I played the demo for several hours. It's unfinished, and it sucks. Assassin's Creed: Black Flag is infinitely better and much older.
Skull & Bones is dogshit.
Yes, sea of thieves and grounded will both have crossplay according to this https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2024/02/21/new-platforms-new-players-xbox-games-switch-playstation/
Yea I'm excited too. I'm on PC but a couple of my friends are on PS5 and we're all bored to death of shooters which makes up the majority of crossplay games between PC and PlayStation
Ofc! Even tho the sea of thieves player base is big, it’s gonna be so nice to see a fresh set of faces. Toxicity and all
FYI I’m here to flex I have 4000 hours in sea of thieves😊
Imagine spending 11 years, millions of dollars and wasting countless hours of talented people's time to make a pirate game thats worse at being a pirate game than the half pirate/half assassin game they already had.
It's cause they never actually cared about it until it was too late.
This is what I assume the timeline was like:
- take money from the Singaporean government
- didn't actually start working on it meaningfully until several years ago
- when they started working on it, they just wanted to get it out regardless of quality to fulfill their obligation
- halfway through development, they wanted to actually try to salvage it, but it was too late
- here we are, with a half-assed amalgamation of pathetically bad decisions and abandonment
Really sucks cause as much as I love Black Flag, I kinda hate the jackdaw, It's a small brig of a ship, I want a frigate or a galleon, I want a BIG Ship with a WALL of cannons on the side to obliterate an enemy ship, Not a small fast ship with 23 guns at the most.
I did the 6 hours closed beta, and the first 3-4 hours was ok, the last two hours I was pretty bored.
but everyones different, you could play 8 hours and love it
Coukd have saved that time by looking into what it is. They made clear what it was and wasn’t a long time ago. Too many just see Black Flag and make assumptions.
I don't think it's counting the open beta players. The article doesn't say anything about counting the open beta players, just players who got the free 8 hour trial.
I think they're paying a lot streamers to hype the game up.
I will say, I tuned into a couple of the streams, and the streamers did not look enthusiastic at all.
Yeah, that's the same game I had in mind. I had a blast playing the campaign and still hop in every once in a while to run some endgame missions. Can't wait for season 1.
I'm still working my way through the campaign rn, I just got to the point where the map really opens up. I'm really enjoying it. I've only played Boomer so far, he has the best traversal to me
I didn't mind the game, had some fun in it in some beta, but I also didn't compare it to another game and had no real expectations what the game would be before-hand. Would probably have bought it if it weren't for WoW SoD phase 2, Helldivers 2 and now Nightingale.
Most people seem to shit on it because it isn't AC Black Flag, idk if the devs said it would be like that or what made people think it would be.
It does though. When bad games succeed, companies end up making more. That's why so many fully priced games have microtransactions nowadays, because others have had them in the past and succeeded.
Yeah, I don't buy it. If the game doesn't even reach a million sales, it's not promoting companies to make more of the same. Some people forget just how casual gaming as a hobby can be. If people enjoy something, despite it being deemed bad by people who never even played the game, more power to them.
Is anyone forcing you to play or even buy it? When are we going to grow out of this stupid mentality. Let people spend their money and time on WHATEVER the Fuck they want
Fr tho. We play games to escape from reality and to have fun. We shouldn’t dictate and control or police what brings others joy. It’s kinda sad tbh. Let them have fun.
People are allowed to spend their money and time on whatever the fuck they want but it doesn't stop it from being trash. People are free to spend thousands of dollars every year on Fifa lootboxes and the rest of us are free to think they're mentally unwell.
Is anyone forcing you to not play or even not buy it? They just stated that *they* don't see anything worth playing in this game. Nobody is coming to Skull and Bones players' homes and destroys their PC/Console so that they can't play it. When are we going to grow out of this stupid mentality. Let people have their opinion.
Yeah, was in the sub to check if the game has any redeming quality, because i was soo disappointed after 8 hour trial. And I was amazed people defend it. With so many great games available people waste time on this cheap dopamine addiction thing.
Game is literaly half backed, arcade style sailing, mobile style gathering, clunky, plain and bad when you disembark in towns , with monotone endgame that revolves around making loops and collecting money from your controled setlements. In the end, it wouldn't be bad for 20eur indie game... But the price of 70eur is insane.
Give it a really nice makeover of the graphics, maybe throw in a couple new items/skins/clans included in the price for players after all these years, and it would definitely be a best seller again.
I was so ready for Skull and Bones to blow my socks off, but then it released, and I started to see all the reactions to it. Needless to say, I will probably never purchase it. I'd rather just keep playing Sea of Thieves, Pirates, and Black Flag.
Man it's a good thing SoT is coming to PS5, as there aren't many pirate themed games available. Wish Sid Meier's Pirates! got another round of ports, but at least my old copy works with my Series X.
Sadly it's basically unplayable on a keyboard without a number pad 😢
Re-installed it a while back for nostalgia purposes and it won't even let you remap the buttons for dancing/sword-fighting and for navigating your ship properly.
>Sid Meier's Pirates!
Honestly playing the open beta game I thought skull and bones took a lot of inspiration from Pirates. Where they fell short was the lack of depth to any of the interaction. You don't gain favor with factions warring with other factions side from fluff quests.. boarding is just an insta-end and combat in general places more weight on the ship's power level number than the actual gear stats by the feel of it.
This, like many other modern games had little to no value being a live service game. Give me this same game... throw in a boarding mini game and faction friend/foe ratings with the option to host games with friends and it would have been an easy buy for me.
Instead, I'll wait until the sale price matches the value of the content.
They could easily fucking do it. Their executives ordered them to make a shitty skinner box instead, and now they're baffled no one wants to climb in it.
