For Honor

[Cordor]

I like how a lot of people got tricked into essentially playing a fighting game without knowing it. For Honor has all of the fundamentals of a fighting game, it has footsies, reads, kinda has a little of execution throwing into it but it has. If they threw a little bit more complex combos and more shenanigans this would be on EVO

The only thing that is keeping people from doing frame data and not making setup videos is because the game dont offer that possibility, they could had done it

 

[Reapy]

Yeah I have to say I'm getting hooked on the game. Its like a light entry into fighting games, which is kind of what I have been looking for. I love the beauty of a good fighting game match between pros but honestly the games just scare me off. This one feels approachable. It seems to be pulling at the fringes of a lot of communities, grabbing dark souls pvp people, fighting game players, probably some from the melee community (warband chivalry etc).

They do need to make some adjustments to the power of defensive play for the high level guys. I've got a long while before that is an issue for me and am slowly learning classes and how to play, so hopefully it'll be something they address as I get better at the game before it bothers me.

Oh also, this game reminds me of how much I like the warband community. I mean we have had our yahoos and clowns here, but far and away the players are pretty chill. In for honor I run into so much teenager rage it bugs me out a bit when I'm trying to be chill. But all in all it is still relaxing throwing people off cliffs all day.

But yeah I've sorta accidentally fallen hard for the game.

 

[LittleJP]

Any interest in getting a TW gang going? Be up for get on around 1900 or so GMT most nights, be fun to practice duels with each other without too much teenage retardery.

 

[Herishey]

Made another video on the campaign;

Spoiler: Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_QN2104eNI

 

[Orion]

If you've got a smartphone you may want to enable 2-step verification on your Ubisoft accounts.

Ya know, before some Russian does it for you and you have to call Ubi support to get them to disable it.

 

[Dansk viking]

I like how a lot of people got tricked into essentially playing a fighting game without knowing it. For Honor has all of the fundamentals of a fighting game, it has footsies, reads, kinda has a little of execution throwing into it but it has.

You're absolutely right. To me it seems like a (quite successful) mix of a console fighting game like Tekken, some movement patterns etc. from games like AC and Shadow of Mordor, and the directional blocking found in Warband (though approached differently).

When people say that the blocking is simplified, it isn't entirely true. You actually have 6 different blocks. Three normal where you hold your weapon to the sides or up, where you take some damage upon blocking, and then the parries that are basically chambers (meaning you have to have the block in the right position and time a heavy attack into it, and if it fails you'll be hit) that drains the enemy's stamina and negates all damage (and can block all attacks, even the so-called unblockables). This means that fast blocking reflexes and taking a risk really pays off (more so than chambering in Warband) - especially the stamina system favours defensive competence since blocking/parrying doesn't drain, but spamming attacks quickly leads to exhaustion that can then be punished hard. There's a grab system if people get close, but you can counter that by mirroring (think Tekken grabbing). Many other ways to fight and different classes that can do different things and play differently.

All in all I like it. That said, I wouldn't recommend buying it at full price at the moment, mostly due to the high price and the occasional connection issues (though I've hardly had that recently, and especially duels seem very stable). But if you have money to spend, time to waste, and an urge to try a different approach to skill-based melee combat, then you should definitely give it a go at some point.

Pros:
- Interesting new approach to melee combat mechanics.
- Highly skill-based (especially in duels and 2v2 due to gear stats not having a say here).
- Potentially addictive for those who feel the urge to master it.
- Lots of different play-styles to master.
- Nice customisation.

Cons:
- Occasional connection issues.
- Pay-to-win is a thing (except in duels and 2v2).

Other:
- Uses Uplay. (Can be good or bad depending on your stance towards Steam and other 3rd party distributors. Personally I find Uplay almost less intrusive than Steam).
- The classes are not entirely balanced. Some, I would say, have huge advantages against other classes. Personally I see this more as a challenge; playing as the basic, more slow classes against super fast classes that can employ poison bleeds and even out-range you - definitely an advantage to have played Warband so that you know how to block and keep your head cool before seizing an opportunity.


PS.
If anyone owns the game and would like to spar or whatever, I currently play as Erafaz on Uplay.

 

[578]

Pay to win is not a thing in the game. You have to reach reputation 3 to get good ****, if you save till then you get about 10-15k. What pay to win are you talking about?

 

[Dansk viking]

Since the servers are down currently... I had to find someone else showing it.

Spoiler

 

[578]

Since the servers are down currently... I had to find someone else showing it.

