Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
40K factions what do you think they SHOULD be?
uttaus
Member Posts: 120
Obviously what the factions should be and what they will be is two different things.
I hear rumour of two factions which seem unwise at the very least if not just plain dumb.
Here is my break down of general factions that might be possible for an MMO.
If you are a 40K wargamer you already know it would be impossible to make all the possible factions with their internal fac tions availabe so here goes.
1. Imperium:
Imperial Guard
Space Marines
Sister of Battle
Inquisition
2. Xenos:
Eldar
Tau
Orks
Dark Eldar (could fit in the chaos faction)
3. Chaos:
Nurgle
Khorne
Slanesh
Tzentch
4. Devourers: (NPC ONLY)
Tyranids
Necrons
Broken down like this you have 3 player factions with 4 racial options in each. Fluff wise there is still much conflict with in each of these factions. Like dark eldar would never work with eldar. etc
I'm doubting they would or could put forth the effort to make 3 player factions with each of these races. With each race givin the option of multiple classes and advancements, the development of such a game would be crazy long.
Asheron's Call, Champions Online, Dark Age of Camelot, EVE Online, EverQuest, Lineage 2, Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft.Waiting for SWTOR
Comments
Actually there's no reason why there can't be more factions than just four, since several races will more than likely appear in future expansions.
There's no reason the Imperial forces can't share a faction, though it would be nice if they could PvP each other as well.
It doesn't make sense for the Orks to be grouped up with anyone, given that they would more than likely fight allies as well as enemies, so they should be their own faction.
All four branches of Chaos can share a faction (Chaos Undivided, and all that), while being able to fight against each other in PvP.
Then there's the Eldar, who should be their own faction.
That gives three factions at launch, or four if the Eldar are indeed in like they have hinted in interviews.
We know that the Tyranids are going to be an NPC faction from what they have said, and it's a fair bet the Necrons will be as well.
As additional races (Tau and Dark Eldar, and possibly Eldar if they don't end up in at launch) are released in expansions, they can be given their own areas/faction as well.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
I actually really like that grouping it gives you plenty of racial choices and has three playable factions.
The downside is bending the lore a little bit by having some races work together but it's a lesser of a few evils imo.
I think there should be a faction for each race really. A.K.A like the board game. Though I do apreciate how hard this would be to implement and balance properly. Was just thinking about reding my White Dwarfs when I was a kid. I can recal reading storys about Imp guard v space marines, space marines and eldar teaming up to fight a common foe. I remember reading something in the instrauctions to Advanced Space Crusade about the pure chaos faction of space marines. (name escapes me) saving a Space Marine Squad from the inside of a tyraninid hive ship. It would be cool if the game would allow you that kind of freedom. I don't know if it's just me but every time I read about a new game only having two factions I begin to get a sinking feeling.
I actually really like the greouping as well, i can see the Tau working with anyone against a common threat, or the "greater good", so the lore bending would not be so bad with them, and since the Eldar are very minipulative,i can actually see lore wise how they could possibly using the ork, although the ork can also be used by chaos, so we will just see how it works out.
I am only afraid that they will pursue the 2 faction thing, but they better learn from Warhammer Online, although, i believe that they will take care of the lore, at least fairly well. There WILL be some lore bending to fit the new story and create the factions, but that is a given.
I don't think those factions would be work very well. For example...
Xenos simply are what Empire considers aliens/strangesrs - they are all xenos.
Tyranids and Necrons are also both seperate. I do not see any instance where they would join forces with anyone.
Dark Eldars could belong under Chaos, after all it was Eldars who spawned the fourth Chaos demon, Slaanesh.
Etc.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
I like the OPs suggestion but I'd prefer it if they just kept all the races/factions separate. I'd be happy enough with just 4 of the original factions at launch, something like the following:
1. Space Marines
2. Chaos Marines
3. Eldar
4. Orks
- all fighting it out in a big free-for-all with other races being added in future expansions.
There is more than enough variety in the 4 factions above for this to work with several sub classes each and it leaves a lot of scope for future content, I don't think it's necessary to offer several race options within a faction to make the game a success. Keeping the factions separate from each other would also allow players to create their own ad hoc alliances and agreements which we need more of in MMOs.
Having more than just 2 factions competing for resources is the way to go though, couldn't agree more with you about having at least 3+ factions.
I have to agree with Torluk , 3-4 factions that are seperate and fight it out FFA style .... giving the freedom to a faction to join forces against 1 or 2 others if they choose to do so .. and then duke it out once all opposition has been destroyed.
They really need to NOT bend the lore on this one. Stay true to the lore and it will prevail.