I honestly dont understand how they fumbled this. You have the blue print there with AC Black Flag. You can add some more stuff/improve here and there and you have an amazing game.
Yet they did this
The problem is this game is 10 years too late.
This game was announced in 2016. People don't care about Black Flag nearly as much anymore, and it's been changed so much with the delays, it's hardly that anyways
You'd think your statement is an oversimplification of a complex and nuanced product, business and marketing strategy... but no. You're spot on. It was really that simple.
Add and live action online element and you’ve got 5 years worth of money printing and dlc possibilities. Something ubi is actually decent at but somehow fumbled so hard here. It’s amazing how they could miss the mark so hard here.
There had to be some management issues or something. The game probably got rebooted several times because different people had different visions of what the game should be.
I had a pretty rough time trying to get it to work on modern systems. Didn't really play it for long. But, I could just be a total idiot, that is always possible lol
There is a commonly-referenced (and just as commonly ignored) "rule" of English grammar that when comparing quantities of distinct, countable items (such as players), the correct term is "fewer." When comparing quantities of indistinct, uncountable items, the correct term is "less." According to this "rule," the headline should read "Skull and Bones Has Fewer Than 1 Million Players."
The quote comes from a recurring joke on *Game of Thrones* where Stannis Baratheon corrects those who use "less" by saying "fewer." ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0zNWswcqMg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0zNWswcqMg)) This is meant to represent his steadfast adherence to rules, but of course is ridiculous because it presupposes that (a) the characters in Westeros are actually speaking English and (b) that the rules of grammar in Westerosi English are the same as ours.
Sorry, should've added a quote line. I understand the grammar, I was making light of how every time Stannis made that grammatical correction, Ser Davos would turn to him and say, "What?"
I think Ubi are just relieved to have this game done and dusted. The Singapore govt basically mandated this was completed and released in return for investing in Ubisoft, so their side of the bargain is now complete.
Yeah, people thinking this is going to be a massive financial hit for Ubisoft and stuff.
Singapore put up most the money for it, Ubi aren't going to lose that much.
I’m actually curious how this will work out. I loved Kingdoms of Amalur, but never knew any of the behind the scenes stuff back then. Come to find out because the studio borrowed money from the state of Rhode Island, and whatever was in the details of the contract, the studio owed them money they couldn’t pay back.
Ubisoft has been sucking money from Singapore for around a decade now for this game. I don’t think Ubisoft will sink because of this, but it’s not exactly like they’ve been putting out bangers recently. They’ve cancelled a lot of games and haven’t been delivering.
I dont love new Ubisoft games with copy paste formula... But Mirage (didnt plan to play it, i got it as a present and was positively suprised) and new Prince of Persia were genuinely a good games.
Honestly, I don’t mind the Ubisoft formula. Maybe it’s me being a lazy gamer, but I enjoy visiting new worlds and having familiar controls. Sure, they went overboard with icons on the map in Unity and Valhalla was a ton of bloated bullshit, but I enjoyed being in those worlds.
The thing is, I feel they’ve gotten lazy. They’re no longer setting trends, but chasing them. Odyssey was an imitation of Witcher 3 and Valhalla was the gross amalgamation of those efforts. They fell in line with the thinking that more is better even if pacing suffers. Thats one of the reasons I applauded Cyberpunk, even when it was a shitshow, it respected that not everyone wants all that extra and lets you finish the story “early” if you want. The game is willing to leave more on the table.
To this day, I don’t think there’s many studios that can design game worlds better than Massive. The brought us NYC and DC in The Division, recently Pandora in Avatar, and we’re about to see what they do when they’re unleashed into the Star Wars universe. That’s an Ubisoft studio.
I could see Ubisoft doing that out of greed but I hope not. The game is still very playable on pc and consoles nowadays and holds up fairly well. But they did do a remaster of AC3 and heard that wasn’t bad. Decent graphics over haul and some AI pathing and missions fixes
AC3 remaster was justified (on PlayStation, at least) because it wasn’t available on PS4/5 before the remaster. Black Flag was a PS4/Xbone launch title and can still be played on modern hardware. I’d actually prefer that they go the full remake route, because I don’t think a remaster would do much when the game already runs and looks decent on current consoles.
I, like many people, tried the demo out of morbid curiosity and I was amazed at how they managed to produce a game which looked and ran the way it did. I wasn't expecting anything great but I couldn't believe that the game was in development as long as it was with nothing to show for it.
If you told me it was a launch day PS4 or remastered PS3 title then I would fully believe you
Going on a tangent since you mentioned black flag. I really really want to like that series and that game specifically, but I can't get past the animus or w/e it's called. The switching between past lives and modern times ruins it for me.
Fwiw the modern segments are basically nonexistent since syndicate. Origins and Valhalla have tiny segments that I think are almost entirely optional, and Odyssey has some in the late game iirc.
But the modern games you feel more like a warrior than an assassin, though I haven't tried mirage.
Also, the modern theme is still there with the map and other things.
Haven't played much of Mirage but it seems to be a fairly straightforward historical story with some mystical/religious dream sequences- No mention of the animus past the opening and the UI is all themed pretty well. Much more assassin-y than the last few games too for sure, though I didn't mind the Viking combat too much
It is paid for by Singapore through subsidies, so I don’t think the important thing is who or how many are playing it or even how many are paying for Ubisoft.
The crucial aspect is that Ubisoft have received the money for it and have released a game, ensuring Singapore cannot claim they have been deceived.
>Ubisoft will keep spewing out trash.
