The Duelist Code of Honor (DCoH)
IMPORTANT NOTICE: The Duelist Code of Honor is a community driven project and not an official Ubisoft code of conduct
The Duelist Code of Honor (DCoH)
I have been playing For Honor now since the earliest test versions and also read through a lot of forum discussions on the topic of ‘honor’ in For Honor. Seeing how they tend to escalate into nastiness very quickly, let me clarify one thing immediately with as much emphasis as possible:
This post does NOT explain how to play For Honor the ‘right way’, nor does it claim to even be the ‘right way’ to go about the topic of honor in For Honor. In fact you can make a rather strong case for it being a ‘wrong way’ to play.
The ONLY intent of this post is to provide a clear definition and explain the reasoning for ONE possible style of play, that people with a similar mindset might point towards sparing them the need for complex explanations.
My friends and I have been adhering to this code for the full amount of our playtime so far and we do not intend to deviate from it after game release or ever for that matter. Having gathered quite some experience playing this way, I will also explain what the goals are, how it feels and address the potential team mates who are not participating in it with the only correct way to address them – and that is an apology.
First I will explain the code. It is separated into non-optional rules and gestures of respect towards your opponent. While I leave the latter up to everyone’s own decision how to go about them, the actual rules are non optional. Afterwards I will address the in-fight behaviour, explain the reasoning and goals for the code as a whole and in the end address both - players who will not play by the code and players who will - seperately.
*UPDATES resulting from responses:
- While this DCoH is meant for all game modes including dominion, it is not meant for actual ranked play. To be more precise. As long as unranked and ranked are not seperated I will still apply the code. If unranked and ranked get seperated I would only apply it to unranked play. In ranked play I would still adhere to the first four rules, but I would leave out the Rule of Numbers and the Rule of Courage as well as mostly not applying any of the handicapping gestures or respect.
- Even though I tried to drive this point home throughout the post. I am not calling anyone dishonorable and I do not want to force the code onto anybody. As a matter of fact, I would probably find it a little bit boring if literally every player followed this code, just as I would find it boring if literally every player went for 100% play-to-win effectiveness. But I see no risk whatsoever of either happening. I think that a lot of memorable matches come from the multitude of different playstyles and personalities involved in the game. That being said I would very much enjoy if far more people tended to follow rules 1 through 4.
- I hoped this would be apparent, but just in case that there is confusion. I do not apply every Gesture of Respect with every opponent. It is an individual decision every time and often it will depend on how much courtesy I get in return. The Rules however are always applied no matter how horrible an opponent behaves.
The rules of the DCoH
Disclaimer: I deem all rules of the DCoH to be MANDATORY. Mandatory means that if you do not adhere to them, you are not playing by the DCoH. And that is not a judgement. You might be playing by your own code of honor or no code at all - either of which is totally fine! But the goal of this post is to describe and define one particular code of honor to be easy distinguishable from ofthers. And the rules are the very core essence of it.
- The rule of Preference:
You do not ever berate, belittle or otherwise criticize any other player for not following the DCoH or not having any kind of honor. You do not express any kind of superiority over others, in fact you do not even perceive such. Playing by this code is a personal choice, not a device for feeling false superiority.
- The rule of Respect:
You do not ever act disrespectful towards your opponent. While enjoying ones victory is fine, any kind of demeaning behavior or taunting (similar to tea bagging or other abuse of the fallen opponent by use of emotes or otherwise) is forbidden.
- The rule of Calm:
Also in chat/voice-chat you do not ever flame or personally attack any other players in the game, even if they don’t do you the same courtesy. It also doesn’t matter if they start it and come at you aggressively. At worst inform them that you prefer to cease communication and put them on mute.
- The rule of Balance:
While the developers of course try to make the game balanced, it is highly unlikely that they will ever achieve perfect balance due to the complexity of the problem and the diversity of mechanics. And even if such perfect balance could be achieved it would never feel like it to the majority of players due to bias. And while balance might actually even really be broken sometimes, you will never diminish an opponents performance or highlight yours implicitly by complaining about or pointing out any perceived imbalance in the game during a match. Balance discussions should be impersonal and a constructive process in the forum. Used in game they are usually just a tool for preserving ones pride in cases of self-perceived failure.
