@jpabenites I agree with you. Back in the day, when we had Action RPGs, like Mass Effect 2 and 3, AC1, AC2, AC2 Brotherhood etc., they were linear, cheaper and faster to do multiple runs through. Open world RPGs and MMORPGs, however, are built in a way to have their players continue playing for hundreds of hours last completion of the story quests and whatnot.

Odyssey did it okayish (Still not a fan of seeing epics and legendaries before the endgame), but the gear was done to an MMORPG standard. The procs are cool and there are builds to farm for. Key word: farm. What's to farm in Valhalla? It's a massive fk off game with tonnes to do but... there's one issue.

A total lack of structured loot. There are rarities, yeah, but they're garbage. Why the heck do we have access to mythical gear as early as level 5? Why?? Why do we have no commons, uncommons, rares, magics?

Let me reiterate: Valhalla has no room for real builds. The skill tree is not how you build a character in an MMORPG or open world RPG. The GEAR is how you build your character, because it's the gear that adds all of the stats to min/max and the endgame Raid/Dungeon lore based thematic LEGENDARIES that have the coolest aesthetics and procs that we dream of, and FARM for.

My use of capitalisation is for emphasis, by the way.

Now, Montreal screwed this up by implementing their "unique " gear, with the most mundane, booooring set bonuses. Half of the bonuses are supposed to be on weapons, not armour. Yet the 5 piece set bonuses are additional stats? That's not how it works my dudes. The 5 piece set bonus is supposed to be what makes your build work and what you work around. Something like consuming stacks to deal status ailments upon heavy hits or a chance to summon your lieutenant for 30 seconds upon critical hits.

Also, their excuse of crafting "unique gear" is lazy and uninspired. I don't mean it in a mean way, it's just an observation. There's nothing unique about any of the gear bonuses I have and have read about. They're all very boring and not what I'd even call unique. You find most of this gear in chests. If they were unique, would they not be acquired by way of lore specific quests (like Thor's armour), treasure hunts with maps, rumours from NPCs or found at the bottom of a lake or something Idfk.

I don't feel like the Huntsman gear set reflects its value from the way it's acquired. I didn't have ti hunt for anything, I just found it in chests. Laaaaaame.

Montreal, you need to talk to Quebec and redo the entire gear system from scratch. I just can't see myself replaying a $130 game that has nothing to farm for. If the Fenrir boss fight doesn't drop Fenrir themed gear with a 5 piece set that has a 5% chance to summon Fenrir for 60 seconds (once every 2 minutes), I'm done. This game is officially disappointing.

I feel there was a missed opportunity to have us equip armour and clothing specific to the time period. All I have for Eivor is unique gear with set bonuses. That's great and all, guys, but you developers really need to understand how these MMORPG mechanics work. They implement common, uncommon, rare and magic gear for a good reason. It's not to dump early gear stat spreads onto us, it's to fuel the lore.

You really could have done something special here, like looting the armour off the guards or bandits we kill in the open world or finding armour and weapons stashed in the barracks of outposts and monasteries. It feels absolutely ridiculous to be walking around in superior and mythical gear sets so early on in the narrative.

What I'm saying here, is that modern developers disrespect the values of item rarities. You have us walking around in such high tier gear so early on, that they lose their value. Gear sets with set bonuses are usually legendaries that drop in end game dungeons or Raids. So why do I have the opportunity to upgrade gear sets to mythical rarity with such low effort? Why can I do that at all??

Why do you guys even do this if you can't do it the way it is supposed to be done? Despite how much I dislike Odyssey, Ubisoft Quebec at least got that right.

I expected more from the legends behind the Assassin's Creed IP.

At least you got everything else right, so not all is lost.

@jpabenites I feel you on this too. Like, this is the 9th century. So where are the Anglo-Saxon armour and weapons? Where are the hlenca? Where are the coppergate helms? We're not even wearing Germanic armour. The Raven clan stuff, sure, but what about the mail or the cloth and leather armour?

There is no variety in the gear. There's no historical accuracy in this gear.

Montreal could have innovated on top of Odyssey, made their gear system better but they downgraded it for no reason.

Booooooring.

@ehllfhire1 Those came from reviewers who don't even play RPGs or MMORPGs. If Ubisoft actually believed they had credibiity, they screwed up big time. Of all the content creators that play Odyssey the most, they are RPG fanatics. They LOVE Odyssey and Quebec's gear system and they're right to do so. It not only gives us builds and something to farm for, it gives us transmogrification. You cannot have transmog, without the gear placed in your inventory. The transmog effects only apply to gear you pick up, therefore Valhalla cannot implement this system which is the crux many players now are crowing about.

