There is the big hype for dedicated servers, but I am going to make this "prediction" more or less for fun, but most likely it will happen like this
First there will be a big hurray for a short time and players will come back to For Honor, but after a short while people will start to deal with the major problem in this game, that can't "simply" be fixed with the introduction of servers.
The core game itself ...
Me personally I had a wonderful connection and so I am not affected by this DS-hype. For me it does not change anything at all.
The reason I never play this game longer then an hour maybe 3 times a week is simple:
The game is too repetitive, too one-dimensional, too poor in terms of ingame mechanics.
People will leave again, because most people can't be wrapped around the finger by being given the same 7minutes-scenario over and over again without any real dynamism.
Dominion is the largest scale battle For Honor has to offer and seen from the eye of what it COULD BE, a complete joke with that paper soldiers in the B-clutch and that's it!
This mode has not gone through any bigger improvment since E3 2015 ...
There is no deeper mechanics, or siege feeling, or destructible environment, or deeper way to interact with the environment, or simple soldiers outside of Zone B
The battle is over, when the gate is broken - finish
Ubi did completely waste the potential of the army aspect itself and any potential "battle strategy" you can order the KI minions on how to take the fort. Maybe also like having a way up after the gate is broken with archer towers, that only minions can infiltrate by climbing up the stairs and killing the archers, or having minions in controlled Zones A and C, or being able to make little combat adjustments to minions, etc.
There is NO CREATIVITY in Dominon at all!
They ultimatively failed to get that action from the campaign into Multiplayer!
We got promissed a massive battle simulator and we got a more or less medieval Tekken.
Even adding 18 more heroes won't fix that.
There is no deeper character adjustment from the gameplay aspect, just some little stats tweaking and some are popular and some are not.
People don't like to play pre-determined heroes, they like to make their own ones and try them out on the battlefield (eventhough this is a bit more understandable, because it would need an incredible amount of Mo-Capping to make so many options).
The combat system is great (no doubt), but that's pretty much it for long term ...
It is very unlikely that Ubi would put it's hand so deeply in the money pocket to actually FIX THAT! by not expanding the game but DEEPENING it!
I personally don't care, about the progression system, lootboxes and micro-transactions ... I prefere that Ubi gets some extra money by selling steel before having them sell me their DLCs.
I talked with many people about For Honor, and what I wrote is exactly what the told me and what is also my own opinion.
This is what the wide audience says ... and the player numbers can be seen in the web (and no, I am not starting with this 95% playerbase loss bullsh*t)
The only thing that makes me play even these 3-4 hours per week is the combat system and the idea of knights-samurai-vikings.
People will play some matches without any interruption and recognize this major flaw at least at this point and not really much will change, but hopefully I am wrong ^^
I both agree and disagree. To me, it's a deep combat system that despite me "customizing" my own hero [so to speak] is nonetheless very rewarding with the current cast.
That being said, Dominion has suffered over time in that I feel it's a shortcoming or half-*** what it could be - siege mode as you mentioned.
I think, if this is the crux of your argument, you're wrong.We got promissed a massive battle simulator and we got a more or less medieval Tekken.
For Honor, as I've understood and experienced it, was never advertised or promised as a large scale battle simulator. For Honor's core concept, is the Art of Battle system. The entire game, as I've understood it from Jason VandenBerghe, is just a framing device for this 1 system.
You highlight Dominion as the nexus of all For Honor gameplay, and while it's surely the most popular gamemode, it's only one of many. The siege/battle aspect you're describing only appears in the Story mode, and Dominion. That leaves us with 5 other gamemodes, where the focus, rightly I think, lies in more personal combat between the players.
Dominion is popular, and players have long wanted a bigger gamemode, but For Honor is about the Art of Battle, and intense, personal fighting between the players. That's what we were meant to be sold on, but if you only want bigger, more siege-esque game modes, For Honor might not be the game you want.
Well that with the big combat simulator is from VandenBerghe himself said. If you watch that video, about about the early stages of For Honor that lasts about 2 hours his says that pretty much with the same words. And also the other devs praised this attribute at the very beginning after the announcement.Originally Posted by Tundra 793 Go to original post
Why do you that they chose Dominion to show-off their game at the announcement?
Dominion is popular, because it's the closest approximation to what people want to play. Duell is good for training.
The rest of the modes (beside Tribute) is completely under-used.
There is always (very) low activity for reason.
This is not the crux of my argumentation, but the reason why the playerbase is what it is. What the fighting system offers is innovative, but the whole game can not rely only on that for fox sake?!
All the other aspects come way to short!
The most popular reasons why people left the game are connectivity and the lack of deepness.
When the network doesn't make any problems, certain people will be able to try those few things they weren't able to and many or most of them will leave again, like those who had no major connection problem, when Dominion and Duell bored the heck out of them.
