This post is going to be long so I apologise in advance for anyone who's going to read this. Below I'm going to list various glitches and the like that I witnessed or experienced (discussing them in detail to more accurately explain the scenario I saw them under) as well as giving my overall general feedback from playing during the alpha. I'll also include images where possible to better help show what I'm talking about or referring too.

So the first up are some general glitches I came across while playing the game. While I can appreciate that not everyone will have run into similar issues, I'm also compelled to bring them up so that the dev know these issues do exist.


1. Game can’t exit to desktop or main menu. This happened to me during the first day or two of the alpha, the game would basically stop working if I selected the option to exit to desktop. The game would stop responding, but I was still able to go back into play mode, just not select anything. I had to basically Cntrl Alt Del to get out of the game. During the last day though the game seemed to be properly quoting so I've no idea if this was fixed on the fly or was something that just wasn't constant.

2. Head glitch (Disappeared, see the image below. Also links to point 3 below, it was the trigger that caused the glitch).

3. Instant killed when attacking an AI Hero while it was hitting an npc soldier. (My character flew onto their back like during the Raider execution animation except the head was severed and the body froze in the fetal position. When I respawned my character still had her head missing, as stated above. It didn’t seem to hinder my character at all though).



4. Profile emblem editor, the reset option when transforming any of the symbols, background etc, doesn’t work. I can move a symbol around but when I hit the reset button nothing happens.

5. Seen an AI Hero get stuck trying to resurrect a companion on some steps on the Citadel Gate map near point A. (See the image below for the location). Their pathing might need to be looked at, the AI Heros might get confused when trying to resurrect an ally if that ally’s corpse is clipped into some scenery. It also seemed to glitch out the Ai that was supposed to be revived as it didn't try to respawn despite the fact it was well past the wait window time.



6. This one is a very minor nitpick. One of the npc soldiers at the end of the “River Fort” map, during the defender side victory scene, beats an enemy soldier on the ground with his katana that he’s holding backwards (the blade edge is facing the wielder. See the image below).




7. Contract Order selection goes off screen and there doesn’t seem to be the ability to scroll down?
(See images below)



8. Some Contracts also didn't have their progress track properly, I know a few other people had an issue with the Heroes Slaughter being tracked.



9. XP doesn’t properly carry over (Sometimes if you are say 200 XP off the next level and you win a match PLUS get an Order finished, it’ll glitch out and only get you to the level and a tiny bit, so if I needed 200 to level, a match win gives me 400 and an order 1000 as an example, I should level up and be 1200 XP into the next level, but I’ve found that it would only put me 100 XP if even into the next level, very infuriating as the Orders can only be done once so that massive amount of XP was a waste.)


Next up are things I've noted that might not necessarily be glitches, but are things I feel should probably be looked at, fixed or tweaked.

Notes:

1. Joined a match mid game, causing me to spawn on top of 3 bots that were fighting another player at point C on the “Overwatch” map. Needless to say the three bots wrecked me before I could get my bearings This could probably do with being fixed, it’s happened to me twice that I can think of. Maybe if a player joins the game late it might be best to spawn them at the base? I can assume that I took the place of a bot that was already at that location, but again in that scenario it would still be beneficial to teleport the bot back to base before replacing it with the player.
This was so bad in fact that at one stage I joined an in progress match and replaced a bot that was climbing a ladder, but when I spawned I spawned in the air about the height the bot had been on the ladder and fell to my death.



3. Daily Orders and Contract Orders that are specific to PvP can be completed in a PvP room even with 1 Player and 7 AI Heros (See point below for more details).

4. I’ll put this next one as a note because I’m not sure if it can be counted as a glitch. Basically, if you join a Player Vs Player 4v4 Dominion game, if everyone leaves after the entire thing is over, sometimes you can be left as the last one in the room. If you click ready, it’ll launch a match with just you and 7 AI Heros. Playing this mode contributes to any PvP/Dominion/4v4 Orders you have, like winning matches, or killing soldier (Like one order I had that wanted me to kill 300 soldier in PvP 4v4). I tested this a few times to confirm it and it happens every time. So in essence I was able to play a 1 Player 7 AI match and have progress toward PvP orders be recognised. Also, see the point below for extra details related to this.

