Well, I still think AC Revelations was the best AC Ubisoft ever made. And AC3 was the last really good one.
The main "design failure" of all their big games since was that they desinged their worlds almost on a mathematical level. X chests, X quests, X towers, X activities. While their previous games were all about the narrative, their newer games are all about always the same old formulaic open world design. While everything has an insane production value the whole thing feels all too often ultimately heartless and less and less unique. In the end, that game design is a victim of its own success. It worked so well for Ubisoft that they apply it on pretty much every big game they made - for the last 5-5 years or so, basically since AC 3/4 and FC 3. That stuff just sells too well so there is no incentive to change the basic formula. Pouring heart and new design approches into it only threatens the economic success and has naturally a hard stand - especially if you think about the insanely short production times, only possible by the ton of people who work simultaneously on the titles.
So it's no surprise that in terms of world and game design, AC, Watch_Dogs and Far Cry are pretty much all the same and that The Division and the new Ghost Recon game will turn out pretty similar as well. It's all Ubisoft being imprisoned in the endless sequel loop of something that once turned out to be the ultimate AAA formula...
