It’s an entirely optional feedback feature that sits quietly in the corner of the synch stats screen after every mission. It’ll help the Ubisoft teams take better note of what the fans enjoy.
The little rating system has been in the game for about a year as it was thought up by creative director Jean Guesdon and executive producer Sébastien Puel.
”The idea behind this feature is to be able to get the input of our players on their appreciation of each mission,” associate producer Sylvain Trottier told Eurogamer. ”The rating is anonymous and is sent to our servers to be analysed.”
”It was implemented early in the production, more than one year ago. It’s also being used during our playtest sessions to gather the player’s feedback.” Already a lot of today’s games collect statistics on user activity, with some even glorifying the figures and encouraging fans to share them about - think Battlefield and Call of Duty K/D ratios.
”It’s fully optional,” Trottier added. ”It’s a way for our players to tell us directly whether they liked or not the mission. It’s a survey if you prefer. It will help us know which missions are the favourites and which one people like less.”
The system is being prototyped with Assassin’s Creed IV, and if it proved successful and not something that irks the community then it’s possible they might include similar mechanics in other titles. ”It’s the first time as far as I know that we are doing this. It’s a test, we don’t know how much data we will collect from there and don’t know if people will use it or not but we think it was worth trying it to get the direct feedback from our players,” he explained.
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag releases on Xbox 360 and PS3 October 29th in the US, November 1st in EU. Xbox One and PS4 at launch. Ubisoft has finally dated the PC November 19th in the US, 22nd in EU.