Quick feedback based on the e3 footage. | Forums

[sanityorp]

First thing first, im glad Ubisoft choose to support a game like that, it looks very good and im really curious to see the final product.

But here we go, this is my quick feedback according the gameplay footage we've seeing at E3.

- When you lock a "named" enemy the UI is way too intrusive for me. I can understand the goal behind it, but there is no need to remind the player how to play the game after a while. I would like see a quick revamp of this UI part, and move the "stance" interface to the right or to the left of the screen instead of being focused on your character. First it break immersion, and just looks bad overall in my opinion.
Several recent games use that kind of "stance" mechanic, feel free to check "Nioh" by Team Ninja for example.

- Do not turn the game into a giant cinematic experience. Ryse: Son of Rome is the perfect example of what devs should not do. Thats why i think, the basic stuff like an health bar, items pick-up, etc should be there. Do a game, not an interactive cinematic game please.


- Opponent IA should be a challenge even for trash enemies, and the only way to do that is to make them way more aggressive. If they just standing there, while their friend got murdered by the player, it'll end-up like a "musou" without the fun of actual musou games. Overall a static IA will reinforce, in a bad way, the interactive cinematic feeling ...

[WYRDB0Y]

- Opponent IA should be a challenge even for trash enemies, and the only way to do that is to make them way more aggressive. If they just standing there, while their friend got murdered by the player, it'll end-up like a "musou" without the fun of actual musou games. Overall a static IA will reinforce, in a bad way, the interactive cinematic feeling ...

I noticed this too, I'm hoping for a hardcore mode with agressive AI, where you get no slack and grunts overwhelm you, big enemies are lethal in 1-2 hits ect. Ubi please listen to us.

[Altair_Snake]

Unfortunately, Ubi has a bad record when itc ome st provide challenge for the players who want it. Yeah, I'm looking at you AC. This is kind of a rceent thing, though, because the early Splinter Cells were hardcore.

Anyways, it is imperative that the game has different difficulty options (easy, medium, hard, etc.). It boggles my mind that AC doesn't have this. My only guess is that they wanna make the casuals think they're hardcore, so they spoil them to the point of not even wanting to tell them they're playing on easy mode. And at the end of the day, teh players who want a a challenge end up with none. I hope For Honor doesn't go down that road. The core mechanics have so much potential.

I defitinely agree that the UI is very excessive and I also want an option to actually turn it off, along with all teh cheesy glow of using buffs.

Aaand more to the point of the thread, yeah: the creeps were way too passive in the campaign demo. And I'm hoping this is a difficulty option thingy. I'm OK with 1-shotting them, but please at least make them gank me while I'm at it, like we've seen in the Multiplayer videos.

[WYRDB0Y]

Fortunately, the real challenge will always be multiplayer at it's highest, which can only be "casualised" by shallow gameplay mechanics, but again fortunately it doesn't seem like they made the Art of Battle any easier.
I'm buying the game for the multiplayer, but because they are making a campaign (hopefully a well crafted one) I want to experience it + it's a tool to learn the game before jumping into MP.

My concern with it is if the AI is so brain-dead it's going to turn me off from the start, I want to die trying to beat the enemies, not just shred through them like butter (not talking about the grunts), but I can understand that for the sake of the demo it was toned down to make it short.

Donno how matchmaking is gonna work, but you can be assured that a lot of people will master this game and if the SP can't teach you, give you a challange, you'll have a frustration inducing hard time mastering the game in MP against good players, especially later down the line when the game is not new anymore.
That said, I have no experience with the game, maybe it's easier to pick up then I imagine it to be.

[FLYINGvDUTCHMAN]

Just one thing I noticed from the mission game play, after landing successful strikes on the enemy there is no blood visible on the blade of weapons. Some blood dripping from the weapon and splashes of blood coming out of the body when a swing is not blocked would be nice. More blood for heavy hits too, to kind of show the intensity of the blow. At the moment, when hits connect it doesn't feel distinctly different from blocked swings. I also agree on the AI grunts being too weak, and the glow effects not being super great.I love the fact that there are larger and slower Samurai too, feels far more authentic, though while the samurai armor looks great now, some of the Norse/ Viking helmets have wings or horns on them, which breaks the theme for me, seeing as I know Norsemen never had those things, they look ridiculous, oh and also the bones around the waist, please, be more authentic like with the great Samurai armor shown.

[TrikRisk]

Wow. You said everything I wanted to say in a sympathic and more apropriate way(far better english). Thank you. Ubisoft, Jason Vandenberg: This.

[TripleJay_X]

yeah, more blood and dripping blood.

how you call it, when parts of the body get ripped off, like in witcher3?