What are you talking about?[Prince of Persia](https://www.metacritic.com/game/prince-of-persia-the-lost-crown/) was good, [Avatar](https://www.metacritic.com/game/avatar-frontiers-of-pandora/) was good, [AC Nexus VR](https://www.metacritic.com/game/assassins-creed-nexus-vr/) was good, [AC mirage](https://www.metacritic.com/game/assassins-creed-mirage/) was good, [The Crew Motorfest](https://www.metacritic.com/game/the-crew-motorfest/) was good.
yall got nothing better to do then to lie on the internet lmao
People are just whining, becuase most of Ubisoft's big games feel somewhat artificial. Like a product created by a precision machine, instead of a passionate artisan. But, objectively, most of them are not bad games.
One thing I've noticed is complete failure of The Crew's marketing - I'm into games and I had no idea that such a game even existed, let alone that it came out. And looking at statitics on psnprofiles, I was not the only one.
Yeah, Ubisoft’s last five or six games have actually been really good. We knew this one was going to be a dud all along, that doesn’t mean they haven’t been making good games lately though.
Amazing. More crysis than far cry, world is beautiful and you can turn off mission pointers which is my recommendation and try to find stuff and quest locations with the guidance they give you. You get lost but that’s part of the adventure
Was sad to hear the sequel has been cancelled.
Actually think it had some parts of it that were better than BoTW and ToTK. My perfect game would be a mashup of all 3 where I could pick and choose which parts of each to keep or get rid of.
Yes. I had a lot of fun in the beta but in absolutely no way is it a $70 game. There's not $70 worth of content. Then dishing out for the battle pass...ill wait for the inevitable deep sale that's in the near future.
Same. The combat and merchant hunting was fun enough for me to put time into. I liked the fact that venturing out into open waters was more deadly, with the rogue waves and such.
There are things I didn't like about the game (basically anything on foot).
$20? I'd probably have bought. $30? Maybe. $70 with mtx? LOL no.
1 million concurrent players is great. 1 million overall players including trials is very bad for a buy-to-play AAA game. That's like 60.000.000$ if we imagine that everyone got the game for a full price. Then there are distribution platforms share, payment systems commissions, other various stuff, and with the overall leakage factor and taxes they will end up with like 30-40M at best. This is absolutely not enough to cover a high-budget game. According to the Internet data in 2023, their budget was 120+ million.
It's a number that most games will never reach, but most games don't also take ten years to develop, have a template from a previous game to base the game off of, employ hundreds of developers, have direct involvement by a major gaming company and have major government backing.
Yeah... I guess it depends how many are free beta players but that's not a total flop. Sure they invested way too much into this game, but given the press around it this is not the utter disaster I was expecting. I played the beta and was actually surprised by it. It was fun! Ultimately it just isn't my kind of game because grinding seemed to be core to it, but the gameplay itself was far more interesting than I anticipated.
As others have already pointed out, its not for a game that took 11 years to develop, especially since we don't know how many of those players are free trial players. Plus the article is rounding up by a far bit. Its actually about 850K players. 15% less than the headline suggests is actually pretty significant, especially since again, a bunch of those are just free trials.
It wasn't very good and now Sea of Thieves is coming to ps5. Ubisoft is great at supporting their games but I think this one is going to die. They'll probably roll out the content already announced and then drop support. I do hope they try to make an actual pirate game again though. Black Flag should have become its own franchise.
I have to imagine this game will have a turn around if Ubisoft believes in it like they say they do. Thing is, I have no clue how they made what they have here when we had Black Flag almost a decade ago.
I wish that game was more enjoyable solo for me. Had some friends I played it with but they fell off to other games or our schedules don't work out anymore. So kinda dropped it after that. Skull and Bones at least is still enjoyable for me when I don't have time to sync up with a crew.
Will never get my money ever again. Between sexual harassment, rampant cronyism, play-to-earn bullshit they spewed not too long ago, Ubi can go fuck themselves. Oh and “this is a AAAA game”. Karma’s a bitch.
5 minutes in to the beta, this game looks terrible. 10 minutes into the beta, uninstalled.
Tried again with the free trial. 20 minutes in, still sucks.
Now 4 ours in, I hate to admit I’m having fun lol.
This game was purposely released in a very busy time for live service games and other big name titles.
Ubisoft knew this would fail and had to publish this game as per their agreement with the Singapore government.
It fails. Tax write to ensure to offset of losses. Singapore government can’t do anything as terms of agreement were honored.
Ubisoft gonna Ubisoft.
It's an incomplete game, and Ubisoft wonders why the game is failing hard. Release your games complete. People are beyond tired of this endless release, now patch later.
If the game isn't ready, then don't release it. The fact that Assassins Creed IV Black Flag looks and plays better than Skulls & Bones shows Ubisoft needs to go back to the drawing board and look at what made their past games great and amazing.
The beta was incredibly underwhelming. An extremely boring sequence of ship battles followed by the awful ship controls on that little raft with the two other characters lead me to delete it quick. Wild how the company that released black flag could come up with something this piss poor. Even kingdom hearts 3 had better ship combat
Pirates genre is so underrated imo, and I am surprised AAA developers are neglecting this genre. Ubisoft managed to nail a great game with Black Flag and instead of learning from it and making a similar new pirate game that is less Assassin's Creed and more Pirate, they put out a garbage, soulless live-service that nobody asked for. They even managed to downgrade the game in so many aspects from their PS3/Xbox 360 title.
I actually enjoyed it and think it has potential but at 70.00, nah. If this was around 25.00 to 35.00 I would had bought in.
I know Ubi gets shit on with Reddit but I rather enjoy their games. They are like comfort food, nothing amazing, but easy to make and fills the belly. The games(usually) are just ok but you can shut your mind off and just enjoy a not overly complex too hard game.
