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I do agree with StarTrotter on this one.

Plus, aforementioned tyranids can easily attract above listed contenders: Imperials to conquer the threat, orks for a good laugh, Eldar for their own shenanigans, and Chaos is just Chaos; Arrive. Raise hell. Leave.

I've always liked DC Universes method of doing outfits.

Superhero "Styles" are tied different from items and their stats.

You collect 'styles' from items, or style selections, you then put that style on your character, no matter how you your upgrade gear. - It also adds in a collecting thing as well, as you then want to collect the complete style if you want to put a certain look together.

It acted as the best of both worlds, in my mind.

I like the idea but can you elaborate about the superhero styles?

@ devs and others on location: I agree with my peers. The location should be on the eastern half of the galaxy someplace that way it would make sense for every race to be there, especially if the lore may include our actions.

Oh, and another question: I have recently assembled my new computer with the following stats - AMD 8 Core processor, 7950 Radeon 3GB video card. It's a very powerful computer for the current generation (it's overkill to be honest) but will it run EC smoothly... preferably on the highest settings?

I don't see why it should be in the Eastern half, if every race isn't going to be there at launch. By the time Tau would be added (if it ever gets to that point), you could always just move the setting forward while holding a massive 'end game' campaign to see who wins the previous planet. Then go Ultima and choose a planet there as a new setting. It'd be like what PS2 does with the warpgate resets.

But the Tyranids are in the game and they don't have much of a presence outside the eastern half of the galaxy.

Leviathan is attacking from the south, but up through the galactic plane. It's perfectly feasible an arm or even an advance splinter fleet was sent ahead into the general area of Obscurus. Also, IIRC, there was some daemon world in the Eye that had Carnifexes fighting Bloodthirsters, so yeah.

Aye Tyranids strike everywhere. That being said, Tyranids are a wider threat in the eastern segment. The only reason I cited that destination is because it would be easier to introduce Tau without having to spend a large amount of resources on dveloping a new system and lore for a different destination. Think about it! It would be cruel to request they scrap an entire planet system just to add one race when we don't even know how many resources the company has at their access and how dynamic they are attempting to make the current planets or planets.

Finally, it would make more sense for the Obscurus region's primary antagonist to be chaos. Having nids as the prime foe wouldn't make as much sense near the eye of terror. Placing it in the far east gives an easier access to Tau, a more common conception of Tyranids, etc

If they get to the point where their playerbase is so big that they're thinking about adding Tau, I don't think devising a new planet would be that much of an issue. Lore-wise, if you really, really wanted Tau in the game, you could make it work feasibly on the same planet you launched the game at, I think.

 TheSGC wrote:
If they get to the point where their playerbase is so big that they're thinking about adding Tau, I don't think devising a new planet would be that much of an issue. Lore-wise, if you really, really wanted Tau in the game, you could make it work feasibly on the same planet you launched the game at, I think.

I would love to have space battles, moons, and other such things by the time we hit huuuuge playerbase.

You can... but it requires a bit of stretching for it (which is admittedly something 40k lore can easily do). I never quite said it couldn't be done. They don't ride the warp naturally instead skimming across it which is slower but much safer. They have allies that are actually warp sensitive and could possibly get a special ride from it. I believe there are even expedition forces to map out locations. Even then, a warp rift could swallow some tau hole and pop em out elsewhere and you could make up some fluff claiming it is new Tau fluff (coughriptidecough). That being said, it's a bit awkward as the amount of troops to maintain a battle would require easier and quicker transportation and Tau wouldn't be prone to sending forces that far. Observing the 13th Black Crusade, Tau weren't permitted to be a part of that instead cast off to the Damocles (misspelled) Crusade where they could fight several factions iconcally IG, Orks, and Nids (most of which I believe were more focused upon the 13th Crusade letting Tau have massive victories). The Tau are an expansionary force but they exist in a small segment of the galaxy.

In the end it is their option. I just recommended the eastern sector as it would be less difficult for them to add Tau (I might be biased but it seems Tau are a relatively popular army at the moment) in the possible future. Along with that, it would make more sense for Tyranids to be the big bad of the region (closer to the eye the more it would make sense for chaos. Kinda like how if you are near Armageddon it maeks more sense for the Orks to be the thing).

