As I said in the other thread. This is not TT. You cannot balance an Shooter around TT. Just like Dread said, you can't balance around the schizophrenic flavor of 40k Lore in a game were players control individual units they are supposed to be able to fight each other where massive swings in power levels between units.
One of the few positive threads I've ever seen around here, where OP actually wants to suggest improvements instead of complaining about muh bolter or muh melee or some other contrivances.
Nothing to do with balancing it around table-top, suggesting that you can't balance a game about the flavour however is pretty ridiculous, I saw your post in the other thread but it's barely worth responding to. It's the same arguments that got the game into a 'competitive' state already. One of the key things to remember is that a game that functions similarly to this is Red Orchestra 2: Rising Storm and the upcoming Rising Storm 2, in both games certain factions have advantages (better weapons, more equipment) but are countered by lower player counts, some weapons in the second rising storm for example, have significantly less accuracy (low quality rifling) and only work up to about 70m, despite this, they work fine due to the fact that they either hit harder or suppress the enemy. The same is true for Eternal Crusade, I understand that pubs and people who don't coordinate think that a weapon that suppresses with every shot, fires very quickly albeit inaccurately and, hopefully, makes a hell of a bang is not worth using, sure some people might rely on the more accurate iterations but the idea is very much that the suppression from these weapons is debilitating at long range, I shouldn't be able to fire back at an Ork at 70m if he's opened fire first, that suppression should lock me down at that range unless I pick a scope or take cover for a moment for the suppression 'meter' to reset. The same for Eldar, I don't understand why people don't think playercount limits work, sure you'll get smaller scale games, but you'll also be able to balance them more to the 40k flavour and make certain things more powerful, Battlefront 2 is a perfect example of this. While it didn't have player limits, it did have class limits. You could only ever have 4 jet troopers as clones, for example, because they were incredibly powerful classes, they required skill to do well with (as eldar will, lower hp) but were very powerful in skilled hands and, because they were so limited, did not significantly impact a battle to the point of being overpowered. Again, I don't think anything here should be applied to live just like that, if anything, this should be tested 100% on UAT for potentially months before release onto live, if the developers ever choose to go down this path, but it is one of the largest reasons why this game is so unpopular, people don't feel like it's 40k. 40k is not competitive, certain factions don't necessarily have the weapons to kill at range but can do other, much more impressive tasks, such as suppressing the ever living shit out of everything nearby a building, even if they don't hit every shot, that many bullets coming your way will cause people to think twice, especially if it reduces your accuracy due to said suppression. Same goes to Eldar, to respond to what you said in the other thread, reapers would be significantly more powerful in terms of damage but should have imposed turn limits & less ability to rotate, their style of defensive/offensive emplacement should rely about covering one area and having long reload times, they should have down times but when locking down one area, should be able to stop 3 - 4x their own number coming through the door, easily. If they get flanked though, the tear-down time for bracing and the time to turn while firing/un-firing should be low enough that they can't simply snap and kill their attacker, they should require support. A lower movement speed would also not go amiss, being that they wear relatively 'heavy' armour for eldar units. Other than that, I can't really say much more to convince you, this is simply something I believe in strongly and I think is worth testing out, via UAT or otherwise, to see if we can get this game into a state that more 40k fans enjoy and play the game, building not only more revenue for bE, but a higher playercount and more matches for the players.
OP works because for the user, well you're overpowered. You feel like a single player character carving through a horde of NPCs. Its a power trip. The guy on the other end isn't enjoying himself at all though. The opposite is not true. Giving orks cannon fodder status and weapons that can't hit shit makes them unfun to play. Never played RO2 but I'll wager that even the "worse" weapons were still reasonably accurate and not at the comedic levels of inaccuracy orks have by lore. Suppressive fire is just another word for bad aim. Been that way since the 90s. Suppression weapons in this game are just as accurate (when used under their ideal conditions) as the non suppression weapons the suppressive effect is there to keep them from being out shot by the more mobile counterparts. And yes Battlefront did have player limits. Most sane shooter games have them to prevent things like 12 on 4. Even heavily asymmetric shooters like Natural Selection enforce this. And class limits have been a thing since the 90s. Generally they work to prevent cheese or when but when its you're limited to the "OP Class" it leads to a lot of bickering in pubs "OMG NOOB GET OFF THE CLASS AND GIVE IT TO SOMEONE BETTER" Then there is the whole range vs melee issue that I'm sure by mentioning has already summoned the usual suspects to come in and scream their insanity. You cannot really balance the two in a game. Either you have a melee centric game ala Chivalry, Dark Souls or even PVK where you have a few sub par ranged options either for softening up targets or have massive drawbacks (long reload time that forces you to stand still). Ranged focused games have used melee as either a humiliation/desperation tool (Most shooters prior to the rise of the military shooter genre) or an instagib tool (military shooter genre). The level of weapon technology in this is closer to the latter in this case (automatic rifles and machine guns). This works in TT because they get special immunities by engaging in melee (namely an unengaged target can't line up a clean shot and put a bullet in the back of your head) that would be insanity in a shooter. TL;DR You want an entirely different game.
