Testing Grounds

**Testing Grounds** is a special open beta feature that allows players to test new features before they come into the game while the developers receives live feedback. Unlike a test server that most games have as a seperate game space to test the changes, the Testing Ground is integrated into the actual game, appearing in the same slot as Special Events. This allows players to access the Testing Ground without needing to leave the normal For Honor game.

So far, there have been four instances of the Testing Grounds, with more to come.

## Late August - Mid September 2019

The first ever Testing Grounds focused on the major rework of Centurion, together with a minor rework of Gladiator and Warlord.

* https://forhonor.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/news-community/152-354386-16/testing-grounds-for-honor
* https://forhonor.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/news-community/152-355049-16/testing-grounds-patch-notes-2123

For Centurion, changes were made so that the Hero relied less on his one-track Cutscene ability and had other options to provide viable offense through his Jab mix-ups.

For Gladiator and Warlord, their offensive power were improved for 1v1s.

### Results

Centurion's rework was delayed, but Warlord and Gladiator received changes almost immediately (during the midseason of Year 3 Season 3) based on the feedback of the Testing Grounds.

Centurion's rework would make its appearance at the start of the second season of Year 4, making improvements on what was originally tested.

## Late January 2020

The second Testing Grounds focused on a rework of one of the game's more popular gamemodes, Breach.

* https://forhonor.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/news-community/152-359964-16/testing-grounds-breach-mode-optimizations

The changes tested saw to increase the pace of the gamemode and remove the divided attention the Attackers had between tickets and the ram during the first two phases of the gamemode. The Guardian's importance has been changed by making its buff unique instead of a combination between the three Boosts available on the map.

On top of all this, Testing Grounds from here on will offer players the ability to test these changes in custom game modes and play against bots.

### Results

The changes to Breach would be delayed, implemented after the third Testing Grounds. Together with the change were some improvements to the Third Phase of the Hallowed Bastion map.

## Early March 2020

The third Testing Grounds focused on improving offense and attack consistency for a better combat experience:

* https://forhonor.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/news-community/152-360779-16/testing-grounds-fight-system-improvements
* https://forhonor.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/news-community/152-360778-16/testing-grounds-how-attacks-are-changing
* https://forhonor.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/news-community/152-360926-16/addressing-light-spam

The Devs want to have the game move towards read-based game over a reaction-based one, but also make offense more accessible by making attack animations and indicators more aligned while also reducing flickering. Although offense has become strong, Light Spam has also been addressed by making them less oppressive.

### Results

Initially, the Changes of this Testing Grounds had not been implemented. Instead, other combat experience based changes were added, such as standardizing Guardbreak vulnerabilities and allowing feint-into-guardbreaks to catch enemies more effectively.

The changes would be later implemented as part of the CCU (Core combat Update) during the mid-season of Year 4 Season 2.

## Early December 2020

The fourth Testing Grounds focused on a rework for four Heroes.

* https://forhonor.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/news-community/152-363722-16/testing-grounds-hero-improvements-overview

The primary focus of this round of Testing Grounds is to look at Heroes who are very limited in what they are capable role-wise and give them the tools to function with more flexibility. These heroes are Warden, Peacekeeper, Shugoki and Nobushi.

### Results

With results of the Testing Grounds for Peacekeeper and Nobushi being positive, their kit updates were immediately pushed to the live game during the mid-season of Year 4 Season 4, with only a few minor changes based on player feedback.

Although feedback for Warden's changes were positive, they were pushed back until the start of Year 5 Season 1 as the Fight Team tinkered further with Warden's kit to improve it and fix some issues that were had with the kit changes. Shugoki's changes were also met positively, but had a number of issues that required more review form the Fight Team, which eventually resulted in needing another round of Testing Grounds for him, planned for early April, during Year 5 Season 1.

## Early April 2021

The fifth Testing Grounds focused on a rework for seven Heroes.