In the equation, Tau are the most restricted in terms of mobility. The rest would easily dart towards a planet if it had any significance. A chaos artifact of untold power, imperial weapons of might, prophesies of the Eldar, being a tomb world, DE joining to have fun with the souls, orks coming cause they heard there was a good battle. Bam problem solved! But with Tau it is usually more trade alliances and expansion of their domain which implies a system near their home planet.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 TheSGC wrote:
If they get to the point where their playerbase is so big that they're thinking about adding Tau, I don't think devising a new planet would be that much of an issue. Lore-wise, if you really, really wanted Tau in the game, you could make it work feasibly on the same planet you launched the game at, I think.

I would love to have space battles, moons, and other such things by the time we hit huuuuge playerbase.

A combination of Eve Online(Space Combat, Vast Universe) and Warhammer Online's ground combat in a 40K setting... one can dream....



I'd still like to know if we're going to have battlegrounds, scenarios, minigames. While Age of Conan had an amazing game world, amazing combat(combo's, finishing moves, spell weaving!!) and really awesome looking characters, their battlegrounds were poorly done. The 6 months I played post launch, I qued daily most of the time I was on, and probably had less than 10 matches pop in the que the entire 6 months I played(unless our guild qued groups to fight each other). Nobody ever qued, because the BGs were so poorly implement, there wasn't any incentive/rewards system in place, and there's also the fact that you couldn't level up via PVP.

If you're going to say BGs will take away from Realm vs Realm, I'd beg to differ. Warhammer Online had very active open world RVR(Realm vs Realm), as well as very active BGs, with plenty of incentive to participate in both. WAR failed for a myriad of reasons, however it wasn't due to BG's taking away from the Campaign. If anything the ability to participate in both BGS and the Campaign kept a lot of players around that might have let their subscriptions drop much sooner.

Crowd Control.... The bane of every newly released PVP centric MMO in the last decade. Please don't take 6 months post launch to start scaling back or sorting out CC. Every single MMO I've played since WoW that had pvp, had totally out of control CC at launch. Anyone that played WoW in the early days can attest to experiencing the mind numbing, pound your face into a brick wall frustrations associated with being "perma feared" by a WoW Warlock prior to Blizzard implementing diminishing returns. AOC, Rift, Aion, WAR, and several others the CC was outrageous at launch and totally ruined pvp. Stunfest, perma stun, perma fear, perma snare, multi-knock downs, perma polymorphed. Do we really have to experience the same exact frustrations with every single PVP MMO that launches when it comes to crowd control? Please think diminishing returns on CC abilities, temporary immunities, ect. Think "less is more" when it comes to Crowd Control for launch.


Can we hear something about vehicle combat, vehicle modeling, vehicle manning, damage models, ect? Vehicles and aircraft in 90% of todays games seem more of an afterthought, thrown in with MINIMAL design and MINIMAL development. All the development time in the world is put into infantry game play, while vehicles are severely neglected. Damage models are non existent. It's simply shoot any vehicle X amount of times and "boom" goes the vehicle, regardless if it's a frontal shot, flank shot, rear shot. Will the damage models take into account fuel tank location, ammunition stores location, trajectory of round versus armor(angle of impact), armor thickness vs velocity and size of projectile, sloped armor ect?

In most of todays games there are no "stations" in any of the vehicles, you get ONE generic view from behind the vehicle and that's it. There's no gunners seat view, no drivers seat view, no commanders seat view, ect. I think it's essential for immersion, and adds infinitely to the requirement for PLAYER SKILL to require players to switch between different seats/stations in order to effectively, and SKILLFULLY move and fight from their vehicle. And please for the love of god give us a gunners seat with a "main gun" view, with realistic optics and magnification, thermal sights(black/white and white/black), range adjustments to the main gun, the ability to change between ammo types according to enemy threat, ect. Give us a commanders seat where you can pop the hatch and look around, or scan the battlefield with binoculars, or have the commander brandish a bolter to fight off sappers!

Will players be able to invite a team mate to multi-crew a vehicle? As in two players manning one vehicle? If this feature is implemented, please it should be invite only. Nothing worse than having some random bozo jump in your gunners seat!!!

As far as vehicles/aircraft in game and ammunition, will players be able to choose between different load outs, or customize their own load out prior to launching? more of XX type ammo, less of XY type ammo? And the ability to save specific load outs on their user profile?

What about vehicle customization? Will players be able to outfit different types of main guns on tanks(plasma cannon, Lascannons, Launchers, ballistic barrel, flamethrower, ect)?

