Just want to see what your thoughts are on a true investigative difficulty for the next assassin's creed.
This difficulty will be a more hands on, extreme version of the exploration/pathfinder difficulties. Instead of looking on your map to see that an objective is north and by what river, these would be details that you find in game by being told, reading notes, through interrogation, or by eavesdropping. The information would be a little more obscure and time sensitive with no help from the game so you would have to keep a personal note of the investigation. For example, you are told that a man with a scar across his left eye who visits the bar every night knows where to find who you are looking for (eagle vision full return, doesn't work through walls). With the new decision process in the game, (can't say I'm a fan), but at which point you could sit down with the character and get him so drunk that he tells you what you're after, or you can follow him home and interrogate him. Either way, he tells you that a meeting will take place two days from now (meditate to speed up, the way of the tao) in the woods north of the great oak west of Takasaki. No fast travel unless paid for at a carriage service. Road signs also point the way. An eagle will be used to find the oak and eagle vision in the trees to locate the people you're looking for. If you miss it though you've missed your chance and have to start another investigation. Given that your current target could be lower on the hierarchy. Upon reaching them you could simply kill them or eavesdrop or interrogate them for more information on the higher-ups. Choosing to let them go upon retrieval of the information could have a chance that they tell you false information and lead you into a trap, or tell the higher up that you're coming for them which could lead to increased activity and more information becoming available in the local area, or simply reward you for letting them go.

As the story goes on, instead of building up a homestead you build a network of assassins and information collectors that do these things for you. A node will have to be set up in each province/city otherwise it's up to you. Ac brotherhood style, you send recruits out on missions to retrieve information and at a high enough levels they can even go on assassination missions for you. The old style bounty system would need to come back. Each time you enter combat openly in a public square or fail an assassination attempt bounty hunters start coming after you. This is where the new hooded stealth system would come into play. The higher the bounty, the harder it becomes to walk the streets, with higher bounty levels resulting in common folk wanting a piece of the action because it is so high.

These missions would have to be procedural with enough variety to make 95% of them seem unique. The story missions will play out as normal. It is just a mechanic for when you're looking for assassination targets, adding a whole lot more depth to the cult/order mechanics for hardcore creed players. No objective markers, only a compass and a map with icons. I also feel like combat needs to be more rewarding/deadly with multiple enemies attacking you at once. Abilities need to be more realistic and actually incorporated into the combat instead of being about to die (not that it's possible in Valhalla) and suddenly becoming impervious to attack while pulling 6 axes out of your [censored]. Smoke bombs and explosive/poison arrows need to be crafted or bought.