Short version of what went wrong; they marketed 'making a game focused on naval combat based on AC Black Flag', then ended up making a generic MMO-type live service grindfest. Multiple people restarting the project in their own image meant nothing of the original idea was left at the end.
Sounds like you didn’t play it. It’s a great game and thanks to reviews like this it’s not getting the attention it deserves. I’ll play this over Sea of Thieves any day.
@@homelander2243it’s a terrible game. Absolute grind fest everytbing requires you to grind materials to actually get anything done if you’re like me and can only play for an hour or 2 a day it really is a terrible experience
there are enough fools in the world that will happily hand over their money in the next game as a service. sadly X as a service exists as long as there are people that are willing to pay
Isn't Helldivers 2, the game everyone's having a blast with right now, games as a service? There are non shitty ways to do this right, most simply do it wrong. Publishers are forcing studios that have absolutely no buisness making a GaaS titles to do it anyways because they fear financially committing to ANYTHING that won't make money forever post launch. A dedicated studio that WANTS to craft a well built games as a service that puts fun first and has a clear focus for what the project should be (and one that allows most paid content to be unlocked by reasonable grinding) can very much so do this right, but the money people in this industry are looking for any chance to cram square pegs into round holes and are learning the hard way what that gets them, failed projects that were flawed from the start that go out to die, wasting years of time a studio could've made something they WANTED to, something that could've been good. They clearly don't respect the time of their studios OR their audience so hopefully now that these duds are hurting their WALLETS they'll start to get the fucking point.
The crazy thing is if you ever played pirates of the Caribbean Online that hand technically had more in it.. also boarding.. in a really really old game.
Damn you brought it way back, that game was incredible, I remember being a kid and spending like birthday money to get membership 😂 probably a top 5 game for me on nostalgia alone
The most frustrating part is they could have just reused almost all the mechanics from Black Flag with some tweaks and free roam multiplayer and people would have loved it.
@@AmazedBunion nah you are wrong, there are even so many people playing war thunder n shi, and in my opinion ac boat combat is way more rewarding, prettier, and have more depth to it, im sure if it was made better that it would have a LOT of people who liked it
@@artisresistance816the point op was making was that ubisoft would misunderstand why their game flopped hard and some mba consultant is gonna come in and say that it's because the market doesn't want pirate games instead of them having any level of self-awareness.
@@prointernetuser Yeah it was the same with unity they fucked up the game it was a barely working bug infested mess and their takeaway from the backlash was peoples don't want an Assassins creed game with asassins in it so they made a shit rpg series....
@@Banishedsoulsofficial no way you just said that, to you then does Minecraft mean you can’t build or fight zombies because it’s ‘mine’ ‘craft’ not ‘build’ ‘fight’?
@@Banishedsoulsofficialyeah, and that’s the problem. It’s just a naval shooter, when a decade ago they made an almost identical combat system which includes hand to hand combat, let’s you roam your boat and exploration
Or lets not make that feature at all and make the combat even worse and less realistic than an 11 year old game that is also an AC game not just a Pirate game.
Do you have the name of person who came up such a pathetic idea (i guess not,how could such pro devs not stick the game design document and plan things accordingly)
100% agreed. In replaying Black Flag I’m enjoying the assassin part way more than I did the first time for some reason but it still would have been cool to have a straight up single player pirate game with its own story.
Oh no! They were still working on the game in 2018! Rare falcon L. I understand people don't like the game, but we out here acting like game development is a bad thing.
They needed to stick it out with the Singapore studio because they not only got funds from the gov there But had a tax cut as well So if they don't deliver they are on the hook for the millions invested by the gov, the tax they didn't pay (the tax cut is based on the IP, no IP no tax cut, that includes all the years they were developing and getting a cut) Then they need to worry about investigation into whether or not it was a attempt to defraud the gov of its money & tax cuts It's better to just follow through tbh
All i wanted was an expansion that let me play Black Flag with my friends. When i found out i cant get off the ship i just re installed Black Flag for another playthrough.
Thing is, as soon as a studio commits to developing a specific ‘live service game’ you know the major decisions are just about how much money they can make over time. The idea of actually making a fun game is secondary. Players can smell that a mile off, and understandably don’t like being seen as ATM’s.
@@The_1ntern3t Now days that is 95% of all AAA titles and 100% of the mmo's and certainly 100% of the live service games. Microtransactions in and off themselves are not inherently problematic or anti-consumer, it is this philosophy in game design that relies on and ONLY on "big data". All resources and creative directions are driven by aggregating player patterns and keeping them playing as much as possible for as long as possible and then creating a digital currency with horrible conversion rates and completely anti-consumer traps that require them to buy a whole other bundle of currency because they always make sure what ever is left over from your first purchase is NOT enough to buy ANY other item in their cash shop. They design the game in such a way that for a player to truly get their desired level of entertainment and engagement this currency is basically a necessity. The most common way they do that is with the season pass model that essentially puts content that you likely already paid for when you bought the game behind a pay wall. The reason these suits seem so short-sighted and out of touch is because they do not rely on or utilize player feedback AT ALL and they also, by all appearances, have all collectively decided that they will never ACTUALLY play the game they have made so they can experience what their customers do. They only use spreadsheets and pattern recognizing algorithms.
Live service games as a concept are flawed as they start with the idea of how to make a consistent revenue stream and then try to build a game from that start point. But unlike mobile games, where that design philosophy tends to work because gamers don't have as much choice outside those types of games, console and pc gamers have much more choice as to what they can spend their time and money on. You also have the additional barrier to entry of the publishers thinking they can charge full price for the game and then include other elements to try and get players to keep spending. As much as i hate microtransactions in games, the more successful games that can generate a consistent revenue stream are the ones where they design a fun and complete game from the start and then look at methods of introducing ways for the players to spend more without impacting core gameplay. Whether it's via cosmetics, additional playstyles that weren't included in the core game, or expansions that build upon the game and add new features that gamers might want or have requested. It's always very obvious which games are made by people who love games and just want to make a great game for people to enjoy, and those who love money and just are trying to figure out the most efficient way of acquiring money by making a game.
The original Battlefront 2 was my favorite game ever. I was so obsessed by it that I dreamt of it. But when I heard that EA got their hand on the franchise, I let a decade of hope and dreams die with that acquisition
Or like when EA finally got to work on Jedi: Fallen Order but all the way through didnt say much as 'no one wants a star wars single player experience' and it was one of their best games for a long time xD
Anybody else watch these videos even though they don't play like 90% of the games covered but just find Falcon's voice soothing? Could listen to him reading out a phone book.
OP is obviously not talking about Falcon, they meant they themselves don't play 90% of the games being covered, they just appreciate Falcon's narration.
You'd think, at some point in that 11 years of development, somebody would have said, "We've been making this game for a while now.... but it's not fun! We should MAKE IT FUN!" lol
Maybe most of them did. Most game devs don't really have a say in where the direction of a game is going. It's a job that pays the bills in an industry where layoffs are happening left and right. And the decisions are given by executives.
It is fun. Just cetainly not 90 bucks fun, and the AAAA BS is a meme at best. Tho quite frankly, AAA titles usually bore me. Other than the few newcomers / hidden gems of AAA scale, the regurgitated AAA franchises that receive their yearly reskins havent been fun in decades. Large publishers dont plan on making games fun anymore. They plan on making something that worked in the past look better. That's pretty much it imho. AC, Anno, FIFA, BF, CoD, .. it's all being regurgitated. Some publishers like Ubisoft even go so far as to copy mechanics that worked well in other games into pretty much all of their games. Most first/third person Ubisoft games have the same movement nowadays. So quite frankly.. S&B isnt a masterpiece, but it's still far more fun to me than anything they released in over a decade. That i still wouldnt consider it worth more than 30 bucks says more about the average AAA title nowadays than it says about S&B tho lmao. /rant If you are looking for fun games.. indie games are usually still being developed around the idea of being fun first and foremost. Indie devs do try new things too, because game development is actually a pretty competitive scene, and copying an existing game only works for large publishers who own the previous game in the first place.
Fun seems to be the last thing AAA developers think about these days. I'm still shocked that games like Redfall and Starfield are coming out with shooting that doesn't feel good. Making a shooter feel good to play is like a solved problem at this point, we have that shit down to a science, and yet we still have big budget high profile games where the shooting feels like shit. Why? Cause they didn't prioritize fun. Gotta get the graphics, the story, the voice acting, the marketing, the carrot on a stick progression mechanics, and everything else set in stone before anyone is allowed to ask "hey is this fun to play?"
No need. Let corporate greed run it's course and cash in on the $$$. Sometimes they fail and then they fire the same people so makes sense to just kick in the hours and not interfere or give stupid people good ideas.
