First of all, I want to give a shout out to the for honor team. When the game came out, I know very shortly afterwards that this was going to be my new go-to multiplayer game. When things started to go sideways and all the issues popped up, I was bummed because I thought for sure Ubi was going to abandon the project and move on, but you guys doubled down and turned this game into what it is today. Thank you X100 for sticking with it and taking it a step further by continuing to support it a year afterwards. Looking forward to marching fire!

Now that the fan boy gushing is over, I think it's safe to say that the AI could really use some retooling in a few different facets, so I'm going to break this down into a few sections: AI combat behavior, MMR and it's effect on AI replacements and PVAI modes

TL;DR:
- Make AI bots more aggressive and combo heavy but less god level block. Turtles are no fun whether AI or player.
- Keep 3s aggressive combos/parry-feints while making it possible to get hits on them outside of GBs, shove+light spam.
- Make friendly AI aware we're on the same team, that we actually exist, and that cleaving through teammates to get hits is really bad form.
- Make AI player replacements initially based off the departing players MMR, but have their skill level dynamically adjust as the game goes on depending on how good/bad that team is doing. Remove 1s entirely from PVP gamemodes.
- give us either dynamic bot skill scaling within a PVAI game, remove the MMR challenge guestimating check, or allow players to opt into easy(1s), medium(2s) or hard(3) modes for PVAI games so that we aren't under challenged because of the weird MMR rating check.

AI combat behavior: First of all, I want to say that I like the variable difficulty AIs you have and for the most part, they do a pretty decent job of providing a challenge with a couple of caveats. As a general complaint, ALL of the bots have a pretty godly levels of block, which tends to make new players lean towards heroes with unblockable attacks way too much for AI. This can be a painful less when they start playing PVP and realize that unblockables also are very easy to parry. Also, feinting attacks for any level of bot is pointless. You can't bait parry attacks out of them at any level since they will just opt to block it every time, so all bot levels could use some "human like gullability" to better emulate actual player behavior and train players to better utilize feinting in the PVAI (and eventually PVP) situations. Lastly for general items, I think play could benefit for some form of "pattern recognition" with regards to players launching the same strings of attacks against them. Maybe even make levels 1s start to parry attacks when a player keeps utilizing the same attack pattern over and over. Now for the level specific details: Level 1 bots feel like they do what is expected of them: train new players on the basic mechanics. While they deliver on this aspect for most heroes, there are a couple instances where they do not use hero specifics abilities at all (LB stick and flip/shove, highlander kick/grab, etc) a little bit of work could be done to incorporate these abilities into these AIs but for the most part, 1s are in good place. 2s I feel could be a little more parry intensive but at the same time, loosen up their reactivity a bit more so feinting attacks actually means something and force players to do more than just unblockable heavy spam. Other than that, they feel noticably more aggressive than 1s but not so much that they provide a heavy challenge (although some heroes at 2s can be pretty challenging. Looking at you Shaman). Now for the mostly useless elephant in the room = 3s. This is the closest it gets to a skilled player challenge with some noticeable issues that no player alive could possibly hope to achieve. Their reactivity to block and parry is on par with maybe 1 or 2 players I've ever gone up against. It's completely insane to the point tha the only hope you have of getting hits on them in many cases is to play classes that punch/kick/shove. While I feel that is definitely challenging, the reactive speed that they can cancel out of attacks into parries is pretty insane. They can also chain attacks faster in many cases than a human player can. In some cases, faster than my input lag or lag in general can keep up with.....yikes. I don't know if I'd really want their aggressiveness tuned down, as we really need an exceptionally skillful AI, but maybe keep the challenge level for that a bit more in their combos and mix-ups, and feints, and a little less in that god-like defense. Last and definitely not least MY GOD, MAKE THE IDIOTIC TEAMMATE BOTS STOP WALKING BEHIND YOU AND TRYING TO CLEAVE THROUGH YOU TO HIT THE OPPONENT YOU'RE BOTH FOCUSED ON. So many times I wish I did not have a AI teammate at all because it seems like they intentionally try to troll their own team by literally walking behind a player and then cleaving through them, interrupting them and often times, stealing a kill. It's really really.....REALLY awful. They're worse than most players with regards to their abhorrent team synergy and courtesies. Most players will try at least to limit the amount of FF to teammates where they can to look for opportunistic openings, but bots......dear god, they just swing willy nilly, and seemingly to interrupt you and be troll. Please if nothing else, make them AWARE they they have teammates nearby and to play smartly around them as much as to their opponent. I mean, why does bot kensei really need to swing that stupid wide arc heavy left WHEN I AM DIRECTLY TO HIS LEFT.....dude, stick to upper and right attacks and get those popsicles out of you digital eyes and RECOGNIZE WE'RE ON THE SAME TEAM

