As a newer player I spent a few days getting my kicked before I really started to get a grip of how to fight in EC. After a week or so I started to get some of the top scores on my team.

Now I understand that there is obviously a learning curve to the game, however, everyone is playing with all the same weapons available to them. If I have a bolter and i go up against another guy with a bolter and he wins it's a fair fight, but he has an advanced/upgraded bolter that he got from gaining exp points and i'm stuck with the standard bolter it creates an unfair fight.

This then creates a compounding difficulty curve for new players where they need to fight against veteran players who also have stronger loadouts then the new players, which isn't fun, and I'd like this game to be fun for as many people as possible. So do you guys have any thoughts of how that would balance out? Are you alright with veteran players out-matching newbs in skill and armament?

I'm sure i've missed something but i'd like to have a discussion about this to some capacity.


https://www.eternalcrusade.com/news/611-State-Of-The-Crusade-XII

There is no "upgraded" bolter right now. You have access to all the same level of items as it stands. A rank 5's weapons in the current build are the same power and level as a rank 1's.

True, but i'm thinking about what we will have in the future as more weapons and upgrades are added in with the new loadout system.

The recent state of the crusade got me thinking about it.

https://www.eternalcrusade.com/news/611-State-Of-The-Crusade-XII

It's just a matter of them working out the pace of unlocks. My guess would be that early on the unlocks will come quickly, and as you advance, they will slow down. It's pretty standard in the industry to do things that way, because it adds a feeling of progress for the player, and it can also be used to give players agency. If I have to decide between unlocking one weapon or another, it makes me think about how I want to play, which increases my engagement with the character. Both elements work together to get players invested in the game, and keep them coming back. There is actually quite a lot of psychology behind game design. If you are interested, "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" by Raph Koster is a good entry point and an easy read.

The other side of that is that you yourself would aspire to upgrade yourself in some manner, that tends to be a natural thing to do in games. If fighting PVE and you're not doing so hot, you go grind and then come back to the harder enemies, though more difficult with PVP, same concept does apply.

This is most likely to be the preferred method.

As generally accurate as this may be, it raises 2 questions for me...

1. In a standard PVE kind of MMO you could "grind" mobs to level, so you could pick things in a suitable level for your character (based on level and / or kit). These enemies would either be slightly (but not significantly) lower for a slower gain with an easier challenge, or you could fight things equal or better yet slightly higher than you with the greater risk providing you a better reward. I don't see how this would translate well to the PVP battlefield setup unless battle ranks were separated, as doing so would have a negative effect on squads that wanted to pay together if they had been playing for different lengths of time.

This also leads me into point 2...

2. If levels and "loot based on xp earned" are not specific to either PVP or PVE, would you not just be able to farm tyranids for hours with your mates then suddenly have enough level / points to spend on progression and loot boxes?

This is probably something that should be cleared up nice and early as it will have a massive impact on the number of fly-by-night / casual / dedicated / absolute hardcore players we can expect to see in the long run.

That's where I guess the learning curve comes in, much like sports whether electronic or physical, it's rarely people getting worse and sometimes you're the guy who can't keep up/doesn't feel like investing the effort and instead does something else, PVE in this case I imagine or you strive to improve. That's something that can't really be changed by a game as that is a mentality away from the game as well, do you keep trying to do better or not. This one is difficult to deal with because of that.
The bit about PVE affecting your progression, I've been wondering about it for a while and I'd be fine if it did, sometimes that's what it takes to get some people into the PVP game and it may be funner than trying to fight people for some. That said, I do believe it shouldn't be as rewarding as rapidly, I shouldn't be able to do three instances (let's say there is a normal difficulty) of fighting Nids and suddenly be finished with a progression branch (assuming these aren't incredibly long instances of course). The other part to that is maybe setting up a different "PVE tree" for the races, allows access to neat things that are made for fighting mobs or specific PVE factions, but doesn't translate over to PVP. This would be a load of extra work though so I wouldn't expect that at all and then some folks wouldn't see a benefit in playing PVP.
Space Marine was kinda funny that way as you could rapidly level in Exterminatus getting some general unlocks but if you wanted the perks for weapons you had to fight people. Taking a bit from my aforementioned idea, have stuff that you can unlock PVE and stuff from PVP, which can benefit if used in the opposite side of things but doesn't do as well as the perks that were unlocked in those areas, again lot of work though. I'm also curious about gear regarding this, but that's for a different discussion I imagine.

the concept of mods in weapons is again meant to be a form of balancing act ... give and take,

you can tweak the weapon with the mods to gain certain stats but only at the cost of losing some other things,

you progress the weapon and it becomes more "specialised" as opposed to more powerful in general,

favour close range combat with your bolter?

then you equip the barrel, magazine, stock etc that gives you the extra kick you want in close range ... but by doing so you lose range, recoil supresser etc etc making the weapon less effective at mid-long range

Um...if vets with better guns cant be stronger than all other players, what is the point of playing the game?

The devs have stated that there will be absolutely no Upgrades in this game, that their will only be "Sidegrades".

http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/q-a-answers-compilation-thread.32349/page-2#post-738409

... Of course that most likely means that there will be certain Sidegrades which are regarded as generally better overall in helping to achieve a higher KDR, and that they will most likely cost a large amount of RTP.

But at least there shouldn't be any Items and Modifications that allow for blatantly obvious superior Loadouts for the same Loadout Points Costs... I hope.