Skull and Bones - "After ten thousand years in development, I hope it was worth the wait"

[Michael Wade]

It really is, gotta hand it to Irritated Ignacio. Christ on a corndog, how do you fuck up a guaranteed money press like this. Angry Jose says “it was a lay-up”, more like putting someone on your shoulders, taking them UP TO THE NET and them STILL boofing the shot. Also, why are over half the pirate crews wahmen? Rhetorical question. Sea Shantys sound stupid being sung by women. All they had to do was take the pirating part of AC4, add more mechanics & content to it.

Seeing him just stop giving a shit and the end and openly want to kick every woman off the ship and have them walk the plank was great.

I knew this game was absolute dog shit the moment I realized there wasn't a dedicated pvp multiplayer playlist but the fact you have to cut trees and spend hours to grind for the one ship available and there's literally no ending or limit to the leveling... Almost impressively bad

 

[ZMOT]

I knew this game was absolute dog shit the moment I realized there wasn't a dedicated pvp multiplayer playlist but the fact you have to cut trees and spend hours to grind for the one ship available and there's literally no ending or limit to the leveling... Almost impressively bad

beta had a pvp event you can join, there are probably more in full game. problem is most people don't play ubislop for the pvp, never have. just look at asscreed, ghost recon etc.
the smart play would've always being make a cheap/free pvp game, provide cross-game boni for PR from your main game (you unlocked all cheevos in asscreed primal? here have some cosmetics to show off). apparently they're doing that now for asscreed, way too late.

it's even more incredibly stupid with battlefield's corpse getting raped by dice and cod turning into it's own human centipede that there's now a big vacuum where something like ghost recon multiplayer could score big just by not being utter shit. battlebit clearly shows there demand. but nope....

as for the grind, the problem is on one hand people whining "there is nothing to do", and if there's something to do you get people "that's not what I want". could they articulate what they actually want? nah. I also assume none of that endless level is necessary for 100% cheevos or to finish the story. being that weird half-mix of "not really a life service game" doesn't help either in that regard. people are much more willing to do that in a proper live service game for some reason, and if it's only to show off they years later what they did. ubisoft games in their current form have none of that "persistence" so to speak.

Sea Shantys sound stupid being sung by women.

can't remember if it was posted over in the ubisoft thread, otherwise enjoy

those comments lol
still feel a bit bad, they're clearly not bad singers, in another game with better material it could've been damn good.

 

[Michael Wade]

@ZMOT. What do they want" ..... It's clear as day! They want multiplayer black flag. That's literally it and they couldn't even try to half ass it.

Joe had the receipts with the dev interviews. They knew dam well that's what people wanted and they ignored them for this slop and lied about basic features.


Almost every aspect of this game sucks ass. Combat, story and inability to get off the dam boat and do anything worthwhile. The one good thing it has is the water effects look amazing. That's it. It is community mandated style over substance.


There's no central vision, there's no clear focus or unity. It's just a bunch of morons in charge trying to bring together elements they don't understand into a half assed live service game and failing to listen to consumers. And they somehow managed to do this with AT LEAST a 120 million dollars.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

How to make sailing ship World of Warships
You mostly rip off Black Flag's types of ships

Brigantines: Fast, nimble, low health, ramming attack and like Gunboat can also drop barrels (equivalent to Destroyers' emphasis as close range ships)
Frigates: Normal ships (equivalent to Cruisers)
Man-o-War: Heavy but slow ship that uses a long-range, slow indirect fire mortar

 

[why42]

I feel skull and bones could just been a combination of sid meters pirates and black flag. It amazes me that AA and indi have been consistently been out doing AAA for years. You'd think these companies would actually fucking learn.

 

[ZMOT]

Almost every aspect of this game sucks ass. Combat, story and inability to get off the dam boat and do anything worthwhile. The one good thing it has is the water effects look amazing. That's it. It is community mandated style over substance.

problem with getting off the boat would just mean running around on land like every other game, boarding and shit is pretty much impossible in a MP environment. you can't just halt the game for everyone else to let you do your thing.

not saying there isn't a lot of shit that could've been better, ubisoft clearly didn't have the talent or ambition to do it.

 

[SiccDicc]

boarding and shit is pretty much impossible in a MP environment. you can't just halt the game for everyone else to let you do your thing.

