Eternal Crusade (WH40K MMO)

[Dreaad]

Oh lol, thye are going to use orks as a free faction. So when everyone else are fighting with population disbalance, they are going to endorse it, to support "there must be a horde of orks" theme. I'm sure everyone will be happy to play as zerg losers, it's so much motivating to play further...oh wait, you can pay and beat the crap ot of all that losers!

There's nothing in the modern gaming industry to keep developers honest. Now that we've gone from scandals over 2 dollar horse armor to not being able to get enough of it you'd have to be daft or hopelessly idealistic not to exploit such a customer base. Hopefully one day someone will invent software that simply automatically triggers an dopamine rush that simulates the feeling of success, perhaps by some sciencemagic mixture of light and sound playing on your screen, and I can simply pay 2 bucks whenever I want to feel like I'm winning and just skip the whole shitty game part.

Just get drunk or something while playing games, similar effect.

 

[Space Satan]

Well, DOTA 2 and Team Fortress 2 proved that devs can earn millions just by releasing decals and cosmetics, without touching game balance. That, actually is great, because devs can keep games F2P without turning them into Pay2Win. But then, once again, is EA which can't even understand the concept of non Pay2Win game.

 

[Alex]

I don't know anyone IRL who plays WH40k, so I'll ask here: does anyone really care about the Eldar? They just seem so boring, it's hard to imagine they'll have a lot of players.

What is even harder to imagine, somehow eldar are more popular than squats. Understanding that is key to understanding WH40k decline.

 

[Excidium]

Eldar are cool. Just poorly represented.

Maybe Games Workshop will make them interesting for you like they did with the Necrons.

 

[Caim]

Eldar are cool. Just poorly represented.

Maybe Games Workshop will make them interesting for you like they did with the Necrons.

Ah, no. Codex was released just a few months ago and it was boring. Nothing changed, nothing new (and interesting) was added and the was minimal.

Which is sad, given what has been done with the Tau, Necrons, Grey Knights (for better or for worse) and even the Space Marines lately.

 

[Space Satan]

Which is sad, given what has been done with the Tau, Necrons, Grey Knights (for better or for worse) and even the Space Marines lately.

What about tau? GW pushed them so hard people started to hate them. Last time I checkedthem they were pseudo animu peaceful aliens. And GW explained their ability to fight Imperium's vast resources with Super Luck and IG commanders with average IQ of 30, who are unable to spot even a primitive trap. Something changed in recent Codex?

 

[Caim]

Which is sad, given what has been done with the Tau, Necrons, Grey Knights (for better or for worse) and even the Space Marines lately.

What about tau? GW pushed them so hard people started to hate them. Last time I checkedthem they were pseudo animu peaceful aliens. And GW explained their ability to fight Imperium's vast resources with Super Luck and IG commanders with average IQ of 30, who are unable to spot even a primitive trap. Something changed in recent Codex?

They got a lot of new toys. Battlesuits and Broadsides have a lot of new toys to add to the variation (Battlesuits are now even somewhat viable as a close combat unit, given that 22 points for a tough mobile 2 S5 attacks body is quite attractive), an entire line of new Ion weapons, improved infantry, rules for support fire, nice new planes and the Riptide battlesuit which is as blatant a Full Armor ZZ Gundam copy as possible down to the bulky design, huge gun, ability to launch a LOT of missiles and a powerful but risky power source.

 

[Space Satan]