The only reason this game never got canceled from delay after delay, director change after director change is because ubisoft took money from Singapore and they HAD to release something and it shows lol
I think everyone knows that by now. But even then, all they had to do was take the black flag pirate stuff and make it into a game. I don't understand how they managed to make it worse. Or they could have done what they did with Mirage and just released it for cheaper, which would have at least made more people try it and resulted in more sales and revenue. How did they actively manage to break what they'd already done and still charge such a high amount that no one would play it? Unless of course, it's for a tax write off, which is probably what it is. Were out here complaining about studio mismanagement while in reality all this is just planned
That and I think the developers think that they're going to be able to trick people into committing to a game where they constantly keep spending money on it. Unfortunately, they have been proven right with games like GTA V or whatever the hell had "battle pass" (I laughed out loud when I first heard that term🤣) but even though people are generally really stupid with their money apparently, you put out a shit product you're not going to get the customer base. And thank God for that because if these guys were succeeding left and right then that's the direction the industry would go At Large. I just wish that people were smarter. I'm a big Fallout fan but as soon as I saw The Fallout 76 press conference or whatever you call it, I knew I was *never* going to play that game. People DO though. I understand people want to play with their friends or whatever but you should only have to buy the game once and that's it. Anything else, show some restraint and say "NO"
What went wrong? All they had to do was take out the Assassin parts of ACIV and put in a new story focused on Pirates and that was it. They would have had a game that would still be talked about to this day. Instead they turned it into a 'AAAA' game and as such it flopped faster than a flaccid sea cucumber.
Ubisoft has a rule about lore and gameplay. They could've removed the AC lore and it would've worked. But no franchises are allowed to share gameplay with each other, so they would've had to create unique gameplay when it came to land. As the gameplay from Blackflag is no longer used since the RPG AC games, I don't see why they couldn't reuse it. I mean, they could've taken out the assassinations and it would've been fine. But we al know Ubisoft, management could find a great idea and ruin it.
@@MarioKaibaI didn't know a company couldn't use mechanics from their own games. Tf kinda coping drug are you on. And there trying to compete with a game like sea of thieves already in existence. This was destined to flop the moment they chose to remove foot combat and add loading screens for boarding. In sea of thieves you literally feel like a pirate in everyway
@@loganovercash Well, SoT does do a lot of pirate stuff, except there are no merchants to constantly steal from, you can't raid the outposts for money. Pirates also retrofitted their ships, you can't do that. Oh and you don't have ships, just boats, because they had to justify not having larger ships with smaller crew counts. Oh yeah, and they don't know how to name their own boats. The Sloop is actually a Cog, for example. Their also missing a bunch of different weapons that pirates tended to use. Oh! You can drink alcohol! Can't do that in SaB!
@@trathanstargazer6421 you can’t drink alcohol? Really that’s a gripe. Names of boats lol bro if you really wanted an ac multiplayer game why not buy ac unity? Also ac rogue was basically black flag 2. In my opinion ac melee combat is the worst in the genre I’m glad it’s not in skulls and bones. Compared Valhalla combat to god of war both had the same theme but combat is like night and day.
Want a gripping RPG saiiling around in a ship? Play "Sunless Sea" - that game will give you fkn nightmares. It gets grim when you run out of food and have to start eating the crew, then you nearly run out of fuel and to save fuel you turn the light off and your crew starts to go insane in the dark - good times. Get the Zubmariner DLC expansion too, it is well worth it.
True! Though honestly I prefer Sunless Skies which was made later and is a more modern game. Id suggest people to play that, and get sunless sea is they really like it
@@Michael-zf1ko True, sea of thieves is a fun multiplayer game, though I'd still prefer sunless skies as it's a mindbendingly puzzling singleplayer games with world building more unique than anything else
The best thing about Skull & Bones is that it reminded me how much I love AC Black Flag so I started playing it again and it’s still an amazing game. Skull & Bones is worse is almost every way and the ways that it is better (more ship customization mainly) don’t matter that much.
@@albertwesker2k24 I'm currently playing PS4 version of Black Flag on PS5. It definitely doesn't look better. Skull and Bones is garbage but there's no need to lie just for likes and clout
I am not necessarily averse to cutscenes in a game, sometimes they make sense functionally, and you deal with it. But the fact that in this game (as I understand from reviews) after you conquer another ship instead of boarding that ship for an on foot battle and looting, there’s a cut-scene instead of letting you board the captured ship in real time. That’s kind of mind-blowing.
Since it is an MMO, while you are boarding, your ship would be vulnerable to other players and NPCs. You basically play as the ship, the ground areas are for quest hubs and finding treasure. One reviewer likened it to Forza Horizon but with Pirate Ships more explosions.
@@Specter_1125 but there is many times you are fighting more than one ship. Are all the other AI controlled ships supposed to stop reacting to players when any AI ship is boarded? It's still a different game than AC BF. I like them both.
You are 100% correct. We all would’ve loved black flag 2 game with more story and interesting missions. They literally nailed the boats and gameplay just build on it
A documentary needs to be done on the inner working of Ubis HQ because for the past decade almost every game theyve announced has been delayed or cancelled at least once, with practically the only exception being the recent AC Mirage. The behind the scenes turmoil of that publisher in general is just astonishing how bad they manage everything from top to bottom. As for Skull and Bones, its wild that literally this game was only, and only had to be a sliced off version of what was already perfected in Black Flag. Just take that off, make it its own side game, boom. But nah. They tried to find ways to hamfist GAAS and microtransaction into it SOME kind of way, and thats what led to all the directional changes. They legit only had to do that one thing, and messed it up. But Im not surprised because Ubi had a genuinely great multiplayer with that Brotherhood hunting assassin multiplayer mode and for some reason just let that go instead of continuing it. The oddest part is them calling it AAAA, which put their feet further into the hole, when the game encompassed none of the qualities of a AAA game. It sure didnt have the quality, and as for budget, it probably doesnt crack the top 10 for AAA game budgets nowadays. So what could have possibly made it AAAA. And if the Singaporean government reason is to be believed, then that means they got additional funds and write offs that didnt come out of their own expenses, which means even more that they didnt spend nearly as much as they are claiming.
I came to the comments to say a similar thing. For the last decade ubisoft have made flop after flop and every time its the same problem. No soul, no direction, and absolutely shallow and repetitive gameplay. They somehow have the ability to churn out terrible games but not even quickly, they take years and are still sorely lacking. I assume their corporate processes are massively misaligned with the developers/artists and have been for some time.
When you have a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 in development for 8 years, and then Skull and Bones in development for 11, it hurts my brain with the comparison of quality. It really goes to show how mismanaged Ubisoft is and how incredibly managed other companies can be. Hopefully, this is a lesson for Ubisoft.
@@detach103ff4yea but rockstar is also notorious for always releasing a game you play for years after it comes out. Ubisoft gets half a year to a year at best. And if it’s the case of Valhalla, it’s hours of recycled content. Red dead 2, 3 play throughs in, I’m still finding new stuff. Ubisoft is years behind them in that regard. All game studios crunch. But rockstar will crunch and produce something revolutionary. Ubisoft is just “there.” They are bargain bin, not at all at the head of the class, and they know that. Bethesda is the same way. Studios like Remedy and naughty dog run circles around them in terms of giving the gamers the next big thing. Something truly special
@@detach103ff4"crunch" is part of software development, period. I worked in B2B development for over 20 years and as opposed to game development there's no such thing as no crunch time. Turns out corporate customers who pay hundreds of thousands per year for your services, as opposed to $60 one time, never think your software is "finished," and they usually have the direct phone number. If you don't like crunch, work in a different industry for a lot less money. That's what I do now.
People like you need to stop defending people that are literally just as responsible, if not arguably more, for the game being bad. It took a team to make this failure. Youre also the type to defend the fools that shat out New Vegas too arent ya?
@@DoomsbluesIf a show comes out with choppy animation, you can tell the animators didn’t have enough time to make it better. If a game comes out with crappy mechanics, you can tell the devs were being thrown around because higher ups can’t make up their mind. (Which they couldn’t, they restarted progress on developing this game how many times?) I have no clue what you’re getting at, or trying to, but the devs can clearly make a beautiful game that tried to abide by every requirement set by their superiors. But if you’re looking to get absolutely roasted, insulting New Vegas is a good way to get there xD Good luck
@@DoomsbluesI don’t understand how you think the devs are responsible for executives and management making terrible decisions on the outcome of the game.
@therotten6152 Not really what I was getting at, but you’re right, there are always outliers. The points I made were more suited toward corporate style development, mainly because it was Ubisoft Singapore- Which definitely isn’t a small team lol. That being said, there’s outliers the other way round too. Lethal company was made by one dude and that’s doing better than a AAA company’s best work
Why they couldn't just do Black Flag 2... It would have been so much easier for devs too. And you know execs won't blame themselves. They will say "see, nobody wants a pirate game".
