How customization may ruin the competitive scene | Forums

[Rain-Dragon]

I disagree that stat customization will be bad for competitive play.

Games like League of Legends are proving it. Extremely successful in the competitive scene and very item-driven.

The question is how they will handle the matchmaking and how big the stat differences will be, but after all it is just a game and everyone will have the best items they could want eventually, it is not like EVE online where skills advance infinitely.

When I get into a game like this I am just that much happier when I beat someone with better gear and imagine how much tougher of an opponent I will be once I get my own top gear.

Look at it this way. If you were one of these warriors in real life, you wouldn't be equipped with the best of the line gear either. You would have to work your way up with junk, becoming worth the better, more expensive sword and armor some smith put their life into.

[PowerSenpai]

I disagree that stat customization will be bad for competitive play.

Games like League of Legends are proving it. Extremely successful in the competitive scene and very item-driven.

The question is how they will handle the matchmaking and how big the stat differences will be, but after all it is just a game and everyone will have the best items they could want eventually, it is not like EVE online where skills advance infinitely.

When I get into a game like this I am just that much happier when I beat someone with better gear and imagine how much tougher of an opponent I will be once I get my own top gear.

Look at it this way. If you were one of these warriors in real life, you wouldn't be equipped with the best of the line gear either. You would have to work your way up with junk, becoming worth the better, more expensive sword and armor some smith put their life into.

League of legends does the opposite actually. You start the game with the same money as your opponents and you buy gear there and then. If you are a noob who is better than your opponent, you can outbuild them and outplay them. In For Honor that would not be possible, instead the noob would die from fewer hits than the higher leveled guy, and have to do more hits on the higher level guy than other people his level. This makes combat feel unfair, not fun.
The realism argument makes no sense either, if everything we did was to add more realism to a game, then games would not be all that fun. After all we are playing a game instead of indulging in reality to begin with, if i want utmost realism i'll go seek out a HEMA club.

[Rain-Dragon]

League of legends does the opposite actually. You start the game with the same money as your opponents and you buy gear there and then. If you are a noob who is better than your opponent, you can outbuild them and outplay them. In For Honor that would not be possible, instead the noob would die from fewer hits than the higher leveled guy, and have to do more hits on the higher level guy than other people his level. This makes combat feel unfair, not fun.
The realism argument makes no sense either, if everything we did was to add more realism to a game, then games would not be all that fun. After all we are playing a game instead of indulging in reality to begin with, if i want utmost realism i'll go seek out a HEMA club.

"If you are a noob who is better than your opponent, you can outbuild them and outplay them."
If you are a noob in For Honor who is better than your opponent, you can outplay them too. They just retain the item advantage, which might be so marginal that it won't make enough of a difference to win a fight against a more skilled player, but rather just enough to tune the character more towards your play style.
We don't know yet. Stat numbers might even be hard-capped at base value so that all you can do is swap out one stat for another. That's something I might prefer TBH.

As for the realism argument, I agree it's not a balancing argument, but just a way to get immersion and thus fun out of it. You know, when a game is about grinding, some people look at the disadvantage they will have as they start off and dread it, and others will look at the advantage they will have as they reach max and look forward to it.
Maybe we get lucky and they find a way to strike a great balance.

I personally prefer customization and progress over instant-fairness. Replay value over instant-satisfaction.

[MisterWillow]

"If you are a noob who is better than your opponent, you can outbuild them and outplay them."
If you are a noob in For Honor who is better than your opponent, you can outplay them too. They just retain the item advantage, which might be so marginal that it won't make enough of a difference to win a fight against a more skilled player, but rather just enough to tune the character more towards your play style.
We don't know yet. Stat numbers might even be hard-capped at base value so that all you can do is swap out one stat for another. That's something I might prefer TBH.

That wasn't his point.

LoL and MOBAs utilise in-match progression. You upgrade your abilities and become stronger over the course of a match, but the base stats of characters remain constant and reset at the start of the next match. For Honor's progression is constant. Progress carries over match-to-match.

