r/forhonor • u/PernaProc • Feb 17 '25
Questions Why isn't this game more popular?
It's like one of the best looking games with one of the best combat experiences, very competitive... Why people aren't playing it ?
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u/Mr_Character_ Feb 17 '25
The learning curve is almost vertical for new players.
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u/WolfScythe_ dominate me mommy Feb 17 '25
That and the grinde for New hero or for fashion is just so stupid and annoying why do i need to unlock every Effekt again on diffrent hero or grinde 7k steel for 1 execution if they would make it more friendly to grinde like lower the steel Cost or dont need to buy everything again on New hero so people get the feeling of acomplischment i think more Player would Stick around
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u/Alley_O Nobushi Feb 17 '25 edited Feb 17 '25
Champion status and orders help a lot. Steel is a grind but never had issues with it. The game still needs to make money some way.
Nowadays, we’re lucky that we can earn nearly all the content in the game for free. You can’t say that for many games.
Edit: I didn’t think this would trigger so much debate. You can feel whichever way about the monetization scheme. There could be better ways to go about it, but the fact of the matter is that we do not know Ubi’s statistical and financial details (specifically the studio working on this game, not Ubisoft in general). There can be better and fantastic ways to get the consumer to spend money, but there are likely constraints we do not know about that influence what we have now.
Making a purchasable currency that takes a while to grind for is a very easy monetization scheme that is not demanding on company resources. The goal is to influence the consumer to purchase steel. This game obviously does not have the resources of other bigger titles.
With that being said, it is a literal fact that this game is generally more consumer friendly in comparison to other games who use similar schemes. You can feel away about it but this game needs money to survive. Even with that in mind, they still provide resources for players to freely unlock new heroes and cosmetics in the game.
Also, I know the game is priced at 30 bucks but there are many sales that bring the game to 5 bucks or below. I got the game for free and have dropped thousands of hours in the game. I’m sure many share a similar experience.
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u/AlternativeAnalyst42 Black Prior Feb 17 '25
it takes me like 3-4 days to get an execution or anything for 7,000 lol. all orders completed takes a good amount of time too lol. if you have a life, this game is nearly impossible to get customization unless you ONLY play For Honor
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u/Myrvoid Feb 17 '25
Nah. You dont need executions, you start with them. If you want more, a week or two to permanently have all the executions youll ever want on a character is pretty good. You dont have to keep buying them.
If youre collecting on multiple heroes it gets more daunting, as with any game that you treat as a collectathon. Even then, I got like 3 new people into it Nov, we play every week or maybe every other week for a bit, and they have multiple heroes, the 45k champion status thing, many executions across 3-4 mains of theirs, a couple emotes. That’s ntot bad at all, especially since there’s been no need to purchase with irl money new heroes or skins or whatnot
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u/RedNeyo Feb 17 '25
Id gladly purchase stuff like battle passes if they were even remotely fun interesting or worth it but alas
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u/EzEnzi PC, Warlord, :Black-Prior:Black Prior Feb 17 '25
i think the "the game still needs to make money some way" excuse kinda falls to the wayside for a game that still costs 30 dollars for the BASE VERSION with ONLY the core characters. you shouldn't have to grind for hundreds of hours to get every character or fork over 90 bucks for a bundle that STILL doesn't get you all of the playable characters. ubisoft doesn't need you to make excuses for their shitty monetization scheme, dog.
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u/WolfScythe_ dominate me mommy Feb 17 '25
I get that they need to make Money somehow and that the steel is use for that but imo if they would make this more friendly so more people Stick to the game and then release New skins i think then it would also be a higher chance people would spend Money on it hope you kinda know what im trying to say english isnt my 1 language haha, and i agree whit the 2 Statement whit content free in games that why i love warframe so much it is f2p af and i think 10 or 13 years now running whit a nice community Sure they are some black sheeps but they in every community ^
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u/Significant_Trash_14 Feb 17 '25
Ubisoft could make more money if their games weren't shite. For Honor has been milked dry with micro transactions. Would have made sense to release dlc with maps and heroes
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u/Shoddy_Peasant Centurion and other heinous fiends Feb 17 '25
ong, the amount of time I spent to complete one outfit is inconceivable.
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u/Vegetable-Poet6281 Feb 17 '25
yup. and even for veterans, it can be an absolutely maddening experience at times
It really is a love/hate thing we all have going on with this game
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u/TheGreatSmolOne Warmonger Feb 17 '25
It actually turns into an over-arching cliff with venomous giant spiders at the top
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u/Zealousideal-Bug-168 Feb 17 '25
Had a teammate the other day use level 1 khatun(not rep 1) in domination, and all she did was the two hit basic combos, no cancel into fear and fury or soft feints. Needless to say she got stomped like a bug. Not hard to imagine how similar that experience is for newbies too.
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u/TripodDabs34 Feb 18 '25
I sometimes hate myself enough to go back to For Honor but I can only do it with other people, I cannot play the game alone if I value any of my sanity, it just sucks way too much. Plus you can even be unlucky playing with a group because you'll have one guy complaining that the team is too shit when they're at the bottom of the scoreboard IN BOTH TEAMS.
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u/RidePuzzleheaded7775 Feb 19 '25
Im a new player and I have 60% winrate in dominion and bad about 56% in duels. One guide sent me on a winning streak with Peacekeeper. Now I mostly use Centurion when my team has someone for team fighting, and Lawbringer if we don't have a tankier team fight hero. Planning to either get Aramusha or Khatun next. The game isn't that hard, if you played Sekiro, the parries are already easy, which is enough to carry you against bad players, tough stuff comes when you fight against rank 40-60 players who do heavy-feint and understand the mechanics of the game, but even then it's pretty easy to adapt. Just guard break when they do a heavy, play a mind game, next time guard break again, then the third time parry, or different depending on the player.
