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[SixAxe505]

Just gonna throw this out there. What if light attacks could not kill? What if we treated it as shave damage? If only heavies/zones could kill then wouldn't that make for a more tactful fight?

[CRIMS0NM0NKEY]

Just gonna throw this out there. What if light attacks could not kill? What if we treated it as shave damage? If only heavies/zones could kill then wouldn't that make for a more tactful fight?

Interesting idea except some characters zones and heavies are better than others. It could work though. Like orochi has to get a heavy while Lawbringer has the option to get a zone or a heavy. Shamon, centurion, and Shaolin might be hard place. It might help in separating OP characters and "finisher" characters. It might be a nightmare to balance in 4v4 IDK.

[Vakris_One]

Raevyne's got a point but reducing light attack damage isn't really going to significantly improve anything about the game if that's all they do. At best it will simply increasing time to kill. What good will that do however if certain characters still have no openers and only rely on light spam, while others have no viable form of offence and while still others are just crutching on one overturned move because the rest of their kit is not viable? There needs to be an overhaul of the fight system in general if things are to improve, much like how they removed guaranteed GB from a parry and got rid of the last bar of health regen - these things helped to evolve the game and put it into a much better state that it was with those things in it. Merely reducing light attack damage won't do much by itself.

Among other things Stefan Jewinski stated that they want feints to be more believable and that this will potentially alleviate the problematic state of offence in the game to some extent. I would like to see what he has planned put into motion and then see where that takes us. I respect Raevyne's opinion but on this subject Stefan showed us that he knows the problems of the game on a much deeper level than Raevyne does. The problem with Ubisoft is that what they say and what they end up implementing are often two very different things. As such it's a matter of waiting to see what they actually implement.

I agree with most of what he said, I never heard of this guy before or seen his vids, but I agree with the majority of what he's saying in this video.

If the devs are balancing the game so average players on PC in an offline training session can't block consistently, how on earth are console players fighting online supposed to be able to come close to blocking any of it?


He also talks about something I made a thread about a week ago, balancing damage numbers by the speed of the attacks. 500ms would be light damage 11-17, so any 400 ms should be less than that.

Keep balancing for the 2% of the smallest platform and you won't have a game left in 6 months.

The same is also true if they abandon the top level and balance the game for the low to medium skill level. The game's skill checks would be too simplistic and the skill ceiling too shallow to keep anyone invested in playing for longer than a couple of months before completely mastering the combat system, getting bored and then leaving because there's not enough depth to the combat system. In my opinion a top down approach is better because it gives players room to improve and go further up along the skill ladder, which in turn gives the game staying power.

If the game is actually made fun at the top levels then more players will have the incentive to stick with the game because it would be both challenging and fun to grow as a player as you attempt to see how far you can go up the skill ladder. Every step from low to medium, to high skill, to competitive level would be as fun as it is challenging to master - this is how pretty much every good conventional fighting game such as Soul Calibre, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, etc, work.

[DefiledDragon]

If the game is actually made fun at the top levels then more players will have the incentive to stick with the game because it would be both challenging and fun to grow as a player as you attempt to see how far you can go up the skill ladder. Every step from low to medium, to high skill, to competitive level would be as fun as it is challenging to master - this is how pretty much every good conventional fighting game such as Soul Calibre, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, etc, work.

You're right in what you say, but if the game isn't fun and doesn't feel fair and balanced at lower skill levels, or at least lower experience levels, there's little incentive to stick with the game and improve. The game needs to be fun at all levels of play and it needs to feel fair and balanced at all levels of play or it's never going to retain new players. They absolutely should balance the game at higher levels of play, but in doing so they absolutely should not sacrifice fun and a feeling of fairness at lower levels of play.

[Vakris_One]

You're right in what you say, but if the game isn't fun and doesn't feel fair and balanced at lower skill levels, or at least lower experience levels, there's little incentive to stick with the game and improve. The game needs to be fun at all levels of play and it needs to feel fair and balanced at all levels of play or it's never going to retain new players. They absolutely should balance the game at higher levels of play, but in doing so they absolutely should not sacrifice fun and a feeling of fairness at lower levels of play.

I completely agree. And in a more conventional fighting game, or even a PvP game like Rocket League, balancing the game from the top down usually yields a fun and fair experience at all levels of play. That's because at the highest level the entire gamut of options and tactics are supposed to be used to their maximum potential. So if the devs make sure that everything is viable, fair and solid at high level then the experience will inevitably be just as viable, fair and solid at lower levels. All is good. Except that For Honor doesn't seem to want to work like this and that's the frustrating part.