If you're a noob in For Honor going up against a veteran who has the advantage of both experience and gear that amplifies their base stats, the fight is so imbalanced that the new player would need to grasp the controls and combat nuances so quickly that they'd be labelled savants in order to stand a chance, at least with how the stats are now. If they dial down their impact before release, then maybe you'd have an argument, but giving someone who's already skilled and boosting their inherent power to the degree the stats currently allow is going to cause major problems with player adoption and retention the longer the game is actually out.

You know, when a game is about grinding, some people look at the disadvantage they will have as they start off and dread it, and others will look at the advantage they will have as they reach max and look forward to it.
Maybe we get lucky and they find a way to strike a great balance.

Again, people in the fighting game community don't really worry about that because the core mechanics are compelling enough to hold players' attention regardless of the reward. Obviously this is not true of everyone, and that's probably a reason fighting games have implemented customisation options to visually augment and personalise your character, but it would be a mistake to allow players to increase the base stats of their fighters. The failure of Tekken Revolution bore that out.

I think the same is true of For Honor. It has more in common with a fighting game in regard to the core gameplay mechanics than anything else. That's how the customisation should be approached.

I personally prefer customization and progress over instant-fairness. Replay value over instant-satisfaction.

It's not instant-fairness. The more experienced and/or skilled player would still have an advantage by virtue of their experience and/or skill. The replay value comes from learning the mechanics, learning the maps, utilising that knowledge to become better.

I would characterize getting a weapon that instantly boosts your attack damage as 'instant-satisfaction' sooner than I would players becoming better by familiarising themselves with the game's mechanics, familiarising themselves with characters' movesets, and learning from their mistakes, as the former is an arbitrary alteration that does little to nothing to actually increase player skill. All it's doing is making sure people who play longer can muscle their way through opponents without much thought for the game's more advanced mechanics.

[Rain-Dragon]

That wasn't his point.

LoL and MOBAs utilise in-match progression. You upgrade your abilities and become stronger over the course of a match, but the base stats of characters remain constant and reset at the start of the next match. For Honor's progression is constant. Progress carries over match-to-match.

If you're a noob in For Honor going up against a veteran who has the advantage of both experience and gear that amplifies their base stats, the fight is so imbalanced that the new player would need to grasp the controls and combat nuances so quickly that they'd be labelled savants in order to stand a chance, at least with how the stats are now. If they dial down their impact before release, then maybe you'd have an argument, but giving someone who's already skilled and boosting their inherent power to the degree the stats currently allow is going to cause major problems with player adoption and retention the longer the game is actually out.



Again, people in the fighting game community don't really worry about that because the core mechanics are compelling enough to hold players' attention regardless of the reward. Obviously this is not true of everyone, and that's probably a reason fighting games have implemented customisation options to visually augment and personalise your character, but it would be a mistake to allow players to increase the base stats of their fighters. The failure of Tekken Revolution bore that out.

I think the same is true of For Honor. It has more in common with a fighting game in regard to the core gameplay mechanics than anything else. That's how the customisation should be approached.



It's not instant-fairness. The more experienced and/or skilled player would still have an advantage by virtue of their experience and/or skill. The replay value comes from learning the mechanics, learning the maps, utilising that knowledge to become better.

I would characterize getting a weapon that instantly boosts your attack damage as 'instant-satisfaction' sooner than I would players becoming better by familiarising themselves with the game's mechanics, familiarising themselves with characters' movesets, and learning from their mistakes, as the former is an arbitrary alteration that does little to nothing to actually increase player skill. All it's doing is making sure people who play longer can muscle their way through opponents without much thought for the game's more advanced mechanics.

Ok, what the hell are you talking about? MOBA's don't only have temporary in-game progression, but also account-level-based progression. In the case of LoL that would be runes and masteries.
If you are a noob and go up against a veteran you get destroyed in any game. What are you trying to say? That the quick fix of a temporary low-level player is more important than the acknowledgement of a permanent high-level player who invested weeks and months into the game?
You want fair fights, that's what match-making is for.

