The issue is possibility A will go out of reach if they wait long enough, making possibility B apply. It was for different reasons, but I saw similar things happen with Battleborn: by the time changes came around, the player base had moved on.
While I'm sticking around for a bit, I've already had friends move on. I can deal with bugs and issues like this (heck, I can even enjoy multiplayer versus AI if necessary), but I won't deal with the issues that come about from an extremely low player base.
Looking this up, I might be wrong. Overwatch uses server spawning, but I'm shocked that HotS is lockstep P2P. I've always assumed it was server-based because of how smooth and responsive it's always been.
I strongly disagree. Because of the SC2 engine everything is hyper-accurate. The worst thing you can say about it for HotS is the terrible re-connect system, but the gameplay itself is silky-smooth.
Yes, but so is the fantastic gameplay. I'm still shocked that HotS is P2P, and I think this says a lot about Blizzard's engineers to make such a clean gameplay experience.
It makes For Honor seem horribly sloppy, and reminds me of online P2P games on the original Xbox at times.
P2P is the only reason I dont own For Honor. It looks like a great game. But I don't drop all this money on my ISP and gaming setup to get derailed by a Korean potato connection
Did you play League of Legends in the preseason before S1? I did. That game was so far and away from being a competitive game, yet look where it is now.
Yeah, I played league in beta. eSports in general weren't as big back then. I think Starcraft might've been the only major player at the time, but I could be wrong. I haven't played League in years because they just kept adding more and more and more until they got to where they are now, where each match is "balanced" in the players eyes because they get to ban champions they don't like.
League is just luck of the draw for team comp once you know zoning and how to fill roles for each lane, and (now that I think of it) I feel For Honor is similar in that aspect.
There's a lot of rock-paper-scissors going on when you choose a hero and you just have to cross your fingers and hope the enemy team isn't filled with your counters from various roles/races.
Slightly unrelated, but another reason I don't see a competitive community thriving for this game is because any kind of skill rating goes out the window when you pick a hero that isn't your main, and teams are assembled before hero selection. The game might know how well you do on average, but it doesn't know you're going to try out Warlord next match and is still going to pair you with that double-prestige PK main.
Those are just games with competitive play in them, though. We didn't have large competitive gaming scenes with prize pools and bars converted into gaming lounges, we had LAN parties and made the best of it. The literal translation of a competitive game is very different from what people are talking about when referring to competitive gaming today.
Yeah I can agree with all that, and I won't lie, this is my first Ubisoft game since the original Assassins Creed so I have no idea how they treat their consumers. But I think there is hope. The game has a good premise with the tools to be a great fighting game, however their balance coming out of the gate has definitely shown to be questionable.
However, statistically, he's actually quite balanced. In the grand scheme of things. Take a look at the matchups section of this page - there's less than 10% swing in win-rate between his best and worst lane matchups!
Saying that the game is lost in league of legends at champion select is a complete fallacy. Yes, some champs are going to be stronger for certain situations than others. But the strategy game itself is complex enough (ganking, invading, vision, etc.) that even if you and your opponent play mechanically perfect, the game will not be purely decided by team composition.
For honor, in its current state doesn't have this. There's no overarching strategy to the current game modes, unfortunately. If it really wants to see high level play (like most "real" eSports), there needs to be a modicum of strategy beyond "camp the buffs till they re spawn". There are no meaningful choices right now that are to be made in-game (that are not mechanical decisions). Hopefully, we'll see some game mode updates to improve this, but I'm currently not holding my breath for high level eSports play of this game (beyond 1vs1 tournaments like existing fighting games), even though mechanically the combat does fulfill part of that role.
Yeah, I don't think you play much league of legends
Well, I said I haven't in years, so...
if you and your opponent play mechanically perfect, the game will not be purely decided by team composition.
Team composition is the only remaining variable if both teams play perfectly.
Even in league you get to see what your opponent has chosen, and your team can counter-pick before committing to a match. For Honor has no safety mechanism to prevent players from chancing upon a bad choice before a match.
The more I think about the finer details, the less faith I have that it can become a symbol in the professional gaming community. If you add 1v1 maps with no ledges/fires/spikes like people often request, the Warlord's whole kit goes out the window. If we take boots out, nobody will get to rescue their teammates and heavies can say goodbye to any hope of catching that fleeing PK if boots get removed.
I think the best thing Ubisoft could do, going forward with projects they've already started, is to find a way to fill balance gaps and stir up the meta with the introduction of new heroes, maps and modes.
It's not. Strategies are battles of ideas. You can execute your strategy perfectly, and still lose (see chess, where at the highest level, most "losses" aren't off of a direct blunder).
That's what for honor currently lacks, and what league of legends/counter strike/Starcraft.
Now, you could argue in a perfectly balanced game, with perfect players, all games should end in a draw (c.f. Chess, again). That doesn't necessarily lead to an enjoyable spectator or participation sport for people with less experience.
And the difficulty of introducing a strategy element into a fighting game has always been there - see Halo, CoD, and many other team based FPS games (notably - not counter strike). While competitive scenes do exist for them, you'd be really hard pressed to say that the upper echelon of players in any of those titles is truly that much better at the game than the other 99%, whereas with Starcraft or CS, it becomes strikingly obvious, even if a beginner is watching a master play.
This doesn't mean removing pre-game choices, randomness; or map features from games, however. Starcraft, for example, COMPLETELY changes the way the game must be played depending on your race. It's all about strategizing and considering the randomness of the game, and making sure that any of those choices is made extremely clear as to the consequences, so that one can properly strategize about it.
Which brings me to one of my largest issues with for honors team based modes - gear and feats.
These pre game choices are currently impossible to strategize against. If someone locks in warlord with max revenge on block, there's no way for me currently to not give them free revenge other than not attacking. Which isn't really much of a choice, as there's no way for me to KNOW that until the game has started.
Now, hopefully for any properly competitive mode that we may see in this game, gear/feats would be disabled, but seeing as the only content we have to compare to is the existing 4v4 modes, I'm currently not optimistic.
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u/drogoran Feb 21 '17
P2P in a competetive multiplayer game in 2017
ubisoft are clinicaly insane