We really need to tap into all the lore and all the sheer awesomeness of the 40K universe. Hell we could at least put some music up and scroll: "In the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium..." That spiel that you see at the beginning of every single Black Library novel. That at least explains WTF is going on for the uninformed masses that have never heard of Warhammer 40,000. How much money does it cost to play existing music and scroll lines of text on a black background? I could probably type something up on Windows movie maker, add some thematic music all in about 10 minutes. I could do one for each faction with themed music and a proper background to fit each faction in about 2 hours. That's just one small example of one tiny area of the game where immersion and Warhammer 40,000 universe could be more at play in our game. There's a lot of inspiration out there guys. Let's not let it go to waste!
Ultimately, @TheAngryDoge is right. What we keep asking for is, literally, the first iteration of this game. The original thought for this game pretty much included all of what we're asking for. That's the sad part: ALL WE REALLY WANT IS WHAT WE WERE ORIGINALLY OFFERED AS THE CONCEPT. So in the end, each of these threads really just boils down to GIVE US THE ORIGINAL GAME, NOT THIS BS. But it's not gonna happen, because regardless of what we want this game to become unless the devs get the cash+manpower (even more than the gobs of it they burned on the Pikoserver debacle) this game will likely not get much better than its current form. Not unless they start allowing players to start having a direct hand in the game's continuing development.
Hell we could even go so far as to spend a little money on something like the Helsreach series(below). Some guy did all of this for free for an audio book. You mean to tell me this type of stuff wouldn't get people fired the fuck up to play EC!?! Sign me the #$@ up for Aspirant training and knight me! Take my money! This kind of stuff is out there, it's amazing and not even associated with any game. "I will die on this world. I will die on Armegeddon Arkhona" View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D4jr-0_COg After completing the "new player experience" and Aspirant training we see our character and a similar cut scene. View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhqpYcFkeCE View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOtSVTvH8bM "The Eternal Crusade" "I will die here on Armegeddon Arkhona" This kind of stuff is BEGGING TO BE IMPLEMENTED INTO 4OK GAMES LIKE ETERNAL CRUSADE!! Who is Abaddon? We see him urging us on to do things in the Chaos campaign but only those who know the 40K backstory know who the heck he is. Why is Abaddon here? Why are we at Arkhona? Where is Abaddon? Why dont we ever see him? Who am I? Where did I come from? When did I take my oaths? What's my character's backstory? My character doesn't feel like a character it feels like a Battlefield 4 personna and that's wrong for a game set in the 40k universe. Developers don't get it when it comes to Warhammer 40,000. There's an entire universe out there and so much lore, BACKSTORY and immersive elements to capitalize on. Some games do okay, others fail entirely. Not even a single sliver of all that lore is being tapped into for Eternal Crusade.
