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Warhammer 40.000: Eternal Crusade: News from the Road - The Road to the Open World
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Greetings Crusaders, and welcome to a quick news update revolving around what we learned during last week's Into the Warp- Episode 18, specifically about the Road to the Open World.
After months of exciting victories and disheartening disappointments, it finally feels like Nathan Richardsson and the rest of the Eternal Crusade dev team have a firm grasp on what can be accomplished, and, perhaps more importantly, what cannot be accomplished, at least not at this point, be it for financial or technological reasons. The reason I find this so exciting and newsworthy, is that now it feels like there is a roadmap in place of all the things that have to happen between now and release, and we are finally working towards a concrete goal.
With the recent revelation that pikkoserver technology is not going to be a viable technology choice for several years at least, too long to really be used as the base of Eternal Crusade, the community was informed that, due to both financial and technological limitations, there would not b e one seamless open world for all to play in together. Instead we would be limited to match-style play, albeit with more players than we have seen in shooters to date. After a few weeks of community moaning and groaning, Nathan promised that we would soon see what his new plan was, and how it would work towards Open World play in stages. The time for that revelation is now here... uh, rather, it was Friday, but I will do my best to recap it here.
The plan now calls for one continent at launch, Malcadia, the central continent that the rest of the world will be built upon. Malcadia is massive, about 16 kilometers square, and it will be further subdivided into over 120 locations, each of which is a PvP map, so that's over 120 unique and different maps to fight for.
While the combats will necessarily be match-based, and thus have certain enforced limitations, they will still be pretty massive, the number of players fighting in each zone will be about 100. These zone limits are intended to be removed at some future point, creating more and more of an open world as development progresses.
Each territory is pretty large, about one quarter the size of a Planetside 2 continent, and can be controlled by one of the factions by taking the Stronghold in the territory. The Stronghold is only made vulnerable by taking a number of outposts that are also within the territory. Stronghold battles are designed to have as many combatants as possible, however there are no hard numbers at this point because there is still a good deal of development yet to occur. Outpost battles are smaller in scale, and each one that you control will give your side some small advantage in the battles to come. In the future, once the tech allows, the limitations on territories will be removed allowing the whole territory, both outposts and Strongholds, to be part of the battle, with the number of participants increasing as well.
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This sort of flexibility and control will allow the devs to add new content, try new ideas, new types of encounters, and so forth, with limited adverse effects and/or added development time. All of this is leading up having more and more territories linked together into massive territories that can be explored openly, and eventually an entire open world, one linked territory at a time.
So all is not lost, Crusaders, the goal remains the same, the road just has proven to be a bit longer than anticipated. But we have a map now, and we will be able to see where we are, where we are going, and we can also suggest to the drivers where we might want to stop for a bit along the way.
Comments
That wasn't even what they are talking about... it seems like you didn't even read the story or watched the video.
Kind of lost interest in this for now...
Will jsut wait for it to release and see what its like but i dont expect anything special.. hope I am wrong..
*shrugs* it happens... Tech companies over-promiseon their product... Devs buy in to hype... Hype turns to dust.. devs need to adjust to new reality...
A lot like how we player live and die.
It is all a cycle
This have been a good conversation
At this point....I don't even care what happens to the game anymore. Like others have said, they basically went back on the nr.1 premise of the game(at least for me): massive battles for territories between all the races.
I am a fanboy....a Warhammer and Warhammer 40K addict. Yet, I have limits.
As far as Eternal Crusade is concerned, I no longer know what to think.
Seems the game design is in a constant state of flux.
My selling point was that it was going to be a MMORPG a TRUE MMORPG, not the MP games that companys try to pass on to us as MMORPGs.
My take away from what the Devs have said is simple and based on what they have said, whether its true, hogwash or otherwise.
1) The said the technology and the money were not there to make the game the way they originally intended.
2) So they scaled it down into a MP game, and the community and especially the Founders revolted (rightfully so).
3) Now, the Devs say they can make the game as originally planned, despite "their" statement that the technology and money is not there to do so. Those two things are STILL NOT THERE....However, they are attempting a Happy Medium by first releasing the game as a hybrid between MP and MMORPG to buy time and money so that they can slowly add on to the game, with the original design goal (true open world MMORPG) as the prize.
Seems reasonable to me......BUT...as one of the other forum posters stated, "he is done with crowd funding and founders programs etc"....He makes a good point.
The PC game industry is flooded with tons of unfinished games as a result of Early Access and Founders Programs.
These programs fund the money, so that the Devs dont have to entertain zoot suit investors who ruin the games anyway.
All sounds good until as we are finding out that its a profitable way to make unfinished games, i.e. "You guys want us to make a particular game? Ok fork some early access and Founder program money over or we wotn make it".
Then as is the trend the games wallow in the sea of unfinished games, and with each and every one PC gamers less and less get involved with crowd funding, early access, and Founders programs.
THIS IS MY FEAR...the game wil be released in an unfinished and unpromised state and will either never take on the original or even recent promised design or may take years.
Personally, I feel its the former, as most of these early access founders program games are becoming stuck in forever construction...NOT forever development....but forever CONSTRUCTION.
Thus, I feel this is all just an excuse to pacify the masses with a promise that will never be met.
Understandable...what choice do the Devs have? Admit design and management failure?
Or...try to salvage the game in a respectable form?
As long as the Devs are honest and truthful, I personally can deal with what ever form the game takes, as long as it is not another multiplayer game with player run or Dev run servers hosting 32 - 64 players max on small to med size maps.
That would be utter BS.....
Give me a MMORPG or give me Heresy!
lmao, the chick sounds like she's high as a kite