The problem with For Honor is that the higher up the skill ladder you go the less and less of your kit you can use. For Honor has a very weird paradigm. At low to medium levels you are learning how to use all the attacks and when it's best to use which attacks - pretty normal stuff for any PvP game. However at high level you are suddenly finding that you have to use less of your kit and less of your attacks because it's no longer safe to use a lot of those attacks you spent your time learning. And you start wondering "why did the devs put those attacks in the game then if they're not going to be used past the medium skill level? If they're just going to become dead attacks at higher skill levels then it's like I've been lied to."

Then at the competitive level you use even less. You are stripped down to pretty much just 2 or 3 moves in addition to the number of viable heroes being drastically reduced. The amount of dead attacks start to overwhelmingly outnumber the very small amount of viable attacks. That's pretty terrible for a PvP game. What the FH devs need to do is make sure that the majority of each character's attacks and kit stay viable from low all the way up to competitive level. Not this nonsense that we have where most of the roster are full of dead kits after you move past the noob stomping level. Only then will we have a fun and fair experience that will harmonize properly with a top down balance philosophy.

[Knight_Raime]

@Vakris_One

Bare my damned children. Excellent freaking posts.
Just a side note. You said in your prior post "stated that they want feints to be more believable."

Do you remember the exact verbiage of that? or could you elaborate more on that? I didn't watch the den. So i'd be really interested in hearing that.

[The_B0G_]

Raevyne's got a point but reducing light attack damage isn't really going to significantly improve anything about the game if that's all they do. At best it will simply increasing time to kill. What good will that do however if certain characters still have no openers and only rely on light spam, while others have no viable form of offence and while still others are just crutching on one overturned move because the rest of their kit is not viable? There needs to be an overhaul of the fight system in general if things are to improve, much like how they removed guaranteed GB from a parry and got rid of the last bar of health regen - these things helped to evolve the game and put it into a much better state that it was with those things in it. Merely reducing light attack damage won't do much by itself.

Among other things Stefan Jewinski stated that they want feints to be more believable and that this will potentially alleviate the problematic state of offence in the game to some extent. I would like to see what he has planned put into motion and then see where that takes us. I respect Raevyne's opinion but on this subject Stefan showed us that he knows the problems of the game on a much deeper level than Raevyne does. The problem with Ubisoft is that what they say and what they end up implementing are often two very different things. As such it's a matter of waiting to see what they actually implement.



The same is also true if they abandon the top level and balance the game for the low to medium skill level. The game's skill checks would be too simplistic and the skill ceiling too shallow to keep anyone invested in playing for longer than a couple of months before completely mastering the combat system, getting bored and then leaving because there's not enough depth to the combat system. In my opinion a top down approach is better because it gives players room to improve and go further up along the skill ladder, which in turn gives the game staying power.

If the game is actually made fun at the top levels then more players will have the incentive to stick with the game because it would be both challenging and fun to grow as a player as you attempt to see how far you can go up the skill ladder. Every step from low to medium, to high skill, to competitive level would be as fun as it is challenging to master - this is how pretty much every good conventional fighting game such as Soul Calibre, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, etc, work.

The thing is, getting better and increasing your skill doesn't have much to do with the issues many people are having, on console many attacks, especially on new heroes are so fast you can't react to them.

The devs said it themselves, they want to balance so that light attacks can't be blocked consistently, the example they used was that pope can block everything beside 400ms attacks on an offline mode on PC and he's not a good player. On console, online, light spam is killing the game for a lot of people, if you don't pick a spammer and do it yourself, it's not fun to play anymore.

I think that's what the video was getting at, the game is changing and for most people not for the better, I think the reason this game did as well as it did is because it wasn't like other fighter games you listed, the closer we get to that, the more people will lose interest. Games like that are fun for a bit, but never long, in my experience anyway.

[DefiledDragon]

I completely agree. And in a more conventional fighting game, or even a PvP game like Rocket League, balancing the game from the top down usually yields a fun and fair experience at all levels of play. That's because at the highest level the entire gamut of options and tactics are supposed to be used to their maximum potential. So if the devs make sure that everything is viable, fair and solid at high level then the experience will inevitably be just as viable, fair and solid at lower levels. All is good. Except that For Honor doesn't seem to want to work like this and that's the frustrating part.

The problem with For Honor is that the higher up the skill ladder you go the less and less of your kit you can use. For Honor has a very weird paradigm. At low to medium levels you are learning how to use all the attacks and when it's best to use which attacks - pretty normal stuff for any PvP game. However at high level you are suddenly finding that you have to use less of your kit and less of your attacks because it's no longer safe to use all those attacks you spent your time learning. And you start wondering "why did the devs put those attacks in the game then if they're not going to be used past the medium skill level? If they're just going to become dead attacks at higher skill levels then it's like I've been lied to."

