The original game did make stupid and crude look cool, the Orkz were originally designed as a sarcastic dig at humanity (like having the Stormboyz dressed as German Stormtroopers) and the perchance for either being really lethal or just killing themselves where they stand. A few years later they kept the stupid and crude but ditched the underlying sarcasm that was Ork and made them too serious.
There's a subtle difference I think. Orks now look cool, visually... in the game they look cool. Hell when they do Ork comics its all cool. Thats because orks are such a visually cool race that you can't help but go wow these guys are cool. If you want a writer to straight up write them cool its going to take some specific remolding so that they can brand it and establish the tone for other writers to work around. Orks are just so visually cool and its so weighted to how things look for them to create theme then you're going to have roadblocks for authors trying to create good narrative. I think they're pretty close to that being ready enough. Another struggle for Ork writing is just how often characters die. Orks die in droves and people have a hard time keeping names up after a while. There are only so many orky names you can do before you get the LOTR problem of having to really have a keen memory or writing down bios for every single person you can then look back on....however GW's basically handled that before by having entirely separate factions that do the dieing. IG (refuse to remember a new name for them especially one as clunky as the new one.) . So somehow they're going to have to fashion a rule about how they characterize expendables for orks compared to the less expendables.
Well, if the system has number limiting battle zones, then there could be an imbalance of 1 paid and 19 free versus 20 paid. The system would easily cause power imbalance. Now, if there is no number limit it just ads to the cannon fodder for the real orks to be shielded by. In theory the unpaid free orkies would bolster the populationwe will not have in the game. It looks like to me, that orks will be the most outnumbered race. We need a ton of freebies to help represent an actual ork waaagghhh.
Or the ork characters just have to be grizzled veterans who know how to survive: Skarboyz, 'Ard Boyz, Nobz, Mega Nobz, Kommandoz, or pretty much any ork from the Blood Axez, Bad Moonz, or Deff Skullz. =)
They could always just force the generic F2P Boyz to use hip fire mode exclusively. It fits the fluff since Orkz just like to spray bullets everywhere and it would help with the balance by making them ineffective past medium range. The paying players would be the veteran Orkz (Flash Gitz/Lootas) who have learned that aiming makes you more killy.
there will never be a player limit for an area nor seperated areas its one of the main features of EC to have extremely huge battles!
Not looking at individual ork balance issue but more overall game issues, I think it will be awesome going up against a massive green waaaghhh it would be silly 50 Marines going up against 50 Orks i want to go up against 500 Orks if most of that is f2p cannon fodder then awesome and in the heat of combat you come across a premium badass ork that's what the grim future is about. If the game is based around controlling territory and due to numbers the Orks are dominating then I am assuming that's when the Tyranids would come into play while a small band of Eldar (human players) try and take a stronghold the game would launch a Tyranid (NPC) attack on say an ork held factory, if they lose that the availability of vehicles in battle would be reduced so the force would have to split some going to fight the Eldar some against the Tyranids. Also at the same time the Space Marines could get an order telling them to fight for the same stronghold meaning the large number of orks now have Eldar and Marines to deal with plus the Tyranids.
Well if they really take thematics and fluff into consideration. The idea behind the ork is actually quite brilliant. I'm not sure if you know this but the orks yell "Dakka, Dakka" because they truly believe that doing so improves the accuracy and power of their weapons. Orks have a sleeping power inside much like psykers where if there are many of them in one place believing the same thing, it influences and creates these powers. This is where the power of the "WAaaagh" comes from..(basically if they ever ally under one warchief and banner, it will be the end of the 40k universe lol) All this being said they have a huge disadvantage in accuracy and they have a senseless urge to rush and kill with their hands because they are ignorant and do not understand their powers. The game will basically "force" the f2p player to run in since they are constantly missing shots creating a difference/balance in the gameplay. Becuase of sheer numbers it will not be a disadvantage.. I will assume that the ratio of paying to non paying players will be something like 3 to 1 and a space marine can take on 3 orks on par, for sure.
The ratio of Boyz vs Nobz has been stated at a bout 9 to one, it's also been stated that a skilled player playing a paid boy can kill a Space Marine 1 on 1 but he will be out gunned and out armoured.