I would rather they had just had it Ork vs. Space Marine if they were going the two faction rout. However, there are a lot of things I wished they decided to do differently.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
This would be just fine. They could adapt some of the good ideas badly implemented in WAR for the control zone mechanics, like interconnected PvE and PvP for zone control points, with missions and battlefields (not battlegrounds) that cross over with other factions. The game wouldn't even need to be huge either: a planet could have a small permanent drop zone from each faction and then change the mission-giving NPCs and the scenery depending on who's controlling what. It could even be done in a kind of fade-in-fade-out manner, I guess.
Or even better yet, there could be an HQ battleship or something for each faction, outside the planets so that the devs could leave them completely under the player's hands, like in Planetside. I don't know, I bet there's a lot of good ideas around here.
Come on is anyone reading? They said they are going to be a WoW clone and onlt want to win over 1 million players. Nothing new or amazing will be happening here.
It's going to be Order vs Destruction. It's going to be Human Eldar Tau vs Chaos, Orks and Dark Eldar. In those groups htere will be all the typical classes you find everywhere else.
I wrote this on another thread in these forums, but since we now have an official Dark Millenium Online sub-forum, I'll copy-paste here.
[One possibility that others have mentioned, is] that different worlds would have different PvP setups. (I mean why not, they're different effing planets, there's no reason to think that the conflict on one world will be the same as it is on another world).
The other overwhelming truth of the matter is that we have no idea what Vigil is planning, and no real basis to judge how they will approach an MMO to begin with, other than a few paragraphs on the official site.
Personally I'd hope that they would take the huge potential of the 40K lore (more popular than Warhammer Fantasy, I imagine, especially in video gamer circles, given the 2 Dawn of War titles (plus several expansions) and really nail it in a way that works for a video game.
The different-PvP-on-different planets could work. I mean if we're talking control of worlds in space, it's not as cut-and-dry as war across a continent with harsh territorial boundaries. Say there's one planet where it's IG vs Orks, another where it's Space Marines vs Chaos Marines, another where IG + Space Marines happen to be fighting together against Orks and Chaos....and the only real "faction" that exists is your own race (army).
For example, if I'm an Ork and I'm just mucking about the Ork home town, there should be...well..nothing but other Ork players around me. I should be in an Ork-only guild. However, that doesn't mean that I won't occasionally find myself on the same team as a Chaos Marine from time to time, depending on the battleground I'm fighting on. And it also shouldn't be surprising that I occasionally fight against that same Chaos Marine and his buddies on a different battleground. Likewise, my Ork guild and their Chaos Marine guild should be able to form an alliance and such that has in-game implications. We should also be able to break that alliance.
I guess my point with the guilds/factions thing is that just because one group of Orks decides to ally with Chaos (or Eldar, or Tau, or whatever) at a given time doesn't mean that ALL Orks EVERYWHERE hold the same alliance. If they make the game so that there are no factions except race that determine who is where on what battlefield, and then allow the guilds (players) to forge their own "Factions", I think it would solve the problem of the 2-Factions-Set-in-Stone Order vs Destruction mistake, and also feel more true to the lore.
Of course this might be a little more "sandbox" than Vigil is wanting. Who knows. We've seen this system work in other games like EVE for years (and yes, alliances do get to the Zerg/Goonswarm/BoB levels of ungodliness, and yes alliances do break and really screw up balance of power), but I have no idea (and neither does anyone else, really) what Vigil's goals for this game are.
I guess another element for this would have to be some sort of resource benefits to territory control. MAG on the PS3 has a 3 faction system and all you really control if your faction is doing well is you get a certain "contract" which basically gives you an XP buff or some other buff benefit. This could be that simple for 40K. Or they could go more complex in the effect of if you control this territory, you have access to a Titan or something. Hell, use the campaign mode from Dawn of War Soulstorm and Dark Crusade expansions as inspiration.
You're THQ after all, you've done the Warhammer 40K thing better than anyone expected. Make it happen.
Just don't do 2 factions of Order vs Destruction, or Horde vs Alliance. If we wanted that, we'd still be playing WAR.**
**Note: IMO, the 2 faction system didn't kill WAR. The engine was horrible for what the game needed to do. Also, Stunties + Knockbacks + Lava = ragequit.
Edit: Just a spoonful of colors helps the wall of text go down.
Currently playing: LOTRO, Guild Wars 2.
Have played: EVE Online; Champions Online; Age of Conan; City of Heroes/Villains; Star Wars Galaxies (pre-CU, pre-NGE); World of Warcraft (Vanilla to Cataclysm); Hellgate: London; Warhammer Online; Lord of the Rings Online; Vanguard: Saga of Heroes; Star Wars: The Old Republic
Wishlist: Mass Effect Online
Nids and Necrons definitely should be NPC only
Space marines Vs Chaos Marines
Be soo easy to implement as long as you get the Corruption Taint in the game,
Arachnids,Neocron,Orks,Skaven,Werewolves,Wet dreams as NPC trash only
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Norsefire-logo.png
You know, you could have a planet web nexus all interconnected together (kinda like EVE, like you said) and when travelling between planets, you could just have hard locations where you enter and leave dependent on the connections. And then just allow what you said where there is no factions except the races themselves. This would allow you to create maps (planets) that have different types of battles, like you said, which lets players to make alliances themselves and capture planets with alliance implications.