And players in fighting games have always wanted customization, like players in any other game. In the form of name tags, hats, emblems or skins, and if those weren't available then people would find ways to get custom skins and mods.
Hell the biggest skin market was born out of a "fighting" game, CS:GO. And don't try to tell me competitively shooting at people is fundamentally different from competitively swinging at people. People loved their customization in GunZ, custom skins in Chivalry or custom 3rd party skins in JKA.

But you seem to miss the point that stat customization in this game is more about tweaking your character to your play-style than about an overall buff.
Let me ask you one thing, are you a console player? Because then I could understand your fright of customization and tweaking and anything else that has to do with individuality, creativity and theory-crafting.

[MisterWillow]

MOBA's don't only have temporary in-game progression, but also account-level-based progression. In the case of LoL that would be runes and masteries.

Maybe I was misinterpreting what PowerSenpai was saying, but I'm fairly certain his point was being made in regard to in-match progression. That's all I was saying.

If you are a noob and go up against a veteran you get destroyed in any game.

But in fighting games it's generally because they have more raw experience, and know the mechanics better, know character move sets better. All of this can be learned.

It's entirely different when players can augment their inherent power, so the veteran can destroy the noob on account of underlying damage numbers the noob cannot counter and presuming both players play for the same amount of time continually, can literally never catch up to. The veteran hardly even has to try, between their experience and their superior capabilities.

What are you trying to say? That the quick fix of a temporary low-level player is more important than the acknowledgement of a permanent high-level player who invested weeks and months into the game?

I'm saying that player's inherent power shouldn't fluctuate in terms of damage output, damage reduction, and stamina. Doing that imbalances the game beyond inherent player skill, so the good players become demi-gods and the rest become either fodder that eventually stop playing or frustrated people who complain on forums like these for nerfs and buffs to in-game stat models that have no business being there in the first place while laboriously throwing themselves at a meat grinder trying to get higher-level gear.

Again, the higher-level player would still have the advantage by virtue of their experience and skill.

You want fair fights, that's what match-making is for.

They could still do that through the renown system. But like I said, I didn't even reach renown 1 on my Raider, and I could kill people in 2 hits. That should not happen.

And players in fighting games have always wanted customization, like players in any other game. In the form of name tags, hats, emblems or skins, and if those weren't available then people would find ways to get custom skins and mods.

Name tags, hats, emblems, and skins don't increase the damage Siegfried in Soul Calibur, doesn't increase the speed of Law in Tekken, doesn't increase the defense of Shinnok in Mortal Kombat.

Customisation can exist independent of stats, and in the case of For Honor I think it would be better if they did.

Hell the biggest skin market was born out of a "fighting" game, CS:GO. And don't try to tell me competitively shooting at people is fundamentally different from competitively swinging at people. People loved their customization in GunZ, custom skins in Chivalry or custom 3rd party skins in JKA.

I'll just copy/paste what I said over here.

---

Completely different circumstances, environments, and tactics are involved in something like Battlefront (or shooters in general).

For example, deaths in shooters occur far more quickly, and any firefight that you are involved in only lasts a couple of seconds even if you're a highly skilled player (in which case, you probably killed your opponent from across the room). You can find a position and slaughter five people in rapid succession, lob a grenade that kills multiple people bunched up. You yourself can be killed by someone you didn't see and you have no way of countering.

Melee necessitates being right in your opponent's face, and fights have the potential to be over a minute long. Incidentally, I can't wait for this to actually come out and for people to get really good, because then fight length will only go up, add to that the fact that being outnumbered can be countered and defended against. Aside from the level 4 Feats (Arrow Storm, Catapult Strike), there's no comparison between the two strategically (or even mechanically).

But you seem to miss the point that stat customization in this game is more about tweaking your character to your play-style than about an overall buff.