* https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/for-honor/news-updates/69QzN3z75i9bQsLEkMDZRl/year-5-season-1-testing-grounds-hero-improvements-overview

Just like the December Testing Grounds, the primary focus of this round of Testing Grounds is to look at Heroes who have lower viability than desired and are in need of new or reworked tools to be able to function better. These heroes are Aramusha, Hitokiri, Jiang Jun, Berserker, Gladiator, and Zhanhu.

As mentioned above, Shugoki has also returned with a new batch of changes for a second round of testing.

### Results

Many of the changes in the Testing Grounds were received positively, with them being added at the start of Year 5 Season 2. Even then, a few tweaks have been made to most of the Heroes before their update's release, as some Heroes proved to have oppressive mechanics that needed to be removed or were in need of some buffs in lacking places. Changes made can be observed both in the Warrior's Den recap that announced the changes made, together with the Patch Notes for the season.

## Early July 2021

The sixth Testing Grounds focused on a rework for three Heroes, together with a review of Option Selects.

* https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/for-honor/news-updates/1NJ25mhgW6XrJTNQkMalq3/warriors-den-recap-june-3rd
* https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/for-honor/news-updates/3dFflN2weSBMJyFVHXTaKH/year-5-season-2-testing-grounds-improvements-overview

On top of looking at Orochi, Raider and Shinobi, three Heroes who have been in much need of a kit review, this Testing Grounds' other primary focus will be to review Option Selects.

Just like before, changes for Orochi and Raider aim to improve their fighting capabilities in areas that they severely lacked in. Shinobi on the other hand is receiving drastic changes that will redefine the way they will play.

**What is an Option Select?**
Option Selects, also known as OS, is a Fighting Game term that refers to when a single input (or combination of them made in quick succession) results in different outcomes depending on what your opponent does (the game "selects an option" for you); an OS is a defensive input that favors the one who uses it by covering multiple defensive methods with ease. The most commonly known OS in For Honor is the Zone OS, where performing a Zone on an incoming attack leads to a parry if the opponent lets their attack fly, or a Zone if the opponent feints their attack. Because of how they stifle Offense due to being low risk, easy-to-use and highly rewarding as a defensive tool, the Devs would like to test a new technology that will de-prioritize certain inputs (primarily the Parry input) that will hopefully mitigate the impact of Option Selects if not outright remove them.
### Results

The reworks for Orochi and Raider, together with the Option Select changes, will all be implemented at the start of Year 5 Season 3. Based on player feedback, a few additional tweaks have been made for Orochi and Raider to make them more comfortable and viable to play. Changes made can be observed in paragraph form in the Fight Team Update for the season or with detail in *the season's patch note*.

## Late September 2021

The seventh Testing Ground focused on a second Rework pass for Shinobi, on top of significant changes to how Renown operates in Dominion.

* https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/for-honor/news-updates/3SOVDl9ExS72vcGwUttM2s/year-5-season-3-fight-team-update
* https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/for-honor/news-updates/1WdaaNLY0yXLJcMoEZkluB/year-5-season-3-fight-team-update-2

Aside from trying out some new changes for Shinobi based on the feedback of the last Testing Ground, a number of Renown-related numbers will be receiving a change in Dominion. The aim of such changes for Renown is to remove focus away from high Renown gain through defending a point, overly complicated Renown gain for takedowns and balancing Renown gain between classes. As a result, players should be more equally rewarded no matter their class, on top of placing more emphasis on capturing enemy points.

### Results

The rework for Shinobi has been finalized and will be implemented at the start of Year 5 Season 4, with a few additions made to make Shinobi further comfortable to play as and against. The Dominion changes though have been delayed for testing, in order to go for a second pass on certain elements such as Renown threshold and Zone Capture time.

## Late December 2021 - Early January 2022

The eighth Testing Ground focused on a second pass for the Dominion changes observed in the previous Testing Ground, together with an extensive rework for Conqueror.

