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Ubisoft on For Honor MT "We never had intention for you to unlock everything."

Grady

Member
Maybe they feel they have to protect themselves financially to support the game long term in case of drop offs in sales. Doesn't really bother me. I only play like 3 different characters and grinding to unlock the gear gives me an extra motive to play and master those characters.
 
Again, why do you need to unlock everything?

I won't EVER believe anybody who says they play as every single character. You choose two, maybe three, maybe four or five but not twelve. Some characters are boring for you, some are poorly designed for you tastes, some of them are ugly or whatever. So why do you need everything?

Yeah, this is the aspect I don't get. Does anybody spend $9000 to unlock every costume for every character in Dead or Alive 5?
 

NandoGip

Member
Man, some people are so dramatic. How many of you actually 100% the games you buy? The few of you who are gonna say "I do" you are literally maybe the 1% of gamers.

I think the developers response is fair. What is even the point of unlocking everything? Just get the shit you like and call it a day.
 

Steroyd

Member
HAHAHAHAHAHA, do they have no self awareness?

Have they never heard of completionist?

Incredible absolutely incredible, I can't believe this a defence.
 

Village

Member
Man, some people are so dramatic. How many of you actually 100% the games you buy? The few of you who are gonna say "I do" you are literally maybe the 1% of gamers.

I think the developers response is fair. What is even the point of unlocking everything? Just get the shit you like and call it a day.

Because I want to. And i own it.

That's all the reason or point there should be.
 
As long as the unlocks have no impact to the gameplay, I couldn't give a shit if it takes more than a year to unlock everything with ingame currency.

Can someone confirm if these unlocks are purely superficial or if the gear has stats related to them that impacts the competitive integrity? If it's the former, then I really don't see a problem at all. If people are stupid enough to pay loads of a skin, then good on ubisoft. If people aren't happy with the price then don't buy it. These completionists need to get over themselves. If stuff likes this helps the game have a longer healthy lifespan as a service (see CS:GO) then I'm all for it.

Gear has stats. You do have to grind to a certain rep before you can unlock the really good gear, but that can be done in a reasonable amount of time and from then on you can buy (or upgrade) gear to your hearts content with steel.
 
So glad I didn't buy For Honor, fuck Ubisoft and their MT ridden trash.

Selling people games and then say "We didn't intent for you to experience the whole game".

Having every cosmetic item = experience the full game ?

If you don't care about cosmetic, there is no point in the steel currency except in the first week you play each character. You can max a character in one week of regular play.

There is nothing wrong in the statement, and i am not a Ubi fanboy at all. The game is awesome but the issue is netcode and the p2p crap, not not being able to have every hemlet decoration in one week.

Like it was pointed out, Csgo and Overwatch are far worst in that regard (cosmetics).
 

danmaku

Member
But there's plenty of games out there where that's just not going to happen.

Ok? I'd say the search for 100% it's still a classic trope of single player games (even before achievements). Multiplayer games are more about getting to the top of the leaderboard or simply play until you're bored. That's why people used to multiplayer don't care too much about having "everything".
 
Man, some people are so dramatic. How many of you actually 100% the games you buy? The few of you who are gonna say "I do" you are literally maybe the 1% of gamers.

I think the developers response is fair. What is even the point of unlocking everything? Just get the shit you like and call it a day.

A new emote costs $7. Regardless of the overwhelming cost to pay to unlock everything, $7 is friggin' ridiculous for a single emote.
 
Man, some people are so dramatic. How many of you actually 100% the games you buy? The few of you who are gonna say "I do" you are literally maybe the 1% of gamers.

I think the developers response is fair. What is even the point of unlocking everything? Just get the shit you like and call it a day.

People just want to hate Ubisoft and look for reasons to hate them, even though I'm positive no one really cares about this.
 

Arttemis

Member
As long as the unlocks have no impact to the gameplay, I couldn't give a shit if it takes more than a year to unlock everything with ingame currency.

Can someone confirm if these unlocks are purely superficial or if the gear has stats related to them that impacts the competitive integrity? If it's the former, then I really don't see a problem at all. If people are stupid enough to pay loads of a skin, then good on ubisoft. If people aren't happy with the price then don't buy it. These completionists need to get over themselves. If stuff likes this helps the game have a longer healthy lifespan as a service (see CS:GO) then I'm all for it.