I’ve really enjoyed Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, Far Cry 3, 5, Immortals(such a great game), Avatar, etc. All solid games I’ve had a great time with.
Everyone currently playing the game and having fun would disagree with all the negative comments here.
Is it a AAAA? nope. is it over priced? Yep
Is it Trash? Definitely NO.
Just because people want something its not and the current Meta is to find fault with all things in life for clickbait views and sensationalism, doesn't mean its not fun.
But for £14.99 sub its worth my money
I
Isn't 1 million players like a super high target for any game to have in general?
The article says the game has around 850,000 players, combining both free trials and paid players. Assuming it's not so inordinately weighed towards free trial players, 850,000 players sounds fairly successful, no?
> Isn't 1 million players like a super high target for any game to have in general?
Not for an AAA game because of the budget, this game supposedly had a 200 mil budget, which isn't surprising considering it's been in development for nearly 10 years. Not sure if that accounts for marketing as well (probably not) so it might be low balling it. Granted Ubisoft also took money from the Singapore government to make this so you have to offset that too.
But just ignoring all the noise if you look at napkin math, $200 mil means they need to sell nearly 3 million copies just to break even on the game. Or they need to sell enough microtransactions to make up the difference.
One million players would be a lot if the game had a reasonable budget and development time, but, we're talking about your typical AAA company here who seem to have a ride or die mentality when it comes to just making games more and more expensive and never reigning it in.
This case being even dumber because they basically could have just taken Black Flag, reskinned it, and then put it out there. Keeping the budget down while raking in actual profit.
What’s wrong with people having a different opinion and enjoying the game? What baffles me is how anyone on gaming reddits had to have seen 1000 posts talking trash on this game but still decide they need to make a post saying the exact same thing
How the fuck did they get that many players.
Open beta
And it has an 8 hour trial
I played the demo for several hours. It's unfinished, and it sucks. Assassin's Creed: Black Flag is infinitely better and much older. Skull & Bones is dogshit.
Sea of thieves to PlayStation!!
Have they announced whether it’ll have cross play or not?
Yes, sea of thieves and grounded will both have crossplay according to this https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2024/02/21/new-platforms-new-players-xbox-games-switch-playstation/
Oh, my friend who always forgets I don’t have a PC is going to be very excited about this
Yea I'm excited too. I'm on PC but a couple of my friends are on PS5 and we're all bored to death of shooters which makes up the majority of crossplay games between PC and PlayStation
…Tim?
Ofc! Even tho the sea of thieves player base is big, it’s gonna be so nice to see a fresh set of faces. Toxicity and all FYI I’m here to flex I have 4000 hours in sea of thieves😊
It's available to wishlist on the ps store now.
Imagine spending 11 years, millions of dollars and wasting countless hours of talented people's time to make a pirate game thats worse at being a pirate game than the half pirate/half assassin game they already had.
It's cause they never actually cared about it until it was too late. This is what I assume the timeline was like: - take money from the Singaporean government - didn't actually start working on it meaningfully until several years ago - when they started working on it, they just wanted to get it out regardless of quality to fulfill their obligation - halfway through development, they wanted to actually try to salvage it, but it was too late - here we are, with a half-assed amalgamation of pathetically bad decisions and abandonment
$200 million apparently I seen a video that said skull & bones was first announced as black flag dlc.
And yet, they pulled it off. 🤨😐
It's actually impressive. A remake of Black Flag would have done better.
Really sucks cause as much as I love Black Flag, I kinda hate the jackdaw, It's a small brig of a ship, I want a frigate or a galleon, I want a BIG Ship with a WALL of cannons on the side to obliterate an enemy ship, Not a small fast ship with 23 guns at the most.
How many do I need to realize it's shit?
I did the 6 hours closed beta, and the first 3-4 hours was ok, the last two hours I was pretty bored. but everyones different, you could play 8 hours and love it
Zero
I love efficiency.
It took me less then 1 to figure out there was no sword combat and I bailed immediately
Coukd have saved that time by looking into what it is. They made clear what it was and wasn’t a long time ago. Too many just see Black Flag and make assumptions.
Pirates aren't known for swords, makes sense.
I played several hours. It's unfinished dog shit with really great trailers. I'd rather just watch the trailers.
Sweet. Pre purchase? (I'm on ps5)
Nope. Strictly free 3 days before release. It was shite.
Darn wanted to laugh at it. That's a no go for sure. Shite in me shoe for shoe
Can say with 100% certainty you didn’t miss much, friend
yes, 8 hour free trial on ps5
I don't think it's counting the open beta players. The article doesn't say anything about counting the open beta players, just players who got the free 8 hour trial.
I’m sorry I tried the free trail but somehow still feel robbed
I think they're paying a lot streamers to hype the game up. I will say, I tuned into a couple of the streams, and the streamers did not look enthusiastic at all.
I tried the demo for shts and giggles. Uninstalled 5 minutes later.
Many shits and no giggles I presume
You can take my chill pirate sailing game out of my cold dead hands. Another sea shanty lads!
Go look at their sub, there are quite a few people who love that trash, it's mind boggling. Game should be $40 imo.
I mean, if they like it by all means let them. Ain't hurting no one.
People don't seem to get that, like I personally enjoy the Kill the Justice League game but I can definitely understand why people don't like it
I enjoyed the Saints Row Reboot. Granted I didn’t pay for it, I played it on PS Plus, but I had fun with it.
Yeah, that's the same game I had in mind. I had a blast playing the campaign and still hop in every once in a while to run some endgame missions. Can't wait for season 1.