12:24 I worked at ubisoft when it was prototyping the game, and I had designer friends during the creation of the game. Ubisoft received a large grant from the Singapore government to create this game locally with talent from Singapore. The local people were good programmers but had previously worked only with banking. A lot of people had to be brought from other places to try and finish the game. As time went on, It kept costing more and more to the point where it already consumed the grant of money received from the government, and it was put on hold. It was revived a couple of times and eventually launched. Ubisoft, EA, and other big triple-A companies, pay some of the smallest salaries in the industry and rely mostly on people's desire to work on big games. You get more respect from smaller companies.
I actually feel bad for the devs and whoever they threw in to make this finished only for it to turn out like this. But then again Ubisoft did this to themselves
Something I’ve noticed with live service titles is that it’s almost better to start out from early access with generally low expectations, and build it up with a relatively small population of fans and whales. It’s not impossible, but incredibly difficult to get the right kind of gameplay loop, balance, economy, etc. right off the bat. So difficult, that it may not be worth trying for most devs. Especially because, when you do it this way and at this price, expectations are going to be high. Little is better at killing a live service game than the kind of “dead on arrival” media attention Skull and Bones is getting.
In my opinion, live service games have to be free to play, pay to customize. That seems to be the only way they'll survive, and thats difficult to make profitable.
At this point we shouldn't be surprised with things like this:: just in the last years, how many games went wrong? Every since "top people" saw money in videogames it became a downhill situation... sadly. Games have evolved to competition and stuff like that and the gaming comunity became kinda forgotten... :/ Ty for an amazing content!
You know when you go to a fast food joint that you can feel in the burger or whatever the dissatisfaction of the employees in what you're eating. This game is that feeling in videogame form.
I'm sorry but this reminded me of when I was a teenager we had this Fry Cook who hated the boss so much he would make sandwiches bad on purpose purely to spite him. Favorite example being he would not put buns on because the boss got mad when he left his station to restock 😂😂
Literally you can feel how much they didn’t give a fck by the end, the game is literally a material gathering sim. Just Sail around collecting materials to upgrade whilst being constantly chased by rogues I don’t get how the so called took AC black flags recipe yet completely ruined it. I used to sail for hours just blowing ships up on black flag but this game isn’t fun whatsoever you’re constantly at a disadvantage unless you spend hours grinding materials and blueprints before hand you can’t just comfortably focus on missions
Well that ain't happened for atleast 7 years with seasonal content and dlc packs coming over the course of the year or two after the official release no game comes complete now when it's shipped
I was so excited for this game to finally come out and then I played the beta and I was like “Yeah no I’m not gonna pay for this”. My friends and I thought we were going to be able to play as a crew on one ship. I mean that would be soooo much more fun 🤦🏻♀️
Why would people even bother when there's Sea of Thieves, I just don't understand. That game is a jewel, a masterpiece even for people who hate pirates.
They could not make Black Flag 2 because under the agreement with the Singapore government they had to develop a new IP. So it couldn't just be BF2, and it had to be sufficiently different from BF, which is probably where the creative vision started to get muddled.
Yes! A deep dive on what went wrong, I've been waiting for a video like this instead of the usual simple bashing and making fun of the game. Thanks Falcon!
Ever since the first time we saw this game I've always said the same thing. I've always imagined the Ubisoft board meeting like "ok, so we take Black Flag, remove all the fun, make it multiplayer and sell it." turns out I was right all these years.
A friend of mine is part of the Ubisoft Singapore team and joined the project about 3 years ago. Last week, she tells me that Ubisoft actually never said it was gonna be Black Flag without the Assassin parts. I said no way, because they totally did. So i went back to watch the E3 2017 reveal, and she's right. Some of the old comments on the video even have many people commenting that the game's basically World of Warships but pirates. So while there's much about Skull & Bones that I loathe, Ubisoft promising Black Flag without the assassin bit unfortunately can't be one of them because they never did.
They just had to grab Black Flag and get rid of the assassin stuff replacing it with a pirate story. 11 year and they couldn't just make an expansion of an existing game of the same company, granted a different studio but still.
One of the problems with a live service game is that it's designed to be monetarily focused from the start. We as players of a specific genre - whatever that genre be - know we already pay almost to over $100 on one game. Some of us buy more than one of them a month. Some of us can only afford to buy one a month. So we really would rather play the game the way it's intended from start to finish and be done. We'll still buy more games in general if the content is good. So the studios WILL make more money off us at some point. But when you design a game that's intentionally nerfed in power levels just to nickel and dime the player who wants to be successful; and probably can't afford Whale status, it's going to piss most players off. Not to mention turn what should be a fun game into something arguably unfinishable. It tends to rely on players' competitive drive to earn cash, rather than permit any actual sense of fun.
The store is cosmetic shit, some of which you can even buy when the in-game currency instead of premium. You’re not able to buy anything that actually gives you an advantage.
I'm the outlier here and I know it. When they said, way way back early in the dev cycle that they were taking out all of the moving around as a person and concentrated on just the ship part I was pumped. The off board parts and sneaking around islands to get upgrades in ACIV got absolutely tedious to me. I just wanted more ship combat. I imagine they'll cut this game off after the first year of content and I'm OK with that. I've got 45+ hours of game time in now. I feel like I got my money's worth. Shame it wasn't more fun for more people, though. I think they could have added more ships, enemies, story content, and even exploration areas(on ship) for a long time.
The game is actually pretty polished and has great fidelity. But.... if we have to play a game like a job (ex. piece of 8 farming), then I venture to guess it's not for us. I believe most gamers are tired of every game treating us like an employee to tick off engagement metrics. I think we all just want to have fun with no frills...
Lets be honest here. I enjoyed Black Flag. The sea shanties, the sea combat, storms and whatnot. But by the end of the game I was kinda done. Maybe other people were different but i've yet to boot the game up since i beat it. I think if this game came out quickly afterwards it would have been ok. But after this long? And its somehow worse? oof.
As someone who bought S&B I find myself wanting more content than whats available now. I like many wanted more ac4 mechanics to come back in this but alas it wasn't ment to be i hope they continue to make improvements to the game and have a nms like redemption arch and this time next year it will be what we all want and expected it to be
@@pascalstrijker3985 where can’t you do shit? Every NPC in the game gives quests at every kind of level and there’s always 2-3 no matter where you are. If you didn’t play it you don’t get a valid opinion
Skull and Bones is certainly one of the games ever made. The characters are in it and the dialogue is spoken with normality. The devlopers are absolutely developers and the gameplay is probably one the the gameplay ever made. It's certainly a game that exists. I'll rate it a /10.
I'm a huge believer in having a story & gameplay direction/Blueprint & the lead developer does what he's hired to do. Not create his vision. Same w/ Movies.. ~~~Star War Books~ The 19 book series New Jedi Order(NJO) had about 6 writers & they spend months preparing the layout of who writes who & who kills off who & when & how they die etc.. Nobody went rogue. I will always respect how they did that.
I was hoping Skull & Bones would be Sea of Thieves but with PvE combat and no open pvp. And ofc have the land exploration and combat with swords and pistols and with more human enemies than just skeletons. No problem with some supernatural elements, love the supernatural.
The special creatures and ghost ships are sponges too. I spent 20 minutes and used over 800 cannon balls on a ghost ship just for the game to crash on me with the ghost ship at 10% hp. All that time and effort wasted...not to mention all the supplies i wasted on that ship for nothing...
Im 40 hours in and I don’t think I’m going to stop playing the game. The game’s loop at LAUNCH is great and it is only going to get better going forward. The game’s systems unlock as you progress and it has VERY GOOD end game systems to keep you motivated to grind. I was reading the negative comments online and I wasnt sure if I wanted to buy the game but I’m glad I played the game and I can’t stop it. Ofcourse it can be improved and according to the devs they are working on QoL and bug fixes right now.
All they had to do was make Black Flag and Rogue again, but with a different story and more in depth pirate elements. Why can't studios make a good pirate game? The last really good one was Sid Meier's Pirates, back in like, 2004
I would hope that Ubisoft examines and makes creative changes to this game. There is vast room for improvement in this game and I hope ubisoft pays attention to what the playing community is saying about this game.
They literally needed to copy paste the ship combat from AC BF and put it in full game. Flesh out like 5 things and make the online solid. That's crazy they took this long to fail this hard on something like this.
Happens when you have a chicken that is repeatedly decapitated and they stick a new one on. If you have no good leadership and vision a game will always fail
Apparently UBI borrowed money from the Singapore government but at the promise of a working product....they were basically forced to releasing as it was otherwise they would of not released it atall.
They should have definitely branched this out into a more black flag pirate game that is more focused on pirates instead of half and half with assasins meaning no parkour and climbing tall towers needed. Just a pure pirate game with walkable cities and interesting story
This is why indie games are more successful today because shit like this is the reality of the large developer world. They care more about making money than making gamers happy.