You can't buy gear with money, it's only earned as a random reward after a match... but you can only upgrade it to the highest tier with the in-game currency. Every item is character-specific, and each character has six different gear slots (3 for armor, 3 for weapon).

The aesthetic items are a separate thing altogether, and don't particularly bother me. I wish it were only play-to-unlock, not pay, because then it would be a trophy rewarding skill or dedication.

The gear system is the real problem, though. Highest tier gear breaks the game. It's overpowered and unbalanced. Gear is only rewarded randomly after a match. The more you play, the better random gear rewards you receive, but you'll never get more than middle-tier quality. It takes about 10,000 currency to max those stats out, and then the effects are staggering, more than doubling certain traits.
 

Recall

Member
HAHAHAHAHAHA, do they have no self awareness?

Have they never heard of completionist?

Incredible absolutely incredible, I can't believe this a defence.

It's called a carrot and a stick.

The whales devour everything while everyone else needs a little motivation to keep on playing. It's seriously nothing new.
 
I think people need to learn that video games no longer exist in isolation.

Video games now exist as continually evolving services, which continually improves (you'd hope) and provides new additional content over time.

I think for games like FH, where it's only cosmetic, MT exist to give gamers more options.

If the market didn't respond to MT's they wouldn't exist. MTs exist because the market wants it.

E.g. games like GTA/GT6 - You can spend a lot of money just on in-game money. I think I'll start to have a problem with it, if the MTs significantly impact the gameplay whilst playing online.

But for the most part, I don't see the big deal.
 
A new emote costs $7. Regardless of the overwhelming cost to pay to unlock everything, $7 is friggin' ridiculous for a single emote.

Only by doing dailies, you get 18 000 steel by mounth. A lot more if you play regularly. The steel is very expensive in real money, but not so hard to get. If it was easy as some people want it to be, everybody would have the top looking gear right now and it would have been meaningless.
 
Yeah, this is the aspect I don't get. Does anybody spend $9000 to unlock every costume for every character in Dead or Alive 5?
Man, some people are so dramatic. How many of you actually 100% the games you buy? The few of you who are gonna say "I do" you are literally maybe the 1% of gamers.

I think the developers response is fair. What is even the point of unlocking everything? Just get the shit you like and call it a day.
I'll try to explain it. First of all, I think people who are determined to unlock everything are diluting the argument a bit (though I think that's an understandable attitude for a $60 game). I'm not going to play every single character regularly and even if I did, I only want to own the cosmetic stuff I think is cool looking for each. That said, the main problem isn't that it costs so much to unlock everything, it's that it costs so much to unlock anything. The rate of steel payout is ridiculously low even with champion status (which is supposed to give you bonus payout) and even with the daily orders. If they doubled those rate, people wouldn't have nearly as much a problem with any of this. The devs justify this by saying they only intended people to play one or two characters (and grind those) but that's a pretty ridiculous assumption (especially when they're trying to sell 6 more over the season and have daily orders that are meant to get us to play more characters) and it's annoying that the game encourages you to do that.
 

N7.Angel

Member
Out of curiosity, why are people jumping so hard on For Honor for being a buy to play game with cosmetic unlocks that can be purchased with real world currency, and not the countless other games available that do the same thing? Overwatch, Call of Duty, Battlefield etc, all have similar systems in place. In many ways I consider For Honor BETTER for not having the cosmetics delivered in loot crates. At least you definitely get the cosmetic you want every single time in this game.

Is this simply a bandwagon scenario that has led to For Honor taking the brunt of this backlash over other games, or is there genuinely a good argument (which I've yet to see) for why this game's implementation of cosmetic unlocks is any worse than any other buy to play MP focused game?

Because Ubisoft.

Where's the overwatch outrage?

And Gears of war 4 that is the biggest ripoff I've ever seen.
 

killroy87

Member
It was dumb of them to even try responding, there's nothing they could say that would give them a win.

I'm not sure who's decision that was, but it was misguided.
 

Arttemis

Member
Because Ubisoft.



And Gears of war 4 that is the biggest ripoff I've ever seen.

Because it's already over $700 worth of DLC and the first wave of characters hasn't even released. At this rate, with the release of 33% more characters and associated aesthetics, it'll be about $1000 worth of aesthetic DLC in a few months.
 
