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Did a completionist murder Ubisoft's parents or something?


BlackDragon
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I love everything about this game... except for the actual missions. Those seem to be specifically designed to drive anyone who wants 100% completion to suicide. Not only do some of the story-missions have some truly ludicrous 'optional goals', with the everpresent caveat of needing to do them all in one run, there's also a large number of places where an 'optional goal' can and will fail in EXACTLY the same moment the game autosaves a checkpoint, forcing you to start all over again from the beginning. It's driving me NUTS. I LOVE running around the countryside, searching for hidden feathers, hunting animals, trading, doing quests for the Frontiersmen and the Hunting Society, all that stuff. But every time I'm forced to play actual missions - y'know, to advance the story and unlock more stuff to do - I find myself wanting to hurl the game out a window after the 10th time I had to start a mission over from the beginning because some bit of random bad luck caused me to fail an optional goal immediately followed by the game triumphantly crying "No takebacksies!"

 

And that's not even getting into the glitchyness and buggyness that's screwing a lot of people over - mostly because there's at least a CHANCE those things will get fixed by a patch. I doubt they'll patch out 'Level design specifically tuned to kick completionists in the dick', tho.

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I honestly had no issues 100% all missions until Seq 8. By the end of beating the game (just all 12 seq.) I only had to replay 4 missions to 100% the campaign portion. However, some of the Naval optional missions are insanely difficult though. What ones are you having issues with? o.0

 

I did not find any of the naval ones incredibly challenging except one, the one where you need to destroy two frigates and a man-of-war by blowing up their powder charges. That took some doing, but once you have the strategy down, you were able to do it more reliably.

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I honestly had no issues 100% all missions until Seq 8. By the end of beating the game (just all 12 seq.) I only had to replay 4 missions to 100% the campaign portion. However, some of the Naval optional missions are insanely difficult though. What ones are you having issues with? o.0

 

Some of those Naval ones are a pain. I personally hate the destroy the ship using the powder storage(Cough Sequence 11 Memory 1).

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Yes, the naval missions with 'hit the weak spot for massive damage' requirements are CONSISTENTLY a pain in the ass. To expose the powder-storage, you have to hit 'em with a broadside. Hit them with too MUCH of a broadside, and they'll just plain sink. If that was the last of the ships you needed to hit, then the game just saved it as a checkpoint. Starrrrrt OVER! AGAIN!

 

For dry land, though... major one was the last mission of Sequence 6, which requires you to approach your target undetected through wildlands. Sneaking just doesn't WORK outside of cities, because you don't have any clear-cut hiding-places (other than the occasional pile of branches), and the enemies will almost always see you long before you see them. And it's a very long way to sneak without checkpoints, without being detected, with numerous enemies patrolling in pairs. And when you finally DO get there, and assassinate your target, an optional goal pops up about not letting any of the natives get killed, and fails immediately.

 

Another, SLIGHTLY less annoying one, was the second Captain Kidd's Map mission. Long footrace where you have to pull off a couple of specific stunts for optional goals - then, a quarter of a second before the end, a NEW optional goal pops up, requiring you to kill your target before he enters... oh wait, he entered the cave while you were reading this, and now the goal is failed and the checkpoint is saved, start over from the top again!

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It's kinda stupid to say the least, sometimes I completely miss out on the optional objectives poppin' up mid-game, I realize at the end of the mission that I could have done "this and that" from the start, instead of having to replay it most of the time...

 

Didn't like this in the previous games either, like in Brotherhood. Sure, it's manageable, but annoying and time consuming...

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The thing is - the optional objectives were just as crazy in Brotherhood, but back then, they were OPTIONAL - as in, there was no achievement related to them. Your only reward for doing them was unlocking some cheat-modes if you cleared a whole chapter 100%. And those cheats weren't even all that interesting... IIRC, they were mostly just the 'funny' kind, like big heads and stuff like that. And they probably disabled achievements to boot.

 

So back in Brotherhood, the Optional Goals were actually alright - you try for them just for kicks, and if you succeed, great. If you don't, no biggie, and no good reason to go back and try again unless you've done everything ELSE in the game and is just looking for an excuse to keep playing. Now there's an achievement for getting everything 100%. Which means that any borderline-OCD completionists and achievement-hunters (in other words, anyone who frequents a board like this) is gonna wind up beating his (or her) head against frustrating challenges, the pain exacerbated by checkpoint-placement that seems specifically designed to sabotage your attempts.

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If the optional goals were restricted to the main missions (the perfectionist achievement), I'd have no complaints. However, some of the naval optionals are just ridiculous, and there are a few others that stand out. Other ACs have had only main mission optionals, but this is seems a step too far

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This thread truly scares me from putting ACIII in my xbox and begin play. LOL!

 

Consider it belated Halloween spirit. :p

 

I'm on chapter 5 and the only hard one up until now was when you had to go into the snow fort, sabotage the two cannons, not kill anyone, get the plans, and escape. All in one go.

