SPOILER ALERT
I have played all AC games and finished all but AC Rouge.
So now playing ACO the game just looks amazing, fighting is great, animations are superb, open world of old Greece is just amazing. I really enjoy the scenery.
But game after that feels really dumb. I am not even speaking about the main quest. You can like it or not. I am talking of the game mechanics and logic. Most of players are completeonists. We want to complete every marking on the map and have the marking it is finished. So every fort, warehouse, temple, workshop, leader house, farm ...what ever. I want to accomplish the assignment. Kill the captain, loot the treasure, burn the supplies and so on.
And now you come to the part of the game where it makes no sense. So in Athens, where for the sake of argument, I like them and I want to be on their side, I have to kill their soldier, burn their supplies, loot their treasure, kill their polemarch. I really don't want their power to go down but I am forced to do that if I want to complete the marking.
The other day I came to a farm where the lady asked me to find here husband. So I did and I found him. I finished the quest and helped them. And then I burned their granaries and looted their treasures. Cause I wanted to have the marking the location is finished. I felt wrong and stupid.
One time I finished a quest for my mother and quest finished with the animation in her leader house. After that I was immediately attacked by the bounty giver who was in the end animation in the back and then by the rest of the soldiers in the house of my mother. My allies. After I help them. Dumb? No....
This hybrid of AC and new open RPG is nowhere. It just insults logic and there are really a lot of really dumb situations. I do salute that the game moves towards The Witcher 3 but somehow Ubisoft is still dwarfed by a small company form Poland where all the actions are well placed in the game where it all makes sense.
I really hope that the future will bring logic into the AC franchise cause it seems it got lost along the way.
I don’t have a problem with the game mechanics and logic. I play the game as a mercenary for hire.
I didn’t generally randomly complete areas, though. There were a couple of cases where I helped farmers who had silos on their land, but I only burned their silos when I had a bounty or contract to do it: either directly or by lowering a region’s power.
There is some buggy ally behaviour at times, which annoyed me. But, I just finished Rogue and there is buggy ally behaviour in that, too. I conquered a gang headquarters for the British, and then one of them attacked me out of the blue when I was walking to the fleet management table. Buggy ally behaviour may just be something Ubi as a whole needs to work out.
You don't have to do all the quests, if you feels something contradict what you like just refuse the quest. I don't do quest that require kassandra of senseless killing even if i will lose 10 ori. I don't help play writers who want me to kill someone who criticize their play, i dont help anyone that want to poison a commander if you want to kill him kill him in a fair fight. and so on. By the way sometimes i kill the quest giver in order to prevent him/her from hiring other mercs for the task. This game gives me so many options to RP.
A good month ago as the game was loading, a 'tip' came up about how petty and superstitious people were back then and that it basically didn't take much for them to get very angry at people and curse them to the gods (just basically what I picked up from the short blurb I read) - -
that does fit in with why NPC's would ask to have people killed for the smallest offenses or wrongdoing.
I'm assuming Ubi had found that out in their research about ancient Greece in that time period?
If that's the case, the only 'dumb' thing about it is basically that that's what the mentality of the people was like in ancient times. And in more barbaric times in history, it may not be a far leap from reality.
We judge ancient people by today's standards & knowledge how many thousands of years later. (and frankly, I question enough of even today's though, freakish standards & actions as well anymore... as if we've arrived at some pinnacle of human enlightenment or perfection? Hardly).
I agree w/ Rhinala, do or don't do them, you're given option to decline the quests or you can completely skip Ori altogether.
I do every one, I see it as a game and I'll take out whoever the quest giver sends me to. To me, that's what Mercenary's are hired to do.
Some of the NPC stuff imo is just randomly triggered. Like if walk up to a quest giver and a bear comes out of nowhere to attack us, I take the bear out & she runs away from me & I can't get the quest till I walk way out of range & come back. Sometimes they attack me bcuz I was fighting near them or whatever. That isn't so much "dumb" as it is just something that the game generated as a trigger that just occurred at the wrong time. etc.
Not that it's by Ubi's design that it happened at a bad time.
There's tons of hilarious video game glitches & things that happen too. They can't control & predict every NPC action in such huge games.
You're a Mercenary, you have no side, just money for hire. That's not dumb or illogical.And now you come to the part of the game where it makes no sense. So in Athens, where for the sake of argument, I like them and I want to be on their side, I have to kill their soldier, burn their supplies, loot their treasure, kill their polemarch. I really don't want their power to go down but I am forced to do that if I want to complete the marking.
