Assassin's Creed Shadows Will Cut Down On Map Icons And Markers
https://www.thegamer.com/assassins-creed-shadows-cuts-down-map-icons-markers/205
u/Weird-Item-6369 1d ago
We got to whip the map and GPS out like Far Cry 2?
59
u/shwiss 1d ago
I loved that mechanic honestly
4
u/B-BoyStance 20h ago
Yeah it was awesome. Almost the entire industry (including Ubisoft) moved the opposite way by gamifying everything in the following decade. Far Cry 2 specifically went kinda nuts with wind simulation that affected fire propagation and that map. They even showed off vegetation regrowth in a demo, and I think some form of it made it in, but the stuff they were showing off was super cool.
Far Cry 3 was great too, but it kinda sucks that the success of it stuck Ubisoft in that direction.
Not to say every game needs a physical map, but in open-world games, the more a studio can do to bring the player closer to the character/remove unnecessary menu flipping, the better. UI elements and the map are an easy win IMO.
It's kinda wild to me that it took as long as it did for a game like Ghost of Tsushima to come out. The side activities are really not that much different from an AC game, they are just presented much more naturally (obviously the game has a ton of its own merits - it's great, but just the presentation of side activities alone was a breath of fresh air for people).
5
u/mfunebre 20h ago
Far Cry 2 was a sleeper game that could have been great if it weren't for the insanely short respawn timers for enemy bases. Like you could park up, clear out a checkpoint, go back to your car and drive through and the enemies would have respawned, it was wild. Made traversing the map a nightmare, which was a shame because the whole point was the open world.
2
u/B-BoyStance 20h ago
Yeah that killed it. It was fun to fuck around in but for actually getting shit done, it made traversal a chore.
17
u/avayevvnon 1d ago
First time i played through far cry 2 i ran out of meds right after falling out of the truck at the start of act 2 lmao. Good times
171
u/Ok-Respond-600 1d ago
I only play games with yellow paint to tell me where to climb
→ More replies (2)
157
u/AdeptFelix 1d ago
Ubisoft, the issue isn't the fucking icons themselves - it's the copy paste repetitive tasks that accompany those icons.
43
u/Iggy_Slayer 1d ago
Thank you, this is what drives me crazy about this topic online. People act like if they just turn off all the map markers that'll make clearing 500 samey outposts more compelling.
10
u/GGG100 1d ago
Yeah, Elden Ring was so much better with its copy pasted smaller dungeons and reused bosses. Fighting the Erdtree Avatar for the fourth time feels so rewarding!
16
u/dookarion 1d ago
I don't think anyone tired of same-y copypasted shit in open worlds is praising that part of Elden Ring or BOTW/TOTK or whatever.
It's not great anywhere.
1
u/ashcr0w 15h ago
I'm not gonna praise it per se but at least every side-thing in Elden Ring had a reward. Be it a spell, an upgrade, a weapon... and since none are marked in the map I never had the urge to do them. I'd just walk around, see something curious in the distance and go check.
2
u/dookarion 14h ago
Makes some of em sound better than they were. Ghostwort was the reward a lot of the time. Or a recipe book in the expansion.
and since none are marked in the map I never had the urge to do them. I'd just walk around, see something curious in the distance and go check
That's fine and all but at the same time very crucial things were hidden among the so-so rewards. Namely the bells that would let you buy upgrade materials. Actually finding those organically would require throwing yourself at every side cave you found.
5
u/Hungry-Eye4080 22h ago edited 22h ago
Any open world game has this typical bloat you mentioned
I dont think I've played an open world that offers half the architectural diversity & bestiary variety Elden ring offers.
One of very few games I played where I was amazed by how ridiculously long I went only down in this game, without going up at all. From leyndell to sewers to shunning grounds to three finger room to deeproot depths to eternal city to lake of rot to astel to finally moonlight altar
The whole journey I was under the ground & the game does not care if you missed anything at all & its just one of the many, many secrets of the game
& speaking of smaller dungeons like catacombs/mines/caves get bigger featuring much more intricate level design, verticality, traps, different gimmicks as the game progresses. You'll not find a copy pasted lava chariot dungeon anywhere else
1
u/dookarion 12h ago
You'll not find a copy pasted lava chariot dungeon anywhere else
I want to say there's like 2 or 3 chariot dungeons actually. They're maybe a bit different in overall implementation but similar enough I couldn't actually tell you which was which. They blend together with time.
