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  1. #1

    TG changes. The right way to promote offence.

    Ubisoft,

    As you can see from many threads here, the changes to light attacks do promote offence and make game fast paced, but with the exception of high level players, it turns matches into spamming match. It is less about guessing your opponent and more about out-attacking him.

    I believe you initial idea of giving heroes reactable 50/50 is the right way to go about it. So, a player can react to both actions separately, but when there is 50/50 choice, he needs to decide what to dodge and when. This promotes offence in the correct way.

    For example, Highlander vs Black prior. If Highlander decides to opening with forward dodge top heavy, he has a choice: a) do top heavy with hyper armour b) soft feint to the side heavy c) enter OS. At this point Black prior needs to guess what do: a) interrupt Highlander with the bash, but risk missing due to Highlanders soft feints and eat heavy; b) wait for parry, but risk Highlander getting into offensive stance and having more damaging options. d) try to gb him out of it, but risk him landing heavy top; e) light attack to stop him entering from OS, but risk eating heavy from the side or top, if guessed wrong.

    This is a healthy way to start promoting offensive playstyle by giving heroes slower, but effective 50/50 options that's based purely on prediction than reaction. Yes, in the example of Black Prior and Highlander, Black prior can react to most of the offence and counter it, but that's just design flaw that requires a bit more fixing. HOWEVER, the idea is correct.

    My suggestion is...
    Instead of trying to speed up the game by tinkering the light attack mechanics, focus on bringing all heroes to the same level by giving them viable 50/50 offensive choices. For example:
    a) aramusha. Let his finishers to be unblockable. This way each time he enters his tempest combo, he has a choice of a) letting unblockable go b) soft feint to the sides c) cancel unblockable into simple heavy/light e) guardbreak.
    b) Nobushi: Let her kick be cancelable. So, each time she lands a light or dodges an attack with Hidden Stance, she will have an option to go on a offence with 50/50 attack: a) kick b) guardbreak.

    In both examples, a hero will have a chance to go on a offensive with 50/50 to open up defensive player, they will have a condition to start a 50/50 offence, which makes them vulnerable for punish, if an opponent guess correctly (e.g. if Aramusha decides to enter his combo by back dodge light, opponent can back dodge himself or go on an offensive in hopes of interrupting Aramusha, but risking to get hit, if Aramusha decides to continue/cancel-dodge/blade-blockade).


    As it stands now, most 50/50 offences are not quite good, because they are either a) easily spammable. b) easily reactable c) don't offer much counters to them. The choices should be either dodge or parry. I find Highlander's 50/50s the faires for several reasons. a) they are not fast, so a person can avoid punish if guesses correctly. b) offers several counters, like dodging, canceling with light attack, parrying, dodge-attack, guard break. c) they require considerable amount of stamina, so they are not spammable, which offers an opponent chance to go on a offensive.

    For these reasons, I like the changes to signs (hiding first 100ms), because it smoothes out 50/50 moves and turns them fully into an offence that can be dodged purely through guessing rather than just waiting what happens and reacting.
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  2. #2
    So I appreciate the wall of text regardless of wether we agree or not. You presented yourself decently. Which I always appreciate. Anyway, onto the thread itself:


    ~I disagree about it making the game spammy in any fashion. Sure, you can have people just constantly triple light or double light each other and then the other person will take their turn at it. As this is how the new recovery values work on TG. But you can also dodge immediately after eating a light now. Meaning people with dodge attacks can punish blatent light spam. And those that do not have a dodge attack by dodging will reset the fight to neutral. Because the second light is dodged and the third will be a finisher. If you block or eat that light you're still at a frame advantage. One needs to keep this in mind when thinking about every hero's capabilities and how much better feints are in TG. TG handles spam centric players a lot better than live does.