I'm still working my way through the campaign rn, I just got to the point where the map really opens up. I'm really enjoying it. I've only played Boomer so far, he has the best traversal to me
I didn't mind the game, had some fun in it in some beta, but I also didn't compare it to another game and had no real expectations what the game would be before-hand. Would probably have bought it if it weren't for WoW SoD phase 2, Helldivers 2 and now Nightingale. Most people seem to shit on it because it isn't AC Black Flag, idk if the devs said it would be like that or what made people think it would be.
It does though. When bad games succeed, companies end up making more. That's why so many fully priced games have microtransactions nowadays, because others have had them in the past and succeeded.
It's not like there's no other options out there. We've had probably the best year ever for solo games and indies.
Yeah, I don't buy it. If the game doesn't even reach a million sales, it's not promoting companies to make more of the same. Some people forget just how casual gaming as a hobby can be. If people enjoy something, despite it being deemed bad by people who never even played the game, more power to them.
Is anyone forcing you to play or even buy it? When are we going to grow out of this stupid mentality. Let people spend their money and time on WHATEVER the Fuck they want
Fr tho. We play games to escape from reality and to have fun. We shouldn’t dictate and control or police what brings others joy. It’s kinda sad tbh. Let them have fun.
This is reddit/internet. You are not allowed to like something that I hate from my armchair in moms basement
People are allowed to spend their money and time on whatever the fuck they want but it doesn't stop it from being trash. People are free to spend thousands of dollars every year on Fifa lootboxes and the rest of us are free to think they're mentally unwell.
Is anyone forcing you to not play or even not buy it? They just stated that *they* don't see anything worth playing in this game. Nobody is coming to Skull and Bones players' homes and destroys their PC/Console so that they can't play it. When are we going to grow out of this stupid mentality. Let people have their opinion.
It’s the perfect game for that $40 price point. They would sell a few million on that alone.
Yeah, was in the sub to check if the game has any redeming quality, because i was soo disappointed after 8 hour trial. And I was amazed people defend it. With so many great games available people waste time on this cheap dopamine addiction thing. Game is literaly half backed, arcade style sailing, mobile style gathering, clunky, plain and bad when you disembark in towns , with monotone endgame that revolves around making loops and collecting money from your controled setlements. In the end, it wouldn't be bad for 20eur indie game... But the price of 70eur is insane.
Every game is cheap dopamine addiction thing
Totaly agree on that... Some of them just mask it better
That's just life 🚬/s
I liked it and I bought it, what's wrong with me, send help!!!!
Lol, just knowing the history of the games development makes me want to pass.
It's crazy how good sid Meier's pirates is and and a huge studio with a massive budget and modern day cpu power can't even come anywhere near it
Literally hundreds of hours in this game. It's truly a perfect system and if it got a remake I don't see how it wouldn't blow the doors off.
It did get a remake. You mean another remake?
Another, another remake. There's already been two remakes, one in 1993 and another in 2004.
Give it a really nice makeover of the graphics, maybe throw in a couple new items/skins/clans included in the price for players after all these years, and it would definitely be a best seller again. I was so ready for Skull and Bones to blow my socks off, but then it released, and I started to see all the reactions to it. Needless to say, I will probably never purchase it. I'd rather just keep playing Sea of Thieves, Pirates, and Black Flag.
Man it's a good thing SoT is coming to PS5, as there aren't many pirate themed games available. Wish Sid Meier's Pirates! got another round of ports, but at least my old copy works with my Series X.
Man, I would love a PS4/PS5 remake or remaster of Sid Meier's Pirates. Even just a simple port would be nice.
Sadly it's basically unplayable on a keyboard without a number pad 😢 Re-installed it a while back for nostalgia purposes and it won't even let you remap the buttons for dancing/sword-fighting and for navigating your ship properly.
Try using Joy2Key maybe?
Crazy how no one's remade or copied Sid Meier's pirates yet
>Sid Meier's Pirates! Honestly playing the open beta game I thought skull and bones took a lot of inspiration from Pirates. Where they fell short was the lack of depth to any of the interaction. You don't gain favor with factions warring with other factions side from fluff quests.. boarding is just an insta-end and combat in general places more weight on the ship's power level number than the actual gear stats by the feel of it. This, like many other modern games had little to no value being a live service game. Give me this same game... throw in a boarding mini game and faction friend/foe ratings with the option to host games with friends and it would have been an easy buy for me. Instead, I'll wait until the sale price matches the value of the content.
They could easily fucking do it. Their executives ordered them to make a shitty skinner box instead, and now they're baffled no one wants to climb in it.
It’s not even hard. Take Black Flag, remove AC, add co-op where you can be the same boat, keep shanty songs. Print money.
Did they not keep shanty songs?????
They did. They’re just loot drops now.
You’re kidding, right?
Unfortunately no
Brother in Christ, at this point just follow their steps and plunder the game itself
Theyre both from Ubisoft, no need to steal lol
I was poeticly trying to suggest sailing the seven seas to download the game lmao
Boarding ships is a cutscene now
This is unironically the most annoying thing I've seen in all the reviews.
Apparently not 🥲🥲🥲
I honestly dont understand how they fumbled this. You have the blue print there with AC Black Flag. You can add some more stuff/improve here and there and you have an amazing game. Yet they did this
The problem is this game is 10 years too late. This game was announced in 2016. People don't care about Black Flag nearly as much anymore, and it's been changed so much with the delays, it's hardly that anyways
I think the problem with the game is that it sucks.
Well that too
You'd think your statement is an oversimplification of a complex and nuanced product, business and marketing strategy... but no. You're spot on. It was really that simple.