- The rule of Numbers:
You do not ever actively fight with an advantage in numbers. Even if you already were in a fight, where the numbers were even. If another ally joins the fray or an opponent falls, giving you the advantage in numbers, you cease attacking and attempt to disengage, passively defending yourself as necessary should your opponent deny your disengage. You can and should support allies who are outnumbered though with full force and even if you are not supposed to interrupt other duels, you are well within your right to interrupt enemy executions. The fight has ended the moment your ally cannot fight back anymore.
- The rule of Courage:
While repositioning and using the battlefield to your advantage is very much allowed, actively disengaging from an existing fight for the sole purpose of regeneration is considered forbidden.
The Gestures of (utmost) Respect of the DCoH
Disclaimer: All of the mentioned Gestures of Respect are explicitly optional. You can adhere to them in general, only grant them to opponents that you want to express beyond average respect towards or completely ignore them, as you see fit. A lot of them would mean giving up certain class advantages, which are part of the overall game balance, which is all the more reason, why they are utterly OPTIONAL and SITUATIONAL. In the end, using your class to it’s full potential in the scope of an existing engagement is very well accepted.
- Duelist’s Greeting:
Pointing at a chosen opponent who is already aware of you or saluting them before engaging is considered a gesture of respect.
- Duelist’s Praise:
No matter if you beat your opponent or your opponent beats you. If the fight was a close one and you enjoyed it or deem your opponent worthy of praise for his skill, you should proclaim it was a ‘Good Fight!’ or even provide a simple ‘Wow!’ from the in-game communication menu as a gesture of respect. Just be careful to only use it, when appropriate, otherwise it can very well be understood as sarcastic taunting.
- Forfeit Initiative:
A battlefield is hectic and an opponent might not always see you coming. This is especially true if you are using some of the assassin class feats which help you hide your presence. Making your presence known to your opponent and giving him the time to prepare for the upcoming fight is considered a gesture of respect.
- Forfeit Feats:
You can choose not to use a feat that would give you a considerable advantage over your opponent in a given fight situation as a gesture of respect.
- Forfeit Environmental Insta-Kills:
You can choose not to explicitly aim or even avoid pushing someone down a ledge or into spikes for a quick kill as a gesture of respect. Again some classes are far better at this than others (Raider, Lawbringer for example), so for those this would mean an even bigger sacrifice.
- Forfeit Execution:
If you consider your opponent to have fought so well, that you want to give him the chance to stand up again or just in general spare their life, you can forfeit an Execution as a gesture of respect.
- Allow Regeneration:
Beginning a fight against an opponent you might find yourself at a hitpoint advantage. If regeneration is close by, instead of suppressing it, you could allow your opponent to reg back to full health instead before engaging as a gesture of respect.
- Allow Revive:
If you are utterly fearless or just want to fight one opponent again immediately or even aim for a 1v2, you can choose not to interrupt a revive as a gesture of respect.
Clarification on in-fight behavior
You might notice that the only rules to impact the actual gameplay are the Rule of Numbers and the Rule of Courage.
While there are a lot of possible gestures of respect potentially seriously handicapping yourself even further and diminishing your performance, I consider none of them to be inherently necessary or the lack of using them to break the code.
There are two main reasons for this:
One is class balance, where some classes would have a tremendous advantage over others when using the full extent of the gestures of respect.
The other one is that the Honor part of the DCoH refers to the perceived honor as a player rather than any kind of ‘roleplaying your character’ -honor as derived from fantasy or history. Although it is nice of course should they coincide for you.
But if your character has class-mechanics that could be considered dishonorable from a roleplaying perspective (traps for example), feel free to use them even while adhering to the DCoH, because from a player perspective they are just a different mechanic. The same goes for the use of terrain, poison, bleeding or draining your opponents stamina.
What the goal is and how it feels
I do not want to judge why others might choose the DCoH, but I will gladly explain what MY reasons are for choosing the rules like this and playing by them. The reasons are two-fold:
The primary reason regarding the first four rules is atmosphere of the game. And again, I am not talking about atmosphere in a roleplaying sense but rather the atmosphere as a competitive environment of a game.