MMR and it's effects on AI replacements: So, I understand that when a players leaves for whatever reason, you want to replace them with a bot suitable to their skill level, but if that is the aim, I really suggest you add a difficulty somewhere between a 2 and a 3. MOst players that have been playing over a month can easy stomp a 2 for most, if not all heroes. 3s are insanely too turtle while still maintaining a more player like combo chain, so that would likely be too much to replace most players with. The gap between a 2 and 3 bot feels entirely too far apart for the PVP game, as most players fall somewhere between those 2 difficulty levels. Also, I would like to suggest that replacement bots should actively scale within the battle. IF you pop a laughably easy 1 or 2 bot in as a replacement in game and that team starts to waver, juice that drone up! Both sides want challenging and close games as much as possible, and having dynamic bot skill levels that adjust in game would be epically better than the slough fest that is realizing half your team just bounced and you're about to get that laughably simple parry bait raider 1 bot to replace them with. dynamic bot skill levels would a much welcomed addition.

PVAI modes: I realize that the vast majority of players play PVP and in my opinion, that is where this game really hits its stride. But there is definitely a sizeable chunk of this community that plays PVAI, whether as to train up on the game mechanics, or simply because they enjoy that style better. With that being said, these players don't always want these modes to be the absurdly easy modes that they are now. Currently, the way bot difficulty is calculated is by looking at a players MMR(or so I've read) and adjusting the challenge according to that. I must say, it's not a very accurate player skill metric for players that play very little in PVP or are brand new. As I mentioned in the MMR section, if we had sliding dynamic difficulties for bots within the match, this might help to keep players in PVAI game modes much more appropriately challenged. Another more simplistic approach to this problem that could work is something akin to how blizzard and overwatch handles their PVAI games = by pre selecting your difficulty levels when you select PVAI mode. In this case, you have 3 bot levels and could simply implement a easy, medium, hard mode setup and do away with the MMR requirements for this entirely, which is silly to use in a PVE environment already, particularly for non-pvp players. Obviously, any bot teammates would need to match the skill level of the bots on the opposing team.

Hopefully one of you devs sees this feedback and maybe some or all of these issues can be addressed. If nothing else, please make AI aware that they have teammates and hitting through them constantly to hit the enemy is infuriatingly bad. And please please please give us selectable challenge levels OR dynamically adjusting bot AI difficulties in match. I imagine that the former is easier than the latter, but the latter would be much more beneficial to both PVP and PVAI modes. Whatever the case, please make PVAI mode actually a challenge for those of us that want it to be challenging and don't just use it as the training/ragequit into gamemode. I play these game modes often with my daughter whom is very causal to games and is very intimidated by PVP games. This way gives her immensely more confidence and enjoyment out of the game and allows us to play together, but a team full of lvl 1 bots is laughably easy for all but brand brand new players. Being able to consistently only plays lvl 2 bots and up would really make the whole experience much more enjoyable.

Thank you for taking the time to read this keep up the excellent work! Love what you are doing for this game! Thank you!