The For Honor Season 5 release date has been confirmed for February 15 on all platforms.
The Age of Wolves will not be providing any new characters to the game, but will be focused on new features and dedicated servers.
Coinciding with For Honor’s first anniversary, Season 5 aims to enhance the core player experience by focusing on Hero balancing, matchmaking and connectivity.
It seems more new characters will arrive in the future, however, this season will be dedicated to getting all the new features up and running.
“For us, it was assessing the current state of the game and what needed to be improved in order for us to feel confident with our game mechanics and address community feedback. We then prioritized the key areas we needed to focus on and balancing the current Hero roster was one of them,” said Damien Kieken, Game Director.
“After the introduction of six new heroes last year, the current roster features 18 unique warriors each with their own fighting style and flair.
“Focusing on balancing will allow us to strengthen the base we have built while giving our players more viable character options – and this without releasing new heroes.”
“Season Five is only the beginning of the process, and we want to bring similar balancing updates to other Heroes in the future.”
Dedicated servers will be one of the big new features coming to the game in February, which will remove the resyncing, session migrations and NAT requirements that players currently have.
The exact timing of the implementation will be communicated at a later date, so it could be that this feature will be launched with a different timing during Age of Wolves.
When it comes to major hero updates, five Heroes – Kensei, Conqueror, Highlander, Berserker and Nobushi – will receive major gameplay updates in order to re-balance the available roster.
“The Kensei and Conqueror will both receive new move sets, animations and more to their kit, while the Highlander, the Berserker and the Nobushi, will also receive meaningful balancing updates,” a message from Ubisoft explains.
“Following Season Five, more heroes will receive similar updates as the development team continues to prioritise game balancing.”
After the launch of Season Five, For Honor will introduce three new training modes designed to change the way players hone their skills.
Newcomers will be able to learn the basics of the game as well as more advanced techniques in the Apprentice Trials and the Warriors Trials modes.
Finally, The Arena mode will allow advanced players to practice against specific heroes and moves that will prepare them for any potential fighting combinations.
“Following our launch in February 2017, our team was focused on building on the initial experience by adding new heroes, modes and continuous gameplay updates,” Kieken adds.
“For the beginning of 2018, we want to focus on the core experience and address player feedback by prioritising online stability and hero balancing.”
Other changes for Season 5 includes a new item that will boost XP in exchange for salvage, the shift of 4v4 Ranked Mode from Dominion to Tribute, a new reputation level cap and a new gear progression.