Coming from someone who has played Ubi games on PC only
1). I don't hate Uplay either but I don't see why it exists either. I bought the game I want to play the game but I have to launch Uplay to do this and if their servers are down or overloaded, which they will be because they are shite, then I can't play the game or can only play the game but with limited capacity. As for the free stuff that it gives you for playing the game... well that's where we fall back to the situation of why do I need to us Uplay to do that? Gmaes of old had unlocks that gave you access to additional content from within the game, they didn't require some online second rate second program to track performance and then issue you the content when you reached a certain point. Like I said I don;t hate it but it really has no purpose in it's current state. Oh and then you also have to remember the way they have treated PC gamers in the past, always on DRM which came, went, came again and right here and right now I am sure they still use some form of this system via Uplay or how about the whole Anno limited install issue. If they just had Uplay as their DRM then yeah it's possible to accept that, it's point less but I can deal with that but it's the fact that you have Uplay and THEN you have some other non sense DRM on top of that.
2). Can't really comment the thing is if they are such a risk taker why is no one else talking about it? Could it be because that the risk taking is far outweighed by the year on year release of games that are buggy, broken, generic, full of little innovation and boring... I dunno but when I hear Ubisoft I don't think risk takers, they are on step behind EA in the gaming publisher who shits out the same annual release with a new skin and one or two new mechanics.
3). Lol, Sorry; Unity, Watchdogs, anyone who has played the Silent Hunter series all of them have been bug messes at launch, some more than others and while some, like the Silent Hunter series have improved with community support and patches to become good games others such as ALL the Ass Creed games and Watchdogs were boring rubbish which never got looked at twice. Ass Creed got boring right after the point that every target would become a context sensitive button mashing affair no matter how much planning and stealth you intended to use, ps a small game called Tenchu did this entire concept way way way better many many years before Ass Creed stole the concept and made an arse of it. Watchdogs on the other hand was bland, boring uninspired and had a lead with so little character or charisma that I couldn't even tell you what his name was, let alone want to wear his 'iconic' cap. Of all my triple AAA titles Watchdogs is one of the least played titles ever managing a grand total of 3 and a half hours.
4). 'that i think they should make a non-AC game that uses the elements.' They did it was called Silent Hunter it's a game based purely on the concepts of naval warfare. All they did is stripped it down, simplified it and then stuck it on to a main stream title as a 'new and innovative gaming concept' I mean you can give them props for tweaking it and making it smoother and making it appeal to the masses but they don't deserve a pat on the back for reusing stuff that appear in other games. Besides that do they really deserve props for coming up with a game mechanic that you just happen to like, I dunno I guess that's a subjective statement.
As far as I can see Ubisoft deserve the hate they get. When I think back at the games, specifically just the games that I've played that came from them I have more hate for the utter mess the games where, the utter borefest that Watchdogs was, the piss poor knock off of Tenchu that Ass Creed was, the hoops I would have had to jump through to play my beloved Silent Hunter series when SH5 launched with always on DRM vs Far Cry 3 and Dark messiah being really very good games. Yeah the bad far outweighs the good, they deserve everything they get.