For Honor‘s August 9 Warrior’s Den dropped quite a bit — to the relief of some and the chagrin of others. The whole team was in the house for this stream. Fresh off the heels of their last stream, they were eager to address feedback from the community. They also had some updates on both the recent Valkyrie and Warden reworks and major ranked changes. As per tradition, they additionally showed weekly content, which was three new battle outfits.
 Warrior’s Den addresses ranked
A major complaint with the Ranked Duel game mode was players quitting. This was being exploited in order to avoid ranked changes or out of spite, which yielded unintended results at match end. This has been changed, and now all quits to a match — intended or not — will result in a penalty. In addition to a 40% rank deduction, there will also be the matchmaking time penalty applied. While the original penalty was for 60 minutes, the team stated that because all quits are now penalized, it’s lowered to 30 minutes. This was also implemented with players suffering from legitimate technical connection issues in mind. They will monitor this change and make further adjustments, if needed.
Placement match changes!
The For Honor team has also made some changes to how Ranked Matchmaking works for the duel placement games. Initially, matching used either a player’s skill rating or a static value based on their previous season’s duel rank. Now, it updates in real time based on the placement match results. The devs have stated that the reasoning for this was their previous system was causing players to have a less-than-ideal matchmaking experience. Because the value used was static, players were facing not only the same players, but the same level of play. In addition, players were exploiting the system by creating new accounts to reach high rank by beating their placement matches.
The Ranked promotion and demotion bonuses regarding division changes were also reduced to 5% from 25%. Ubisoft states that this was an internal issue from patch 1.26.1. This was causing larger than intended alterations in Ranked progression when moving divisions. This update should assure much smoother transitions.
So, about those reworks
The new Warden and Valkyrie reworks have been a hot topic since the last patch. The consensus from the community has been rather mixed, but a very vocal number of For Honor vets have stated their displeasure. Many argue that Valkyrie was in a bad enough spot and her nerfs weren’t warranted. Another point was the fact that the changes made her feel like a different hero altogether. The community has almost unanimously agreed, however, that she didn’t get enough of an upgrade for viability. The dev team acknowledged this on stream, stating that her rework is indeed not as good as they’d intended. They felt that they removed too much and didn’t compensate for her nerfs enough. In conclusion, Ubisoft assured fans that they’ll be examining the data and feedback in an effort to improve her rework.
In contrast, the team stated that they quite like the Warden rework. This has been a far less debated topic, with most Warden mains fairly satisfied. The Warden doesn’t have to rely entirely on Shoulder Bash now, and the team wanted to keep him fairly simple. Being a Vanguard character, Warden should be fairly easy to pick up, yet difficult to master. For now, it appears as if this hero is working as intended.
Unintentional patch fixes
The For Honor camp stated that some changes from the previous patch were not intended to drop just yet. They also announced some tweaking here and there.
Shugoki has been another heavily discussed character. In the previous patch, the devs removed his ability to Demon’s Embrace heroes with hyper armor applied to them. This was not considered regarding players with revenge, so the change will be rolled back.
There were also changes to OOS (out of stamina) where making an opponent OOS merely pauses stamina regeneration. It didn’t actually cause them to go into a state of stamina depletion. The devs didn’t intend for this effect to be implemented for this patch. This specific change was intended to be patched with several other stamina changes included. The team stated that the change will be reverted next Tuesday, but to expect future stamina changes.
Events, events, and MORE events!
Warrior’s Den also released their roadmap for the rest of August. There will be a Ranked Duel tournament from August 10 to August 13. In addition, there will be a Ranked vanquisher event. In this challenge, the faction with the most Ranked matches wins XP boost rewards. In order to reap the rewards from these events, you must actively participate in them.
Mt. Ignis erupts!
The “special” season 7 event is one that has already generated a fair bit of hype. Called “The Eruption Of Mt. Ignis,” this event features the primary volcano in the Honor narrative. It will be interesting to see what’s exactly entailed in this event. Some are speculating that it may be similar to For Honor‘s Ice Brawl event. In this event, players had to beat one another on a lake of cracking ice, which would eventually break and kill everyone. The same mechanics could be applied for flowing lava, with players having to meet some objective while avoiding advancing molten rock. It will be exciting to see more of what is involved with Mt. Ignis in the coming week.
In addition, the roadmap teased three “stronghold” events, consisting of one faction hero each. The reward for these events will all be steel and a symbol of some kind. Bearing the same kind of artwork as the special event, it can be speculated that these will be related in nature.
Finally, there will be a Ranked Duel and Ranked Warrior challenge at the very end of the month.
It’s a pretty exciting August in For Honor. With rework tweaks, a pile of events, and continued gameplay changes, there’s never a dull moment.
What are your thoughts on this week’s Warrior’s Den and Mt. Ignis? As always, we’d love to hear your feedback!