5. Like that which was stated above, sometimes you can be left in a room on your own in the PvP 4v4 game mode. This allows you to play this mode vs 7 AI Heros. The thing is, when you finish this match, you are awarded on average 500 points, 100 from the game mode and 400 from the match (assuming you win). This is different from if you had played a Player Vs AI match which awards 85 points from game mode and 340 points from the match (again, assuming you win). So there’s about 75 points in difference between playing the PvAI mode and the PvP mode of the 4v4. So basically if you get into the situation of being in a PvP room on your own, you can play with 7 AI Hero Bots (which are usually easier than players) but get a much higher reward than if you played PvAI. The point difference isn’t much, but it’s easier and more advantageous to play the 1 Player 7 AI in the PvP than it is to go back to a 4Pv4AI game. I hope I explained that ok.



6. PvP 4v4 doesn’t seem to refill the teams if one or two people leave? (I was in a match and during the end screen 3 of the opposing team had left and the 3 that were on the enemy team got put up the ladder and thus onto my team leaving their old teammate behind on his own). I can see this being an issue as if 2 or 3 people leave then only 2 are left on one team with the other being full players, now I know the bots replace the players but the bot’s skill is based of the average of the players (I assume) so they don’t exactly perform great. This can cause the remaining 2 people to leave, leaving only 4 players vs 4 AI, this could cause the remaining people to leave which could result in the situation I stated above with one person being in the room on their own.

Finally the remaining stuff is just some personal thoughts about the alpha and my experience with it as well as some suggestions.

Thoughts:

1. I’ve noticed that the “Overwatch” map has a lot of narrow spaces during the 1v1 dual mode (one near the pits and the other on the bridge) I found these to be rather abusable (More so against players that aren’t used to a guard break anticipation). Maybe consider changing one of the locations to another area? The Citadel Gate map has two zones during the dual that are more or less free of the worry of being flung off a cliff. Now I know people will say “Git Gud!” but you’d be mistaken, I was the one flinging people off the cliff in the fights. It’s more a note to make the fights a bit easier for more inexperienced players. Two out of the three locations you fight on in the “Overwatch” map can basically be over in a few seconds if you catch the other player off guard. While I get that’s the punishment for not being careful, if you catch them in both areas you’ve basically won 2/3 fights you need for a victory and with ease. It’s not game breaking, but I think it’ll draw out duals on “Overwatch” a bit more if one of the locations is changed to a more open area.

2. I didn’t notice any way to check or select your Daily Orders or your Contract Orders between battles during the aftermath screen. Considering the Contract Orders need to be selected to have progress contributed to them, it’d be nice to be able to select them without having to leave the group we’re in. There was a time I was in a good group in 4v4 and I had just finished an Order and wanted to select a new one but I would have had to leave the group to select it, which kind of sucks to be honest. If there was a way to view or select them between fights it’d be a little quality of life improvement for the game.

3. I couldn’t seem to find a way of knowing at what level each of the “Feats” for a class unlock at. So for example, the catapult on the warden, I had no idea what level it’s unlocked at, until I’ve unlocked it that is. Comparative to this, the colour pallets, symbols, etc for the character all list the renown/level needed to unlock them, this indicator for the “Feats” would be nice also so I know how many levels I am off to get that Feat I’ve got my eyes on. Again like the above, it’d be a little quality of life improvement.

4. It'd be nice to have a Hardcore mode where you have 100% friendly fire. Force people to be more tactical rather than people just rushing into a fight and things basically turning into a giant blender fest. That way people can choose what mode they want.

5. It'd be nice if in the 1v1 mode vs the AI we could choose the difficulty or the class of the AI we face. I know this would be difficult to do in 2v2 or 4v4, but I don't see why we couldn't have this option in 1v1. Because it'd be nice to be able to select an AI class that we want to practice moves against etc.

6. For some reason we couldn't do a 1v1 with a friend during the alpha (got a message saying group was too big) it would be good for us to have a way to do 1v1 with our friends, and also have the ability to do 2v2 (yourself and 3 friends) and 4v4 (yourself and 7 friends).

