They did spend years working on a non Assassins Creed age of piracy game, Skull and Bones, but it ended up as a bad live service game.

They tried with Skull and Bones, but it didn’t hit well. Closest I have found is Sea of Thieves.

I dont know. When I first heard about their game, I expected a neat pirate ship combat sandbox game, but instead it turned out to be a lame ass arcade shooter.

I dont recall seeing anyone happy about this, outside white knights on reddit.

It seems like there are a lot of niche game concepts and genres that are falling to the wayside as the major devs and publishers are more interested in dumbing things down for a larger, more casual (or in some cases more competitive audience). Hell Civ7 is sitting at mostly negative recent reviews after pulling that shit.

You're thinking of some different game, no idea what one tbh

Assassin's Creed Black Flag is definitely not an arcade shooter though