So Ubisoft put out Assassin’s Creed Odyssey a while ago, and while it was a good game, it was cursed by the touch of “AAA Live Services” (Read that in the most snooty Jim Sterling voice you can), and as a result, a lot of people felt the pressure of the grind from beginning to end.
The company later introduced a Story Creator toolset that allowed the playerbase to craft their own quests using in-game assets. And as always happens with these tools in game, players will find a way to make the game easier. In the case of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, it was very simple quests that could be easily completed and farmed for XP rewards. Players were even encouraged to use these quests by the game itself as it locked the most engaging content behind level restrictions.
Ubisoft has changed their mind, and we all know why.
Ubisoft will now consider such content to be a violation of the Terms of Service for the community creation toolset going forward, so expect to get banned from online services if you try to submit such content. You know, banned from a game you paid $60 or more for because Ubisoft felt their bottom line being threatened by players avoiding the XP boost microtransactions.
In a more elaborate statement, Ubisoft said the following:
“Story Creator Mode was designed to be a tool for players to let their creativity and imagination run free as they build their very own Stories to share with others, using a modified version of the tools our own designers used to develop the quests in the game. However, since the launch of the beta we have noticed an increasing flow of “farming quests,” that exploit the tool to get large amounts of XP. These exploits risk jeopardizing the overall quality, integrity, and purpose of Story Creator Mode and results in less visibility for the creative, interesting and frankly fantastic community stories that have been published.
We want to focus on rewarding creativity by highlighting quality quests and we are working on fixes and adjustments to reduce the impact of such farming quests on the player experience. We are also changing Story Creator Mode’s terms of use to prevent creators from publishing these kinds of Stories.”
They can rant about quality and integrity all they want, but no one believes them.
This all comes in the same game that had more than a couple high-priced special editions, a glut of cosmetic and gameplay-affecting microtransactions, and sponsored deals with a variety of companies for “free” XP. It comes down to the fact that Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was intentionally designed to force the player to grind for everything in the game. This is part of the obvious psychological manipulation and pressure of putting XP, materials and high-end items on a cash shop in a blatant attempt to squeeze more money from the player.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is out now on PC and consoles, although I don’t know why you would want to buy it now, unless you want to sink a ton of time into it.