There are actually other stats present in the game that do that, though, which I think would be fine if they remained. Debuff resistance, sprint speed, revive speed, feat cooldown reduction, etc. etc.

Half of those were not used in the test, though, because they can easily be forgone in favour of the overall buffs to attack damage, damage reduction, max stamina/stamina cost reduction. That's the problem.

Let me ask you one thing, are you a console player? Because then I could understand your fright of customization and tweaking and anything else that has to do with individuality, creativity and theory-crafting.

First, I play on PC and on console.

Second, that sort of condescension is unwarranted and unwanted. Please refrain from resorting to it in the future.

[Rain-Dragon]

First, I play on PC and on console.

Second, that sort of condescension is unwarranted and unwanted. Please refrain from resorting to it in the future.

Well excuse me, but I find the attitude of some people towards customization, creativity and individuality in general highly disturbing, and in my opinion the entire success of consoles is based on this whole sheep mentality.

[MisterWillow]

Well excuse me, but I find the attitude of some people towards customization, creativity and individuality in general highly disturbing, and in my opinion the entire success of consoles is based on this whole sheep mentality.

Console players want just as much in-game customisation as anyone else, in my experience.

You told about, that half of the stats haven't been used ... in videos I saw other things.
Even regard, that in 4 days there is no real strategy how to use the other stats as much or more as the others like damage etc.
Of course all the Newbies take general stuff because it's the easiest thing for beginning!

Not every piece of gear is tied to damage, defense, and stamina. There's obviously more stats that are used, but for those specific pieces of gear there was very little reason to use anything else so that's what the vast majority of people used. The likelihood of this still being the case on launch if it stays the way it is is very high.

For my Conquerer I am going to enforce my Revenge, because it gives me infinite stamina --> autoblock from all directions all the time with extra life and damage

Revenge gear is tied to other pieces, so you could have that Revenge boost and still have high damage.

You mention this 2-hit thing all the time ... I never saw that or something similar in the videos, so you are telling me something that seems like out of the clouds.
I just saw little differences in gear ... as I love it!
The only way i can imagine that 2-hit stuff you tell about, is using the Super-Damage-Unblockable of the Raider ^^

That's what I said I did. With my Raider, I could kill people in 2 hits, that being the Heavy>Unblockable combo. There was very little point in doing anything else unless I was fighting someone good at blocking, which becomes boring. At least if everyone had their base attack/defense stagnant, I would have to pull that off twice at least (depending on class), which increases the chance of an opponent learning from the first time seeing the combo and adapting.

And even with my high-ish level defense gear, a Warden with high attack could kill me in three hits (instead of six), an Orochi with four (instead of six or seven), and another Raider in 2 (same combo). Again, all this does is shorten fights, which shortens people's patience, which has the potential of them quitting the game prematurely because they're dying quicker than they can even grasp the mechanics and they have lower room for error to learn from their mistakes than they otherwise would have.

You complain, that people are frustrated, if the get killed a few times in the very beginnning ... almost every game offers progress through gear. Also in these games experience, knowing the mechanics, ect. is getting combined with better gear.
There are better equiped soldiers and there are worse equiped soldiers and they also had to deserve their gear!
Actuallly people get even more angry in shooters because the don't play well and get killed with less shots, but somehow they continue playing and have really huge player-bases ... suprise suprise
In For Honor you even see you opponent and can kick his ace even with weaker gear, insead of getting shot in the back with a single bullet.

For Honor is not a shooter. It shouldn't be compared to a shooter. It has more in common with fighting games, and those almost never have progress tied to increasing a character's health, damage, defense, or any other stat over time, and the one that I can think of off the top of my head that tried that was a failure (Tekken Revolution).

Further on, the people love to move on in progress and unlock new stronger stuff and it's an old and well-functional principe, that almost everybody loves.
Just learning the mechanics isn't the end of development, but also building up your character.