Spoiler

I wont even watch that video but if you claim its proof for P2W then I know its garbage already. Do simple maths, Reputation 3 is basically level 60, untill then you cannot in any way or form get heroic gear. How is buying in-game currency with real money pay to win exactly? You get 600 gold every day from the  2 dailies and about 500-600 with the regular 48H orders. Do that till reputation 3, you have pretty much geared a reputation 3 character not once but twice. Everything is available to ANYONE.  Also, you get about 11 crates from story mode to unlock gear to any character you want in multiplayer. So this means you can gear a character to full capabilities, upgrade to gold gear score and STILL have about 10k sitting around.

 

[Dansk viking]

I don't know why you're taking it so hard. It doesn't even bother me that much.

What you're saying is that just because you can't get the best gear in the game before you've grinded to reputation 3, that somehow negates the fact that you can buy the stuff that you'd otherwise have to earn through playing the game?

- A person with reputation 0 can unlock all the abilities and upgrade their (low quality) gear fully by simply paying real money. (Additionally, you have to pay 500 silver credits to unlock the heroes except for the 3 basic ones, not that it's a huge cost, but again, you can buy instant access instead of spending your in-game currency that you could otherwise use on upgrading gear etc.).

- A person with reputation 1 or 2 can purchase all the higher quality gear (for their reputation) and upgrade it fully through simply paying real money.

- A person with reputation 3 can basically purchase any gear they want and upgrade it fully by paying...

This, for example, ends up having people that can gain revenge mode (which is, for those of you not familiar with the game, a period of time where you have a full extra health bar as well as block and do more damage) several times during a short engagement, and other such imbalances. Since the game often throws people of different reputation level into the same games, you can end up having a reputation 0 or 1, that hasn't invested more money than the initial high game cost, against a reputation 3 that has bought the best gear in the game with real money, and therefore has a significant advantage in pretty much every aspect.

If this isn't in any way pay-to-win, then I need you to tell me how that's defined.


What I wanted to do with my inital post was praise the game, but now people will just get a bad impression because I'm forced to attack the game's payment policies... It should be mentioned in regards to the gear, that while there is definitely some gear better than other gear, you often trade an advantage for a disadvantage - so, for example, the player that has full revenge gain from defence (meaning that revenge mode can be activated after only a few blocks) might have a very long ability cool down, etc.

 

[578]

I don't know why you're taking it so hard. It doesn't even bother me that much.

What you're saying is that just because you can't get the best gear in the game before you've grinded to reputation 3, that somehow negates the fact that you can buy the stuff that you'd otherwise have to earn through playing the game?

- A person with reputation 0 can unlock all the abilities and upgrade their (low quality) gear fully by simply paying real money. (Additionally, you have to pay 500 silver credits to unlock the heroes except for the 3 basic ones, not that it's a huge cost, but again, you can buy instant access instead of spending your in-game currency that you could otherwise use on upgrading gear etc.).

- A person with reputation 1 or 2 can purchase all the higher quality gear (for their reputation) and upgrade it fully through simply paying real money.

- A person with reputation 3 can basically purchase any gear they want and upgrade it fully by paying...

This, for example, ends up having people that can gain revenge mode (which is, for those of you not familiar with the game, a period of time where you have a full extra health bar as well as block and do more damage) several times during a short engagement, and other such imbalances. Since the game often throws people of different reputation level into the same games, you can end up having a reputation 0 or 1, that hasn't invested more money than the initial high game cost, against a reputation 3 that has bought the best gear in the game with real money, and therefore has a significant advantage in pretty much every aspect.

If this isn't in any way pay-to-win, then I need you to tell me how that's defined.


What I wanted to do with my inital post was praise the game, but now people will just get a bad impression because I'm forced to attack the game's payment policies... It should be mentioned in regards to the gear, that while there is definitely some gear better than other gear, you often trade an advantage for a disadvantage - so, for example, the player that has full revenge gain from defence (meaning that revenge mode can be activated after only a few blocks) might have a very long ability cool down, etc.

I'm not taking hard I just analyze the naysayer's theories. The problem is that if you waste steel upgrading things in Rep1-2 then you are pretty much wasting your steel. Feats unlock is laughable because without gear they're pretty bad too. The term would pay2getbetter maybe, but that 'better' is so minimal to the gear Rep3 gives that its not even noticeable. The thing with the term pay2win is that in general it was forged with ''I need to pay to get good'' mindset. This does not exist in for honor. Community events give you crates, seasonal war endings give you crates, you get a massive number of crates from single player and you pretty much get gear after each match. You can pay, but it won't make a difference. Thats what I mean. Also revenge builds are a bit broken but in the last devstream they said they look into it, along with switch stance lag for some classes and warlord nerfs .

