Hello, this is a new thing I will be beginning to do within the community. I will gather data, or trends seen within the community, gather it all in a Forum post, and present it. This will be my first one, so sorry if it's a bit weird. Anyways, the topic today is For Honor, it's recent content trends, and the community's response, and in the end give some suggestions as to what might fix this issue. I hope you enjoy reading.
(all sources are linked at the bottom of the post)
Data Gather: For Honor, the Community, and the Game's Future
Part 1: Data and Analysis
For Honor, ever since it released back in 2017, always had a passionate community that changed over the years. With more people coming in, and bringing up their own ideas, art, and even jokes to lighten everyone's day. However, now there is something churning within the people, and it could be a problem not only for the developers, but for the game as a whole. It seems that the community wants hero-specific, or at least new and innovative content, to become the new normality for the game.
This is no new concept, as ever since Season of Hope people have been concerned about the future of unique hero content. It only grew as the seasons progressed, and now the people of the game are starting to get really irritated.
One post on the Reddit says:
- "Just PLEASE. Unique content. Literally begging you for some ******g originality here," (u/Rogahar)
While many others resort to sarcasm:
- "Sorry, but we only do universal executions here," (Cloe_SSB)
- "'picks up item' 'WACK!' Ubisoft dev team: [emojis of laughter and ones of money coming out of their eyes and mouths]," (Yahspetsnaz)
And many others are at a loss of hope or are very desperate:
- [in response to a hero post] "You went trough all this effort only to be ignored by Ubi" (asked to remain anonymous)
- [in response to a hero post] "I would pay 2000$ to get this to happen" (also asked to be anonymous)
- "As if they’re ever going to add anything except instrument emotes and executions," (MellowMemestar)
One can look at these and realize the long-standing issue that has started to heavily manifest within the community. People are starting to resent the universal content, and in some forms are calling to action to represent their cause, or even to outright boycott the game and Ubisoft as a whole. These few excerpts are just small amounts of what people have been vocalizing within the past year or so. That wouldn't really concern a developer, though, because people do this all of the time. However, where the real problem comes in is its exponential growth within the community. It's very easy to find anti-universal speech out there on any corner of the internet, whether it be Steam, the front page of Reddit, to the depths of lesser-known sites. These quotes were taken from Reddit, a place that is seen as a high-priority mark to check on the wants of the people. This is done only to show what has been growing in hibernation for a little over a year by this point. If this continues, it can set a very worrying precedent on the future of this game. It could die off, and many people's aspirations and creativity would be struck down. It is also a problem on the developer-side, because a failed game does not look good for any game developer looking to work on a new title. It's just the way business is, if a person cannot work well enough then they might not score the job, and this is a deeply worrying personal issue.
However, it is one thing to criticize, but it's another when people add on their own ideas on what can be done to fix this growing trend. As people know, passionate community members like to create their own idea of what content could be in the future. The thing is that this is growing even more so than ever before. It could lead to even more growth to the overwhelming majority of the playbase. Some of these people have their own words to say. One of the greatest ideas people have is less content but more quality.
In its own post, u/Roghar has said, "Every other game with a large roster does staggered content releases for their heroes, so it surely only makes sense for you all to do so too."
WolfKnight53 only affirms this said in response to a hero post, "I honestly would rather get this hero than 2 heroes next year. If it meant getting this high quality of a hero I'd give them up."
People are willing to wait longer periods of time for unique content. The community is, at this point, mainly starving for anything resembling unique content for any hero. People are also at the breaking point, as they are extremely desperate for anything at all. Many members even started recognizing universal content as no content at all. Really, at the end of the day, longer spans of no content followed by better quality is not much different from what we have today. At least, this is how the players see it.
Some say that Ubisoft is doing this under the idea that the development team is low on money. However, as stated in a German article detailing the financial success of Ubisoft in the past year, it tells a different story. It states, "Accordingly, the 'back catalog' made up more than 50 percent of the total net bookings for the third year in a row and thereby further consolidated their business model, namely to keep the players in their titles for a long time and to provide the games with updates and chargeable extensions over the long term. Most of the sales in this area were made with Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin's Creed, The Division and For Honor ," (Kleffman, 4). It is, at this point, noticeable that For Honor has made more money than it has in the past year. As to how it achieved this status is debatable, but it does close the argument that the team is losing money. In fact, they are gaining it. Showing that this counter-argument does not have stable footing when it comes to the idea of unique content within For Honor.
Therefore, it is easy to see the growing issue being found within this game and its base of players. It faces harder times ahead than ever before, and it could be the end of not only a game, but the creativity and revenue/validity that the game makes. This growing resentment, being proven by the miniscule percent of voices out there, are endangering the future of For Honor, its community, and its employees.
Part 2: Solutions and Deviating the Current Path
Most people will probably stop about here, after all, the data gathering and analysis part is over. All that is left now is how to stop this trend from growing so large that it engulfs the people who affiliate with the game. Luckily, this issue presents an open door not only creatively, but also financially. For if the company is able to capitalize on this issue, both the people and the company get what they want. Here, I will use the quotes above, and create possible solutions that will allow the game developers to make more money, to get more members, and lastly to keep the people of his game happy. I may not be a game developer, or a marketing expert, but I do hope that those with the respective positions hear me as equal for this last bit.