There is always a good thing about MMORPG item rarities (done right) in open world RPGs. It appeals to the hardcore RPG/MMORPG fanatic and it appeals to the casual gamer, because who doesn't enjoy seeing a fresh new set of greaves they picked up from a bandit, or a really cool monster unique they looted from a world boss that took them an hour to kill?

@netspook Aye, I know the type. Everyone is entitled to their opinions of course, but to defend objective issues is a wasted endeavor. There are undeniable issues with Valhalla, from random crashes to internet connectivity issues (yet you can play it offline so why is this even a problem?). There's nothing to defend here. For example, why am I still seeing the gods annoying issue that plagued AC2 (jumping onto a platform Eivor was never aimed at, for instance)? Why is the stealth system so fatally flawed? Why can't my horse jump off a 1 metre ledge, but it is fine jumping off a 100 metre cliff?

Valhalla is not perfect and the more I play, the worse it gets. It is fatally flawed and it saddens me. I love Ubisoft Montreal. They're the genius minds who began this franchise, but they really dropped the ball hard with this one.

@forcefrank Absolutely. I rather enjoyed Odyssey's abundance of armour because it gave me something to farm for, something to build. I feel like Valhalla is going to have absolutely no replay value whatsoever and no reason to continue playing once the story and mysteries are done.

This is the issue and the one thing I hate about developers who try to use MMORPGs as the template to build upon: they do not conform to the rules that all MMORPGs abide by.

There is nothing wrong with spending hundreds of hours wearing purple gear (epic, unique, whatever the devs choose to call them) before you start collecting the rarest legendary sets from Raids or dungeons. That's what makes MMORPGs fun to play. The build variety, the reason to continue playing them for hundreds of more hours. Odyssey isn't even a fully fledged MMO and it already dove in the right direction. So why did Valhalla downgrade?

There's an extremely lazy excuse in saying "we wanted to craft gear that's unique, to have more of an impact than random gear". Firstly, check yourself before you make that statement. The Huntsman set is all wrong. Montreal have given it the extra damage every 20 metres further from an enemy yeah?

That perk goes on a bow, not on a set of armour. I personally would have put a better proc on a LEGENDARY set, of the Huntsman, which would be something like 'longer detection time for animals and hostile NPCs' for a 2-3 piece bonus, then 'extra damage when shooting unaware animals and hostiles' or 'double damage when shooting from the shadows or a hiding place' for a 5 piece set bonus.

Secondly, gear set bonuses should only ever be applied to legendary gear. If they're stubborn on this, the least they could have done was apply the set bonuses to mythical gear and have anything of lesser rarity be stats for spreads or 'builds'.

Thirdly, the gear in-game isn't even reflective of the time period. It's not thematic, it's actually quite lazy. Where are the sets of hlenca? Coppergate helms? Half of the gear that existed in the Anglo-Saxon period of the 5th and 11th century is not obtainable, nor can we even loot it. We can't even have our armoursmith craft us armour. What use is he then? Just for upgrades? Or boring gear that should only exist in linear isometrics like Icewind Dale or Planescape?

Have the devs even played MMORPGs and done extensive research into what makes a good proc and what makes a bad proc? If the bonus on a gear set is boring or not flashy or outright mundane, it should not be on that gear.

Let's look at what makes Valhalla's gear set bonuses so terrible. Firstly, the Berserker set: Increase speed when taking damage until you heal yourself - Additional increase to attack and armour.

Now, this does not sound at all like the berserkers of old. Why were they even called berserkers? Because they fought without feeling pain. For Christ's sake, at least take a look at the history and make something fun out of this set. What should be done here, is this:

2-3 set piece bonus - Taking damage builds a multiplier of increased damage (up to 4x stack). 5 set piece bonus - Once you have all stacks, doing a heavy attack spends those stacks to deal massive damage, bypassing the stun bar of any enemy at the cost of dealing 10% of your maximum health as damage to yourself.

What Montreal have done here, is screwed it all up. They have added boring stat increases for the 5 piece set bonus instead of a PROC. A proc is a special modifier that activates upon a chance percentage. This can be anything from a 5% chance to deal damage over time on hit or critical hits allow you to use a skill with no global cooldown, once per minute. Those are old school MMORPG procs but modern ones are more fun like a 5% chance to summon a thunderbolt upon hit (once every 2 minutes) or a 1% chance to summon an Asgardian warrior upon critical hit (once every 5 minutes) for 60 seconds.

Montreal clearly did not think this through, or they ran out of time. I want to believe that they knew what they wanted but had to ship out this mess early, because the gear and their set bonuses are absolutely atrocious and boring.

@netspook That's a good point too. In real warfare, no one is stupid enough to strip down their kills to take their pants, but we can anyway. GR Breakpoint is, hence, a looter shooter yes? Like The Division 1 and 2, Destiny 1 and 2, Mass Effect 1.

