Here's a clue... do you think a community is going to stay with a pure meat grinder for the next 8 to 10 years? Not everyone enjoys mindless meatgrinders, nor can they stand playing them full time, 12 months a year for years on end. How many people are still playing Battlefield 2? BF3?

There's going to be ONE Eternal Crusade released, it needs to be much more than a simple race to respawn meat grinder.

Well there's quite some people still playing BF3 xD but I get your point.

That's the melee systems shortcomings though, which quite frankly sucks badly.

Yes I do think what's fn for both sides, I'm playing both, ranged and melee so I do consider both sides. Fights just aren't fun and engaging right now.

Btw, you didn't comment on my Eldar argument.

If you can't grind meat then people won't play the game in the first place. Slowing down the gameplay isn't adding any depth, it's just going to make the game more frustrating and less fun to play.

Having a downed state and healers is what's keeping this game from being a "race to respawn", that and the inconvenient spawn locations.

p.s. The reason people don't play Battlefield 2 is because Battlefield 4 exists. If DICE had kept updating BF2 and not produced new Battlefield games, then BF2 would still be the go-to game for Battlefield fans

I love shooting in contrary to melee which i prefer to run from xP. It has been some time since I joined and I managed to learn how to win fights though still have no chance with experienced assault players. I love the game and its visuals so I stayed when every player with power axe just run straight for enemy lines killed me and teammate and merry went further without even once taking notice of the bloody bullets. TTK now is fine, it feels more like a battlefield of future, and tough I hate plasma and never want to use that - from perspective I can see how its enriching battle as a whole and making gameplay more intresting. So...
Good job Behaviour, yeah

I'll respectfully disagree. Shooter fans tend flock to the next great thing that hits the shelves or that goes live online. MMO fans find a game they like and stick with said game for years on end. MMO's tend to be slower than shooters if you're saying there's no difference.

I'll say again we need to find more of a happy medium between both genres. Squad play and using tactics and strategy in a MMO type party means squat if you're entire squad/party is dead in 6 to 8 seconds of PVP combat.

I agree that the fights could use some work, but increasing the TTK isn't the solution. The melee system needs simplification.

An advanced melee system looks good on paper, but it just isn't fun to play with (remember Age of Conan?). Luckily bE has been simplifying and streamlining the melee system with every update so far, so we're moving in the right direction. The game is a lot more fun now than it was last October.

I'm sorry, I forgot about the Eldar bit. Considering that they're going to be dealing more damage and taking less than the Space Marines, the Eldar seem to be poised to be a high risk/ high reward faction right now. I think most shooter fans are going to be more comfortable playing as the Eldar, and if the game draws a lot more than just 40K fans they could easily become the most popular faction (but that's a big "if").

I think most above-average players are going to mechanically prefer to play as the Eldar, but we haven't really seen any Eldar-specific gameplay yet so that's just guesswork.

I played a Bear Shaman in AOC and it's my favorite class and favorite build of all time in any game I've ever played. The guild I was with has several world firsts and I loved the hell out of that game. Unfortunately world PVP meant simply turning on PVP in the open world, there was no campaign, no open world ownership of territories or reason to PVP other than to gank. My guild PVP'd heavily though it got old after only a couple months because again, there was no world wide campaign and PVP seemed to be an afterthought instead of an integral part of the experience. The guild vs guild stuff was instanced and the instanced Battlegrounds were a total failure because nobody ever qued for them.

The rock paper scissor melee system is just stupid, a blocking mechanic would have made melee so much more enjoyable and skill based than what we have now. Good melee systems don't have to be "advanced". Look at Chivalry, I wouldn't call the system advanced, but it's fun and engaging. I'm not saying it's the right solution for EC but why on earth wouldn't space marines block incomming blows actively instead of just bashing their weapons together continiously.

I just don't see that happen.

I see your point, but you're thinking of "MMO" as a game genre again. PlanetSide 2 is an MMO-FPS and it's TTK is generally less than one fifth of Eternal Crusade's TTK.

MMO-RPGs like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2 are every different animals from what Eternal Crusade will be (an MMO-TPS). The reason people stick with those games aren't the pace of the combat, but that they've gotten invested in a character they've spent days, sometimes weeks, leveling up and gathering gear for. Roleplaying games will always absorb more hours than shooters, that's part of their nature.


But if we absolutely have to compare two widely different genres; WoW's PvP game modes' popularity fell dramatically when Cataclysm (expansion) went live.

In Wrath of the Lich King players have approximately 20-30 000 HP depending on their class and gear, but when Cataclysm hit most players had well over 500 000 HP, with a few classes reaching up over 1 000 000 HP. Of course they increased the damage with it, but it wasn't to scale.

WotLK had very fast and popular PvP, Cata had very slow and unpopular PvP

Honestly I think you share universal opinions with a lot of people:

• Low TTK. This is especially hurtful to the melee system, in my opinion (melee system, not classes). I'm pushing for global increase to TTK. It's something a lot of people have been asking for, for quite a long time. I don't understand why Brent won't just try it for one patch or something. It's not going to break the game and cause all their fans to quit instantaneously.
• More time spent on respawn than in-game (especially as a jump assault). This is going to be a major issue when the game finally goes large-scale and respawning means respawning at an outpost 2 minutes drive away from the location you're attacking.
• Melee animations. They are frustrating. It's incredibly difficult to land even one hit in melee, but this is slightly balanced by the low TTK. It's an enormous resource cost to make new animations in a mocap studio, however, so the solution for this is extremely complex.
• Melee system. I'm actually in favour of the melee system, but a lot of people aren't. I highly doubt they will change it now though. Alexis is on to something decent. It's just clouded by lag, bugs, low TTK and difficulty of using melee attacks. The system can be pretty good, in my opinion.

You're quite right though. I've been worried myself lately. EC will always stand on a 40k crutch. I know I'm only playing it because of how much I love 40k. The game its self is enormously frustrating with these points, especially the instant death time. Nathan wants to make a good game first and foremost. Obviously we don't have the metrics, but there's definitely a bad vibe going on at the moment with many players.

I love the community interaction with the developers, but I tend to find there is an enormous delay. In particular with melee, I've noticed it can take them months to notice very serious and obvious bugs. They implemented the defensive bash back in October or November or whenever it was, and only just now has it been fixed so that it doesn't drain all stamina upon clang. I understand there was a Christmas break, but it's now March. The D-bash is still killing people in one stagger thanks to survival time. I feel like I'm flogging a dead horse raising the same point in the melee threads time and time again.