For Honor is back in the news after its game director took the better part of this week's Warrior's Den weekly livestream to defend the game's microtransactions, specifically how much you would have to pay to unlock everything.
Saying For Honor was not designed to unlock all content for all heroes, game director Damien Kieken said their goal was to create a ton of content for each hero so people can master 1-3 heroes and have enough gear and cosmetics for those heroes. Kieken says this all about 23:30 in the video above. It's a compelling argument, but it has been hilariously undercut by the game's own marketing.
As one Reddit user pointed out, the box for the game uses the phrase "Master the Art of Battle with 12 Deadly Warriors." This phrase has also been used in several promotional videos for For Honor. Of course, mastering a hero requires getting your characters to the highest gear score, and you can't do that for 12 heroes without unlocking everything.
So the For Honor community is now asking, "Are we supposed to master all 12 warriors (soon to be 18), or is the game only designed for us to master 3? Which is it?" It's a good question, too. For Honor was pitched as a game with lots of available gameplay options, and used as a selling point the idea that you can and should master all of them.
But, when it turned out that you had to pay an exorbitant sum or money, or play an exorbitant sum or hours to do so, the For Honor team changed its tune.
Another thing this Reddit post points to is the sudden lack of support for For Honor from its own community. In the early days of the game's release, many For Honor fans had a militant defense of any criticism, including and especially the microstransactions. Calling the game "pay to win," as I did, was a surefire way to get downvotes on r/ForHonor. Now, it seems the community is growing colder and colder toward For Honor's model, and it's losing defenders among its own ranks. This is something we could guess by watching For Honor's ever-shrinking player-count, but this is the first tangible evidence of it.
