So, on the Steam thing, Nathan posted that at launch, Eternal Crusade has its persistent world component in place. I can only imagine that he's referring to the World Map and our ability to conquer territory against enemy factions.

So, if the World Map truly is Eternal Crusade's MMO component, then I must ask... what does the World Map do exactly?

Do we gain bonuses for conquering a territory? Penalties for losing a territory? Does our selection of maps change if we start fighting over a different territory? If a faction is eliminated from an entire faction vs faction conflict, does that affect whether those two factions can fight each other?

I really want to know, what is Eternal Crusade's MMO World Map actually doing other than sitting there for us to see before each battle?

Very good question, I've asked it before with of course no answer.

I think more territories your faction controls there should be and increase in both the respawn timer, because the troops are spread more thin and requisition gains of it's players, because of the resources generated by the territories.

The map is nothing.

The MMO aspect is really nonexistent.

The world map at launch was supposed to look more like Planetside 2's world map. Yes, the devs said it wouldn't be open world at launch but it was still supposed to look very similar to PS2's world map AND FUNCTION like it.

Instead, we got something that somebody went crazy on with the polygon lasso in Photoshop. Disappointing to say the least. Even a static, unfinished placeholder of the map we were supposed to have would have been better.



http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/the-persistent-world-map-then-and-now.57865/

Right now it is nothing more than a placeholder with the only functionality being the meter showing faction matchups and who is winning the aggregated matches.

I imagine in time they will show the map with individual territories being won and lost according to aggregated data for each race on each map type (Fortress, skirmish, etc.)

Then at least it will show progress of a faction, in a shallow way, but still showing it vs the current map that doesnt show faction match ups via territory but a tiny bar when you zoom in.

Even then, when they have the more visually representative map of territories by type as they are won and lost it means nothing until we players can make decisions on where to attack and influence our factions victory over other factions.

Okay, but again, what will that do? What effect will it have on the gameplay itself? How will we feel it when our faction is doing well as opposed to our faction losing ground?

It won't do much unless they also start adding in bonuses, penalties, etc. to territories as well but its just what I imagine their next step will be from the current extra useless iteration.

TBH I dunno what they could even do in the long run with just a map and these lobby games cycling so few maps...even req, exp or rtc bonuses are just meh.

Even planetsides map and faction map battles is pretty weak and its lightyears ahead of 40kEC. No idea what they can do to improve the "impact" on players to give a hoot about it in any significant way.