I keep seeing all these posts about how the game is too easy, etc. I'd like to ask that if you're gonna go ahead and arbitrarily increase difficulty--like, making it so that you give less damage and receive more damage--please just keep that to the "action" mode, or just create an entirely new difficulty mode or something. I want no part of it. Some of us want to have a smoother, easier-going experience and would rather not die all the time and be stuck in loading screens more than in the game world. I actually want to enjoy myself in Far Cry 6 and take down enemies efficiently and effectively.

Meanwhile, yes, I'm one of those players who encounter (and absolutely loathe) bullet-spongey enemies, even in "story" mode. There have been several times now where I asked myself "Am I shooting these guys with bullets or spitballs?!" I've been in situations where I shoot a dude in the chest several times with an assault rifle, only to have him continue blasting me like I'd just tickled and mildly irritated him.

Why do we have to carefully select ammo types--and also not be able to change them out on the fly, like we could in Far Cry 5 and New Dawn? What's the point of the "standard" ammo? I guess I just never understood this pivot to more RPG-like systems and mechanics in this open-world first-person shooter series, with these dumb life bars and levels/ranks, etc. The enemies I'm facing are just regular people, right? Not superhumans?

Anyway, at the very least, please keep the "story" mode easier for those of us who prefer it. Let everybody whining about increasing difficulty have their entirely separate difficulty level that they can choose.

I upgraded my Bone-Biter Dane axe to "mythical" level to see what kind of final appearance it would have, and then I noticed that almost every time I strike an enemy with it, there's this magical-sounding "shwing" sound instead of a more realistic-sounding, bone-crushing sound. I can't stand this new sound for mythical weapons. Would it be possible, through an update, to deactivate this sound--or, at least, to be able to have weapons appear as their lower-tier forms (such as "flawless")?

While we're at it, a full-blown transbog feature for all weapons and armor would be really useful. I'd like to have certain armor pieces appear as lower-tier versions as well if I don't like higher-tier appearances.

I hope someone from the dev team hears this.

*sigh*

Not excited about this. I don't like the idea of "live-service" games, and the other question I have is this: will Assassin's Creed now turn into some kind of online multiplayer fest? A major reason why I stick with the AC games is because they have always been self-contained story- and character-driven single-player open-world experiences that don't depend on some multiplayer nonsense.

I'm not interested in (and don't get the appeal of) games like Fortnite, and I've never been into GTA Online (but I love GTA 5, the single-player game).

So I'm immediately not getting a good vibe from this direction.

@jcar4327 Yep. Nailed it. I don't want to feel like I "must" "log in" to a game, lest I miss some kind of content. I want an offline single-player game that will ALWAYS be there whenever I'm ready to play it.

Also, I'm simply not interested in multiplayer content, period. I play games as a solitary activity, and I don't want to play with other people. The problem is, if AC starts bringing in more co-op multiplayer content, I worry that us solo gamers will be left out or forgotten about. Soon, there will be quests that can be played ONLY through co-op (and, thus, rewards that can be attained ONLY through playing co-op content).

If this is where AC is heading, that might be the point where I finally quit the series. And that sucks, because I've been a loyal player of the AC series since day one, way back in 2007.

Keep Assassin's Creed a story-driven single-player open-world action/adventure series, and I'll keep happily coming back.

Hi! So I'm dying to play Wildlands again, this time on the new PS5 I was able to get. But unlike Breakpoint, this game hasn't been patched to take advantage of the superior PS5 hardware and allow for a silky smooth 60 frames per second.

Will you be updating Wildlands to run on PS5 anytime soon? It's a shame that this hasn't been done yet.

Agreed.

I was just asked to provide a video of that flaming red-rune flash that appears whenever enemies and animals do unblockable attacks. My only request is to have an Interface option to turn that effect OFF.

Like . . . really? It's there for anyone to see. Just get into a fight, and eventually an enemy will do an unblockable attack, and that fiery red rune thing will flash on them. Have they not seen this or something?

I'm seriously hoping a forthcoming update will go a long way toward fixing a glut of glaring clipping issues in AC: Valhalla. There are blades and handles clipping right through cloaks and other fabrics seemingly all the time, especially when walking, jogging, running, or riding on horeseback. Sometimes straps and tunics will clip through when cloaks and hoods are pulled over and you're moving around. It's pretty terrible at times. I know it isn't exactly easy to handle this, but I'm hoping some minor adjustments can address all this.

I ran across a Screen Rant article about a potential ditching of the open-world design for the next AC game (https://screenrant.com/assassins-creed-richard-open-world-ditched-third-crusade/: (https://screenrant.com/assassins-creed-richard-open-world-ditched-third-crusade)) in favor of a more semi-linear design that characterized, say, the first AC game.