The amount of time that this was in development for what resulted is somehow wildly mind blowing and simultaneously expected. This one always felt like the outcome was obvious, but I think it's indicative of a wider issue in the industry when you look at other AAA titles that spent ages in development and did not live up to that time and resource investment.
The main problem with game developers making live service games is all the parent companies expect them to make live service games because they are the most profitable over a longer period of time maybe if we as players stopped buying and supporting live service games they'd actually make games that are complete on release again
Ppl just wated SM Pirates! merged with seadogs 2 and AC:BF, maybe with some dynamic economy of dozens of games in this setting. That was easiest thing to do - just use what came before, slap good graphic and there u go - instant hit. But naaah we need workd of warships with sails strapped to pt boats. I would not be surprised if Akella will do it in a year or two.
"live service open world games cant just be made and print money... it takes a dev with understanding and directions how to envelop it into a working reality" best comment
These devs aren't the ones who made Black Flag. These devs aren't gamers. They practically don't care. Or at least not enough to properly put together a good game; with which all the pieces they need they already have.
I’m glad I played the free trial game and saved like $70. Like it got me in a pirate mood again and watched the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies a few days ago, but I feel bad I did not have the same fun like with not just AC: Black Flags, but Sea of Thieves and Sid Meier's Pirates. I wanted a fun pirate game but felt like I was playing ship simulator. Heck, I had a more pirate-y adventure when I modded Skyrim a few years back with some pirates mods! I was hype for the customization and traveling on a ship, but once I got to try it out, I was disappointed. Didn’t get the customization I hoped for and the ship battle got tedious, especially with pirate hunters keep appearing and destroying me so frequently when I was a low level. Read it could be a potential bug, but it was so annoying, I gave up.
It's very sad to hear how this developed and why it was done that way. I personally like pirate games (maybe the only thing I could imagine playing with friends online), but the price tag is high for me (and probably for my friends) and as it's not my main type of game, I'm not going to grab it yet - I might as well go back to "sid meier's pirates !" game and enjoy it again
Would have been simple, pirate on foot combat combined with ship combat. Assassins creed could have been the groundwork for it indeed. Arena ship combat could have been an add-on later on maybe. You just want an open world with other people where you can do pirate things. But not so vast of an open world that it becomes lonely. Islands with towns and jungle to explore would be nice as well.
Steam world: heist is a must if you are a fan of turn based game. The only downside isnthe sadness that appears when you realise that you have done all available content. Hoping for more dlc is like waiting for that ex that left you all those years ago.
I like the game. Ever since I played AC3 and Black Flag I remember thinking I would love a game just focused on the ship combat. I understand the criticism but those people clearly wanted a different genre of game than what it was. People play space games all the time where you never set foot in anything and just operate through menus and viewing a ship in 3rd person. Change it into a pirate ship and suddenly its not good enough? The game isn't perfect (the characters were one of my first and immediate criticisms that they looked like bog standard AC asset flips) and that comment about it being quadruple A was just laughable, but I do enjoy what it is. Criticism against the development situation is/was warranted, but people getting upset that it wasn't the game they wanted it to be when it was never once advertised to be that is a but ridiculous.
Short version of what went wrong; they marketed 'making a game focused on naval combat based on AC Black Flag', then ended up making a generic MMO-type live service grindfest. Multiple people restarting the project in their own image meant nothing of the original idea was left at the end.
and released it 7 years to late....
"then ended up making a generic MMO-type live service grindfest"... par for the Ubisoft course
Helldivers crushed Skull & Bone also Suicide Squad ❤❤❤
Sounds like you didn’t play it. It’s a great game and thanks to reviews like this it’s not getting the attention it deserves. I’ll play this over Sea of Thieves any day.
@@homelander2243it’s a terrible game. Absolute grind fest everytbing requires you to grind materials to actually get anything done if you’re like me and can only play for an hour or 2 a day it really is a terrible experience
Any publishers reading these comments, please grab a pen...... WE DO NOT WANT GAMES AS A SERVICE!! Have a nice day.
Too bad you're not a shareholder.
there are enough fools in the world that will happily hand over their money in the next game as a service. sadly X as a service exists as long as there are people that are willing to pay
I don't think they know how to read...
I’m fine with games as a service, as long as that game is badass.
Isn't Helldivers 2, the game everyone's having a blast with right now, games as a service? There are non shitty ways to do this right, most simply do it wrong.
Publishers are forcing studios that have absolutely no buisness making a GaaS titles to do it anyways because they fear financially committing to ANYTHING that won't make money forever post launch.
A dedicated studio that WANTS to craft a well built games as a service that puts fun first and has a clear focus for what the project should be (and one that allows most paid content to be unlocked by reasonable grinding) can very much so do this right, but the money people in this industry are looking for any chance to cram square pegs into round holes and are learning the hard way what that gets them, failed projects that were flawed from the start that go out to die, wasting years of time a studio could've made something they WANTED to, something that could've been good.
They clearly don't respect the time of their studios OR their audience so hopefully now that these duds are hurting their WALLETS they'll start to get the fucking point.
The crazy thing is if you ever played pirates of the Caribbean Online that hand technically had more in it.. also boarding.. in a really really old game.
I loved that game so much
Damn you brought it way back, that game was incredible, I remember being a kid and spending like birthday money to get membership 😂 probably a top 5 game for me on nostalgia alone
truly the best Pirate game. Would love a refreshed version with better graphics
there’s never gonna b a game as bomb as potco
@@JB-1996 you can still play that game today, its been revived by some dedicated fans.
The most frustrating part is they could have just reused almost all the mechanics from Black Flag with some tweaks and free roam multiplayer and people would have loved it.
Facts
They are too inept at making video games to even do that it seems
Basically, black flag with 2024 graphics and instead of good story focus even more on sea aspect and make it multiplayer,would be perfect
But that’s fun to play man… they don’t care for that.
@@AmazedBunion nah you are wrong, there are even so many people playing war thunder n shi, and in my opinion ac boat combat is way more rewarding, prettier, and have more depth to it, im sure if it was made better that it would have a LOT of people who liked it
Ubisoft management takeaway from this will be that people don't want pirate games.
I want TO pirate games. Oh wait, no I don’t. There’s nothing worth sailing the high seas for 😅
I do. I love Sea of thieves, was hoping this would be like that but better ships and more realistic graphics.. instead we got a war ship game
@@artisresistance816the point op was making was that ubisoft would misunderstand why their game flopped hard and some mba consultant is gonna come in and say that it's because the market doesn't want pirate games instead of them having any level of self-awareness.
Ubisoft's takeaway would be that they should hide more abuse and dump more microtransactions on us.
@@prointernetuser Yeah it was the same with unity they fucked up the game it was a barely working bug infested mess and their takeaway from the backlash was peoples don't want an Assassins creed game with asassins in it so they made a shit rpg series....
Having zero hand to hand combat and not allowing you to roam your boat or explore islands is criminal.
No its a naval shooter. If you can't comprehend that dynamic you're not a real gamer and need to back to mine craft
@@Banishedsoulsofficial no way you just said that, to you then does Minecraft mean you can’t build or fight zombies because it’s ‘mine’ ‘craft’ not ‘build’ ‘fight’?
@@Banishedsoulsofficialmy your comment the games you've played are garbage. Bet you haven't even touch black flag.
@@Banishedsoulsofficialyeah, and that’s the problem. It’s just a naval shooter, when a decade ago they made an almost identical combat system which includes hand to hand combat, let’s you roam your boat and exploration
@@Banishedsoulsofficial minecraft*
What went wrong is that they looked at everything that made Black Flag good and said “let’s make that feature a cinematic instead”.
@@stars_and_tarot_YTwe found the 40 year old toddler
Comment chain?
Or lets not make that feature at all and make the combat even worse and less realistic than an 11 year old game that is also an AC game not just a Pirate game.
Its almost impressive how they wasted all that potential.
100%
"Your boat has stamina." 🤦🏻♂️
Lol
Wow 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Do you have the name of person who came up such a pathetic idea (i guess not,how could such pro devs not stick the game design document and plan things accordingly)
Im not one to hate on games I wasn’t planning on buying anyways but that’s crazy lmfaoooo who came up with that 😭
No fucking way😂
Played the demo last night….was legit 30 plays queuing up to talk to a NPC which gives you missions of “go get this, bring it back” 10x
Ubisoft and the stupid NPC queues. I remember standing in those lines when The Division launched. They've learned nothing in 8 years it seems.
what’d u expect from ubisoft anyway lol
I feel a video game industry collapse, just like Atari in the 80s.
Weird. You don't have to queue. Played the beta and the full game since launch and haven't seen this
@@harlequinCTSounds like he is simply jumping on the "hate train" and is one of the 70% of complainers who havent even played it for real. xD
The first Quadruple A game goes right next to 16x the detail.
it's the goat editor himself!