Observing the content output since Season of Hope, it is easy to depict that there has been much more content than there was originally. This comes in the form of universal emotes, re-textured (and sometimes entirely new) armors, only 2 heroes per year, and an emphasis on story and events along with the respective collectable content. This development idea, although respectable, is not the best for this game. People have been accustomed to the ways of old content output, and they seem to not want to change from it.
From this, the idea is created, stop the abundance of special events, its corresponding battle passes, and focus on less but meaningful content. The reasoning for such a proposal is due to the allocation of company resources. The decision of a very experienceable story and an attempt to make easier-to-produce content is perhaps one of the worst decisions this game has made when accounting for both money and public image. It seems that people are ready to pay for unique content for heroes once again, some have even stated that they will pay even if it costed more money than it has before. It is imperative to relocate company resources to unique content, and to get rid of the idea of more content than ever before. It is, as seen in recent ordeals, to be unprofitable by the week, and it still just keeps coming.
So the idea, in latent terms, is to stop production of the current event system, universal emotes, universal executions, seasonal weapons, seasonal colors, seasonal patterns, battle outfits, reskinned armor, and seasonal effects. It is not profitable to keep making these for the company, because it allocated mandatory funds towards something that is making less and less money over time. Instead, put money into longer periods of waiting for content to create hero-unique emotes and executions once again. Not only that, but hike up the price to about 10,000 steel. This way, more money is made, and more people will pay for it. Not only that, but more people will come back. Along with that, when it comes to new heroes, make their releases much farther apart to ensure quality as well.
If the idea were to cross someone's mind, they could say to put these unique content into the seasonal pass. I extremely emphasize against this idea, because as said earlier public image matters. If public image were to increase, so would the revenue. For a profit-based company on video games, this is a crucial devise to take a hold of. If the unique content were to be placed into the seasonal pass, people will originally comply. However, it will enact the same dissent that is seen with today's growing crowd. And eventually, this very same issue will have to be confronted again. So for this reason, I say lets not put the hero-unique contents into the battle pass.
So what about event passes? I say that since the proposal takes away a lot of content from the battle pass, it should instead go into the Event passes. Or in other idea, put more steel, salvage, champion status, scavenger crates, and faction troop multipliers into more of the payed battle pass content. Along with that, remove the free battle pass content. In this way, the revenue from such a live-service system remains intact, but the supplies for unique content goes elsewhere at the same time.
In this way, I feel like the development team behind For Honor can create a marvel out of a misery. If executed correctly, it could not only fix the issue described in the data analysis, but also make more money in the long term. Unless if there is something that I am not aware of in the development of For Honor stopping such things from being possible, then I humbly understand. I hope you see me as equal in presentation as I see hard workers trying to create the best game they can under a for-profit company. In this way, I hope you receive this grand proposal well. This isn't usually an ideal scenario, but the opportunity is presenting itself. There is only so much time left before this last door closes and we are stuck in the dark.
Sources:
This isn't exactly in MLA format, or in a way to help find the specific quotes I have been using. But it will provide where I got them from.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/forhonor/co...st_but_please/
2: https://www.reddit.com/r/forhonor/co...xecution_idea/
3: https://www.4players.de/4players.php...nde_Titel.html
4: https://www.reddit.com/r/forhonor/co...he_vindicator/
5: https://www.reddit.com/r/forhonor/co...is_doing_fine/
6: https://www.reddit.com/r/forhonor/co...cept_lobotomy/
7: https://www.reddit.com/r/forhonor/co...rument_emotes/
I stress again, these may be specific sites to find such quotes, but the issue is noticeable everywhere you go.
edit: *Rogahar says that his temper is because he loves the game, not because he really hates it
While I respect the leg work to get the responses and the effort it took to write a post this large but keeping it rather easy to follow i'm going to have to disagree with it. Primarily because it's operating under a potential misunderstanding and general lack of information.
The article about FH being a source of Ubi's income is very misleading. 50% is the number for their entire backlog. It doesn't state how much of that is coming directly from FH. More to the point though Ubisoft does not have many live service titles. The article lists them all and their biggest selling franchise. So of course their live service games are going to be bringing in consistently more money. The only thing this article can possibly state about FH is that it's not been forgotten by the higher ups at Ubi. But there's no other conclusion that can reasonably be drawn from that statement that isn't heavily speculatory.
I don't really see how anyone could look at the amount of content being pushed out on top of the amount of support the devs are continually giving it could at all indicate financial decline. Even if I were to believe a substantial amount of that back log money was coming from FH that would conflict with the idea that their losing money and the current path of monotization in FH isn't successful which is what it sounds like you're attempting to state. Or others.