Will the be some sort of vehicle repair mechanic in game? ie repair a thrown track? Drive to an in field repair depot to replace a damaged main gun? Will there be a playable Adeptus Mechanicus or Explarator class for each realm that can repair vehicles during combat, or between firefights?

From what I've read in one of the dev interviews, vehicles in game will have a big impact on the battlefield. I imagine tanks will be an extremely valuable asset, that should NOT be driven immediately into enemy lines and lost/destroyed the minute they're spawned into game world. With that thought in mind, will players that are cautious with these valuable assets be able to resupply their ammo, refuel, replace wounded or dead crew members for their vehicles via respawn stations or some sort of "in field refitting" mechanic?

Will players that are playing as infantry be able to ride on tanks? Of course it's not advised in combat, but it would be great for helping infantry players move with their armor until they sight the enemy or make enemy contact.

If you haven't noticed, I'm a bit of an armor enthusiast. I think you'll lose a lot of potential players who are armor enthusiasts if your vehicle damage models and vehicle user mechanics follow suit with most of todays hybrid games that combine infantry combat with armored combat.(ie The infantry combat offers cutting edge game play with extremely deep customization options, while the armor aspect of the game is bare bones minimum with ZERO customization options, all in all just plain garbage.)

As far as aircraft... think IL-2 Sturmovik!!




...

Although I can see that you're an armor enthusiast, I can only support about 1/2 of your post. I played WAR as well and left because RvR dried up in the areas I played in with the exception of tier 1. For this reason, pvp was almost exclusively found in Bgs, not in the open world. I can't argue about how it contributed to the experience/rep grind every player needed anyway though.

Stuns suck in general. I liked how SM handles it.

Tanks: compromise - have the ability for all those "upgrades" just like BF3/4 with the machine spirit taking over the positions a player doesn't occupy. I still love 3rd person view while driving and 1st person while fighting in a tank.

I hope being able to hitch a ride on a tank is an option for an upgrade.

Still hoping for an answer about orbital support. .. that's my armor question. Can we call upon satilites and naval weapons, ect?

IIRC there will be some notion of orbital bombardment in the game, tied to your own strike cruiser, but the details are scarce at the moment.

The amount of anxious energy the thought of this game gives me is almost unbearable. I'm an avid gamer but i've never tried my hand at an MMO before. I'm psyched to get my feet wet with this game! I just finished Space Marine and i'm itching for some more 40K gaming goodness!

 DemetriDominov wrote:

Tanks: compromise - have the ability for all those "upgrades" just like BF3/4 with the machine spirit taking over the positions a player doesn't occupy. I still love 3rd person view while driving and 1st person while fighting in a tank.

I've played several tank simulators. It's incredibly immersive to experience driving a virtual vehicle from the drivers view, especially in a tank. Your view is quite restricted, and you're forced switch to your commander's seat frequently to effectively navigate the battlefield. All the while communicating with team mates on voice comms to find and fix enemy locations. Your scanning for targets constantly switching between the gunner and commander views, when the enemy is fixed you must quickly switch to the driver's seat to face your frontal armor towards the enemy, then quickly switch back to the gunners seat. You're engaging enemy armor, hearing rounds thumping off the exterior of your vehicle, fighting off sappers and infantry close in, switching from station to station back and forth at a frantic rate within your armored fist of death in order to survive. I'm telling you that system of crewing gets your blood pumping infinitely more than a single, generic, 3rd person view.

Third person view being the ONLY view available for vehicles in games(PC or console) screams CHEAP and incompetence and in my book. 3rd person view from a fighting vehicle is as far from visceral as you can get, and I distinctly recall "visceral" being mentioned a time or two in that dev interview.

I say the complete opposite. I only like being in first person view to target enemies. 3rd person to drive. We'll have to just agree to disagree on this point.

Miguel, any chance you guys utilize the Mantle API AMD is releasing soon?

 TheSGC wrote:
Miguel, any chance you guys utilize the Mantle API AMD is releasing soon?

Doubt it, way to little info out on that yet.

-From watching and reading various interviews, it appears there will be "one server" world wide for EC. "Defiance" went with the "one server" approach. It wasn't truly ONE SERVER. It was one gigantic player pool, and the game split up the entire game world into hundreds of "sessions" or "sub-servers". More than half the time I played, it was a total pain in the ass to get all my friends into the same session/sub-server. When we did finally get 6 to 10 of us in the same session, in the same area, in the same group, one person or a small contingent of our group could stray 50 meters from the main group, and they'd drop into another session/sub-server. We would have to go through the whole pain in the ass all over again to get everyone in the same session. This really took away from game play, not to mention immersion.

