Hey guys!
Like many of you, I played the Alpha to death and now I want to share my thoughts on what I experienced and what I think needs to be fine tuned for the final release.

Note that I played mainly Duel and Brawl games, wanted to hone my skills in the art of fighting and test out the system, seeing as this is the core of For Honor. I must have played around 200 Duels and at least 50 Brawl games, and I only remember being beaten 2 or 3 times in duels and only in one single Brawl game. If you wanna check for yourself, here's a video of a friend and me playing Brawl and wrecking all (he recorded).

As for my feedback, I will only point out the things I think need improvement - everything else I consider to be PERFECT as is. Yes, this game really surprised me with how polished, tuned and balanced it already is.
So here goes:

Fight System:
- I think the distance to guard break needs to be slightly reduced overall. I get that some characters have a longer range on this - I'm not complaining about those. I just think that it should be reduced by maybe a foot or so (ingame distance) on all characters to avoid people spamming the mechanic from a distance.

- I've seen some people abuse the sprint attack in duels, meaning they will release lock, press sprint in the direction of the enemy and immediately fire out their sprint attack (which usually has a longer range than other attacks and comes out rather quickly). Maybe the devs want it that way, but I think it would be better if your character has to get at least 2 or 3 steps in to gain momentum before he/she can release the sprint attack.

- I don't think rolling works exactly as intended right now, meaning it won't reliably dodge under horizontal attacks. Also, dodging to the side will often not save you from a charging opponent or in some cases not even from a vertical heavy attack.

- The time window for pressing block&heavy attack to parry is a bit too wide I feel, especially on heavy attacks. It took me a while to realise how early I could already press it, which then made parrying heavy attacks way too easy. Comparing it to other games like Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry or Onimusha, a mechanic like this should really only work if you press the required button RIGHT ON IMPACT. Seeing as this is a rather advanced mechanic anyway, I don't see the need here to make it easier for the casual player.

- I've noticed that sometimes, even if the finishing blow is a heavy attack, I wouldn't get the prompt for the execution input. Am I missing something here? Is this intentional? Are only certain heavy attacks viable for a execution follow-up?


General gameplay mechanics:
- I think the revive mechanic needs to be rebalanced, especially in Brawl mode. It only takes about 6 feet of distance to the opponent to be able to quite safely turn around and run away to revive your teammate. While I understand the tactical element of watching your opponent and not letting him/her get away, I think it's just that little bit to easy. Slowing the revive process by 1 second would be enough to make it fair.

- Alternatively, you could keep the revive speed as is and make revived teammates come back with only half their health restored. That's the way it works in most if not all online team shooters and I think it's fair. Even in dominion mode, it makes sense that if I have fallen once and have been revived, I am still hurting and need to retreat to a taken objective to restore my health.

- Speaking of objectives, I think the time it takes to capture an objective in Dominion mode is WAY too short and should be extended by at least 5 seconds. Right now, if you see an opponent run to a capture point 60 feet ahead of you, there is no way of stopping him/her from capturing. But then I haven't played that much Dominion mode, so maybe I'm wrong on this.


Graphics/HUD:
- Color. I have to say, as much as I love the art style of this game, it is just too damn colorful. Medieval battle needs to be gritty and dirty, all those bright blues and oranges totally take me out of the experience. I understand that there has to be a visual indicator of team allegiance, but it surely doesn't have to be this bright. At least give us the option to mute the team colors via a slider or something.

- That white outline around locked opponents needs to go. Really, NEEDS TO GO. It totally denies the otherwise beautiful lighting of the game and totally takes the locked opponent out of the whole game. Again, I understand that you want to highlight the lock, but c'mon, we already have that HUGE white circle on the ground, do we really need any more? And don't argue that we need the white outline to read the opponent's limb movement and attacks, because WE ALREADY HAVE INDICATORS FOR THAT. Same as above, at least please give us an option to customise which indicators we want to see and which we don't.

- Speaking of HUD customisation, it would be great to be able to scale/defeat each and every element of the HUD, like the stance indicators on your character, the hit warnings on opponents, and the life bars on both. I would also love to see a hardcore mode for duelling where there is no HUD at all and you really have to read the opponent's movement.

- On the same line of thought, please include a replay system that enables us to turn of the HUD and move the camera freely to create really epic looking replays!


Upgrade system:
- I think the progression and levelling in this game is too fast. I've seen it done wrong on other games before (Star Wars Battlefront, for example) and you are really destroying your own long-term playerbase with a progression system that's too quick. I get that you have to take casual players into account who need rewards as well to keep them interested, but as it stands right now, the dedicated players will have everything unlocked within a week or two, and that's not good at all. I understand that you can't expand the progress beyond prestige level 5, because then players would become too powerful with their stats, so I recommend that you find a way to progressively slow down players' progress through the levels, so that new players can get to prestige 1 rather quickly (still slower than in the Alpha, I'd recommend), but getting from prestige 4 to 5 takes waaaaaay longer. In other games, each level will take 1.5x the XP to unlock than the previous level. Maybe that's a good benchmark to start with. I know it's going to be difficult with the items that can be dissolved into XP then progressively becoming worthless, but I'm sure you will find a way.

- I think it shouldn't cost more metal to dismantle a higher leveled item, bacause if I spent a lot of metal already on levelling up an item, then why should I pay even more to dismantle it into another one?

- Please, PLEASE, don't make ANY items only available to purchase with real money. The only exception being purely cosmetic items - although I still don't like the notion of doing microtransactions, that would be a tolerable way to do it. Anyway, any item with stats superior or even equal to 'free', unlockable items will absolutely break the game and the spirit of dedicated players who don't want to spend extra money. Thank you.


This is pretty much all I can think of right now - I didn't touch the overall diversity of heroes/gear/maps/game modes because we haven't seen the whole scope of the game yet and I trust that there's going to be a LOT more. Psssst, 4v4 Brawl please!

Cheers,
eL