In the coming months, we will find out if the French publisher will be interested in tuning this project at all. Unfortunately, at the moment the situation is not looking good and the boat is taking on water…
Boat models are not enough
For a game that is almost 100% focused on sailing (landing in Skull and Bones is just a small break from sea adventures), we have far too few ships at our disposal. To diversify the gameplay, Ubisoft should introduce about 5-6 new units.
Games price too high
The budget of Skull and Bones may actually have exceeded the generally accepted levels in the industry and into the “AAAA” ceiling, as stated by the CEO of Ubisoft. You can believe it, considering the game’s incredibly long product cycle. Too bad you don’t feel this financial boost while you’re having fun. There are as many cutscenes as the cat cried, the soundtrack is too varied and there are definitely too few story missions – these are just the first examples. In such a situation, a radical price reduction may help the project.
Weak power balance of smaller vessels
Currently, in the endgame phase, which happens quickly in Skull and Bones, it only makes sense to use two or three ships. This is definitely too small a difference. Everyone is sailing in the same boat, which is not aesthetically pleasing or interesting in terms of gameplay. Ubisoft needs to speed up smaller ships a lot, make them super flexible and give players a reason to use them in the endgame (Elite: Jeopardy could be a model here).
Game crash on XSX
What’s happening with Skull and Bones on XSX borders on scandal. The game can hang on Xbox regularly, every few hours, to the point that the console has to be reset manually (the dashboard stops working). I don’t know of any other product that would have such an effect on XSX. It is time to finally put an end to this shameful problem.
Badly thought out commercial reasons
I know Skull and Bones is a pirate game, not a merchant game, but players should still be encouraged to do things other than constantly firing bombs and cannons. This works well, for example, in Dangerous Elite, and I think that the trade topics in the Ubisoft game could also be improved (so that it would be profitable to sail with goods other than contraband) .
Story missions are not enough
The first set of questions for John Scurlock is great. The man is charismatic and completely egocentric (as befits a pirate). Later, however, things become much weaker, and after a series of low-key pirate missions in Indochina, this “campaign” comes to an abrupt end. It would be useful to have more activities of this type – with plot, dialogues, etc.
Very infrequent updates with new content
The “roadmap” presented for Skull and Bones for the first year of release is…disappointing. Ubisoft should release new content more often, at least once every 4 weeks, and not just throw out gameplay tracks once a quarter. Such support plans may be suitable for small online games with small budgets, but not for large campaigns from a large publisher.
Too little diversity of action in the end game
This is the element that people who still play Skull and Bones complain about the most. While it’s exciting to get to the end of the game in Skull and Bones, the final stage of the game loses its momentum very quickly, turning into a monotonous process of smuggling contraband and -repeat the same activity over and over again. Ubisoft should work hard here, providing more things for the more experienced players to do.
Terrible use of places explored on foot
In Skull and Bones you can explore many beautiful places – in Madagascar, the coast of Africa or Indochina. The problem is that in this place there is basically…nothing to do. Walking around these places (while searching for treasure or shopping) will quickly become so boring that you might want to avoid it altogether. Ubisoft should introduce better opportunities to interact with other players; maybe even a chance to sword play with other characters to spice up this element of the game.
Too little PvP and too few players on the servers
After the first appearance, in one of the updates, Ubisoft introduced a cool option to fight other players anywhere on the map (as long as both sides of the conflict agree to it) . However, this is still a bit too small in terms of PvP. Skull and Bones could use certain areas with team fights or other events of this nature – forcing team actions. The second issue is the issue of a small number of players in one session on the server. Ubisoft currently only allows 20 people, which is not enough for the game’s large map. It is time to expand this level.
