I realize nobody is listening at Ubisoft, if the past few months have shown us anything, our complaints and our hopes increasingly fall upon deaf ears, and so, I must admit, I am broken, I cannot continue to hold out any hope for this game. I will delete Valhalla from my drive today, but before I go, I feel as if I have earned the right to scream into the void, so to speak, do feel free to move along if rehashing old complaints and bitter recriminations don't appeal to you.

I bought Valhalla pre scaling, in fact, it was the reason I was willing to buy it in the first place. The ability to turn off scaling or being able to tailor it to an individual's style of play is crucial to the RPG experience. To change this a month after release, with no warning, and with no option to avoid it is, in my opinion, unconscionable. Ubisoft either sacrificed a plurality of their audience to the whims of another, or felt that they should control how people play. With more than one interview from people working on the game telling us there would be no scaling, I felt lied to, and betrayed.

Yet still I soldiered on into this beautiful, albeit in the same vein sometimes boring world that was laid out before me. I suffered with the lackluster parkour mechanic, and succeeded in getting to England, and began to subsequently ignore the main story, and explore the map. This lasted till about my tenth treasure chest that I had to search down a key for, or find a hidden entrance for, that only rewarded me with cheap resources that I did not need. This whole endeavor felt like busywork that's only purpose must be to extend the life of a shallow game, with only enough substance for a short playthrough, not the deep exploration of a true RPG. I was disappointed, and frustrated.

But, I persevered. Maybe the exploration section was busywork, surely the main quest would breathe new life into this game. I would be a Viking hero, and settle in England. This lasted until The Absence of an Ealdorman, which bugged out on me, and stalled my progress for a couple months, and while this quest has been fixed for me and some others, this game is inundated with a plethora more, some game breaking, some just irritating, but all unacceptable, this long after release. I am infuriated, and disgusted.

Still, my better nature, and my forgiving attitude prevailed. I will seek out other things to do while this game is fixed, I assured myself that such a large game must have something for me to bide my time with, so I once again began to explore, plodding around, doing lackluster world events, and searching for varying amounts of dross in overly hidden chests. At this point I came upon a Zealot, and proceeded to be thoroughly trounced, having to retreat to safety. Fear not, I thought, I am playing a game where stealth is an option, I will sneak up and take the upper hand. Little did I know that Ubi had once again been misleading. To my surprise, I could not stealth attack this Zealot, there was no option to do so, there must be some mistake. I paused my game, and checked my menu options, guaranteed assassination was on, and the menu option clearly stated that ALL enemies were subject to it. Is a Zealot not an enemy, are they really my friend? No, just something Ubisoft felt I should work harder at. I felt patronized, and belittled.

At this point, I stopped playing Valhalla, it has sat on my drive for weeks, untouched. Today it will leave, and, while I may pay attention to updates from Ubisoft, I will no longer be tempted unless serious change is made. An RPG is about player choice, to rob us of these things lessens your products, and in my opinion, lessens you as a company. We want to play your games, but on our terms, in the world you created. If you keep altering it while we are trying to find our way, or everytime we use our ingenuity to play differently, you will only alienate your broader audience, and limit yourselves to your core base. If that is your plan, go forth, but if you want to bring your products to the masses, I urge you to treat us like the adults we are, and not the children you seem to want us to be.

Goodbye Ubisoft, it's been a great run.

Congratulations, many of your arguments would be compelling, and cogent, if you in fact OWNED anything in the transaction you had with Ubisoft. They get away with all this because you did not purchase a product, your purchased a license to use something. Something that is under the sole discretion of Ubisoft.

If you bought the game digitally, or purchased any additional content, they can revoke your license at their discretion, period.

If you bought it in physical form, while you may have access to the game that is on your physical media, Ubisoft can stop you from upgrading it, purchasing additional content, or connecting to any of their servers.

You are stuck on the idea of ownership, you didn't buy Assassins creed Valhalla, you dont own it, you bought a license to use it, for the term that Ubisoft sees fit to allow it.

You didn't buy an armor pack, you dont own it, you bought a license to use an armor pack, for the term that Ubisoft sees fit to allow it.