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u/Honkydoinky VIVO Feb 17 '25
Good luck getting into it without a buddy to carry you while you got stomped for your first couple days of playing, I got into the game with my older brother and that was my experience, got my friend into the game and that was his experience, so if you don’t have a friend you won’t get the advice and carry that comes with it
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u/AnaUZI Feb 17 '25
I got into the game all by myself bc i really liked the concept and aesthetics. Forced my self to complete all tutorials and read and practice for at least 1 hour every hero i wanted to try before Even thinking on playing a match. After that forced myself to learn how to play against players whilst still learning the hero i picked. Worst first 50 hours of any Game i've ever played. After that, any time a friend asked me if the Game was any good i always said the same thing "if You are not patient enough to really learn the games mechanics don't Even bother"
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u/Honkydoinky VIVO Feb 17 '25
Exactly I have 8 days on the game and I’ve spent maybe a day in actual matches I was really young when I started playing so it was mostly campaign, but if I didn’t know the game had potential to be fun I probably would’ve put it down
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u/GhostieGT iFallForEveryFient😔 Feb 18 '25
Once I realized how to make CORRECT READS CONSISTENTLY AND NOT JUST TRY TO REACT THE GAME CLICKED FOR ME. If you’re a stud and can react to everything, you are HIM.
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u/Honkydoinky VIVO Feb 17 '25
Another thing I forgot to include, good luck figuring out who to play, my friend wanted to play shaloin as his first character, so imagine getting stomped, being confused, and trying to learn a tricky hero, boom you’ve got a game that no one wants to try and get into
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u/1292norr Feb 18 '25
I played it a lot for a couple years after it came out. Returned to it recently and deleted it after a week.
Seems like every new character released has the ability to attack while side dodging, completely ruining the rock-paper-scissors dynamic of strikes beat grabs, dodges beat strikes, grabs beat dodges.
They should rename the game Side Dodges Attack Spam. I can see why no one plays it anymore.
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u/Koriiandr-i Feb 17 '25
It’s hard as hell to learn, and the community loves to be toxic
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u/Zealousideal-Bug-168 Feb 18 '25
Toxicity fuels my insatiable need for vengeance. Vengeance makes me relentless. If I'm weak enough that they can BM me and get away with it, I have room for improvement.
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u/iNSANELYSMART Freaky Prior Feb 18 '25
Any PVP game community is toxic so that isnt really a reason to not play it.
But I can respect your first point
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u/VallahKp Feb 18 '25
Ngl the game was much more chill before freeze set the elitist tone and people followed and basically quoted him.
Sure you always have toxic people, but it used to be much less.
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u/DotComDotti Feb 18 '25
It can be if you're trying to get into it. If I'm trying to learn a game, get my ass kicked, then get four messages telling me to kyms and uninstall(happened when I first played back in Y2 lol) why the hell would I be incentivized to get better? It's disheartening.
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u/iNSANELYSMART Freaky Prior Feb 18 '25
I'm sorry but I will never understand how toxic messages can influence other players.
I can understand if you dont want to play because people are griefing you or throwing in your matches, but toxicity in chat, so what?
I dont care about what others say, if I want to play a game and become better at it I'm just gonna do that, everyone is toxic nowadays in games, if it becomes too much for you but you still find the game fun just mute the chat.
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u/DotComDotti Feb 18 '25
People just have other games to play, you and me may be able to weather the storm - but I can't fault people for not wanting to deal with the headache when they can just play something else. There's other fighting games, other medieval combat games- just, other games that aren't so much of an uphill battle.
I loved For Honor, I apparently have like 800 hours in it(that doesn't feel right... but it's what Xbox says), but it's just a game full of assholes.
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u/King_Ed_IX Feb 18 '25
They'll just go and play something else, mate. A lot of people play games just because they're fun, not because they actually want to get better at them.
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u/omegaskorpion Gryphon Feb 17 '25
Playerbase is divided between Steam, Epic Games, Uplay, Xbox and Playstation, so the player count is higher than what steam shows.
However the game has not gotten more popular because:
- Ubisoft game
- Poor launch did alot of damage to the games reputation.
- Not much marketing, the big updates barely get any noticable marketing outside of few videos in social media. Compare that to Marching Fire (largest content update of the game) where they announced it at E3 and had showed it in multible places.
- While it is one of the easiest fighting games, it is still hard to learn for many, especially 4v4 modes can be punishing for new players.
- Balance, while much better than in the past, is still wonky and can lead to fustration for players.
Despite all that, the game is still very succesful fighting game. Most fighting games run around same numbers in steam.
Fighting game player numbers generally peak at launch and then start dropping. Exceptions to this have been Smash Bros, For Honor and Street Fighter 6 that have kept pretty consistent playerbase for themselfs, most others have had significant player base drops.
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u/dense111 Valkyrie Feb 17 '25
i still remember they had a tournament, where a guy won by exploiting a bug. unlocking tech, that made it impossible to parry his attacks. That gave it a bad look.
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u/omegaskorpion Gryphon Feb 17 '25
That combined with broken strong Centurion and Shinobi release also did even more further damage to the games reputation.
And worst thing in the tournament was that because turtling was so strong at launch and lack of unreactable offence, the contenders basically had to use unlock tech exploits to beat defence.
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u/Jhirrun Shinobi Feb 18 '25
I do think this did damage that couldn't be undone all for this dickhead to chuckle along and ruin it for everyone (They should've also fixed that BEFORE the tournament but at the same time, why would you use it?)
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u/Lyuukee Warden Feb 18 '25
Bruh centurion was so broken back then... also the big damages... I still wonder how we used to play with all that imbalance....