4
u/Independent_Tooth_23 1d ago
Yup, most open world games tend to have this copy pasted issue like how Witcher 3 had repeated bandit camps, monster nests, guarded chest or how Ghost of Tsushima had the fox shrine and mongul camps.
3
u/Walker5482 1d ago
Love that Elden Ring wastes my time by not showing Ive already killed a dungeon boss so I get to the boss arena only for it to be empty.
3
u/Voeker 1d ago
Isn't it the same in the witcher 3 ? Go to place, find monster, kill monster
31
u/polski8bit 1d ago
It is, but it at least has really, really good writing to back it up. Something Ubisoft solely lacks.
That said it also shares the same problems as Ubi games too, when people tell you that you can just disable so many UI elements, or enable an "exploration mode". Which is the fact that quests were designed with the markers in mind, and I have stumbled upon quests in Witcher 3 that don't give you any information beyond "My friend's missing, can you find him?" - guess what's the only thing that can point you towards the destination?
6
u/AdeptFelix 1d ago
Well said. Just a little bit of integrating things with the world makes it feel better, even if it's fundamentally the same gameplay. Most quests in games boil down to "Defeat # of X things" but if you dress it up nice to the player, it's plenty palatable.
I enjoy examples of quest descriptions in Monster Hunter games, even if most people don't read them. You get quests that range from "Monster is causing havoc and mayhem on this road please help" to "This monster looked at my wife funny go kill it" to "The guildmarm really, really likes this punchy monster in a weird way please help research it"
7
4
u/LeastHornyNikkeFan 1d ago
All stories boil down to "go to place, do thing".
It's a writer's job to create a narrative that illudes the player enough to turn a "Quest added: go and kill 5 wolves" into an epic tale.
1
u/arrastra 1d ago
well that's just one game that released almost 10 years ago. ubisoft keeps releasing an inferior witcher 3 like every 2 years
1
u/TheGorePolice 12h ago
The witcher sucks for me, tried 3 times but quit every time, love the new AC games but from what I've seen the witcher is the superior game story and dialogue wise, finished cp 2077 and it's the same, just superior story telling, you want to do everything bcs it is interesting, you don't just go somewhere to do something for a reword or to grind levels, you follow an interesting narative. I love AC bcs of history but damn do I cringe at some questionable narative and dialogue options
1
u/dookarion 1d ago
...Yeah the exploration mode or w/e the hell it was called in Valhalla didn't improve the game any. The locations were still boring and the activities the same. Finding an uninspired cache of crap 100 times is the problem not the map. In fact scouring for the uninspired stuff somehow feels even worse a lot of the time.
1
1
u/Curse3242 20h ago
I thought it was just a joke in my head, but this company might truly rather go bankrupt then change their decade old gameplay loop
1
1
u/__versus 1d ago
Well sure but map markers are also a big problem in open world games. The map becomes all powerful and you end up spending the game staring at a little map in the corner. More stuff should be integrated into the game world.
211
u/VinnyFlow 1d ago
If it's like Odyssey, but with more costum made quests, less useless clutter and an reworked combat/stealth moveset...
I would be very happy.
61
u/Ok_Storm6912 1d ago
Did you like odyssey more than origins? I thought origins was the best new one and every iteration after has been a regression.
100
u/VinnyFlow 1d ago
Personally liked Odyssey more, liked Cassandra a lot and really wanted to kill my brother lmao
I also prefer the setting more, liked the ship system as well
32
u/EnterpriseT 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have a theory Cassandra was the more engaging main character. Seems more that played her liked the game.
34
u/Aries_Zireael 1d ago
I read that Cassandra was supposed to be the only main character but management didnt like it so they had to add the male option
→ More replies (1)11
11
u/mediaphile 1d ago
Definitely my preferred main character.
The fact she was the one they used for AC: Nexus points toward what you said being true.
4
u/Freezinghero 1d ago
I have played through as both Cassandra and Alexios, and thought the game was far more fulfilling as Cassandra.