Will EC's game world truly be open world? ie If me and my chapter mates from Spacewolves drop onto continent X, and some of our bretheren from Dark Angels also drop onto continent X, will we be able to link up our two different groups at our pre-designated rally point without having to worry about which "session", "sub-server" our brothers from DA dropped into?

If Behavior Online is going to go with a similar "one server" world wide approach, and if the game is truly going to be open world, will players have to endure the same pains as I experienced in Defiance?


-Miguel has made it pretty clear there will be 1 stronghold per faction, per continent, so that's 4 total per continent. Will each faction always occupy the same stronghold per continent every campaign? Or will there be a randomization as to which faction occupies which strongholds when the campaign resets. I've played other games where certain "strongholds" are nigh impossible to take because of the surrounding terrain, while other "strongholds" are incredibly easy to take, again, because of the terrain surrounding the keep. This becomes a clearly unfair advantage for the faction that always occupies the stronghold with the best surrounding terrain. Strategically, the faction with the strongest keep will ALWAYS have an unfair advantage over the others. I certainly hope they take these type facts into consideration.... and implement some sort of rotation where factions start off on each continent at a different stronghold per campaign reset.


-Once a faction loses their stronghold on continent X, can that faction recapture their stronghold? Can the faction that has lost their stronghold on continent X capture another factions stronghold on that same continent?

-If a faction, or two factions lose all their strongholds on a planet, and the campaign is only left with say, Orcs vs Chaos, how will the other two factions(Space Marines and Eldar) be able to interact within the campaign?

-Will there be "continent locking"? Once a continent is locked by one faction(Orcs capture all 4 strongholds on continent A), will that continent be locked(off limits) for the duration of the current campaign? Or, will other factions have the opportunity to go back to continent A and assault the 4 Orc strongholds? I'm hoping it's truly "total war" and there's no type of continent locking implemented.





...

Hey Psychopski! Thought I'd drop in to shed some light on some of your questions-

We don't have any plans for space combat at launch. We're focusing on nailing the battlefield experience.

Battlegrounds- we're not this kind of MMO! We're not a classic MMO like WAR or WoW- we're calling ourselves a "Massive Combat RPG"- Massive Combat in the style of Planetside 2, with a deeper and more rewarding role-playing-based progression system. As a large-scale third person shooter game, we're focusing all of the fighting into our seamless open world without dividing players out into artificially created matches or battlegrounds. You can go anywhere at any time, and ambush (or be ambushed)- or find yourself in a desperate firefight!

Vehicles- we are focusing more on the infantry experience, since that's the majority of what the tabletop game is built around. Vehicles will feature, and they'll have different seats for different roles (driver, gunner, etc)- and these seats may have different camera views! We certainly haven't ruled out more rigorous damage modeling, but it's not a core focus for us. You WILL likely see all the iconic vehicle destruction results from the tabletop though- destroyed weapons, immobilized vehicles, etc.

Vehicle customization is highly likely- both cosmetic and weapons.

From a single-server perspective, our current goal is to get every player into a single world. No dividing of the player base, no instancing- if you're in our game, you're in the exact same world that every single other player of our game is in. That's extraordinarily ambitious, but we're feeling pretty confident that MuchDifferent's PikkoServer technology will help us achieve this.

1 Stronghold per Faction per Continent - I haven't heard Miguel say this personally, but I can tell you we're aiming for far, far more than that. Orders of magnitude more. Our continents are huge expanses of landmass, they would feel very empty indeed if they only had 4 strongholds on them. Inside each Territory we're planning on having multiple points of interest to contest, along the lines of (these are just examples, mind you) Manufactora, Fortresses, Bridges or Tunnels, Mines, and more. Not to mention the PvE hotspots that will be scattered around as well...

Your faction's Home Base will be uncapturable by other factions- but you only have one of these in the entire world. Your foothold in a Region or on a Continent may well be captured from you, requiring you to circle around from a different angle. In this way, you may approach the same area from multiple different angles over weeks of play. We're also not going to randomize who controls what- that's going to be squarely in the players' hands.



Phew! Hope you're excited to read some of this! Funny how having a day off gets me cranking to work on the game anyway....