And I'd just like to voice some very clear opposition to this idea. I am not one of those players who would like Ubisoft to move away from open-world structure in Assassin's Creed. One of the only reasons I continue playing games today is to immerse myself in vast, expansive, and beautiful open worlds that I can explore and be lost in for months if I want.

My absolute favorite games are big open-world action/adventure games or action-RPGs, including Horizon: Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Days Gone, Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto 5, some of the Far Cry games, the Watch Dogs series, and the recent Assassin's Creed games (especially Origins, my personal favorite of the RPG-style ones). These are the games that keep me coming back to my PS4 after the work day is over and during my free time.

I grew up in an era where games were still oppressively linear and restrictive in their design, and as open-world games blossomed, I gladly welcomed that shift in design. More freedom, more places to go on my own time, more lived-in environments, fewer or no loading screens. These are all GOOD things.

Some people complained that the world of AC: Odyssey was "too big." Look, I legitimately don't understand claims like that and probably never will. I WANT open-world games to be expansive AND detailed. The huge open-world Classical Greece of Odyssey is a strength of the game, a credit to the development team's designers and artists, something I really adored about Odyssey. My only real criticism of Odyssey would have to do with the weirdly tanky, damage-spongey enemies and the frustrating, unrealistic, cartoony combat (it should NOT take 16 hits of my sword just to make an enemy twitch). Now, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be meaningful things to do and see within these open worlds, of course. Some people complained about the wide, empty deserts in Origins' recreation of Egypt. I LOVE that stuff. Things like these lend a sense of legitimacy and a sense of immersion I seek in video games. I love finding myself in a huge sea of sand and traversing it at will, trudging through the dunes and climbing atop a hill to seeing a city off in the hazy distance.

These are the experiences I want in my games. This is what I crave. And Assassin's Creed helps to fulfill that for me.

If the game world is too big for you, my goodness, just use the dang fast-travel options and skip over everything that makes an open world great. But some of us like to get lost in these worlds--seamlessly, with nothing hidden behind loading screens. Some of us want to take in their sights, observe their macro and micro details, walk or ride through miles of terrain, explore every far-off location, climb every mountain, visit every town or settlement, see what the locals are up to all to feel like we're existing in a convincing place and adventuring at our own pace, on our own time.

Don't get me wrong--in these recent RPG-heavy games, I REALLY wish we could move away from this obsession with damage numbers, stats, lifebars over enemies' heads, etc. If I strike someone with an axe, they should just look like they just got struck with an axe. If I shoot an arrow right into someone's face, they should just look and act like they just got shot with an arrow to the face instead of barely flinching and continuing to attack me like nothing happened. If I set someone on fire, they should look and act like they've been set on fire. At the very least, keep giving us many options to disable artificial HUD nonsense so we can have a more immersive visual and gameplay experience as well as difficulty options that lower enemy health and increase damage we deal and so on.

So please, Ubisoft, keep the open-world design and structure. Keep giving open-world haters the option to fast travel to their next quest objective, but let the rest of us continue immersing ourselves in your legitimately huge, gorgeous worlds. I don't want to lose that in this series.

@ubiaioli So is it live yet? It's 8:11 ET now, and it's still not downloading for me.

Long-time Assassin's Creed fan here, and I think this needs more attention. I was loving this game, but especially after the latest update (December 15), it's reeeally making it harder for me to enjoy and immerse myself in the experience because of the visual noise that I can't turn off on my screen.

In descending order of importance, here are the specific HUD/Interface elements that the devs should REALLY let us turn off in the settings:

Those flashy red "rune" symbols on enemies performing an unblockable attack

Before the December 15 patch, I had this thing off! I believe it was disabled by turning off the "Enemy Info" setting (which usually displays enemy health and stamina bars), and I was blissfully playing for almost 200 hours without EVER seeing that ghastly, cartoony red rune flash on enemies. Now, after the patch, I am forced to see it every time an enemy does a heavy attack. There are now wolves, wild boars, and chickens flying at me like they're on fire. In bareknuckle fist fights, my opponents look like they're on fire when they're about to grab me. This is so distracting, unimmersive, etc. It kills any sense of believability or realism I may have had while playing this game and engaging in combat.

Simply give us the option to turn this thing off. That's it! That's all I'm asking. There's even already a sound effect that plays when an enemy is doing an unblockable attack. I don't need to see this thing!

Mid-screen messages that say, "Ammo is full," "Rations are full," "Adrenaline is full," "This door is barred from the other side," "Find the key for this door," etc.

These mid-screen messages are obnoxious and unnecessary, and they take up a big chunk of my screen. I can tell the door is barred from the other side: there's a red glow on it, it makes a "locked door" sound when I try to open it, and Eivor literally vocalizes the fact by stating, "Hmm. Must be barred from the other side." As for arrows, rations, and adrenaline? I got it! I can figure that out on my own without the constant textual reminder in the middle of my screen, even during hectic combat! Just give us the option to turn these off in the Interface settings. That's all I'm asking!