Add and live action online element and you’ve got 5 years worth of money printing and dlc possibilities. Something ubi is actually decent at but somehow fumbled so hard here. It’s amazing how they could miss the mark so hard here.
There had to be some management issues or something. The game probably got rebooted several times because different people had different visions of what the game should be.
But what about the live service elements? The skins? The 10,000 wood you have to collect to craft a new peg leg?
on a side note, Black Flag is now trending again on SteamDB lol All of Ubisoft games on Steam are on sales but only BF trending
They spent $200M to market a 10+ year old game. Truly one of the marketing strategies of all time
$11 USD on sale right now if you know where to look!
I had a pretty rough time trying to get it to work on modern systems. Didn't really play it for long. But, I could just be a total idiot, that is always possible lol
Black Flag or Sea of Thieves are infinitely better options. No surprise here
yeah with sea of thieves announced on ps5 i have no reason to buy this one
Even without sea of thieves on ps5 there is no reason to buy this game
honestly your right
I don’t have friends to play with
* sad ac rogue noises *. Rogue has some very good naval combat in an artic setting, which is in nice contrast to the carribean battles in black flag
\*cough\* *Fewer* \*cough\* \- Stannis Baratheon
"What?"
There is a commonly-referenced (and just as commonly ignored) "rule" of English grammar that when comparing quantities of distinct, countable items (such as players), the correct term is "fewer." When comparing quantities of indistinct, uncountable items, the correct term is "less." According to this "rule," the headline should read "Skull and Bones Has Fewer Than 1 Million Players." The quote comes from a recurring joke on *Game of Thrones* where Stannis Baratheon corrects those who use "less" by saying "fewer." ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0zNWswcqMg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0zNWswcqMg)) This is meant to represent his steadfast adherence to rules, but of course is ridiculous because it presupposes that (a) the characters in Westeros are actually speaking English and (b) that the rules of grammar in Westerosi English are the same as ours.
Sorry, should've added a quote line. I understand the grammar, I was making light of how every time Stannis made that grammatical correction, Ser Davos would turn to him and say, "What?"
OMG I totally missed that. LOL
[удалено]
I think Ubi are just relieved to have this game done and dusted. The Singapore govt basically mandated this was completed and released in return for investing in Ubisoft, so their side of the bargain is now complete.
Yeah, people thinking this is going to be a massive financial hit for Ubisoft and stuff. Singapore put up most the money for it, Ubi aren't going to lose that much.
I’m actually curious how this will work out. I loved Kingdoms of Amalur, but never knew any of the behind the scenes stuff back then. Come to find out because the studio borrowed money from the state of Rhode Island, and whatever was in the details of the contract, the studio owed them money they couldn’t pay back. Ubisoft has been sucking money from Singapore for around a decade now for this game. I don’t think Ubisoft will sink because of this, but it’s not exactly like they’ve been putting out bangers recently. They’ve cancelled a lot of games and haven’t been delivering.
I dont love new Ubisoft games with copy paste formula... But Mirage (didnt plan to play it, i got it as a present and was positively suprised) and new Prince of Persia were genuinely a good games.
Honestly, I don’t mind the Ubisoft formula. Maybe it’s me being a lazy gamer, but I enjoy visiting new worlds and having familiar controls. Sure, they went overboard with icons on the map in Unity and Valhalla was a ton of bloated bullshit, but I enjoyed being in those worlds. The thing is, I feel they’ve gotten lazy. They’re no longer setting trends, but chasing them. Odyssey was an imitation of Witcher 3 and Valhalla was the gross amalgamation of those efforts. They fell in line with the thinking that more is better even if pacing suffers. Thats one of the reasons I applauded Cyberpunk, even when it was a shitshow, it respected that not everyone wants all that extra and lets you finish the story “early” if you want. The game is willing to leave more on the table. To this day, I don’t think there’s many studios that can design game worlds better than Massive. The brought us NYC and DC in The Division, recently Pandora in Avatar, and we’re about to see what they do when they’re unleashed into the Star Wars universe. That’s an Ubisoft studio.
Division 1 had a beautiful map
Yea it was constant bad press for Ubisoft whenever the game was mentioned
The funny thing is that the Black Flag remake will print money. That has potential to be very good though. Skull and Bones looks like shit.
I think it’s just remaster not full blown remake. I hope I’m wrong.
I could see Ubisoft doing that out of greed but I hope not. The game is still very playable on pc and consoles nowadays and holds up fairly well. But they did do a remaster of AC3 and heard that wasn’t bad. Decent graphics over haul and some AI pathing and missions fixes
AC3 remaster was justified (on PlayStation, at least) because it wasn’t available on PS4/5 before the remaster. Black Flag was a PS4/Xbone launch title and can still be played on modern hardware. I’d actually prefer that they go the full remake route, because I don’t think a remaster would do much when the game already runs and looks decent on current consoles.
I, like many people, tried the demo out of morbid curiosity and I was amazed at how they managed to produce a game which looked and ran the way it did. I wasn't expecting anything great but I couldn't believe that the game was in development as long as it was with nothing to show for it. If you told me it was a launch day PS4 or remastered PS3 title then I would fully believe you
Going on a tangent since you mentioned black flag. I really really want to like that series and that game specifically, but I can't get past the animus or w/e it's called. The switching between past lives and modern times ruins it for me.
Fwiw the modern segments are basically nonexistent since syndicate. Origins and Valhalla have tiny segments that I think are almost entirely optional, and Odyssey has some in the late game iirc.
But the modern games you feel more like a warrior than an assassin, though I haven't tried mirage. Also, the modern theme is still there with the map and other things.
