I think you (Devs) are missing a great opportunity, for all the wrong reasons. Here is why: 1) Any title with the word "Warhammer" in it, is guaranteed to both garner 100% attention, but...100% disdain if implemented incorrectly. Therefore, you need to avoid "short cuts" such as scaling down game aspects that were advertised or promised as "massive". Either deliver what is stated or be doomed. As a result, relying on small to large maps with strict borders and with new and different maps released to add variety does not cut it. You need something else besides limited sized maps in a lobby shooter. The world map could have helped, but its current state is a disgrace to the IP and your talents. 2) If the most common phrase stated by players in game is; "That does not make sense", in regards to how they view the combat relationship between classes, then you are doing it wrong. I heard you all were Warhammer/40K players at one time...thus, I do not need to point out the many things that violate the lore in this game. Here is the best example of many: Ork weapons with better durability than Space or Chaos Marine weapons? Space Marine (LSM and CSM) are forged by extremely skilled and talented experts...Ork weapons are crude yet effective, but not high quality. Orks rely on sheer numbers overwhelming you. Currently, this is the opposite and one of the most inaccurate aspects of the game. Your original idea with Orks being F2P to ensure sheer numbers albiet with cruder weapons was genius, but never done. I am sure part of the issue was players not having fun playing Orks as cannon fodder, but it did not have to be that way either... there is an additional way. Let the players be stronger/leader type Orks and the rest of the Orks "bots". All the while keeping weapon quality lore and Ork Strength lore intact. 3) There will never be game balance, i.e. Race/Class balance as long as you avoid the basic class concept of: Fighter, Caster, Rogue, Healer. And "Race Elements" need to be subtle. Better to have ALL Race/Classes start exactly the same and then adjust in small increments accordingly. Instead, the way you have done it in this game is ONLY one or TWO ways: STRONG or WEAK (Nerf or OP). Small quality adjustments are always better than huge low quality adjustments. It is a simple concept that you all have made difficult.
"3) There will never be game balance" I disagree with that, Orks, Chaos and loyalists seems mostly balanced only need some minor tweaks. Problem is Eldar, reduce their health or toughness, lower their damage a bit and problem solved.
The short recap of EC's development 1) Some of the really big tech from 3rd party groups never materialized. Specifically, interconnected servers for affordable mass zoned areas. There was also a "minor" staff shakeup, and that's when Nathan came in (which I think was positive for the game). 2) From the dev side, they've said match bots are roughly equal to a player in terms of server allotment. So every bot you add is a player out. Obviously that doesn't help with your solution of more bodies. 3) Over the course of a year the changes have seemed pretty small. The change from eldar being a faction desperate for help to a powerhouse was a change in damage drop-off to the ASC and the release of howling banshees, but it precipitated a meta shift that wasn't easy to predict. A lot of "major changes" have actually been related to performance, and the direct impact it has on certain builds (melee hit detection and the high RoF weapon bug come to mind). About eldar- I know everyone thinks the solution is to nerf their health/armour (protip-a direct nerf to toughness has zero impact on DA, HB, SH, and warlock, the classes that are the root of the discussion). But that idea doesn't resolve melee (time differences in animation and various detection issues) and it's very easy to manipulate with wargear. If the problem was hitting and damaging them then plasma ball spam would have solved it, but it hasn't. There are wider issues, and simple number solutions may not meet them.
Well Eldar needs to be fast, hard hitting and good swordsman, the only problem is when you hit them with a bolter they shouldn't require whole clip or more to die.
When I saw this thread's title I thought I will find a list of things that are done wrongly in the game yet in OP i find only a tip of the iceberg. Therefore i have to add my mantra in here: Do you realize this game is only three steps away from Greatness, but always comes up short? why is that so? because among other things, the game has no background story whatsoever and no lore to gnaw upon as a warhammer fan! Give me lore, give me campaigns, give me some background and I can patiently wait until you balance the game-play out.
I do mostly agree on point 2. Its extremely unsatisfying to me personally that Orks are on the same level in terms of numbers and stats as SM/CSM, it ruins the immersion. And i heard times and times that bots would deny space for real players and its just heartbreaking especially when i watch 'For Honor' trailers and see hundreds of bots there. Thats how Orks should be. Right now they're more of an army of Commando Nobz really.
Alright, funny thing. For Honor looks like it has these massive armies right? Do a head count, let me know how many you actually see. I don't think you'll ever see more than 80 in a match at one time (and that's a high approximation, I would say as low as 40 is possible), and those bots are very low in resource cost. They're scripted with a very limited list of options, and their animation list is as limited. I also have a sneaking suspicion that they're programmed with a mass script rather than individual scripts (something which I first and recognized in the LOTR when they CGI'd the Battle of Helms Deep, was pretty cool at the time) but that's a debate for another time. EC conversely would require more complex scripts, especially if they can melee like players. In terms of low resource bots following players, that might happen someday, but "someday" hasn't been very kind to you EC players. Don't worry about all the boyz being so tough though, Skarblitz only gets the best for his Waaagh! and you're it. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well now that I've utterly crushed you... Some good news! Background nerd knowledge-the original foundation for this game was going to be Pikkotech servers. The idea is pretty simple, rather than one massive (expensive) server to house 1000 players at a time, it was going to be a network of small servers, maybe 50 players each, that swap and transfer players between them in localized content. You might compare it to seamless phase transitions seen in other games, but on a much faster scale. For reasons that have to go into networking, this failed. But that's ok, because as people go crazy with streaming services and interconnected life devices the technology to keep up with this digital era is expanding. Even though Moore's law is starting to trickle off we're still making technological advances, and it's possible that AI designed chips might bypass the quantum limit we thought existed. At some point this game (and every game) might have that full potential. The second part that goes with this is how new Eternal Crusade is. Reusing script and assets from games is a long running tradition, and part of the unexpected* pitfalls of development this game had that other games don't have is because of how much is original to it. Now Eternal Crusade might crash, but a developed lobby shooter primed for MMO gameplay set in the 40k universe has a lot of potential. Don't think that if this game fails that we won't see another one. Of course, the future is fickle and maybe screen-based interfaces become obsolete in comparison to full-dive technology. At which point I will be playing SAO. *I say unexpected, because judging by this forum people were blown away. Those with a more technical grasp on the situation shrugged and said "what did you expect?" It's not resignation, it's foreknowledge. My real excitement comes from how far they pushed the envelope.
First you stomp my dreams, then you go all Morpheus on my sorry ass... savage! What you're saying does make perfect sense though; time will show. It would be a shame to see another project like this crumble though (first one dead before birth if you remember Dark Millenium). Let us not be Space Marines with all their 'Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment' nonsense