@@vanlllasky sup vanillasky
This is Quadruple A but "Horizon Forbidden West" is only a Triple A?
That was the problem. Having one more A is like having an extra pair of chromosome
@@Crashed131963 two generic games
I've said it once; I've said it a thousand times: all I wanted was a single-player pirate game like Black Flag but without the Assassin stuff.
I feel you
That’s all anyone wanted and they all voiced their disappointment by not buying the game, right?
Which seems so hard to do? I mean they have the license to print money...
We need demos, and real beta testers back.
100% agreed. In replaying Black Flag I’m enjoying the assassin part way more than I did the first time for some reason but it still would have been cool to have a straight up single player pirate game with its own story.
Oh no! They were still working on the game in 2018! Rare falcon L.
I understand people don't like the game, but we out here acting like game development is a bad thing.
They needed to stick it out with the Singapore studio because they not only got funds from the gov there
But had a tax cut as well
So if they don't deliver they are on the hook for the millions invested by the gov, the tax they didn't pay (the tax cut is based on the IP, no IP no tax cut, that includes all the years they were developing and getting a cut)
Then they need to worry about investigation into whether or not it was a attempt to defraud the gov of its money & tax cuts
It's better to just follow through tbh
It's a very profitable game bro, don't believe youtubers
@@parabalani I doubt that and the game still sucks dick regardless
“AAAA” even Activision wasn’t bold enough to make that claim💀
Well "AAAA" is for the money wasted to make this game. Not the quality 😂
@@siriusblack6527 bro🤣🤣
Elden ring just screams at you...
"AAAAAAAAAAAA!"
🔊
In the CEOS defence it was a sarcasting comment highlight what a complete shitshow the project was.
What went wrong? They didn't make a game with even the depth of Sid Meiers Pirates.
Or the original Monkey Island!
Literally all they had to do was just do Black Flag but with a focus on exploring and without the Assassins's Creed stuff.
Sküljagger
@@Custer_The_Hymen_BusterI think even under the jolly Roger on switch is more fun than yhis
Or even meeting the superficial standards of black flag!
All i wanted was an expansion that let me play Black Flag with my friends. When i found out i cant get off the ship i just re installed Black Flag for another playthrough.
I’m actually about to do the same thing, it’s on discount for only 9 bucks! 😹
Thing is, as soon as a studio commits to developing a specific ‘live service game’ you know the major decisions are just about how much money they can make over time. The idea of actually making a fun game is secondary. Players can smell that a mile off, and understandably don’t like being seen as ATM’s.
It's like they try to design a drug to get people hooked up. Fun is only secondary
It's simple. If it has microtransactions, I don't buy it.
@@The_1ntern3t Now days that is 95% of all AAA titles and 100% of the mmo's and certainly 100% of the live service games. Microtransactions in and off themselves are not inherently problematic or anti-consumer, it is this philosophy in game design that relies on and ONLY on "big data".
All resources and creative directions are driven by aggregating player patterns and keeping them playing as much as possible for as long as possible and then creating a digital currency with horrible conversion rates and completely anti-consumer traps that require them to buy a whole other bundle of currency because they always make sure what ever is left over from your first purchase is NOT enough to buy ANY other item in their cash shop.
They design the game in such a way that for a player to truly get their desired level of entertainment and engagement this currency is basically a necessity. The most common way they do that is with the season pass model that essentially puts content that you likely already paid for when you bought the game behind a pay wall.
The reason these suits seem so short-sighted and out of touch is because they do not rely on or utilize player feedback AT ALL and they also, by all appearances, have all collectively decided that they will never ACTUALLY play the game they have made so they can experience what their customers do. They only use spreadsheets and pattern recognizing algorithms.
The drug is as effective as a fake, tasteless gummi bear@@benoitbergeron8858
Live service games as a concept are flawed as they start with the idea of how to make a consistent revenue stream and then try to build a game from that start point. But unlike mobile games, where that design philosophy tends to work because gamers don't have as much choice outside those types of games, console and pc gamers have much more choice as to what they can spend their time and money on. You also have the additional barrier to entry of the publishers thinking they can charge full price for the game and then include other elements to try and get players to keep spending.
As much as i hate microtransactions in games, the more successful games that can generate a consistent revenue stream are the ones where they design a fun and complete game from the start and then look at methods of introducing ways for the players to spend more without impacting core gameplay. Whether it's via cosmetics, additional playstyles that weren't included in the core game, or expansions that build upon the game and add new features that gamers might want or have requested.
It's always very obvious which games are made by people who love games and just want to make a great game for people to enjoy, and those who love money and just are trying to figure out the most efficient way of acquiring money by making a game.
This is like when EA released Battlefront 2015 and they were surprised that people wanted Star Wars Battlefield with large scale vehicular warfare.
The original Battlefront 2 was my favorite game ever. I was so obsessed by it that I dreamt of it. But when I heard that EA got their hand on the franchise, I let a decade of hope and dreams die with that acquisition
@@benoitbergeron8858you know Battlefront classic collection is dropping on PS5 on 14th March?
@@garycod4-n1g Yeah, I'll be playing it for sure! I wish I had a PS4 or a PS5, though.
@@benoitbergeron8858 sucks bro, I would give you my ps4
Or like when EA finally got to work on Jedi: Fallen Order but all the way through didnt say much as 'no one wants a star wars single player experience' and it was one of their best games for a long time xD
Anybody else watch these videos even though they don't play like 90% of the games covered but just find Falcon's voice soothing? Could listen to him reading out a phone book.
they do play the games he says it a lot that he’s played a lot of them over the years but yes that’s exactly why i watch him
I dont mean that Falcon doesn't play them I mean I don't play them lol@@evanmichielsen3675
He actually plays them. Albeit probably not all the way through. That would be a monumental task and you literally would have time for nothing else.
@@porterde08 The commenter meant HE doesn't play the games in the video title, not that Gameranx doesn't😂
OP is obviously not talking about Falcon, they meant they themselves don't play 90% of the games being covered, they just appreciate Falcon's narration.
Honestly, I'm just grateful its out so those 100s of devs can move on from this hellhole of a game and go make something new.
It's Ubisoft - they don't do "New". They'll make Assassin's Creed 17, FarCry 12, or some other boring shit instead.
If they developed this they need to get a different job.
The Ubisoft large layoff in on the way😢
Haha u want them to keep making more horse manure 😂😂😂
@@lemming9984 aye, better than this game.
You'd think, at some point in that 11 years of development, somebody would have said, "We've been making this game for a while now.... but it's not fun! We should MAKE IT FUN!" lol
Maybe most of them did. Most game devs don't really have a say in where the direction of a game is going. It's a job that pays the bills in an industry where layoffs are happening left and right. And the decisions are given by executives.
It is fun. Just cetainly not 90 bucks fun, and the AAAA BS is a meme at best. Tho quite frankly, AAA titles usually bore me. Other than the few newcomers / hidden gems of AAA scale, the regurgitated AAA franchises that receive their yearly reskins havent been fun in decades. Large publishers dont plan on making games fun anymore. They plan on making something that worked in the past look better. That's pretty much it imho. AC, Anno, FIFA, BF, CoD, .. it's all being regurgitated. Some publishers like Ubisoft even go so far as to copy mechanics that worked well in other games into pretty much all of their games. Most first/third person Ubisoft games have the same movement nowadays.
So quite frankly.. S&B isnt a masterpiece, but it's still far more fun to me than anything they released in over a decade. That i still wouldnt consider it worth more than 30 bucks says more about the average AAA title nowadays than it says about S&B tho lmao. /rant
If you are looking for fun games.. indie games are usually still being developed around the idea of being fun first and foremost. Indie devs do try new things too, because game development is actually a pretty competitive scene, and copying an existing game only works for large publishers who own the previous game in the first place.
@@Yamyatosif this game is AAAA then what the hell is rdr2, gow, bg3? Ubisoft is out of their mind.
Fun seems to be the last thing AAA developers think about these days. I'm still shocked that games like Redfall and Starfield are coming out with shooting that doesn't feel good. Making a shooter feel good to play is like a solved problem at this point, we have that shit down to a science, and yet we still have big budget high profile games where the shooting feels like shit. Why? Cause they didn't prioritize fun. Gotta get the graphics, the story, the voice acting, the marketing, the carrot on a stick progression mechanics, and everything else set in stone before anyone is allowed to ask "hey is this fun to play?"
No need. Let corporate greed run it's course and cash in on the $$$. Sometimes they fail and then they fire the same people so makes sense to just kick in the hours and not interfere or give stupid people good ideas.
People constantly complain about management, but this is one of those examples of how important competent management is.
The only reason this game never got canceled from delay after delay, director change after director change is because ubisoft took money from Singapore and they HAD to release something and it shows lol
Like they did with Watch Dogs Legion
I think everyone knows that by now. But even then, all they had to do was take the black flag pirate stuff and make it into a game.