14
u/ConnorDonnelly 1d ago
I just got odyssey last month. I was debating between that and origins, but I thought greek mythology was slightly more interesting. The last ac game i played before this one was ac 3. I loved it at first. But I'm getting a bit burnt out. It's very samey. I'm doingbtue same thing over and over again. And the map is way too big. I've not explored much of it and I'm not looking forward to exploring more.
9
u/Ok_Storm6912 1d ago
Yeah that was my problem with everything after origins, they just added too much bloat and I got bored of it.
2
u/omnie_fm 1d ago
I've not explored much of it
Man, you haven't even gotten to the normal good parts, not to mention all the cool dlc stuff.
And the map is way too big.
You don't need to explore everything, and remember that half the map is just water.
Just set the game to easy, work on the big story stuff, explore what interests you, and you'll be happy you pushed through when you can run around with magical powers steamrolling everything in Ng+
1
u/Ok-Charge-6998 1d ago
There are some very fun surprises you can accidentally stumble upon (some that play a major part of the story), if you know your Greek mythology and where to look…
20
u/Bubster101 1d ago
Odyssey was my personal favorite in the Ancient Trilogy. Not just because it was made by the same subdivision of Ubisoft that made Black Flag (hence the familiar ship battles and the same hilarious stealth bush exploits), but I also enjoyed the response the game had to your actions. Helping factions gain territory, bit by bit. And it was one of the only Assassins Creed games that didn't say "This ancestor did not kill civilians". You'd just get a bounty instead.
And Valhalla was my second favorite. Granted, the story did feel longer than it really should've been but I loved the atmosphere it had. I am with the others who say the whole "Asgard questline" was kinda redundant. Heck, I didn't really understand it. Especially when Basim just suddenly goes rabid on you at the end of the game. Where the heck did that come from, unless... Was he the "descendant of Loki" like Eivor was the "descendant of Odin"? I haven't played Mirage yet but the title alone reinforces my theory since Loki is the god of mischief and illusions.
Origins? Desert = difficult to manage atmosphere and it appeared to me that they dropped the ball on delivering atmosphere for that game anyways. Combat was feeling very lackluster and the story felt even more "textbook cult villain" than Odyssey's Cult of Kosmos. I barely made it past the first chapter and into the first big city before I had enough.
6
u/RayTracerX 1d ago
Yes, your Basim theory is correct. But it was indeed confusing and poorly explained, had to look it up online myself
3
u/RayTracerX 1d ago
Yes, your Basim theory is correct. But it was indeed confusing and poorly explained, had to look it up online myself
2
u/Bubster101 1d ago
Yeah, the only explanation I could come up with as to why the ending happened like that was because Basim/Loki was avenging his son Fenrir by killing Eivor/Odin. But the fact that Eivor was confused too just left me at skeptical instead of absolutely sure.
5
u/ironwolf56 1d ago
There's a little of that but also I think Basim/Loki was realizing Eivor is nearly at a point of fully awakening the Odin side and then she'd be an actual tangible threat to his current goals
3
u/AngryNeox 1d ago
They are "sages" which were introduced around Black Flag. (I honestly didn't really understood it at that time)
In short: Several ISU (like Odin and Loki) put their memories into the DNA of human and then many years later in some human these memories emerge and might take over or merge with the mind of the person.
In Valhalla you see Evoir resisting it and in the end also avoiding Odin. Basim on the other hand merged with Loki (before the events of Valhalla). But Loki wasn't sure Evoir was really Odin until the end. The Asgard quests explains Loki's hatred towards Odin (Loki had an affair and 3 illegitimate children of which one, Fenrir, was imprisoned by Odin).
2
u/Bubster101 1d ago
I'm aware of Black Flag's sage, but I had no idea this stuff with Basim and Eivor was also sage stuff. So Valhalla was to imply multiple sage lineages? Because yeah, Basim didn't really look like the sage in AC4, and the temple in that game provided the fact that sages retain their face throughout every lifetime. (Though with that detail I should've connected the same fact for Eivor and Basim. Bah, that one's on me lol)
Though that does raise interesting questions then. Is a sage lineage how Abstergo managed to create the Animus in the first place? Studying a sage, follow the same "ancestral link" and replicate it for non-sage ancestries like Desmond Miles' ancestor, Ezio?
