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Where the War Goes from Here
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Where the War Goes from Here
Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade launched just a few weeks ago on the PC, and it’s been having a rough go from critics. That said, it has its hardcore faithful, and it’s clear Behaviour is keen on improving the game more and more in coming months. We caught up with Executive Producer Nathan Richardsson to discuss the state of the game, and what’s to come in the new few months.
Comments
Usually interviews on this site hardly deserved their name as they were mostly light questions and PR drivel in return. Even if the roof was on fire they never touched the hot topics about a product.
So i really like this new trend and hope you plan to continue it.
/thumbup
/sexy
/Agreed
It is nice and I'm hoping they keep it up.
I can see where most of the legimate critic about gameplay issues is coming from, the game was definitely released months too early and I am afraid in some regards would/will never reach an AAA level (animations for example aweful, game feels clunky (which only partial can be justified with wearing a haevy armor, etc.). But the critism quickly descended into unreasonable hatred.
And one more thing regarding how cool an open world ala Planetside 2 would have been: unfortunately the waste majority of Warhammer 40k fans are foremost Space Marines fans. Last statistic I have seen from Eternal Crusade Loyalist Space Marines make 60% of the population in a 4 faction game! I cant imagine any way an open world war would even remotely working out with this distribution in sensible way.
And in addition many Space Marines fan boys are furious this game isnt catering their Ubermensch fantasies and Orcs/Eldars stand a chance 1vs1 against their powerarmored alter ego. I m glad, for me game balance ist more important then lore. Then again, I never have been the biggest Warhammer fan.
there you have it folks- its not an mmorpg- glad to see them clear that up from what it was intentionally supposed to be- now we can all move on...enjoy it for what it is or just stfu.
FF14?
When will this game become an MMO? Never, but we already consider it an MMO
When will you balance the game? We don't believe balance is possible, just get gud (by being organised)
How are player numbers? Great! But actually not that great...
I don't know where I stand on this too well. I mean it's Nathan Richardsson, who I knew for about 10 years as CCP Oveur as the executive producer for EVE during some of it's best years. As an CCP employee working on EVE, he did a lot of good things for their flagship game and was one of the last remaining proponents of keeping EVE hardcore before he quietly left and CCP Gigglechick took over. Then Greyscale left and now the game is slowly dumbing the fuck down year after year.
On the other hand, he had a hand in World of Darkness and you all know how that shitshow clowncar turned out. As someone from Atlanta, and who knew several people at the White Wolf studio in Stone Mountain, I'm seriously put out by that fiasco. A lot of good people are out of jobs now who expected to be working on WoD for many years come, and who had been working there for 20+ years.
Now he's taking over for a game where, in the space of one year, the studio head, lead programmer, lead level designer and the creative director all bailed out. Something internal over at BI is not well for that many people of that caliber to nope out like ducks in a row. Seeing the game that actually dropped compared to what they took people's money to make is a nice hard hoof in the crotch to funders.
Defiance = 5.5 IGN, 64% Metacritic, 7/10 Steam
War EC = 5.3 IGN, 51% Metacritic, 6/10 Steam
That seems very close to me and not order of magnitude different. In my opinion, both games are disasters but I am only seeing them from the consumer standpoint. I would agree that Defiance may have sold better but that was also off the back of a TV series and lots of promotion via the Sy-Fi channel.
http://www.flesheatingzipper.com/gaming/2013/04/defiance-mmo-not-faring-well-as-trion-worlds-unveils-low-gamer-turnout/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2012/11/26/with-defiance-comcasts-syfy-bets-100m-on-convergence-of-tv-and-videogames/#4d6db642130f
Trion Budget for Defiance 80 million
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/70007/defiance/
Global Sales of 57 million
Take that with a grain of salt since we can not really say how accurate those statements are or what ingame sales were from the cash shop.
There is nothing MMO about this game. Wich is fine but be honest enough to call it what it is.
A lobby based shooter.
NR: The problem isn’t really lack of world persistence, it’s very much there.
Me: WRONG! There is no "World Persistence", if there were the battlefields would carry over from one game to the next.
