In an interview with Loomer979 on YouTube, Assassin's Creed 4 multiplayer director- Damien Kieken – and lead multiplayer designer – Tim Brown – discussed the multiplayer.
New to Assassin's Creed 4, the Multiplayer Game Lab will allow players to modify over 200 parameters for each match. Players can tweak the length of sessions, ban specific abilities and even change the scoring for each type of kill. If you prefer to create a match where aerial kills don't reward players, then set the scoring to zero.
With the next generation coming, Ubisoft will not release an Assassin's Creed 4 beta to instead focus on next-gen development.
When asked question proposed by the community, game director on Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag – Ashraf Ismail – answered multiple questions regarding stealth, mission structure and development.
Ismail mentions the importance of stealth in Assassin's Creed 4 due to the more aggressive enemies rather than those that just stand and watch. Leading up to the release, the development team continues to find a balanced challenge ensuring that encounters don't result in a too difficult or too easy challenge.
As the series progressed, the mission structures changed. To avoid a very linear, hand holding structure, the development instead laid down a few simple objectives that the player can complete in any order.
Since Assassin's Creed 4 quickly adopted an annual release model, some fans worry that each game won't properly fix the issues of the previous games, but Ismail explains the benefit of split development. Even though Assassin's Creed 4 will only release a year after, the separate Ubisoft team began development two years ago. With more than a year of development, the Ubisoft team can spend time on focusing on the naval side of Assassin's Creed 4 while also taking into consideration the feedback of the previous game.
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag will release October 29th on Xbox 360, PS4, PC and Wii U. PS4 and Xbox One dates still unannounced.