This is what happens when games are sold as a service not as a full product. I honestly wish I had never bought that game and probably wouldn't have if I had had access to the beta.
 

Jeremy

Member
They're implementing things that work well on F2P mobile games and still charging full price, it's garbage. If you're going to put $700 worth of purchasable content after the fact, at least bring the entry fee down. Or just end this practice plsssssssssssssss
 
Only by doing dailies, you get 18 000 steel by mounth. A lot more if you play regularly. The steel is very expensive in real money, but not so hard to get. If it was easy as some people want it to be, everybody would have the top looking gear right now and it would have been meaningless.

Okay... so by playing the hell out of the game every month, you get the equivalent of $18 of in-game currency. Wow, exciting...

So that's enough to get you two new emotes. Yay, I guess? Fun month.

The point is that by any metric, real money or earned in game, the in-game currency prices for goods are completely out of whack. It's greedy and dumb. F2P microtransactions in a full-price retail game.
 

killroy87

Member
They're implementing things that work well on F2P mobile games and still charging full price, it's garbage. If you're going to put $700 worth of purchasable content after the fact, at least bring the entry fee down. Or just end this practice plsssssssssssssss

You're right, but that also assumes that this game would be completely anemic on content if you took away the microtransactions (like a F2P mobile title is). Comparing this to a mobile title is a terrible analogy, since this is still an actual game.

Me personally, I think the game is fantastic, and has enough content to justify the price even without the cosmetics. Other people can disagree, but I don't personally buy the idea that a game has to be either free/cheap with micro-transactions, or full price and no micro-transactions.
 
That's the general idea of a lot of these MT systems. It's never the intention for the free to play player to acquire everything.

With that said, it feels quite cheap how expensive they are in a premium game. Uncharted 4 for instance, would take a similar amount of time if you wanted to unlock everything, however within that time you would have unlocked hundreds of outfits, taunts, weapons, and other items.

In For Honor, you could spend the same amount of time, and only obtain some rather crappy special effects, a handful of taunts and executions, and one or two additional costumes that are mere variants of the default.

I don't see an issue packing a game with enough content that the regular player will never unlock everything. In Uncharted, Overwatch, or Garden Warfare 2 the player will never unlock everything, but they will unlock a lot of content for their efforts, either way.

In For Honor, the player will neither unlock everything, or unlock a lot of content. It's a lot of work for very little reward.

Making matters worse, if we compare costume prices in For Honor, it's close to £15 for a single costume, which isn't even a complete freshly modelled outfit, but a variant of an existing outfit. Fighting games (e.g. SFV, DoA), offer new costumes, with new modelling work for £3, games like Uncharted offer new costumes, with new modelling work for around, £3, games like Smite and Battleborn offer new costumes for between £2 and £8. All of these costumes entail more work than the purchasable featured in For Honor, and they are all a fraction of the price.

You're right, but that also assumes that this game would be completely anemic on content if you took away the microtransactions (like a F2P mobile title is). Comparing this to a mobile title is a terrible analogy, since this is still an actual game.

Me personally, I think the game is fantastic, and has enough content to justify the price even without the cosmetics. Other people can disagree, but I don't personally buy the idea that a game has to be either free/cheap with micro-transactions, or full price and no micro-transactions.

I feel as though you don't play many mobile titles. I wouldn't describe games like Hearthstone or Clash Royale as devoid of content, even without the MT systems. Many mobile titles, and many free to play titles offer a decent amount of content for the free to play player. Most of the good mobile titles are still 'actual games' without their MT.
 

killroy87

Member
That's the general idea of a lot of these MT systems. It's never the intention for the free to play player to acquire everything.

With that said, it feels quite cheap how expensive they are in a premium game. Uncharted 4 for instance, would take a similar amount of time if you wanted to unlock everything, however within that time you would have unlocked hundreds of outfits, taunts, weapons, and other items.

In For Honor, you could spend the same amount of time, and only obtain some rather crappy special effects, a handful of taunts and executions, and one or two additional costumes that are mere variants of the default.

I don't see an issue packing a game with enough content that the regular player will never unlock everything. In Uncharted, Overwatch, or Garden Warfare 2 the player will never unlock everything, but they will unlock a lot of content for their efforts, either way.

In For Honor, the player will neither unlock everything, or unlock a lot of content. It's a lot of work for very little reward.