Huge interview here

• The reason I chose Behaviour Interactive is because they were the first ones in Canada to open a new studio. They are the largest indie studio in Canada. They’re about 300 employees.
• I’m lucky enough that more than half of the core team I put together were extremely active in the 40K universe even before I called them to work on the project
• So we’re not trying to fix what has worked for the 20 years that the IP has existed. Let’s not try to fix it because it’s working well, so let’s focus on the gameplay. That allows us, after a month and a half to two months of coding; we have a full build with live gameplay already, which the fans will be able to see soon, probably by the end of the month.
• Our game is a Massive Combat RPG. So, yes, it’s an MMO, but it’s not an MMOFPS, it’s not an MMORPG, because the whole game is driven by the player and by a player hierarchy that’s going to come up in the game
• The game’s combat is very visceral. It’s not like typical MMO targeting and tabbing combat. It’s comparable to Gears of War and Space Marine from THQ. You can block, you can roll, you can hide under cover, and some of the cover can be destroyed. All of the major 40K vehicles will be there for you to drive as well, so it’s going to be really important to build yourself a strategy in order to win.
• Since we have single server technology, you’re talking about the whole planet being on the same server, so the war councils will control the war effort for a campaign on the continent.
• There are many different types of campaigns. We have primary campaigns and secondary campaigns with secondary objectives.
• Campaigns will last between two weeks and three months. The range is there because we don’t know. It depends.
• As a new player, you arrive in the game, and you’ll see the objectives that come from these three different hierarchies. You don’t have to follow it. You don’t get punished if you don’t follow it, but you get experiences bonuses if you do
• One of the things I don’t like about MMOs where you have massive warfare is that you don’t have a winner. You’re just fighting and fighting, but there’s no purpose to your fighting, and there’s no real reward for you winning, because it’s a continuous game, so you never win. But, in Eternal Crusade, if you see a Space Marine on the battlefield with five or six veteran medals for campaigns that he’s won, he’s a guy you don’t want to mess with, you know?
• The groups are more of an organization for social interaction, but we don’t give them additional powers. The game is made so that if you want to play the game alone, that’s fine.
• You have the same concept in Eternal Crusade. We have Promethean mines, which are procedural dungeons filled with waves and waves of Tyranids you can kill. You can find relics, which will boost your character, but everything that you do benefits the whole faction.
• The currency that we have in the game is a military currency called Requisition Points. When I was in the army, I didn’t buy my rifle, you know? I just had it. But since I was an officer, and because I was attached to a tank unit, I had a different kind of weapon than everyone else had. So that’s how progression will work in the game. Because it’s a PVP-centric game, if you take a new player that has just come into the game, and someone who has been playing for three years, and if you were to undress them, they would be about the same in terms of power.
• t’s a war economy, and it’s based on Requisition Points. Yes, we will allow trading and all that stuff, but then again, we’re kind of limited by the IP, because we cannot allow Space Marines to publically trade with Chaos Space Marines.
• you have a few continents on the planet, and each continent is split between all of the different factions at the start of a campaign. However, each of these faction areas are surrounded by Tyranid territory, and the Tyranids will be controlled by the AI.
• Within the next few months, we’re going to ask the fans to vote on the next sub-faction we’ll add.
• the devs are required to spend thirty minutes to an hour a day speaking to fans on forums, or on Twitch, or Twitter, etc
• When the Drop Pods fall to the planet, there’s a metal harness that needs to go up so all the Space Marines can go out in the same time, but in the concept art and the miniatures, it’s mechanically unsound. So we actually took a picture of it, and sent it to a few fan forums to ask them to come up with a solution for us, and they’re the ones who found the solution, which is to pop it out like an ejection seat. So that’s our new approach, and so far the fans have loved it.
• The weather system is going to be very different on each continent, and you will have to adapt your strategy
• It’s not like Eve Online. CCP knows in advance that there’s going to be a really large battle and where it will be. In our game, it’s something that can happen anywhere at any time, without us even knowing about it.
• All of the large scale MMO and MOBAs on the marketplace have spent a lot of their budget trying to have a perfectly balanced game. Balance between factions, balance between classes, balance between melee and ranged, etc. This is not something we’re trying to do, for a few reasons. First of all, the 40K universe is unfair. It is equally unfair, so it’s unfair for everybody, but it’s unfair. Depending on the situation, I might have an unfair advantage over you, but you might have an unfair advantage over me.
• We’re going to have a secret meeting place as well, where the war councils of opposing factions can meet and make deals with one another
• So there’s two groups of Orks. There’s the Ork Nobs, which are equal to the Space Marines, the Elder and the Chaos, but there’s another sub-faction which are the Ork Boyz, and they are a Free to Play faction. Both models are in the game, and once you play the Free to Play Boyz, you can upgrade through micro-transactions just as if you’d bought a full Nob package or a full Space Marine package.
• So, yes, we’re going to have a cash shop, obviously, and yes we’re going to have micro-transactions, that’s going to be very important, and I can’t tell you how all of that will work, but I can tell you the philosophy behind it, and the philosophy behind it is that we will have pay to win over my dead body.
• Let’s say you go to a high-level dungeon, and the reward at the end is a very powerful sword. But maybe you don’t have the time or you don’t want to do that dungeon, or you don’t want to grind. You want to go right into the shop and buy a sword. The golden rule that we found that makes everybody happy is the sword that you buy in the cash shop is twenty percent less powerful than the sword that you grind and work your ass off for.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

 

[Excidium]

Cash shop gear, really...