A funny quote of a friend of mine: "it feels like a prototype that already got DLCs"
About 1 month and we will see if anything changes.
Furthermore ... the game is almost in year 2.
It is unlikely that any big changes will happen now (Ded Servers are in work since season 2). That big and deep stuff is what the devs should have focus on, instead of wasting so much time and ressources in ranked, Skirmish and maybe also Elimination.
If the DS doesn't revive the game from the dead, nothing else will.
Disagree, the whole game can and does rely on this. As Tundra said, the maps and game modes are simply framework for the fighting system, which is innovative and in my opinion extremely engaging. More so than almost any other game I've played. There's very little else in the world I can sit and do for 5+ hours, but playing For Honor is one of them. The learning curve is massive. I'm rank 40 on Berserker and still learning things I can do with him in different situations. I've enough to learn about other classes to keep me happy for years to come I imagine.Originally Posted by Illyrian_King Go to original post
It is not a large scale battle simulator. It is, basically, Medieval Tekken where you can run about a map and do things, rather than just seeing two characters facing each other in a single room with a backdrop like the classical fighting games. It's a niche market for sure, but they've totally nailed I think.
The player base for this game is never going to be huge. The main reason it's a very small player base as opposed to just small is the connectivity issues. I had friends that liked the game but not enough to put up with the disconnects and other problems P2P servers bring. I think the dedicated servers will draw enough people back.
I'd like more game modes. 8v8 Siege is a must. They could do with spicing up dominion and reworking elimination and skirmish modes. But at the end of the day the game will always boil down to one thing: You and the person in front of you.
Game was never advertized as a large scale battle simulator. The major focus was and still is the art of battle system.
Dedi's are clammered for because of random match drops. With dedi's being added in this won't happen. and if there was ever any kind of advantage gained from lagging it will be gone.
Players will still lag. And you will still be able to see this.
The real gem for me is when they flip on lag comp after the dedi's have been out for a bit. This will make fights feel a ton better again.
Originally Posted by PDXGorechild Go to original post
It can of course ... but with 2000 players active on steam on average, while games with much less potential have numbers above 20k or 30k.
Fortunately every game has it's fanatics and same with For Honor.
But the player numbers indicate, that there is something terribly going wrong.
Maybe you enjoy duelling till eternity, but the player numbers don't lie about what most people think.
And Dedicated Servers won't change much, despite maybe bring a new bunch of "fanatics" (in the positive manor) and maybe raise the number up to 3k or 4k, but not more.
Wait 1 month and we can diescuss about it.
This is exactly what would actually help the game, but most likely it won't happen. The person in front of you with the "Art of Battle" is exactly what makes the combat system unique, and that's the point I am saying. It is more or less a wasted concept, because it is left alone without any bigger and complex ingame mechanic coming for support.Originally Posted by PDXGorechild Go to original post
For the average player, this is not enough to hook up for longer then 3-4 weeks --> visible in the player numbers
Acutally it was!Originally Posted by Knight_Raime Go to original post
Just as an example is the video from VandenBerghe I mentioned earlier, he said he wants this (showing an image of an 3rd person sword fighting game) mixxed with this (showing an image of medieval 2 total war, which is a mass battle strategy game).
I am glad you like it how it is, but don't say it was ment to be like this from the very beginning, because it isn't ... it was just cheaper to leave out the mass aspect and reduce it to the present scale.
Just to repeat. this is just my prediction for when the Deds are here, and what I am saying is based on numbers for everybody visible who has Google. I am not making this game "bad", but just talking why the numbers are tiny, and why.
I guess this might really come true.Originally Posted by Illyrian_King Go to original post
Dedicated servers might solve one problem but there will be many other problems too.
There are still bugs that exist for months, the matchmaking is still not fair (I often play together with people < prestige 10 and they just have no chance), characters are unbalanced and many of the existing modes are dead (on PC I cannot find any tribute match PvP anymore).
I know that they will bring dedicated servers but I think that they are not able to fix the rest of the problems because they were not able to fix in within a year.
I see what you mean, but I am still hopeful. I think an 8v8 mode is highly likely given that so many players have expressed a desire for it, which the Ubi representatives have acknowledged. They have listened to us and implemented, albeit slowly, in the past.Originally Posted by Illyrian_King Go to original post
Dedicated servers alone won't make the game huge overnight. But it gives them the platform on which to do much more with the game, especially things like larger battles with more players involved. They've filled the roster, they're reworking and rebalancing old classes and new, they're tweaking the fight system, faction war and giving us something to do with spare loot, and we'll have dedicated servers in the very near future. The next logical step has to be new game modes.
Originally Posted by R-a-g-e. Go to original post
I very rarely see any bugs in game on PS4. Bad matchmaking is a result of low population due to server issues, something the dedicated servers may solve mostly. Balance is and always will be a work in progress. They've taken their time, yeah, but I really think we may be about to see the light.
We'll know for sure, soon™....