This is going to be one of those “Ubisoft investigates Ubisoft and found that Ubisoft did nothing wrong at Ubisoft”-situations, isn’t it?
How about just the completely entitled attitude of the execs that think they can tell us how to enjoy something. Only to then whine that nobody wants to buy their 70 euro no better than mid game
They do damn near 10/10 work when they give a fuck, Thats probably the worst part.
Siege was damn near perfect as a tactical competitive shooter for the first few years. The Division was great, Just Cause was enormous fun and so on.
The problem is they hit a winner, and then milk it and milk it and milk it until we hate it or them.
I’m old enough to remember when Siege was a Rainbow Six game.
I love the division 1 and 2 but the first game had some MAJOR bullet soak issues for the first half-year of the game’s lifetime.
Massive always does good work despite Ubisoft, in my opinion.
Massive are the ones that made Star Wars Outlaws - so it seems the world disagrees with you.
I wasn’t so interested in Outlaws, but I’ve sometimes thought the criticism was slightly overblown. It looks a lot better than some other Ubi games.
Honestly, Outlaws has flaws, BUUUUT it’s fun as hell. It’s a 7/10 game, but it’s fun. I enjoy my time with it even though I see some glitches here or there, or that the lip sync is a little jank.
It’s a big ass Star Wars game (with no AC towers hooray!) where you get to rub shoulders with scoundrels and play Sabacc and visit honestly cool locations that are visually impressive.
I feel like most of the issues it has is probably a function of “we need this game out by X date” versus the devs’ ability.
I finished the main story last night and I basically agree with you. It’s got plenty of issues, but overall it’s fun. It is neither the 9/10 game of most reviews I saw nor the 4/10 game that people want it to be.
I think my main issue is that it wants to have a story about the underworld and how you can’t trust anyone and you’re a huge underdog just trying to survive but it doesn’t want to commit to it. It feels thematically janky in places and ways that feel design-by-committee. It fills the shoes of Shadows of the Empire decently enough, but it feels like it was trying to be 1313 and failed.
I have this feeling that once it starts going on more sales and more people play it the general consensus will be that’s it’s a pretty solid game. I also imagine like a lot of these games there will be a patch in the next month that fixes a litany of issues.
You’re right it’s kind of interesting that the factions don’t really add a lot of meaningful gameplay mechanics, but oh well. At first I was like, “I’m not working with the Pykes AT ALL because I know what happens in your spice mines.” But you end up just being friends with all of them as needed (to get their rewards).
Just having this big coat of Star Wars paint over this otherwise fairly standard action/shooter/open world game really does make it more fun, though. I still have a bit to go in the story, but I’m just basting around cleaning up side quests right now because it’s fun to do.
It seems like a very polarizing game, you either really enjoy it or not at all.
My god Siege was good for the first few years. Intoxicatingly good multiplayer. Too bad they fucked it up trying to make it more CoD like. For example, I used to play with a completely hidden hud because it was so immersive and fun. Now it’s like rainbow six and Roblox had a baby and the weird game popped out. I can’t even hide my hud or crosshair any longer
Yes it was. It was so frigging good.
Ah yes the “sears” method of going out of business.
Clearly what they need is more management layers and SCRUM masters to streamline the game creation process.
and a dozen more external contractors will def make their games better
Don’t forget AGILE. That should solve all of their problems, right?
They’re going lean so they’re firing half their workforce so the rest can produce more work. Don’t worry though middle management is safe
And of course, the preferred way is to do it at the office, 5 days a week.
How else do we foster a sense of team if all the devs are not in the office 5 days a week?
Also to promote a sense of community and close cooperation we’re moving to an open office plan. (I.e. packed in like sardines to glorified picnic tables with hot seating and noise everywhere.)
Finally, let me address some of the polarized comments around Ubisoft lately. I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda. We remain committed to creating games for fans and players that everyone can enjoy.”
Creating games for the broadest possible audience is what has made Ubisoft games so lackluster in recent years, and I think players are tired of games not targeting a specific niche. It feels these games are full time jobs in themselves with how much needs to be done to complete/100% it, and I think that formula is now stale.
I’ll be interested to see what results of this investigation. Hopefully better art, but I am cynical
. . . our goal is not to push any specific agenda
This is the part they’re actually getting at. Not that the fundamental game design is for everyone (which, yes, is what they try and fail at), but rather they’re responding to people who think they’re failing because they put a woman as the protagonist in some game or another.
100% is itself a bit of a misleading target.
I think I remember Just Cause 2 had it so the top achievement in the game was only for 70% completion because they knew they had such a ridiculously huge map.