Again. Fighting games. Getting new stronger stuff has never been a part of those, and everyone is perfectly satisfied with them because the mechanics are satisfying enough that the only fluff they need are wacky outfits.

You like equalty in the game, and I respect your opinion, but with all the respect: this equalty is a thing that more or less will be displayed very soon and only the very best ones will have a slightly bit more advantage compared to the others and that's alright for me (even I don't play games over-exageratingly to achieve that level)

The 'equality' you're talking about will be shared by the people who start playing day one, but the potential exists that after a month that could be all that's still playing because of the power curve that exists.

I also wanted to discuss: Also these kind of people, who get easily frustrated (which you mention all the time) in common don't play games for long, so better game the game for people who stay and give them the chance to shape the character a bit more the way they want, except of forcing them to stay on 1 of 12 ready templates.

It's not about being easily frustrated. It's about lacking the tools to adequately compete with people who have unlocked inherently stronger tools.

Like I said above, there are other stats that could change your character in other ways that don't screw with the inherent game balance.

You said: "That's a distinction between one style of sword over another. It doesn't necessarily say anything about the quality of the weapon itself."
That's all wrong!
A sowrd's quality depends of the material (iron, steel or alloys), the quality of blacksmithing (experience of the blacksmith), the way how the raw-material is treated (just forged straight out or first folded the metall), sharpened or not that much, etc.
A longsword for example isn't just a longsword
I also heared, that very rich people also put diamond powder (which is sharp as f*ck) on their blades, just to make it even sharper and cut through thicker armor.
So don't tell that every weapon is equal!

A weapon is only as good as the person wielding it. Unfortunately, with the limited control limitations on the Art of Battle---and video games in general---you have to account for the fact that everyone has the same (limited) basic set of motions they can perform, and help to retain balance through not creating a power curve tied to stat adjustments.

[MisterWillow]

I am sure, that people will early discover strategies how to use the other perks ... but 4 within 4 days in an Alpha you can't expect too much.

You're putting yourself at such a disadvantage if you don't equip attack, defense, and stamina in those three slots that it's pointless to do otherwise. There's absolutely no incentive to do so.

Heavy Unblockable as I said ^^
But the Unblockable is meant to kick *** ... I saw Newbies kill people with 3 Unblockables instead of 2, so the gap isn't huge.
If that annoys you, you should better open a thread about damage adjustment of Unblockables.

It wasn't two unblockables. It was one heavy attack and one unblockable. If all I have to do to kill someone is that combo, there's very little incentive to do otherwise, stagnating the combat, frustrating my opponents, boring me.

But they also kill enemies faster --> balance
Who says that everybody wants long fights?!
I personally wouldn't like to stop a minute per enemy.

Then farm minions. You take those out in a hit. Just sit in the mob and farm away. Players should be a challenge, and they become less so when they die in max four hits.

Again, in the context of fighting games, I don't want to watch a fight that lasts a few moments. I want a tense trading of hits that takes advantage of the combat mechanics. If Ryu could kill Ken in four hits, the margin for error is so low that either it becomes really aggressive players winning every single fight because all they have to do is wail and eventually a hit will get through, or two people dancing around each other for five minutes because they're waiting for their opponent to make the first move.

Well I can't see how high-ish you defense was, but again I expect you are mainly talking about heavy strikes, which are meant to deal damage!
I watched almost every single video existing about the Alpha and I didn't see much difference in gear.
And I really looked about how much gear effects the gameplay.

That much damage almost undermines the whole combat system. All it does is reward overly aggressive players and it doesn't give newer players time enough to learn the mechanics before they're dead. That's terrible for player retention or player adoption later in the game's life cycle.

Actually you didn't get the sense of my comparison.
I was talking about the point, that other games (talking about shooters) offer the same progress system (that everybody seems to love), which is even more unfair (because a good camper can take out a whole team and additionally when he is allowed to kill peope with 1 bullet instead of 2), than the one you are mentioning.