7. There isn't much being done with the loading screen, see below.



It'd be nice if more was done with this screen. In the case of AI, maybe we could see what their difficulty is? and in the case of the players maybe we could see what their renown/level for the selected character is. I mean, I know my opponent might be a warden, raider, etc, but how good of a warden etc are they? is this their first time with the class? or are they renown 2 level 18? It'd certainly be nice t know what we're going up against. I think you could also make it bigger so you can see the emblems a lot easier.

8. I was thinking, some games give you a reward for finishing the campaign on the highest difficulty, maybe we could have something like that for For Honor (I know we don't know much about the campaign yet but it was an idea that crossed my mind). It'd be cool that if you finished the campaign you got a colour palette for each faction that used the colours seen in the factions emblem.

So for example you'd get a colour palette for 1v1 duels that would be green and yellow and white like the knight faction as well as two other palettes with colours that match the emblems of the other factions.


Final thoughts:

Overall I felt that the mechanics were good, the stance system, etc, worked well. I did at times feel that some people spammed guard breaks a little too much as a "free hit" type of thing but really I know that'll come down to each player.

The peer to peer was dreadful though, this game really needs servers of some kind, if not by the developers themselves then have the option given to the community so we can have our own servers. To go with that, a server browser would be nice if that option is chosen, we know PC games can support such a thing and I'm sure some system could be worked in for the consoles to do something similar. When it comes to a game with mechanics like For Honor, it's multiplayer scene will live or die on the connection people have in a match.

I'll withhold my final judgement on the classes till I see how the remaining 6 perform vs the current 6 we got to try. I'm sure many others have stated their opinions on the classes as is anyway.

The game also feels like it could probably benefit from another mode, although sadly at this time I don't have any immediate suggestions beyond saying that maybe some kind of objective based mode might be fun.

The amount of things we could customise was great, though the different visuals in the gear we had access to during the alpha wasn't overly amazing. Would like to see more stuff overall, more colour pallets and different visual gear would always be welcome of course. It was nice to see that we could alter our executions which I thought was really cool. I seen that there was an emote option also, hopefully we get a similar thing with those as we have with the executions.

The music is nice, but it doesn't get my blood going, it's not overly epic and doesn't really feel so much like fighting music but more so like battle preparations music.

More maps are definitely needed (although I'm sure there are probably more than just the three we were shown so far).

Some aspects of the interface could do with being looked at. The gear for example, it'd be nice if we could see some numbers on the stats that are altered, rather than just an arbitrary bar. Does a max bar in sprint speed allow me to run 5x faster? or 1.5x times faster? I think having visual numbers there would also ease the worries people have over the idea that high end gear will give you a considerable advantage over someone with out.
See"Block Damage Resist" below in the pictures as an example.




I liked that you had to hold down the A button to confirm your choice, prevents people from accidentally selecting stuff.

The tutorial, so... where to begin with this one. I suppose the videos will be a start. While it was nice to have them decided into basic and advanced, it also would have been nice to have the option to either pause, rewind or replay certain sections of the videos. If there was a segment in the advanced video for a class I wanted to rematch I would have to start the video from the start again, which can be a little infuriating.
I felt that overall the tutorial was ok, but I felt that it could give more time to each mechanic and the demonstration of it. When I played the tutorial for the first time I felt a little flushed and rushed through it. (It also didn't help that when you choose to continue the tutorial it just drops you into what's basically a dominion match, whereby I preceded to get destroyed by two AI Wardens that rushed me. Not the most fun first experience).
I feel that For Honor is a game that could greatly benefit from a practice mode where the player can choose the class the AI plays, how many AI there are, as well as the behaviour of the AI (set the AI only to block attacks, or parry or try guard breaks etc). This I think would allow people to get more comfortable with the controls in a more controlled environment. We do want to ensure after all that the game is accommodating to new people, if the learning curve is too steep or unforgiving they'll simply give up and leave and that'll impact the overall population the game will have.
Super Smash Bros has a great example of a training mode that would allow people to practice with a character in a controllable and adjustable fight/environment.

And that's all of it, all that comes to mind anyway.

I hope this proves helpful to the Devs and I thank you for taking the time to read my post. ^_^