Colorful weapon trails

Every time I swing my axe with a heavy attack, there's this unsightly, cartoony orange-ish trail left behind my weapon. For similar immersion-killing reasons, I am requested that we get an option in the Interface settings to turn these weapon trails OFF. Again, people who like seeing these things can leave them on for as long as they want. But those of us who want a more immersive, more believable, less-cluttered experience should just have the option to disable them.

Those white sparkly explosions whenever I loot something/someone

Every time I hit the "loot" button to collect something anywhere, there's a small explosion of white sparkles that fly around it. There are irritating, and I would very much appreciate--once again--the option to turn them off in the Interface settings.

Allow us the OPTION of having a more immersive, more realistic visual experience with AC: Valhalla. If you do, I will keep playing this game for months to come. But right now, it's harder for me to appreciate and enjoy it.

@Ubi-Keo Gotcha. So an update broke something in the game, and the following update didn't actually fix it.

Soooo we're just gonna leave it broken from now on because support has ended. Cool, cool.

I mean no offense to you, by the way. I'm just disappointed that the team couldn't implement a simple fix to an animation that was broken by a previous update. Like, how difficult can it be--isn't it just adjusting a bit of code to ensure a simple animation plays out properly?

Ubisoft staff,

The animation bug associated with the Light-fingered skill has not been fixed as of the most recent update (1.7.0).

See above for the videos I posted a while ago demonstrating the lack of animations on loot containers (barrels, baskets, satchels, etc.) when the Light-fingered skill is active.

The animations are still missing today.

This is pretty disappointing.

@Ubi-Keo With all respect, the animation bug associated with this skill still hasn't been fixed as of this latest update.

With the skill activated, when I walk up to loot containers (baskets, satchels, barrels, etc.), Eivor loots the containers, but their animations still don't play.

I posted videos demonstrating this some time ago, and the animation bug still persists today.

@ClickonAlpha Agreed. I was waiting and hoping for a simple New Game+ for Valhalla--a game I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated.

I'm super disappointed by the fact that this fantastic open-world adventure can't be experienced again from the beginning with all the gear, upgrades, progress, etc., I got in my first playthrough, allowing me a far more relaxed experience where I can stomp around the world and own all enemies I enounter.

New Game+ modes keep me coming back to my favorite games time and time again, giving me near-endless appeal and replay value: AC: Origins, AC: Odyssey, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (though that NG+ is pretty flawed, in my opinion), Ghost of Tsushima (also flawed, but at least it's there), Horizon: Zero Dawn, Horizon: Forbidden West, Far Cry 6 (recently), and more.

What a shame.

One thing that's always bothered me about Odyssey is the lack of camera-distance options. Why is the camera set so far behind Kassandra/Alexios?

Why was there never an option to have a closer, more modern, more immersive camera angle that's offset and looks over the protagonist's shoulder? Valhalla had this option implemented, and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint offered this option (even giving a "dynamic" option that changed based on the situation).

I thought about this more when I was playing the recent next-gen upgrade of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which introduces such a camera option. I'm able to see the world in a new way with a view like this, and I feel more "grounded," for lack of a better word, with it.

That's fine and all, but as I said, they actually interrupt my game by triggering a massive stutter whenever they spawn in the world. And sometimes I trigger the quests on accident, thinking I'm just looting a body. Now I have "Avenge xxx_PoonSlayer_xxx" show up in my quest log.

Ignoring them is possible, sure . . . or . . . Ubisoft can just give us an option to opt out of these silly things altogether. Options are good. You can keep them on, and I can disable them. Everyone's happy.

@KooTn815 So I slightly disagree about Breakpoint. I actually think that Breakpoint has some better gameplay mechanics, animations, HUD settings, etc., that are above and beyond Wildlands.

Ideally, I wish Wildlands could be remastered (for lack of a better word) with some of Breakpoint's quality-of-life features, animations, mechanics, and so on--and with 60 FPS, of course.

Honestly, I really don't understand these things and wish we could completely opt out of these dumb little quests where we kill whoever defeated some other player.

Why is this even a thing? And why is there no simple option to not participate in them? I play Assassin's Creed to be immersed in a single-player open-world adventure, and these "Avenge" quests make my eyes roll every time. I don't want online multiplayer-style features forced on me.

In addition, there's always a very noticeable stutter whenever a fallen player spawns in the world. I can't stand this.

Can we please just opt out and never have to see them again?

@dominantboy Totally! I want everything functioning as it should.

@Ubi-Keo Thanks so much! I look forward to a fix for all errors in the code!