That's a good point. In my mind the problem with FH isn't that there are outfits locked behind a paywall, it's that almost all of the cool shit is locked behind a paywall. If they pumped out a ton more taunts, outfits, emotes, etc, that unlocked at regular intervals to keep the game fresh, it wouldn't feel as nasty seeing that super expensive stuff there.

I feel as though you don't play many mobile titles. I wouldn't describe games like Hearthstone or Clash Royale as devoid of content, even without the MT systems. Many mobile titles, and many free to play titles offer a decent amount of content for the free to play player. Most of the good mobile titles are still 'actual games' without their MT.

I played a ton of Clash Royale, and yes, it's absolutely devoid of content compared to a game like this. CR has units, and battlegrounds (which differ in look only). The entire progression of the game is to grind out for better units by either paying, or waiting. That's the entire game. Note, I'm not saying the game is bad, the core gameplay is really fun, but that's not the point here. You might feel otherwise because you enjoy the game so much, but content-wise CR is absolutely pretty light.
 
Okay... so by playing the hell out of the game every month, you get the equivalent of $18 of in-game currency. Wow, exciting...

So that's enough to get you two new emotes. Yay, I guess? Fun month.

The point is that by any metric, real money or earned in game, the in-game currency prices for goods are completely out of whack. It's greedy and dumb. F2P microtransactions in a full-price retail game.

No, if you play the "hell out of the game" during one month you'll get 50 $ of in game currency. Finishing the dailies can be done in 15 to 20 minutes.

And if you choose to spend that much in the most expensive emotes, it's your choice.
 
Such a to do about all the literal shit in the store. Like anyone actually cares they can't get some dumpy emote they're never going to use for every character.
 
Overwatch's loot is only cosmetic stuff. Not actual better weapons

Like it was stated many times, you can get to max your character very quickly without paying 1 $. Like in one week. You need more than 1 week to play a character correctly anyway.

And in most gamemode, the stats of your stuff don't apply.
 

killroy87

Member
No, if you play the "hell out of the game" during one month you'll get 50 $ of in game currency. Finishing the dailies can be done in 15 to 20 minutes.

Let's not be hyperbolic. If even just one daily is asking you to play multiple Dominion matches, it ain't getting done in 15 minutes.
 
I wonder if there will be a "ultimate" or "GOTY" or something along those lines version of this game created after 6 months/1 year that has like 50,000+ steel included or maybe all characters unlocked.

Would probably pick it up then.
 
Let's not be hyperbolic. If even just one daily is asking you to play multiple Dominion matches, it ain't getting done in 15 minutes.

It's usually 3 matches of some gametype, or 8 kills. Maybe if it's Dominion it would take you 25 minutes, but if it's Duel you can do that in 10 minutes.
 
Let's not be hyperbolic. If even just one daily is asking you to play multiple Dominion matches, it ain't getting done in 15 minutes.

Agreed. I don't think I've ever completed my challenges in under an hour.

Some of them can include things like 'get an 8 kill streak in Skirmish'. Which is easier said than done because you have to actually last hit the enemies, and sometimes it just doesn't trigger.

Other challenges ask things like complete 8 matches of brawl, again, 8 matches... each match consumes almost 10 minutes. For one challenge.

There are others that are utterly unenjoyable too. Kill 400 minions in Dominion against AI? Why would I want to do that?

I played a ton of Clash Royale, and yes, it's absolutely devoid of content compared to a game like this. CR has units, and battlegrounds (which differ in look only). The entire progression of the game is to grind out for better units by either paying, or waiting. That's the entire game. Note, I'm not saying the game is bad, the core gameplay is really fun, but that's not the point here. You might feel otherwise because you enjoy the game so much, but content-wise CR is absolutely pretty light.

I actually don't know enough about Clash Royale to say that much about it, but it didn't seem that I would need to pay when I played. I assumed it was similar to other TGCs.

On others like Hearthstone and Krosmaga I was able to build competitive decks and have a lot of fun without spending any real money, plus the content itself that's unlockable by the player is pretty frequent. New cards every day, in For Honor I get nothing interesting, every day. Arbitrary weapon drops of which I have duplicates of, minor skin options of my character, and a paltry amount of steel so I can look towards buying something in a months time.