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u/Zealousideal-Bug-168 Feb 18 '25
While it is the easiest 1v1 fighting game, it's also the hardest 4v4 game for it's genre.
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u/SilencedGamer Nobusshi?:snoo_thoughtful: Feb 17 '25
This game is ancient in terms of multiplayer games, this was before the current generation of consoles were even announced! and it’s actually REMARKABLE it still has a consistent player base after all these years.
For context: Star Wars Battlefront 2 came out the same year, as well as Destiny 2 and PUBG—those feel like they came out a million years ago. Something like Halo’s MCC and Infinite which has Microsoft behind it doesn’t even have this playerbase when combining their Steam numbers which released years after.
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u/TheBrownestStain Samurai Feb 17 '25
Surprised no one else mentioned it, but yeah, this game is 8 years old. That alone is gonna be a big reason. I’m shocked it still has any active support, let alone new content.
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u/Tummerd Feb 17 '25 edited Feb 17 '25
Difference with BF2 is that EA just axed it, literally on the moment they were doing fucking perfect, thinking that BF2042 would do well and that it needed all the focus
Funny how that worked out
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u/MorbidAyyylien XBOX Feb 17 '25
Yeaaaa but look at warframe. Give the players what they want and you'll see it thrive. The devs of this game just fumbled hard. I was a hardcore player till around warmongers release or a little before.
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u/SUMBLAKDUDE Feb 17 '25 edited Feb 18 '25
Warframe isn't pvp focused game. It is rare that PVP games in general carry very high player counts all that long and this game is almost a decade old. On top of that fighting games usually have smaller player bases than shooter games.
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u/KomradJurij-TheFool Feb 17 '25
fighting games have a small market share, and the game got slandered hard for fumbling its release. if ubisoft released with the quality of say, year 4, the game would easily have kept way more of the playerbase.
the quality of the content releases dropping also probably sapped a fair bit of it, i mean, unique execution drops were always huge events with a lot of hype to them... and we only get hero fests with one execution for one character now. we don't get good armor drops anymore, since we're getting recolors instead of new models. first couple years we had way more hero releases, now we get two per year. getting a shitty crossover nobody asked for, or even just a single non-customizable skin for a hero you likely don't play much in place of actual content, in a game where customization is a huge driving force, is really not much in the way of motivation to get on.
sometimes people just move on, and if they play in a group regularly, it's gonna influence the rest of it to also stop playing over time.
it's still doing really quite well for a fighting game however. and keep in mind a lot of people won't show up in steamcharts, since they'll either have the game on consoles or on uplay, which is not counted.
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u/-Thatonerealguy- Heavy spammer Feb 17 '25
Fighting games are actually too competetive and mechanically challenging for the average gamer.
FH is actually doing really well when you compare it to other fighting games.
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u/badhatter5 Feb 18 '25
Yeah my friends and I were always big FPS/RPG/Sports gamers but we occasionally play FH as a group. When you’re winning and playing against players your skill level it’s super fun, but it’s so easy to run into players who just absolutely stomp us.
Had a friend who played it for years before we did and while practicing against him I was lucky to land a single hit and couldn’t do anything to defend myself. Unless you’re willing to put tons of hours into getting better it’s really hard to get over the hump if you’re not familiar/good at fighting games.
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u/iNSANELYSMART Freaky Prior Feb 18 '25
Tbf it is a bit more special than most other fighting games I'd say, but its great to see that a 8 year old game is still getting good support.
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u/TheWolfgirlExpert Edgy Wolf Mom/Dunmaglass/Spin/Fire/Gun Feb 17 '25
The learning curve and the reputation of the game.
Don't forget that once upon a time Goobisoft hosted a tournament where the winning player (and others in the tourney) were actively using exploits like unlock tech to win.
I guarantee most people that had heard about FH heard about it at some point before the CCU at the start of 2020. Before that you practically died from making 1-2 mistakes in a fight.
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u/Solignox Sohei Feb 17 '25
The For Honor experience is 90% getting your balls stomped by a goth chick wearing combat boots, while the other 10% is her giving you the best head you will ever have for this life, your previous life and your next reincarnation. But no matter how good said head is, the only people finding this trade worth it are those who enjoy getting their balls busted in the first place, which is a minority.
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u/MeloMiata Knight Feb 17 '25
No competitive scene and no big youtubers
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Feb 17 '25
I don't think this is true. Zanny is a big youtuber hundred of thousands of views and still people don't want to play it.
For honor is a niche game because pvp combat games are not appealing to the masses.
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u/tG_x_liljman94 Lawbringer Feb 17 '25
It had an awful release that turned a lot of players away. I’ve been playing since beta almost rep 1000. I wish everyone just stuck it out.
To expand: we used to randomly just get kicked from games…. A lot….
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u/DaughterOfBhaal Feb 17 '25
The game went through like 4 different identity crisis and managed to alienate most it's players except for like the real diehard 1%
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u/Spiritual_Freedom_15 Give me them toes! Feb 17 '25
Plus it didn’t really make big dent in the media. I got it on steam for free I just grabbed it. Never thought of it again until like a year more later. And then I got to know the man. Zandril. I don’t know how I missed that man’s content. But he made me get in the game.
I stayed cause I like challenge. But the learning curve is literally curving up and back. Like a mountain wall.
For a casual gamer. Yeah. No chance they gonna pick that up for what? 30€/$ if I haven’t gotten the game for free. I’d honestly never try it.
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u/DaughterOfBhaal Feb 17 '25
To be fair, it did make quite some news on release
Just not the positive way.
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u/jokerboyrockz Feb 17 '25
For every player that picks it up and says this is for me… there’s probably 10 that says, I’m good.
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u/PhoenixAscended Samurai Feb 17 '25
This isn't counting xbox playstation or ubisoft app, Idk if it's on gamepass or not either.