Then at the competitive level you use even less. You are stripped down to pretty much just 2 or 3 moves in addition to the number of viable heroes being drastically reduced. The amount of dead attacks start to overwhelmingly outnumber the very small amount of viable attacks. That's pretty terrible for a PvP game. What the FH devs need to do is make sure that the majority of each character's attacks and kit stay viable from low all the way up to competitive level. Not this nonsense that we have where most of the roster are full of dead kits after you move past even so much as the noob stomping level. Only then will we have a fun and fair experience that will harmonize properly with a top down balance philosophy.

I've never actually thought about it like that but yeah, you're absolutely right. Characters move sets in FH become ever more restricted in terms of viability as you progress whereas in other fighting games, the characters movesets open up to you as you improve and become invaluable tools in the arsenal of your offence. I find it difficult to put my finger on the issue. It's certainly too easy to defend but at the same time, characters who are typically regarded as "viable" are far too easy to use, requiring little actual skill in order to succeed. Conq is the classic example of this, as is Glad to a degree in that without his zone, he would likely be two tiers lower than he is now. How problematic are a games mechanics that one move in a characters kit can propel them up the tier list like that?

I've offered a number of suggestions on how to improve the game in terms of balance and player engagement, but in all honesty, I really don't know what they can do short of re-designing the mechanics from scratch.

[Knight_Raime]

The thing is, getting better and increasing your skill doesn't have much to do with the issues many people are having, on console many attacks, especially on new heroes are so fast you can't react to them.

The devs said it themselves, they want to balance so that light attacks can't be blocked consistently, the example they used was that pope can block everything beside 400ms attacks on an offline mode on PC and he's not a good player. On console, online, light spam is killing the game for a lot of people, if you don't pick a spammer and do it yourself, it's not fun to play anymore.

I think that's what the video was getting at, the game is changing and for most people not for the better, I think the reason this game did as well as it did is because it wasn't like other fighter games you listed, the closer we get to that, the more people will lose interest. Games like that are fun for a bit, but never long, in my experience anyway.

I think the point of what Vakris is saying is that if the game is pandered to in the way that would appease the players like ravyene the fun wouldn't last long either. Because people would master the game super quickly. We're trying to say that dumbing down the game will only feel nice in the short run. Making the game good from the top down perspective would make the game good in the long run for everyone.

The only reason these "competitive improvements" feel bad for mid to low players right now is because how lop sided it makes balancing. And this lop sidedness only happens because the fundementals of the game are ****ed. If the devs are capable of fixing offense at a mechanical level then there wouldn't be a need to fist every kit full of unblockables. We wouldn't need to keep adding in 400ms attacks to everything. both things could go back to being powerful tools to individual hero styles. Fixing offense at a mechanical level would mean a top down perspective of balance could still be achieved. and the less of the 400ms attacks and quick unblockables would mean things at a mid/low level wouldn't feel as chaotic/frantic. Thus the game is fun in the long run for everyone.

Raveyne and many others try to implement quick fixes that address the symptoms and not the actual problems. Which is not how you fix the game for the better.

[The_B0G_]

I think the point of what Vakris is saying is that if the game is pandered to in the way that would appease the players like ravyene the fun wouldn't last long either. Because people would master the game super quickly. We're trying to say that dumbing down the game will only feel nice in the short run. Making the game good from the top down perspective would make the game good in the long run for everyone.

The only reason these "competitive improvements" feel bad for mid to low players right now is because how lop sided it makes balancing. And this lop sidedness only happens because the fundementals of the game are ****ed. If the devs are capable of fixing offense at a mechanical level then there wouldn't be a need to fist every kit full of unblockables. We wouldn't need to keep adding in 400ms attacks to everything. both things could go back to being powerful tools to individual hero styles. Fixing offense at a mechanical level would mean a top down perspective of balance could still be achieved. and the less of the 400ms attacks and quick unblockables would mean things at a mid/low level wouldn't feel as chaotic/frantic. Thus the game is fun in the long run for everyone.

Raveyne and many others try to implement quick fixes that address the symptoms and not the actual problems. Which is not how you fix the game for the better.

I agree changes need to be made, but can the game only be made better by increasing the speed of everything and adding feintable unblockables to everyone?

I'm speaking more generally as a game design level, but I found that when the game was slower and more about mind games with intense back and forths here and there was a much better pace than this new "Go like *uck" bar style fighting, as soon as you engage it's non stop lights and feints and unblockables, more feints than attacks, I personally just find it mentally exhausting keeping up with all the feints and lights, it takes a lot of the fun out of the game, it turns fighting into a chore.