Senior Member
edit: my issue with Dominion.
(It's been a long week.)
If you had to describe For Honor quickly, what would you say?
If you had to explain what you most enjoyed about For Honor concisely, what would you say?
If you had to explain what makes For Honor unique, how would you do it?
These questions are important because the games 4v4 modes take great liberties with the answers. Maybe I'm just old and grumpy, but I really think there's a disconnect between what makes For Honor good and what you spend most of your time doing in Dominion. With every addition to a mode, the core gameplay becomes less focused, and, in case you didn't know, the reason you play For Honor is to fight other players.
The Duel, Brawl, and Elimination modes are the core game distilled in a straight forward match. However, Elimination in particular is unappealing because 4 duels at the same time. You may as well just play Duel. But the star of the show is Dominion, is the one in all the ads, it's the one with all the activity because it's the most interesting...in theory. My issue is however that, as I mentioned, all the additions the Dominion mode makes detracts from what you really want to be doing: fighting.
A lot can be gleaned from the user created "fight clubs" in the Dark Souls series. Players become remarkably sociable and exhibit a simple etiquette to get the most out of the game's fight mechanics. They're there to fight, not hold the proverbial point. Now, I'm not saying holding points is bad or that Dominion is inherently flawed, I think it does a lot right, but the focus and key to success needs to always be the fight engine: the reason we're all here.
Feats, running between points, and minions, are all obstacles that force you away from the reason you wanted to play in the first place. The former and latter also contribute a lot to low fight quality during the Dominion match. Someone ending a fight with a feat is always frustrating because actually getting into a fight in Dominion can sometimes be quite a trial; you're either dealing with a Death Ball, in which case you have to split up and actually avoid the fight if you want to succeed, or you play the objectives while everyone else plays death match in the minion lane. Maybe your team wins, but you're bored out of your mind. Of course some matches are great, but in my experience they are the exception, and this post is the reason I think why.
The answer to the initial three questions are not:
Standing on the glowing ground.
Running through a field.
Playing Dynasty Warriors.
Senior Member
I think the core problem with For Honor is that developers did not know what kind of game it was, and still absolutely clueless as to what it is or should be.
For Honor's 3rd person view and 3D graphics trick people thinking into it is a 3D game, whereas it is as 3D as any MOBA is. All movement is locked into 2 coordinate planar system.
Probably initially they inherited MOBA model for FH, which can also be seen in various aspects like map with 3 directional reach (and objectives), 4 feat skill system where final one functions like an ultimate.
But then the combat system and the player gameplay experience is designed around traditional fighting games. People with no game development background often mistake thinking FH is different from traditional fighting games but if you break it down you see how similar they are;
traditional fighting games: 3 direction for attacks low/standard/high. Linear movement back and forth with high jump option as 2nd dimension which allows movement in a 2D plane from sideview.
for honor: 3 direction for attacks left/right/top. Linear back/forward dash movement with (either) side movement option which allows for movement in a 2D plane from top view.
Main problem is that they try to enforce MOBA map mechanics onto traditional fighting game based gameplay experience. Active feats makes the actual fighting mechanics obsolete instead of complimenting them. Control/combat mechanics are not designed around vsing multiple opponents in a meaningful manner either.
If it were upto me I would replace all active feats that make combat system obsolete with something else, and make it so that outnumbering the opponent by more than 1 ally is discouraged by game mechanics.
1v2 or 2v3 is ok. But for honor encourages 1v4. I would probably test out a 'mega revenge' that fills when enemy attacks in 1v3+ as something akin to old revenge maybe (kind of thing you never want to give to enemy). And then nerf current revenge that happens in 1v2 by quite a bit.
If there is no intensive to try to outnumber enemy by huge numbers, people just wont do it and start doing what ever else is incentivized and is beneficial. That means in the absence of gank squads, people wont have the reason to run away from enemy => more fights taking place.
Senior Member
Agree with Mia.Nora.
As I metioned here https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.ph...uel-Suggestion devs already should separate duels and massive modes. Massive modes must be more casual, and have a nice amount of players, while duels will stay hardcore and more MK/Tekken game, than BF/MOBA games.
With Breach, i think, we will see this problem even more. Only 4v4 people, who could completely avoid fighting and do bunch of objectives. And all this cause 8 people are not enough fo real siege gameplay. Again, Chivlary is a good example. Without mass this gamemode will be pretty boring.
Senior Member
Yeah, the MOBA style map has bugged me but not simply for existing, but rather because it's such a superficial recreation of the idea.
While I agree that For Honor has much of the same structure as a traditional 2D fighter, I think it's applied quite differently; the feel of the game is entirely different. Space Invaders and Gears of War are both technically cover-shooters, but the 3rd dimension allows for a much more exciting venue.
To use the MOBA comparison where feats are concerned, I think the biggest problem here is how ineffective the minions are against players, and how effective the feats are against players. From memory, Dota2's minions early game are more of a threat than the other players, especially if you get caught surrounded. The minions in For Honor are never directly threatening, they're only an irritant, or a fog of frustration in one of the criminally rare duels. I wouldn't be opposed to scrapping the hobbit armies entirely and have a proper phalanx of "captain" AI in the "minion lane".
Something else MOBA's do is evolve. The concept of towers is a core component of MOBA gameplay; defeat enemy towers to allow your minions to push. Dominion has no such feature; it is a perfectly static map where minions are either on the orange side of "the B point" or the blue side. There's no progression in a match.
