Greetings brothers - fellow children of the holy emperor, traitorous filth and respective xeno races, here is just some content for discussion I thought of and typed out in a notepad one day.



Enhancing Immersion and Authenticity.
Of course I do not expect this to be a priority, first and foremost.

TL;DR: Enhance/Drastically alter the way the game is presented to help immersion through UI elements and everything from before and after a battle.


> Launch the game.

> Press Any Button to Start

> But from here, as opposed to a character selection screen with 4 pedestals of glorious warriors floating in the emptiness of space, the screen flips to the planet Arkhona and it's immediate surroundings in space.

• - From here one would see a 3D, rendered and artistically beautiful Arkhona erupted into glorious, mass-scale war. One could pick out small explosions, settlements turned into destruction and visible outcomes of the war wrecked unto the planet's environment all across the world, of course these would miniscule in view as the view would be of the entire (or partial) planet in space.
• - The screen would be partially the planet, the surrounding space and atmosphere, so one would see the described planet aforementioned and also the various fleets of each faction in-orbit, in their own separate areas surrounding the planet with visible skirmishes to small or even mass-scale conflicts between all the factions vessels, all the while as well vessels and various types of orbital deployment structures departing from vessels unto the planet to represent reinforcements and deployments.
• - This screen would replace the current character selection and become a faction selection, with at the top, bottom or on are around the various fleets (whatever is suitable, I'm not a game developer) would be the name of each faction.
• - Of course a selectable button or some sort of incorporated method to select a faction.

> Then the screen would zoom into a vessel, (presumably a transport or barracks vessel) of the faction selected.

• - The camera would move through the ship once zoomed into it on the way towards stopping at the character selection screen, showcasing different parts and functions of the ship as well as the personnel, (perhaps running, manning stations, gearing up for deployment, etc.)

> Once the screen finishes moving and establishes itself. The camera will settle at a lore-friendly appropriate zone depicting a authentic to lore armoury or barracks within the vessel.

> The camera will showcase the standard, tactical equivalent of each faction's warriors in the armoury/barracks (presumably at a locker, sitting at a bench or what have you, creativeness is bliss) preparing theirselves for deployment.

• - From here would be where the player actually chooses their character (if it's their first time launching the game, first time creating a character or just creating another character) the player would then name their character.
• - Then would be (from the armoury or barracks specifically) the choosing of their loadouts, classes and overall arsenal. Only this would be available here.
• - A suggestion would be, eventually, faction-specific UI. This would do wonders for the impression of the game at the onset for immersion and authenticity into who the player is representing.

> Then after their character is created and all their loadouts completed, the character would press a button called "Ready for deployment" or something to that effect in-which a warning message will appear asking if the player is sure.

> Then, the character would actually load into the ship, (can be instanced with other players moving around, or just a space without players, whichever) from their position in the barracks or armoury and actually be able to move throughout the vessel with all the features of accessing the game denoted before from just the menu, being incorporated into different sectors of the ship and requiring the player to actually move to said area, interact with something or someone and then be able to commence a feature of the game such as queing for a battle, loading the worldmap, inventory, store, guild, selecting a gamemode - what have you.

> Accessing the world map would be at the bridge of the ship, at a large authentic faction-specific, lore-friendly peice of technology showcasing Arkhona, (such as a large holographic, circular table, or a large holographic projection being shown on the walls of the ship) from here the player interacts with it and then the camera zooms into the holographic projection. This is where the world map is displayed and all it's current features accessable there.

• - The world map and it's features of selecting a gamemode or queing for a game would be the same as they are now.

> The "Battle Now" feature would be represented on the bridge as well, it would be near the world map projector, showcased as a terminal, intercom or person where the player interacts with it to recieve new outstanding tasks and be deployed into the planet.

• - Once the player starts queing for a game, they can leave the terminal, intercom, person or what have you and move around the ship with the que status at the top of their screen.

> From either instance of queing for a game, accepting a match from the que will then instantly transition to a cutscene of the player running into a smaller transport vessel (or perhaps even a orbital self-deploying structure) aboard their vessel with others running into the ship or other means of deploying as well, we then see the ship, intitiate, with a view of the hangar or area around them with other personnel and ships doing their duties, lift off, hover, take off and launch into space towards Arkhona.

> From this little cutscene, we then transition into the loading screen with the beautiful wallpapers.

> Then one loads in and engages in the name of their faction.

> Then the match finishes, but then the players loads into the ground, on-site established sectors for their forces. Such as the current garrison, but eventually, hopefully, each garrison being lore-friendly, authentic and unique to their faction.