Yes, and after a couple months the playerbase stagnates for CoD and Battlefield because people have unlocked stronger weapons, better sights, more perks, and people who don't play as much find themselves at such a disadvantage that they find playing a chore and they eventually stop playing altogether.

In For Honor you see your opponent at least and if you play well you can take him out with not that much effort!

I want the effort. I want the challenge. That's diminished if either of us can die in just a few hits.

Boring!
Not for me!
After a while you get well into the mechanics and what then? Honestly, I would leave at thet point, because there is nothing more I can achieve!

I'm sorry if this is rude (and I'm quite sure it is), but I can't help but think you don't actually enjoy games very much from this statement, because you ostensibly don't enjoy the mechanics enough to play anything for that reason alone. You don't enjoy becoming a better fighter through learning the nuances of a fighting system, you don't enjoy learning to control recoil or finding spots on the map that take advantage of your visibility vs your concealment, you don't enjoy learning the proper strategy for controlling a map or anything. All you want is the reward to show people, or something to prove to yourself that your time was well spent.

I happen to think that games like Battlefield should drop progression and give you everything from the start, because frankly I'm tired of starting with a lousy weapon and having to grind my way through levels to get something I want or am comfortable with.

In my opinion, it's a lazy way of keeping players engaged with a game. Rather than craft compelling mechanics, they promise people a long list of things to unlock in hopes they want all of those things.

That enhancement of gear was never a part of fighting games is a huge nonsense!

If stat enhancement were part of fighting games, people would stop playing them altogether. Again, Tekken Revolution tried this and was a massive failure.

Again, I bet that in the final game the defferences won't be dramatic.
Ubi would know that pretty well if people, who join a month later would be outmatched in some situations in the case you are talking about.

Maybe. No evidence exists to support that supposition, though. I'm approaching this argument on what exists, and not what I think, or hope, will exist sometime in the future.

I would definitely be for a bonus for kinnling a high level Player.

I'll admit to this being the one benefit.

This can still be attained by killing a player with highly ornate armour, though---since that would indicate they've at least been playing for a good long while, and so would have more experience---and for all of the potential downsides, I'd rather everything be cosmetic.

Which lack in tools? As long as you don't have to pay real money to become stronger, you don't lack in tools. You play and you gain currency (steel I think).

I was going off your shooter example. New players lack the perks, guns, gun attachments, killstreaks, sometimes usable items like claymores or certain kinds of grenades (depends on the game) that people who have been playing longer have access to, and on top of all of these disadvantages, they lack map awareness, where choke-points exist, etc. etc. This lack of tools has always led to player stagnation in CoD and Battlefield with every installment.

On the other hand, people have been playing Team Fortress 2 for ten years straight and all you can unlock in there are cosmetic items.

This is playing with words ^^
A weapon is as good as the wielder AND as good as the weapon itself! A good warrior with the old rusty blade of his grandfather can easily lose against a well armored warrior with a high-quality blade.

A good warrior with a rusty sword would know to stab the (presumably less experienced, given this line of conversation) armoured warrior in the armpit, under the helmet in the neck, or in the groin. He would know that he can flip his sword around and bash the armoured warrior with the pommel, he can use the crossguard to sweep a leg, he could also use the crossguard to hook an arm, a weapon, a shield.

There's a reason Musashi could kill an nodachi wielding samurai with a wooden sword he carved from an oar. He was the better fighter. A good fighter could kill someone with a plastic fork.

[Sakinahz]

You and i think very alike Masterwillow and wish i could keep the discussion going but i am on mobile so i wont type a long post.

Anyone interested in the subject could go here https://m.reddit.com/r/forhonor/comm...f=search_posts .

Where both side of the argument are discussed and also showing what some renown 5 gear might look like in term of stats.

His main renown 5 sword actually triple his block attack damage while very sligthly lowering basic attack and lowering revenge stage damage by a lot.

A sword like that would be a huge advantage in 1v1 where revenge state is basicly useless no?