* https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/for-honor/news-updates/1qjDla7M9xEbxgLodhZIwW/year-5-season-4-testing-grounds-update

Together with small improvements to the previous Testing Ground changes for Dominion, a rework is in order for the resident walking fortress. The current state of the Conqueror pins them as a very defensive Hero with very little in the way of offense. This heavy focus on defense highlighted gameplay scenarios that the Developers want want to steer away from with the direction the game is taking. Changes to be made should help make the Conqueror have more offense in trade of defense, while also becoming a more fun Hero to play as and against.

### Results

The Dominion Changes were finalized and shipped at the start of the New Horizon Year, during Season 1, with some further adjustments to make smoothen the experience. Meanwhile, the Conqueror changes were met with mixed feedback, thus will be taken into another Testing Ground for further exploration.

## Late March - Early April 2022

The ninth Testing Ground focused on second pass for the Conqueror rework changes, together with rework changes for Shaolin.

* https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/for-honor/news-updates/16fIwiED7jTwWoDuT8lIcJ/testing-grounds-march-31st

Compared to the last Testing Ground, Conqueror has receive some changes to remedy unhealthy aspects of the kit, such as undoing the ability to dodge from Full Block Stance, along with attempting to fix other long standing issues, such as removing Infinite Lights to prevent Light Spam. The focus still remains on giving Conqueror better offensive options while removing Conqueror overly strong defensive game and stamina bully aspects.

Shaolin has always had a kit that felt limited, particularly due to the lack of flow in regards to his core kit of his Qi Stance and an overall ineffective kit in apply the intended pressure of his complex movesets. This Testing Grounds looks to offering Shaolin more flexibility and better flow to access these options in better, more effective ways.

Unlike previous Testing Grounds, this Testing Ground lacked a proper end-of-event survey due to technical difficulties.

### Results

All of the changes observed during this Testing Ground lacked any direct feedback through Ubisoft's usual poll and survey. However, the developers had mentioned that they viewed other avenues of feedbacks, such as the Reddit boards and content creator videos, to improve upon what was offered in this Testing Ground. After some tweaks, reworks for both Shaolin and Conqueror were released during the next season, at the start of Year 6 Season 2; while only small adjustments were made to Shaolin's rework, Conqueror received a mixed bag that was a collection of all previous Testing Grounds with the Hero, plus some additional changes in order to streamline his rework. All changes made can be observed in the season's fight update recap.

## Early July 2022

The tenth Testing Grounds looks to make another system wide change in the form of changing Guardbreak Vulnerability in order to allow players to engage in Offense even when outnumbered.

* https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/for-honor/news-updates/49GnwKUBitlM10GNHcNAqc/testing-grounds-article-june-30th

As the game evolves, heroes get rebalanced, and other system-level changes occur, the driving forces behind our direction is "We want heroes to attack more". This has been shown in a lot of our revamps - we're giving more and more heroes aggressive tools over defensive ones, touching up on stamina and improving their flow.

However, one issue that has been surfacing is that players are not as incentivized to be on the offense when outnumbered due to the rules of Guardbreak Vulnerability (or possibly lack of clarity it has at times). This applies to both in-chain vulnerabilities that opponents could abuse in outnumbered situations, along with the recoveries on Finishers. In order to remedy this, the start-up of Chain Attacks and the recoveries of most attacks will now be Guardbreak Immune until the Hero can Block.

### Results

Changes from this Testing Grounds were poorly met, so overall the concept has been scrapped or deprioritized.

## Mid-September 2022

The eleventh Testing Ground wishes to observe gameplay improvements for two Heroes, Valkyrie and Tiandi, to make them more viable, together with improvements to Counter Guardbreaking.

* https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/for-honor/news-updates/30dS7HAQf1L9II4HHV12jA/y6s3-tu-testing-grounds

As one of the older Heroes without any major updates recently, Valkyrie's kit has many aspects that are, while not weak, but did not align with the current state of the game. Her Heavy Attacks had little use, her Sweep was poorly performing, her Bashes were lackluster and her overall kit needed many touch-ups to make her viable. As such, this Testing Ground seeks to improve her kit by giving her a more solidified identity and better tools to face the modern state of the game. May her kit be empowered to make her Offense defensive and her Defense offensive.