For me personally toxicity in competitive games has been a major diminishing factor to my enjoyment of any game, where I participated in the community, even if I could power through it. For Honor by it’s very design with it’s presentation, the emotes and the executions is already aimed at a personal feeling of pride and skill. It provides an intense impact to both your victories and your losses. Emotions will run high in such an environment, even if people want to be nice about it initially. Frustration and Anger are quick to be relieved onto other players.
The overall goal of the rules is to diminish some of these already unpreventable unpleasant effects by abstaining from any kind of provocation and by avoiding two types of situations, that tend to push people over the edge. One of which is being ganged up upon, the other one is having an enemy escape when you feel like you had won the engagement and having your kill denied.
The other reason is a heightened sense of challenge and accomplishment. You will find yourself in situations where you have to face multiple opponents more oft than not and personally I enjoy that a lot. Ganging up on someone gives me a rather hollow feeling of victory, but this is really personal preference.
But I will also usher a warning to everyone trying the DCoH. If you are not immune to frustration yourself, … getting flamed by your team, taunted by the opposing team ganging up on you, not getting a single kill before you lose the game and your opponents proclaiming how easy their win was because you are so stupid … might be taxing to some.
At the same time seeing an opponent approach an already running duel that you are in and then realizing that he stopped and waits for you to finish, rather than hack you in the back, feels really nice.
Still… you cannot, should not and have no right to expect such courtesy from anyone. If you choose to follow this code, do it for yourself, not for any praise or morale high ground. There is no moral high ground for us in this. Which brings me to the next topic.
Addressing the players who do NOT follow the DCoH
No matter if you have your own code of honor, if you just don’t care and play as you see fit, or if you are trying to follow a strict play-to-win philosophy.
You are all doing fine and thank you for participating in this great game.
And my sincere apology for my ultimately selfish adherence to the Duelist Code of Honor, if I happen to be your team mate.
I can understand the frustration of someone expecting me to help them in a duel if they are cornered and feeling betrayed that I just run by or the anger of a win-focused player over me not playing to my maximum effectiveness in a setting where win/loss is a shared property between us. It is those moments of frustration that my apology is meant for.
The fact of the matter is, that ultimately I play by the DCoH because it is more fun for me to play the game this way, rather than – for example – following the Play-to-Win philosophy, which I sometimes did embrace in other games.
I do not want to start the enormous and actually rather complicated discussion about playing the game ‘how it’s fun for you’ versus playing a game ‘as effectively as possible’ to do right by your potentially random team members. Let me just put up one argument why it might not be as bad as it seems:
Adhering to the DCoH is a potentially enormous self-imposed handicap. So there is no discussion that my theoretical maximum effectiveness might be far bigger than my actual effectiveness when playing according to DCoH.
And if I was playing to my maximum effectiveness all the time, gaining an appropriate match-making rating that is basically the ‘expected effectiveness’ that I will provide for my team, then – yes – suddenly playing a lot less effective than what you were matched for means that your team is not getting as much win chance out of you as your matchmaking rating promised them.
But I am never playing to my maximum effectiveness. If I constantly play by the DCoH my matchmaking rating will actually depict my diminished effectiveness including the self-imposed handicap. That means that in the long run, if I get matched with you as a teammate, I will bring the appropriate win-chance to the team that match-making promises me to bring with my handicap well considered. If I suddenly played to my maximum effectiveness then, it would actually not be fair towards the opponents. It would be like losing a few times on purpose - not caring - only to drop in ranking and then collect some easy wins in uneven match-ups. (ie. smurfing)
That still won’t prevent the frustrating moments that I – again – sincerely apologize for. But at the very least you can be sure, that in regards to the overall win chance of the team I make up for it in other ways.
To those interested in the DCoH
Please help us to establish this code as something that - even if it may not be widely accepted - is at least understood by the majority of the community. You can help by:
- Rate the post
- Respond to this post proclaiming that you will play DCoH
- Calling for a sticky - already succeeded
- Proclaiming to follow the Duelist Code of Honor at the start of your matches so your teammates are warned and not surprised by your behavior
- Keeping a constructive discussion going
Thank you very much for your patience in reading all of this. See you all on the battlefield!
Lord Katerchen