Why not? Pirates of the Burning Sea did that just fine.

 

[ZMOT]

Why not? Pirates of the Burning Sea did that just fine.

never played it, how did they handle it?
made it invulnerable, phase it out? I'm just curious how to prevent like people blowing up the boat right under you ass while you're on it for example.

 

[SiccDicc]

never played it, how did they handle it?
made it invulnerable, phase it out? I'm just curious how to prevent like people blowing up the boat right under you ass while you're on it for example.

They made you both invulnerable if I remember right, but when you got out of the fight you're right back in the thick of it so you had enemies waiting for you and if you didn't succeed you still had the other guy, too.

 

[King Vidiot]

Haven't bought this game, but I'm wondering why anyone would buy this instead of AC Black flag and Rogue? It seems they've only taken away features and made it prettier.

It looks like a bunch of people had the same idea. Checking the Steam charts for Black Flag and Rogue show a noticeable bump in active players for those games in February right around when Skull and Bones released.

I really want to see the Ubisoft Connect numbers for these games, but I don't think they have publicly viewable player counts like Steam does. It wouldn't surprise me if Assassin's Creed IV has more active players right now, especially since they gave that game away on Uplay a couple years ago. I expect to see Skull and Bones going free to play in less than a year.

 

[King Vidiot]

I expect to see Skull and Bones going free to play in less than a year.

The game is not free to play yet, but they are doing a free week now through June 6:

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

Video Games Ubisoft Allegedly Spent Between $650 And $850 Million On Its AAAA Game ‘Skull And Bones’

According to YouTuber Endymion

>Endymion
Lol.

Endymion shared, “I was also told that the project that ruined Ubisoft was not actually Outlaws or Shadows. It was actually Skull and Bones.”

“My sources told me they have seen multiple different versions of the game that were each completely different over the years. They said that they were told that the budget that was spent on Skull and Bones, it ranged somewhere from $650 to $850 million over 10 years,” he added.

“And that Skull and Bones failed so badly for Ubisoft it was the actual reason why they’re dying the way that they are,” he said. It’s not actually Outlaws and Shadows if you can believe it. So they sunk a legendary amount of resources into that game and it clearly did not work out for them at all.”

 

[DogZero]

Video Games Ubisoft Allegedly Spent Between $650 And $850 Million On Its AAAA Game ‘Skull And Bones’

>Endymion
Lol.

idk about these numbers exactly but I believe the general principle of this. Like me and others said in this thread, it seems what happened is Ubisoft took money from Singapore government to make skull and bones back in 2014 off the back of black flag. This committed them to deliver the game so they could never cancel it, and they were bound to use their studio in Singapore itself. Result is that what should have been a slam dunk turnover a year after black flag of a game that's just its sea combat by itself fleshed out a bit and basically paid for by public funds turned into a massive boondoggle they couldn't divest themselves from or write down for taxes. Thats how most studios recoup costs on massive failures, its why Sony shut down the servers for concord, you can write down the game if it's not for sale anymore, can't do that when you promised a government a live service.

Ubi was having issues before outlaws and one mediocre game sale like it doesn't produce the sort of issues they are having now: it's been a long time coming. You can also tell this has been a growing cancer by how heavily they have monetized Valhalla, trying to turn it into a perpetual micro-transaction machine to offset these losses, delusional hopes it would be like gta online in returns.

The "Third person historical action game" genre has been held hostage by ubi for too long. What I want is their art and environment teams (go look at the monuments in Origins/odyssey/ even Valhalla or the towns they are best in the business) to get poached by someone who makes a generic historical action game not tied to the retardo AC storyline. Take odyssey, imagine if that game wasn't an AC game, you could choose who wins the Peloponnesian war by the end by whose battles you fight. My point is the AC setting, by having a recognizable modern aspect, constricts what they can do with the games and it's an element NOBODY cares about. People care about the historical action aspect, and it's lessened by being vestigial shackled to AC, a thing they do just for brand recognition and out of fear. It should just be an anthology series with a fun adventure in different places in times unconnected to the rest but under the same brand.