    ~Not everyone would agree with you about adding 50/50's. People around here generally dislike having to make reads. Personally speaking I don't see how having a 50/50 on every hero is better than making attacking safer globally. In both instances you'll have people EZ cheesy spam because they're incapable of moving up as a player. Or simply don't wish to learn how to play. And creating a viable 50/50 is a lot harder than you'd think. Ideally FH would have safe/basic offense with standard mix ups that everyone has access to. (feint baits and the like.) And then hero's would have their own specific mix ups tied to moves only they have.

    However in FH we have examples of characters who hit opposite sides of the spectrum here and are poor because of it. Highlander is the "50/50" machine with his kick into grab. Without that he's basically got nothing. And because the mix up is busted and imbalanced it either is reaction ignored and thus HL feels bad. Or someone can't deal with it. And HL deletes you in 3 hits. Then we have Orochi. Who has "viable" basic offense. If you're capable of reacting to most of his stuff he can do nothing. And if you can't then you get blendered. The point here is we need both viable base offense and characters with good mix ups. By overly relying on 50/50's we're essentially where we are on live. Where an entire kit's viability banks on a single gimmick.
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  3. #3
    Firstly, thank you!

    -Good point here, but in my opinion there are still some issues here, although it is still a Testing ground. a) not all heroes have 500ms lights. c) not all heroes have dodge attack b) not all heroes have similar animations. With 400ms visibility, you start relying on animations more. I have harder time blocking valkerie, for example, than orochi. At this point, this change either makes some heroes a lot weaker or forces balancing team to make heroes offences more similar. Right now, most Highlanders I saw on youtube/forums agree that those changes affect them badly. I main highlander too and I felt quite disadvantaged by the changes. The same can be said about heroes with clearer animations or 600ms lights. Another point is that it really does make game fast paced but in the way of 2d fighting. Where the game just turns into trading match. This concept is vastly different from what For honor stood for in the first place. I understand the need to change, but this change seems wrong in my opinion, since it negates the need for bigger slower mix ups (50/50s, canceling heavies, etc). I had a match where Orochi simply stood next to me and light spammed me out of Heavy feints, Offensive stance, Parrying his attack didn't give me much of a room, since after my attack (failed or not), we're back to with trading lights, unless you have a hero with hyper armour or proper dodge attack.

    -People who dislike making reads are the same people who would dislike light spam, since it too requires read: should you dodge and risk gb? should you parry and risk eating light? should you just block, but what side, if you can't react?. Moreover, as I said that the idea is right, but implementation is not good yet. Highlander's 50/50s is not just kick-grab. It's heavy-kick, heavy-grab, -heavy-cancel-parry, heavy-cancel-gb. His 50/50 has conditions: 1) you need to have good amount of stamina 2) you need to enter offensive stance. This is a healthy 50/50, since enemy also has plenty of ways to counter it as I said. The bad example of 50/50 would be conqueror's bash (bash or gb): a) you can actually react to it and avoid it b) it's spammable, which makes it frustrating. c) it doesn't over as much variation. Heavy soft feint into bash is a good start. See? this way the game becomes less about trading, but more about predicting, spacing and stamina management. Light attacks and heavy attacks becomes simply tools for spacing, defence (cancelling mixups), less safe way to confuse your enemy or a prerequisite for the actual proper mix ups.

    -As I said in my post that the fact that For honor developrs are focusing on pumping out on heroes and making combat changes, instead of changes to heroes on individual basis is what making the game imbalanced. Compare for example JJ with older heroes like PK, centurion. Even reworked heroes do not have enough complexity to their 50/50s. Ask yourself who has more mix ups? more defensive tools? more offensive choices? more nuances to their combat mechanics? Newer heroes or older ones?
    Is just making overall flat changes to combat system the way to go about it? Those changes forces heroes to be more similar to each other in regards to the light-heavy attack speed and damage. Whereas proper slower 50/50s offers greater variations: stamina consumption can determine how many times you can use it before running out of stamina, but that can also determine the damage/risk/rewards, it offers bigger and more interesting choices than "light attack? eat light and dodge? or parry on guess every couple of seconds".
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  4. #4
    Lot's to unpack here nice.


