Ubisoft launched the second major title update for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla last week, Title Update 1.2.0. It added a bunch of new stuff to the game, including Transmog and the Ostara Festival. However, it also added something called the Godly Reward Pack. This is a community reward pack that acts as a thank you to players for keeping the game alive. It gives players an outfit for Altiar, as well as all the tattoos, armor, and weapons from the Yule Festival. I have a big problem with this because they’ve undermined all of the work that players like me put in during the Yule Festival to get that stuff. What was the point if it was going to be made freely available?
I love time-limited rewards. I think they’re a great reason to keep playing a game during its events so that you have everything that you could possibly get in the game. As a collector, it makes me feel like I’m making the most of my time with the game. Loads of other players compliment the Yule Festival armor because it looks absolutely mental when upgraded to Mythical status. However, it took a long time to earn the Yule Tokens required to buy that armor. Now, all that effort may as well have been for nothing, because everyone has the armor.
The worst thing that a developer can do, at least in my book, is something like this. It undermines your dedicated player base, and makes them feel like their time in the game isn’t worth the time of day. With the Ostara Festival around the corner, I was ready to grind for even more time-limited rewards. Now though, I reckon we could all leave it and we’ll still get it in a few months anyway. That’s the kind of attitude that more players will now have, and it’ll mean that most won’t bother playing the in-game event at all.
Ubisoft has shot themselves in the foot with this one, and they really do deserve for the Ostara Festival to be underwhelming as a result. If they want to reward players, it should be with brand new gear like the Altair Outift, not something that genuine fans have worked hard for.