If side grading confers no real bonus, and merely makes one weapon work like another, then what's the point?

Each weapon in the 40k lore already has a clear and definitive purpose. The ability to spot what the opponent is wielding is an important one in online gaming. So why muddy the waters by having pseudo-sniper bolters, or pseudo-shotgun bolters? Offer the players different skins for their shotguns if they dislike the basic skin so bad. But don't start dressing weapons up as other weapons.

It's more likely that they will confer a noticeable bonus, because the difference between an attack bike and a Rhino is far more than simply appearance.

This, a thousand times.

I'm not lying, I'm really confused about what you misunderstood, because it's really clear what they wanted (to me and other 85 people at least).

Sergoros, as well as others, you're all assuming what the side grades will be. We don't know basic stats of the weapons, we have no idea what side grades there'll be!

In principle, side grades sound great. Trade extra range for higher recoil, or more spread for lower recoil, or vice versa. I doubt it's going to be a "gain 10% damage for 10% less accuracy", that's easily open to abuse in CQC. There's a billion options of where to go with side grades.

Now, everyone should calm down and understand, it's pre-alpha. Like I said we have no idea what the weapons stats will be and what their side grades will be. When the devs decide to tell us, we can decide if it's P2W or not.

@Whoever was asking if buying gear that you would otherwise have to grind for give you an advantage: It does, but an advantage is not P2W. Imagine these cosmetics, what happens if the cosmetics coincide with the colour scheme of a biome, acting as camoflauge? It's just an example. An advantage is not always P2W.

A properly side-graded weapon would have advantages in one area, but disadvantages in another. It's months before game-play and we're prophesying the Doom of Prospe- no wait Eternal Crusade.

Lets all close our minds eye, and have a nice discussion on how to avoid the P2W in the devs monetisation scheme.

I'll try. Personally, I think cosmetics won't work for the Space Marines. For the Orks and Chaos, they will gladly make alterations to their armours, maybe purchases for Orks where you get an Ultramarine cosmetic shoulder pad to wear or similar for example. Same with Chaos, you can have spikes, horns protruding from your body through the armour, or sections of armour replaced with a bony carapace that has ruptured the armour plating. I am unsure about Eldar.
How, aside from trinkets, oaths and armour marks of the moment etc, what visual customisation can we give the Space Marines? We can't change colour, we can't give them irregular armour. Sure we can give them gilded armour for champions, or older versions of the plate, but nowhere near what you can do with an Ork for example.
So how do we support the devs vision of side-grades while making it balanced for those who do not wish to invest? One solution would be to always offer enough RTP with every purchase of the game to purchase one side-graded item from the armoury (based of the bike, this would be 15,000 RTP). I'm not really sure how this would work out, it might even be an incentive for the players to buy more items from the shop, a sort of once-you've-got-them idea. Secondly, everything available in the shop should be unlockable. I really appreciate that they wanted to give us something special for being founders (aka, the bike) but obviously it's been taken the wrong way. Make things in the shop come with a cool skin and a slight advantage perhaps (not a sidegrade obviously) such as slightly larger ammo capacity or the possibilty to mount more weapons on it (say it is an earlier, bulkier issue of bike in the shop, the bulk of it allowed it to mount more weaponry but there would still have to be unlocked with in-game currency). Or special armour plating unlocks that cost a lot of in-game currency to equip and increase the RP of the vehicle? I know that won't be a popular idea! So how about larger model size, but more HP. That's a pretty good trade off. Lower HP but better survivability against armour piercings rounds? That ofc depends on the armour system they use.

My point is, the devs want to make money off the shop, obviously. This will allow them to carry on supporting the game in terms of servers and possibly even provide us with free content.

tl;dr (understandable) We should stop basing assumptions off nothing, we should closely monitor what's going on, and when we have concrete facts, such as the stats of weapons and sidegrades, we can start analysing if it's going to be fair. I have full faith that the team are more than willing to listen to us and take feedback, but we must be careful. If we bitch and moan and doomsay on ifs and buts, they'll be less forthcoming about what they're going to do, cutting down the influence we have!



Two last points, the Herest pack is CLEARLY a support the game button. You aren't getting $450 or whatever it is worth of game (though it's a pretty good deal tbf if you have disposable income) you're paying to support the devs. Also, there will be plenty of cosmetics in the armoury, as seen by the armour types in there and the class heroes, which (I read somewhere) are cosmetically different to the ones you get ingame, like the Legion of the Damned payed version has flames but the free one doesn't.



