Final Feedback on the game from a beta player | Forums

[Justicator]

WARNING: This will be a loooong post in which I will touch on the logic of balancing and why ubisoft is doing it (IMO) totally wrong and how would I (if I was a developer) use the core concepts of FH, the reason why the original players started playing the game in the first place, are completely neglected, and yet how they would do a far superior job in balancing the game than dishing out new heroes and poor reworks have been doing so far.

PREFACE: Let it be known that I am fully aware that UBI is a company mainly interested in money and not the quality of the game. When I say this, I am not saying all its employees are like that, but I am saying the company as a whole is interested in it. Because of this, any changes what would ever come to FH would in some way be tied to earning money. This is the reason why the Perks were done in this way, this is the reason why arcade, a game mode about fighting the AI in a multiplayer focused game, is locked behind a paywall. This isn't even debatable; anyone with half a brain that tried to get a specific set of perks on a character saw how much chests and steel it took to gear out only 1 preset of a single character! I am not saying that perks are inferior to what we had before, quite the opposite, i feel they are better. But the way they were executed clearly screams give us your MONEYZZ! How would I do it, if the goal was to just re-balance the game and not take out my consumers money and make everything they previously paid and played for worthless? Easy, for each equipment piece in your inventory that you had when marching fire came out, I would allow you to manually select the perks that you want improved on it. Any items earned after marching fire would be random, like they are now. It should also be noted that I do not expect anything that I say here to have any impact on FH. I am doing this out of a sense of "duty"; I had a lot of good time playing this game with my friends, way back before. I am saddened that it has come to where it is now and before I completely quit it, I wish to give my 2 cents about that which bugs me.

PART 1: BALANCING
Achieving balance in a game like FH can be difficult if one does not wish to have bland and samey heroes that are way to similar to each other. And yet, the way UBI does it is so completely wrong that it would be laughable if it wasn't so frustratingly stupid. Let's say every hero is broken into three components; Offensive Power, Defensive Power and Utility. For the purpose of this text they shall be refereed to as options A, B and C respectively. Now lets say that a hero may have a maximum of 3 ranks in each of these options while having a total of 6 points that you may spend in them. So for instance our current hero types would look something like this:
ASSASSIN: A(3), B(1), C(2)
VANGUARD: A(2), B(2), C(2)
HEAVY: A(1), B(3), C(2)
HYBRID: would depend on the classes it is a hybrid of.
This is balance. If your hero is exceptionally good at something it must be exceptionally bad in something. If a hero should be a jack of all trades, meaning that it is average in all of his options, it may not be exceptionally great or terrible at any of them. If you give something to a hero, you must take something from his other aspects to compensate. This is simple logic. What did UBI do? Every new hero got more and more options on top of what everyone before it already had. And the options jhust kept piling and piling while the OG cast was left behind. Those that did get a rework mostly (with the exception of kensei) had their attacks sped up, damage buffed/nerfed and/or unblockables sped up. I strongly believe now that no rework other than that of the kensei is actually good. But, with marching fire, UBI, broke the balance even further with the introduction of Nuxia. You see, regardless of weather her trap mechanic is actually any good (which is very debatable), she, nevertheless, got another entirely different option in combat; option D. She can totally negate your block and parry attempts. But she can block and parry herself. So she got a totally different option but she did not lose any of her other options. Because of this we have a single hero that has a unique mechanic but did not lose any of the base mechanic that other heroes have. This is not balanced. Either all heroes have a unique mechanic, no one has a unique mechanic or the heroes that do have a unique mechanic must not have access to all the "basic" mechanics that others have. Again, her trap mechanic is actually crap and forces you even further into the assassin light spam meta where you react with a fast light to almost any indicator on the screen regardless of what it is. But this is just a symptom of the current state of them game and the incompetence of the balancing team.

Now that we understand how balancing is done, one can clearly see why having all heroes come to the level of shaman is actually a crap idea. This game IMO would be in such a better position if the new kensei was the "ideal" for rebalances and new heroes.

PART 2: CORE CHANGES
FH has a unique mechanic, the guard stances; the reason why the original players started playing it. Instead of using this, with each expansion, UBI moves away from its core concepts into the cesspool BS gameplay it is now; light and ublockable spam. It is obvious to everyone by now that UBI did not expect everyone to become fairly good at blocking and most even good at parrying. It is why the defensive meta and staring contests happened. This is not UBI's fault; they created a unique game (actually Jason VandenBerghe created a unique game, UBI butchered it) and they could not foresee all the problems that it might have. And yet, how they handled this problem is entirely UBI's fault; their "answer" to the defensive meta would be their first step into a long series of wrong choices. The following are the changes that I would make to FH that would focus on the core gameplay of FH and balance that. FH has **** foundations ATM and no amount of decoration you put in that house will ever make it stable; it is only a matter of time before it crumbles completely.