 

God, yes... I'd almost, blissfully, forgotten about that one. I don't even know how many times I retried that one before finally pulling it off... it was particularly soul-rending because AFTERWARDS, after I'd gone to all the trouble of evading every guard, luring away the fellow patrolling outside the command-tent so I could steal the plans undetected, ect... THEN it occurred to me that fist-based stealth takedowns might not count as 'kills'. So maybe I could've just KO'd my way through the fortress instead.

 

Or maybe not. Didn't get a chance to try it. It might still count as 'kills' even though people you knock out barehanded obviously remain alive, squirming around on the floor and stuff. Somebody should try it out...

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Kudos to you for being able to do so... I can't. Every time I see an 'objective failed' pop up, my fingers jump to the 'Restart' button before I can stop them. I can't listen to a game telling me that I suck and not try to prove it wrong. I just... can't.

 

It's the 'Don't be detected' objectives that get to me the most, honestly. The stealth in this game just... doesn't... WORK! It's completely random and INFURIATINGLY vague. Sometimes you can send a man screaming to his death and the guy standing half a foot in front of him won't notice. At other times, you'll be detected from halfway across the map the moment you stick your nose out of cover. Sometimes hitting the attack-button will make you stealthily pull a guy over an edge, and at other times it'll make you leap over the edge with a war-cry on your lips to stab him in full view of half a regiment. It's all trial-and-error, with more of the later.

 

And don't get me started on the checkpoints. They're always where you DON'T want them - right after a failed objective - and never where you WANT them; right after you just pulled off a difficult section and before you have to do ANOTHER difficult section. I'm stuck at Bunker Hill right now. I have to blow up two ships without being seen, with no checkpoint inbetween, while air-assassinating a scotsman. If I do that without taking out all the other guards on that ship, they'll spot me immediately when I do so. Taking out all the guards without being spotted by the scotsman is PROBABLY possible, but after half a dozen tries, I'm just sick and tired of him psychically detecting my actions from the other end of the ship, with two masts and a half-ton of crates between us.

 

All this game is doing is giving me a headache and probably annoying my neighbors due to all the loud swearing. I've had enough. I'm done. It's sad, really, since all the OTHER stuff is great, but the main missions are killing it for me (possibly literally, what with my spiking blood-pressure), and there's no way AROUND them.

 

If they make a minecraft-esque open-world game all about the exploration and the hunting and stuff, I'm there, but this one's over for me.

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I'm stuck at Bunker Hill right now. I have to blow up two ships without being seen, with no checkpoint inbetween, while air-assassinating a scotsman. If I do that without taking out all the other guards on that ship, they'll spot me immediately when I do so. Taking out all the guards without being spotted by the scotsman is PROBABLY possible, but after half a dozen tries, I'm just sick and tired of him psychically detecting my actions from the other end of the ship, with two masts and a half-ton of crates between us.

 

trick here is go to the ship on the right (from the direction you're swimming towards them) climb up the side of the ship they aren't firing from and climb the riggings all the way up the mast, if they start to see you with yellow don't worry keep going. while up there pick everybody but the scot off with ranged silent weapons (arrows/poison) no guns, leave him for last, jump on his head blow the ship and move on. ship 2 i found you can just sneak up the side and blow the poweder without worrying about anybody else as long as you time it right

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I must confess that I haven't tried that... because in my experience, firing an arrow causes every enemy in a two-mile radius to magically divine your exact location, orientation, mood and possibly underwear color, which made me question the purpose of having a bow in the first place.

 

Just more proof for my 'stealth is too random to be fun' thesis, I suppose.

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Bout the scotsman thing. I did it a fun way and climbed to the top of the ship. If you're right above them you can use your bow or poison dart then slip away so nobody can see you. Keep doing it until the scotsman is the last one and boom xD.

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God, yes... I'd almost, blissfully, forgotten about that one. I don't even know how many times I retried that one before finally pulling it off... it was particularly soul-rending because AFTERWARDS, after I'd gone to all the trouble of evading every guard, luring away the fellow patrolling outside the command-tent so I could steal the plans undetected, ect... THEN it occurred to me that fist-based stealth takedowns might not count as 'kills'. So maybe I could've just KO'd my way through the fortress instead.

 

Or maybe not. Didn't get a chance to try it. It might still count as 'kills' even though people you knock out barehanded obviously remain alive, squirming around on the floor and stuff. Somebody should try it out...

 

I didn't even try. Wasn't worth it. What was probably the worst part was not getting to the objectives, but getting out. There were guards facing both sides of both exits. I had no idea how to do it so after 10 minutes I just made a break for it.

 

And I'm in the middle of the 6th scene/act. Only have to go back and do one thing. Anyone know how to stop the snitches from calling in reinforcements?

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