I like your idea, its a win-win if they implement something similar, but also, like you said, we just have no other information about what exactly they are doing.
MMOs Played: I can no longer list them all in the 500 character limit.
I do not get things like this - we know exactly what they are doing. They are doing a MMOTPS version of DoW - it is set within a specific area of space detailing a specific scenario... this is what they have stated, what is there to question?
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
I like the idea of having all the races as their own factions but also letting specific races remain as allies, this would mean you could kill any player no matter what faction they are, but there would be consequences if you killed your allies, I have always liked the idea of some kind of good vs evil alignment system in games, so if you kill your own races or allies you would be flagged as a murderer, or whatever, Mortal Online and UItima Online take this approach, and being a "red" as you are in Mortal and UO, you are a enemy to your own race and allies, allowing anyone of them to kill you without taking a alignment hit and the way you bring your alignment back up to become "good" again would be to kill enemy races, it is suppose to prevent grieving in a PVP game and make it for a very hard life...
Lineage 2 does something similar if I am not mistaking, so does Darkfall Online..
Uh eldar + orks = no way . Come oh it could make for some funny quests but lore be dammed.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
I find it hard to accept some of those groups being allied to each other. The game really needs to be a really big mess of combat. But the real driving force is what kind of story they're trying to set this WH40k game in. IMO, and I hope I'm really wrong here, they're going to establish a story like the Dawn Of War 1 games where you could possibly have something like an Imperium + Eldar alliance against Chaos or something. From what I gathered from articles so far, the game is going to be set on a single planet, so I highly doubt we'll be planet hopping (remember, this is being done on a small budget, this isn't TOR level of money here).
Imperium of Man & Eldar vs Chaos vs Orks
Man and Eldar will ally temporarily because Chaos forces are as usual up to no good, something along the line of some ancient artifact that if Chaos gets it, the galaxy is finished. But the Orks invade, blow stuff up, kill stuff, and cause hilarity... because that's what they do. They're the wildcard, and this can be a 3 sided fight.
I predict the game will be very tightly focused as far as factions go, at least at release. IMO, I highly doubt we'll see Tau, Necrons, etc. at release.
Personally, I hope for a much, much wider game world, or rather some big sector for us to travel to and fight on, and hopefully some space battles with some shipboarding missions (clearing and securing a captured ship, or go "Space Hulk" and send the Terminators to clear out Genestealer infested ships). I hope for many factions against each other. The interesting thing is that some of these factions have immense variety of forces within themselves to choose from. In the Imperium alone is big in pickings. You have the Imperial Guard, Adeptus Astartes, Ordo Malleus, Inquisition, etc. This means that the Imperium can easily have a wickedly big selection of groups to start out with.
Imperium of Man: Adeptus Astartes (Space Marines), Imperial Guard, Inquisition, Sisters of Battle - Easily can have the greatest selection and variety in the game. You COULD make the MMORPG solely based on the Imperium because of all the different power groups within it.
Eldar
Chaos: Take a pick of the 4 different Chaos Gods and their cultists as well as Chaos SM Legions. Not to mention Daemons. It's been a while since I was a hardcore WH40k player, but are the Chaos Gods and Legions still fighting each other? Or is it one big happy Chaos family now?
Orks
Dark Eldar
Tau
Necrons - NPC only - Big threat for all
Tyranids - NPC only - Big threat for all
It'd be great if all the factions had their own agendas, but more importantly fighting each other. The thing though is that you need ALOT of players for many factions to work. Otherwise what you'll have is like certain factions will have tons of players and others having barely any, and will always lose in PvP due to the player faction imbalance.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
I personally agree with the every race a faction idea. We've only had games with 2 or 3 factions, no one has really serious tried more. There is no data out there that suggests that having more factions would be a bad thing. Sure it would dilute the player base between the factions, making one perhaps understaffed, but if they balance them properly in appealing aesthetics and ability it shouldn't happen too much.
Also, if anything diluting the player base could be a positive thing, though it may feel like it gives you less people to interact with, you can have the servers set up so that each "server" is really a combination of 6-8 servers, one for each races PvE area (ala DAOC) and another server or two for PvP where they mix, using the cross server matching similar to WoW. That way you can keep the numbers higher per race, by having fewer overall "servers" but just having each server really a combination of several.