DEFENSIVE CHANGES:
-Added a new core mechanic; GUARD. Guard is constantly depleted when blocking attacks. It is re-filled when you make attacks. Guard is depleted depending on the damage of the attack that you block; the higher the damage the more it depletes your Guard. Once an enemy breaks your guard (meaning that it is depleted completely) you enter a unique stagger animation during which time the opponent has a guaranteed heavy. If he GBs you, you may CGB.
-Parrying is no longer a heavy input but a unique input; a button that does absolutely nothing but parry. If you are baited into a parry, you remain in a vulnerable animation, and not in a heavy attack that may be canceled, or what's worse, even go through and actually punish the player that baited you. During this vulnerable state, the player is guaranteed a heavy. If he GBs you, you may CGB.
-Assassins may no longer parry. Instead, their deflect is now performed with the unique parry button. Additionally, deflects are now chain starters for every assassin, but on their own deal very low damage. Deflects are like this for all assassin classes (no more free GB for zerker crap). If the assassin is baited into a failed deflect, it enters a vulnerable state during which you are granted a light against it.

The goal of these changes is to force a reaction simply by using attacking. If you are no longer able to block everything indefinitely, you will have to attempt to parry or step back and initiate your own offense. Either way, you may not be passive. Also, by removing parry from assassins, you force them to These changes become more viable when combined with the following offensive and utility changes.

OFFENSIVE CHANGES:
-All classes may now soft feint a heavy into a GB. All classes may now Soft feint a heavy into a light. Weather this soft light soft feint is done from any heavy, specifically finishers or in some other manner should be balanced by the specific class; but everyone should be able to do it.
-All classes now have basic L-H-L-H and H-L-H-L combos in addition to the combos they already have.
-Any light attack faster than 500ms has its attack speed reduced to 500ms. No more unreactable 400ms crap, this is terrible balancing.
-Blocking Light attacks no longer stops your momentum and you may continue with your attack combo (similarly to how heavy attacks now function)
-Zones are now all 600ms and should all be multiple attacks. The second and/or third attacks should be soft feintable into a light for everyone. The stamina cost for zone attacks is reduced but their damage (especially the damage from the first hit) is also reduced.
-All assassins now do dash attacks with a heavy input and they are all the same speed, that of the orochi for instance.
The goal of these changes is to give every hero the same playing field and the same ability to bait as well as the same ability to punish those baits. The soft feint heavy into GB for instance should have been introduced way back into season 2 for all heroes; why only some have it is beyond idiotic. These changes also force a reaction form a player not by extra fast, cheesy or otherwise broken ublockable attacks and mechanics, but by playing smart.

UTILITY CHANGES:
-Stamina Changes! The more you attack, the less stamina your every next attack costs, allowing you to feint more and keep up the pressure. The stamina loss you receive when you get parried is also reduced.
-Completely reworked bashes! Heroes now have access to the following bash attacks: either from neutral or as part of a chain. Bashes from neutral may be canceled at any point before they are "released" (just the way that warden's shoulder bash now works), but they NEVER guarantee anything; they simply "stun" your opponent (meaning you get that flashing screen where you do not see the stance of your opponent) briefly, allowing your opponent to initiate his attacks more easily. Bashes that are a part of a chain are fast and guarantee a light, but they may not be soft feinted or canceled. They must be committed. An enemy that dashes them gets a guaranteed light.
-Completely reworked chip damage! Increased chip damage to 20% . For each additional character attacking you, the chip damage is re-scalled so that their total would always be 20%. This means that if 2 people are attacking you, their chip dmg will each be 10% (total 20%), 3 people attacking you means that their chip damage is 6,66% each (total 19,98%) and if 4 people are attacking you, each of them does 5% chip damage, total 20%.
-Certain classes (mainly heavies, but a few others as well), especially those that have a ton of armor on them (like the LB), get HA on heavy attacks. Not assassins, not those skinny bastards, NO! Guys with HEAVY ARMOR get HA.
-All heroes have the same amount of HP. The damage reduction they have should, on the other hand, vary greatly. Those that have a lot of armor should have far better damage reduction that lightly or no armored heroes. The flip side is that this should directly dictate how well are ones dashes and general mobility.
-Heroes now have a standardized throw distance depending on their type; heavies throw the furthest, then vanguards and then the assassins. Hybrids throw depending on what they a re a hybrid of. No more shaman BS throw distance unrealistic crap.
-No more carrying heroes on ones shield, weapon or shoulder for an obscene amount of time for easy ledge kills. Our heroes are not some hopeless morons that will not fight back any simply enjoy the CHO-CHOO express to hell ride so calmly. It is unrealistic and immersion breaking. Balance the classes by giving them proper options in 4v4 situations to make them viable, and not this crap.

