Yes
No
Maybe
Junior Member
It seems that the developers are trying to keep this game relatively realistic (no fantasy elements like magic, monsters, etc) to keep the emphasis on getting as close to the feel of actual sword fighting as possible, free of other distractions. I have no problem with that whatsoever and totally get where they're coming from, but... it still doesn't make me not want to play a game like this that DID have those things. The Art of Battle system that they've come up with seems like it could be very versatile and adapted to other kinds of games. Imagine a wizard duel where attacks, blocks and dodges were determined by a long-range version of the Art of Battle. That would be a cool enough game in itself, but if you give the warrior class magical weapons with the ability to block spells, and daggers or throwing axes to help close distances on far away enemies, add an archer class (even though they suck) and a scout class for stealth assassinations, sprinkle in some ogres, ents and horses, and then turn them all loose with a decent assortment of traditional multi-player game modes, and you have the makings of an epic multi-player fantasy action game the likes of which is not available anywhere else. If people liked some classes but not others they could create servers or game modes dedicated to certain scenarios like "wizards only" or "no archers." I'm just throwing stuff out here, but that is a game which I would really like to play.
Senior Member
Absolutly no.
No. Nope. Not really.
I reject this because of 3 reasons:
The most important one first : Gameplay
ForHonor with its Art of Battle System might be just what Consoles need : A Competitive Game format that works better on consoles (controller) then on PC. (One might argue that there are already things that work better on a controller, but those are not as innovative and effective as the for Honor MEchanics MIGHT turn out to be.
So, if we reduce the importance of the mechanics that will hopefully enable detailed, entertaining and deep Control of cool-looking melee combat, in favor of mechanics that are NOT innovative, NOT deep (like.. let me guess: throwing a fireball?) and would work better on a PC (Aim Mechanics), we would ruin everything we could have had.
BTW: Therefor, abilitys like arrow storm, knights' artillery etc. should definitly NOT be too big of a deal in "Lategame" by wich i mean expert lvl gaming. They should be viable on a tactical lvl, to control the battlefield, damage minions etc, but not be of great practical usage in direct combat. Instead, we need more moves in duel situations, that only an expert can pull of.
You could argue about this second reason : Increased effort for the defs
If we want to have this game before coming of Blizzards "end of time" we better be careful with all our little wishes and sparkling things that we want to see in the game. Of course there must be serious content in a released game. But is it really necessary to have a spartan/indianWarrior/Celt/RussianWarrior and what not. Allow me some sarcasm: Its sure a nice thing if every single player in this game can have a **** about how he is leading his very special own lokal hero to victory. But putting in another Class means not only giving him a nice design and a big soword, it also means balancing it against 3 other races with their subclasses, which most likly means changing them as well. And suddenly you have a hughe mess. Same thing counts for things like "Hey, lets take magic in it"
Third one is about style. And i know that this is a subjective Point
Lets focus in the strengths of our new hypeGame. In ForHonor that clearly is that we have ****ing Vikings batteling Samurai while batteling knights jesusfreakingchristYES!!!
Anything that pullls the focus away from that in contraproductive for the imigary, in my opinion. By making them something wizard-like or including more things that the diminishes the historical or at least the pop-cultural prototype of Samurai-viking-knight, we would make the whole game more fantasy-esque and we all have seen that 10000000000 times ago. Instead of a VIKING FIGHTING A SAMURAI FIGHTING A KNIGHT we would have a magic-fantasy-Diablo2-Barbarian (warcrys etc) vs some sort of fantasy paladin (heal spells and buffs and stuff...seen and seen and seen) and the typical lightly-armoured roughe-type of fighter. Thanks, no.
Anything that makes this game less of what we know so far would be bad for it. We need more things that makes it feel like MORE of what we've seen.
Sounds conservative but it isn't. The game beeing focused on melee would be the real innovation.
What do you think ?
Senior Member
Could be cool, I think, to have dueling wizards; though, given that projectiles need to cover a distance, unless they moved inordinately fast, it might be too easy to see them coming (literally) and defend against them. Of course, if players had an infinite base magic projectile, it could easily turn into a multiplayer bullet-hell, and so become almost impossible for any player to possibly defend against every attack, which would be very interesting to watch. Don't know how much fun it would be to play, but it would be interesting to watch.
Junior Member
I'm sure there would probably be some sort of simple projectile attacks like traditional fireballs, probably for the quick attack, but for the strong attacks I was thinking of something a little more involved, like a series of quick, or in some cases longer and more involved, Harry Potter vs Voldemort kamehmeha showdowns. Think Gandalf vs Saruman or Bavmorda vs Fin Raziel. In some situations attacks could be blocked outright, in others, there would be more back and forth with reversals. Art of Battle would determine the outcome of these interactions the same way they're using it already. If one person got the upper hand they could do throws, force chokes, or any number of other effects, ideally well still retaining the defender's ability to get out of it. There could also be larger aoe spells which would let players control parts of the battle field and open up new tactics. The idea is to have a deeper and more involved experience than just a simple fireball exchange.
Also, just to be clear, I am not at all advocating adding any of this to the current game. I was just thinking of all of the things that they could do if they transplanted the Art of Battle system into other games.
For Honor & Watch Dogs Moderator
Junior Member
I'm sure there would inevitably be some loose projectiles, but for the main dueling aspect I was thinking of something more like elemental-based energy effects which would move fluidly and be more whip-like. The Art of Battle system could still function much the same way as for sword-fighting, just on a larger scale and from farther away. The actual kamehameha-style standoff has been done many times so I wouldn't want it to just be that, but a direct lock-up like that could still have some place by replacing the button-mashing which usually determines those things with a series of art of battle exchanges so you felt more in control. I'm sure you could probably charge some meter or something to use more powerful, character-specific abilities.
Also, while it's true that there are many rpg type games out there which use magic in some way or another, most are either single player or co-op. I think that it would be a pretty cool and fairly unique thing to have an action oriented, vs multiplayer game with a control system as intricate as what we're talking about.
For Honor & Watch Dogs Moderator
I still don't favour this idea personally. Adding magic would also take away the cool feeling you get as a Knight or Viking or Samurai to then suddenly have wizards and you've got a sword, it just doesn't exactly flow right with me personally. Furthermore we've had several games already that offers magic and sword combat. I mean games like The Elder Scrolls Online and the previous game series has had this.
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