We live in an industry where change rarely happens in a way that does a 180° dime turn. So its very uncommon for a game to do what EC has done. Sadly consumers are the type of people who do little research, and react to what they see and compare it to what they saw/know from before. There should be a more Accessible PR "In your face" kind of thing that makes you aware why some things happen, for example play an unplayable first time video when you start EC explaining things (a big insane but just as a example)
A lot of gaming companies make huge changes on the original idea before the release, but nearly all of said companies use a non-public development (not certain what to call it), so the consumers doesn't hear about it. Star Wars: Battlefront 2 was released without the single-player campaign due to time restraint, but EA Games didn't admit this until after the release of the game. http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05...-cut-to-release-in-time-for-the-force-awakens I still agree that Eternal Crusade had a huge turn-around when it changed from a open world PS2-ish game to a lobby shooter, but that is just about it, most of the other changes were done as a logical results of that change. They couldn't do the Free-2-Waaagh! after they changed to a lobby shooter, as in a match with equal numbers it would be gimping the Orkz to much if they had all the F2W players, as those players would have limited choices and would have a higher degree of newbies. I firmly believe Eternal Crusade should have a Monthly Crusade, where the game would be F2P with everything unlocked up to Rank 2. This would be available for one weekend (Friday to Sunday) each month. But alas that is unlikely to happen In any way, I could really need some timed game-key, so I could have my friends try out the game. None of them are really sold by EC, partially due to the bad PR the game have had, so they won't really buy it, even if they could potentially refund it within 2 hours on Steam. And to be fair, you can't really try out EC in a mere two hours. I still agree that they should do a short video explaining the changes from the original promise and what their current goal is, with the explanation of the free quarterly(?) expansions.
Fun fact: There's a Livestream from June 3rd this year where Nathan says that Open World is EC's eventual goal for post-launch. And personally, I sure as hell wouldn't have bought EC if it were just going to be a 4-faction version of Space Marine. The MMO and Open World components were major reasons I wanted to play this game. I was 100% willing to wait years after launch for it to actually happen. I'm a Sisters of Battle player in the TTG who wants plastic minis - waiting patiently with the expectation that good things will come with time is my specialty. Frankly, if they're just gonna strip the MMO parts of EC that were planned down to the point where they're literally comparing the game's MMO status to games like Crossfire... I think I'll take the next refund offered, thanks. Oh, FYI, Crossfire does not describe itself on its own website as an MMO. Wikipedia does not state its genre as an MMO. I don't know who the hell decided to call it an MMO on YouTube videos, nor why Nathan decided to call Crossfire the "Biggest MMO shooter in the world" instead of comparing it to Planetside 2 which is quite clearly an MMO shooter that defines itself and is defined as such and is basically THE MMO shooter, and also the one that EC's devs have compared EC's goals to in the past. Scratch that, I do know why he didn't compare it to Planetside 2. He knows EC doesn't hold a candle to Planetside 2's persistent world. Do I expect changes in game development? Yup. Do I expect significant features to change a lot? Yup. Do I expect it to be exactly what I envisioned? Nope. Do I expect the game's genre to change? Nope. I mean, if we should start expecting developers to change the genres of their games less than 4 months before launch, the gaming community should probably start boycotting preorders and prepurchases of all kinds, as clearly developers are abusing the hell out of them.
I've got a legitimate question for Julien the stats guy; With all the metadata available, is it possible to see how many players/what percentage of people drop the match que when they see they are facing Eldar?
I think Eldar have been strong from the start - but it is something very simple. Eldar have Fire Dragons as a base class with a base Melta weapon. Other races do not have this advantage, and will find matches against Eldar a struggle to destroy troop carriers with low-leveled teams with no Melta guns. It costs me 10,000 requisition as a Space Marine just to acquire a Melta weapon for a Tactical Marine - it costs Eldar players 0 (zero) requisition. Right off the bat, any Eldar vs (faction) game will result in the game already being in the Eldar's favor; simply because they can use Melta weapons on troop transports against teams that possess next-to-no Melta weapons. I think we can all agree; troop transports are key - and if one faction has an instant Melta weapon - well...
Increase space marine armour by 15% Chaos by +5% armour +5% hit points Orks by +5% armour, +5% hit points Slightly nerf the plasma cannon and the autocannon More comprehensive balance fixes are of course do-able but this is a simple, nice and easy one that could be implemented real soon and would make a good noticeable improvement to the balancing out the results and tallies.
The majority of bad players who don't research the game or work together play loyalist marines. How do you account for that in your statistical analysis?
Lsm have over 50 % population....if you take avg...like half the lsm population will be below average by definition ...this number is still big and comparable to certain non lsm factions population. Question boils down to how are these ppl distributed in games. We need a player ranking system and match making based on that rather than first come first serve.