So long as they dont do something so completely beyond the pal, as to be deemed unconscionable by a court of law, you are stuck with their way or the highway.

Reading the patch notes left me with questions on the scaling options. With the phrase "Boss encounters and game modes will not be impacted by this as they have their own intended difficulty settings," it seems that boss encounters wont be impacted by any level scaling decision, they will neither get easier, nor harder. This could also probably, i.e. hopefully, be read as the boss's base level will not be altered, but then they will scale accordingly. Any thoughts?

I think my title explains enough, but if this was actually a MTX, it would be one I would reluctantly buy.

A little upset, mildly repulsed by this board at the moment. I looked through the posts on this board, and after checking my notifications could not find my post on the board. I looked through several days, and could only find my post by searching for it, with the supplied function. So I would not run into this by just casually reading the boards. I am not one to accuse without at least an inkling of suspicion, so maybe this is a glitch, maybe my double checking missed my post 3 times, many things are possible, but it feels like my rant was conveniently hidden. So, I hope you all will forgive me if I reply to myself, just to verify the veracity of my claim, or to justify my own quasi paranoia.

I realize nobody is listening at Ubisoft, if the past few months have shown us anything, our complaints and our hopes increasingly fall upon deaf ears, and so, I must admit, I am broken, I cannot continue to hold out any hope for this game. I will delete Valhalla from my drive today, but before I go, I feel as if I have earned the right to scream into the void, so to speak, do feel free to move along if rehashing old complaints and bitter recriminations don't appeal to you.

I bought Valhalla pre scaling, in fact, it was the reason I was willing to buy it in the first place. The ability to turn off scaling or being able to tailor it to an individual's style of play is crucial to the RPG experience. To change this a month after release, with no warning, and with no option to avoid it is, in my opinion, unconscionable. Ubisoft either sacrificed a plurality of their audience to the whims of another, or felt that they should control how people play. With more than one interview from people working on the game telling us there would be no scaling, I felt lied to, and betrayed.

Yet still I soldiered on into this beautiful, albeit in the same vein sometimes boring world that was laid out before me. I suffered with the lackluster parkour mechanic, and succeeded in getting to England, and began to subsequently ignore the main story, and explore the map. This lasted till about my tenth treasure chest that I had to search down a key for, or find a hidden entrance for, that only rewarded me with cheap resources that I did not need. This whole endeavor felt like busywork that's only purpose must be to extend the life of a shallow game, with only enough substance for a short playthrough, not the deep exploration of a true RPG. I was disappointed, and frustrated.

But, I persevered. Maybe the exploration section was busywork, surely the main quest would breathe new life into this game. I would be a Viking hero, and settle in England. This lasted until The Absence of an Ealdorman, which bugged out on me, and stalled my progress for a couple months, and while this quest has been fixed for me and some others, this game is inundated with a plethora more, some game breaking, some just irritating, but all unacceptable, this long after release. I am infuriated, and disgusted.

Still, my better nature, and my forgiving attitude prevailed. I will seek out other things to do while this game is fixed, I assured myself that such a large game must have something for me to bide my time with, so I once again began to explore, plodding around, doing lackluster world events, and searching for varying amounts of dross in overly hidden chests. At this point I came upon a Zealot, and proceeded to be thoroughly trounced, having to retreat to safety. Fear not, I thought, I am playing a game where stealth is an option, I will sneak up and take the upper hand. Little did I know that Ubi had once again been misleading. To my surprise, I could not stealth attack this Zealot, there was no option to do so, there must be some mistake. I paused my game, and checked my menu options, guaranteed assassination was on, and the menu option clearly stated that ALL enemies were subject to it. Is a Zealot not an enemy, are they really my friend? No, just something Ubisoft felt I should work harder at. I felt patronized, and belittled.