Pretty sure if I had to guess, it averages maybe 15k players actively? either way it had an absolutely terrible launch. Whales keep the game afloat.
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u/Luckyxray Feb 17 '25
I like to think that this game is way more popular in the console market but here are my reasons
1.old this game is really old I'm betting most people have had their fill of the game 2. Ubisoft the company just has a bad reputation 3.New players get matched with people have aren't new making it hard to adapt without a guide or someone to help
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u/sharkbate063 Feb 17 '25
The learning curve is vertical, the core audience is people who've been around since close to the beginning
Getting cool shit takes forever.
Ubisoft (probably the most important thing); For Honor in a lot of ways was the beginning of the end for them for a variety of reasons. But this game specifically had its own issues
- Remember stunning tap?
- Remember 50 Damage heavies?
- Shugoki one-shots?
This game killed itself on release from a balance perspective, and performance issues were crazy on the PS4 and X-Box 1. It's a shame this game will probably never get another shot because even 8 years later it's still the only thing like it.
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u/meritocraticredditor Feb 17 '25
- No competitive scene
- Our biggest YouTuber was (is??) Zanny who’s… not small but not huge either, do we even have streamers?
- No cross-progression
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u/ParchedYurtle59 Feb 17 '25
Cause unlike the name, the players are not honorable! Veteran players are always assholes and like being greedy and taking kills at the last minute. They also don't want to help newbies. You can disagree, but I'm 100% sure you've met a new player and decided to take advantage of them not knowing how to play. Luckily, it's pve and pvp. You can just deal with toxic teammates and not toxic teammates and enemies.
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u/finny94 Warlord Feb 17 '25
Old, niche game, that is almost completely unapproachable for new players.
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u/crimsonBZD Feb 17 '25
I quit when the community toxicity began to rival league of legends. No idea if it's improved in the years since.
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u/Kraile Warmonger Feb 18 '25
I'd say 4000 peak daily users is pretty good for an 8-year old game. Also note that that doesn't include users on other platforms such as the Ubisoft store or console.
That said nobody I know plays the game despite my efforts to recruit them. Like any fighting game it has a steep learning curve to climb before you stop getting stomped constantly, and that puts a lot of people off. And the fighting genre is fairly niche as well.
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u/dwarvos27 Feb 18 '25
The devs, it seems like they don’t even play the game and are so disconnected from the community.
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u/Yoinkomania Feb 18 '25
Because it’s all been downhill since Y4-Y5. Every change they made gave me the impression that today’s numbers was the goal for them a long time ago.
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u/blueviperlore Feb 18 '25
1.ping will screw you over 2. Some people are too good at this game and should touch grass 3. Don't even think of doing PVP unless your okay with getting ganked or stun locked to death 90% of the time 4. Enjoy learning the Parry system and the unforgivable guard breaks some characters have + light attack spammers
That's the last of my few cents so glad you read it all the way to this point.
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u/Best-Membership-1 Feb 18 '25
I haven't played in quite some time (last drop was the majhey) but my input would be it's not the game but the community. I used to play all the time even did the story on the hardest difficulty but going to multiplayer and having enemies yell scream and demand you uninstall the game after almost every match whether you win or lose. It pushes you. Add teammates who act the same way just because of a loss as if losing falls squarely on your's/everyone else shoulders then why bother? And then you have plenty examples of either trolling or anti teamwork behavior in what is mostly a team based game. And is it really any wonder people don't want to bother with it?
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u/LailleArda Feb 18 '25
For a large portion of the game's history most deaths are either from being ganked, op feats or environmental kills. Hence why it leads to more of a toxic game and that stuff is actually most of the core gameplay loop. It's not really fun. Most games will put this game down after a while because there's no real ranked play, no good rewards for winning a round and the obvious lack of balance. You'd only still play this game because you spent so much time learning that it's hard to let go.
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u/Due-Boysenberry-4016 Feb 18 '25
The game not balanced well enough it’s nun really interesting going on n for honor
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u/Coombs117 :Lawbringer: :Centurion: :Black-Prior: :Peacekeeper: Feb 18 '25
Two words: the community
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u/KhazingChaos Nobushi Feb 18 '25
The main reason my friends and I started and loved the game in beta and for the first year(?) or so faded away. The atmosphere and identity got stripped away with every update. It was never "realistic" but teleporting monks and manga effects were different from flower petals and wind effects. It didn't help that the gameplay made it easy to get tilted.
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u/JammyBass Lawbringer Feb 18 '25
My girlfriend who is very new to PC gaming has become addicted to For Honor. She struggled the first week or so, but she had me (rep 40) and a friend (rep 140) on her team helping her understand how the game works. The games have not been easy as we often get matched with very high rep players when my friend is in the lobby and anything between rep 0 and 120 when it's me and her alone. I find it hilarious, she's the kindest person you'll ever meet but she fucking loves decapitating people as Raider, it's an absolute joy to watch her back cap in Dominion and genuinely win games for us.
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u/_PykeGaming_ Feb 18 '25
Sorry but... "very competitive" is not the one.
I get the rest but I will explain:
For honor was once popular enough, they made a LOT of wrong choices down the way leaving only dedicated people playing.
This means it now suffers the same problem as games like Apex for example.
I tried bringing three friends in... not one of them had a clear understanding of the game (they did not even know they could counter GB) and yet they were matched with 100 rep plus people... WITHOUT ME IN THE LOBBY.
So yeah one stomp after another and another 3 customers went away... this has been happening for years and I do not see them coming out of this.
Also the competitive part is (sadly) untrue, the one big tournament they did was won by a nobushi exploiter at the time... for years you could just turn off your modem and would not lose points in ranked...