I don't understand how they managed to make it worse. Or they could have done what they did with Mirage and just released it for cheaper, which would have at least made more people try it and resulted in more sales and revenue. How did they actively manage to break what they'd already done and still charge such a high amount that no one would play it?
Unless of course, it's for a tax write off, which is probably what it is. Were out here complaining about studio mismanagement while in reality all this is just planned
Yap. It was getting sued or releasing a subpar game.
@@Shinigami88X1Legion was cool tho. U might not like it, but it has some great features
That and I think the developers think that they're going to be able to trick people into committing to a game where they constantly keep spending money on it.
Unfortunately, they have been proven right with games like GTA V or whatever the hell had "battle pass" (I laughed out loud when I first heard that term🤣) but even though people are generally really stupid with their money apparently, you put out a shit product you're not going to get the customer base.
And thank God for that because if these guys were succeeding left and right then that's the direction the industry would go At Large.
I just wish that people were smarter. I'm a big Fallout fan but as soon as I saw The Fallout 76 press conference or whatever you call it, I knew I was *never* going to play that game. People DO though. I understand people want to play with their friends or whatever but you should only have to buy the game once and that's it. Anything else, show some restraint and say "NO"
What went wrong? All they had to do was take out the Assassin parts of ACIV and put in a new story focused on Pirates and that was it. They would have had a game that would still be talked about to this day. Instead they turned it into a 'AAAA' game and as such it flopped faster than a flaccid sea cucumber.
Ubisoft has a rule about lore and gameplay. They could've removed the AC lore and it would've worked. But no franchises are allowed to share gameplay with each other, so they would've had to create unique gameplay when it came to land. As the gameplay from Blackflag is no longer used since the RPG AC games, I don't see why they couldn't reuse it. I mean, they could've taken out the assassinations and it would've been fine. But we al know Ubisoft, management could find a great idea and ruin it.
@@MarioKaibaThey literally dhare the gameplay of Odyssey, FC New Dawn, GR Breakpoint and FC 6.
There is just no justification. None.
@@MarioKaibaI didn't know a company couldn't use mechanics from their own games. Tf kinda coping drug are you on. And there trying to compete with a game like sea of thieves already in existence. This was destined to flop the moment they chose to remove foot combat and add loading screens for boarding. In sea of thieves you literally feel like a pirate in everyway
@@loganovercash Well, SoT does do a lot of pirate stuff, except there are no merchants to constantly steal from, you can't raid the outposts for money. Pirates also retrofitted their ships, you can't do that. Oh and you don't have ships, just boats, because they had to justify not having larger ships with smaller crew counts. Oh yeah, and they don't know how to name their own boats. The Sloop is actually a Cog, for example. Their also missing a bunch of different weapons that pirates tended to use. Oh! You can drink alcohol! Can't do that in SaB!
@@trathanstargazer6421 you can’t drink alcohol? Really that’s a gripe. Names of boats lol bro if you really wanted an ac multiplayer game why not buy ac unity? Also ac rogue was basically black flag 2.
In my opinion ac melee combat is the worst in the genre I’m glad it’s not in skulls and bones. Compared Valhalla combat to god of war both had the same theme but combat is like night and day.
Want a gripping RPG saiiling around in a ship? Play "Sunless Sea" - that game will give you fkn nightmares. It gets grim when you run out of food and have to start eating the crew, then you nearly run out of fuel and to save fuel you turn the light off and your crew starts to go insane in the dark - good times. Get the Zubmariner DLC expansion too, it is well worth it.
True! Though honestly I prefer Sunless Skies which was made later and is a more modern game. Id suggest people to play that, and get sunless sea is they really like it
Or just get Sea of Thieves. It doesn't have the horror element, but the mechanics are insanely good and your crew are real people.
@@Michael-zf1ko True, sea of thieves is a fun multiplayer game, though I'd still prefer sunless skies as it's a mindbendingly puzzling singleplayer games with world building more unique than anything else
@@belg4r489 I started Sunless Skies - I must get back to it, which I will do, just after I finish this thing in Minecraft...
The best thing about Skull & Bones is that it reminded me how much I love AC Black Flag so I started playing it again and it’s still an amazing game. Skull & Bones is worse is almost every way and the ways that it is better (more ship customization mainly) don’t matter that much.
i loved black flag has a pirate game not has a mainline game like rouge
Just re-downloaded it
Played the beta with my friends they liked it I didn't have fun I played like 5-10 min of blag black and never touched skull and bones again
I tried playing black flag again but skull and bones does play and look better...surprisingly.
@@kona8832 and that's ok I understand idk something just clicked more for me with black flag and something just didn't click with skill and bones
It's better to play Ac4 and AC rouge than this 4A schlop 🎉
And you can probably get them both for HALF the price
@@weetzcro9661 You also get every AC game (I think minus the first one) if you're a PS+ Premium member
Those games look better, have better gameplay mechanics, story, and you can run them on a potato.
@@albertwesker2k24 I'm currently playing PS4 version of Black Flag on PS5. It definitely doesn't look better. Skull and Bones is garbage but there's no need to lie just for likes and clout
*Rogue
I am not necessarily averse to cutscenes in a game, sometimes they make sense functionally, and you deal with it. But the fact that in this game (as I understand from reviews) after you conquer another ship instead of boarding that ship for an on foot battle and looting, there’s a cut-scene instead of letting you board the captured ship in real time. That’s kind of mind-blowing.
Since it is an MMO, while you are boarding, your ship would be vulnerable to other players and NPCs. You basically play as the ship, the ground areas are for quest hubs and finding treasure. One reviewer likened it to Forza Horizon but with Pirate Ships more explosions.
@@dracdrumthere are many ways around that issue. There already isn’t PVP in most areas, for one.
@@Specter_1125 but there is many times you are fighting more than one ship. Are all the other AI controlled ships supposed to stop reacting to players when any AI ship is boarded?
It's still a different game than AC BF. I like them both.
@dracdrum it's the same as chorus but not in space
@dracdrum black flag figured out the ai problem just fine I don't understand why they couldn't just do the same
Kind of appropriate that a pirate game gives you a perfect example of the sunken cost fallacy at work.
Twilight Zone: they created it so well that it became a real pirate and stole all the studio's booty.
You can tell the game is shit when news outlets start with "What went wrong?"
Oof way to out oneself like that.
You are 100% correct. We all would’ve loved black flag 2 game with more story and interesting missions. They literally nailed the boats and gameplay just build on it
Skull and bones went to Davy jones locker on release day
It's swimming with the fishes
Skull and Bones, Your debt is settled.
The only pirate here is Ubisoft, lol, taking all those shinies and not much in return.
Ubisoft. That’s where it went wrong.
A documentary needs to be done on the inner working of Ubis HQ because for the past decade almost every game theyve announced has been delayed or cancelled at least once, with practically the only exception being the recent AC Mirage. The behind the scenes turmoil of that publisher in general is just astonishing how bad they manage everything from top to bottom.
As for Skull and Bones, its wild that literally this game was only, and only had to be a sliced off version of what was already perfected in Black Flag. Just take that off, make it its own side game, boom. But nah. They tried to find ways to hamfist GAAS and microtransaction into it SOME kind of way, and thats what led to all the directional changes. They legit only had to do that one thing, and messed it up. But Im not surprised because Ubi had a genuinely great multiplayer with that Brotherhood hunting assassin multiplayer mode and for some reason just let that go instead of continuing it.
The oddest part is them calling it AAAA, which put their feet further into the hole, when the game encompassed none of the qualities of a AAA game. It sure didnt have the quality, and as for budget, it probably doesnt crack the top 10 for AAA game budgets nowadays. So what could have possibly made it AAAA. And if the Singaporean government reason is to be believed, then that means they got additional funds and write offs that didnt come out of their own expenses, which means even more that they didnt spend nearly as much as they are claiming.
I came to the comments to say a similar thing. For the last decade ubisoft have made flop after flop and every time its the same problem. No soul, no direction, and absolutely shallow and repetitive gameplay. They somehow have the ability to churn out terrible games but not even quickly, they take years and are still sorely lacking. I assume their corporate processes are massively misaligned with the developers/artists and have been for some time.
When you have a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 in development for 8 years, and then Skull and Bones in development for 11, it hurts my brain with the comparison of quality. It really goes to show how mismanaged Ubisoft is and how incredibly managed other companies can be. Hopefully, this is a lesson for Ubisoft.
Lmao that's cause Ubisoft is horrible
Rockstar is notorious for crunch so hardly a metric or comparison..
