Collection of relics and lore keeping would be similar in gameplay. Both ancient relics and secret scrolls could use the same mission format and at the end you still gather whatever you were looking for. I dont think that the planets lore would fit in very well affecting battles. It would interfere with everyone who just wants to fight at that moment and instead realize they should have sent their dungeon crawlers to go retrieve the days secret message because the enemy just did and used it to annihilate your team. Dungeon crawling and competitive warfare shouldn't affect each other. Also I'd far rather learn about new characters from all the factions rather than the planet itself. One of the things about Planetside 2 is i had to go to wikipedia just to find out what my army stood for and i still dont know any characters who i fight for, the most i got out of it was the guy who founded my army. It's fine for PS2 but NOT for 40k. No, no, no! Warhammer is LOADED with backstory as we all know and you might be able to get away with playing TT and not having any story to it but you wont get away with having people play an MMO for years and never experience any adventures. I guess that's a good way to put it. Theres combat, and theres adventures. I want both.
Exactly. Hyper competiveness may sound nice and work theoretically, but in the end this is what kills games. You need off time stuff to keep you attached. Otherwise people will stop logging in if they aren't on a 100% competitiveness level which will lead to them not loggin in at all. Planetside 2 is an excellent example, lots of people in my outfit got burned out because there is nothing to do but fight. I don't log in on a sunday morning to do highly competitive gameplay, I log on to chat with my buddies while doing light headed stuff, but this is what keeps me attached in the end. Planetside 2 majorly sucks at off time for exactly that reason. No one logs on at these times because there's nothing to do.
Actually, now that I think of it...exploration with achievement rewards is mentioned in one of the interviews. Warhammer online had it also, any many other games...RIFT even had those puzzles, but that would probably be a overkill if vastly used..."dear Mr CSM plz wait a sec, don't kill me, I need to finish the puzzle in your base first", that's a immersion breaker. Also some rewards from battle, something like "dogtag" collectibles, or maybe tyranid remains, can be interesting collectibles...you don't even need a inventory for those, get one for first tyranid kill of that type and it appears in your/guild cruiser, in a display case...just brainstorming here, nothing set in stone...
I hope they don't dumb down game play with 30 different flashing red/blue/green icons all over my screen, pointing to the exact locations of every enemy or friendly player/npc within 500 meters. I also hope they don't dumb down the overall challenge level of the game, along with NPC behavior. The development of UI has come a long way since the days of Everquest back in 2001. Back then, traveling around the game world(mostly on foot) and not getting killed was a challenge in itself. It was easy to get lost, or stumble across a group of NPCs that would kill you with a glance. "Neutral" NPCs chased you relentlessly if you had a bad standing with their faction, they "remembered" you when you showed up in their town or city again at a later time, and killed you on sight. Now days most games spoon feed players fast travel via teleporting. They baby players with over the top UI's with a dozen flashy arrows, icons, or skulls over any enemy players or npcs nearby. There are a myriad of extremely easy quests or tasks that you can't fail, and even if you fail, failure has no consequences. Most NPCs in games these days are dumbed down and pose not real threat, they don't chase you for more than 10 seconds, and they forget your transgressions against their faction when you return a few minutes later.
...That last comment including colours reminds me... pleeeeease don't forget a colourblind mode! At least stop colouring things light green and yellow! IT'S NOT A GOOD ENOUGH DIFFERENTIATION!
They were warned in Alpha about this, they were warned in BETA about this, and all the way up to release we literally begged them to add mini games ala PS1 and they just would not do it. I love a good Team Death match as much as the next guy, but only in short spurts. If that is all a game is based on well then...you have PS2. I can't believe another developer would look at PS2 game play and want to emulate anything about it other than massive. I like your ideas.
Well, for now we have the open world pvp, 2 pve modes and tons of customization available, so in that regard i think EC will do better than PS2.
I suppose you could implement daily quests such as recon etc that give a xtra XPboost, and servers the war effort for your faction. Recon, drive a squad from point A to B, something along those lines.
