The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

I haven't played or looked at any Syndicate information, but what I do know is that in previous games, especially Unity, once you achieved a viewpoint-like area (ie, were higher than your surroundings on stable footing) you could just stop moving and collectibles would be highlighted. I like this more than what you propose, because it's not artificial. The player takes in the landscape, and in so doing collectibles/mission start points/etc are revealed to him. You use viewpoints to actually view your surroundings, not unlock icons on a map.

It's still the case in Syndicate. I still insist they introduce what I suggested, because it works better with their current system. If collectibles were never marked on your map at all even after Syncing a viewpoint, using only High Ground icons WOULD be better. But that's not how it works at current, and people who want to collect everything are always going to be opening and closing their map every few seconds to every few minutes because that's the path of least resistance. Therefore, "Mark Nearest Known Collectible." Keep your flow up. Keep your parkour up. Never stop moving. Never go into a menu. It's a small quality-of-life change that should just BE there, no questions asked. I'm actually surprised in all their years they haven't once thought of it, because it would have a profound effect on how enjoyable just navigating through the game world with purpose would be!

Whoever wants to only use High-Ground icons to pick things up can still do it. It's long, it's arduous, and there are too many collectibles in the game worlds presently for it to work well that way - just like Jermaine said once. But they're still free to play that way if they wish.

I feel like the bit of friction between opening your map and marking a collectible has the effect of setting the tone for how the developers want you to engage with collectibles. Ideally, they want the experience of picking up a collectible to be something you do on your way to a more involved activity. Something you stumble across, or happen to notice on the map as being near to or on the way to your objective.

Making the experience frictionless makes it appear as though these dots on the map are meant to be a means to an end, rather than a supplement to something bigger. You would be able to very easily follow the path of inconsequential content all around the map, neatly avoiding the things that were designed for you to have fun with. It would be very likely that players who wouldn't enjoy that style of play could end up feeling obligated to play that way.

I think this exposes the biggest flaw of collectibles: that they become less interesting and more potentially tedious the more you improve their functionality.

I think the only real solution is to accept that a simple collectible isn't good enough. That instead you need to rely more heavily on things like traditional simple side assassination missions (black flag style, Unity's were hideously overcomplicated) activities, games, and ESPECIALLY mysteries.

In essence, murder mysteries (or mysteries of any kind, no need to limit them) are a collectible hunt where CLUES are the collectible! It allows you to make the player traverse the map, and more importantly make them feel as though its citizens and shops and houses have a purpose.

Collectibles in an open world with no challenge or additional activity necessary to claim them will one day be seen as unthinkable in game design. Even in Mario, reaching all the coins requires engagement within a larger challenge: the level those coins exist in.

It can be fun to go around syncing all the towers or exploring locations without having to solve anything, but what if the game treated that as an intrinsically fun activity without any gamey reward from it? What if you climbed towers to see what it looked like from the top of them, and for no other reason? (this would be augmented in particular by making tower climbing more difficult, but that's another issue i've talked about before already)

Then why are they necessary for 100%? They want it to work that way, but it just falls apart the closer you get to 100%.

This is why I dig Helix Glitches so much more than other collectibles. I KNOW where they are. (This is huge for me, I actually kind of hate not knowing where a collectible is. Shoot me. *shrugs*) Once I get there I still have to figure out HOW to get it. Also why Riddler Trophies in Arkham are really cool/way better than most collectibles in most games. They're actual gameplay that engages your brain once you reach it.

This is a good suggestion for the distant future when Ubisoft actually changes their design philosophy. My suggestion targets the present, and in the present, that doesn't work. It doesn't work because it's not fun enough to "just" do things. It's not interesting enough in its own right. I mean, it sort of is, if you're into taking screenshots (I am) and turn your HUD off either before you get up there, or once you get up there. But nah, for the most part, that whole 'doing it for the sake of doing it' is something Assassin's Creed is terrible at xD The closest it gets to having that is essentially what this thread is about enhancing: doing Parkour with a loose purpose, without a currently accepted mission pressuring you into anything. Flowing through your environment and swiftly grabbing stuff along the way, while experiencing a peaceful serenity as you do it.