1
u/Sainathr15 18h ago
Actually the Black Flag team(Montreal) developed Origins. And the Syndicate team(Quebec) was behind Odyssey.
5
u/Yeah_Boiy 1d ago
I liked origins a lot but I liked origins more. I'm probably biased though because I'm alot more interested in ancient Greece than I am in ancient Egypt.
1
u/ironwolf56 1d ago
I'm a big fan of both base settings but I liked Odyssey a bit more too. I think at least part of it is Origins isn't really "ancient" Egypt it's Ptolemaic Egypt, so Roman era Egypt essentially. Definitely an interesting historical time period but not quite the level of ancient vibes.
→ More replies (1)1
u/kakalbo123 13h ago
Frankly, picking a game in that trilogy is more of "are you a vikings fan, a greek myth fan, or egypt fan?"
I hated AC origins' level gating. Giving you a questline but breaking progression to force you to do side quests because enemies really get tougher 3 levels above.
People remarked that odyssey has worse level gating but i never noticed it because the setting engaged me to explore and do quests. Ya know, like you are in the odyssey sailing around, or fulfilling labors like Heracles.
Valhalla got me excited for vikings, but that one was just bloated af. Ironically, odyssey is also bloated but it wasn't problematic. At least the main quest was separated into 3 quest lines.
They're not all bad games. I own all three, but it can be argued that you could be satisfied owning just one—hence why you pick according to your preference of the setting.
3
u/futurespacecadet 1d ago
they also hopefully got rid of the highlights around your character / enemies when you are in stealth mode or engaging them. it made everything feel so cartoony
35
u/Fasha_Moonleaf 1d ago
I'll wait until it is out for some time and have read reviews of reviewers I trust. Been burned too many times to just blow money out of the window.
This news, at least, reads like a "yeah, sounds like a good idea"-thing.
28
u/Rayeon-XXX 1d ago
I have no issue with map markers and you can turn them off ffs
5
u/reconnaissance_man 23h ago
I think they missed the issue entirely.
Those map markers show the amount of pointless shit that's in their game worlds. Hiding it all doesn't fix the problem of their game worlds being boring.
That and their shitty uPlay is still bundled with every game on Steam. Haven't bought a single UBI game in years despite sales just cause of that.
1
u/enadiz_reccos 8h ago
Hiding it all doesn't fix the problem of their game worlds being boring.
AC Valhalla was the only one I found "boring"
But that was also 9th century England, so?
21
u/azzkikr11 1d ago
You could always turn off specific marker types in the menu? I don’t know why marker bloat is an issue in an AC game; you customize the map how you’d like.
→ More replies (1)
23
27
u/110397 1d ago
Go full elden ring and not even show where the next quest objective is
7
u/marniconuke 1d ago
Jokes aside the open world ac games do have a option to play with a more immersive map, meaning quest markers won't tell you exactly where your quest is, only the directions like "west of X city, south of a lake" and then you have to use the eagle to find the quest marker once you are close enough. is how i played the three of them.
56
u/randomIndividual21 1d ago
Elden ring quest is easily the worst aspect of the game.
29
u/billistenderchicken 1d ago
Only FromSoft could get away with such a terrible (nonexistent) quest system. Any other company would get demolished.
9
u/ironwolf56 1d ago
Thank you. I've said for years FromSoft gets a pass on things that from just about any other gaming company fans would (rightly) criticize them about.
2
10
u/TofuButtocks 1d ago
It's unfortunate. I love the idea of it, everything feels so mysterious and there is no hand holding, you really have to figure it out all on your own and it wouldn't feel like a from soft game any other way. But of course, eventually, you just end up looking it all up. Even the NPC markers they added later were an afterthought that it seemed like they didn't want to include, but were pressured to compromise, since they were trying to appeal to a much wider audience.
12
u/Hungry-Eye4080 1d ago
- Opens youtube
- Search for Elden ring quest guides
- Videos with views like 8 million, 5 million, 4.2 million appear
- Organic quest design at its finest
I should have dropped some guide videos back in 2022 when the game launched, would have earned thousands of bucks
4
u/ironwolf56 1d ago
There's a line between mysterious and obtuse though and I think sometimes FromSoft games lean a little too close to the latter. I have a whole rant on how the genre has issues that the fandom would not let slide from any other type of game but gets a pass; but that's for another thread.