 

[Dansk viking]

You're right: It's not a matter of them having a pay wall in the sense that people who pay money get gear that would otherwise be unobtainable (at least in theory). The model they have may not be any issue if you have all the time in the world to grind to the highest level and unlock all the gear you want, but if you don't have that amount of time, and you don't want to spend more money than you already spent buying the game, you will lag behind in the game modes in which gear stats are active. Gear and reputation matters, especially if you're far below on both - in a game that is otherwise in essence a very skill-based game that rewards the fast thinker and the one with faster reflexes etc.

In the end, you can buy faster levelling, and you can buy better gear, but if you get beaten by a reputation 0 with <10 gear level with your purple 80+ gear and reputation 3 hero, you suck so hard that I don't think you would ever have a chance no matter how long you plan to keep trying (i.e. you should move on to bridge). That said, very little is more satisfying than beating people that underestimate you.


PS. It may be the way they're presenting it that's annoying me most...

PPS. For anyone that prefers videos to reading, here's another take on it.

 

[578]

You're right: It's not a matter of them having a pay wall in the sense that people who pay money get gear that would otherwise be unobtainable (at least in theory). The model they have may not be any issue if you have all the time in the world to grind to the highest level and unlock all the gear you want, but if you don't have that amount of time, and you don't want to spend more money than you already spent buying the game, you will lag behind in the game modes in which gear stats are active. Gear and reputation matters, especially if you're far below on both - in a game that is otherwise in essence a very skill-based game that rewards the fast thinker and the one with faster reflexes etc.

In the end, you can buy faster levelling, and you can buy better gear, but if you get beaten by a reputation 0 with <10 gear level with your purple 80+ gear and reputation 3 hero, you suck so hard that I don't think you would ever have a chance no matter how long you plan to keep trying (i.e. you should move on to bridge). That said, very little is more satisfying than beating people that underestimate you.


PS. It may be the way they're presenting it that's annoying me most...

PPS. For anyone that prefers videos to reading, here's another take on it.

I feel you on that, but reputation 3 is reachable by day 3-4 of gameplay. It really is not much considering there are 30 reputation levels for each character. Matchmaking issues will be worked out I believe, till then, hang on tight.

 

[Reapy]

At this point I wouldn't go hard on this game, it is still fun and I'm giving it an hour or so a day which is a lot for me.  The game is very defense oriented, and again, I sorta suck at the game, but you get hurt bad when you attack with anything other than a very quick attack, which not all classes have as an option. The result is it is very difficult to move the game forward and open people up as you get up in match making. Again, I'm not in that personally but having watched some streams and just being able to see the system as it is if playing more perfectly, that is much the case. Even at the sort of middle mix I'm at people are parrying me and starting to be more passive to the point you really reconsider if it was so smart to push the attack button there.

I don't know that it is really gear that is an issue as well but more that revenge is too strong a stat when you have all your gear on. It is frustrating to watch 3 people wailing on a player that gets full revenge every 2 blocks. If there was a longer revenge cooldown or a buffed revenge build didn't build revenge so quick I think that would go a long way to making a high gear player frustrating to play against.

They are doing some underhanded stuff, like I opened all my crates right off the bat thinking it wouldn't matter what level my character was. That is a newbie trap and they planned it that way. On the other hand you can buy one crate a day after about 30 minutes of play time, which gives you 2 high level pieces of gear, so honestly I expect in a month everybody will have a 108 gear score.

All said I'm enjoying the game a lot and it should hold me over until bannerlord or old age gets me.

 

[Herishey]

Finally got another video up on the For Honor campaign if anyone wants to check it out.

Spoiler: Video

 

[TheFlyingFishy]

I'm almost to the point where I've given up on this game. It's very fun, but broken to a completely baffling degree. I just had a match where an enemy went 19/0 by standing in and directly outside of our spawn with a full revenge build. For those that don't know what revenge is: Revenge is a highly boosted mode you get if you survive or block enough attacks. You can't get staggered and you take a hugely reduced amount of damage while dealing a hugely increased amount of damage. The problem is that at higher levels you can use equipment to buff how quickly you get revenge mode and how effective it is while you have it. This leads to situations like the one I just had where the player has buffed revenge stats to such stupid levels that it is in their favor to stand still and get hit. It sounds stupid as ****, because it is, but hitting an enemy with a build like this is literally just buffing them. They take a completely negligible amount of damage, and two landed hits fills the revenge meter, at which point they cannot be staggered and two hit everyone from full health. Even worse, upon killing people with executions, they regain health, so that negligible amount of lost health is boosted back up to full. This guy went 19/0 while his next closest teammate had 2 kills. They couldn't even get close to us before he killed us in spawn. The entire match was just trying to leave spawn only to be cut down within seconds. It's so stupid.