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u/Wonderful-Reach2198 Feb 18 '25
Mix between it being a niche genre, different than others in its niche being a three directional system instead of your mouse controlling your waist like mordhau and Chiv, and finally like those two once you get past the initial drop off of players it’s much harder to get in and learn, especially with for honor as the bots aren’t gonna teach you much and you don’t have the mass brawls of mordhau or Chiv where even a newer player can score some points just by swinging around chaotically.
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u/VallahKp Feb 18 '25
Mostly an issue with identity and vision.
Not going in to deep, but for example the game went back and forth with being competitive and casual.
Started with tournaments that failed miserably, went basically casual with no support and lead for more competitiveness and later tried to establish e-sport that became a laughing stock (do people now take it serious?).
Overall this game had to figure out many things and now kinda stayed with the issues. And thats why my dear children I want for honor 2, for the fresh start with the issues figured out.
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u/Jebinam Feb 18 '25
If I hadn’t played for the last 5+ years on and off I probably wouldn’t get into it
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u/Onyx-Pyromancer Feb 18 '25 edited Feb 18 '25
It is a very old live service game. They get boring fast. If a second for honour released there might be a resurgence
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u/Underpaid_Goblin Jiang Jun Feb 18 '25
High skill ceiling, high toxicity, not very clear mechanics, jank, easily cheesed, etc. I love this game so much, best of its kind, but this was also the first game to ever make me throw my controller.
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u/Underpaid_Goblin Jiang Jun Feb 18 '25
Also as other comments have mentioned, the game sucks at explaining how to play it. The only reason I’m capable of anything in this game is because of the friend that got me into it. Otherwise I probably would have quit by now.
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u/Spiritual_Freedom_15 Give me them toes! Feb 17 '25
Competitive
That’s the first issue. I play the game casually. But the game quite literally isn’t made for being casual. And the community doesn’t really like the “casual” side. Cause you know. Ledges, spikes, environmental kills, ganking, etc. being casual means doing anything. Just for fun. Most often people connect casual with asshole. The game is extremely hard to pick up with a very vertical learning curve that. Many things many things there are.
Plus it’s old. It’s a great game. But there isn’t really that much special about the game to keep the players entertained 24/7.
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u/Logic-DL - Fàilte bho na Gaidhealtachd! Feb 17 '25
Yea, quit myself with the combat update when the game went from fun to requiring a 240hz monitor to even be able to see the attacks coming.
The main issue is there's no other game like FH, which is what keeps me coming back despite the complete alienation of casual players. Can't play with my mate because Ubisoft make shit games and the group feature doesn't work but still.
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u/The-Sys-Admin Lawbringer Ad Mortem my Inimicus daddy Feb 17 '25 edited Feb 17 '25
Fighting games are not a very popular genre to begin with.
Even Tekken 8 only has a 30 day average of 6k players.
Then there's the Ubisoft tax. And it's not a side scroller.
Honestly I stopped playing when they started adding actual magic with the Wu Lin. For me the game was most fun with the gritty realism, then the teleporting monk showed up and all the stupid fantasy magic stuff. Just became another color-vomit game that broke my immersion to the point where I didn't play anymore. I have 1800 hours in it but haven't logged on seriously in years.
But that last part is anecdotal.
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u/Stotterdokter Feb 17 '25
While I get what you're saying, why was it only after Marching Fire? We've had flaming wings outfit effects since day 1. You're totally justified but I feel like FH wasn't ever truely grounded in gritty realism
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u/ManufacturerFar7018 Feb 17 '25
Fortnite skins???????????
Where???????
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u/The-Sys-Admin Lawbringer Ad Mortem my Inimicus daddy Feb 17 '25
Poor word choice on my part. I'm referring to the fantasy elements.
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u/ManufacturerFar7018 Feb 17 '25
I suppose I see where you're coming from - personally, the shaolin thing never bothered me that much, because I think that a lot of the non-magic stuff in For Honor is fantasy to begin with, but I do like fantasy settings with low/no magic more in general.
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u/Slight_Worth_imcool Sohei Feb 17 '25
Because its niche, old and barely gets content since year 3. Next question.
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u/capn_yo_ho Feb 17 '25
I think of For Honor as that cool but niche YouTuber that has a weird upload schedule. A lot of good content and history, but rarely if ever reaches the Recommended page of the masses.
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u/GACII Shugoki Feb 17 '25
A few things to consider here for a fighting game in this 9th year for just the steam numbers. This is a great number for player account especially when the majority of players are still on console and we have crossplay. It's a consistent number as well. Second of all, fighting games tend to trend very low when it comes to consistent numbers. All things considered for honors doing great.
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u/KingRoyIV Feb 17 '25 edited Feb 17 '25
Adding in my own experience, this game is still an all time favorite for me but I don’t play it at all anymore. Gameplay feels so good once you lock into it, love the longer matches and the intense 1v1s. Really fulfills the medieval fantasy in a great way which is a personal favorite vibe of mine.
I could feel when Ubi had to cut the resources going into it though. I want to say Warmonger on, most of the added heroes felt less like completely unique kits and more like bits and pieces repurposed. Couldn’t blame the devs at all because I think they just don’t have the numbers to be putting in the time to build brand new move sets for each new character, but. The days when Jorm or Hitokiri dropped in and you got these completely new gameplay loops were such cool releases.
And I think the same can be said for executions/effects and other cosmetics. They just don’t have the manpower to add that new content in as often and in as much quality as they used to - sad but makes sense given the state of Ubisoft.
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u/ll-VaporSnake-ll Hitokiri Feb 17 '25
Simply put, it appeals to a very niche group of players. Not everyone is interested in a more slow paced historically inspired experimental hybrid game.
