For me it was always about exploring than combat. I really enjoy the stealth aspects and they were the things that made the game enjoyable while exploring, never cared for the combat at all. I remember just running around on the rooftops in AC1 for hours doing nothing but running, climbing and watching NPCs. It was such an innovation of total freedom never seen before. For me the series was dead once they abandoned Desmond. I only played AC3 to find out what happened and it's to this day by far the worst game in the series, partly because the American civil war is one of the most boring backdrops they could've chosen.
I enjoyed AC4 and Rogue for the Caribbean setting and some great stealth missions. The ship combat also was pretty great and novel at the time. I did not care for England and France so I skipped those. I played ACO for the Egyptian setting and it was pretty cool, though I got burned out about two thirds in because of so many side missions. I ddin't even attampt the greek one because ACO pretty much already covered that.
Initially wanted to play Valhalla to see their take on Vikings but ultimately skipped it because of the focus on large battles and their much too romanticized portrayal of Vikings. Right now I'm just waiting for them to do the eventual Japan setting which I'm probably gonna love. Though I expect they're gonna also focus a lot on large scale battles on that one, rather than the obvious stealth angle.
For me the spirit of AC lives on in Far Cry, which adopted all of the tropes including the stealth. It has much more fun characters and the action focus makes a lot more sense too.
If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.
