For Honor: Trying times

For Honor hit the shelves amid a storm of hype and anticipation, however, Ubisoft soon found itself in a quagmire with regards to one of the most touted features of the game, the 4v4 epic online multiplayer battles. The reason for this was fairly simple, instead of having dedicated servers, they decided to go with ‘Peer to Peer’ hosting for the online multiplayer modes instead.

Now, this caused players to face multiple issues such as NAT types not matching, pauses when players left or disconnected, frequent host migrations, and the most prevalent for Indian gamers, having a very poor connection to the host. Moreover, the problem of host advantage will forever be present in a ‘Peer to Peer’ format no matter what. All these factors culminated in a substantial number of players abandoning the once popular online slasher in favour of other more balanced games. The game saw a mass exodus in its playerbase, similar to No Man’s Sky soon after launch with a report claiming the game had lost 95 per cent of its playerbase since launch.

However, now, finally, months after the game’s initial release, Ubisoft Montreal has gone ahead and introduced dedicated servers for For Honor for the PC version. The decision, while being welcomed by the players, does come as somewhat as a surprise as even with dedicated servers, similar problems may still arise. While yes the host advantage and host migration issues will be solved, the location and stability of servers will still factor in, but that’s something that can’t really be addressed and I don’t think For Honor will have the player count to justify dozens of servers across the globe to cater to all pockets of gamers. Dedicated servers, in my book, are a step up from the ‘Peer to Peer’ system any day, however, there are still several issues that Ubisoft need to address before new players and even quite a few old ones will return to the game. The new content they have been churning out for For Honor has been interesting, but Season 2 really needs to step it up if they are to survive. The fact that creative director at Ubisoft Montreal who headed off For Honor has since set sail for Arenanet to work on Guild Wars doesn’t really reassure gamers as to what they can expect from new For Honor content.

Coming back to the servers, this isn’t the only game that has fallen prey to the ‘Peer to Peer’ problem. Their other big release, Ghost Recon Wildlands also suffered the same fate as For Honor owing primarily to Ubisoft’s refusal to get dedicated servers for the PC versions of the games. Which is surprising considering the two of them were Ubisoft’s main games that year and relied heavily on multiplayer/co-op. Lets just hope they’ve learned their lesson.