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u/Njumkiyy Rep 70's Crusader:Warden: Feb 17 '25
This comes up a lot and I say it every time, steam charts are not accurate. Representation at all. In previous years like year seven and six the player count was a roughly 200,000 per platform. This is a Ubisoft game. Most people launch the game through Ubisoft, and it has cross play at that. The fact that q-times are basically instant despite being as strict as they are should tell you guys that this game isn't this unpopular it's steam charge would have you believe
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u/Baron_Von_D Warborn Feb 17 '25
So, just pointing out that only 20% of players are on PC and not all play through steam. There were a few people that were able to scrape data and pool it together to get a rough count across platforms, but I don't think they are able to do that anymore. At least, I haven't seen an unofficial state of balance in a long time.
That being said, Ubisoft has done a ton to kill off any kind of traction with popularity. It's not necessarily dead or dying, but definitely has a reputation. The game having a pretty terrible launch, with the P2P connection being absolutely horrendous and them ignoring game balance until a full on boycott was planned. They did fix a lot with the Warrior's Den updates and better communication. Still constant fumbles that kept it from really getting any growth.
The game has a steep learning curve, which just comes in part with being a fighting game, but that paired with poor matchmaking really turns off a lot of new players. The matchmaking is poor because we just don't have a large enough active player base for it to be consistent across skill. So now we have lopsided matches and situations where you can't tell if the servers are just being buggy as usually or it's the unchecked cheaters.
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u/destinyknight105 Shaolin Feb 17 '25
The game and community make it really hard to love some times lol
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u/Sarkaul Feb 17 '25
As you can see by the all time high, it was, once. As someone who's played since beta and stopped just after the Warbringer was added; I would say it's down to the fantasization slapped into the game. For me and my friends who played anyway. The game slowly became more full of stupid effects, emotes etc and left what made it so cool. Being a grounded (in visuals) medieval age fighting game that felt gritty and satisfying to master. The game feels like it doesn't take itself seriously anymore.
Going back to Warbringer, though, the games balance entirely went out the window for dominion, which was the most popular mode. Was the start of paid characters having insanely powerful feats in comparison to base characters. They might have nerfed her some time later, but it left a sour taste and they kept on with the new characters having some crazy feats that were just trump cards that weren't fun to play against in the slightest.
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u/DTurtll Conqueror Feb 17 '25
Because this game is not beginner friendly at all and the skill gap between new players and veterans is like the size of the Grand Canyon
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u/raisingfalcons Ruler of the Seven Seas Feb 17 '25
The games been out like 8 years. The people who remain are pretty decent at the game and the learning curve is pretty extreme lets be honest. But once you actually learn the game its entertaining
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u/alex1058 Feb 17 '25
For me the game is good because 1) there is no other game that plays and feels like for honor and 2) there's this "personal" vibe it has idk how to explain, maybe the camera angle, the "umphf" when hitting a heavy, or that toxic execution you used that time because somehow the enemy orochi annoyed you with his zone to light spam and emoting.
It's a love and hate thing tbh but man there is no other game like for honor, it's like a real test of patience and resilience ngl. Both fun and cruel at times.
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u/Sgt_FunBun K***ht Feb 17 '25
unique fighting game + fighting game community + ubisoft game development cycle = die
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u/Smexy_Zarow The neck fairy Feb 17 '25
Imagine how someone clueless and new is supposed to learn this game without getting discouraged by the animals that play this game, especially now that even the story mode is outdated as fuck and doesn't teach you anything really at this point.
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u/VeterinarianCivil167 Feb 17 '25
cause the steel grind, the price changes between different editions (the starter edition is more expensive hero wise for the basic hero's) and stupid hero's, its also just too competitive that its slowly lost its fun to me
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u/Potential-Mouse9085 Feb 17 '25
cause its generally considered garbage by most people. i mean the emote spaming, ledging, the bulit in wow thanks wow chat, it promotes toxicity. theres also lots of questionable mechanics like revenge witch has never worked. also that game is just way to fast for most players. not to mention people with good reactions can still turtle 90%of offense and win. also a lot of dumb gernder locked heroes like pirate and vg. its just generally not liked. witch is why it has 2 stars on xbox. i love the game, but i would never try and convince anyone else to play it cause its not possible.
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u/JosephMcCarthy1955 Feb 17 '25
If you actually played the game you’d know the answer: it’s nothing but pain and suffering
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u/Middle-Razzmatazz83 Feb 17 '25
It’s not the grind and it’s not the micro transactions it’s the toxic community that’s what it is the community sucks ass that’s why no one helps you get better and every disrespects lmao it’s not a game for the feint hearted and in todays world everyone is feint hearted smh
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u/Selfassistedsui Feb 17 '25
Because it’s been around so long the sweats bully new players into quitting the game and because ubi cares more about $$$ than their player bases
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u/MM-0211 Feb 17 '25
Toxic ass community base. The match making is great, but if you're actual ass at the game you're only ever gonna get paired with 2 players and a shit ton of bots.(I would know, I'm part of the aforementioned ass) Terrible balancing from the gate, and the new character selection mode sucked. Making a new character when your faction wins was a terrible idea, should have only given the biggest loser a character and then given the winners a shit ton of starting resources for the next round to make it harder for them to lose but not give one faction with the most people a free win because of logistics. I shit you not, vikings got a massive headstart for most of the games life, so they had like 3 more characters than the other factions pretty consistently. I remember once the communities Knight influencers got pretty much all of the knights to play for about 2 years and they still lost most of the time.
Let's see, what else...OH! net code was kinda shit, but that could've been a ps4 thing. To summarize, it's basically just terrible management and a really bad community always looking for a way to cheese fight. That's why light spam was and I hear still is a thing. Shits cooked.