- Steven Lumpkin
- Lead Level Designer

Good stuff, good stuff. Any hard news on the engine you're using? Is it Unity?

I've been hyped about the game since the announcement, and I recently discovered this Thread and decided to make an account. I have some ideas and thoughts about the game and would like to ask if they have already said something about it. (This might become an epic wall of text, if so, I'm sorry )

1. Customization
I think it might be a good idea to take a fairly new approach to this aspect. Of course I'd like to see my ribbon-hung Space Marine chest, but it would really lose interest if everyone had them. The "cheaper" one's should be awarded for stuff like "Kill 100 Orks", but the bigger and better looking one's might be given out by the War Council to the Strike Force leaders who fought in an epic battle in this month/week, depending on how often they should be awarded. The leaders will then decide which member fought the best and then give him the medal. Also, some armor pieces might be found in dungeons and then be transferred to the War Councils. These "Relics" should be extremely rare and also extremely OP, maybe one per map per week, which then should be contested by the four factions. Basically saying, you have to hold the area maybe for like 3 or 4 days, before you can access the almost impossible dungeon, which only the most experienced and best player of the faction can partake in.
They should always be unique and named, so it is an incredible honor to carry this piece of equipment (e.g. the Black Sword of the Black Templars, an ancient chestpiece from the times of the Heresy and more). You might wanna add a cooldown, if you introduce these, as a fully equiped Warrior might very well tear a whole army apart.
Trophies from enemies (like heads, torn armor, banners) should be available by literally tearing them off, either trough a finisher in Close Combat, or looting the corpse after the battle has been won. Once a player reaches a certain amount of "Fame", he should be given a customized head, so you can recognize the head when it is stuck on top of a trophy rod.

2. Combat
I think enough has been said about that. I would only like to add that some players, again only the most experienced and best, preferably the leaders and champions, should be OP, in terms of hard to kill, and just sweep through the enemy lines. This should be achieved by them using these "Relics" I mentioned above. Once you get to actually kill him, his head (and other body parts) can be looted and then fairly given to the one who led the assault. As only your own champions will probably be strong enough to get him down, he will then get the trophy.

3.Map
Seriously, I'd really like to know more about this before I give my opinion. Will it be like Planetside 2 with multiple open worlds, all with their own theme, or like one gigantic Continent with multiple climates(e.g. poles on both sides, a desert, some thick forests, big plains, and also some rainforest?
I'd also like to see the aftermath of a big fight. Big holes everywhere in the ground, punded from a deafening artillery fire, wrecked tanks and ruined fortified positions? I don't think that this will be possible though (sadly).


These are only my ideas, wishes and thougts. Have they been mentioned somewhere else before, or are this completely new ideas? Feedback would be much appreciated.

I don't think veteran players will be extremely harder to kill. While the game is not balanced in terms of faction-faction warfare, an new player Ork Boy could potentially kill the SM faction leader and then teabag him or something. At least, that's the vibe I've been getting. And frankly, I like it. That's how PS2 runs, whereas high-level players being absurdly difficult to kill is how traditional MMOs with PvP work. And I hate that traditional MMO system, but love the PS2 system. The battle rank system in PS2 is more about how long someone's been playing and how much time they've invested into it. It's about merit and recognition rather than becoming OP.

Sorry for the off topic post but I am sure there are a lot of space marine fans here. http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/10/17/space-marine-creator-captain-titus-would-have-gone-rogue-if-the-series-had-continued/

This shocked me, not sure how I feel about having him going rogue and forming a new chapter, but damn, would have had 2 more space marines. :(

edit: Also I remember Miguel saying there would be mutiple reveals near the end of october, will they be all at the same time or like 1 every day?

http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/
forum open!

Oh snap!

Will take a gander after uni.

silent0siris wrote:
Hey Psychopski! Thought I'd drop in to shed some light on some of your questions-

..........

- Steven Lumpkin
- Lead Level Designer

Steven,

Thanks for shedding some light!

So, when will the gameplay trailer be released exactly (which week) ?
And are there any particular favorite Chaos warbands that may become No. 5?

Yeees Night Lords, although seems like we got Raptor legion as our thing again, haha.

Just caught this on twitter.

GrahamMcNeill 5:38pm via Twitter for Mac
Together with my good pal and colleague @_AntReynolds_ I'll be working on the narrative writing for Behaviour Interactive's Eternal Crusade.

Enjoy. ;P