 

[Caim]

Not a fan of items levels. And I can already predict people ganging up on one faction to wipe them out early. And if only 2 factions are left it might end in a stalemate.

And a cash shop, ugh...

 

[Mary Sue Leigh]

Oooh I can't wait for this!! :D Orksorksorksorksorksorksorksorks..

 

[Irenaeus]

Actually doesn't look that bad... We'll see.

 

[Jaedar]

When the Drop Pods fall to the planet, there’s a metal harness that needs to go up so all the Space Marines can go out in the same time, but in the concept art and the miniatures, it’s mechanically unsound. So we actually took a picture of it, and sent it to a few fan forums to ask them to come up with a solution for us, and they’re the ones who found the solution, which is to pop it out like an ejection seat. So that’s our new approach, and so far the fans have loved it.

Steel Rehn confirmed, goty 10/10

 

[Caim]

When the Drop Pods fall to the planet, there’s a metal harness that needs to go up so all the Space Marines can go out in the same time, but in the concept art and the miniatures, it’s mechanically unsound. So we actually took a picture of it, and sent it to a few fan forums to ask them to come up with a solution for us, and they’re the ones who found the solution, which is to pop it out like an ejection seat. So that’s our new approach, and so far the fans have loved it.

Steel Rehn confirmed, goty 10/10

STEEL REHN
SOME PERFORM MULTIPLE, SIMULTANEOUS AND DEVASTATING DEFENSIVE DEEP STRIKES AND OTHERS FEEL THE PAIN
STEEL REHN
A HERETIC WILL DIE BEFORE HIS SIN
*I move away from the mic to fight for my honor as a Space Marine*

 

[Space Satan]

I can live with that, as long as they stay the fuck away from planetside 2-like droppods - several tonnes of metal and electronics to deliver single soldier who dies after 2 bullet hits. As far as I remember Iron Warriors' droppods were like a deployable bunkers with heavy bolter placement.
P.S. yet initial stage of planetside 2 droppod deployment is pure awesome, with all that descent and ambient sounds.
That's how planetary invasion should start, but with a dozen of soldiers in each pod:

Should they do that - I'll be happy as a pig in a dirt.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

When the Drop Pods fall to the planet, there’s a metal harness that needs to go up so all the Space Marines can go out in the same time, but in the concept art and the miniatures, it’s mechanically unsound. So we actually took a picture of it, and sent it to a few fan forums to ask them to come up with a solution for us, and they’re the ones who found the solution, which is to pop it out like an ejection seat. So that’s our new approach, and so far the fans have loved it.

Steel Rehn confirmed, goty 10/10

STEEL REHN
SOME PERFORM MULTIPLE, SIMULTANEOUS AND DEVASTATING DEFENSIVE DEEP STRIKES AND OTHERS FEEL THE PAIN
STEEL REHN
A HERETIC WILL DIE BEFORE HIS SIN
*I move away from the mic to fight for my honor as a Space Marine*

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

If you want do single person drop pods, do it like in Starship Troopers book - small, sheds tons of chaff on descent to confuse AA defence and ejects the soldier before it hits the ground. The only way to survive such deployment, of course, is to wear a power armor.

Even Quake 2 did drop pods nicer than Planetside 2 ffs.

 

[Space Satan]

Except that Quake droppods were a cinematic and in Planetside 2 you can control your pod. imperial guard already have gravshutes and a well established tactic of dropping shitload of recently press ganged hiveworld scum upon their enemies. SM "standart" droppods is only better in terms of orbital deployment.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Drop pods? PUSSIES

 

[Excidium]

Oooh I can't wait for this!! :D Orksorksorksorksorksorksorksorks..

You can't bash people and take their teef.

 

[Caim]

Oooh I can't wait for this!! :D Orksorksorksorksorksorksorksorks..

You can't bash people and take their teef.

QUEST: ADEPTUS ORTHODONTUS
Collect Ork Teef: 0/400
Thought of the Day: Corruption of enamel is corruption of the soul.

 

[Excidium]

No but seriously. This requisition thing stomps on my immershun.

 

[Caim]

No but seriously. This requisition thing stomps on my immershun.

There was requisition back in Dawn of War as well, so at least they're being consistent.

Incidentally, did you all know that at one point Malcador the Sigilite once suggested to the Emperor to make the Primarchs sisters instead of brothers because there would be less infighting, jealousy and rivalry that way?

Either he was tremendously stupid or a top tier .

 

[Excidium]

That would be p. hot.