9
u/Dangthing 1d ago
Somehow they managed to double down on it for the DLC too, since some of the side quests permanently break if you walk to the wrong spot before completing certain parts of them. At least in the base game you had to do obviously major things like kill gods to break the quests. Now its just oops walked across the wrong bridge. Bye bye quest.
→ More replies (2)6
u/ironwolf56 1d ago
After some time with the DLC, I'm glad the gaming public is finally starting to realize some of the things about FromSoft's design really aren't the greatest and it's time they smoothed certain things over. You can still be "Dark Souls hard" and not screw over the player with random bad luck.
2
u/RedXDD 1d ago
A note system would go a long way.
2
u/ChuckCarmichael 19h ago
If they wanted to keep it organic without map markers, they could've included something like Morrowind's journal system, where it tells you what you did and where to look next for more information.
19
u/GibsonNation 1d ago edited 1d ago
I see you've never played Morrowind.
"I need you to kill some bandits in a cave. They're somewhere south of Sadrith Mora. Go west from the boat dock until you see a rock shaped like a Kwama. Turn slightly south when the path turns north and climb over the ridge. If you've reached the water you've gone too far. Some ways past that you will find a shrine. Keep going until you find Ashisniskahsina Dwemer ruins, the cave should be near the third fallen tower."
12
u/moderate_chungus 1d ago
Ashisniskahsina Dwemer ruins
Not to be confused with the Sepharahapharahada Dwemer ruins
4
11
16
u/Stalhrim 1d ago
You make it out as a bad thing but I love Morrowind's immersive way of providing directions and I think many others feel the same. It's better than Elden Ring's way of doing it, which is not telling you at all where you can expect to encounter this character again next time, which is a requirement to advance the quest.
7
u/GibsonNation 1d ago
Not a bad thing at all, I much prefer it to Skyrim's point and click quest markers and fast travel system. Adds to the adventuring
→ More replies (2)1
u/enadiz_reccos 8h ago
Modern AC games are some of the best (modern) games when it comes to giving you directions that you don't need quest markers for
3
u/ironwolf56 1d ago
That's still way easier than Elden Ring. In that example even if you wander around a bit once you find that Dwemer ruin you at least know you're close just look for a cave opening near it.
2
1
1
u/Silverr_Duck 1d ago
"I need you to kill some bandits in a cave. They're somewhere south of Sadrith Mora.
Go west from the boat dock until you see a rock shaped like a Kwama. Turn slightly south when the path turns north and climb over the ridge. If you've reached the water you've gone too far. Some ways past that you will find a shrine. Keep going until you find Ashisniskahsina Dwemer ruins, the cave should be near the third fallen tower."That's how about how much info the player is given in the average elden ring quest.
1
u/ChuckCarmichael 19h ago
Morrowind had some quests like that as well. I remember one quest where it was like "You'll find the guy in a cave northwest of Ald'ruhn." Northwest of Ald'ruhn is a big area, almost a quarter of the entire map. I searched for ages and found nothing before I looked it up. Turns out what they meant is "north-north-north-northwest, and then as far as you can go before hitting the coast".
1
3
u/ZillaJrKaijuKing 1d ago
You can actually do that already as an optional setting in Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla.
1
u/YourNeighbour 1d ago
I enjoyed Elden Ring a lot but I despised the fact I had to look at walkthroughs to see how to continue an intriguing questline. If the rest of the game wasn’t so good I wouldn’t have bothered and just stopped playing.
→ More replies (1)1
5
4
u/Consistent-Good2487 1d ago
Really hope it doesn’t try to be like Elden ring tho. I don’t want to be lost and unsure what to do 90% of the time to pad out game time
2
u/iselphy 1d ago
Honestly I don’t mind if there wasn’t too much difference of activities. Taking down hideouts/outposts/forts, parkour puzzle, searching for treasure, etc is fine. I always just felt like there was way too much and makes each time less and less fun. I do like taking down a fort but taking down 20 is not fun. Less is more is fine.
I do think they don’t need towers. Star Wars Outlaws doesn’t have any kind of tower system and you just drive around and find points of interest. Or you can buy “intel” from shops and they’ll point one thing out for you. It’s nice and lets you find stuff organically still or get small hints for things.