Also, I would ask the devs not to add anything else to the founder store until we have comprehensive knowledge. For example, the Space Marine powersword; bought only cosmetic? Or will it be better vs armoured targets than a chainsword but worse vs non-armoured? These are things we need to know if we're spending money! (I understand we can still redistribute point's don't worry).

EDIT: We don't know the stats, why can't you understand that? Advantage in one area is traded off by disadvantage in another. That's the whole idea of side grades! Your concept of what is basically roulette at a casino has no bearing here. I'm not paying for more dice rolls or to freeze you on the spot for five seconds, I'm paying for a trade off, not directly better.


Advantage in specific situation, disadvantage in others. You keep missing that.

The $35 bolter, you know it's more powerful in every way than the standard bolter do you? You're sure it's not just a cosmetic/side grade? Where'd you get that info?

Failure OR P2W? What? I thought P2W was a failure hence we try to avoid it.

I accidentally pressed submit before I finished typing, I finished it now. But how will that work for the Space Marines? (I use SPC as my example because I know the most about them). Obivioulsy you can have different finisher moves per chapter per weapon, so that's a really really good idea, BUT there's going to be loads of people (myself included) that would be outraged that an ANIMATION wasn't in a game we paid for. Sure it offers no advantage, neither do any of the kill animations. Shall we make them all pay to have? But onto skins, how are you going to skin Space Marine weapons and armour? Sure, for Space Wolves, you can have a fur cloak and wolf teeth. But what about Ultramarines? They're very by-the-book. I can't see them having trophies on their armour lore wise. Same with the vehicles, the Space Marines aren't really ones for gaudy-ing up their rides. Sure for CSPM and Orks, they can pimp the hell out of it.

if we listen to miguel side grade are for example:
assault bike and rhino are sidegrades of the same item.

who is the player that bring a good at long range bolter to a close quarter battle?
who is the player that choose the short range bolter to a open field battle?
why someone must decide to use a bad weapon?
in this game we will die often, when you die you change loadout and switch to another, you aren't locked in a loadout for hours: you can switch when you die!!
so you can have a disadvantage at the start of the battle but after you die or when you reach the "change loadout console" you will select the correct loadout.
look at the dev streaming ceck how much time they die in 30 min: now image a 10x 100x battle imagine how much time you can change loadout in a single battle.

True, now, I can buy a exclusive $ bolter that has an advantage in close range and a disadvantage at long range, there is no way to get an equivalent in game, you just have your regular bolter, if I'm defending a base and I'm camping in a small corridor that leads to a capture point I'm going to have an advantage over you because I bought a specific weapon, if the advantage is something like 5-10% I don't care, me having a better internet connection or living closer to the server will have a bigger impact on the fight, but just the fact that they put a second paywall behind items it's fucked up, we don't know if we are going to have 1 maybe 2 different bolters to unlock after we buy the game and 20 by paying more cash, we don't know if they are gonna make OP weapons the first 2 weeks to boost sales, having such little info saying we are gonna sell unique weapons that you cannot find in game was a mistake, and a fucking huge one.


Sidegrades are not just bad because it will give the game the feeling of p2w (even if it's not) it also takes a lot of value out of the game the same way that those ridiculous prices take away a lot of value out of the founders pack...

Extra face? You're going into battle without a helmet? :/
And you insisting variety = advantage isn't true, at all.
We clearly can't debate, starting to use condescending language in your posts is grinding on me in a bad way so I'm dropping out of this now. I hope all our fears are wrong, if not we can kick up a fuss.

Regardless, I've said my part. When more information comes about, I'll have something to say.

I think I've already made my stance pretty clear but let me just add, for the sake of the dev's redemption, that I know exactly where they're coming from and why they're after these sidegrades.

Aside from the idea of creating added value for the buyer, these different stats also help to bring these things to life and add flavor and spirit to the individual guns and vehicles and this is very important from an artist's perspective for building a living world and creating immersion.
Unfortunately this just makes it all the more grimdark that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It was.

Truthfully they need to just make the weapons special founder's skins and be done with it, I know it's far too early to really say anything and I'm reserving judgment but I can not think of a single game that has realistically made the "sidegrades for money" thing actually work.

Ultimately there will be some math wizard who finds out the "Best weapon" for each class and everyone who isn't completely moronic will google it up and find exactly what gun to buy and all other guns will be considered "noobtraps" because the only people who would use them are people who don't care that they're using a gimped weapon or people who just don't know any better.