Hello, crusaders! I explored lots of different visions of an Imperial Guard, and now I'd like to talk about it. First of all, I think f2p system is unacceptable for Imperial Guard. It's a good idea for orcs because of their specific culture: they are wild uncontrollable green tide of WAAAGH. But IG is a strict organization where guardsmen have to OBEY orders, and I even can't imagine a horde of f2p IG-soldiers. It permissible only if they are "White Shields". If IG will be a normal, non-f2p faction as planned, what can do an ordinary guardsman against a spacemarine or a chaos sorcerer 1 vs 1? IG-soldiers should always work in team against their enemies - it is a big advantage of them. So, you can rule not ONE guardsman, but play as sergeant of little squad (2-4 soldiers under your control), and every soldier from your squad will have his own specialization (i.e. for example, every class in game will have 3 talents trees, so, guard squad will have 3 different talents trees depends on different soldiers in squad), also you can use abilities of every of your soldiers. For example - your squad has a medic, a guardsman with plasma and a primaris psyker\battle psyker. On this basis you can use a medic's healing ability, high damage from plasma and a psyker's psy-power. Moreover, you can choose your soldiers - master of ordnance, sniper, engineer, veteran with any weapon or even make HWT from your squad. Of course, you can customize every member of your squad. Additionally, your sergeant will have a special talent tree, where he can change a whole squad's destiny. Gameplay is easy to realize - 3rd person shooter (no 1st person, as I read here) where you play as a sergeant and give different orders to your squad. It can be like the "Star Wars Republic Commando" with ordinary orders (follow me, defend this position, etc.) and special orders (use medkit from your medic, use psy-power from your psyker and so on). Also you can rule them like pets in some of the mmo-games. Finally, I'd like to say some words about regiments. Every regiment will have his own special perks, classes and orders. For example, Death Korps of Krieg (IF this regiment will be in game) will have special Quartermaster and Grenadier class, and so on. So. What do you think about it?
Penal factions BAM! There ya go. Disorganized and largely useless F2P org. Just give subscribers the ability to play as a commissar and -BLAM- them for not listening. Problem solved! Yeah, not likely That aside, I Could perhaps see guardsmen play something similar to mastermind of city of heroes. Start with a unit or two under your command, gain more specialized units as you level up, and give them concise orders and direction. But it would be strange to implement in a balanced way...never really heard of a somewhat-skill-based-shooter that allows for one character to control a mob of NPCs.
Even if you give Guard players a whole squad instead of a single soldier, they will be at an disadvantage - the reason simply being that coordinating an entire squad unsurprisingly requires significantly more coordination that doing the same for a single character. Simply put, where in FPS mode you simply can shoot someone in the face, in TPS mode you have to order one of your guys to shoot someone in the face, which arguably takes longer. The closest solution to the guard problem I could imagine would be making every player some sort of Stormtrooper (i.e. Imperial Kasrkin) or have them come from a Death World (Catachan, for instance).
Actually F2P peeps who get to play as an Ork made me laugh hard to be honest. Imagine an Ork git, equipped with just a vest and a gun, going head to head against a veteran Space Marine with seals and medallions all over his armor. :3
Considering that my computer will already be dealing with 300 individual 'Murica Marines and such on the screen at once, an additional 400 Imperial Guards, which might have summed up to 100 individual players, would've been really laggy. Don't get me wrong though. I like the idea, but I doubt it'd be realistic.
I agree! Like I said before, It was a good idea for them to pick Orks! Because if they manage to get as many people playing as they hope, Then it will be awesome to see a horde of orks running towards you!
the squad idea could work if you dont have to tell you're men what to do, but the problem is that guardsmen only do what they are told to do when they are told anyway IG will not be implemented because every faction is at war with each other and factions are made with the idea of progression from one stage to another AND as you know a simple guard cannot become a space marine so problem solved
It's sad because the impossibility of it being implemented is high, but at the same time is one of the main reasons I loved Star Wars Battlefront so much.
