaves a bitter taste.
 
Top Bottom