Last week, Ubisoft launched the Ostara Festival in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. This is the latest bout of fresh content that the game has seen and actually makes for the second time-limited event in the game’s short history. The festival is packed with new activities to take on, and there are some great rewards to purchase with tokens earned from those activities that won’t be available anywhere else. This is the kind of stuff I love to see in games, but Ubisoft seems to be having a hard time of it at the moment. Over the weekend they had to push a patch that removes a lot of the features because they’ve been causing players’ games to crash.
We’re deploying a server-side hotfix to address a rise in crashing near Ravensthorpe. Settlement decorations will be temporarily removed and Ostara Festival quests involving decorations will not be completable. Thanks for your patience as our team releases a permanent fix soon! pic.twitter.com/gYG7O8dvF3
— Assassin's Creed (@assassinscreed) March 20, 2021
The hotfix removes the ability to customise the decorations around Ravensthorpe, and some other items have been removed from the game because they’re causing all kinds of issues. When I think about it, I experienced a crash as the festival started, and I was incredibly annoyed by it. The main issue here isn’t a lack of content, if anything, Valhalla has more than enough content to keep you busy for hundreds of hours. Instead, this is an issue of quality. Ubisoft doesn’t seem to be checking their updates as thoroughly as they once did, and it’s detrimental to the overall experience in my opinion.
I’ve been saying for years that I’d rather have a great game than a buggy game, meaning I’ll always accept a game’s release date being delayed. Rushing causes errors, and the only people to suffer from those errors are players. I’d rather avoid that because this is where it lands us. It feels like the Ostara Festival is a piece of content that’s meant to keep players vaguely satisfied before Wrath of the Druids launches. In reality, it’s a buggy update that hinders the overall experience. I don’t think anyone wanted this.
Right now Ubisoft needs to take note. Regular buggy updates aren’t what the community wants. We want great new content when it’s ready and has been playtested a bit more than this was. Let’s hope that the first DLC for the game has a smoother launch.
