For Honor Is One Step Forward, Two Steps Back For DLC

A few days ago, I included For Honor on a list of games with consumer-friendly DLC practices for its decision to include post-launch maps and game modes for free. Now that the details have leaked for For Honor's Season Pass, I'm having to clean a fair bit of egg off my face.

Two images were spotted by a Redditor on Ubisoft's store page (although the images have since been removed). Both of them are advertising For Honor's Gold Edition, which includes the deluxe edition of the game and the season pass. Nothing in the Deluxe Edition is egregious in anyway – a slew of cosmetic items.

And yes, the game will have its own version of loot crates, which appear to be the socially acceptable microtransaction as of late. But the devil is in the details – more specifically the season pass details. With six new warriors included in the season pass, For Honor is officially bordering on pay to win, which is not good for a game that has already been revealed as always-online and peer-to-peer. Ubisoft is racking up a lot of buzzwords that game studios usually want to stay far away from.

For Honor is one step forward (free maps and game modes) and two steps back (paying extra money to gain a competitive advantage) for DLC.

And there is only two ways this can work out. Either, these new warriors do have and competitive edge over one or more of the other warriors, making it a pay-to-win system, or these new warriors are mostly indistinguishable from the others to avoid upsetting the competitive balance, thereby making your season pass purchase worthless. Take your pick.

I thought the rule was clear by now. DLC that you can buy should never ever give you a competitive advantage. The only game that routinely gets away with that is League of Legends, and who knows why the players put up with that? That's why gamers may still roll their eyes at things like loot boxes in Overwatch, but it won't ruin the game for them, because I can spend absolutely zero money in Overwatch and still be on equal footing with my opponents and teammates.

Iin fairness, the exact details of each of these developments haven't been confirmed (mostly because Ubisoft removed the images from the website and haven't expanded upon the details), so it could be that these new heroes will be released free at some point, but I can't imagine those who purchased the season pass will really feel like they've got something of value if that was the case.

I suppose we'll see.