At this point, I stopped playing Valhalla, it has sat on my drive for weeks, untouched. Today it will leave, and, while I may pay attention to updates from Ubisoft, I will no longer be tempted unless serious change is made. An RPG is about player choice, to rob us of these things lessens your products, and in my opinion, lessens you as a company. We want to play your games, but on our terms, in the world you created. If you keep altering it while we are trying to find our way, or everytime we use our ingenuity to play differently, you will only alienate your broader audience, and limit yourselves to your core base. If that is your plan, go forth, but if you want to bring your products to the masses, I urge you to treat us like the adults we are, and not the children you seem to want us to be.

Goodbye Ubisoft, it's been a great run.

Congratulations, many of your arguments would be compelling, and cogent, if you in fact OWNED anything in the transaction you had with Ubisoft. They get away with all this because you did not purchase a product, your purchased a license to use something. Something that is under the sole discretion of Ubisoft.

If you bought the game digitally, or purchased any additional content, they can revoke your license at their discretion, period.

If you bought it in physical form, while you may have access to the game that is on your physical media, Ubisoft can stop you from upgrading it, purchasing additional content, or connecting to any of their servers.

You are stuck on the idea of ownership, you didn't buy Assassins creed Valhalla, you dont own it, you bought a license to use it, for the term that Ubisoft sees fit to allow it.

You didn't buy an armor pack, you dont own it, you bought a license to use an armor pack, for the term that Ubisoft sees fit to allow it.

So long as they dont do something so completely beyond the pal, as to be deemed unconscionable by a court of law, you are stuck with their way or the highway.

Let's unpack a couple of things, the argument you brought about is legal in nature, we will get to this, your moral stance on the other hand is spot on, Ubisoft should offer refunds when they change a product, altering something so fundamentally after purchase is screwed up, but with many things, morality does not always line up with legality.

Now, back to the matter at hand.
First, Terms of Service agreements may be one thing, but we are not talking about Tos agreements, we are talking EULAs, which are legally binding. There are whole sectors of digital copyright laws devoted to these, and they are always in corporate favor. Before buying any product digitally you agree to be bound by them. Ask Ubisoft for your end user license agreement, they will be happy to show it to you.

Second, even though I said product in the above paragraph, you have actually not purchased a product, that armor that you claim you have bought is not a product. You have only bought a license to use a piece of their intellectual property, they can change that intellectual property, in any way, up to and including deletion of said product. The only way this comes out as a bait and switch, is if they alter the intellectual property between time a purchase and download, and even then youd only be eligible for a refund, at that, there is still no crime.

I get it, it's a raw deal, for all of us, but as we only buy access to something they own, they will always control what it is, even to the detriment of our sense of fun. I wish you the best in your endeavour, if it works out for you, it works out for us all. Keep arguing, I just dont think it's going to get you anywhere.

You are not going to get much traction using your current argument. The terms of service agreement that you go along with just by ordering the game or buying anything from Ubisoft digitally, allow for Ubisoft to change it at will, as you only have a license to use the product, you do not actually own anything. It's the whole reason they can release a game as unfinished as this, and constantly update it without our permission.

You may be able to get somewhere with the fact that some of their in game menus refer to activities in the game that cannot be accomplished, ie guaranteed assassination working on ALL enemies.

The only other option I see is to get a court to nullify the agreement by ruling that Ubisofts conduct was unconscionable. A ruling such as that would allow the court to force Ubisoft to either fix what had been done, or make restitution. I really dont see the diamond slot issue being much use here, sure it's down right infuriating, but they issued a release about, and notified the community at large about changes, and furthermore it does not alter the base game enough to violate an end user license agreement (EULA).

The only action I see thus far by Ubisoft that may be deemed unconscionable by a court may be their level scaling. There were multiple interviews and press releases stating that this would not be a feature in Valhalla, yet without even warning us, they placed it in the game, fundamentally altering the playing experience of anyone who bought it before December 14th. If you bought it at launch, this is not the same game you played on day one.

But even after saying all this, EULAs are so broadly written that it is almost impossible to get a company to issue refunds, or make changes, because they hold all the cards. Even CD project red was not deemed unconscionable by a court, they were shamed into providing refunds by the public and corporate partners. Until digital ownership laws are updated to reflect the current times, its buyer beware, or just dont play their game.