No this isn't some crazy speculation on the story, it's more of a how Assassin's Creed 4's rate-a-mission feature may actually be more of a crazy Focus Test for Watch Dogs. Both Assassin's Creed and Watch Dogs have similar gameplay tropes (tail a person, eavesdropping, and etc.) So, what if the delay was meant to use the analytics garnered from the rate-a-mission to improve Watch Dogs gameplay and how frequently you may do the mundane stuff like tailing npcs around Chi-Town.

Just a crazy thought, but you never know.

Thats Crazy!

Fuck...

If that's the case then I fucked up by never rating anything....

Besides my favorite part of AC4 was probably exploring the islands and finding da loot (Yes I found 100% of all the loot in AC4, like a crazy person).

I imagine that's exactly what it's meant to be, but probably not specifically aimed at refining gameplay in Watch Dogs. I obviously speak from a position of ignorance regarding the development process, but I feel like Watch Dogs was probably too far along in its development to benefit from data pulled from Black Flag's ratings. More likely, in my opinion, the rating system will help shape future Creed games.

Yeah I think it's probably too late for them to completely replace or even redesign entire missions.

@doskias: Yeah, I know in the long run it's probably meant more for Assassin's Creed as franchise. I mean they also had you rate the missions on the ship, probably for when they make that proper pirate game they've been talking about. I know that they were probably close to gold before the delay, but they could have used the early ratings (1-2 months after AC 4's release) to ramp up or scale back certain types missions. From what I've experienced from game development, you're pretty much working on a project until you finalize that gold master copy.

Do they really need that much time to figure out that tailing missions are the fucking worst?

Like 2 minutes is really all they should have needed after the first AC.