Community Discussion: For Honor Operation Health

**Wookiescantfly** · 11-06-2018

Hell there everyone, I thought I'd open up a discussion among the community as to what we would like to see for For Honor's equivalent of Rainbow Six Seige's Operation Health. For those of you who are not aware, Operation Health was a period of approximately 1-2 months during Season 2 of the Year 2 plan for the game where the development team focused solely on fixing and improving the game. During this time there were no new operators introduced to the game, and I'm told neither were very many new cosmetics either.

i'm not sure how widespread the desire for this is, but there's no question that it's currently rather desperately needed. While I'm fully aware that the art team and the fight team, etc are all different teams, it doesn't change that a break from silly cosmetics and memes would be more beneficial for the overall moral of the community than anything else. So with that I pose a question to the rest of you:

What would you like to see out of something like this done for For Honor? Please note that if you're going to suggest that a character get a rework, nerf, or buff, please be as specific as possible as to the changes you would like to see made.

Personally the changes I would like to see made are as follows:

Warrior's Den absolutely needs to address balance changes and bug fixes going on with the game. Even if it's something as minor as just letting us know that the team is reviewing data for a possible change to the way hair drifts in the wind; it doesn't matter, so long as the devs let us know they aren't just ignoring us for lols while we lament at the state of balance and such.
All future content, balance changes, maps, etc need to be in house playtested or tested on a PTR before final release.
Do not ask for Feedback on something if you're just going to ignore it entirely.
I would like to see the fight team move away from unreactable attacks and dependency on abuse of bashes to combat the defensive meta. There are other ways to deal with defensive gameplay that don't involve breaking the game or making it borderline completely unenjoyable for the average player. Obviously this also involves reworking characters like Conqueror and Orochi, who were reworked to be overly reliant on these things.
I would also like to see the fight team take more feedback from higher level competitive players into consideration.
Rework Revenge and revenge gain associated feats so that the revenge meter no longer builds in 1v1 fights across all game modes. Additionally, your revenge meter should not build if you're attacking a target that has been recently attacked by an ally or is currently being locked on to by an ally.

**Skrzymir** · 11-07-2018

They don't care.

**Wookiescantfly** · 11-07-2018

I'm generally rather aware that the development team thinks rather poorly of their players, if Roman's generally poor attitude regarding criticisms about the game any time he's on Warrior's Den are anything to go by. However, I still think it would be a good idea for us, as a community, to come together and discuss things we feel need to be addressed about the game. It's certainly better than going "Wow m8, these devs don't do nuttin" all over steam, youtube, etc.

**marcosouza50** · 11-08-2018

This is a good idea the developers have to understand that we do not want new content in an unbalanced game, it ends up being useless.

**Wookiescantfly** · 11-09-2018

like I said in my OP: If you feel a character needs to be reworked, be specific. So I am. I have much more experience with Conqueror than I do with Orochi, so it was easier for me to make this. Keep in mind that this is only a suggestion and I am definitely open to discussing and adjusting parts of it. Without further ado.

Spoiler: Show

**Ubiflowessence** · 11-09-2018

I do agree that it is better to come together as a community when it comes to sharing thoughts and concerns on the game. And OP, thank you for sharing your ideas and suggestions! Although the team is aware of balancing changes, revenge build and other feedback shared by the community, I will forward this to the team to see if it is possible for some of these ideas to be implemented in the future.

**Wookiescantfly** · 11-11-2018

Originally Posted by Ubiflowessence Go to original post

I do agree that it is better to come together as a community when it comes to sharing thoughts and concerns on the game. And OP, thank you for sharing your ideas and suggestions! Although the team is aware of balancing changes, revenge build and other feedback shared by the community, I will forward this to the team to see if it is possible for some of these ideas to be implemented in the future.

Cool. Thank you. If I have any more suggestions I'll post them here rather than make a whole new thread. The contents of this one are going to be relevant for some time if my guesses are correct.

**Wookiescantfly** · 11-11-2018

Originally Posted by Jazz117Volkov Go to original post

My issue with toning down the defense meta is too much of the core gameplay is built around it. It's why we haven't seen those much talked about adjustments implemented. Weak defense doesn't work; it cripples too many characters. If we look at the meta as not a mechanical issue but a behavioral issue, the fix is incentives. High defense is an incentive to defend, but that doesn't mean weak defense is an incentive to attack. There needs to be clear and present advantages to playing offensively; that's the only way I see the meta going away.

