Member
This game is extremely well designed.
People might not see this, but if you ever tried to monetize a game, you need to do this delicate dance between playability / balance / PROFITS.
For Honor is a MOBA, and for most MOBAs, the biggest microtransaction is for temporally boosts, shortcuts (pay for levels), and skins. Not a lot of people thought about a REAL worthy source of microtransaction (gears with actual stats). The reason being that it would cause balance issues... However, this game has 3 modes! That's what solves that problem. There are gamers like me who enjoy mathematically fine-tunning my character and have a high enough earning rate that spend $10 on gears that I need an hour to grind would be a very very inefficient use of my time; thus people like me love buying shortcuts and gears as opposed to grinding them. However, for the gamers with a whole lot of free time, you have Duel and Brawl mode that doesn't use gear (thus, balance)!
It's a really smart idea and I think keeping both as it is will appease both end of the spectrum. You don't want to go deep dive into one end or another, you want to center-shift to get the highest possible number of players interested.
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Ok ok, so praise aside, you most certainly need NUMBERS. A green bar doesn't tell me anything. In fact, since the characters have different basic stats, a "two bar" sword on Orochi might be as powerful as a "half-bar" Axe on a Raider. We need uniform numbers to plan, customize and maximize. The gear stats should make a difference BUT not "all the difference" in a Dominion match. So I think a rough rough estimate is that an average fully geared (not all epic gears) character should be about 20% stronger than another character of the same skill level. A fully MAX geared character would be about 40% stronger. What this means is that EVEN IF you are epic geared, you still lose in a 1v2 situation against two equally skilled opponents. That balance should be kept at a minimum, we don't want an epic character to go God-mode versus the mortals 1v5 (that would make free players quit, which kills the game).
Junior Member
I can't be the only one who would rather have no stats on gear, can I? Just make gear a fashion choice or at the least have a dominion mode with gear stats turned off.
Junior Member
I fully agree with you. I think gear stats makes the talk of balancing classes close to impossible. I've never seen a game where they manage to checkmate themselves with their own ingenuity.Originally Posted by MobiusN749 Go to original post
I'm kidding. EA does it all the time.
They can call it features all they want, all I see is loads of variables that players are forced to keep track of and balance themselves. I am aware of that this is a MOBA and that is a part of the MOBA gameplay. Problem is that the balancing happens in the field with literally all the other MOBA's. In this game however, you need to know who you meet before you meet them and pray to the war god that you've picked the right gear in advance.
Someone mentioned that the best thing to do is to save up for reputation 5 gear since the "best" gear starts dropping then. I say the best gear is the "crap gear" since my ability to balance my gear and gamestyle is dependent on what gear is dropping and the class I play. What a "fun" game mechanic it is to not be able to play domination until a good combination of gear has been acquired. In any other game I get happy when rare items drops. In this game that happiness is quickly removed when I try to fit it in with the gear that I already have.
All of this could be fixed with the option to play domination without gear stats.
Senior Member
I had rare items with max "use less stamina" on 1 of my characters. It gave me barely a noticeable difference in the total number of swings. It was a huge hit to damage and defense, and I did find that noticeable.
So it would seem it affects are very limited.
Senior Member
I like custom stats on the gear. I also like that there seems to be a base stat for each and even with high end gear, you never gain in all categories. You have to give up damage to gain more stamina for example. So it's about tuning to my game style. They barely made any difference in dominion though.
Junior Member
Custom stats and gear is fine, and so are unlocks based on achievements (especially when they are just cosmetic). The last of us MP does this beautifully- aside from the fact that they had certain load out gear you needed to buy separately as DLC... At least this was minimal and essentially a one off buy like an initial game purchase.
This Play to Win and even worse Pay to Win system is breaking a lot of games. If you look at it in reverse where you had where you had pay/play(P/P) to win micro transaction that allowed you to boot players from a match who where dominating or penalized the other team, by say giving them all longer re-spawn times, people would consider that crazy but for some reason when you when you make it so people can P/P to pick up there team mates fast, recover quicker, run faster and customize better in order to dominate a match we accept this as normal now.
Well designed game, sure, but that's despite these huge micro-transaction faults. Again Ubi call it what they want but it's all just corporate profit poo poo. Sadly this is probably to there own disadvantage and will turn a lot of people of buying. Over watch has none of this and it is great! Street fighter as well. For cosmetic stuff and emote sure, again no problem. But equipment, stats , revive boosts, xp, this is just garbage.
"All of this could be fixed with the option to play domination without gear stats" - True and that would let people vote with there game choices to show developers what they want. but they won't put in this option. At minimum however, if they insist on this jerky nonsense of P/P to win options then they need at least balance out the prestige delivery to make it a truly balanced and fair game.
So for the gamer who doesn't have the time or skill, let them buy stuff and get the higher rank quicker with XP bonuses. But then if you happen to come around, at a low rank swinging a stick, and you take down a player 5X your rank, well then you should get 5X the prestige. This at least would balance out this system which they should just get rid of all together.
Junior Member
1- Would be nice if u destroy in item by accident to have a systeme to get it back for u
2- A wardrobe would be so nice to get all the cool looking gear u get to be safe and u can always use them. (and plz reduce the cost for changing item's look)
3- Would be nice maybe in future, if u could add nice looking weapons... Like that looks like god weapons... maybe they will give u little bit more benefits but really rare... That would be cool.
