The game first comes out.. Everyone is a noob.. Run around.. shooting.. stabbing.. jumping.. Having a total whale of a good time. Then the realization sets in, of how many "points" you need for this new gear/ability. The fun melee/shoot em up atmosphere is totally replaced by the grind mentality of just needing a few more points for [x]. The game evolves (devolves?) in to Campers/Rambos and Premade "crush-the-world" teams. This "evolution" seems so incredibly ingrained into gaming these days. I honestly hope i'm wrong, but history shows otherwise. I have been wracking my brain, trying to come up with some suggestion to, mutate (or so to speak) this path to boredom, that seems almost inevitable. Anyone got any ideas?
This is a good thread. As far as mentality goes, each of us can only control our own. So just choose not to do that (to keep the game fun for yourself). But that only goes up until the point where there are crush the world teams. (Possibly campers as well, but they don't bother me. It sounds like we can equip a lot of grenades, and the maps seem pretty open.) I don't really have a solution for that. Guild Wars 1 had a ranking system that helped keep the skill level of the teams on a similar level. I don't know that it makes sense here, since we are battling on a sort of risk board for territory. They may be able to add a new game/match type that would be easier to balance in the future (or come up with a magic solution that I don't see). Nathan mentioned Guild raids on battle cruisers being a possibility for the future in one of his interviews, but it was a big if. If that did happen, I think it would be easier to balance similar to GW's GvG matches. "Sub-factions, clans, with their own private and upgradable ships are especially things we want to do but we think there must be more to it than just owning them, and that we should have a working massive shooter first. However, I can’t resist the temptation of guilds boarding each other’s ships as part of clan warfare in the future. But that’s just me and is probably a silly idea." http://www.mmogames.com/gamearticle...ior-producer-warhammer-40000-eternal-crusade/ On the other hand, in my opinion it took a very long time for GW's Random Arena to get to the point where it wasn't fun due to Inflexible "experts at the metagame". An easy solution would be to randomize who was on your team, but I'd prefer team selection to not be random even if it makes the game harder for me. I haven't played any shooters online in a very long time. Possibly 10 yearsish. I'm not sure if there were any new mechanics added, but there really wasn't anything all that great when I did play them. The best thing you could do was shuffle the teams around (which isn't desirable for most of us).
Any game with "RPG-elements" will have some degree of grinding, this is inevitable as it's the easiest way to make the game feel longer and rewarding. The problem arises when the grinding becomes boring and repetitive. This can atleast be allieviated by game design. Personally I hope the "fastest" way to grind would be straight out fighting. Not neccessarily fighting good or amassing kills as then the supportive classes could become even rarer, but then again no one wants the afkers rewarded for just being there and not doing anything. I'd also like to see that capturing empty or minimally defended objectives wouldn't yield huge rewards as this would only lead to non-violence but then again capturing an undefended objective in a stalemate battle should be rewarding. I admit that there will be quite a bit of balacing needed but I hope the team will be up for it and find the perfect balance.
What the hell you think you gonna get with a Third person shooter game? The maps are going to change and grinding for points is gonna take time to get new gear, There no way around it if they using the basic Xp style. The major factor that will change the game play will be the players themselves and how they use the enviroment and tactics. Of course people will find the best things and learn how to do that, Why use something that you don't know will work when you have something that work wonders. There will be guilds/squads like that. I highly doubt the grind will be that bad at all compared to other games, but yes you need to put work to get the high level gear for the certain classes. The thing With PS2 where the massive warfare just got boring is because the maps has certain choke points that if one team gets to it quicker they get the advantage but if both team get there its a endless stalemate that gets old fast. Hopefully he Devs here will try to avoid areas like this that just makes 2 armies stare at eachother endless till one side has more log off so the other side can push harder.
it gets worse when you realise support classes like apothecary and devastator has a slower progress. i'm getting planetside 2 flashback
horizontal progession: the only problem is if dev create a reward sistem that promote farming instead of tactical gameplay.
If you get a good bunch of guys then grinding out games can be fun. I don't mind grinding if with a good bunch. If grinding on my own. Then boring as hell
The progression will be horizontal: A veteran-player will have more abilities than a noob, but not necessarily better ones. (e.g. like the arena-mode in DoW II)
Lead game designer, on how much time you will need to max out a single class: 1. (team question) How "deep" are you guys planning to make individual class progression? That is, how much time (even a guesstimate or what you would like is fine) would you say it would take for a person to get all the possible unlocks for one class? Will it be a decently long path that will see you needing to focus allot of playtime on one of the classes to max it out and feel like you have went from a novice to a veteran (the before mentioned veterancy of basic classes) or is the idea to not make the individual class progression too expansive as to make it easier for people to unlock multitudes of options/classes faster? BRENT ELLISON: Our goal is to make each class quite deep with around ~50 hours of unlocks per class (and of course there are items that can be used by any class sprinkled throughout each progression tree). The earlier parts of the progression are cheaper though, so you can go wide early on if you like. Note of course that this varies a bit from faction to faction, as Eldar have fewer options per class due to having more classes and Chaos progression is less class-focused in general. http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/q-a-answers-compilation-thread.32349/page-3 50 hours is nothing in a game one plans to play for years. Honestly im even disappointed that its gonna be that short. You will be a veteran in 2-3 days of gameplay time.
