Sry if i sounded a bit trigger happy there, we were going in circles for a while so i lost my temper a bit. I really want to see them ingame i do, heck i dont even want to become one. But i want to see them done right, i dont want them to be ruined as a unit with nerfs if they get too easy to attain. After all i like to see Greater Demons in the future (perhaps when demons are released as a race) and if DPs somehow get canned cause there were badly implemented to the point that its easier to just remove them, then that leaves little hope for Greater Demons...
Hmm.. so there is another possibility that may satisfy lorefluffness too - two others actually. First off, we are being a bit lore-agnostic anyway in that we are saying 'every time a CSM dies, it actually dies, and the one that is taking over for it is actually an identical one'. We are not playing resurrecting CSMs here. So we can get around the 'sacrifice entire solar systems' lore-barrier by saying 'your CSM is dead. It didn't ascend, it is just dead. Or busy. What you purchased was the right to play a DP who has become interested in the conflict and is joining in'. DPs are immortal so there is no worry about 'every time its dying a new DP is appearing from somewhere, how many bloody DPs are there!!' - but they do get banished to the warp (like Greaters) which can bring in a fun limiting caveat. Picture this for a second. Your DP gets summoned (at a limited location - very high upgraded Chaos held base). It has to travel to the battle site (like vehicles in PS), it is too big to just 'catch a ride' or get teleported in. It fights, gets shot up, dies. Now! It is back in the warp, to get it summoned again needs sacrifices. They can be ones you collect, or maybe a bunch of players chip in their kills together to let you get your DP again (so obviously DPs in a strikeforce will get back in the fight much more often then solo players - but it will still take about an entire major battle before they can accumulate enough - and if you keep wasting yours in blind charges then maybe they'd rather use that kill count for something else in the economy). Now we have multiple limits enforced on gameplay (smart not blind), limits on DPs (you won't get 5 DPs in a fight because each one would take about an entire strike force to support - if you have 5 strike forces joining up to call this in, those who helped will want to see some value-added, and we are talking several hundred players here), and any other imposed limits on even getting that unlocked (that have been discussed to death throughout this thread). This can be even further restricted by what you can summon in those major bases - maybe you can only summon one per base per hour, and if you do then you can't summon [whatever] instead, so do you really want a DP for this battle for your team, or would something else be more useful? And it becomes a group decision too, everyone is involved since it is their kills that are fueling it, so everyone has a vested interest in what it does / the DP has an interest in supporting his strike force after so they'll keep wanting to help him in return. So what happens when the DP is dead, before it can pop back in? (And this pop-timer is now naturally longer than an artificial 5 minutes. Sure the strike force could warehouse kill-counts for a rainy day, but even so it can only die so many times before you are dealing with hours of concentrated team gameplay to bring it in again, and it will always feel natural and not imposed / forced / penalty). Well, you play your regular marine until then. Because we never want to punish players for having fun, we want to give them toys to mess with but they should still get to keep playing afterward. Which solves the other issue - the DPs on the Chaos side don't get upgraded (we'll leave off talk of Daemon armies for when we see what those are like), but the player doesn't feel capped either (I've reached the top.... now what do I do...) because they can just keep upgrading their normal character. Option 2 (my preference): Similar to the above BUT (since we are not saying a particular player got upgraded), it is the strike forces that can unlock that slot. And they decide which player gets to play the summoned DP - so everyone can have fun / their turn, but you put your best player forward for an important battle, since you don't get that many DPs. This limits DPs even more (and we are still saying it is VERY hard to even unlock the slot - it would be a strike force's achievement, not an individual player's), makes sure no strike force is ever deploying more than 1, provides a nice banner-project for the SF to shoot for that rewards a lot of players.... [Added] Oh, and additional benefits to some version of the above (the above is just a draft / concept): Model can be applied to biggies of other races (Avatars, Chapter Masters, etc), whatever would be scary and thrilling to fight but we don't want to see in every single encounter) Could also be used for smaller things, like the daemon pack summonings, dreadnoughts, etc - and it becomes a zero-sum game (we could bring in one DP played by one player, or an entire daemonette pack of NPCs that can provide cover for our approach as they charge in, or two of us could play dreadnoughts..), and adds incentive for base-upgrades (more summoning power) and for base defense (after you upgraded it you don't wanna start over / puts you very behind if you lose bases that can do these summoning) Could apply a timer to how long it can stay in once summoned (or how long before the Baneblade or whatever has to be teleported back out to get refueled / be deployed elsewhere), so it encourages judicious use - you won't waste one taking a minor base guarded by a single squad, but you would bring it out for giant encounters - which is where you'd expect to see them anyway Provides possible model for the really scary OP stuff (Greater Daemons mentioned by @DjemoSRB, Baneblades) that can be controlled easily in this model you Could save up to summon a Greater Daemon in that one critical battle, but does your Strike Force have enough self-control to not summon a DP or dreadnought or daemonette long enough to build up that summoning power? How much are you willing to invest in upgrading a base that can do this and which the enemy could destroy - especially once they learn what you are unlocking there? How long does a summoning even take - does the opposition have a chance to interrupt it - adding gameplay to their sneakier forces as they try to prevent the summoning from completing (likely behind enemy lines since you are not going to upgrade a frontline base that will likely get taken)? How active is your strike-force since you have to gather a LOT of kills (or other battlefield objectives) to get to use this unit for [x minutes] or [x hours]? Adds developer flexibility and balance-control - you aren't dealing with nerfing a few players, you can just play with timers / costs normally and affect every side, use this as a jump-point for generating objectives and missions.. it can open up a lot of directions for the game? Thoughts?