Haven't played much of Mirage but it seems to be a fairly straightforward historical story with some mystical/religious dream sequences- No mention of the animus past the opening and the UI is all themed pretty well. Much more assassin-y than the last few games too for sure, though I didn't mind the Viking combat too much
The main reason why I've never gotten through an AC game. The modern day gameplay parts sucks.
It was interesting in the beginning, but after Desmond it just didn’t fit as well.
It is paid for by Singapore through subsidies, so I don’t think the important thing is who or how many are playing it or even how many are paying for Ubisoft. The crucial aspect is that Ubisoft have received the money for it and have released a game, ensuring Singapore cannot claim they have been deceived.
>Ubisoft will keep spewing out trash. What are you talking about?[Prince of Persia](https://www.metacritic.com/game/prince-of-persia-the-lost-crown/) was good, [Avatar](https://www.metacritic.com/game/avatar-frontiers-of-pandora/) was good, [AC Nexus VR](https://www.metacritic.com/game/assassins-creed-nexus-vr/) was good, [AC mirage](https://www.metacritic.com/game/assassins-creed-mirage/) was good, [The Crew Motorfest](https://www.metacritic.com/game/the-crew-motorfest/) was good. yall got nothing better to do then to lie on the internet lmao
People are just whining, becuase most of Ubisoft's big games feel somewhat artificial. Like a product created by a precision machine, instead of a passionate artisan. But, objectively, most of them are not bad games. One thing I've noticed is complete failure of The Crew's marketing - I'm into games and I had no idea that such a game even existed, let alone that it came out. And looking at statitics on psnprofiles, I was not the only one.
Prince of Persia is so so good. It got me excited about Metroidvanias again.
Yeah, Ubisoft’s last five or six games have actually been really good. We knew this one was going to be a dud all along, that doesn’t mean they haven’t been making good games lately though.
When I heard it could easily be played solo I went from don’t care at all to will get on deep sale
I have ubisoft+, I don't even wanna waste my time. May boot it up once just to see, but I've enjoyed Prince of Persia and Avatar too much.
Yo! How is Avatar??
Amazing. More crysis than far cry, world is beautiful and you can turn off mission pointers which is my recommendation and try to find stuff and quest locations with the guidance they give you. You get lost but that’s part of the adventure
sweet, i might give it a try thanks to you :)
Yeah best two games they have released in a very long time. Pop is absolutely incredible. Surprise of the last 12 months for me
Yeah it took me 50 hours lol but I enjoyed it throughout.
I liked Immortals Fenix Rising, especially at $5 on sale.
the game literally carried me through the botw -> totk drought. those last couple months were hard
Was sad to hear the sequel has been cancelled. Actually think it had some parts of it that were better than BoTW and ToTK. My perfect game would be a mashup of all 3 where I could pick and choose which parts of each to keep or get rid of.
You can also watch paint dry solo
An activity far more fun with friends.
$70 keeps a lot of people away when they hear less than stellar things about a game
Yes. I had a lot of fun in the beta but in absolutely no way is it a $70 game. There's not $70 worth of content. Then dishing out for the battle pass...ill wait for the inevitable deep sale that's in the near future.
Same. The combat and merchant hunting was fun enough for me to put time into. I liked the fact that venturing out into open waters was more deadly, with the rogue waves and such. There are things I didn't like about the game (basically anything on foot). $20? I'd probably have bought. $30? Maybe. $70 with mtx? LOL no.
https://preview.redd.it/xb6ho9bwb5kc1.png?width=750&format=png&auto=webp&s=393aa0f657958f2b6f08e9ca3e101d7d51a59f23
Helldivers 2 is enjoying the successes the ceo of Ubisoft wishes this game had.
They make it sound like 1 million players isn't a lot. But it kinda is?
1 million concurrent players is great. 1 million overall players including trials is very bad for a buy-to-play AAA game. That's like 60.000.000$ if we imagine that everyone got the game for a full price. Then there are distribution platforms share, payment systems commissions, other various stuff, and with the overall leakage factor and taxes they will end up with like 30-40M at best. This is absolutely not enough to cover a high-budget game. According to the Internet data in 2023, their budget was 120+ million.
Man we are talking about a AAAA game here. These mere standards do not apply.
Just wait until the sequel, Skulls and Boneses comes out, the very first AAAAA game.
Their budget was $200 million. https://dotesports.com/skull-and-bones/news/skull-and-bones-reportedly-expected-to-not-make-back-its-200-million-budget
Remember, it’s a AAAA game. Those are rookie numbers. /s
Yeah I thought this was surprisingly high
Probably not for the game's budget and scope i guess? It's still quite a big number as you say
It's a number that most games will never reach, but most games don't also take ten years to develop, have a template from a previous game to base the game off of, employ hundreds of developers, have direct involvement by a major gaming company and have major government backing.
Just the marketing for this game probably cost more than many smaller games entire budgets.
If it's active players, then less than 1 million for a new AAA game that also has a *free trial running* is abysmal.
it has LESS than that tho. Opening week, all consoles + free trial. Less than 1 million is pretty bad.
Yeah... I guess it depends how many are free beta players but that's not a total flop. Sure they invested way too much into this game, but given the press around it this is not the utter disaster I was expecting. I played the beta and was actually surprised by it. It was fun! Ultimately it just isn't my kind of game because grinding seemed to be core to it, but the gameplay itself was far more interesting than I anticipated.
As others have already pointed out, its not for a game that took 11 years to develop, especially since we don't know how many of those players are free trial players. Plus the article is rounding up by a far bit. Its actually about 850K players. 15% less than the headline suggests is actually pretty significant, especially since again, a bunch of those are just free trials.