Listen, I get that we all want things to "move forward," and that this isn't an evolution, but a short-term solution to an irritating problem. Ubisoft should eventually craft AC games with the kind of collectible systems we suggest in other threads. BUT THE THING IS? THEY'RE NOT DOING THAT right now. So for as long as collectibles REMAIN this way, this SHOULD be an option. It should be the band-aid solution. I really, really don't think it would have any detrimental effect, and if it does, the benefit of not having to open your map repeatedly (which is necessary to 100%/experience all content) FAR outweighs it. About players feeling "obligated" to play a certain way? Some players feel obligated to 100% games right NOW, for fear of missing out on what the game has to offer, especially when a game can cost nearly 100 dollars. Shouldn't those players be accommodated? Their lives should be made a little less tedious. With the current way collectibles are implemented, this needs to be addressed, and Marking Nearest Known just works. It's not flashy, it's not fancy, it's a little boring, but it works. And that's all players like me really want, at least until they revamp their entire game design philosophy.

why are they necessary for 100%? to make players feel like they got a good value when they finish their time with the game and are only at 50% completed.

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long term I think straight collectibles should be moved away from.

short term I think making it easier to find the nearest one makes them worse and more harmful to the average player's experience, and would prefer they weren't marked on the map at all and were less numerous, a la GTAV. (By the way, that game sold much better than any Assassin's Creed game, Ubisoft, so perhaps marked collectibles aren't as important to success as you think they are.)

They should be removed from 100% as well, so as to show mercy to completionists.

apologies for focusing so much on the long term in my post.

No worries. On all of those counts except of course, your stance on Marking Nearest, I agree.
Why do you think Marking Nearest as an available button-press is at all harmful to the average player?
It, just like anything else, is completely optional. The only players who would care about a button like this are ones trying to reach 100% anyway, and to THEM it would be a GODSEND.

Having less of them would be welcome. Having them not be needed for 100% would be welcome, too.

If you need to have collectibles, it would be much nicer if they involved solving a kind of puzzle using your tools, the way Batman games do. I'm just not sure how they could do that in Assassin's Creed. Maybe have some of them be Stealth Collectibles, where if you alert the enemies Guarding it, it locks itself away until you reset the area. Or have some of them be Combat Collectibles, where you have to fight/kill everyone there before the locks open. Parkour Collectibles may involve chasing down a nimble Courier who's carrying it and has all the same navigation moves as you, albeit moving at a slightly reduced speed. Or, on the flipside, hitting a switch and then having to get to where it is in time. Things like that would be much cooler than what we have going on right now.

Additionally, and this is, I think the only thing I can say I 100% Dislike about Syndicate: If a collectible is necessary to unlock pieces of STORY, please make it easy to find. Helix Glitches are the only reliable method of getting a huge amount of Present Day story, and they're not marked on your map until you get close. Knowing this, Ubisoft made one of the Real Money options the ability to purchase a map of them. That's just cruel to players who care about this part of the story.

it's not just an option, it's another step towards embedding pointless trinket-grabbing into the tradition and identity of the game. people are already getting tired of it, why invest in mechanics that facilitate faster burnout?

I'm sure their energies could be better directed elsewhere.

there's nothing wrong with those rifts being unmarked, but i don't like the sound of that microtransaction to reveal them.

Pointless trinket-grabbing is already a part of the game's identity, much to our disappointment.
It has been the case for nine mainline games.
It's already happened. It's there. It's real. It's a thing. Until they create a long-term solution (abolishing that kind of design outright) a short-term solution would sure as hell be nice.

This mechanic wouldn't facilitate faster burnout rather than make it more enjoyable for the people who do care about it, because again, we're not grabbing collectibles for the sake of grabbing them, they're a reason to parkour around the city and enter a semi-meditative state by doing so. This is why collectibles in GTA can get away with being unmarked; moving through that game's world at a fast pace is not nearly as exhilarating as navigating over rooftops, sliding under obstacles, vaulting over things and just... FLOWING. And it is that state of flow that AC's collectibles serve to open up, by giving the player a destination to reach with loose purpose, and letting them experience the game's claim to fame, its parkour, in a really enjoyable way. That same semi-meditative state is only aided by not having to wreck your flow with repeated opening and closing of map screens, which as a commonality between us, we've established we don't like very much. Collectibles just serve a subtly different function in AC's current rendition, than they do in other games. I feel like I'm not successfully communicating that here, not successfully explaining what this suggestion tries to accomplish on that front, that fluid, flow-state front.

Addressing your dismissal of story-important collectibles being unmarked; there is A LOT wrong with things that unlock pieces of Story being unmarked, and there actually being hundreds of them. Any player that really wants that story/narrative will just end up using an online map to find them all! Why don't we just cut out that step and build it into the game itself? I really, really don't get it... Either don't make collectibles necessary for 100% or for Story, or if you do, make them few - 10 or 20 like you suggested. At least then, it's reasonable, and finding that amount unmarked through exploration isn't absurd. If neither of those things are chosen, then I damn BETTER see those pointless trinkets on my map at any time I want because to do anything else is so hilariously anti-consumer and anti-player it almost makes me want to cry. And definitely don't sell an in-game map for them for real money.