That's more of an issue to do with the fine-tunings of the balance than an actual issue with it, from a theoretical point of view. As suggested, certain things should be more powerful but weaker in certain ways, Eldar being significantly squishier is still a thing so while they would be able to more easily dance into and out of melee, knock people's aim off with a 'stagger' on hit, they'd also die in the current 6 headshots, 8 bodyshots. When it comes to Orks, the suppression has to be sufficient that it prevents effective ranged fire beyond say, 60m, but not so as to make heavy weapons unusable, it again ties back into the concept of making the game feel like 40k, you're under the misconception that people want the game to be 100% competitive and that people don't want a sense of fluff, even if that means they're squishier. 40k fans, especially Ork ones who played during 4th Edition, are very much accustomed to playing an underpowered faction but enjoyed playing it not for how good they are on paper, but the fact that the sheer randomness of their weapons was enjoyable, for example, there is an Ork weirdboy whose name eludes me that used to be able to turn any enemy, including hero units with incredible resilience traits, into a squig but it also had a chance to backfire, and do the same to him. This was a hilarious way to act out the orky playstyle, it's a risk to both parties but will end up hilarious regardless and that's exactly what I, and a large portion of my clan, are looking for. When we play Orks, we want that level of humour alongside the ability to fight as a brutal ork, firing a weapon that may not be accurate but sure as hell prevents my enemy from shooting, makes a lot of noise and, when we finally charge, is hilarious fun to shoot as I am able to throw grenades with one hand and shoot with the other. Everything the orks do should be brutal and hilarious, in differing levels. Things like Ork rokkit launcha should be hilariously inaccurate at range but should detonate with a huge explosion, when they do work, it's glorious, when they miss, par for the course. This might not be the most competitive faction but it will certainly be the most numerous and, subsequently, rather powerful despite the setbacks, it allows the faction to play for fun and have a numeric advantage to offset the randomness, sure, you might lose a fight and die more frequently but faster respawns should be a reward for kills & executions, as should incrementally increasing health for executions. ‘Da more gitz ya smash ‘da better, dat makes ya tougha an’ bigga. dats how Boss Ghazghkull got started! It should be rewarding to play an Ork in a suicidal fashion, rushing enemy positions and getting at least 1 kill should at the very least knock 1/3rd of your respawn time off, executing people should be encouraged to become tougher, taking you to near marine-toughness at max execution count, skill allowing you to progress to become more of an individual player than a part of a war-machine. When it comes to melee vs ranged, I think Njord (i think?) is actually right on his suggestion that there should be a timer between switching weapons, playing a tactical archetype and getting into melee should require a period of delay switching back out, right clicking should instantly draw a melee weapon but switching to your bolter should have a short delay, 1s or so, to allow a melee character to recover and fight, you shouldn't be able to simply dbash and spam headshots. Again, when it comes to the aspect of having someone play a more 'op' class simply because they're better, you're looking at the game competitively again. This game aims to emulate warhammer 40,000 and evidently didn't do well at it, that's what fans want. Look at the steam reviews, well over half of them say that the game doesn't feel like 40k and that's all the people who paint and play table-top say as well, there's no sense of flavour or unique aspects to any of the factions. It's so generic it's boring, and that comes from a focus on competitive gameplay, this game needs to have that element of unique, fun gameplay where every faction has a more defining unique nature, even if it means that they aren't on equal terms individually, that's where strength in numbers & teamwork comes into play. By all means, an Ork might be weaker than a marine in this system but the suppression paired with higher melee damage and dps, due to high rof/suppression, is more than enough to give them an edge, I mean, have you tried firing at a heavy bolter at close range while it's shooting at you? your aim goes everywhere, imagine even just half of that suppression from a regular shoota. It'd work fine, I think. But as said, test this first on UAT before any implementation. You'd have dozens of clans lining up to play UAT if this was implemented, I know for sure VM would turn up and I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to say that so would DLB, XIII, MYST, WP, WoK and many, many others. Other than that, I think we'll have to agree to disagree, I respect your opinion and understand it fully, I'm a competitive gamer myself (2k hours in team fortress 2 and played prem. division ugc & highlander for 2yrs) but 40k holds a special place, everything in this universe is built around a sense of absurdity, humour and visceral combat without necessarily being 100% competitive in all aspects, all of which is possible with the implementation of systems I've mentioned and would bring a lot of the 40k fans who feel let down by this game back into the fray. Despite all this, I am a realist and realize that I am posting this thread more for myself, as a sort of therapy, than a realistic expectation for change, and I think a lot of people on this forum could use this sort of thread for the same thing and who knows, it might provide Noah with the 'evidence' he needs to start a change in direction. For sure. I doubt anything will come of it but it always helps to have fan feedback and have a reason to justify potential changes, it's nearly impossible to get anything done in a games development company if you have no evidence to justify a need or want. Plus, it gives 40k fans an opportunity to discuss how they'd want the game to be balanced and I'd love to use this thread to continue to entertain that, I think everyone could offer a unique insight into how they see 40k, and bring most 40k fans on this forum closer together than any of these Headshots OP or NERF ELDAR threads ever did. That being said, if you've got friends who agree, send 'em to this thread. Get some more voices in, even if only to bring this to the forefront of the developer's minds.
Well as a lifelong Ork fan I'll admit you're absolutely right in how the players would like our faction to be portrayed in this game. But as for 'evidence' to give to Noah, I think they're essentially beyond the "Point of No Return" regarding large-scale changes to game mechanics or anything like that. You know, the things that would make the game feel more like Warhammer 40k. Besides, they have always seemed far more interested in balancing for competitive matches than they are the spirit of the 40k universe. Ugh if I ever win the Powerball lottery for some reason I'm gonna bribe GW with a truck full of cash so that TRUE FANS of the IP can make the next Warhammer 40k game instead of these chumps who have no real grasp its grim-dark nature.