The goal of these changes is to compliment the defensive and offensive ones, while bringing FH a step back from certain complete and unrealistic crap that plagues it ATM. Additionally, unblockable attacks now become an extra tool in ones kit, not something that the entire kit revolves around or something that must be spammed if one wants to have any real chance of wining.

Only once you have completely rebalanced your core features can you truly begin to implement new heroes and new game mechanics without creating a complete C L U S T E R F U C K that FH sadly is today. If anything, the balancing of FH should be a great example of how NOT to do it.

FINAL THOUGHTS
FH is a unique game and I am sad that I have stopped playing it. Ever since marching fire came out, i am not playing it. I no longer have the will to learn to fight against unbalanced heroes and broken mechanics. This is not the FH I want or expected when I bought the game. Seriously, who in their right mind though that giving heroes a way to cancel anything to everything as well as the ability to cancel their bloody recovery times is a good thing, when you have so much OG heroes that are LITERALLY UNUSABLE when compared to the new guys? Playing FH has felt like an uphill battle for me for the past 5 months, as I stick to my trust warden. And no, his rework is not good; it is an example of a bad, dull and uninspired rework. Master of the longsword MY A S S, more like master of the shoulder FFS.

Thank you all for reading this long post. A special thanks to the players I used to play consistently FH with, I will miss our time playing together the most. If I have ever insulted anyone during my forum posts, I apologize, I truly am sorry. Sorry for any spelling or grammatical mistakes that I have made, english is not my native language. I hope that one day we get a game that uses the unique aspects of FH and creates a quality game that we will all enjoy. Godspeed!

[Matanuro]

As your close friend who was there at the beggining beside you, we shared a lot of good times togather. Lot of laughs,joy, frustration, anger, sweat and general enjoyment. Through this game, both of us even found new friendships that we hope that will last for a long time. And I can say with a smile on my face, that all of this time we spent playing the game was well spent. But it still saddends me to hear this. You already know my opinions about this post, heck, even I told you some ideas that you had written here and we both agree upon everything you just siad. So, if any of you DEVS are reading this, take notes. Your own players understand the game better than some of you. And that isn't a bad thing. If only you'd listen to your own community and actualy implement some of the ideas, you would have the best fighting game on the market without a doubt...
Well, here's to you Justicator, and to all the time we spent playing this togather. Friendship beetween a Warden and an Orochi can be possible it seems. And for further note to you: Nadam se da će developeri stvarno ovo vidjeti, pročitati i konačno doći k sebi i da neće otići putem kojim idu... Jer ako se ovo nastavi, ne gine da ćemo svi mi koji aktivno i dalje igru igramo, da ćemo sve poslati u rodni kraj i prijeći na nešto novo.

[Bednja]

So what you're saying is all the current heroes should be the same with no variation besides their looks and animations? That would be a very boring game. What would then be the point of updating such a game with new content when it all boiles down to the same. The game like that would die out pretty soon. Besides you after a year and a half did not expirience the full game but only the campaign and only one hero on multiplayer with your reasoning being "I don't want to play anything else" so how can you suggest changes on hero balancing when you never expirienced and tried to learn other heroes and see the benefits and the drawbacks. Every hero has benefits and drawbacks. For Honor is not a game where you make one gray mess of the hero cast but with diversity like you have currently it draws in players and by that money. And after all the passion of delivering a game to the players at the end of the day all those devs and their bosses have to have a roof over their head, so yeah of course they have to make money somehow. Your final feedback on the game with all the good you intend in the end would hurt the game and the company more then leaving it as it is right now.



Disclamer: By this I mean no disrespect, you're a good player, you mean well, but you're focusing on the wrong thing here.

[Justicator]

I purposefully did not go into specific hero rebalances and changes as that would simply be too much. The purpose of this post was to show how the notion of balance is so fundamentally skewed in the eyes of UBI's balance team and how it negatively affects the game. And as I had already stated; "Only once you have completely rebalanced your core features can you truly begin to implement new heroes and new game mechanics without creating a complete C L U S T E R F U C K that FH sadly is today. If anything, the balancing of FH should be a great example of how NOT to do it." I am not against heroes having different mechanics or having certain heroes be better at some stuff than the others, but you can't build a good product on extremely bad foundations. You just simply can't; no matter how pretty the decoration paper is that you wrap your s h i t in, it's still s h i t in a paper...

