This critical look at For Honor is mainly intended for the developing team. Nevertheless, thoughtful response, analysis and critique from the community is welcomed and encouraged. This review is not representative of any other gameplay than what I have experienced personally and should not be taken in any other context.

Background:
In general, I usually play shooters as my competitive multiplayer outlet. I play a variety of single player and co-op games with a focus on survival games. I do not have any technical background or experience and I can only speak from a players perspective.

I will say up front that I love For Honor and generally have fun playing. I believe it has the potential for an thriving esports community and has a definite skill curve that is steep and rewarding(practice and knowledge are required to excel in this game).

I have been playing For Honor since closed beta with an extended break about 2 months after game launch. I am neither the worst player nor the best. I struggle with many aspects of the game (consistently deflecting still alludes me) and succeed in others. My first love was the Warlord and I branched out to the Valkyrie and Nobushi before I stopped playing due to the birth of my son. After returning at the beginning of season 5 I continued with the Valkyrie and am working on expanding my character repertoire further.

In general, I usually play shooters as my competitive multiplayer outlet. I play a variety of single player and co-op games with a focus on survival games. I do not have any technical background or experience and I can only speak from a players perspective.

Ranked Duel Beta:
While I acknowledge this playlist is still in a beta state, I believe it needs some major changes. Long queue times, player drops/ connection issues, lack of ranked progression on drops, and skill matching issues tend to negatively impact the overall ranked experience.

In my experience so far, a bracket/tournament system should be replaced with a single ranked best of 5 queue for duels (one match, two players, and requeue when the match is done). It seems to me, this will eliminate the long queue times ad generally make for a better experience in duels. However, the tournament/bracket format has a strong appeal and could be implemented into a sort of event type system. Weekend tournament queues or special event with higher victory rewards that goes on a monthly or quarterly rotation, etc.

Player forfeits are one of my biggest points of contention and makes the ranked experience nearly unplayable. Regardless of the opposing player quitting(mid-game or otherwise), the player who remains in the match receives zero ranked progression. Meaning, a player can sit in queue for an extremely long time with the goal of reaching a higher rank and have an opposing player drop the match and the winning player gets no reward towards higher rank. This needs to change for ranked to become viable. The player who sits in these long queue and perseveres should receive at least a minor ranked reward on a forfeit.

Additionally, I have not had great luck finding on par skill match-ups. Either way the matches are usually one-sided. The player either seems to have just picked up For Honor for the first time or Odin himself has got a vendetta against me and came to personally punish me via For Honor. As stated above, I do not have technical experience and can only speak from a players perspective. Moreover, I know the developing team has been working on how players are matched and I am encouraged that this section might become outdated swiftly.

Community in game attitudes:
Like all the 50/50s and mix ups being added to characters, the attitudes you will see on the battlefield are a tossup at best. This experience is obviously not limited to For Honor. Online gaming in general has devolved into a toxic environment that any parent should be extremely critical of when allowing their children to participate.

In an effort to be 100% clear, this is not your typical, "I got jumped by 3 players while playing in a 4v4 playlist and nobody has honor in this game" critique. What I am referring to is the general bad mannered (BM) and exclusionary behavior that is all too common in an online environment. I believe it should be a developers goal to create an environment that allows players to grow, progress and have a positive shared experience with other players.

This is undoubtedly a tall order for developers. How can a developer create a constructive social environment that encourages positive behavior. Between tight budgets, profit margins and deadlines this task likely is an afterthought and might not even be an objective of the team. I dont have this behind the scenes knowledge but from the players perspective it seems like a dog eat dog place.

So, stepping down from the soap box, how can this be achieved? It seems there has been some attempt to allow players to rate matches from 1-5 stars but without any real knowledge as to the criteria for those stars. Does a 5 star match mean your opponent was honorable and humbly said good fight after soundly defeating you or does it simply mean there were no issues with connectivity and the match generally ran smoothly? As far as I know, this rating system has not been detailed to the players. Nevertheless, this system might be usable to establish a player respectability rating with a little work. Establishing a database of player respectability could help to encourage those who BM players to win or lose with a little more dignity.

Another option might be to allow players to "thumbs up" a match. If you have an opponent that has won or lost with dignity and has added to the player experience in For Honor you could give the match the "thumbs up". This "thumbs up" would give the opponent a slight experience boost for the match or some other reward.

incentivizing positive online behavior creates a more profitable environment for everyone involved. It should be players and developers responsibility to help create and encourage these positive interactions.

I hope this post can be addressed with thoughtful and constructive critique.