Junior Member
Alright, how do we include the dev team to take a look at some of these suggestions? And, can we actually have constructive discussion about tweaks that would improve the experience for EVERYONE not just the classes on the table.
My first suggestion is the stamina system needs to apply to all motion. Period, sure i'll concede that in hand to hand combat by a trained professional in realistic bouts their stamina would be far greater than this ridiculous bar we have but thats kind of my point. PK, orochi, zerker, and warden can almost indefinitely continue on with the same exact combo input unless their opponent gets one of three things right. First, you can guess where the next attack is coming from but if you play a slower framed character like law vs. pk you have to sustain a few hits before he's given the handicap to block the attack. Second, pray you aren't against a wall but the shield break system even after the patch doesn't allow for complete control of where you are on the field, now yes, i do know that you can double tap escape and you are free of the attacks but again you have to already be in perfect position and free of the environment for this to succeed and we're talking about class vs class not the whole game. Thirdly, and probably the most aggravating, your hp bar runs out.
I might stand alone, and trolls be damned, that doesn't feel like a realization of the dev teams mechanic in execution. Rather, it feels more like a diluted adaptation to an otherwise fresh system, yes this combat has been used before but not recently and it is a relief from the constant FPS, MOBA, or MMO scene especially if you want to have a multiplayer experience. I've heard it all before from players everywhere on reddit, in game, and here on the forums to just "git gud." In other words, just accept how those classes are without question or uninstall the game, I reject that, i think we can have a balance that wouldn't nerf specific classes and in fact balance out the whole experience and increase the metrics we experience in game.
My idea in general is a stamina system that involves all of the combat actions without exception. I am obviously not on the dev team so there are things that i clearly do not know as to why they didn't go with this idea and unless someone provides DIRECT quote that it is unhealthy from the game from the devs or publishers, then any argument against is objective and biased from that persons point of view. We're talking about mechanics as a whole. So in depth, rolling already takes stamina and so does attacking for most classes but for these light classes, classified as medium, it doesn't consume stamina unless one of the three variable i stated above happens. That seems a little too much control for the attacker and not enough balance for the system or their opponent, but i dont want to reduce their attack speed or damage tables. Instead, i purpose that all motions suffer from a limit. lets say the PK is on the offensive and they have already used the shield break link into bleed combo once, the opponent is a tank or heavy class and their animation doesn't allow them to catch up to the pk motion of attack and they are open for another round of the same exact input from the attacker. Suppose further that the next series of attacks lands by the pk and they again use shield break into bleed. Here's my suggestion on the completion or successful connection of a repeat input by any offense action immediately puts those actions on a stamina exhaustion cooldown of about 1.3-1.5 seconds this balances the attacker and defender. The attack would be forced then to use a new set of combo links, and the defender doesn't suffer a repeat mechanic which again i believe betrays the intentions of the dev team. This would benefit all classes, for instance; the lawbringer wouldn't be able to constantly slam after heavy attacks, the orochi wouldn't be able to constantly roll attack, the warden wouldn't be able to shoulder slam, so on and so on. Again i realize that there are already counters in place but they are whimsicle and faulty (no offense to the dev team)
My next suggestion, and one that i think can also help balance out the application of mechanics for all players regardless of class is the shield break system. YES I KNOW! we're tired of hearing about it and i agree! I dont want to talk about changing what i imagine is a simple slider of available window to counter the shield break, that already doesn't make sense but we'll all live i suppose. No, what i think we can do about this is the stamina interactions. When the shield break ballot starts the aggressor takes all the stamina of a full attack and presses it into their actions, the defender returns the correctly timed input and they commit nothing. Essentially they can sit on their defensive legs and never have to come out of it until the aggressor gambles their entire stamina bar, hoping the latency or player messes up. Lets change that to half the input of a shield break initiation and exponentially increase that for each successive shield break engagement by either attack or defender without at least two more inputs from a combo or break of locked engagement. It's tough for me to say exactly how i envision it in my head but basically defenders wouldn't have a castle wall to sit behind while classes like the PK have to open each fight, we already know how thats going to end (just an arbitrary example)
Those are my suggestions for mechanic tweaks, as clearly as i can think of them. i've been putting a few days of thought into this post while doing homework, being a parent, working, and playing the game. My real life commitments subtract from my ability to "git gud" because i have obligations that demand deeper resolution. So, to that point i see how the workings of the dev teams fairly descent effforts to make a fighting game that is fresh stand out and i also see how they might change some things across the board that would impact everyone instead of selectively nerf'ing classes. lets be real, that never works, once a team starts to take the road we end up with games like league of legends. I hope this game does not go that route because it can make a name for itself in the gaming community all on its own. This has great potential! I want to see it continue in that direction.
Remember, lets try to build upon what i started. Anyone who thinks i'm a know it all and doesn't have anything to contribute is wasting their time and mine and others.
Thanks ubisoft, if you read this.
Junior Member
I think you got some valid points here.
The problem I see would be in the class design in combination with the generally higher rewarding defensive playstyle. By giving a stamina cost to all movements it would simutaniously nerf classes with higher mobility such as PK,Oroshi and so on.
Almost the same goes for growing stamina cost for repeated attackpatterns. lets take the kensei as example this time. His relativly straight forward playstyle in offensive makes it kinda hard for a higher stamina cost on repeated combos to work because how to determine which combo gets the higher stamina cost.
my motherlanguage is not english so im having a hard time to explain what i want to say....
My point is about the differenses in attack chains:
gb, light, heavy, dashing atks, direction of the attack, and so on
How shall these be differentiated? If you can reset the stamina-cost-growth by changing the direction it would be useless since its too easy to resett. so we re speaking of something like light-light-heavy. that would put clases with low variety in a bad spot aka forcing them further into a turtling game to lets say resett the system by blocking an attack. ( in your example the PK would have to mix maybe a heavy into his chain which is easy to parry and further much harder punishing for the aggressive player)
my personal opinion is that the game already is suffering from overrewarding defensive playstyle cause of lower stamina requirements. on the other hand if you "punish" repeated offensive movements what would some classes get in exchange? So ether you heavily prefer certain classes with this system or worse some classes have to catch up in terms of certain moves which will lead in less variety in classplaystyle. Who wants a game where every class can do the exact same things?
Further speaken i dont think for honor is as badly balanced as it may sound in most threads here. the devs need to fix the major issues first and if its still necessary and then they should think about new mechanics to reward or punish certain patterns.
For now a punishment for certain overspammed moves would be sufficient (higher stamina cost only for these for a certain time=> evade- or blockoveruse should be punished as well as spamming the same atk over and over again)
TLR i dont want to talk bad ur idea too much because as i said in the begininng i think u have severell valid points here. I really like the generell direction of this^^ But on the other hand the devs resources should be used for fixing/balancing the current system over creating a whole new one (at least for now)
