PS2 continents are also instances, just bigger ones, and because they're so big, 3-4 ways can happen in them without breaking the balance and making it feel crowded and suffocating. So when instances in EC get bigger, the option for 3-4 ways battle will definitely become more viable. Now? Not so much, Heroes and Generals tries it, but the results are not so good and not many people like it. Simply because their map size is not big enough to handle the chaos. Also, 3-4 ways battle may sound cool, but they're not always the most pleasant one to be in, especially when there is just 1 objective (the base) to fight over. Also, the key phrase here is: "This is a ways away however, so we will look at it in greater detail in the future." So after feedback, extensive research, we will have a clearer answer. And like Nathan said, they will implement something if it is FUN. If at one point, 3-4 ways battles sound like they can be fun, they can be added then.
c'mon. if when they announed the game they tell that "eldar and chaos can fight of the same side" or "space marine and chaos can be allied and fight a batlle togheter because the game will be on 2 side 1v1" the shi... warpstorm was so huge that the eye of terror will appear as something irrilevant. there is a lot of difference between "occasional interessed alliance but nothing formal" to " actually you are on the same team"
At risk of descending into pendantry, it's not actually about the instances or how many there are, but the method used to determine control. I'm assuming, based on what we know so far, that each instance has a single Control Point in it, a specified attacker and defender, and a fixed maximum number of participants (and, possibly, a fixed minimum as well). The attacker has objectives to complete and, we believe, a time limit - if they succeed, control of the location the instance relates to flips to the attacker. If they do not, time runs out, the defender maintains control of the location, attackers are purged out and the instance re-opens to be contested again either by the same attackers or others lurking in some form of queue. This is a lot of what makes it hard to support 3-4 way attacks. Is the third faction an attacker, or a defender? How does it choose? Can it change its mind mid-instance? How do its allies know what its chosen? How do the objectives and balancing adapt to the fact that a third allied participant could seriously change the balance of numbers between attackers and defenders? If each faction has its own win conditions under which it takes/maintains control, is it possible to maintain an effective alliance, or will all alliances break up in the closing minutes as the allies on the 'winning side' both try to achieve only their own conditions and deny their allies from achieving theirs? If you were going to set up variations of each instance with unique objectives and balancing to cope with the amount of variation, so that each side faced broadly equal amounts of difficulty/challenge you'd be looking at unique or tweaked versions for each of the following: Key D = Defender, A = Attacker 1 = Faction operating alone 2+ = Factions operating as allies 1Dv1A, 1Dv1Av1A, 1Dv1Av1Av1A, 1Dv2A, 1Dv2Av1A, 1Dv3A, 2Dv1A, 2Dv1Av1A, 2Dv2A, 3Dv1A = 10 variations per instance, not including adaptations such as an alliance being created or betrayed mid-instance. That's a whole lot of development time...which I expect is why they've said "Not yet, we'll look at it further on". The open world makes this easier on the one hand, because by removing the explicit time limit and population capping against any single objective, it means players are free to deploy their forces as they see fit and strike up whatever form of alliances or rivalries makes sense. On the other hand, it brings with it all of the horror of balancing the super-size LSM faction against the F2W Orks and the two (and one day more) others who'll be able to field far less in numbers but, not unreasonably, would like the game to be enjoyable from their perspective rather than become whipping boys for the zerg. Sometimes there are just no win-win solutions. xD
This paragraph alone has started convincing me that a completely open world may not be what we want if we truly hope to see additional factions in this game and want a broader player base. If I remember correctly, in polls way back when the forums opened, the majority of people were planning to play LSM or CSM. With the zerg-minded masses roaming around, what would be the point of playing Eldar or Tau or Dark Eldar, etc? They would probably never field the numbers the other two factions can and would become a novelty at some point because frustrated players of the smaller factions would get tired of being zerged to death and never achieving reasonable amounts of territorial control. Then the game would essentially boil down to LSM vs CSM. While it could still be fun, I would hate not seeing all of the races of the 40k universe represented on the battlefield with an equal chance to conquer territory. Provided that the mechanics of the instanced matches are done correctly (i.e. fun), all factions have the chance to compete and the player base will be more diverse. Just food for thought...
The alliance system is put on the hand of players, is it not? So we're the ones who will choose who will want to ally. If players want to stick to lore and not ally the one they hate, they can do it. Still, even nemesis help each other from time to time in lore too, and it often lasts as long as a campaign, so it's not that far-fetched. Either way, 1v1v1 does not work, at least not in a way that is fun, with such a limited space and number of players. When things get bigger, we'll see, because then there will be more options.
I know you guys want to only see the bad, but how can you ignore the last sentence? This seams like a band aid feature, for the closed matches. Oh yeah,we can do atleast that, thats easy. Maybe it helps with population, maybe friends can play together. But we don't put much work into this bandaid. We keep it simply. No complicated systems on allies for now. And I am pretty sure the anser of "only ever two sides in a MATCH" applies to exactly this. If we have the open world, we will automatically have 3-4 way battles.
that part of the answer is directed to the "how ally will interact" not to the number of side in a battle. yes because clearly that not create issue at all? you can imagine how many people will be kicked from the game or have the weapon locked or can't shoot, because they made too much friendly kill against a chaos marine because they are allied with the space marine in that match? it's an extremely confuse element of the gameplay. one match you fight the chaos space marine and the eldar while allied with the ork the day after you are allied with the eldar against chaos + ork, after that you fight with ork against chaos + eldar. how a player is supposed to understand something in a game like that? who is the enemy team? who is in the allied team?
Well that player instead of bashing his head at the keyboard he could spend a few seconds to listen/read to what the warcaounsil have to say...
Well, unless you're an idiot, you will notice that when you shoot at an allied faction, FF indicator will pop up. Other than that, notifications from War Council, your Guild Leader will help too. It's only confusing if such thing happens mid way through battle. Brent also mentioned that the Alliance may last as long as the duration of the campaign, which I personally don't agree with since lore-wise that will be somewhat wrong. But still, if you put the power in the hands of the players, then players can choose for themselves whether the lore or their own gain is more important.
You seem to be talking about the game when it first releases in its Open Beta state, where each Facility is its own separate Instance/Match. But we should be basing most of our feedback on what the devs actually have planned for their stretch goals for the game. And the Stretch goal is to have many separate "Control Points"/Facilities within these instances. (notice that 3 merged territories with 12 "Control Points"/Facilities is called a "Match") How can their stretch goals of merging territories work with only having 2 sides per Instance/Match? If this was indeed the case the game would get worse the more it opened up from merging the territories, because at least 2 Factions will be locked out of those large Instances. Unless they each decide to ally with a Faction currently fighting within these large Instances. This is why the whole "No foreseeable Open World" and "Only ever 2 sides per Instance/Match" are such bad ideas. Which is why I'd personally prefer that the devs delay the release of the game so that they could actually achieve an "Open World". Making the continent a lot smaller would be a great start. I really don't know what was going through the devs heads when they decided to make the continent 4 times larger than what they had originally planned, after they had found out that their promised Server and Game Engine technology couldn't actually achieve what they wanted. I find this rather perplexing to say the least.... Agreed. The devs should have made a final decision on whether the game was going to be similar to either Planetside 2 (Open World with lattice links connecting Facilities) or Heroes and Generals (dozens of separate Instances with lattice links connecting Facilities). As the constant balancing issues from evolving the game from "40k: H&G" to "40k: PS2" are going to be an absolute nightmare for the devs, as they will effectively be creating two very different games at the same time. How can you ignore the EVER in the statement "There will only ever be two sides in a match"?
