I will begin saying that I love this game the way it is, and by no means I'm saying that it desperately needs radical changes or they need to follow my suggestions to be a viable and successful tripleA game.
That being said, I think there are things that could be done to improve the game flow and general balance. I'll break this thread in three main points; 1. Reaction speed, 2. Window of opportunity, 3. Speed/Damage
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1. Reaction Speed
First a question, have you ever try this? http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime
This is only a more interactive way to explain how limited human abilities are, in term of reaction time. My best time was 234 ms, and it was in my 8th try or something, still poorly.
Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying Ubisoft didn't took reaction time into consideration when planing their game. What I'm saying is, try to do this test 2 times today, one when you are at full stamina, fed and rest. Then try again when you have your vision almost burning after 1~2h of play and in the end of the day when you're going for a couple of last rounds. You'll surely feel the difference, and maybe that's the difference for one player to another, that's fine and all if you want to make your game heavily focus on mechanic skills and flashy speed combos like a fighting game.
But if you want to make For Honor like you advertise, a game that combine mechanic skill and strategic play (like many mobas, and that's what in theory help in their success both in playerbase and in the pro scene) you'll need to slow down combat a little bit. Slower attack speed a little bit, more smooth animations, you got to help those non mechanical players to understand what is happening and feel as they can win even if they don't have pro level reaction time.
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2. Window of opportunity
Any combat in life, physical or not, violent or not has window of opportunities for both sides. That's what makes it a combat and not a beating, having opportunity to strike back is what put them in somewhat even ground and can be called a combat in some form.
That's a point I think Ubisoft could have made a better job, understand this, running out of stamina should have been a huge misstep from the player and one they should have been punished severely for it. I work a full time job and play only a couple of hours per day, but most of the time I'm free, I watch high level players streams and videos.
It's painful to see that almost everyone of them runs out of stamina 2~3 times per fight, stamina depletion could have and should have being huge, but now it's just a annoyance, and a couple of second they will have to wait so they can strike again.
Miss an attack is not punishable, counter strike doesn't hurt as much as it should, and hitting a heavy attack on a enemy you guard break isn't even viable most of the times. I think this point should be addressed to improve the quality of For Honor.
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3. Speed vs Damage
How many of you already saw this table of values for Damage and HP of For Honor heroes?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...Kgc/edit#gid=0
I don't know how accurate it is, but we all can see they work hard for this numbers, and I trust most of them. Fact is we don't need all of them to be correct, just want to address the tendencies of how For Honor devs approach Damage and Speed, most precise, the damage vs the attack speed of the heroes.
I want you to pay attention on the fact that the Beserker has the most hard hitting heavy attack of the game, with his top attack combo. Oroichi's combo hit like a truck, while warlord hit as slow as last snail and still deal less with his poor heavy slow combo than a Orochi easy to land light sweep combo.
The tendency here is to give fast characters more DPS, rewarding spamming combos over well calculated blow. Slow character with few combos have less damage per hit as well as least DPS overall. What For Honor devs are saying with this is, If you are good mechanic pick fast characters and end the fight quickly spaming as much as you want, if you're not very good mechanically speaking, go play something else.
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I'll now propose some personal suggestions, just to try to convey where exactly For Honor devs should try to tackle, to improve their games. Feel free to post your own suggestions.
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SUGGESTIONS:
1. Reaction commands (Counter attacks, Guard break counter, Grab, Executions) should have a longer reaction window from 300ms~400ms to account for lag, fatigue, different players capabilities. Exact number should be tested but that's the window they need to create for a more "strategic and tactical" combat.
2. Rework stamina while still time, make more punishable. How to do it may vary, it could be even different for every Hero. Shielded heroes, could drop their perma blocking while without stamina, forcing them to block with reaction like other classes without a shield. Fast assassins could trumble if they try to dash/dodge or run. DPS Heroes like the Raider could become unable to block and counter a Guard break. On top of that put a Moviment speed and Defense speed debuff on everyone.
I know it seems harsh, but it suppose to be a huge mistake from the player, stamina is always in your control, it suppose to be your responsability to maintain in a safe level, if you made a mistake and didn't proper calculated your stamina, surely you should be punished.
3. Increase the HP overall, I'll try to make a table to understand how much I'm talking about.
WARDEN - FROM 130 TO 135 HP
CONQUEROR - FROM 133 TO 140 HP
PEACEMAKER - FROM 115 TO 120 HP
RAIDER - 133 TO 140 HP
WARLORD - 133 TO 140 HP
BESERKER - 115 TO 120 HP
KENSEI - 125 TO 130 HP
NOBUSHI - 115 TO 120 HP
OROCHI - 115 TO 120 HP
Doesn't look much but it can make a difference in combat.
4. increase the damage output of slow and heavy characters, they work by punishing players missteps, that means the more up the ladder you go, least opportunities you'll have to punish bad plays. But they'll need that buff to maintain their viability and to maintain high level play more diverse.
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