Sure, For Honor as a game, offers more, I mean, it has to, it's £50. But I do feel that the progression system does a worse job than many free to plays. Content wise it's pretty comparable to premiu free to plays like Smite and Warfarme. I can unlock whole new characters in Smite faster than I can unlock a costume in For Honor. Even their outfits, cost far less of my time or money than Honors counterparts and it could even be argued that the game has more content.

The same is true of Paladins. The game has more maps, more characters, it's entirely free to play and yet still, it's easier for the player to unlock premium outfits, emotes, taunts and whatnot than it is in For Honor.

I feel as though Ubisoft feel 'as long as users can theoretically unlock it' it's fine, but the player progression in FH is exhaustive. Cosmetics and unlockables do matter and as someone that only plays a few characters, it's hard to be incentive to play by the prospect of unlocking a new outfit, that doesn't look all that different to my regular outfit, within a months time.
 
Agreed. I don't think I've ever completed my challenges in under an hour.

Some of them can include things like 'get an 8 kill streak in Skirmish'. Which is easier said than done because you have to actually last hit the enemies, and sometimes it just doesn't trigger.

Other challenges ask things like complete 8 matches of brawl, again, 8 matches... each match consumes almost 10 minutes. For one challenge.

There are others that are utterly unenjoyable too. Kill 400 minions in Dominion against AI? Why would I want to do that?

I never had this last one as a daily.
 
Anyway, the other solution would have been to shut down completly the MT and just let the system as it this.

But if the price to have constant free expansion for the game is to know that some kids are spending $$$ for cosmetics, it's fine in my book. It work well in Siege.
 

TyrantII

Member
Validating my decision this generation to give them zero of my money until they turn their anti-consumer ship around.

Too many good games and a backlog a mile long to deal with that bullshit.
 

Zyrox

Member
Agreed. I don't think I've ever completed my challenges in under an hour.

Some of them can include things like 'get an 8 kill streak in Skirmish'. Which is easier said than done because you have to actually last hit the enemies, and sometimes it just doesn't trigger.

Other challenges ask things like complete 8 matches of brawl, again, 8 matches... each match consumes almost 10 minutes. For one challenge.

There are others that are utterly unenjoyable too. Kill 400 minions in Dominion against AI? Why would I want to do that?

The ones you are talking about are the additonal orders that you can pick and choose from. The actual dailies are rather short affairs like "complete 2 duels" or sth along those lines. The additional orders are more grindy and pay less than the dailies.
 
Anyway, the other solution would have been to shut down completly the MT and just let the system as it this.

But if the price to have constant free expansion for the game is to know that some kids are spending $$$ for cosmetics, it's fine in my book. It work well in Siege.

Or they could just lower the steel cost of everything. Or double the rate at which you earn steel.
 

Arttemis

Member
The ones you are talking about are the additonal orders that you can pick and choose from. The actual dailies are rather short affairs like "complete 2 duels" or sth along those lines. The additional orders are more grindy and pay less than the dailies.

The main orders give 300 steel. The additional orders still give 100 steel, and there are enough there to double your daily steel income.

Or they could just lower the steel cost of everything. Or double the rate at which you earn steel.
This needs to happen.
 
Hmm... I'm going to note up front that I haven't played For Honor and am not all that familiar with how the microtransactions work. Based on experience with other games, I feel like I've got a pretty decent idea, but I'll apologize in advance if I'm way off base because I'm working from faulty assumptions.

With that preface out of the way, I honestly don't feel like this is all that bad of a response. Maybe I'm just too much of a sucker or something, but I feel like the Games as a Service model is set and we're stuck with it. It's not going away no matter how much we complain about it. Whether the game is f2p or not, there's going to be microtransaction hooks in a lot of products these days -- particularly multiplayer-focused titles.

Now, I'm not trying to carve out some libertarian stance here where I proclaim that the free market should run wild. So this is where I go back to my preface and note that maybe I'm just not understanding something. Basically, I tend to think that microtransactions can be distasteful under the following circumstances:

1.) Players that pay more are rewarded with stat/weapon boosts that make the game unfair. This is the Pay to Win model.

2.) They lean heavily on psychological tricks to exploit whales into spending a lot of money quickly.

But that aside, the general idea that they don't expect players to unlock everything really doesn't strike me as unreasonable. The games as a service kind of necessitates an almost seemingly infinite supply of rewards and other new content. Whether it's unfortunate or not is up to you to decide. But that's the way the industry has been going and will continue to go.
 
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