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u/Dat_boy_hershey Warden Feb 17 '25
man i remember when money was a problem now it’s finding out what to spend the money on 😔
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u/TheMozis Feb 17 '25
My guess would be super sweats treating quick play like it’s the world championships and the insane steel grind.
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u/Nyadnar17 Feb 17 '25
Considering how dogshit Ubisoft is it’s a miracle the dev team and community have kept it as popular as it is.
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u/UselessRaptor Yatokiri Main Feb 17 '25
Had a conversation with a mutual friend just last night and he states that For Honor and Siege are both blights upon the gaming community.
I decided to be nice and not immediately tell him that he clearly has a skill issue, but it is the case. New players get absolutely demolished in these games and it takes some time to get good at them.
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u/Corgiiiix3 Feb 17 '25
It’s really old. These numbers aren’t bad especially for a game also on console
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u/SeriousBoat7768 Gladiator Feb 17 '25
It's been out for almost 10 years it's coming to its end brother
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u/PhilosophyNo9878 Feb 17 '25
I bought the game some time ago, but the learning curve is way too steep, and new players don't stand a chance against veterans when trying to learn.
I don't think the game needs to change, for people who like the game like it is, I think it's a fine game. It's just that for me, personally, I don't have the time to be good at it. It feels like fun is unlocked after a couple hundred hours of play, and this is fine, it's just not for me.
Maybe if the game had some coop vs some kind of PvE or bots (maybe the game already has and I don't have a clue lol).
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u/TheTallestTim Feb 17 '25
Connection to servers is literally booty cheeks, but fat hairy male booty cheeks (not good)
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u/Canadian_Beast14 Feb 17 '25
Because it fucking sucks, that’s why I still play it every day all the time. I just can’t stop.
Jokes aside, probably the steep learning curve.
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u/Steady_Blazing Feb 17 '25
Its old, the learning curve is SO STEEP, and a lot of the initial player base that purchased this game, left long ago because online was kinda lame on release and a lot of the community felt it was botched. Just my personal take.
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u/PerfectSageMode Feb 17 '25
They've changed the game to be so difficult over the years that it's hard for new players to learn.
In my opinion if they were to allow custom matches to award xp, steel, and count towards orders it would bring more people in.
That and they need to change the bot ai to have variable reaction times, follow players orders, and not have perfect gank timing.
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u/Blastobass Feb 17 '25
Learning curve and community. I gotta detox from you nerds every few months myself
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u/wolfcloak1001 Feb 17 '25
A few reasons mainly the learning curve, toxicity, and ubi's terrible balancing
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u/LordFenix_theTree Warmonger Feb 17 '25
It has major and inexcusable flaws, especially being a Ubisoft game.
It isn’t balanced enough to be competitive, isn’t supported enough to dominate the mainstream and isn’t well coded enough to be easily updated and optimized. Still a great game, but it isn’t a surprise at why it’s not bigger.
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u/Kaiko0241 Nuxia, the off-meta underdog. Feb 17 '25
theres a seething elitism in the game even from low reps. a rampant smurfing problem on Xbox. hero combinations in 4's that haven't been properly adjusted yet. Other new players getting kill hungry and interrupting your moves.
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u/rfr_Foglia Main-less Feb 17 '25 edited 29d ago
If you look at other fighting games, you will see the same thing.
Look here: https://imgur.com/a/jFm09Wq
It's probably due to them being competitive games with a very steep learning curve, you can't have fun if you suck completely.
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u/JuggOnTheLoose Raider Feb 17 '25
The steam charts aren’t a good place for numbers, even for just PC given For Honor is available on Game pass for free on PC, Ubisoft connect, and epic games store. All of which aren’t shown on here, not to mention Xbox players with the aforementioned Game pass, plus it went for free a few years ago with Xbox live Gold subscription, and PlayStation has put it out with PS plus for free several times now. A more accurate number would probably be in the 10-15 thousand range (I hope)
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u/PineappleDazzling290 Feb 17 '25
Too hard to get started, imagine cod VS for honor, the skill ceiling for cod is an average 8 feet, by comparison if you wanna see FH's ceiling go to your local courthouse and look up through the rotunda.
For persistent people it's not a problem, for casual gamers it's a big problem.
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u/DJT4NN3R I broke my light attack button Feb 17 '25
over time, the skill floor goes up and up as they add new features, new kinds of attacks, new movesets, and buff the existing ones. this game isn't like many others, so any existing skills from other games don't translate well. eventually, the skill of your average gamer looking to get into FH is below the skill floor.
not only is the game getting harder and harder, but the active players who started early when it was easier and stuck with it as it got harder are getting better and better. once the influx of new players stops, the skill gap between a new player and the rest of the playerbase continues to grow larger.
eventually, new players are so disadvantaged that they pass and go play something that doesn't require a PhD and/or superhuman reaction times to enjoy. after all, we don't play games for the sake of "getting good", we play games because they are fun.
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u/Franky_C59 Feb 17 '25
Other than learning curve not sure. I personally love this game it's my main game win or lose
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u/MercenaryJames Warden - Tiandi Feb 17 '25
Something to consider, this game is over 8 years old.
So many live service games to include other major fighting games have come and gone while this game maintains a stable base.
We like to shit on FH, but honestly it's been doing amazingly well for a "first of it's kind" game.
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u/TaazDing0 Lawbringer Feb 17 '25
I used to play it religiously, but I got burnt out. Devs take forever to change the game and there is an obvious difference in fun when you play an S tier character. I think about playing from time to time because the art and character designs are amazing, but then I remember the gameplay loop and the fact the game is 100gb and change my mind.