[MisterWillow]

-When you lock a "named" enemy the UI is way too intrusive for me. I can understand the goal behind it, but there is no need to remind the player how to play the game after a while. I would like see a quick revamp of this UI part, and move the "stance" interface to the right or to the left of the screen instead of being focused on your character. First it break immersion, and just looks bad overall in my opinion.

It's interesting, I'm technically in the same boat as you, and would welcome options to reduce or turn off all the various UI elements, but having played it now, I can honestly say it didn't bother me. I was more focused on my opponent and surroundings than the UI---in fact, I barely noticed it.

Of course, that could be taken either as 'it's fine because it's not as obtrusive as I though, so leave it' or 'I could play without it, so get rid of it' so... please put toggles (or transparency sliders) in the options menu Ubi.

Several recent games use that kind of "stance" mechanic, feel free to check "Nioh" by Team Ninja for example.

Nioh's stance mechanic is hardly comparable to For Honor's.

It's a button press to switch instead of a stick rotation (the latter being more intuitive in my opinion), and once you select the stance you want, you can forget about it, since the stances in no way influence blocking.

- Do not turn the game into a giant cinematic experience. Ryse: Son of Rome is the perfect example of what devs should not do. Thats why i think, the basic stuff like an health bar, items pick-up, etc should be there. Do a game, not an interactive cinematic game please.

I understand the concern, I suppose, but as far as I can see, there's no indication they're making the next Ryse. Telling a story with cutscenes and making a repetitive hack and slash are two very different things, and unlike Ryse, I'm already interested in the story.

- Opponent IA should be a challenge even for trash enemies, and the only way to do that is to make them way more aggressive. If they just standing there, while their friend got murdered by the player, it'll end-up like a "musou" without the fun of actual musou games. Overall a static IA will reinforce, in a bad way, the interactive cinematic feeling ...

It's important to remember that what was shown at E3 was for demonstration purposes, and to prevent a player (even an experienced one) from dying over and over while giving a presentation they usually scale the difficulty down quite a bit. They were probably playing on easy.

I noticed this too, I'm hoping for a hardcore mode with agressive AI, where you get no slack and grunts overwhelm you, big enemies are lethal in 1-2 hits ect. Ubi please listen to us.

The Chosen with the kanabo is exactly that

As for AI aggression, I feel like it's going to be a very delicate balancing act. In the Viking level, for example, there are several times when there are three or more lock-on-able Chosen around you, in addition to all the minions. If they make the AI too aggressive, it will literally be impossible for the player to defend against it, since not only will the grunts overwhelm you, but the Hero characters will also bat you around like a ping pong ball and you'd be dead in seconds.

Anyways, it is imperative that the game has different difficulty options (easy, medium, hard, etc.). It boggles my mind that AC doesn't have this. My only guess is that they wanna make the casuals think they're hardcore, so they spoil them to the point of not even wanting to tell them they're playing on easy mode. And at the end of the day, teh players who want a a challenge end up with none. I hope For Honor doesn't go down that road. The core mechanics have so much potential.

Having said all that about difficulty, yes, there must be difficulty options. I don't think the comparison to AC is apt, though, since all of Ubisoft's other games (Far Cry, Ghost Recon, etc.) have difficulty levels in them. I would expect For Honor to be no different.

Just one thing I noticed from the mission game play, after landing successful strikes on the enemy there is no blood visible on the blade of weapons. Some blood dripping from the weapon and splashes of blood coming out of the body when a swing is not blocked would be nice. More blood for heavy hits too, to kind of show the intensity of the blow.

Disagreed in the other thread, and will disagree here. I'd rather not have unrealistic geysers or mists of blood every time I hit someone. There's enough blood to get the point across, but not too much to be ridiculous.

At the moment, when hits connect it doesn't feel distinctly different from blocked swings.

I did notice a couple of times during the demo that there was a red streak even if I or my opponent blocked an attack. Not sure if it was a glitch, but making all blocks spark (like they did most of the time) would mitigate this concern.

I also agree on the AI grunts being too weak, and the glow effects not being super great.I love the fact that there are larger and slower Samurai too, feels far more authentic, though while the samurai armor looks great now, some of the Norse/ Viking helmets have wings or horns on them, which breaks the theme for me, seeing as I know Norsemen never had those things, they look ridiculous, oh and also the bones around the waist, please, be more authentic like with the great Samurai armor shown.

I'm actually split on this.

On the one hand, I would absolutely prefer designs aligning more with history.

On the other hand, I realise, after this presentation, that the factions are much more set in a mythological mode than I had originally thought.

The horns I might be okay with (they're forgivable to me). The wings are a bit much for my taste. The bones around the waist (or anywhere else really) smack too much of Conan the Barbarian and should be removed.