For Honor Alpha Feedback

Hey guys! First off, thank you so much for the opportunity to FINALLY get to play the game! This has been the game to generate the most excitement for me in a long long time. This was also the first Alpha test that I have ever been a part of so I will do my best to give you my impressions!

About my experience:
-Played approximately 20 hours
- Game modes - Dominion (Against AI) & Duel (Player v Player)
- Main Character: Warden (Level 14), Orochi (Level 11), Conqueror/Berzerker/Raider (Level 5-6)

The feedback is ordered by concept/group, with the stuff at the top being the most important in my point of view.

Moveset Increases & Variety:
So starting out I was very much a Warden/Conqueror guy (Go Knights!) and I enjoyed playing as them. They were flexible and simple...maybe a little too simple...but more on that in a second. I also wanted to give the Berzerker a shot and this was my first exposure to the Assassin class. The Berzerker was frustrating to play as and I found that chaining attacks was difficult and that sense of speed just didn't carry over to give a sense of outstanding offensive capability that you expect from a dueling-focus class.
But after a while of seeing all of the success that people were having with the Orochi and all of the OP-Orochi chat on the forums, I decided to give the Orochi a shot to see what all of the fuss was about. My first round of Dominion (AI) with the Orochi, I went 11-2 with 5 Captures and I realized that some of the concerns about the Orochi were definitely warranted. The character was VERY agile and had an incredible range of offensive and defensive capabilities making it easy to play and spam attacks. Attacking with the Orochi was very easy, as it seemed much easier to change guard direction and attack from multiple angles very quickly, plus with a variety of unique charge attack/counter attacks/multiple top strikes. I won't address the OP-Orochi topic because both sides have valid point but my point is this: THE OROCHI IS A BLAST TO PLAY WITH! For me, this fun comes from the VARIETY/OPTIONS IN THE MOVESET and the ease at which you can operate.

The Orochi has 9 "moves" in the Moveset list allowing for a wide array of options and fun things to do compared to the other assassin Berzerker that only has 7 moves. The Knights got stuck with 6 moves for the Warden and 6 (plus a Charge Heavy Attack) for the Conqueror. While the other Vanguards had a few more (Raider = 7 moves & Kensei = 8 moves - which also has a good amount of variety).

Based off this and just the experience of enjoying the variety of the Orochi and the frustration of only having a small amount of things to do with the Warden (Top Counter, Shoulder Bash, and Double Fast Side Attacks), I really feel like expanding the type of moves that each character could do would allow for more variety and more fun for even the "Easy" characters. The Warden could have some type of charge attacks or a similar back-dodge-forward strike counter similar to the Orochi. Just additional ideas for the Warden but I feel like almost all of the characters need a SLIGHTLY expanded Moveset to match the fun variety of the Orochi.

Character Feedback/Experiences : just wanted to give a few of my impression of playing/playing against some of the different characters.
- Orochi - Easy to play as with great attack options and counter attacking, huge moveset
- Warden - Limited moveset, quick attacks and fair counter attacking, slow
- Conqueror - Outstanding defense and resilient, fun to play with. One issue I encountered in a 1v1 Duel against a Conq. was that they could hold the Charge Heavy Attack and then rapidly jump around the Guard direction wheel and because of the range of that Heavy attack and the speed of the guard switch spamming, there was no way to guard it or get in close to guardbreak. A possible fix could be for the Charge Heavy could be for the charge to drain stamina faster because the charge drained very little and the person could just sit and hold the charge.
-Raider - Unblockable swing was very hard to get away from even when dodging - one issue in playing against them was that the Stun Tap was very hard to guard against or block and was spammable enough to completely knock someone around the map.
-Berzerker - did NOT feel like an Assassin class, attacks didn't seem to want to chain well and seemed much less user friendly compared to the other "Hard" level Orochi.

Training Mode: The game DESPERATELY needs a training mode. When trying to learn a new character you would either have to do the Tutorial mode several times, get stuck fighting the annoying AIs in the tutorial mode or the good AIs online, or go against real players that affect your record when you are just trying to get used a new play style.
I recommend doing a training mode (like Soul Caliber or Mortal Kombat) where you can fight purely against an AI that you can choose the character and how the AI acts (movement, skill level, play style, etc.), and where you can have a Moveset overlay to practice differently techniques, chains, and strategies. Or at the very least, a tutorial mode where a game pause actually stops the game.
Another aspect that could be improved would be the How to Play Character videos. It was frustrating trying to learn the specifics of a new character and have to watch an entire video for a single clip for a certain move. Possibly doing the Moveset menu with a broken-down smaller individual move video clips for each chain and moveset (Shadow of Mordor did something like that this) would work better instead of seeing the same thing about guarding and the revenge mode tips over and over and over and over.

Customization: Something that you could consider when it comes to customization is displaying all of the available options of weapons pieces, armor pieces, or appearance options[/U]. By doing this and allowing players to purchase individual pieces with Steel from a full display menu, you would increase the motivation of the players to work toward the pieces that support either their play style or aesthetic appearance preference.
Also, I feel that it would be a great option for the customization of the characters to utilize the "Transform" option from the Player Emblem Creation to allow you adjust the size, placement, and multiple layers of the tattoos, icons, symbols, and other options the various parts of the body for the various characters to allow the player to create their perfect warrior.

Guardbreaks :My personal experience with the guard breaks was that they were very spammable and hard to counter. Most of the time it seemed that any guardbreak counter I had was when another player and I were both in close proximity and both trying to guardbreak and it basically became a weird guardbreak-counter-guardbreak-counter-repeat cycle with people mashing the guardbreak. I have seen a lot of higher-level players on the forum saying that the guard break counter was too easy but this was not my experience (I am definitely a middle of the road player so this may simply be a matter of skill level/practice but I feel that for average players it was very difficult to shift from the stance thumb stick to the guardbreak button).

Edge Throws & Kicks: Being able to use the surrounding area/ledges during combat is fantastic! However, I had a slight issue when engaging AI characters near ledges. It seemed that it was easier for them to engage me and shove me off a wall, but when I would engage them do attempt to shove/throw them off awhile, they would often slide along the edge of gap/edge or end up perched up in edge-corner where the gap ended and not fall of. I feel like the edge-sensitivity was different from situation to situation or at least didn't sync well with the AI bots.

Ladders : Last thing! I had a number of upsetting and frustrating experiences while scaling a ladder and being tossed off by the AI. This was incredibly irritation because even when going down a ladder and engaging the speed-slide, they could reach up and bump you off the ladder to your death. The ultimate issue is that you can never tell if someone is coming up a ladder if you are on the top so I think that some type of ladder indicator to show if people were coming up the other side or down from abovee would be useful to all players.

These are just my impressions and this was the first time that I got to have a hands-on experience with the game. I am so excited with what you guys have done so far and I know that you will continue to push to make the game better! Keep it up! For Honor!