NR: All part of one single persistent world. If there wasn’t persistence, you as a character wouldn’t exist.
Me: WRONG! There is a difference between World and Character persistence, and you are combining both to mean one.
NR: The fact that you do battle on a smaller battlefield doesn’t change that either, it’s more the philosophy we use to make it easier for us to tie together a varied world of different and unique experiences together, without having to worry all day about what happens if they conflict with each other in a shared space.
Me: Smaller.......smaller....smaller...what the heck happened to "Epic Massive Battles"? That is the phrase you used from Alpha thru Beta up to release.
NR: But building something more meaningful on top of this persistence world is our focus right now, iterating on the map, tying more activity into and most importantly right now, we’re finalizing the first version of Campaigns which will continue to expand and is really the thing that gives you, your faction and your guild objectives and goals to achieve, earn RTC etc. and see the effect of those movement reflected on the larger world. Might want to mention the Garrison where you can hang with your faction.
Me: Same old stuff since Alpha.
NR: We totally understand that right now, the components in there doesn’t mimic an MMORPG and we moved away from that a long time ago but we are very much an MMOFPS, were it not for us being third-person.
Me: Yep.....Right AFTER you TOOK all of us Founders money we paid for a MMORPG!
REFUND PLEASE!
NR: Absolutely. Right now it isn’t really necessary, I’ve never liked the numbers game, having come from a game where you have 3000 vs 3000 players. Believe me, the numbers alone don’t make them “fun” in itself, it’s the final goals and achievements.
Second is performance and while optimizing and improving performance across the board, increasing player numbers to affect the lower spec PCs out there just isn’t a good idea either.
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We have heard this line of BS since Alpha, it is Nathan's ETERNAL EXCUSE for small maps and small battles.
NR: A large part of our milestones are based on player feedback. I think short term it’s Campaigns and the World Map that will get a lot of attention, a long with the ongoing tasks of new gear, performance improvements, optimizations and fixing.
Nathan, "Player Feedback" OH REALLY?????????
You mean all the feedback threads your Forum Moderators DELETE and LOCK because, a Moderator disagree's and abuses their power, and/or because YOU KNOW there is NO CHANCE in hell you will ever do anything the players want, which has been proven by how much the game is the opposite of what players provided as feed back for improvements etc.
The game just gets worse and worse
I saw the same thing happen with Space Marine which was a VERY under rated game and very satisfying to me as a Warhammer 40k fan. If this game proves to be a successful sequel to THAT and you can play as Orks and Eldar and fight Tyranids and wear Terminator armor then it literally fixes every complaint on every board I saw about SM.
I 100% think you have the same 100 grognards making the same complaints on every single online site. Negative comments get way more attention than positive ones. I've followed this game closely ever since it was announced. I wait patiently for this to come to consoles... I hope desperately that xbox and pc will get to play together. I hope ardently that gameplay improves and we start drawing more people THAT DON'T KNOW WHAT WARHAMMER 40K IS to the lobbies. If you ever want to see a true AAA WH40K game than it needs to start appealing to a wider group than the current fan base.
By the Emperor people y'all are some whiny, whinging gits.
I self identify as a monkey.
I honestly think this 'developer support' PR is merely smoke and mirrors and the publisher is just trying to recoup some of their losses (including license which isn't cheap and are likely in danger of losing considering neither the studio itself nor game are at the levels they were when license approval was given).
Does anyone really think the publisher is going to invest the funds (in a developer with only something like a dozen people!) needed over months to develop everything being pitched for feature updates? I would honestly be shocked if this game makes it to 2017.
I actually agree with Kano here. Having to launch content along a TV show is crazy. If the game took it's time, I think it would of been pretty awesome. For what it is though, I think still think it's fun. At least it's something different.
The game is supposed to be available for consoles very early 2017, so a more educated guess would be, that EC will be kept running on PC at least till then to iron out all bugs/ improve balance and try a smoother launch for consoles.
The forges of the Empire have failed us! All weapons become useless after 5 hits!