    Point 1) As far as I'm aware there are only 4 examples in the game left of someone having a 600ms light. Warden's chained side light, Highlander's opening lights, centurion's chain lights, and Raider's chained top lights. These should all be 500ms at some point. As the devs have stated 600ms lights are not viable and they will be removing them. Cent's will be gone with his rework whenever that drops. And yes animations are a thing. You're not intended to only rely on indicators. I'm not sure how either of these things stack against the changes made on TG though. perhaps you could clarify that for me.

    Highlander has always been bad. And yes, he is worse in TG. He can still trade with "light spam" via his opening heavies though. Everyone else gets to do it with lights. Shinobi is also technically worse off. But i'd say two heros whom are worse isn't enough of a cause to not push the changes. Especially when the main issues with them lie within design and not the impact TG has on them. The devs have openly stated that they've always wanted the game to be competitive with a bigger emphasis on reads over reactions. Even if we kept attacks at live speed and simply removed high parry punishes/loss of stamina on parries Offense would still struggle to get going. I'm barely an above average level player and this was a consistent problem for me both on xbox and on pc.



    Point 2) I'm glad you see that as it was my point. Both "spam" and over reliance of 50/50's are going to be widely disliked and thrown out haphazardly rather than trying to actually play the game at levels where throwing out random things is highly effective. It's because of this that I can't subscribe to the idea that TG changes or heavily reliance on 50/50's are better over the other. We need both things imo. Also I know HL has more mix ups in his kit besides kick into grab. I specifically used that as his main example since the rest of his soft feints are entirely too situational. Same with just tossing out a raw grab. Kick into toss is the only one that forces some sort of consistency both for HL and for his opponent.

    The current changes on TG actually allow for basic mix ups to work though. If you condition me that you always light into light I will dodge the second light. Then you bait me by not doing so and toss a heavy instead which smacks me for a good bit of damage. Alternatively if I have a dodge attack you can bait me into parrying that or GBing me in start up. The recovery changes and the better feints are the foundation to the game's basics. The next step would be to improve individual kits so their specific mix ups are better. Lights can now properly be equated to other fighters as safer poke tools that allow one to get into their offense. Which imo is the way we should be going.


    Point 3) There are several reasons that make the game imbalanced. It's not any one thing. I do agree that older hero designs are dated compared to new ones. I have always insisted that the dev's hero design methods are flawed and need to change. But the devs are not going to change someone like PK to have as much complexity as say Black prior. We can even see with the newest additions of year 3 that a vast majority of them are overly simple, gimmicky, and rely on one thing to be good. Just like launch heros. The more "complex" heros existed in year 2. And the only good hero that came from that was Shaman. The wulin (excluding zhanhu) are the exceptions because it's my firm belief that they were designed in a vacuum not bound to FH's rulesets.

    But i'm rambling. My point is that as much as I agree with you on how much the game would benefit from a roster refresh to bring older heros to be closer to some newer heros it's just not going to happen. The devs are very strictly bound to "hero identity" and that constricts them from being able to make wild changes to basically breath a new existence into an older kit. As i've tried to mention before. I think these fight changes need to happen. I also think we should make hero specific mix ups better. And tbh I think while you might understand how the TG changes work I think you're perhaps grossly misrepresenting how said changes impact the game as a whole in regards to how it works with kits. Orochi is a very easy example. He will have to be approached differently with the TG changes compared to the large majority of the roster because he can dodge cancel his recoveries. Meaning he will beat your attempt to just toss out a light once he's landed a finisher light on you. You're seemingly viewing the TG changes stand alone rather than how they will mingle with the rest of the game.
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  5. #5
    Originally Posted by Knight_Raime Go to original post
    The devs are very strictly bound to "hero identity" and that constricts them from being able to make wild changes to basically breath a new existence into an older kit.
    A good portion of the vocal community also do not help in this. Every time a hero has been changed the most vocal opposition has come when, to balance things they were given, they have lost things such as one hit ko or an endless chain (that only worked against newbies in any case) and the buzz word screamed in near every one of these is identity.
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  6. #6
    KitingFatKidsEZ's Avatar Banned
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    I will instantly uninstall and never look back if the game turns into a spamfest of repeatable 50/50s as Highlander, Hitokiri, Warden have against certain characters.