In this game you also have the ability to change Nation power for either side if it gets too low. Most times it evens itself out.
It's a good design or else you're endlessly going to be forced to do Conquest Battles if you need more red or blue territories.
And it's within your control to balance out which sides you take forts, leaderhouses & camps out. If you take down nation power of blue, head to a Spartan territory and do the same to them.
Problem solved.
Hmm, I get what you're saying. I feel like that's pretty inherent whenever looting in game is tied to an inhabited location. That's why there are all the jokes about Link and clay pots- if anyone did that in real life, they'd look like an absolute jerk.Originally Posted by NICK.ALTMAN Go to original post
That's why I think, from a roleplaying perspective, it makes more sense for loot to be in locations like enemy hideouts or caves.
As far as the burning thing- maybe the game could've been a little more explicit if this was the case, but I guess it's reasonable enough to assume that in wartime, much of the resources of a farm could be requisitioned by the occupying armies. Maybe it's possible that the destruction of these particular granaries doesn't really hurt the farmer and his family, but the nearby army instead. I get that's kind of reliant on suspension of disbelief, but I guess it's plausible enough.
I'm actually fine with how most of the game plays while you're still running the story missions other than some possible AI tweaks here and there. We're mercenaries with no real affiliation to either side during the story after all.
Post game needs some work in my opinion. Doesn't have to be much but it needs something.
I'd like to see the:
-- Hardcoded npc's actually get some kind of reset, possibly turned into quest givers. Right now their are some still sitting in the same room we left them in at one point in Athens including a duplicate of Baranabas?. Also a certain person is standiing next to a certain pillar in a certain room in Athens that shouldn't still be there.
-- Capitals unlocked and made to be conquerable. Gives those of us a side to pick that want one and gives us something to strive for in our efforts to dominate the map.
--OP mentioned farms. I kinda of agreed there. I skipped farms in my story missions unless specified for the story. Just felt wrong in most circumstances. I think I'd prefer to protect the farms. Think maybe have them being attacked by bandits and flagged on the map similar to the conquest battles. Run in, save the farm, which gives you a small window to be able to loot the chest without the npc flagging you as stealing, becoming hostile.
Overall I think Ubi did a real good job with the base game of Odyssey, specially as a first attempt at an rpg, choices matter, type of game.
I admit to harboring completionist tendencies where some games are concerned - but modern open world, sandbox games have gotten so huge and offer so much different content that they sort of cured that tendency - lol.Originally Posted by NICK.ALTMAN Go to original post
One of the things that make an RPG an RPG is that it offers choice, and those choices include what content your character will take on - their goals, motives, priorities, etc. Each bit of content you see in the world is a role-playing opportunity. You get to decide whether your character will engage with that content and when. You can jump right in and do it now, pass it by to finish a higher-priority quest and return after dark to steal the loot, or ignore it altogether.
You can stalk every mercenary you see on the map, even the non-hostile ones, or avoid them all. You can choose a side and stick with it, maintain status quo (stay out of anything involving territorial control), or flip them all.
In a typical action-adventure type game, you're taken through a specific storyline. An RPG gives you the freedom to co-create your character's narrative via all of the choices you make, including which content you engage, when, and how. That is one of the reasons that you'll see people refer to "my Kassandra" or "my Alexios" - players take a higher degree of ownership of the character because they are actively involved in creating the narrative of that playthrough.
If it feels wrong/stupid, don't do it. Anything that isn't part of the main storyline is entirely optional.The other day I came to a farm where the lady asked me to find here husband. So I did and I found him. I finished the quest and helped them. And then I burned their granaries and looted their treasures. Cause I wanted to have the marking the location is finished. I felt wrong and stupid.
(And frankly, you can have a lot of fun playing an RPG without ever finishing the main storyline. I've done that with multiple characters in several games.)
I would agree that NPCs - including civilians - are a little over-eager to get involved in hostilities. A more realistic reaction imho would have most civilians running away or at least backing away from fights and soldiers not engaging unless you're doing something wrong.One time I finished a quest for my mother and quest finished with the animation in her leader house. After that I was immediately attacked by the bounty giver who was in the end animation in the back and then by the rest of the soldiers in the house of my mother. My allies. After I help them. Dumb? No....