For Honor’s all about deadly duels and flashy sword fights. Oh, and micro-transactions. With the release of new emotes, some fans are less than pleased with their high price.
In For Honor, you’re able to acquire an in-game currency called steel to spend on a variety of cosmetics and upgrades. Special character skins and particle effects are just some of the options but there’s also emotes. As first noted by Eurogamer, the latest round of combat emotes are a tad expense.
Normally, emotes will cost anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 steels. While you can gain steel by playing matches and completing challenges, players are also able to purchase it. 5,000 costs $4.99. The latest emotes cost 7,000 steel.
Players eager for the new emotes have two options. The first is to grind matches for steel. Matches will yield a pittance of steel, sometimes as small as 15 units. If you’re not completing challenges, you’d need to complete over 450 matches to unlock an emote. The only other option is to pay money. But the prices seem too high for the reward.
To put the price in perspective: Destiny also sells emote. The most expensive ones sell for 500 ‘silver.’ A purchase of 1,000 silver costs $9.99 and is enough to buy two rare emotes. Paying the same price in For Honor gives enough steel to buy one emote, with some currency left over.
“[These] exorbitant prices are a fucking slap in my face,” a Reddit poster said. The developers should be ashamed.”
These emote prices highlight a tension at the core of For Honor. Fans (including myself) greatly enjoy the core experience. Brawling and dueling is a damn good time. There’s a good game here. But the ramped up prices for these emotes and the slow pace for gaining steel without ponying up cash.
“The actual game, the simulation is spot on. It’s the coolest melee system in years,” one player said on Reddit. “Everything wrapped around that actual gameplay is just terrible.”
Update—March 22, 1:40 p.m.: Addressing concerns about unlockables during a livestream, game director Damien Kieken said the following:
“The design philosophy was... we never had an intention for you to unlock everything in the game. We applied RPG mechanics to a fighting game. It’s like World of Warcraft, you would not try to unlock everything or all the character. Or in a MOBA.
We forecasted that most players would play one to three characters. All the design is based around that. The cosmetic items are really, for us, endgame content. It’s the things we want you to unlock after playing several weeks.
We are releasing more content to give more choices... so that players have a choice and can pick the [content] they like. Yes, those items are harder to access but at least they are grind-able. It doesn’t me we won’t change anything. We are looking at the feedback and looking at the data.”