Assassin’s Creed Origins: 10 Things Ubisoft Must Learn From Other Open-World Games

4. Abilities & Skills - Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Assassin's Creed: Syndicate tried to include a levelling system, but said system ended up being really underwhelming. Sure, they gave a sense of progress to the game, but they simply made the game easier. Abilities tended to tweak health or damage but had no overall effect on the actual gameplay beyond tweaking the difficulty. And whilst you can say what you like about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, it did abilities and skills right.

Abilities in Deus Ex fundamentally changed the way the game could be played. The unlocked secret areas and paths meaning that no matter what you put your points into, it usually paid off. Add onto that a whole bunch of fun and unique abilities that gave you interesting ways to tackle problems and you had a system of skills that had an impact on the game.

Skills shouldn't affect the difficulty of the game but simply give you easier options to tackle the difficult challenges. Instead of adding damage output to the main character, give them an ability that is better equipped for high health enemies or one that can eliminate multiples through tactical use. Don't just tweak the stats behind the same monotonous fighting gameplay.

Change the actual gameplay through abilities that are meaningful and more importantly, fun.