Assassin’s Creed 4 multiplayer: Every ability, perk, and streak shown by Loomer979
Just because I’m technically on “vacation” doesn’t mean I’m not following every drip of news regarding AC4: Black Flag multiplayer. Today, Loomer released a video explaining all the changes and updates to the base game, some of which are minor… others of which will have consequences I can’t even imagine yet. You’re certainly encouraged to watch the video, but some important notes:
- There are no longer chases. It is unclear at this time how this affects chase-like behaviors and scoring.
- There are no longer silent streaks. Instead, silent kills count as two kills towards all streaks.
- Smoke Bomb and Throwing Knives have both received large nerfs, hurting the stun-baiting strategy.
- Almost every ability can now be thrown/deployed at distance.
- Money Bomb has been slightly buffed. Prepare to ride to victory on a gold-plated chariot!
Obviously it’s too early to understand just how some of these changes will affect AC4 multiplayer balance and strategy, but some preliminary guesses might be:
- With fewer easy stuns and less of a contested kill penalty, pursuers will generally be more aggressive.
- As such, target players may be forced to rely on skills like Morph and Bodyguard, or Tripwire Bomb/Booby Trap in less conventional defensive scenarios.
- Firecrackers and Time Phase will be the abilities to watch out for as they negate key strategies while having additional versatility.
- Game Lab is going to be extremely popular in the community amongst players who are angered by these changes!
Well, those are just my thoughts… how do Black Flag’s updates sit in your stomach?
I really don’t like the change to aiming time for Throwing Knives. I never held the button down to aim. I always just tapped it to throw them.
So Ubisoft actually has functioning human brains. Hm. That’s going to make admitting whose office I recently incinerated quite awkward…
See, this is what happens when you listen to community feedback instead of insisting on Firecrackers being the best ability ever. Assuming that you don’t get something like 15 seconds per craft off of Smoke’s cooldown, this looks to be a game full of fun, innovative, and actually balanced abilities. Sure Smoke remains, but using it will lock you to only one ability for almost a full TWO MINUTES. A far leap from the BS in ACR where you could easily see 10 Smokes per person per match. Besides, there are now decent counters to it. Ooh, I’m sorry, did your Smoke not go off? Somebody must have sabotaged it, tee hee. Also glad to see the delay brought back to make it less of an “No, *I* win” button.
Why am I talking about Smoke so much? Because there didn’t use to be any other abilities, that’s why.
I really like the streak and perk changes too. Now, you’ll actually have to choose between twelve very viable, gameplay-dependent choices. Though I’m just not sure about the kill streaks’ triggers. Yes, it’s golden to have fun streaks be an easier alternative to bland score rewards, but when it’s just three kills between 250 points (which already take FIVE silent kills) and muthahubbin’ Hack, it does seem a bit odd. Loss streaks are great though, might actually even run the switchy thingy assuming that you don’t get its effects at literally any time for just a small simulated micropayment like in AC3. (My salary for this month says you used to have to pay Erudito credits to switch sets mid-life, but Ubisoft changed it when it proved too obvious.)
Also, do we have information on what “Crafting unlocked at Prestige 1 and level X” means? Do you actually have to go through the entire leveling process, twice for some abilities, to craft them?
In case you’re not familiar with AC multiplayer leveling, picture leveling a Priest during WoW classic as Discipline spec, except that it takes three times as long still (after removing all of the -300% xp nerfs they gave the old content) and all quests are replaced by driving rusty nails into various spots on your body.
Animus Hack is only super-good in Deathmatch. In pretty much any other mode, the maps are too big and the players are too hard to ID to use the hack efficiently. Getting a score boost is always useful, but getting the ability to smite players is only useful if you can find them.
And while crafting is generally useful, winning comes down to smart plays 90% of the time, with minor things like “my ability had 5 seconds on cooldown” being a tiny fraction of what decides most matches. Plus, new players don’t know abilities well enough to know how to craft them anyway.
You’re implying that I’d ever play anything but Deathmatch, since anything but Deathmatch is a dumby-dumbdumb running match.
Thinking about it, while score streaks got nerfed hard, any other streak is practically useless outside of Deathmatch. Revelation will be quite nice to have since it ends on death or getting stunned, not a kill or stun. I foresee a team mode meta of protecting one person to keep their Revelation active so that all pursuers are revealed. Since you can damn sure bet that Throwing Knives will remain the free stun they are now, Revelation could even find use as a low-risk low-reward kind of streak in solo modes.
Got the game 3 days ago. Both single player and multiplayer are breathtaking! Wolfpack is blast! The multiplayer maps are wicked awesome. So much better than AC3’s maps (which I hated!).
Knife stuns are def out of the question. Have been trying to do them last couple days and everytime the hunter kills me.
Players use a lot of Time Phase, Tripwire, Disquice and Decoy abilities especially on Deathmatch.
Kinda miss the Silent Streak +250, but with good abilities and silent kills you can make the 250 streak work. It is however challenging because all the new players are running around like headless chickens killing their targets for little points. That however never changes XD