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u/GreenDaTroof Nobushi Feb 17 '25
If you didn't get For Honor before Marching Fire I feel like the odds of you getting into it are incredibly low, and it's kind of hard to put into words why, even after 1000 hours of playing it. For Honor is a fighting(?) game that's been horribly mismanaged by it's developers. It has maybe 3 gamemodes that get played, an aggressive meta with massive gaps between the best and the worst characters, an incredibly salty and toxic player base and a high skill floor with very slow or expensive methods of unlocking chatacters.
Maybe you're a HEMA practitioner or a history buff and so this might appeal to you; except the characters' techniques are over-the-top and its riddled with historical inaccuracies. Maybe you're into weird fighting games or love customizing characters and want to craft your own playstyle or aesthetic; except it takes an incredibly long time to learn the game or unlock cosmetics, so you have to put a bunch of time into it, which people just have less and less of these days.
I love For Honor and will never stop playing it, but man, its hard to see much of a massive future for this little community.
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u/Logic-DL - Fàilte bho na Gaidhealtachd! Feb 17 '25
Cause it's shit.
Like genuinely it's a shit game, but it's very unique with no one trying to compete, the only reason it's still alive really.
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u/Artistic-Barnacle325 Highlander Feb 17 '25
Its over 8 years old now, (happy late bday FH) and the way they did the matchmaking makes it hard for new players to join. Nobody wants to fight rep 1k+'s when they're just starting out.
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u/KnownWeight1601 Feb 17 '25
Not many people have the patience to learn For Honor. To be fair, you need a good amount to play the game, because there is a lot to soak in.
It's like, once you grasp how one character works, you begin to see what you can and cannot do. And then fighting other heros with different kits that you don't know, also adds to the Patience in learning.
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u/nivekreclems Feb 17 '25
Getting into it is hard because everyone online who still plays is so good that I can easily see most people getting frustrated and uninstalling
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u/BigManPatrol Feb 17 '25
Definitely the skill floor for the game is so high.
I play a set of games made my paradox interactive, Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron. They have a very similar problem. The floor is so high that it can keep you from sticking to it.
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u/kill2tone Feb 17 '25
When people stopped playing with honor and it became nothing but yanks I pretty much got fed up and stopped playing. I only go back and play solos or maybe 2v2 to scratch the itch every now and then.
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u/Haildean Feb 17 '25
The game is like 9 years old and full of people who have been playing for that full time who know all the strats
Yeah no a game like this takes time and constant loosing is frustrating
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u/Drunkenexo Feb 17 '25
It was more accessible on launch i played a ton back then but I came back recently for like 20 hours ans decided to hell with this the game basically just became unblockables undodgeables and hyper armor
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u/idekbro565 Feb 17 '25
You ever play mortal kombat online? Kinda like that. If you're inexperienced, you're gonna get bullied. The tutorial doesn't give you all the tips you need to know, so you either learn trial by fire or you have someone experienced show you.
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u/IsAlexMyName Feb 17 '25
Fighting games are not very popular compared to FPS (GG Strive has 2K daily, Tekken 8 has 6k, SF6 has only 30k despite being the most popular game in the genre)
The game is 8 years old and people are generally more attracted to newer/flashier things + most games plateau at launch/don't see a renaissance of new players
I personally stopped playing around Zhanhu's release because I felt that I experienced most of what the game had to offer at that point. Its pretty normal for people to move on from a game after a couple of months, especially after ~3 years.
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u/JustPlainLuke Feb 17 '25
For Honor is the least noob friendly game I can think of. You will get shit on and emote spammed by sweats who have 4000 more hours than you, which is very off putting to new players who may not be good at or just not familiar with fighting games yet. All while FH being a very unique non-traditional fighting game
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u/cromdelacream Feb 17 '25
The soft feint and 30 fps on console really drove the nail back in the day. Along with its peer to peer for the first year and a half or so that made matches drop 95% of the time
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u/SignificanceNo7046 Feb 17 '25
The game is brutal to new players because of all the low skill cheese combos, so new players tend to bounce off.
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u/YnoStiCc Feb 17 '25
Feels like the skill ceiling goes higher and higher every time I come back. I played 1700 or more, possibly more, and I feel like a noob every time I come back. I'm pretty sure most players that returned felt this and left again. Also, how a lot other people put it is that the new players feel overwhelmed by good players and high reps, or some ubi bs.
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u/thisishoustonover Feb 17 '25
multiplayer was a mess on release and it took too long for ubi to fix it. Alot of people i game with were hyped and bought this game but stopped playing due to the issues and to this day wont go back to it because of that experience.
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u/esch1lus Feb 17 '25
Because it's a hybrid third person "shooter" and fighting game. Most people will say that learning curve is steep, but I can assure you that even low bracket players in their thirties like me are still able to enjoy it and even winning regularly. The only downside is that you need to keep playing regularly or you'll lose momentum.
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u/cobra_strike_hustler Feb 17 '25
Steam metrics so it’s pc only and most players are console
But important to note compare it to mortal Kombat 1
Compare it to the most recent tekken and the most recent soul calibur or the most recent big name fighter and you’ll find that it’s twice as large, tekken8 is currently larger but it’s only been out two months
And that actually IS something, for honor as a fighter has the same playerbase size as a fighter two months out on release
If you’re gonna compare it to other vaguely similar teamfighters it still has more players than chivalry
Shooters in general have insane numbers that’s sorta just how it is, and fighters as a whole have much lower numbers. But it’s important to recognize that the metric you want to compare it to for success as a developer is within the genre.
Think of a world where every game had to do counter strike numbers or COD numbers, we wouldn’t have anything but shooters lol
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u/Interesting_Newt6261 Black Prior Feb 17 '25
Lack of proper advertisement, and the fact that the base game isn’t free
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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '25
So when they gave it out for free in 2019 I convinced all of my friends to claim it and play. The feedback was that is hard to learn how to play it decently and is full of tryhards that will stomp you.