Something people lack fundamentally is the information on just how much something actually costs. FH could absolutely be pulling in enough money to say, make unique executions again. But how does that cost stack up to say, running dedicated servers? Even if the dev studio isn't directly paying for those themselves Ubi might be taking a bigger cut from the profits of FH to simply continue to maintain the servers. We also do not know how much resources the devs are allowed to budget and to what departments. It's a pretty thought that the devs could remove the resources/budget they spend on seasonal content and instead funnel it all into hero design. But the devs do not self publish. They don't get that level of creative freedom like Bungie gets to have.
They're likely forced to produce regular consistent content to fulfill obligations to Ubi themselves and there's not much that can be done about that. Finally I have to mention "quality content" that people keep throwing around. As per usual people are misusing or bending definitions or situations to suit a narrative. I could easily find a dozen people who think the memetastic fantasy route FH has taken isn't anywhere as good as "realistic" looking weaponry with more gritty asthetics. But, if the former wasn't as good as people tend to say that doesn't explain why the sales for said content continue to be more than profitable.
Re-using assets isn't exactly new to FH either. Far before we started only getting general executions animations were reused quite often. Asset flipping is done often wether a game is successful or not. Often the choice to do so is more based on time constraints rather than Budget when it comes to AAA games. Said time constraints come from producers as well as what the community is demanding. Bungie for instance often re-uses gun models because the demand for amount of content kind of dwarfs everything else people ask for.
Anyway, the biggest actual hope for FH as a franchise at this point is already happening. The game is a budding competitive sport now. It's being noticed and treated more seriously. Tournaments have always been a big key to pulling in more players and generating hype for fighters for many many years. That and IIRC Ubi recently stated they wanted to focus more heavily on unique live service titles. So this can mean FH gets/got the go ahead to make a sequel which would sorely help the game for a numerous amount of reasons. Or it could mean FH as is will get a far bigger budget/support from Ubi in the near future.
EDIT: Leaving the statement in but I was slightly off. The financial statement was talking about a bigger push on high end free to play titles, not live service games. While a live service game is technically what F2P games are this original statement doesn't directly refer to games like FH, Seige, and Division where you have a paywall for entry. There has been talks of people thinking FH should just go free to play at this point and I do think that's a financially stable route if they continue to support the game as they currently are. But that's neither here nor there. So sorry for potentially misleading in that regard.
To Knight_Raime
You do make good points, and I can tell you also pay attention to the game a lot as well. I respect that, as many people really don't take the time to go into such detail about the game. That being said, when it comes to the first part of your statement, you seem to be getting my message wrong. I was debunking the idea that For Honor is getting less money, which is an argument thrown around in most public domains. What I was really arguing was that, even if by a little, the game is not dying or losing money. Meaning that reason for a lack of hero-unique content is not applicable anymore. Mainly, that evidence and paragraph was meant to show that the game is, in fact, growing and becoming more of a competitive and successful title, just like how you agree too.
When it comes to content output, this post was mainly created to help bring to light what people usually feel about the game, and the potential implications this could have. The main thing I was bringing to light here is how this is most likely an idea on how the developers use their time, and their resources to make content, rather than the idea that they lack any resources; as the paragraph above has already stated this isn't the case. What is really the issue is what the developers are prioritizing. The use of making universal content for all heroes goes against what the game was like before Season of Hope, and many people wish to return to such a precedent. However, this being said, reusing assets isn't bad either, my proposal never said it was. When it comes down to time, community wishes, and resources, reusing assets (especially creatively) can lead to some really good content and an execution of good public image. I must restate, that the issue isn't the assets being reused, or having lack of money, but instead the goals of the developers in a non-competitive light. For example, ever since the new development team came in, the events are full of detail, which was nice initially, until it became somewhat obvious that it is eating up the time for other things, especially unique hero content. This is what my article depicts.
That being said, I would not like to have this forum become an argument thread, what the original goal is to show any Ubisoft representative that may be looking at this that the game probably needs redirection if it were to stay stable within the majority-of-the-playerbase non-competitive community.
However, as my final paragraph states, if there is something the community does not know of, and it's causing the lack of content we see now - like a For Honor 2, then I humbly understand.
My apologies. I guess I probably misunderstood the community content section but the vibe I was getting sounded like people were saying or inferring that the current path when it comes to content and monotization direction is hurting the games income.
The re-used assets comment I made wasn't about anything you particularly stated. In fact it's pretty much exactly what you did in your first part. Taking a common held idea/comment and debunking it. Some people have argued that the re-using of assets is a potential sign of lower budgets and/or making less money. So it's rather a PSA than a counter to you specifically. Apologies for that confusion.
Nothing to really debate here. More or less we're on the same page. I just disagreed with some of the community sentiments and my bias took me to believe the overall message was something it wasn't. From a consumer perspective I do agree it feels kind of sad that the newer heros have less executions that are unique to them. I also feel people when it comes to complaints about event weaponry/pass weaponry and armors of late are pretty poor offerings. However, for me what's most important lies within the competitive side of things. Meaning as long as they continue to balance the game, improve maps, etc and bring in new heros i'm fine with sub-par cosmetics.
Not really a counter point or anything, just giving my opinion to go along side your report.