Weakening defense amounts to taking things out of the game, what we need is to put things in the game.

The above quote is from a thread that was necro'd recently, and personally I feel like this was a bit of missed wisdom that nails the issue with the defensive meta on the head. The main problem with the defensive meta is that playing defensively has too many advantages compared to attacking. Therefore my suggestions for a change to the core defensive mechanics are as follows:

Have blocking cost stamina. 5 Stamina per Light Attack and 10 per Heavy Attack. The edge on Superior Block dodges in this case would be that they cost no stamina to block an attack. It's also still a dodge, so you're left open for a guaranteed GB for attempting this. This change will make stamina management harder and push people into OOS that much more frequently.
Overhaul Unblockable attacks. Remove GB vulnerability on the startup of Unblockables and change how they interact with superior block dodges and deflect dodges so that you will still be hit if you attempt to dodge in the direction of the attack with these properties on these dodges. As it stands, Deflect and Superior Block dodges don't really have a downside; this would give those a small downside that will take a while for people to break the habit of. Taking away GB vulnerability on startup also prevents people from just turtling until you toss it and tossing a GB for punish.
Decrease the amount of stamina an attacker loses for getting parried by 50%.
Decrease the amount of punish you get off of parrying a light attack to be in line with a heavy attack. Light parries are much more common on PC, and this is a large reason for the existence of the turtle meta imo. You get a free heavy off of a light parry 100% of the time. Why attack when you can just turtle for your free heavy? That needs to change. If a parry guarantees the same light attack punish across the board, then it removes the need to turtle out light attacks for guaranteed heavies.

Naturally testing these changes to make sure they don't break the game is paramount. Also, this is meant to start a discussion. So if you have any ideas of your own, feel free to share them.

**Obliged_HL** · 11-11-2018

"I would like to see the fight team move away from unreactable attacks and dependency on abuse of bashes to combat the defensive meta."

That makes no sense. If it's reactable you can turtle. If it's unreactable you can't turtle. If it's hard to react to, half of the time it's called unreactable and the other half of the time the top players can react to it often. Just like the economy, a game's balance needs to pay attention to the top and keep it a priority. The levels of play below will follow eventually as they play longer or will settle at some level. A bigger issue is that new players need to be educated better on how to deal with the enemy's offense and what's guaranteed and what's not guaranteed when defending against "bash spam", and what their options are. This could be alieviated with better training media, I highly recommend getting actual good players to help with this.

For example, I recently played the Highlander hero tactics and I thought it was good, until I reminded myself this is intended for someone who just started playing. All the damn things says is to "press this and then that." That is not helpful. As a new player, how would I even know when that's a good time to use the move, or what it gives me, or how an opponent would normally react? It told me "Do a balor's might and then kick", but it doesn't explain what it does and why I would want to do it, or what the enemy can do to avoid it. It could at least say "Balor's might into fomorian kick punishes parry attempts". Simple and it's not that hard.

"Decrease the amount of punish you get off of parrying a light attack to be in line with a heavy attack. Light parries are much more common on PC, and this is a large reason for the existence of the turtle meta imo. You get a free heavy off of a light parry 100% of the time. Why attack when you can just turtle for your free heavy? That needs to change. If a parry guarantees the same light attack punish across the board, then it removes the need to turtle out light attacks for guaranteed heavies."

All this would do is make the turtling player's win take much longer. What we need are almost unreactable to all out unreactable attacks that require small risks to initiate, but when initiated are harder to punish then are to initiate. This makes predictions, raw skill and knowledge a requirement in order to mount a proper defense and make the game more exciting. For example when you predict a beserker's 400ms light and parry it. He had all the dice on his side but you made a hard prediction and scored a reversal by predicting his moves by finding a pattern.

Also Ubisoft please read my post with video evidence and indepth explanations on why Highlander's offense is ineffective https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.ph...1#post13776381

also found here https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitive...ers_offensive/

**Wookiescantfly** · 11-12-2018

Originally Posted by Atlas-D Go to original post

"I would like to see the fight team move away from unreactable attacks and dependency on abuse of bashes to combat the defensive meta."

That makes no sense. If it's reactable you can turtle. If it's unreactable you can't turtle. If it's hard to react to, half of the time it's called unreactable and the other half of the time the top players can react to it often. Just like the economy, a game's balance needs to pay attention to the top and keep it a priority. The levels of play below will follow eventually as they play longer or will settle at some level. A bigger issue is that new players need to be educated better on how to deal with the enemy's offense and what's guaranteed and what's not guaranteed when defending against "bash spam", and what their options are. This could be alieviated with better training media, I highly recommend getting actual good players to help with this.[...]