> From here, the same aspects from the ship of physically interacting with an object or someone to initiate any of the features of the menu related to the game would be. (Except settings, obviously) One could include a erected barracks, armoury, warmaster's tent or structure and various other immersion-aiding, authentic aspects of a ground-force garrison.

> One could return to their vessel they arrived from at the garrison as well, probably denoted as a landing bay with a transport vessel. Coupled with a cinematic similar to the one mentioned above but obviously, leaving Arkhona.


Addendum:
One could transport from, eventually, their guild's vessel from both the ground garrison and their deployment vessel in space. Or perhaps, once one joins a guild, their deployment vessel becomes the guild vessel.


Dark Angels, 1st Company, Deathwing, Brother-Epistolary of the Librarium.
Fortress Monastery - Angelicasta

I don't suppose you could give a tl;dr version by any chance?

Late reply, but thy document has been edited as such.

This sounds like an absolutely insane amount of work for the devs.

Is it a good idea? Sure.

Would it be awesome? Yes.

Would I prefer them to work on this instead of improving the game play, fixing bugs, adding more weapons, war gear, maps, game modes, cosmetics, vehicles, meta systems, etc? No.

If you really want to make suggestions on how the devs can increase the players immersion, etc, I would suggest you think of ways they can do it using pre-existing assets and systems, rather than suggesting that they create a huge range of assets which would require an immense amount of work for a feature that is not very important in the grand scheme of things.

He fully expects this to be way on the backburner

I think this would be awesome but I think it would also be an issue. A player would have to go through all of this just to get into the game! A lot of players don't really care about immersion and just want to play, which highlights the advantages of a quick and simple UI. I know I'd get tired of all the waiting after the first few times. This would fit pretty well in a singleplayer game but in a multiplayer PvP game like this it wouldn't really work.

To be honest I didn't think it was possible to give a tl;dr version and was just kidding, lol.

Kinda how I imagined space marine to be in a way. I love the idea but I agree much work would have to be done, I say put this on the feature list to give it a shot of being seen. And as for going into battle as described it gives me a split image of how halo5 gives multiplayer starts

Love this idea. Would make queue times more enjoyable and loadout creation more fun. Not to mention the immersion factor...

As for the resources to pull this off... they could always outsource the project. It would be more programming than art. And art assets can be created for this rather quickly.

Greetings brothers - fellow children of the holy emperor, traitorous filth and respective xeno races.

I appreciate the feedback, criticism and overall general discussion. But let me stress this, as I purposefully went to the trouble of stating it at the beginning of the post - evidently to no success:

"Of course I do not expect this to be a priority, first and foremost."

As such, critique would be for me to simply just focus my efforts on providing critique for improving the gameplay as mentioned by @Saeritan, 'tis fair but obviously that is not the subject of this specific post. And no doubt that is the focus of the majority of current critique, in no way does this hinder it.

If one does not appreciate this content despite labeling it as what it is - then that simply is the case and no doubt move on, as opposed to providing unnecessary criticism and making overtly obvious statements about a notion that is clearly elicited and explained in the top of the post, no?

Very apt criticism for the content explained and I appreciate you extrapolating your opinion.

The cutscenes would of course, (hopefully) have the functionality of being skipped.
The rest, I'm sure a player could bare with; sacrifice a few more minutes or perhaps seconds (depending on how it is implemented) to simply increase the quality of the product.

Perhaps I should've mentioned this in the initial post, but I also have the idea that after at least a character is created the ideal situation would be the player simply selects the faction vessels orbiting Arkhona and their player loads into the ship and then simply travels a few seconds or perhaps a minute to reach objects of aforementioned functionality such as queuing for a battle.

(IE:
- Player has at least a character created.
- Launching the game subsequently would replace the character selection screen in space currently with the four factions in orbit.
- Select faction's area of orbiting vessels. Akin to how a player currently selects their character on the pedestal.
- Character instantly loads into the ship at the barracks or at last area in vessel/terrestrial garrison upon logging out.)

So after the initial first time start up or first time creating character of said faction, unnecessary time extending aspects, such as zooming through the ship would no longer occur. Then subsequent launches of the game denotes the new functionality of replacing the current existing character selection screen and then adding a little bit on-top of it.

I, personally, don't understand forsaking superior quality and thus further being engaged into a game just for saving a minute or two, after all this is a very niche fiction with very specific and exacting fans expecting X and Y, etc.

But very fair critique and thanks for the discussion!