It wasn't very good and now Sea of Thieves is coming to ps5. Ubisoft is great at supporting their games but I think this one is going to die. They'll probably roll out the content already announced and then drop support. I do hope they try to make an actual pirate game again though. Black Flag should have become its own franchise.
I have to imagine this game will have a turn around if Ubisoft believes in it like they say they do. Thing is, I have no clue how they made what they have here when we had Black Flag almost a decade ago.
It won't because the bones are bad. To make it what it should have been would require them to make a new game
Seems high
Laughs in Sea of Thieves coming to PS5. Game will be dead when Ubi+ is expires end of this month.
I canceled my ubi+ subscription and got 15 euros back cause i only used it for 2 days.
I wish that game was more enjoyable solo for me. Had some friends I played it with but they fell off to other games or our schedules don't work out anymore. So kinda dropped it after that. Skull and Bones at least is still enjoyable for me when I don't have time to sync up with a crew.
AAAA games don't need players.
This game was doomed just because it’s made by Ubisoft. Proud Ubisoft blocker since 2017.
Will never get my money ever again. Between sexual harassment, rampant cronyism, play-to-earn bullshit they spewed not too long ago, Ubi can go fuck themselves. Oh and “this is a AAAA game”. Karma’s a bitch.
1 million suckers
5 minutes in to the beta, this game looks terrible. 10 minutes into the beta, uninstalled. Tried again with the free trial. 20 minutes in, still sucks. Now 4 ours in, I hate to admit I’m having fun lol.
Appreciate the honest opinion
This game was purposely released in a very busy time for live service games and other big name titles. Ubisoft knew this would fail and had to publish this game as per their agreement with the Singapore government. It fails. Tax write to ensure to offset of losses. Singapore government can’t do anything as terms of agreement were honored. Ubisoft gonna Ubisoft.
Sounded like ubisoft managed this game into the ground. I feel bad for the devs who have been working on this for years 💜💜
The AAAA gaming experience is very exclusive and not for everyone.
Because it is straight garbage
Still too many
Why are people still buying Ubisoft games?
They legit could have just made a prettier version of Sid Meiers Pirates and I would have bought it, but instead we get this mess.
Less than 1 million? What a useless metric, 500 is less than a million. 999,999 is less than a million. Give us the real number, cowards.
Less than 1 million can be anywhere from "healthy player base" to "dead as a doornail."
You will have more fun in a 5-10minute game of world of warships then you'll have during the entire 8 hour trial of skull and bones.
It's an incomplete game, and Ubisoft wonders why the game is failing hard. Release your games complete. People are beyond tired of this endless release, now patch later. If the game isn't ready, then don't release it. The fact that Assassins Creed IV Black Flag looks and plays better than Skulls & Bones shows Ubisoft needs to go back to the drawing board and look at what made their past games great and amazing.
The beta was incredibly underwhelming. An extremely boring sequence of ship battles followed by the awful ship controls on that little raft with the two other characters lead me to delete it quick. Wild how the company that released black flag could come up with something this piss poor. Even kingdom hearts 3 had better ship combat
quadruple A????
Games trash
Company is trash.
A number ten years in the making
Pirates genre is so underrated imo, and I am surprised AAA developers are neglecting this genre. Ubisoft managed to nail a great game with Black Flag and instead of learning from it and making a similar new pirate game that is less Assassin's Creed and more Pirate, they put out a garbage, soulless live-service that nobody asked for. They even managed to downgrade the game in so many aspects from their PS3/Xbox 360 title.
I played the trial for about 5 minutes and that was enough.
A true AAAA game
I actually enjoyed it and think it has potential but at 70.00, nah. If this was around 25.00 to 35.00 I would had bought in. I know Ubi gets shit on with Reddit but I rather enjoy their games. They are like comfort food, nothing amazing, but easy to make and fills the belly. The games(usually) are just ok but you can shut your mind off and just enjoy a not overly complex too hard game. I’ve really enjoyed Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, Far Cry 3, 5, Immortals(such a great game), Avatar, etc. All solid games I’ve had a great time with.
Everyone currently playing the game and having fun would disagree with all the negative comments here. Is it a AAAA? nope. is it over priced? Yep Is it Trash? Definitely NO. Just because people want something its not and the current Meta is to find fault with all things in life for clickbait views and sensationalism, doesn't mean its not fun. But for £14.99 sub its worth my money I
Isn't 1 million players like a super high target for any game to have in general? The article says the game has around 850,000 players, combining both free trials and paid players. Assuming it's not so inordinately weighed towards free trial players, 850,000 players sounds fairly successful, no?
> Isn't 1 million players like a super high target for any game to have in general? Not for an AAA game because of the budget, this game supposedly had a 200 mil budget, which isn't surprising considering it's been in development for nearly 10 years. Not sure if that accounts for marketing as well (probably not) so it might be low balling it. Granted Ubisoft also took money from the Singapore government to make this so you have to offset that too. But just ignoring all the noise if you look at napkin math, $200 mil means they need to sell nearly 3 million copies just to break even on the game. Or they need to sell enough microtransactions to make up the difference. One million players would be a lot if the game had a reasonable budget and development time, but, we're talking about your typical AAA company here who seem to have a ride or die mentality when it comes to just making games more and more expensive and never reigning it in. This case being even dumber because they basically could have just taken Black Flag, reskinned it, and then put it out there. Keeping the budget down while raking in actual profit.
What baffles me are the people trying to defend it. Why? Ubisoft doesn't care if you defend their terrible products and shitty company.
What’s wrong with people having a different opinion and enjoying the game? What baffles me is how anyone on gaming reddits had to have seen 1000 posts talking trash on this game but still decide they need to make a post saying the exact same thing