yes to faction locking, maybe a feature that allows one to switch factions at least once every 12 hours or so. still I dont think the ridiculous scenarios ppl have painted here will be an issue at all. yes it might suck that "your bodies" log in and want u to join them and u cant because u already switched factions, so? its a matter of simply asking at what times they log in , so u can have a reasonable schedule as of witch factions to play at a given time, there thats it. it might be a problem, but not more than a couple of times before u realize for sure u "only" want to play as an ork, or eldar , etc . my goodness u folks gonna have some many ppl to meet and engage with u r not gonna know what to do with them. just occurred to me what if your bodies from an ork factions and your bodies from an eldar factions ask u to join them at the same time? ... !!! View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMF0gIy-8xI
Your concern about planetside 2 definitely has merit. But I dont know how ps2 would have ended up if soe had introduced a npc race of hungry space bugs to just eat away at the overpopped faction. If you find yourself outnumbered in this game you have to know that you have inadvertent allies. The tyranids could potentially be limitless in their numbers.
That is one thing they should test out in Alpha and Closed Beta to see how effective the Tyranids will be as a balancing act. The unintended consequence of Tyranids surging on one faction may still bump that faction a wee bit more pop. wise from there being more PVE opportunities from those who hate frontline PVP. So assuming the PVE base ins't too large then the Tyranids may be a decent little speedbump...but if there are ample PVErs they will probably handle the Tyranids while the initial threat from that factions PVP player zerglings can continue they merry rampage. Lots of things to test, but something needs to be done to either make the Tyranids insanely dangerous to the winning faction or there should be a soft lock on certain missions. I bet if the Tyranids are too strong alot of people will complain hardcore, since most people probably wouldn't like their effort against the main factions being completely trashed by the Tyranids...if so the winning faction is pretty much the Tyranids lol. My guess is the Tyranids will be implemented in the backfield away from the frontlines to save server power for the players at the big battles. The rearfield Tyranids will probably be annoying at best but not stop the PVP steamroll on the frontlines...why go PVE against nids when you can curbstomp other players.
Hungry Hungry Tyranids is a game whose relevance will be directly related to their response time. If they attack at random or in variable intervals, dividing up their attentions by whoever had the highest populations (although if it would be determined at the time of the attack itself or the cumulative population trend tracked between attacks), they are going to be of little use to stop the Victory Dancers*. If Tyranids were set to auto-spawn whenever a massive population shift occurred from one faction to another (particularly if the number of players logging off of one faction in a set period of time correlated or matched the numbers of players logging into another faction during the same timeframe), indicative of VD transmissions, that might be a more effective use. The problem isn't so much that a population imbalance would persist for long enough to do massive damage, it's that faction swapping and VD-activity would cause drastic, short term spikes until the action dies down. If 'Nids don't react to those spikes, they are practically useless in deterring VD. *From now on, I'm going to use the term Victory Dancers to describe the people we're concerned about who would jump ship to gain an easy victory. Yes, my abbreviating it as VD is intentional; if you don't get the joke, ask your mother or the internet. WITCH FACTIONS?! CALL THE INQUISITION! Edit: Or skip the Inquisition. I've already directed the Black Templars here. Gotta have some fun, right?
Yeah, no thanks, 12 hours of game play represents 2 days of gaming for a lot of people. This would only work if the clock ticked down while you were offline then I could be at work for 90% of it. That only tends to work if they're at school or have office jobs, I have literately no idea when I will finish work (being a chef I'm bound by what time the last customer comes in) and the time I finish work can vary up to 3 hours without knowing even an hour before hand. If you're on you Space Marine or Chaos Marine when they both ask you're screwed anyway with a faction lock in place. Also a lot of games work with an in game friends list and people have friends that they only have contact with in the game itself so you would have to log in to check who is online.
2 days, huh. Well, as one who works 12 hours a day 5 times out of 7 in a week, travels another 2, and sleeps 6-8, so I can have 4-2 hours for myself including maintenance, easing up, switching energy cells, and some gaming. That would be more than 2 days for me. And when you put it with the thing that atm they want 1 week long campaigns, with only during weekends more time to play, I am certainly against faction locking. Not that I would like to switch games, Im a Space Wolf, and I will be even if we are on the wrong end of the stick. But sometimes I wanna play with Orkz because they are funny, Chaos because looks cool and Eldar.. well, I dont want to play with Eldar. But still, I dont want to wait until the next weekend so I can play enough to switch faction. Imo either make the campaigns longer IF a faction lock is put in the game, or make the faction lock shorter. Like 2-4 hours long.
This was in my thoughts too. Despite the nids balancing factor. When people see that kind of farming battle they could instantly join to winning side (without FL). And can Nids balance unbalance fast enough (?).