Im liking it, especially the idea about upgrades. As in make the warp portal a upgrade of a base (and ofc it cant be just any base, only the big ones). It would have to be a last in tier upgrade for a base of that size and you would have to go through a whole tier chain of upgrades, one requiring the other, just go get the means to even spawn DPs (or other demons). So the base itself will need to have allot of babysitting as to not flip and reset everything. If it were to tie in with kills, it would only be fair that its a ridiculous amount of kills (im talking 4-5k kills here, that can be stored ofc). Sounds much right? Well coming from GW2's RvR if you play for like allot of hours during the day (max i think i did was 12-15 on a holiday) you can easily rack up 400-500 kills or more by yourself. And i still stand on the matter that this summon should have a ridiculous cooldown (3-5 days respectively). This is not a simple piece of requisitionable wargear, its a bloody demon with a pompous attitude. If you lead him into death hes probably gonna be all like "Fuck you, im not helping your incompetent ass any more", so the timer would simulate something of a time it takes to get back in the good graces of a DP so he would even consider dying for your dumb ass of a squad again, same would later go for a Greater Demon. Theres probably more that can be added but im just not seeing it now, but as it stands i can see it working.
You don't need to sack an entire world to become a Daemon Prince at all, it just helps. How many worlds get sacked in Warhammer fantasy, yet some ascend to Daemonhood regardless. Hell, in the Slaanesh fluff even mortals who die can become remade as Daemon Princes because the Heralds and Daemonette's are doing their renditions of Valkyrie's and find that mortal's soul to still be usable, and of sufficient faith. "But Mhorge, that's fantasy, two different kettles of fish!" - Not really, in the fantasy 'map' of the hellwastes of the Immaterium there is a point called the Eye of Terror, which is a concept that doesn't exist at all in fantasy Angron himself became a Daemon Prince because Lorgar injected him with a warpstorm essentially. Angron didn't even conquer his adopted homeworld. My point is, that everyone's ascension is different and that there are no rules beyond impress me. As to Noctifier's post, it does sound like a good idea, but I don't think there's such a thing really in a twitch game. It's: 'who has the best lag' and who can get the drop on someone most of the time. I actually like the first option you put forward first more, in that it can cost the strike force to reinforce giving them a vested interest in keeping it up, and yet it rewards the people who play well and have some sort of dedication to get the DP. In other words, it's their reward because they got it. They didn't get it because they are their Strikeforces pet, nor do they get it because they're their Strike Forces commander (call me corrupt but if I was the Strike Force commander, I would be tempted not to nominate anyone else bar myself for Daemon Prince ). I just think you've removed the hard work/dedication aspect by making it open to potentially everyone (extreme example) which is the entire point that I personally wanted to avoid.
I still think it should be only be usable by one person in the entire CSM faction with serious cool down times. It should be a last resort or something only to use in the biggest battles. A Daemon Prince interfering is a pretty big deal. I don't think any of them would be interested enough to constantly be banished to the warp, wait forever, then jump back in over and over. Anyone who has ascended to daemonhood works on their on time.
If I was a SF commander i'd never field a DP for some terrible amount of requisition. I'd prefer to make more termies, havocs, predators available for many players instead.
You know what? It's been said the Dev Team WILL PARTICIPATE in some major fights. Let THEM be such things as Daemon Prince, etc. No player should hold such power.