 

[p1138]

Video Games Ubisoft Allegedly Spent Between $650 And $850 Million On Its AAAA Game ‘Skull And Bones’
>Endymion
Lol.

lol, fucking bullshit. If Ubisoft had spent that kind of money on skull and bones, they could have gone headhunting hiring anyone they wanted, and I don't believe a massive portion of 650-850 million was blown on marketing either, especially in the last 3-4 years or so. On top of that, Ubisoft much like most other publishers has a massive problem with their game development effort when plotted looking like a hockey stick, so shit ramps up toward the end, not the other way around. In other words, this wouldn't have started as a 60-80 million dollar per year spend.

On top of that, Ubisoft got raked over the coals for SW Outlaws and that was a game with a supposed 100+ million dollar budget over a few years not including marketing costs. Since Ubisoft is a publicly traded company, this would mean they somehow managed to disappear over a half billion dollars with no one noticing or questioning it on their earnings reports? Yes, they're a big company, but they're not that damned big.

I guess the good part about Endymion is that he usually comes up with shit so stupid or nonsensical that it's obvious he's full of shit.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

Ubisoft took money from Singapore government to make skull and bones back in 2014 off the back of black flag. This committed them to deliver the game so they could never cancel it, and they were bound to use their studio in Singapore itself.

Huh, I didn't actually know that. That makes too much sense now.

Result is that what should have been a slam dunk turnover a year after black flag of a game that's just its sea combat by itself fleshed out a bit and basically paid for by public funds turned into a massive boondoggle they couldn't divest themselves from or write down for taxes.

It's hilarious how hard they dropped the ball. They saw a staircase leading to the hoop with no interference, and they Joe Biden stumbled up it way longer than they should have and still missed the hoop by a mile.

its why Sony shut down the servers for concord, you can write down the game if it's not for sale anymore, can't do that when you promised a government a live service.

Now that makes sense, government funded games are both a mistake and a blessing (if the company fucks themselves up, they can't unfuck themselves and pretend it never happened, they have to support this alcohol baby).

Ubi was having issues before outlaws and one mediocre game sale like it doesn't produce the sort of issues they are having now: it's been a long time coming. You can also tell this has been a growing cancer by how heavily they have monetized Valhalla, trying to turn it into a perpetual micro-transaction machine to offset these losses, delusional hopes it would be like gta online in returns.

I largely ignored Valhalla since I saw the writing on the wall for a long time before, but did they really try to...you know what, that makes sense given Mirage's existence...

The "Third person historical action game" genre has been held hostage by ubi for too long. What I want is their art and environment teams (go look at the monuments in Origins/odyssey/ even Valhalla or the towns they are best in the business) to get poached by someone who makes a generic historical action game not tied to the retardo AC storyline. Take odyssey, imagine if that game wasn't an AC game, you could choose who wins the Peloponnesian war by the end by whose battles you fight. My point is the AC setting, by having a recognizable modern aspect, constricts what they can do with the games and it's an element NOBODY cares about. People care about the historical action aspect, and it's lessened by being vestigial shackled to AC, a thing they do just for brand recognition and out of fear. It should just be an anthology series with a fun adventure in different places in times unconnected to the rest but under the same brand.

I'm in the same boat, give the actual artists and designers a real developer to work under and we'll really see the magic happen, hopefully with Goobisoft's bankruptcy. Normally I'd say that'll never happen but AssAssin's Creed Shadows is shaping up to look like a disaster, we'll see how much brand loyalty and normie consoomerism will count after it releases.

If Ubisoft had spent that kind of money on skull and bones, they could have gone headhunting hiring anyone they wanted, and I don't believe a massive portion of 650-850 million was blown on marketing either, especially in the last 3-4 years or so.

I don't remember much of the article, did the article just throw that out there or did Endy actually say that much money?

Since Ubisoft is a publicly traded company, this would mean they somehow managed to disappear over a half billion dollars with no one noticing or questioning it on their earnings reports? Yes, they're a big company, but they're not that damned big.

You'd have to be the Pentagon to do that.

 

[p1138]

I don't remember much of the article, did the article just throw that out there or did Endy actually say that much money?

It's the article regurgitating Endymion's claim that a little birdy told him it cost that much. In other words, it's bullshit. I could send an email to endymion right now and claim it actually cost a billion, that doesn't mean anything.