As for energies being better directed elsewhere, sure! What little energy it would take to introduce this, anyway.

Look: Until they STOP with the pointless collectibles entirely, this is nothing short of a "might as well" solution to the situation, to tide us (me and the many others like me) over. I somewhat understand why you've taken the stance you've taken, and that's because the quicker the entire playerbase gets tired of these collectibles the quicker it'll be changed. Theoretically. Hopefully. So, there's some merit in that, I'm sure. Almost kind of revolutionary, in a way. When the people are angry, things change, yeah? The thing is, I like their purpose, their purpose that nobody seems to understand, most of all Ubisoft. I'm already tired of how their potential as a flow-starter is being entirely misused. And I want a solution now, not in four years.

I've commented on "pointless trinket grabbing" before. It made sense in AC2/ACB, because you were removing BORGIA flags, so esoterically, you were removing Borgia influence along the way. You were collecting feathers as an homage to your younger brother. Etc. I won't digress.

For your suggestion of "simply adding a band-aid to the system in its current state," they have. It's called a mini-map. The collectibles show up on the mini-map as you move through the game world. It's no less artificial then hitting a button to tell you where to go anyway.

The only collectibles that have encouraged the sort of flow you are talking about were the song sheets and benjamin franklin papers in AC3, BF and Rogue... because when you got close they actually moved you through the environment. I like that.

I actually really like this idea.

In fact, the Artefacts in Unity approached this, especially in Dead Kings. You had to sneak past the guards to get them, or kill the guards to get them. Granted, they never locked so you could just run in, grab it and run away. But still closer.

when the story content is the super secret glyph-equivalent and you already get modern story in the main path, I'm fine with it.

The fact that there are hundreds of them doesn't say to me "they need to be marked", it says "there need to be less of them and they should be easier to find than a typical collectible"

The point of these rifts or whatever seems like they're a huge secret part of the game that was never spoken about pre-launch, and players should have to work a bit to figure out what the equivalent to that is in each game.

Again, microtransactory stuff puts a big damper on it, I don't think that's cool.

I really liked AC3's "triangulation" approach for finding secrets on the map, it was so cool that they dropped that system on you after the game was over and you thought you were done learning things. maybe something like that could be attached to more than just cheat codes in future games?

that was pretty cool

Agreed on the Triangulation system. It was good because it had the player be an active participant while letting them feel like they had the power to track the Pivots rather than feeling whether they found them or not was completely up to chance/serendipity. Give some manner of locating them, rather than just putting stickers all over the World Map and being like, "LOL good luck bro, we know this is frustrating so buy our map."

Not quite. Mark Nearest is about what happens when there is nothing ON the Minimap because a player is not close enough for anything to appear, but when they still want to maintain their Navigation Flow without stopping. For THAT matter, it also accommodates players who wish to have all other HUD INCLUDING Minimap off, while keeping this feature on to facilitate that zen-like state. If it were already fixed or good enough, I wouldn't be trying to fix it. Moreover, the fix is simple. I'm no god of game analysis, but I'm at least rational enough to have made my original suggestion for a reason.

A player on Reddit commented on this same post I made there, with a wise idea. They reminded me that in inFAMOUS 2, clicking the Right Stick sent out a Pulse that showed you the direction of the closest Blast Shard on your minimap, even if "closest" actually meant a gajillion miles away. The player could then track it without ever opening their world map, without needing to stop moving through the world for even a moment. The idea is solid and a good example of the direction I'm looking in. AC should be able to do it without even a minimap because the idea is to take in the world while moving toward the location with maximum grace and no other pressure. Shanties don't work for this, because if you fail at getting one, it's just frustrating and you have to wait for it to reset. Instant Flow-Breaker. There is a pressure and a tension there that is antithetical to what this is about. Flowing toward a collectible, on the other hand, is nothing but the pure, trance-like bliss of movement. Nothing is there to make you fail it, nothing is there to ruin your own flow except you yourself. It is an alternate kind of Play that AC has always flirted with and never truly achieved, separate from the tension of actual Missions: a Yin to their Yang. Even a marker superimposed on the actual game world is better than having your eyes glued to the bottom left corner - which is also why Minimaps are problematic. Eagle Vision in Syndicate is amazing because it means you can turn off the Minimap entirely during missions. Marking enemies, superimposing their positions through walls onto the game world is the "new minimap." You are free to argue that it's sort of wonky, but you can't deny that it has you looking at the actual screen rather than an arguably worse abstraction. Same thing with the concept for Mark Nearest.