Also, if you spread the player base a bit more than normal, it makes it easier to give more of a feeling of importance to each individual player, instead of doing the standard MMO thing of making most of them feel like worthless clones who never really get a chance to impact the world as a whole.
My absolute worst fear is an Order vs. Chaos system similar to the horrible Warhammer Online. It didn't make sense there, and makes far less sense in 40k. You lose a massive amount of the feel of the chaos and violence of the world when you have enemies who have hated each other for thousands of years or that have diametrically opposed views on the universe, getting together and playing nice, no matter what lame forced excuse you try to make up to make it seem plausible. It won't be, and it will ruin the experience for a massive amount of the players.
Oh dear. This would be a terrible MISTAKE, you are right.
"Note: IMO, the 2 faction system didn't kill WAR. The engine was horrible for what the game"
STRONGLY DISAGREE with this sentiment. The engine did not help, but the 2 faction system destroyed WAR both from the inside and the outside.
INSIDE: as quoted above same old classes jumbled together.
OUTSIDE: Zero-sum game, Underdog Syndrome, Snowball effect. The End.
The VERY BEST this game can hope to do to achieve success is break the usual faction model and create it's own MMO niche: MULTIPLE FACTION PVP
Space Marines, Orcs, Chaos, Eldar, Tyranids
Core Opening races ALL-AGAINST-ALL. 5-factions. Would entail reduced graphics and complexity but would maximise gameplay and player choice and if successful FUTURE EXPANSIONS of new races ie tapping all of WH40K not cherry picking and discarding the rest.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
to be completely honest, anything can happen in the 3 or so years it takes to create the game, like they may move away from the WoW clone thing. i do like some of the ideas in here but we are speculating waayy to early
Intelligent people posting in this thread, I am impressed with the suggestions and I hope the developers take note that non-faction races is what players want..
I still wouldn't mind having some races allied though who would normally be allied in Warhammer, but they wouldn't be a faction, there would just be a alignment that you would have with each race and if you went out and killed the races allied to you, or your own race for that matter, you would become enemies with them.. Factions could still exist in the game but as a NPC type of thing, players should be able to get together and create multiple raced clans, set up their own towns and create "their own" factions, it is one of the things I hate about WoW, factions should be optional... You should be able to become enemies with your own race and allies, it is realistic and it would add in A LOT of depth.. They could do this and prevent grieving at the same time with the right alignment system..
This topic gave me hope that they did move away from wow clone. I found it's filled with people who wasnt told that it's order vs destruction.
--
"Any free people have the right to choose how it wants to be govern thats the essence of democracy. It's sad when America has chosen for the stability and consistency of a dictatorship and doing it democratically" -utnow
What you are saying is one of the fundamental questions of making an MMO, it appears, I'd say.
Q:how are those races aligned against or with each other?
Q: How do you array the players to be antagonistic or cooperative so they have lots of options to fight either/both with each other or/and against each other and keep factions' populations balanced?
Either use 2 factions where you can diversify the races and hope to balance and hope to make both sides equally attractive to players or suggestion:
""MULTIPLE FACTION PVP - Core Opening races ALL-AGAINST-ALL. 5-factions.
Space Marines, Orcs, Chaos, Eldar, Tyranids
Where eg 4 classes per race and each class is a mirror of all the other races, this allows balancing but adding a few differences along the way.
Advantages:
1. WAR already failed using 2 factions
2. WH40K needs to find an exclusive market niche to differentiate from other MMO's if it's to succeed in a competitive market & 5 factions might achieve that.
3. Actually creates scope for more content that's replayable than vanilla 2factions and vastly better PvP options.
4. Xenophobia should be the driving storyline in WH40K and players could have a lot of fun with that.
5. Built on a model that is easier to balance all races.
6. Expandable to include future races for even more options to pvp cominations FvF, 2FvF, FvFvFvFvF etc.
7. Some co-op between races could be implemented Space Marines & Eldar, Orcs & Chaos etc (fits IP).
8. Campaign feature for all races to win territory etc etc.
It's got huge potential and in a few years technology to sustain large battles should be even stronger.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
1. Imperium- Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Sisters of Battle, whatever else. Nothin much to explain here.
2. Tau (flesh out Kroot and Vespid as needed) and Eldar (OP's suggestion of Eldar and Dark Eldar on the same side is beyond laughable.) Tau consider the Eldar to be the race with the most hope of embracing the Greater Good anyway. So not too much lore bending here.
3. Chaos and Ork (Maybe Dark Eldar, I don't really like them). Unstable alliance, both planning to betray other later, straight out of DoW.
3 faction system leads to self-balancing conflict. Each race being its own faction would be nice, but that makes the scope of the game so massive that I just don't see it happening.