@cuddles1767 😂 nah
@@detach103ff4yea but rockstar is also notorious for always releasing a game you play for years after it comes out. Ubisoft gets half a year to a year at best. And if it’s the case of Valhalla, it’s hours of recycled content. Red dead 2, 3 play throughs in, I’m still finding new stuff. Ubisoft is years behind them in that regard. All game studios crunch. But rockstar will crunch and produce something revolutionary. Ubisoft is just “there.” They are bargain bin, not at all at the head of the class, and they know that. Bethesda is the same way. Studios like Remedy and naughty dog run circles around them in terms of giving the gamers the next big thing. Something truly special
@@detach103ff4"crunch" is part of software development, period. I worked in B2B development for over 20 years and as opposed to game development there's no such thing as no crunch time. Turns out corporate customers who pay hundreds of thousands per year for your services, as opposed to $60 one time, never think your software is "finished," and they usually have the direct phone number. If you don't like crunch, work in a different industry for a lot less money. That's what I do now.
This game held so many talented devs hostage. Thank goodness it’s out so they can go do something better.
People like you need to stop defending people that are literally just as responsible, if not arguably more, for the game being bad. It took a team to make this failure. Youre also the type to defend the fools that shat out New Vegas too arent ya?
@@Doomsblueswhat are you going on about?
@@DoomsbluesIf a show comes out with choppy animation, you can tell the animators didn’t have enough time to make it better.
If a game comes out with crappy mechanics, you can tell the devs were being thrown around because higher ups can’t make up their mind. (Which they couldn’t, they restarted progress on developing this game how many times?)
I have no clue what you’re getting at, or trying to, but the devs can clearly make a beautiful game that tried to abide by every requirement set by their superiors. But if you’re looking to get absolutely roasted, insulting New Vegas is a good way to get there xD
Good luck
@@DoomsbluesI don’t understand how you think the devs are responsible for executives and management making terrible decisions on the outcome of the game.
@therotten6152 Not really what I was getting at, but you’re right, there are always outliers.
The points I made were more suited toward corporate style development, mainly because it was Ubisoft Singapore- Which definitely isn’t a small team lol.
That being said, there’s outliers the other way round too. Lethal company was made by one dude and that’s doing better than a AAA company’s best work
With games like this, don’t ask what went wrong, ask what didn’t go wrong, you’ll find it to be much easier to sort out what went wrong then.
Why they couldn't just do Black Flag 2... It would have been so much easier for devs too.
And you know execs won't blame themselves. They will say "see, nobody wants a pirate game".
They probably blame something dumb.. like social media.
There working on a black flag remaster. There's a hope still
@@kristiano.7363and nobody will buy after this screw-up. They don't deserve our money
12:24 I worked at ubisoft when it was prototyping the game, and I had designer friends during the creation of the game.
Ubisoft received a large grant from the Singapore government to create this game locally with talent from Singapore. The local people were good programmers but had previously worked only with banking. A lot of people had to be brought from other places to try and finish the game. As time went on, It kept costing more and more to the point where it already consumed the grant of money received from the government, and it was put on hold. It was revived a couple of times and eventually launched.
Ubisoft, EA, and other big triple-A companies, pay some of the smallest salaries in the industry and rely mostly on people's desire to work on big games. You get more respect from smaller companies.
I actually feel bad for the devs and whoever they threw in to make this finished only for it to turn out like this. But then again Ubisoft did this to themselves
Ubisoft always does these things to themselves, the only games they got going for themselves these days are R6 siege, For honor & Assassins creed
Something I’ve noticed with live service titles is that it’s almost better to start out from early access with generally low expectations, and build it up with a relatively small population of fans and whales.
It’s not impossible, but incredibly difficult to get the right kind of gameplay loop, balance, economy, etc. right off the bat. So difficult, that it may not be worth trying for most devs. Especially because, when you do it this way and at this price, expectations are going to be high. Little is better at killing a live service game than the kind of “dead on arrival” media attention Skull and Bones is getting.
In my opinion, live service games have to be free to play, pay to customize. That seems to be the only way they'll survive, and thats difficult to make profitable.
@@MikadoYumaeither free to play or a low price point going into it like hell divers
At this point we shouldn't be surprised with things like this:: just in the last years, how many games went wrong? Every since "top people" saw money in videogames it became a downhill situation... sadly. Games have evolved to competition and stuff like that and the gaming comunity became kinda forgotten... :/ Ty for an amazing content!
You know when you go to a fast food joint that you can feel in the burger or whatever the dissatisfaction of the employees in what you're eating.
This game is that feeling in videogame form.
I'm sorry but this reminded me of when I was a teenager we had this Fry Cook who hated the boss so much he would make sandwiches bad on purpose purely to spite him. Favorite example being he would not put buns on because the boss got mad when he left his station to restock 😂😂
Literally you can feel how much they didn’t give a fck by the end, the game is literally a material gathering sim. Just Sail around collecting materials to upgrade whilst being constantly chased by rogues I don’t get how the so called took AC black flags recipe yet completely ruined it. I used to sail for hours just blowing ships up on black flag but this game isn’t fun whatsoever you’re constantly at a disadvantage unless you spend hours grinding materials and blueprints before hand you can’t just comfortably focus on missions
13:00 “Normally when a game ships, it’s done”
Nice
Well that ain't happened for atleast 7 years with seasonal content and dlc packs coming over the course of the year or two after the official release no game comes complete now when it's shipped
That should be a law. Every product should be sold finished or complete.
Would you buy a half way sealed can of beans?
I was so excited for this game to finally come out and then I played the beta and I was like “Yeah no I’m not gonna pay for this”.
My friends and I thought we were going to be able to play as a crew on one ship. I mean that would be soooo much more fun 🤦🏻♀️
Its worth it on ubisoft plus if you have it.
Why would people even bother when there's Sea of Thieves, I just don't understand. That game is a jewel, a masterpiece even for people who hate pirates.
"Looking at it makes me want to take a nap."
There's your box quote
They could not make Black Flag 2 because under the agreement with the Singapore government they had to develop a new IP. So it couldn't just be BF2, and it had to be sufficiently different from BF, which is probably where the creative vision started to get muddled.
Yes! A deep dive on what went wrong, I've been waiting for a video like this instead of the usual simple bashing and making fun of the game. Thanks Falcon!
"It exists!"
- the most positive thing you can say about this game lol
"Sid Miers PIRATES!" was pretty cool.
Best pirate game ever
Ever since the first time we saw this game I've always said the same thing. I've always imagined the Ubisoft board meeting like "ok, so we take Black Flag, remove all the fun, make it multiplayer and sell it." turns out I was right all these years.
A friend of mine is part of the Ubisoft Singapore team and joined the project about 3 years ago.
Last week, she tells me that Ubisoft actually never said it was gonna be Black Flag without the Assassin parts. I said no way, because they totally did.
So i went back to watch the E3 2017 reveal, and she's right. Some of the old comments on the video even have many people commenting that the game's basically World of Warships but pirates.
So while there's much about Skull & Bones that I loathe, Ubisoft promising Black Flag without the assassin bit unfortunately can't be one of them because they never did.
They just had to grab Black Flag and get rid of the assassin stuff replacing it with a pirate story.
11 year and they couldn't just make an expansion of an existing game of the same company, granted a different studio but still.
“No I don’t want you to try to make a good live service game, I just want you to make a game” SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE DEVELOPERS IN THE BACK
If it was a single-player game with a good narrative, I would be all in. Kinda like Black Flag 2!
One of the problems with a live service game is that it's designed to be monetarily focused from the start. We as players of a specific genre - whatever that genre be - know we already pay almost to over $100 on one game. Some of us buy more than one of them a month. Some of us can only afford to buy one a month. So we really would rather play the game the way it's intended from start to finish and be done. We'll still buy more games in general if the content is good. So the studios WILL make more money off us at some point. But when you design a game that's intentionally nerfed in power levels just to nickel and dime the player who wants to be successful; and probably can't afford Whale status, it's going to piss most players off. Not to mention turn what should be a fun game into something arguably unfinishable. It tends to rely on players' competitive drive to earn cash, rather than permit any actual sense of fun.
The store is cosmetic shit, some of which you can even buy when the in-game currency instead of premium. You’re not able to buy anything that actually gives you an advantage.
I'm the outlier here and I know it. When they said, way way back early in the dev cycle that they were taking out all of the moving around as a person and concentrated on just the ship part I was pumped. The off board parts and sneaking around islands to get upgrades in ACIV got absolutely tedious to me. I just wanted more ship combat. I imagine they'll cut this game off after the first year of content and I'm OK with that. I've got 45+ hours of game time in now. I feel like I got my money's worth. Shame it wasn't more fun for more people, though. I think they could have added more ships, enemies, story content, and even exploration areas(on ship) for a long time.
The game is actually pretty polished and has great fidelity. But.... if we have to play a game like a job (ex. piece of 8 farming), then I venture to guess it's not for us. I believe most gamers are tired of every game treating us like an employee to tick off engagement metrics. I think we all just want to have fun with no frills...
