Last month, Ubisoft released a tool that allows players to create their own quests in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Players could choose to have other players’ custom quests appear in their games.. Almost immediately came a mess of quests dedicated to rapid-fire power-levelling.
“To each their own,” you might say of this questionable practice, but Ubisoft has decided to put its battle-sandal-clad Grecian foot down and ban quests that are simply about easy XP boosting.
These custom quests would, for example, spawn NPCs to instantly kill an enemy for the player, granting them experience in seconds. Players could then repeat this process, gaining sweet, sweet XP until all their dreams came true. Now, about a month later, Ubisoft has announced in a forum post that these types of bogus quests will no longer be tolerated.
“These exploits risk jeopardizing the overall quality, integrity, and purpose of Story Creator Mode and results in less visibility for the creative, interesting and frankly fantastic community stories that have been published,” reads a note from the Assassin’s Creed community and development teams.
From now on, XP farming quests will be against the story creator tool’s terms of service. In addition, they will not be surfaced by the game’s automatic recommendation system, and Ubisoft will be “sanctioning those who continue to willingly and intentionally misuse the tool.” The company also re-dedicated itself to “actively” combating other exploits in the future.
It’s worth noting that this particular exploit might have hit close to home, given that Odyssey launched with a suite of pricey microtransactions that offered, among other things, XP and money boosts.
They’re still available, alongside others that have come along since. The company has not mentioned that with regard to these player-created quests, however. Instead, it’s focused its messaging on creating an environment in which elaborate stories about gods, men, and, in one tale discovered by Kotaku’s Joshua Rivera, Sith Lords can thrive.
“Story Creator Mode was designed to be a tool for players to let their creativity and imagination run free as they build their very own Stories to share with others,” said Ubisoft. “We want to focus on rewarding creativity by highlighting quality quests.”
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