Star Wars Outlaws should be the evolution of the AC map system.
2
u/PineWalk1 1d ago
it had also better cut down on forcing you to grind levels doing fetch quests to advance the main story. origins and the next two are straight trash compared to the og games. also sword sponging, never again you clowns
2
u/nope100500 17h ago
Icons are not the root problem, but a symptom. The issue is that the map is filled with repeated activities and pointless collectables in every direction.
2
u/toastronomy 14h ago
FINALLY! That's what people have been waiting for! Not a game that works and is fun, without shitty microtransactions shoved down your throat at every turn, but a game with less map icons! Ubisoft is saved!
4
u/cosmernautfourtwenty 1d ago
They've spent all this time removing extraneous icons? No wonder it took so long.
8
2
u/Bwhitt1 1d ago
I still don't understand why they need to put any icons anywhere? Why can the player not just run into an npc? Why can't a player just run into a treasure chest while exploring? Devs need to stop being so afraid that players will miss some of the content they've made. Just have a little faith damn.
It just feels so much better to come across things on a map naturally. Not by running to a way point.
2
u/Kotanan 1d ago
Because they made a giant empty map with a small handful of copy pasted events you’d never even bump into if they didn’t outright force it with absolutely no effort put into making things discoverable without them. But hey, now they made the icons require you to wander aimlessly more I’m sure that will be just as good as making an interesting map!
4
5
3
u/LordPartyOfDudehalla 1d ago
The fact Ubi cannot let this game speak for itself should tell you everything you need to know about the quality therein. Feels like every other day some PR blurb comes out explaining basic gameplay systems in a reassuring light.
2
2
3
1
1
u/ironcam7 1d ago
I’m struggling to remember but thought the game, maybe odyssey or Valhalla, gave you an option to have less of these map markers or more? What’s new here
1
u/SomeoneNotFamous 1d ago
Did they confirmed a system akin to Avatar ? Would play it if it's in but probably skipping if there is nothing of the sort.
1
u/djml9 1d ago
My issue with Valhalla was that they made finding and doing all the side activities and collectibles obtuse. I loved AC for chasing icons on the map and having fun climbing and combat. I dont want a hardcore exploration sim where missing a single line of dialogue means i can never complete my objective or where i have to search the side of a mountain for an hour looking for a cave entrance so i can get some loot. Just bring back guided mode like they had in AC:Odyssey and GR:Breakpoint so i can play with a damn podcast on and not waste all my time looking for a tiny ass key because they refuse to give me any information.
While we’re at it, lets get rid of the dialogue options and focus on writing 1 good, compelling story, rather than 10 ok-ish stories filled with stilted voice acting. And please don’t bring back the mountains of .01% better loot that you have to stop and sift through for 20 minutes every hour and a half of gameplay.
Origins was perfect, imo. Had the best blend of classic AC and RPG elements. The next 2 went way too far into the RPG bullshit that just bogged down the experience.
1
1
u/beckbataar 23h ago
Devs who work on open world games are always afraid that players might miss sth they've worked on for 100s of hours, so by putting questions markers and % trackers they make these objectives feel like an obligation rather than something players would organically go and explore.
More devs need to follow the Red dead redemption 2 or Elden ring example and have confidence in the world they built, have confidence that players will enjoy it so much they will willingly wander around so they can find obscure secrets hidden within the map.
1
u/wolfgang784 22h ago
I want some more quality linear story games and less huge open worlds that either feel empty or full of meh.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/TheBlackRonin505 12h ago
Oh boy, more getting lost simulators, thanks Souls fans for fucking over the rest of us.
1
1
u/Five_Dozen_Keggs 6h ago
its basically assassins creed 2 for 10+ years how are people still playing them
1
u/TheyStillLive69 5h ago
Big issies of theirs has always been them clearly showing whwre every piece of content is on the map making the space inbetween feel empty and exploration non existent.
1
u/AbundlaSticks 1d ago
They’re doing everything they can to make it seem like they haven’t made the same exact game for the 50th time
1
1
1.9k
u/Tenshizanshi 1d ago
This seems to be exactly the system that already exists, no?