Lets be honest here. I enjoyed Black Flag. The sea shanties, the sea combat, storms and whatnot. But by the end of the game I was kinda done. Maybe other people were different but i've yet to boot the game up since i beat it. I think if this game came out quickly afterwards it would have been ok. But after this long? And its somehow worse? oof.
As someone who bought S&B I find myself wanting more content than whats available now. I like many wanted more ac4 mechanics to come back in this but alas it wasn't ment to be i hope they continue to make improvements to the game and have a nms like redemption arch and this time next year it will be what we all want and expected it to be
Naw I think you want your money back just refund it bro
@@avoidhuncho5331 nope. It’s a fun game, I’ll be playing it for awhile. It’s better than any other pirate game out rn
@@homelander2243 Sea of Thieves
@@homelander2243 your saying that skull and bones a game where you cant do shit is more fun than sea of thieves your crazy
@@pascalstrijker3985 where can’t you do shit? Every NPC in the game gives quests at every kind of level and there’s always 2-3 no matter where you are. If you didn’t play it you don’t get a valid opinion
Skull and Bones is certainly one of the games ever made. The characters are in it and the dialogue is spoken with normality. The devlopers are absolutely developers and the gameplay is probably one the the gameplay ever made. It's certainly a game that exists. I'll rate it a /10.
I was hoping it would be as good as sid meier's pirates! I used to love that game as a kid
Wow. You explain so nicely and in a simple manner. Keep it up 👍🏼👍🏼
I'm a huge believer in having a story & gameplay direction/Blueprint
& the lead developer does what he's hired to do.
Not create his vision. Same w/ Movies..
~~~Star War Books~ The 19 book series
New Jedi Order(NJO) had about 6 writers & they
spend months preparing the layout of who
writes who & who kills off who & when & how they die etc..
Nobody went rogue. I will always respect how they did that.
I miss the times mmo's were live service not live service being live service
Quick question, does anyone knows the name of the first background song used in this video?
Late ik. But Chaos - Gunnar Olsen.
I had to go searching for it cause it was famiilar. Was driving me crazy. Hope this helps you my friend.
@@ldking5132 thanks so much
I was hoping Skull & Bones would be Sea of Thieves but with PvE combat and no open pvp. And ofc have the land exploration and combat with swords and pistols and with more human enemies than just skeletons. No problem with some supernatural elements, love the supernatural.
To be fair, it’s not like sea of thieves wasn’t trash when it came out.
The special creatures and ghost ships are sponges too. I spent 20 minutes and used over 800 cannon balls on a ghost ship just for the game to crash on me with the ghost ship at 10% hp. All that time and effort wasted...not to mention all the supplies i wasted on that ship for nothing...
Lol that's nuthing my guy I spend 60 k evry 5h 😂
Im 40 hours in and I don’t think I’m going to stop playing the game. The game’s loop at LAUNCH is great and it is only going to get better going forward.
The game’s systems unlock as you progress and it has VERY GOOD end game systems to keep you motivated to grind.
I was reading the negative comments online and I wasnt sure if I wanted to buy the game but I’m glad I played the game and I can’t stop it.
Ofcourse it can be improved and according to the devs they are working on QoL and bug fixes right now.
All they had to do was make Black Flag and Rogue again, but with a different story and more in depth pirate elements. Why can't studios make a good pirate game? The last really good one was Sid Meier's Pirates, back in like, 2004
I would hope that Ubisoft examines and makes creative changes to this game. There is vast room for improvement in this game and I hope ubisoft pays attention to what the playing community is saying about this game.
I'm pretty sure the voices for singing the shanties I head while watching a stream of these were flat out lifted from AC3.
They literally needed to copy paste the ship combat from AC BF and put it in full game. Flesh out like 5 things and make the online solid.
That's crazy they took this long to fail this hard on something like this.
Happens when you have a chicken that is repeatedly decapitated and they stick a new one on. If you have no good leadership and vision a game will always fail
Apparently UBI borrowed money from the Singapore government but at the promise of a working product....they were basically forced to releasing as it was otherwise they would of not released it atall.
And they still could have made a better game than this
I replayed the entirety of Black Flag instead of buying Skull and Bones, and it was as great as i remembered...
They should have definitely branched this out into a more black flag pirate game that is more focused on pirates instead of half and half with assasins meaning no parkour and climbing tall towers needed. Just a pure pirate game with walkable cities and interesting story
This is why indie games are more successful today because shit like this is the reality of the large developer world. They care more about making money than making gamers happy.
The amount of time that this was in development for what resulted is somehow wildly mind blowing and simultaneously expected. This one always felt like the outcome was obvious, but I think it's indicative of a wider issue in the industry when you look at other AAA titles that spent ages in development and did not live up to that time and resource investment.
Apparently there is an additional subscription to play? I'm on xbox and cant find any concrete evidence
The main problem with game developers making live service games is all the parent companies expect them to make live service games because they are the most profitable over a longer period of time maybe if we as players stopped buying and supporting live service games they'd actually make games that are complete on release again
Yeppers.
I had not seen any game footage until now. I definitely see what people are saying about how it looks like a mobile game.
Ppl just wated SM Pirates! merged with seadogs 2 and AC:BF, maybe with some dynamic economy of dozens of games in this setting. That was easiest thing to do - just use what came before, slap good graphic and there u go - instant hit. But naaah we need workd of warships with sails strapped to pt boats. I would not be surprised if Akella will do it in a year or two.
Love Gameranx, but Ibloody love it when it's Falcon, especially for a critical analysis. I dunno, it justs hits different
The second I had seen that the sailing ships in this game had "stamina" when going full speed ahead, I knew there wasn't much hope for this game...
They gave a ship a human stamina defect
"live service open world games cant just be made and print money... it takes a dev with understanding and directions how to envelop it into a working reality" best comment
At this point, they should just remake AC: Black Flag to be the Skull & Bones everyone wanted.
These devs aren't the ones who made Black Flag. These devs aren't gamers. They practically don't care. Or at least not enough to properly put together a good game; with which all the pieces they need they already have.
Keep up the great work Falcon! I absolutely love your honest takes that are not dripping with toxicity.
I’m glad I played the free trial game and saved like $70. Like it got me in a pirate mood again and watched the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies a few days ago, but I feel bad I did not have the same fun like with not just AC: Black Flags, but Sea of Thieves and Sid Meier's Pirates. I wanted a fun pirate game but felt like I was playing ship simulator. Heck, I had a more pirate-y adventure when I modded Skyrim a few years back with some pirates mods!
I was hype for the customization and traveling on a ship, but once I got to try it out, I was disappointed. Didn’t get the customization I hoped for and the ship battle got tedious, especially with pirate hunters keep appearing and destroying me so frequently when I was a low level. Read it could be a potential bug, but it was so annoying, I gave up.
It's very sad to hear how this developed and why it was done that way. I personally like pirate games (maybe the only thing I could imagine playing with friends online), but the price tag is high for me (and probably for my friends) and as it's not my main type of game, I'm not going to grab it yet - I might as well go back to "sid meier's pirates !" game and enjoy it again
Been playing the trial which was fun tbh. Looks great. But no land exploration, or land combat? Ouch
07:40 what's the Name of the game?
Black flag but with my friends in a co op campaign is all I wanted tbh. Every fun and cool part of Black Flag is gone in this game.
I personally am having a lot of fun with it. It's pretty much what I expected it to be.
Would have been simple, pirate on foot combat combined with ship combat. Assassins creed could have been the groundwork for it indeed. Arena ship combat could have been an add-on later on maybe. You just want an open world with other people where you can do pirate things. But not so vast of an open world that it becomes lonely.
Islands with towns and jungle to explore would be nice as well.
Steam world: heist is a must if you are a fan of turn based game. The only downside isnthe sadness that appears when you realise that you have done all available content. Hoping for more dlc is like waiting for that ex that left you all those years ago.
Damn I remember my first trip to E3 in 2017 and seeing it at the ubisoft booth and thinking the exact same thing and how cool of a premise that was
Sick vid but the trap music in the background is mad distracting if wearing headphones
Wow i never played ACBF but its been sitting on mt shelf from my brother on PS4 for a while now. Not a ubisoft fan but now I wanna play it lol
I like the game. Ever since I played AC3 and Black Flag I remember thinking I would love a game just focused on the ship combat. I understand the criticism but those people clearly wanted a different genre of game than what it was. People play space games all the time where you never set foot in anything and just operate through menus and viewing a ship in 3rd person. Change it into a pirate ship and suddenly its not good enough?
The game isn't perfect (the characters were one of my first and immediate criticisms that they looked like bog standard AC asset flips) and that comment about it being quadruple A was just laughable, but I do enjoy what it is.
Criticism against the development situation is/was warranted, but people getting upset that it wasn't the game they wanted it to be when it was never once advertised to be that is a but ridiculous.