Defensive meta and 50% player base quitting | Forums

[BreakingInMan]

Let's talk about how annoyingly NOT fun the defensive meta is and why 50% of the total player base has quit the game already:

Let me start off by saying this: In my experience, when a game hides it's current online players (like For Honor has done from the social menu), it is a bad sign. I say this because in the first few weeks that For Honor was launched, there were roughly 60-70k concurrent players and the activity would read "high" or "very high". Now, according to steam charts, I'm seeing between 7-10k when before it was closer to 30-40k. Mind you, this is Steam alone, not including players who bought the game directly through ubisoft. I just checked and it says "Very High Activity" and there are only 8,543 players online through steam. Here's why I think this is.

When the game first launched, players didn't know about the "defensive meta" and actually played the game and attacked one another. Now that players are learning the mechanics, all they want are parries or unblockable combos. The problem that I see here is nobody wants to attack first in fear of getting parried > guard block > heavy attack. This game rewards the defender far too much. Hell, I've seen two last men standing and all they do is feint, guard block, and stare into each other's eyes and nobody takes damage until it's down to the final 30 seconds when they begin to get careless...

Furthermore on that note, SOME classes have advantages over others when it comes to initiating combat with amazing feint combos and unblockable first strikes. By this I mean the Kensei, Warlord, Law Bringer, and of course, Warden. Unless you really know what you're doing, those classes are going to have VAST advantages over you if they're just sitting back playing the defensive meta. It's been a frustrating downfall because I truly love this game and want nothing more than for it to be a good game but in it's current state, I cannot honestly say that it is.

One way I feel this can be mitigated is to disallow the parry of light attacks so players don't have to fear engaging in combat. As an Orochi/Warden main, I can absolutely punish the hell out of Peace Keepers and Berzerkers who arguably have the fastest light attacks in the game. But when I play against higher rep'd players, they just don't attack once they see that I can block/parry like the rest of them. It becomes a waiting game to see who'll make the first move (and ultimately, mistake).

Opening up light attacks to be parry free keeps room on the table for safe engagement from all players. The only other alternative I can see to this change is to make parry more difficult to achieve. Once you get that down, the game is pretty easy. Unless, of course, you're playing against other players who utilize the defensive meta.

Reactive gameplay is only SO fun. Pro-active gameplay is by far, more fun. If these changes aren't for you then that's okay. Maybe it'd be better if more character's had more options to engage. Initiating combat is the most difficult obstacle in higher-tier gameplay so more options to initiate combat is going to be key to making For Honor great again!

Mind you, my ideas are just that. Obviously I'm open to alternative suggestions and feel that this is an important topic that needs to be discussed because I do believe it will be the ultimate downfall of this game

Also, the community faction war could use a better interface that gives a more clear idea of the progress per round and areas that are under heavier attack, etc. The community faction war is so negligible that none of my friends even pay it any mind. Most players I ask about it don't even drop specific war assets, they just let them distribute automatically by not selecting anything.

TL;DR Defensive meta is ruining the game and community faction war provides so little information about overall progress that most people I know tend to ignore it entirely.

Ah, does the little baby need a hug? Are the big kids acting like big kids again? Poor baby.

Hey, why don't you "sack up" and be a man before crying like a baby on the internet!

[BreakingInMan]

I'm getting parried into guard break into heavy attacks that take away like 20% of my health....
This is all because I tried to hit someone with a light attack that wouldn't have even done half of that damage.

This game is screwed.

Poor little baby. Are the big kids playing too rough?

Sack up, be a man; or go play Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

[FactCrusader]

People are quitting, yes, but not for the reason you made up from your imagination.

Some fundamental problem such as connectivity issue, memory leaks, 8 core cpu bug, then balance issues and others.

[RLTygurr]

The issue is that parry and guard break are currently too strong of mechanics as opposed to your attacking options. Both are laughably easy to perform, especially parry.

The thing is, if you made light attacks non-parryable, everyone would just stick to peacekeeper since her light attacks are so fast. Currently parry and guard break are the only ways to punish a decent peacekeeper, and taking away one of those and leaving guard break as the only option would be a huge mistake. She'd be unbeatable.

On another note, feints are meant to be an offensive tactic but they just aren't too useful half the time because people have learned to just block heavy attacks if they know they might be feints. Half the time, I choose to sidestep them instead rather than risk it. Or if I'm using a quicker character, I'll just attack to counter it.

I agree that the defensive meta gets annoying, but in a fight you're more focused on surviving than defeating your opponent.

In my own personal opinion, the solution lies more in character kits, where most characters lack any legitimate offensive options that are somewhat viable and are thus limited to playing defensive for guaranteed and safe damage. However, running out of stamina does nothing currently. It's worthless as a mechanic and it doesn't do enough to justify the risk of running out of stamina.

[Bracus_Maximus]

First: Remove the free guardbreak after parry ( which dont applies for all classes lol ). Let it grant only a free light. This and maybe the unparryable lights can move the game away from the pure defensive meta a bit.
If its not enough then make more changes. Come on. I know testing takes time but time passes as well as players. Do something. Its boring at the moment.

[Gnarxly]

it's too bad if 50% of the player base leaves because they lack the patience and strategy to stare at their opponent and wait for an opening.

in the mean time I love easy kills on hyper-agressive mountain dew powered salt factories and I will miss them.

I guess we can't all win.

50% of who exactly?
Majority of player base always moves on to the next shiny. Most people get bored with new things very quickly. It's a very common human trait in civilisations with high availability of basic goods, and I've been observing it since online games exist.

[psyminion]

I dunno 50% of who, that is OPs idea. I just ran with it.

https://gamerant.com/for-honor-horizon-zero-dawn-sales/

[Knight.Bishop]

The whining on these forums is unbelievable.

You have no data to talk about 50% of the player base leaving.

It is a defense-first game, this is not street fighter.

[PandaCDN]

The whining on these forums is unbelievable.

You have no data to talk about 50% of the player base leaving.

It is a defense-first game, this is not street fighter.

Well, the PC pop is dropping hard. I am unsure about consoles. At peak when the game came out it was at 65-ish according to the ubisoft social panel, there was about 45k on steam and 20k from uplay it seemed. A couple days before the patch it was at 29k-ish with 20k on steam and 10k on the uplay. You can find the screenshots on here somewhere. I am unsure the thread but they were pretty much spot on, ive been keeping a eye out for the pop drop.

After the patch its harder cause they removed the total players from the PC version. Its down to about 12k-ish on steam, lets say maybe 6-8 k on uplay. So 18-20 k players. So from Feb 28th when the patch hit, its lost 9 to 10k. Probably due to the disappointment of the patch not fixing much. We wont really see where this game lies till the first big patch. Hopefully that doesnt take too long, unless they just want this to be a console success.

As for the defense first game, devs already have been quoted defense is too strong right now.

[RahnuLe]

The thing is, if you made light attacks non-parryable, everyone would just stick to peacekeeper since her light attacks are so fast. Currently parry and guard break are the only ways to punish a decent peacekeeper, and taking away one of those and leaving guard break as the only option would be a huge mistake. She'd be unbeatable.

This is a class balance issue, and one that can be addressed on its own.

Either lights need to be normalized to the slow speeds seen in most non-PK classes and made safe, or they need to be unsafe but all as fast as the PK's lights. Either way, light attacks being this game's equivalent of jabs, they should probably not be so trivially easy to defend yourself from.