Reading Trophies Assassins Creed IV Black Flag

Reading Trophies Assassins Creed IV Black Flag

If there’s one thing pirates love, it’s trophies. Many a buccaneer has been educed to tears after learning just how many hours they’ll need to put into Killzone: Shadow Fall, and there are still tales on the high seas about the one guy that didn’t even manage to get down the pole in Ghostbusters. In Assassins Creed IV Black Flag, you’ll captain a ship and kill some templars, but how many people are there alongside you?

In this week’s Reading Trophies, we take a look at how many people are playing Assassin’s Creed, how they’re playing it, and just how far they’re getting.

Heroes Aren’t Born

The game begins with our hero, Edward Kenway, chasing after an assassin on a tropical island. A fairly typical 93.3% of Black Flag players managed to get through this section of the game, meeting up with Stede Bonnet and sailing to Cuba. Considering it takes only a matter of minutes, it’s no surprise, but – and what do we say here, folks? – Gamers don’t play their games.

There’s a huge drop off after that point, surprisingly massive. 78.8% got through the second sequence, and 64.6% completed sequence three. Within the space of a couple of hours, thousands of people have free run away.

There’s probably a few key reasons behind why this seems so sharp. First of all, it’s an open world game. How many of those stuck in sequence two have spent eight hours doing side missions, collecting Animus fragments? It seems a little early to get lost at sea – the ship sections by and large are later in the game – but that doesn’t mean people haven’t found alternative ways of keeping busy.

That means the average 8 or 9 hours it takes for someone to get bored of a title has probably been spent, well, not really actually interacting with that title. Then you have to account for natural drop off, rentals, borrowing… It’s probably not due to the quality of the title or that of the story (although that could easily have put people off as well).

Saw That One Coming…

It’s fair to say the best missions come at the end of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, which is probably the wrong way around. This shows, as only 22.8% of those that have synced trophies have completed Sequence 13, the final bit of the game. The final trophy, Saw That One Coming, is about as common as some of the collection trophies, again a testament to an open world. With so much to distract you, how in the hell are you supposed to focus on getting to the end?

Interestingly enough, there’s a 10% drop off between Sequence 9 and Sequence 13. This could be because the missions spike in difficulty, become longer, or it might just be a natural drop off.  More interesting than that, there’s a 0.6% drop off between Sequence 12 and Sequence 13. The last sequence is basically a couple of cutscenes and a long conversation. Hundreds of people seem to have switched off within the last ten minutes – an odd thing to do when you’ve already put in 20 or more hours.

Each mission has extra mission constants that you can do. This results in 100% sync, and there are a few bonuses for completing 100% of the missions and their bonus objectives. This is fairly easy, actually, much less complicated than with Assassin’s Creed 3, but only 2.1% of players bothered to do it. That seems fairly low – and overall it is – but it’s 9.21% of players that finished the game. When you look at it like that, the people that got their money’s worth really did.

Killer Killer

The extra missions are, unsurprisingly, rather well represented. Killer Killer, the trophy you get for harpooning a killer whale, has been completed by a massive 35.1% of players. This isn’t part of the story, it’s not prompted by any real piece of dialogue or hint. Focussing more on ship combat and upgrades, I managed to get through the entire game without doing a single harpooning mission. In comparison, only 46.4% of players killed a guard ringing a bell and received Silence, Fool!, a trophy that is awarded for doing something beneficial, regular and sign-posted by a gigantic bell symbol.

Why is Killer Killer so popular while something like Hungover, rewarded for waking up in a haystack, is so rare? Hungover requires you to drink too much at one of the many bars in the game. It’s cheap, quick, easy and can be done in multiple locations.

The obvious answer is that Killer Killer, while optional and not overly obvious, is signposted on the map and sounds pretty cool. Hungover, on the other hand, is an Easter egg trophy, and one that isn’t especially well described outside the game. Unless you were specifically looking to get it or were just persistent in wanting to see Edward entirely out of his head, you probably wouldn’t even know it was a thing.

And that’s really the big difference in the optional trophies for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. People seem more interested in doing awesome stuff than they do in finishing the story. They might not want to explore especially much – although over half (52.2%) have completely finished at least one location – but if they come across something, they’ll probably check it out.

While things like crafting the hunter outfit (Redingote Up! – 13.7%) seems practically ignored despite it being basically purchasable from any store, the fort missions seem a positive success. 21.6% of players have captures all forts, a task that would likely take quite a few hours and plenty of travel. The fort missions are in two halves: you attack the fort from the outside (from the boat) and then kill the captains within it. This takes quite a bit of skill and time.

Only 5.9% of players decided to take on the legendary ships. These are extra difficult naval battles that stress not only your sailing skills, but the state of your ship as well. You need to fully build up the Jackdaw if you want to survive (7.9% managed to to do that; it’d be higher, but it requires a ton of exploration, treasure maps and deep sea dives).

One last trophy worth mentioning is Sharing is Caring. This bronze is awarded for sharing each type of discovery once. There are specific events – hunting missions, ship convoys and chests – that when you come across them, will be “shared” with friends. Fans of the game seem especially angry about this trophy, and rightly so. Only 12.3% of gamers managed to earn it, a ridiculous amount when you consider how long you have to be playing the game to finish it. The discovery rate must be tiny, for a trophy without any real constraints (the items can pop up at any time) to be so rare.

Committed to the Cause

How are people finding the multiplayer? Well, as with other primarily single player experiences, they’re not really. It appears that probably less than 10% of Assassin’s Creed players have bothered to boot up the multiplayer, perhaps a little more (based on the 7.8% aquisition rate of Personal Bag of Tricks, which is awarded for finishing a game with a customized ability set – this is a beginner move, really). That’s still a lot of people, so it’s not like it’s dead, but you have to wonder if that kind of attach rate really makes the effort behind it worth it.

As a keen player, I have to say that it is, although I feel pretty alone in that. Getting to level 55 will put me alongside only 0.8% of players – a number made smaller by a glitch that means you only get the trophy if you hit level 55 (not if you automatically prestige, having earned too much xp).

Even rarer than reaching level 55 is the ridiculous All Rounder, which you’ll get for using every ability, playing on every game mode and attacking with every ranged weapon. You must literally do almost everything, and oly 0.5% have bothered. If it wasn’t for this, and perhaps for the level 55, this would be a fairly easy going, enjoyable platinum. Ubisoft turned it into a grind.

Conclusion

Assassins Creed IV Black Flag is a fantastic game with lots to see, and that shows in the trophies. People are popping them left, right and centre, for things they perhaps wouldn’t do in other games. The side quests seem more popular than those in Grand Theft Auto V, even, although that could be down to the fact there’s less effort needed to make it through.

Ubisoft should be proud that they’ve released a game that people are so happy to play through, although there are parts of the story that seems to lose some of the crowd.