Feinting, Soft Feinting, Delaying an attack, dodge attacks, staggering with a bash for a followup, and purposely whiffing an attack to draw them into attack range are all examples of tools we already have at our disposal to open up someone's defense or force a reaction. What we don't need is opening attacks that both chain into a combo and cannot be reacted to. I have no problem with chained 400ms attacks. Having the gameplay rely 100% on either predictions or reactions with no inbetween is not fun for anyone, and that's exactly the type of gameplay the balance of the game looks like it's shifting towards. Any opening attack needs to be reactable, even if only inconsistently reactable. 400ms lights as an opening attack basically turns the opening move into guaranteed damage and turns it into a game of the first one to attack being the victor in most scenarios, as these attacks are more prediction than reaction. This is even more so the case when we take into account things like input delay or latency.

Bashes themselves are fine, but creating or reworking a character that cannot function in high tier play without spamming them is not good game design. Look at Centurion. His kit has 3 bashes in it and they made his ability to have reliable mixups so reliant on them that balance changes to make his bashes less broken when he first came out completely crippled the character and made him competitively not viable if your opponent knows to stay away from walls. Look at Conqueror. Outside of making his bashes more powerful, they crippled his kit and limited his counter attack options outside of repeatedly spamming his bash for a light until you're either dead or OOS. Both of these characters are sign of a lack of foresight or playtesting on the part of the fight team, and it is absolutely inexcusable from a Triple A company like Ubisoft. For Honor may be the first of its kind, but this is not Ubisoft Montreal's first game nor is it their first multiplayer game. I'm more disappointed than anything else at the apparent lack of what should amount to common sense for this company by now.

Originally Posted by Atlas-D Go to original post

"Decrease the amount of punish you get off of parrying a light attack to be in line with a heavy attack. Light parries are much more common on PC, and this is a large reason for the existence of the turtle meta imo. You get a free heavy off of a light parry 100% of the time. Why attack when you can just turtle for your free heavy? That needs to change. If a parry guarantees the same light attack punish across the board, then it removes the need to turtle out light attacks for guaranteed heavies."

All this would do is make the turtling player's win take much longer. What we need are almost unreactable to all out unreactable attacks that require small risks to initiate, but when initiated are harder to punish then are to initiate. This makes predictions, raw skill and knowledge a requirement in order to mount a proper defense and make the game more exciting. For example when you predict a beserker's 400ms light and parry it. He had all the dice on his side but you made a hard prediction and scored a reversal by predicting his moves by finding a pattern. [...]

While parrying Berserker's 400ms light does grant you that opportunity to turn the fight around, had you missed that parry you literally could have just hit Cancel and baited their following parry of your flopped parry attempt. That's incredibly low risk for all of the damage you get off of it. High reward, low risk attacks are bad balance..A light attack is already difficult to parry and requires quite a bit of practice to be able to consistently do on reaction, especially on console's locked 30fps. High Reward needs High Risk and Low Risk needs Low Reward. That is proper balance. Flopping a light parry is not very punishable due to the ability to feint the heavy that follows the mistake, unless you're playing conqueror, which will usually spark a reaction out of your opponent and give you the advantage regardless. Whether their reaction is to dodge or attempt a parry, you get a free punish for your mistake in missing the light parry. This makes parrying a light attack a low risk, high reward punish with a high skill floor to be able to pull off. Changing the level of reward to be appropriate to the risk associated creates appropriate balance and lowers the damage potential, and thereby the reward, for playing passively (Aka Turtling).

While I do agree that better training media is needed, I cannot agree with Low Risk, High Reward by design game mechanics. If something is Low Risk, High Reward on a subjective basis from player to player based on their personal skill set and how they play the game, then by all means. Not even the games people want this to be more like, Tekken 7 or Soul Caliber 6 for example, have opening attacks that are almost or completely unreactable.

As for the training media, there definitely needs to be a context specific Hero Tactics-like that not only helps you with more complicated mixups, but gives you actual tactics against whatever hero you have the bot set as. It's not perfect, but it's an idea.

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Thread: Community Discussion: For Honor Operation Health | Forums

Since I brought up that he would need to be reworked,

Combating Turtle/Defensive Meta