It honestly feels like they didn't do any intesting past the early levels. I don't see how they could've let this through otherwise. It is nothing short of being an ingame cheat that does away with all the fundamental fighting mechanics in the game in favor of STANDING STILL AND LETTING THE ENEMY ATTACK YOU SO YOU GET BUFFED.


Also, the matchmaking and networking is laughably awful. It amounts to spending 5 minutes in a game and 5 minutes in a menu. It would be much alleviated if matches would last longer, but they're just first to three wins for some reason. After that, it's back to the main menu to queue and load into matches for another 5 minutes, because they way they designed their matchmaking, if a few people leave, the lobby closes instead of repopulating, so once a couple leave, the only thing to do is return to the menu, which everyone does automatically instead of waiting for the timer to run out only for it to tell you that too many have left, so it's going to disband your party for you. It would be far better if it was first to at least 5 or something so you could play more than you wait instead of them being an equal amount of time.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

There is no networking for the actual matches. It's peer-to-peer.
Also it's UbiSoft, why do you expect any balancing or care? They have proven over and over that they don't give a ****.

 

[TheFlyingFishy]

It just baffles me that they'd allow it to ruin their game. Everywhere I look, besides the networking and matchmaking, the one thing I'm seeing people bash the game about is the revenge ****. I feel like they're clearly losing money on it, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

There's probably just as many MithrellaS around that will defend it to the last. And never forget, they already have the money for the game and for god knows how many season passes, ingame currency and all the other ****e.
Hype for future DLC will sell them regardless of balance and bring back people paying for ingame currency regardless of balance.

Balance is an unnecessary investment for a throw-away seasonal game, even more so with a new IP. There'll be a "For Honor 2" within the year and it will sell just as well.

 

[Reapy]

I'm pretty much getting where flyingfishy isr. Networking is fine to me. I'm spoiled in new jersey where there are probably lots and lots of people in my area that I have good connectivity too, so I'm not seeing too many lag issues. 

If anything what I thought was interesting was watching a 2v2 tournament from two perspectives both players struggled with the same type of latency issues at the same moments in time. Not optimal, but reasonably fair.

Obviously this must vary region to region and what hour of the day you are playing as well as where your MMR is.

But yeah if I was listing some complaints. 1. Too much time in menus. I like to boot a game up and be in the game, like warband was connect to a server and just sit there swinging my sword endlessly for an hour or more if I had time. That isn't going anywhere though.

Getting to the level where I'm finally getting match made into 107 geared players with revenge builds. This is what is killing me. I don't want to duel, the defensive meta is annoying, you get punished for attacking, it's always the wrong move to move forward and play the game and instead you should sit back. As my match making rating went up and time progressed more and more people understand this and it is just not fun.

So then okay lets go into dominion and goof around. Well everyone here has max revenge builds and 30% stat boosts. I don't care too much about the better stats, but revenge is frustrating. For stat boosts I can just play a bit more and get my own gear, fine. For revenge, if I get revenge, it is just multiplying the stupidity of revenge every 3 seconds and doesn't fix the problem.

Now if I attack someone they get revenge in 2 hits. Live through that by running away or going defensive then attack them again and get revenge. Or even better is if you are basically killing them they get revenge and throw off a guardbreak or whatever else, or someone else runs in and gives them revenge.

It honestly just feels stupid. It's even worse with characters with instant knockdowns available like the warlord (I want to main warlord but just playing a lot of classes right now) where the headbutt that comes out super fast knocks you down when revenged for a free heavy.

Revenge is great if it happens once a fight. It is not great to happen 5 times a fight. The other thing it has done is teach people to not attack in groups. Early on it is kind of fun to multi block if you are out numbered, and fun to try to time your hits to get someone when ganging up. Now this makes no sense and you  need to spam guard break. It's effective but also not really fun on either ends of it.

Anyway it seems like the developers at least are tuned into things. I've slowed down playing but won't be putting it down yet, but I'm kind of waiting for a patch now.