But this loot chaser Sofajockey speaks of.... Quebec were not denying that Odyssey would be an RPG, a looter of sorts. So why try to push credence on something that's a fallacy? It's like complaining about jump scares in a horror film, a review that's written by someone who only watches romance films. Of course they're going to moan about something they don't enjoy in games they don't usually play.

For RPG and MMORPG fans, Odyssey is a fine game that deserves its praise. Valhalla is a far cry from that bar. They actually lowered it, when no one even asked them to.

@martygod12 What concerns me the most is the lack of anything to farm for. I have no real reason to hunt down and kill the Zealots cuz they don't drop cool [censored]. There are no monster uniques, no world boss drops, nothing.

Why the heck, then, would I purchase a $130 game that I'm only gonna play once? Dare I call this a cash grab?? Give me a reason, Montreal, to spend hundreds of hours in this game as I have in TES Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim, WoW, AC Odyssey, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, literally any open world RPG that has gear drops.

Give me a reason to care about playing this game past the story. I need one, Montreal, I spent too much money on this thing to abandon it for better games like TD2, or even returning to Odyssey.

And, as I stated a few times, we need to see some historical accuracy here. Vikings were too poor to craft anything with metals so they mostly stole it all. What are we stealing, Montreal? I don't see any Anglo-Saxon armour and weapons in my inventory. In fact, I see [censored] I can't even rid myself of.

You need to re-evaluate your gear system, friends. Cuz it is lacking

P.S.

To clarify, I can only loot placed weapons and armour. There are no rescanning chests with anything new in the (obviously non-existent) loot pool. So, as for Anglo-Saxon armour and weapons to loot, it's all unimpressive named gear with lame perks on them. Increase damage after every light hit (up to 6 times)? 6 times? What happens after the sixth hit then? Does it reset? How long until I can start stacking it again?

God, Montreal, fix your gear

@cell1e Aye. Ngl, I'm getting fed up with having to waste time backtracking across acres of open fking countryside to pick up three arrows from a random outpost or camp, just to waste them tryna kill the stupid boar that hunted me across the fields just to hit and run. I understand the reality of how expensive metals were for Norsemen, but if we were playing a historically accurate game about Northern Germanic tribesmen, it would be a little bit boring because of how slow the pacing would be.

With that being said, I'm still peeved that I can't get a wonderful surprise looting RNG weapons and armour pieces from corpses. Feels bad, man.

@adkogz7 You'd prefer Origins, but without the abundance of lootable weapons? Just skins for different aesthetics but nothing to build? I can respect that, but in an open world RPG that would be way out of place. It would make more sense for a smaller, more linear game world.

@adkogz7 You'd prefer Origins, but without the abundance of lootable weapons? Just skins for different aesthetics but nothing to build? I can respect that, but in an open world RPG that would be way out of place. It would make more sense for a smaller, more linear game world.

@w1dowmakers Aye. And why are the "legendaries" so boring? Sleipnir Shield - blocking temporarily increases back damage. What does that even mean? Like, backSTAB damage? And why is this thing worth 120 pieces of Opal?? Plus wouldn't you assign backstab damage to a dagger? Why the heck is it on a shield?

This gear is ridiculous.

*edit* like off-hand daggers. Why would anyone even wield a dagger with a large shield like this anyway? I am absolutely bamboozled right now

@cell1e Aye. Ngl, I'm getting fed up with having to waste time backtracking across acres of open fking countryside to pick up three arrows from a random outpost or camp, just to waste them tryna kill the stupid boar that hunted me across the fields just to hit and run. I understand the reality of how expensive metals were for Norsemen, but if we were playing a historically accurate game about Northern Germanic tribesmen, it would be a little bit boring because of how slow the pacing would be.

With that being said, I'm still peeved that I can't get a wonderful surprise looting RNG weapons and armour pieces from corpses. Feels bad, man.

@reedaaaa If all else fails, set it on fire. That's what I do :3

@jpabenites Aye. I do sometimes come across as bashful or rude, but that's not my intention.

One more thing that's weird about this "unique gear", is that it implies that whatever Eivor wears only exists in one set ever made. Does that mean that nobody else can wear the furs that he wears? Or the weird iron helmet with leather padding? Yet there seems to be no issues with standard armour procurement for the NPCs we fight. They all wear the same stuff. Why can't we take that stuff? Furthermore, I thought wearing bearskins was a Roman thing?

I just don't understand what's going on here. If Montreal wanted to make an action RPG like the older AC games, why did they throw stats and gear set bonuses onto their aesthetic gear? Why did they make their game world so large?? Why are there leveled zones??? Bruh

Look, if you're gonna use MMORPG mechanics then use all of them. Don't half [censored] it otherwise you get criticisms like this and it just isn't fun to read, because nobody wants to see their hard work being put under the scope of negative analysis.