    If i want to play a coinflip simulator i can legit just do that without a PC.

    Its ******g no skill braindead gameplay.
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  7. #7
    Originally Posted by CandleInTheDark Go to original post
    A good portion of the vocal community also do not help in this. Every time a hero has been changed the most vocal opposition has come when, to balance things they were given, they have lost things such as one hit ko or an endless chain (that only worked against newbies in any case) and the buzz word screamed in near every one of these is identity.
    True. Both Valk and goki got slammed for their "identity" being removed. And some even made that claim knowing cent will lose his guaranteed cutscene.
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  8. #8
    Okay, you convinced me. These combat changes are not as bad as I thought initially, but there are still two things that concern me:

    1) Lights becoming too strong that there is no longer much of a need for unblockable/undodgable 50/50s mix ups. They decreased damage of heavies, lights are the same, hid first 100ms, decreased lots of stamina penalty mechanics. At this point, it not often you'd get a chance to pressure opponent. There needs to be a balance between lights attacks, heavy attacks and unblockables. As of right now, heavies are not as rewarding to land, whereas light attacks are safer and if you land two of them, you basically did more damage than one risky heavy. Unblockables eat lots of stamina and can be interrupted by lights. So, why not really just spam lights with occasional feints? Stamina regulated pace of the combat and allowed more defensive player to have his chance for an aggression.

    I say that 100ms change is good. damage reduction change is good. but decrease the damage of light attacks and do something about stamina consumption and heavy damage, so players will have more incentive to change the pace up and do 50/50s and will have an aim to land heavies.

    2) The biggest reason I don't like those changes is because there is nothing about slower heroes. Some heroes are designed around controling space and positioning, like HL, Shugoki, Nobushi, Lawbringer, etc. What are they supposed to do against orochi, shaman, berserker who will stand in your face and spam lights. And whilst spamming lights, their kit is still quite useful and relevant, like fast feints, fast zone, HA, dodge attack, etc.
    For example, when Highlander throws out heavies, the hyper armour appears too late. It's easier to catch him out of it. Entering offensive stance with those light-spam-incentives will have difficult if enemy just follows me around.

    Yeah, perhaps lights should be faster and more relevant, but not to an extend that it becomes less efficient to use heavies or 50/50.
    Do you know how much easier it is to land 3 OS lights rather than one unblockable heavy that has 31 damage value? Light attacks should be the main source of damage, but a tool to open up turtles and to start a more damaging attacks.
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  9. #9
    Good discussion!

    True heavies do need to still be valued and in TG perhaps they are a bit weak compared to light options. Simplest fixes are of course number fixes so either light damage needs to get slightly further reduced or heavies buffed.

    One thing to keep in mind tho is that heavies do still give executions. Not important for 1v1 sure but in any 4v4 mode securing the execution is very important so there is still that purpose regardless.
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  10. #10
    I'd say the fixed 100 ms delay changes made certain characters better than they were before
    highlander's crushing counters are still viable because it's still 600ms with a 100 ms blanket on it.

    The damage values are still decent and the damage values for heavies make it less punishing so people
    throw more attacks against most heroes instead of it being a mexican standoff even nobushi
    benefitted from the changes in TG.

    The only thing left to change is the healing/support feats in the TG they became too powerful in the TG
    tweak this and the TG will be a better game.
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