[Skrzymir]

There might be good feedback here, but I've only read the preface and I wholeheartedly agree with it. Though, I must add that the game will die much sooner than they expected because of a move like this (turning our gear into trash), so it's kind of paradoxical to say that Ubi is money-oriented. They might be, but they will lose business rather than gain it. I'd literally fire anyone who thought this was a good idea if I was the manager, as such persons cannot have positive impact on the company and are utterly irrational and borderline criminal.

I was prepared to invite friends to play with the release of MF, to provide a lot of feedback (essentially work voluntarily) as someone who has a great understanding of balance in multiplayer games, to promote the game to the wider public, to invest my money and obviously spend a significant amount of time playing. I will not do any of these things, and right now I doubt whether I'll even play the game at all. I will also never invest any money in anything Ubisoft again, and I was gonna buy the Division 2 as well as Ghost Recon. This is who knows how much, perhaps several thousands of dollars of loss to Ubi just because a few people in FH's dev team thought it'd be a good idea to scam people out of their gear in hopes that they'll buy a Steel pack or two.

If they say nothing tomorrow again for the third time in a row on the Warrior's Den, I will be contacting Ubisoft and disputing this. I doubt the upper management doesn't know that they scammed us with this move that trashed our gear, but perhaps they don't realize the negative impact on their business this will have. I don't know. They should be more disappointed than even people like myself. I'll try to make them realize that. If I fail, then they'll learn their lesson the hard way.

[Justicator]

@ Skrzymir Yeah, I feel you. No matter how much fun I had at the beginning, when I first started playing this game, enough is enough. Supporting a company, that is so out of touch with their player base and where certain higher-ups of the dev team (we all know who I'm talking about) are arrogant beyond belief, is borderline stupid. I really pity the people who spent a ton on money on steel to gear up multiple characters...

[Damocle]

I'm sorry man if I didn't read all of that but through your final thoughts I've understand your disappointment, because is mine. I play since closed beta and I thought "I finally found my definitive game, where the ONLY thing you need is skill". The game were unbalanced at beta just for 50/50 Warden's SB and Peacekeeper lights spam, but it was fine. Since beta this game improve significally the tecnical part, but about balancing... this game is going worst and worst each time they touch something. Our reflexes got better and we all know that but this not an excuse to ruin this game... after season 2 this game was taking a wrong way but cent and shinobi weren't that op, we'd just needed to learn how to play 'em. They nerfed shinobi I think 2 times and buffed him 1 and nerfed cent 8 times and reworked him 1. After that I've understand Ubisoft doesn't know what is doing, that's a real shame how can you release a character to nerf him 8 time? Season 3 brought us glad zone and highlander. Gladiator's zone after almost 1 year is still broken. Shaman was nerfed and she's now fine, aramusha sucks, warden sb is too ****ing strong, lb sucks, shugo sucks, conqueror's shieldbash if it gets you OOS... well pray your gods, pk now sucks, cent got a too strong punish but overall he sucks too, glad got his broken zone, raider sucks in 1 vs 1, warlord combos pathetic, berserker got hyper armor even on his ********, valkirie spam as ****, highlander is pretty fine, shaman too, kensei is the most RIGHTLY balanced, Orochi is **** (he just got 400 ms lights), Nobushi's hidden stance is the oppiest defensive tool in this ****ing game but overall she's not that good too, shinobi sucks (his deflects are the only good thing he has), aramusha is cool but weak. And now we got these new char, JJ is fine, nuxia is a bit fast, tiandi is pretty good and shaolin has everything, what then? A stupid expansion to spill of money from us making the game balancing even worst. After more than 1 year and a half this game is still unbalanced and what do they do? They rather watch their stupid data instead of listening WHO PLAY THE GAME. Waiting an entire season to MAYBE get a rework of 1 CHARACTER. Ubisoft is just playing with our hopes and time. Like you I'm not playing the game anymore, I'm playing Enter The Gungeon, a SINGLEPLAYER game that's requires much more skill and gives you much more fun than a stupid expansion. Now people complain me about how much this expansion was good and keep playing your shaolin.

[ScrubonFire]

Hello Justicator, I read your entire tread and fully agree with you!
I posted my first feedback tread today which I came to a similar conclusion. But you got the core picture of what For Honor was supposed to be. A game about skill. Now, not so much. Right now Im looking at the shattering helmets of this websites layout and think: "Yupp this is what it has become" Solid realisation of VandenBerghes dream shattered in tiny pieces of junk. I will probably quit too because this game is just annoying and frustrating while other players with their unreactable 400ms attacks telling me to "git gud". Also the scum which are using bots who parry every single light attack of mine.

[Justicator]

Thanks to everyone that took the time to read that huge a s s wall of text Wish it could change something, but sadly it won't. I'm not delusional. The best I can hope now is that someone who will attempt to make a similar game in the future reads it (as he scours the forums to see what other game developers did wrong) and implements some of those suggestions into their own game.