Framerate
If you play AC on PC go to the bottom of this post
I personally think there is nothing but benefit to targeting a locked 60FPS on console in AC games. Players would have a greater awareness of their surrounding and the actions of enemies within them, which would allow for things like fights to be tuned to a faster pace.
2x the frame count would also mean the controller checks for inputs twice as fast, again increasing the player's reaction speed and the responsiveness of the game. Even if the framerate is not tied to controller polling in AC, the player benefits in reflexes from seeing the results of their actions represented on screen more accurately.
It would mean that players could handle seeing more complex animations because of a greater ability to interpret rapid motions, perhaps opening up the way for new free-running techniques that would require you to pay more attention to what animation state your character is in.
In general it would make the game look more visually appealing and less tiring to look at during long sessions.
All this would probably mean things like environment size would have to be reigned in, but inflated map size is perhaps the series' greatest issue right now and targeting this framerate would be the best way to cushion the blow of the size reduction. (perhaps also leading the way to a return to the multiple-city structure of other games?)
I feel that as more and more games (even open world ones) head towards 60 frames per second, Ubisoft would be thankful that they got on the train before it's too late.
Soon more and more people are going to notice and care about the difference, and it will become more and more of a standard across the big budget end of the industry.
I won't pretend it's a simple or easy thing to optimize your game for showing twice the frames, but it's a huge step towards improving basic playability, which is the #1 thing that is becoming the most stale about AC. It feels like 2007 presentation and control standards being applied to 2015 features, visuals, and content.
FOR PC PLAYERS: Yes, I am aware that AC games can be played at 60fps on PC. However the games are developed primarily for console, and so their features and gameplay will be created assuming that the game will run at 30fps, meaning PC players don't get the same benefits other than visual ones. Also, the games will continue to be unoptimized for framerates above 30fps on PC
Agree 100%. I've started hopping on top of the "there's no excuse to not run at 60fps" opinion as of late. It really just changes everything, the issues of responsiveness and fluidity being key. With some games it gets to the point where you don't even want to play them until your brain has forgotten how great playing at 60fps actually feels. Case in point, I tried playing Shadow of Mordor after playing MGS V, and it genuinely felt like the entire game was lagging. It wasn't, but it felt like it.
Even a super solid 30fps is a huge improvement. Once I played something like Forza Horizon, which is locked at 30 all the time, it became obvious how rare it is for many games to even reliably hit THAT.
I guess I got started thinking about this based on what I said about the low-level actions in games being what sets them apart. There's nothing more low-level than the actual responsiveness of the player's inputs. Lining up the arc of a manually-targeted air assassination on a moving target is something no player could ever enjoy doing on a spotty framerate, and so it makes that mechanic off-limits to AC. And I really hope that more active things like that can eventually make their way to the series, so this is an important step.
There are some games I think don't need to be 60: something like Hitman, for example, where I always feel like I'm making very slow and deliberate inputs based on a larger plan. But even then, simply a 30 lock makes a huge difference.