A portion of an OXM interview with lead designer Jean-Sebastien Decant...

OXM: Players can give feedback on story missions. What will you do with that information?

JSD: Firstly there's the context. You're now a researcher for Abstergo in the present day, so you're giving a rating to the research you've just performed. For the rest, getting closer to players, getting a feeling for how they react as you play, is more and more important. We spend a lot of time during development playtesting the game, with a lot of people from outside Ubisoft, and we also track a lot of data when the game is released. We thought it was nice to have something that is apparent, that is visible to everyone.

OXM: How will you use this info when developing future Assassin's Creed titles?

JSD: We're going to use it, we're going to analyse it, we're going to see if there are patterns we can understand from it, but we're not just going to use it like - they loved that mission, I want more of that mission, next game everybody makes that same mission! Because maybe nobody will appreciate something we really love. So it's more of a hint for us - OK, we should find a way to make that mission more appealing, because we think it's right, but they don't like it.