Two words: Space Marines... okay, one word if we go for "Imperium" Lets face it, the Space Marines are the poster boys of the Warhammer 40,000 IP. We all know it, we all know how much attention and marketing these fellows get. Heck, if you go into the polls asking after what race you'll play the overwhelming majority remain the Astartes. I doubt this really comes as a surprise to anybody. So, what can be done to overcome this? With overpopulation comes more bodies, with more bodies comes unstoppable zerg. There's only so much 'skill' can factor into it when it's 5 vs 30 as it looks worryingly like the Eldar might end up in such a situation (the small, dying, race is the least played, go figure). One thought could be that the faction with the most numbers/overpopulation has more pressure applied to it by the Tyranids, essentially forcing the overpopulated side to spread out their resources to defend critical points and thus, numbers. Other incentives could include the usual affair; xp, currency boosts, etc. I'd be very interested in seeing what the devs have in store, just because I'm sure they must have expected right from the start that the Space Marines would overwhelm. Any ideas pople?
I realy like the Idea of Tyrannid pressure, but wouldnt that result in PvE action, PvP players would be forced into? Its hard to spread out the giant SM-zerg ball cause if you wanna equalize the playernumbers the other 3 races have to combine strength to even the numbers. How close do we wanna stay to lore? Will there be Legion fights to even the numbers resulting in something like: 3 space legions, 2 ork armys, 1 eldar and 1 chaos legion all fighting in a free for all scenario? Cause most of us know what huge problem this is in other MMOs (PS2, wow, etc)
ork have f2p and eldar have female 2 thing whitout relevance for war 40k fan, but relevant for the other potential player.
Personally love the idea of Tyrannids attacking the most populated race. Some PvE in your PvP diet won't kill you.
Yep you have to factor in the Ork's free to play element, and its only early there's a ton of Eldar players ( like me) Chaos and Ork players out there. Also with people no doubt playing a different times, you'll no doubt end up seeing faction population flux depending on what time of day it is, what day ect. Its way to early to really tell.
Two things are undeniable: 1. It's too early to tell 2. Space Marines (any flavor) will be played more heavily than the others. I had an idea though, and it runs something like this: Supposing the setup is PS2-like, with multifactional open warfare, what would happen would be that the losing faction would actually become stronger overall, with only a few players on the other side becoming stronger. It's like this: Say there's five 'zones', with two belonging to each faction, and the middle one being the primary battleground. For the Warp of it, let's say it's Eldar and CSM's. The CSM faction manages to take down the middle battleground. For the Eldar, who are now on the back foot, they receive an across the board percentage increase to their stats. For the CSM's, they aren't penalized for winning, but the highest scoring player character...their (Black) Crusader...receives a massive bonus to his abilities or perhaps a stat boosting aura more powerful than the Eldar's individual buff. This effect increases, decreases, or is cancelled out as the team wins, loses ground, falls back or respectively. The endgame sees the final battle being an epic fight between hordes of invaders rallying behind their champions, seeking the huge prize if the other faction is defeated entirely, and teams of bloodied but unbowed defenders taking down scores of their foes in last stands and counteroffensives that are the stuff of legend. This is both fluffy and encouraging of strong team play. For the losing side it feels more like a heroic last stand rather than simply a steamroll, and for the winners, it's a challenge to actually win, and it gives individuals incentive to do well to taste the power of victory all for themselves. Thoughts?
An interesting idea, Solidzaku. My personal thoughts on this is that the Risk mentality is going to sink in if there's a clear advantage for any faction. In this case, we all think that that'll be Space Marines. The unwritten rule in Risk is that no one is allowed to secure a continent at any cost. The only exception is Australia, but the point I'm making is that if the Space Marines really got out of hand on the map then the other factions are going to gang up and knock them down a peg. Naturally, all the metagame movements are going to make it more complicated but all the not-Space Marines will have an interest in making sure they don't dominate so badly. If after that Space Marines are still just crushing the other factions that's when I think the developers might want to take a look. Otherwise, just wait and see in my opinion.
Along the lines of what Feel No Pain said, the real worst-case scenario is if one faction has 51% or more of the population. Even if the game ends up with 45% Space Marines, that's still 55% of the world that could potentially be directed against them. We're looking into options to encourage working together, or at least having more opposed goals against the most successful factions. We know it's not going to be an even split, so we're designing the strategic game as one where you try to define your goals and fight to achieve them, not one where we tell you you're losing if you don't own the majority of the territory.