On the other hand, Tiandi is a strong Defensive Hero who lacks enough Offense, This revamp aims to give Tiandi better offensive tools and enhance their Dodge Specialist identity while mataining the Hero's strong defensive capabilities. This includes giving the Hero the ability Dodge Cancel all Recoveries, giving a dedicated follow-up for Kick so that it has a use in offense, and making Side Dragon Dodge more usable for a counter-offense.

Counter Guardbreaking historically led to a frame neutral situation, which prevented the user of the Guardbreak to have an advantage. However, this limited the options that Counter Guardbreaker could perform to a Light attack, as most other options could be easily beaten out by the original Guardbreaking hero performing another Guardbreak. To amend this, Counter Breaking now has less recovery along with reducing the Counter Guardbreak distance. These should give more options for the the Counter Guardbreaker to perform a counter-offensive, but also prevent that attack from whiffing due to the distance made from Counter Guardbreaking.

### Results

Changes for Counter Guardbreaking were so well received that they were immediately shipped during the next major update, the Y6S3 midseason patch.

The changes for Valkyrie and Tiandi came later on, at the very start of Y6S4. While the changes to Valkyrie remained mostly the same, Tiandi's rework received some modifications based on feedback, reverting some unwanted changes.

## Mid-November 2022

The twelfth Testing Ground will be testing a system level change in regards to Dodges and Dodge Attacks. These changes intend on opening up offense options by rebalancing the risk-reward of performing such actions.

* https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/for-honor/news-updates/1Nngrya8KSzicbL7gho25e/y6s3-tu2-testing-grounds

Side Dodge Heavies and Side Dodge Bashes have not only been a strong form of offense, but also a strong form of counter-offensive that lack enough risk for the reward they receive. As such, even when properly countered, there was little punishment for performing these Side Dodge attacks. In response, this Testing Ground seeks to up their risk by changing Side Dodge Heavies to cause a Light Parry Punish instead of a Heavy one, along with making missed Side Dodge Bashes not chain and be vulnerable to a Guardbreak. In return, all Side Dodge Attacks will have their input window standardized to have a minimum window delay of 200 to 400ms into a Dodge, as some Dodge attacks either had a smaller window or a static one.

Dodges also had their own issues, as Heroes maintained their guard during the Dodge. While not a problem for Heroes who intentionally have it built into their kit via Deflects and Block Dodges, having it even as a Static Guard Hero proved to be unhealthy at times as a Hero could fend from multiple scenarios while dodging; this issue was most problematic against Undodgeable attacks which are meant to catch Dodging opponents. As such, all Heroes without a Deflect or Superior/Normal Block Dodge now do not have their Guard up during a Dodge. In return, I-frames are now static to 33 to 300ms into a dodge instead of being speed dependent, meaning that dodging into a wall or a group of minions will no longer remove one's I-frames during a Dodge.

## Mid-December 2022

The thirteenth Testing Ground will seek to help change Jormungandr move away from the overly rigid gameplan of "Stamina bully." This will be achieved by removing their Stamina draining moveset in favour of more disruption tools, recontextualizing their bullying nature to being a displacement kind.

* https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/for-honor/news-updates/1bm5DW1fI4ln0yD389ofya/y6s4-testing-grounds

Jormungandr's current identity is that of a stamina bully; the hero's game plan is to deplete their opponent's stamina, land specific moves to unbalance the opponent and land Hamarr Slam. The hero's entire kit revolved around that game plan, and while this works in certain situations, the power level isn't where it should be, especially considering the many improvements we've made to Stamina management since the release of the hero. For this revamp, we're refocusing the gameplan so that while Hamarr Slam is still an important piece of the hero while leveling up the other parts of the kit to make the hero viable in today's metagame, which is group-fight oriented.

We're addressing three specific areas of Jormungandr:

* Gameplan
* Flow
* Quality of Life