Breath of the Wild aims the same way - they like having you come across a bunch of Korok seeds while traveling, but not scouring the land with a magnifying glass looking for them.
Just Cause 2 was insanely huge.
I can’t name you a single Ubisoft game that i’ve had any interest in buying, in the last decade
I missed when they’ weren’t so focused on development and more publishing focused. They published some bangers in the late 90s/early 2000s. Grandia comes to mind and a ton of Dreamcast games.
All of the big publishers from 20 years ago doubled down on a couple of key franchises that make the most money and appeal to the widest demographic, rather than the old strategy of having a diverse portfolio across most genres.
Prince of Persia came out this year and I would say that it’s one of the best metroidvania games ever made
tbh I bought far cry 4, but because it was at a heavy discount and Ij ended up paying less than (the USD equivalent of) 4 dollars
FC New Dawn was actually really good
What it really comes down to is that this type of “safe” game design where you rehash the same game over and over again for 20 years thing used to make a shitload of money, that’s why they all do it, and now it doesn’t. Or at least, they’re discovering that there’s a mathematical maximum amount of times you can rehash something without innovating. And not doing that is too huge a pivot for a huge lumbering company like Ubsioft to make on a reasonable timescale.
This is what’s supposed to happen though. When not enough people buy games to make them profitable, the games have to change, or Ubisoft goes under. Either is fine.
And I feel like half of that 20 years was based on FOMO. “I better get the next Assassin’s Creed or I’ll miss out”, and then it’s all the same crap but they still sold a million of them. People do eventually wise up to FOMO.
Miss out on what? Unity was a buggy mess on launch, skip, the British one was a snorefest. By the time of the reboots, Ghost of Tsushima, Elden Ring and BotW already came out
Well, it also doesn’t help how much they are “accidentally” insulting multiple racial groups trying to make an Assassins’ Creed game.
I don’t think they’re doing that.
“The Board has investigated itself and found no evidence of incompetence.”
Nah in this case this is real. The board is investigating the executive leadership, two separate entities. It’s like corporate investigating stores management, in a way. This could mean executives getting fired
Good fuck em
They’ll get payouts which is more money than you and I will ever make combined. I’m hungry. When do we eat?
Nah, this is about money. They’ll definitely find a group of underpaid employees to fire.
They’ll fire the developers that implemented the unpopular features (that they didn’t want to build in the first place but were forced upon them from executives, who, by the way, are due for their end of year bonuses!!)
Management has decided that the real issue is the lack of employee involvement. Mandatory beatings will commence.
I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda.
Press X to doubt
Always suprised when I remember that WatchDogs 2 is from Ubisoft. Such a well made game, i played the crap out of it twice
Edit: awe man Steep was super fun too
Did we play the same game?
Maybe they fixed it? I didn’t play day 1 so I’m not sure how it was then (played maybe 2-3 years after it’s release)
I just found it soul less and unbalanced. But then again I was going into it early when they where still calling it the “GTA killer”.
I played it a few months after launch due to the gaming being included with my GPU and I really enjoyed it.
That was my experience. Got it at GameStop in sale after it had released, played through the whole thing, then I went and played the first one.
I think I like the second better, but the first one is good for what it is.
I never played Legion.
I wanted to like Steep but the Controller experience, even on the Steam deck is so horrible I didn’t last a full hour
I know there are some changes you can do in settings. I mostly did snowboarding and since I snowboard irl I found the controls were close to how you’d control your feet on an actual board. So that probably helped ^ ^
But rider’s republic mixed it all up so I get what you mean
Ubisoft isn’t making money. That’s something wrong as far as the board is concerned.
Maybe they should try not making crap games. All that money and they can’t get decent voice actors or writers.
Absolutely not. When the board is looking into it, it’s because they are not returning shareholder value and they are pissed about it. This will likely end with the C-suite being butchered.
Ah yes, I hate being butchered that way, too. It sucks hard to be paid to leave before you get paid extra to start your next job elsewhere.
And don’t get me wrong, if the C-suites actually ever had to take actual responsibility for their fuck-ups, I’d be all for those board investigations. But they don’t. They get paid enough to not care about interims between jobs - just look at the CEO who said people can just spend a year on the beach or so if they’ve been laid off - plus they get paid extra both on the leaving and on the re-hiring.
If they had to pay all non-salary money back on fucking up, even retroactively, no matter how many Porsches they’d have to liquidate to get the money from X years of fucking up the company back, sure. Do it. But that’s just sadly not the case. For a C-suite, this just means changing what name is written under your name, and moving on to the next place you can grift.
