Assassin’s Creed as a Live Service Game?
Contributed by DJMMT
I’m not even sure how to define the term “live service game” anymore. But I am sure that Ubisoft has mastered the formula through practice. When I think of live service games, The Division franchise comes to mind. Destiny as well. To me, live service means a game that just keeps growing for players that start day one and are willing to keep paying more money. But at the same time, there needs to be a time component to the content. A game that keeps adding DLC isn’t a live service game. It’s just a game with a lot of expanded content. For instance, I wouldn’t consider Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to be a live service game, as it’s a standalone title with a lot of content that you can play at whatever pace you want. I put in 200 hours to get the full 100% completion including DLC. But I didn’t play it until it had already been out for two years. There was nothing live about it by that point. At the same time, there are games like Immortals Fenix Rising that have additional content and weekly challenges. So it is an expanding game with a time component to it. Yet I wouldn’t necessarily call that a live service game either. My point is more that Ubisoft announcing a live service Assassin’s Creed game is at best unclear. That could mean just about anything at this point.
There are certain ideas that come to mind when I think about what a live service Assassin’s Creed game could be. For instance, I’d love for them to have a PVP zone within the game that works similar to the Dark Zone in The Division. At the same time, I don’t want an Assassin’s Creed game to get even more focused on loot then the last two games already have. I’m not saying such a system can’t work. I’m just saying it’s not the direction I’d like to see Assassin’s Creed take. But since we are talking about live service games and Ubisoft, loot-based progression is basically inevitable.
Imagine a game, and I’d say this would only work with something as canonically ambiguous as Assassin’s Creed, where the story is told in chapters that take place in multiple locations and follows multiple characters over a vast period of time. What if instead of Assassin’s Creed Infinity starring one protagonist like Altair, Ezio, or Edward, it stared several. Think about it like this. The story doesn’t follow an assassin. Instead it follows an object, like a piece of Eden. That object starts in about 400 BC during the period of Odyssey. Since it’s a live service game, you probably create your own assassin. You create a character based on key details of that time period and location. The clothing, race, gender, hairstyle, and whatever else are all defined by the time period and the plot for that chapter. You play through that chapter and then the piece of Eden goes through some sort of event that ends up moving it to a new location and having it be lost or hidden for a period of time. That’s the end of chapter one. Then chapter two places you in a completely different location and another period of time. Say a couple hundred years later in Egypt in the setting of Origins. You now create an entirely new assassin, again based on the setting and story requirements of that chapter. Once more you are following this piece of Eden.
Each chapter would work like this. You would jump from time period to time period with a collection of characters that you’ve created and embodied in locations all over the world. Each chapter would give you access to different tools and skills that make sense for that setting and period. Like the hook blade in Revelations and the pistol in Brotherhood. The game would be a literal live service experience that was constantly evolving and changing to tell a perpetual story about this piece of Eden and the collection of assassins that interacted with it throughout history.
Rather than build entirely new maps, they could make use of the last 14 years of digital assets they’ve created. Sure, there would have to be a lot of clean up for the older titles, but the idea is that they wouldn’t necessarily have to design entirely new locations from scratch. It could even be a fun nostalgia trip. The other thing is that the chapters don’t only have to move in one direction. They could jump back and forth through time as the story develops to tell you different things about the object in question and those who played a part in its journey. They could also return to settings in previous chapters for later portions of the story and have you use the assassin you’ve already created for those locations. I see the potential for an entirely new style of game and redefining what the term live service game even means.
There are of course some problems with this idea. Especially when you consider the profit driven aspect of it. How would such a game be sold? Would you buy a season pass? Would you purchase a specific number of chapters? Would you play via subscription? There’s a lot of ways that a company with Ubisoft’s track record for microtransactions could make an experience like this cost a fortune. There’s also the time aspect. Would you be able to join in at any time or would you have to start day one to experience all the content? Is there a time limit on how long you have to play a specific chapter? If the map keeps changing then does that mean the server only allows for one location to be playable at a time? These are the sorts of issues that an endeavor like this would have to tackle with the cost for players being astronomical.
Really I think this could be an opportunity to change the entire strategy of how live service games work. The key issue with live service games is always retention. Developers try to maintain a player base indefinitely by parsing out new content as quickly as possible and keeping players engaged for as long as possible with challenges and timed events while they wait for the next content drop. But what if it didn’t have to be like that? What if instead of trying to maintain the player base indefinitely, they simply focused on getting players to return? My biggest problem with every live service game is that I always beat all the available content, get bored, and then stop playing before the new content drops. Then when the new content releases I’m so far removed from the game and into other games that I have no interest in going back. Sadly, when I do go back I usually don’t remember how to play and my loot is often not as good as players who stuck it out the entire time. Ultimately this puts me off even more and I just quit altogether. Even when I have the season pass and have access to the newer content, I still usually end up never playing it in this scenario.
I simply can’t be asked to relearn a game I’ve already beaten. But what if each chapter felt like playing a new game? If it didn’t feel like I was behind every time I logged in after a while, I’d probably not be so turned off by the experience of going back to live service games. The only real solution I can see for this is creating the illusion that you’re playing a different game altogether. A chapter-based Assassin’s Creed game that jumped between time periods could effectively pull this off. In fact, it’s one of the few franchises that can. The game wouldn’t need to preserve gear or really anything in the traditional sense. Every time jump could be a fresh start for the entire player base. New players and old would all start level with each other without feeling like they lost anything, because you’d be playing in a new location with a new character anyway. So each chapter would feel like a completely new game, and technically it kind of would be. This would remove the repercussions of stopping once you’ve finished the content while waiting for the next chapter.
I think a live service Assassin’s Creed game has the potential to be something different that we’ve never seen before. But I doubt that’s what ends up happening. Given Ubisoft’s commitment to formulas and established monetization strategies, I don’t see this being much more than Valhalla with a possible shared world element. When you consider the amount of content both Odyssey and Valhalla have gotten, it’s almost fair to call them live service games. Especially Valhalla with its content release strategy/schedule. We still don’t know enough about this project at this point. I hope Ubisoft takes this opportunity to think outside the box. And ideally bring back the PVP as well.
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