It seems a little strange to me that there won't be Guardians as a class, I mean how are you really going to be able to differentiate between the in game craftworlds when no one will be flying the colour schemes of their chosen craftworld I'm puzzled.
I would love to play as a guardian too, but from a lore standpoint they are no match for even normal space marines. Too bad that the entire game is set around the idea that we are "elite soldiers of the 41st millennium" right from the beginning, as this automatically prevents weaker (but nonetheless awesome) units s. a. imperial guardsmen, Chaos cultists and eldar guardians from being playable without heavily breaking the lore.
I truly hope that when the technology allows it, they'll make a sequel to EC that involves just "horde" armies where players control their own squads and fight on an apocalyptic scale, and then eventually are allowed to import their characters from EC1 to fight as the "hero's". That. Would. Be. EPIC.
If you have ever played Titanfall, I thought they did a very interesting thing with the Spectres and Grunts: NPCs running around on either faction - weaker than the elite players (Pilots) - but strong enough to matter and improve the feel of the combat. I think Orks with F2P boyz will accomplish that in a slightly different way - but conceivably they could use the horde units from each faction for the same purpose in the future if they wished to expand EC in that way. NPC Guardians for the Eldar, Heretics for Chaos, Guardsmen for SM, maybe even Gretchin for Orks (albeit they'd probably need to outnumber the Guardians/Guardsmen/Heretic NPCs 2:1 at least). It's a great way to add activity to the combat and the map, without needing to make the map smaller / cramming more players into a dm_deathbox map.
Yeah, one of the small problems with this style of game for a universe like 40K is that armies like Tyranids and Imperial Guard are, realistically, unplayable from a user controlled standpoint. A single guardsman is cannon fodder. A single gaunt, same idea. Since those are the basic troops of those two armies and they work on a more quantity over quality standpoint, you run into them having to be exclusive to AI hordes for PVE encounters. I love my SMs, I'm a loyal and avid fan and collector. But, I also REALLY like Eldar and Nids. Eldar's basic troops aren't very good toe to toe against a SM or and Ork. They're not meant to be. They're the Craftwords planetary defense forces, they only fight because they are forced into it at the time. Unlike the Aspect Warriors that live their lives devoted to war. So, having Guardians is really kind of laughable. It'd be like playing a single guardsman. You're armed with a flashlight, good luck.
Maybe an idea could be Guardians being free to play like Ork Boyz are supposed to be, I mean the current plan makes the Eldar sub factions seem totally pointless or am I missing something?
Well, the warlock can Showcase craftworld flavors, while the aspects will have appropriate craftworld trinkets and baubles adorning Armour is the impression i'm under. But I thought guardians were confirmed not to be showing up *edit adding additional Ftp options would diminish the horde feel the orks should have. And while I would like to see guardians, I wouldn't want to play as one. makes It seem like a waste of effort to put more f2p options.
You know, you're right. There won't be Guardians. I just checked the forum with the confirmed classes at launch again. No Guardians. Not sure wtf I was thinking lol. http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/official-basic-class-list.20852/
Eldar Guardians will not be a playable class. The issue is you want to be a hero style class and not someone who only fights cause they have to. Aspect warriors are those who have chosen the path of combat and so it makes since that they will be the heroes we are fighting as. We might still see guardians as NPC guards and what not but when it comes down to playable classes unless they change it later on the closest class you can play to a common guardian will be a Dire Avenger.
