For Honor Alpha Player Breaks NDA with Ubisoft to Reveal Broken Matchmaking System
For Honor is a game that, although highly anticipated and hyped, has been steeped in quite a few negative rumors.  There have been game breaking balance issues for the alpha players, as well as rumors that the single player campaign will be inaccessible without a constant internet connection, which we covered here. Yesterday, a new issue was brought to light by an NDA breaking Reddit user: the matchmaking system in For Honor works about as well as cold molasses trying to run uphill.
Reddit user MexGrow released his NDA breaking video, linked below, just yesterday, to share his outrage that For Honor is using peer-to-peer matchmaking instead of dedicated servers.  In the video, you can hear him reluctantly admitting that he is breaking his non-disclosure agreement, but that the issue is so major that he felt the entire community needed to know about it now.  Check out how rough it is for him to get into a match in the video.
When a game uses dedicated servers, there is a lot more stability because one player who may be stealing internet from the Wallmart down the street doesn’t crash the whole world for everyone playing. Â Now, For Honor does not have massive amounts of players to support for each match, although a huge 30v30 mode would be an awesome addition some day, but peer-to-peer matchmaking will always cause issues, even in the 1v1 and 2v2 modes. Â It is possible that Ubisoft may be planning to switch to dedicated servers as For Honor approaches launch but since the game is set to come out in just a couple months, one would think that now would be the time to be stress testing servers, maybe with an open beta? It also does not seem to make much sense to inflict such an irritating system on your testers. This kind of wait time and drop rate are just unacceptable for a modern game, and someone was bound to get so fed up that they would leak something like this.
In the text of his video, the whistleblower includes a link to a petition that you can sign to demand that this massively awaited, triple A game gets the proper support from dedicated servers. Â If you have ever played a melee based, online game like, The Elder Scrolls Online, or Dark Souls, you know how important it is that you and your opponents are seeing the same thing on your screens, and that nobody is lagging out. When a player pulls a Goku, teleporting around the map and stabbing you in the back of the head because of myriad internet connection issues it’s infuriating and not fun. When you can’t get into a match, or stay online to finish one, that’s simply an unplayable game that doesn’t seem to warrant spending money on. We know that For Honor is going to look great and have a unique combat system… but Ubisoft has some serious work to do between now and the release date of February 14th if they want this beautiful concept to hit the intended mark.