@reedaaaa O right. Yeah, that's an issue. Perhaps try a different vantage point? Sometimes you gotta break stuff to be able to shoot stuff inside a different room, to then move stuff to open a doorway.

@netspook Aye, I know the type. Everyone is entitled to their opinions of course, but to defend objective issues is a wasted endeavor. There are undeniable issues with Valhalla, from random crashes to internet connectivity issues (yet you can play it offline so why is this even a problem?). There's nothing to defend here. For example, why am I still seeing the gods annoying issue that plagued AC2 (jumping onto a platform Eivor was never aimed at, for instance)? Why is the stealth system so fatally flawed? Why can't my horse jump off a 1 metre ledge, but it is fine jumping off a 100 metre cliff?

Valhalla is not perfect and the more I play, the worse it gets. It is fatally flawed and it saddens me. I love Ubisoft Montreal. They're the genius minds who began this franchise, but they really dropped the ball hard with this one.

@ehllfhire1 Those came from reviewers who don't even play RPGs or MMORPGs. If Ubisoft actually believed they had credibiity, they screwed up big time. Of all the content creators that play Odyssey the most, they are RPG fanatics. They LOVE Odyssey and Quebec's gear system and they're right to do so. It not only gives us builds and something to farm for, it gives us transmogrification. You cannot have transmog, without the gear placed in your inventory. The transmog effects only apply to gear you pick up, therefore Valhalla cannot implement this system which is the crux many players now are crowing about.

There is always a good thing about MMORPG item rarities (done right) in open world RPGs. It appeals to the hardcore RPG/MMORPG fanatic and it appeals to the casual gamer, because who doesn't enjoy seeing a fresh new set of greaves they picked up from a bandit, or a really cool monster unique they looted from a world boss that took them an hour to kill?

@detroitin2019 I respect that :3 I still have a deep seated love for AC1 and AC2, my all time favorite ARPGs. The issue though, with open world games like these, is that their very nature requires end-game content to keep us invested, because they are far too large to replay multiple times. Especially if there's no gear to farm for, to min/max stats, or even gear with really cool procs to be excited about. Tell me, what's exciting about increased movement/attack speed upon hit? For a legendary gear set?

I fully expected something closer to a real RPG from this game. Y'know, some set bonuses that give us extra projectile damage when shooting from the shadows or a hiding place (like how you can shoot from haystacks or bushes), or a legendary set that gives you a 100% chance to fatally kill someone by landing on them from a specific height (not via assassination). Something cool, y'know? What really peeves me though, is the lack of historically accurate armour. They got some of the weapons right, but who plays an open world RPG to stare at their weapon the whole time? 100% of our experience is gonna be spent staring at our player character, so we need to see some armour that's appropriate for the time that this game is set in yeah? That would be 873 AD, the 9th century: most commonly known as the Anglo-Saxon period.

I don't see [censored] from that period of history. I don't see any leather spaulders, chainmail cuisses, spangenhelms. Nothing of the sort. Nor can we loot these from barracks, monasteries, heck: we can't even craft leather armour.

I'm all for unique, lore-based, weapons and armour. I've played Balder's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Icewind Dale. I've played TES Morrowind, which had hand-placed unique weapons and daedric armor sets in specific locales across Vvardenfell. I am no stranger to these mechanics and systems, but Montreal screwed it all up. This is their crime.

@martygod12 What concerns me the most is the lack of anything to farm for. I have no real reason to hunt down and kill the Zealots cuz they don't drop cool [censored]. There are no monster uniques, no world boss drops, nothing.

Why the heck, then, would I purchase a $130 game that I'm only gonna play once? Dare I call this a cash grab?? Give me a reason, Montreal, to spend hundreds of hours in this game as I have in TES Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim, WoW, AC Odyssey, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, literally any open world RPG that has gear drops.

Give me a reason to care about playing this game past the story. I need one, Montreal, I spent too much money on this thing to abandon it for better games like TD2, or even returning to Odyssey.

And, as I stated a few times, we need to see some historical accuracy here. Vikings were too poor to craft anything with metals so they mostly stole it all. What are we stealing, Montreal? I don't see any Anglo-Saxon armour and weapons in my inventory. In fact, I see [censored] I can't even rid myself of.

You need to re-evaluate your gear system, friends. Cuz it is lacking

P.S.

To clarify, I can only loot placed weapons and armour. There are no rescanning chests with anything new in the (obviously non-existent) loot pool. So, as for Anglo-Saxon armour and weapons to loot, it's all unimpressive named gear with lame perks on them. Increase damage after every light hit (up to 6 times)? 6 times? What happens after the sixth hit then? Does it reset? How long until I can start stacking it again?

God, Montreal, fix your gear