For Honor, a war game that pits Knights, Vikings, and Samurai against each other in chaotic free-for-all matches, received praise from critics for its combat system, balanced character classes and realistic physics.
However, one of the aspects of For Honor that has drawn criticism is the free-to-play model of the game. For Honor features microtransactions that require either real money or steel points that players acquire to unlock everything that the game offers.
Analyzing The Unlockables Of 'For Honor'
Redditor bystander007, in a post on the official For Honor sub-Reddit, analyzed how much money or time it would take to unlock everything in the game, including emotes, effects, executions, ornaments, and outfits.
The Redditor opened his post by describing developer Ubisoft as being notorious for its "deceptively expensive" multiplayer games, as can be seen in its Tom Clancy titles. The same is true in For Honor, and after looking at bystander007's analysis, players who were looking to grind their way into acquiring all the game's unlockable will think twice about their mission.
As noted by bystander007, to acquire all the unlockables of a hero in For Honor, it would take 91,500 steel on average. Multiplied by the 12 heroes in the game, players would need 1,098,000 steel to unlock everything.
Ubisoft is selling steel packs worth $100 that contain 150,000 steel, and it would take 7.32 of such packs to collect the necessary 1,098,000 steel. This means that Ubisoft valued the in-game unlocks of For Honor at a whopping $732, which would be an additional cost on top of the $60 to $100 price tag of the game.
The Redditor then goes on to say that casual players who play about two hours daily for up to seven days a week will probably never be able to unlock everything in For Honor. Bystander007 estimated that casual players can gain 1,200 steel daily, on completed orders and half-contracts that give players 1,000 steel and 200 more steel coming from played matches.
With a gain of 1,200 steel per day, collecting the required 1,098,000 steel for unlocking everything in For Honor will take 915 days, which is equivalent to about 2.5 years of playing daily. Even with intense grinding that requires gamers to play for 16 hours a day, it will still take just less than a year to unlock everything in For Honor.
Of course, all these calculations do not take into account any setbacks such as server maintenance and additional unlockable content that could be added to the game through DLCs and updates.
The Rise Of Video Games With Microtransactions
Of course, players are not required to unlock everything in For Honor, as the game can still be enjoyed right out of the box. Gamers can spend all the steel that they accumulate on their favorite heroes, instead of having to invest so much time or money into unlocking everything for all 12 heroes.
There have been a rising number of video games that utilize microtransactions, though recently, the unlockables are focused on cosmetic upgrades rather than items that will give players an advantage over other players who do not spend money on the game. Examples of such games are multiplayer shooter Overwatch and soccer title FIFA 17.
It can be argued though that, even if they are just cosmetic upgrades, these are content that developers are hiding from players beyond the initial price tags of games, as they take advantage of a microtransaction system that looks to bring in more profits for their companies.
