Junior Member
First things first, I love the feel, concept and general core of the game. While it might not be a polished gem just yet, For Honor has the potential to become one of THE best melee medieval combat games ever. Note that my experience comes primarily from playing Duel modes, where I've racked up quite a decent number of hours of gameplay this weekend. That being said, there are quite a number of things that could potentially use addressing:
1.) Edges you can be thrown off from are too common (in duels)
Explanation: While using the environment to your advantage is a great feature, there are simply way too many ledges and places you can get thrown off of on most maps.One mistake or bad dodge, and you're exposing yourself to a one-hit kill move you can't counter or come back from. Yes, I know you can guard break to counter that, but for a game that revolves heavily on dodging and that allows staggering hits, it's waaaay too easy to set off your victims for that final push.
I've been on the serving end of this, playing a lot of Raider and getting really, REALLY good at stunlocking people and abusing the environment. I'm sure other classes can do this quite well too (I've noticed the Conqueror to be particularly effective). I've actually chosen and upgraded my gear to give me boosted throw range, meaning I can knock people off from insane distances, all I need is some good positioning.
It's a great feature, but some maps have so many gaps and dangerous ledges, it makes it ridiculously easy to win fights by abusing push-offs. Removing some of the gaps (not ALL) would help making throw-downs more rewarding and feel less abusive.
2.) Game modes, as it is, are very limited and not entirely diverse.
I'm not sure whether this is the case just for alpha, but with Domination being the only objective-based mode, and the rest being 1v1 and 2v2 duels (which are more or less the same thing since a lot of people have etiquette), there's simply not a lot to do before the game gets slightly repetitive.
3.) Gear improvements need balancing and potentially nerfing for some stats
Gear progression is great, but it feels fairly easy to upgrade some stats that provide significant advantages, making fights against lower level players highly unbalanced. Particularly weapon damage and stamina cost reduction upgrades seem extremely strong, more so than other upgrades. Boosting my damage on my Raider, I could easily take down 2/3rds of an enemy's health if my first heavy connected and I followed up with another, and that's just with a level 2 weapon. I can see that getting out of hand very fast.
4.) The Bot replacement system has some major flaws
Assuming your enemies leave, you're often stuck with playing against bots for a seemingly infinite number of games, unless you quite to the menu and requeue. It feels random, as bots are also sometimes replaced by players. And here in lies the problem: do NOT replace bots with players joining a game right in the middle of a duel. It's buggy, laggy, and usually end up with the guy joining getting smacked around before he can actually react. I enjoy a fair fight, I highly dislike smacking someone that can't fight back because his game is still loading.
5.) Etiquette in 2v2?
I've noticed a lot of players that win their duels wait for the 2nd duel to finish before engaging the survivor. However, some don't, and when that happens, things get infuriating. There's nothing worse than focusing on parrying your opponent's hits when you suddenly get stunlocked from behind. Either make 2v2 duels happen in the same area (like a circular arena or room), or prevent 2v1 situations. This might be my personal preference and others might enjoy the chaos of it, but I think the teamwin should be decided in a fair 1v1 fight between the survivors, if it comes down to it.
Junior Member
Running is also an issue. just had a match take 5 minutes longer than it should of because an entire team decided to just sprint away after we started crushing them. we ended up winning by over 1000 points but none of them had died at the end. since they never tire out and we have nothing to catch them with(ranged attacks or stuns) they could pretty much run forever. tie sprinting into stamina. just like you did for the running tackles for the raider and conq.
ladder usage is bad. my last match i got 2 free kills because 2 guys tryd the ladder at the same time and literally froze at the top of the ladder together. one swing and the they both fell to their deaths. aside from that, a little ninja punching the bottom of a raiders feet shouldn't be what it takes to de-ladder him and possibly kill him from the 8-10 for fall.
also the guard break is very inconsistent. many times it wont even register. i just swing into to someone and nothing happens. this happens at least 2 or 3 times(in a good match) a match.
Peer to Peer needs to go. priority one should be dedicated servers so P2P is no longer required. host changes are awful mid fight and P2P allows for lag to come into play more. not to mention makes cheating easier.
