For Honor has been seriously shaking up its formula, following huge backlash from its own community. After avoiding a threatened day-long blackout that was slated to occur earlier this week, Ubisoft today had to show us the money, as it were, in order to make good on their promise of meaningful changes.
While the huge balance changes to different heroes and to Revenge mode will likely eat up most of the attention, Ubisoft also included a small one-off in the patch notes that may turn out to be the game's most important patch note.
"All Daily Orders and Contract Orders can now be done in PvP and PvAI without distinction." Right beneath this one: "Added Daily Orders that can be done regardless of the game mode you play."
After writing about how many games it would take to earn max gear score, I received lots of feedback that I didn't take into account the Daily Orders and Contract Orders. But this was deliberate, because Orders of any kind weren't a reliable way to earn Steel, since they could force you into a bot match, which is not why anyone buys a $60 game, or they could make you play a gamemode that you don't enjoy.
These two changes go a long way to addressing the underlying criticism that Ubisoft has been receiving more and more since release: it's too difficult to earn Steel without paying for it, making For Honor err on the side of pay-to-win.
But not anymore. No longer will there be a distinction between Orders based on AI or PvP, this makes completing Orders a much more attractive task both for people who don't want to play bot matches and the people who do.
Added with last week's overall buff to Steel income, and you're looking at a brand new landscape of For Honor where real money won't be the end-all-be-all and 108 Gear score won't be at quite the premium.
