Poll: WH40K MMO, can it be done and not throw me into murderous rage?

[Kovash86]

BOOM!! TEXT WALL!!!

EDIT: By the way, no one is really sure how many chapters are out there, they only keep 1000 chapters on the books, but the Dark Angels are proof enough that there is a lost of stuff kept off the record. The rule the Dark Angels break is the one about not having more than 1000 marines, they break that rule by making all of the chapter masters, of the Dark Angels successor chapters, report to the Grand Master.

 

[Ultrajoe]

I agree with all of these ideas, good work guys.

I guess i will never be a nid' though...

 

[Chaos Marine]

From my limited experience with the W40K RTS series for PC (I never had the opportunity to play the real game), I would say it is slightly possible; The imperium of man consists of both Space Marines and Imperial Guards, so having these two pitched against each other is sort of pointless, at least, for the back story to be used in the a W40K MMO, additonally, I believe that other races might be allied together in some sort of not-so-friendly alliance to balance off this whole cesspool of races.

I think by now, the whole alliance thing might get some W40k purists on the edge, I admit that doesn't reflect the W40K universe, but for gameplay sake, it is safe to say that's the best way to balance off the game.

That might work if every race in 40K didn't hate every other race in 40K with a blinding passion.

 

[Ultrajoe]

Yeah sorry ultrajoe, I thought and thought about how to make nids playable but you would have to have like all of World of Warcraft on one server to make it fair and reasonable without messing with unit strength. plus most people would hate to be a mindless drone in a flood thats will probably die alone with 10,000 of your closest friends.

i thought perhaps genestealers, in different forms (see previous page where this idea is fleshed ot)

but it wouldn't be true to the fluff... and i would feel even more wretched indulging in it

I suppose it could work if it was a single planet, upon which a genestealer cult was just coming to the fore in an attempt to conquer everyone.

 

[Groovewood]

Making an mmo that is faithful to Warhammer 40,000's source material would be very difficult. The only way I can see them actually doing it is either a) excluding the hordey expendable armies (I'm looking at you guard and orks) or b) only allow players to be the elites of said forces (i.e. IG players get to be Kasrkin, Orks can be flash gitz or nobs), so they can be on an even keel with the other races who in general are more elite.

This is kinda like what they're doing with the Warhammer Fantasy mmorpg. The Empire is the fantasy equivalent of the Imperial Guard, lots of troops, but they're all wimpy manling troops. However, in the mmorpg, the four choices are Warrior Priest, Knight, Witch Hunter, and Wizard. These account for a tiny percentage of the total forces of the Empire, but frankly, they're the only ones who are good enough on their own. Essentially, the imperial guard would have to look something like this.

Still, I'll wait to see what ideas get cooked up as the game develops further. Another concern is how to use the non-sentient races. In an RPG I don't think you could really put either the 'nids or 'crons in as a playable race, and in an FPS I could see Tyranids working possibly, but not the Necrons, the future skeletons are just to slooow.

 

[Ultrajoe]

I just have faith in the Emperor...

and the Developers, i have faith and hope.

but just to be sure... a little bit more towards the Emperor.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Of course it could be balanced, you are just thinking too inside the box because you are thinking "the only way to balance = NERF!" - we don't have details about how it could be done, but unless they pull a "Star Wars Galaxies" (You use to have to work for months just to become a Jedi) and let you simply pick being a Jedi -, then it would be ruined if everyone could just become a Grey Knight or Chaos Lord at the start.

Chances are it will be like "Star Wars Galaxies" - you'll see "Guardsmen/Grunts" way more often than the other high-powered classes which require months of playtime and long, tough, quests.

I think you'll be able to pick "Factions" instead of Races. You pick which side you are playing, and then work your way up. If they have all races, I'd like to see how this is done with Necrons and 'Nids.

 

[Saskwach]

BOOM!! TEXT WALL!!!

EDIT: By the way, no one is really sure how many chapters are out there, they only keep 1000 chapters on the books, but the Dark Angels are proof enough that there is a lost of stuff kept off the record. The rule the Dark Angels break is the one about not having more than 1000 marines, they break that rule by making all of the chapter masters, of the Dark Angels successor chapters, report to the Grand Master.

And the Black Templars break the rule just by ignoring it. To be honest, I've always had a problem with the 1,000 man fluff. I can (mainly) understand it in the fluff where a squad of SMs can kill armies and deflect bullets with their gigantic...armour. However, having 1000 SMs per chapter and- let's overstimate- 1,500 chapters would mean 1,500,000 Space Marines total, not including casualties at any one time. In the whole galaxy. I'm just guessing but I'd expect that the Imperium has many, many more planets than that (inhabiting almost all of the galaxy as they do) and more crises in need of SM support than there are SMs. This is understandable, though, SMs being the elite of the elite and exceedingly rare in the fluff.
If you look at things from the tabletop, though, it gets ridiculous. When outnumbered three to one by (say) Orks, an SM force will lost a lot of soldiers, if not lose outright. Let's say it has 50% casualties, and 25% deaths. For a chapter that's a 1/40 loss from a single battle, and for the Company it's a 1/4 loss. Considering SMs take years to train to Battle Brother level no chapter could possibly sustain a fighting force that was actually useful for very long at all.
[/geek rant]

 

[Kovash86]

From my limited experience with the W40K RTS series for PC (I never had the opportunity to play the real game), I would say it is slightly possible; The imperium of man consists of both Space Marines and Imperial Guards, so having these two pitched against each other is sort of pointless, at least, for the back story to be used in the a W40K MMO, additonally, I believe that other races might be allied together in some sort of not-so-friendly alliance to balance off this whole cesspool of races.

I think by now, the whole alliance thing might get some W40k purists on the edge, I admit that doesn't reflect the W40K universe, but for gameplay sake, it is safe to say that's the best way to balance off the game.

That might work if every race in 40K didn't hate every other race in 40K with a blinding passion.

That's not true, the Tau don't hate the other races, they pity them for being so ignorant, and for standing in the way of the Railgun empire *cough I mean Tau empire. The Eldar don't hate, despise is a more accurate statement, but they will use the other races against each other. The Orks don't hate they just like to fight. The Tyranids are completely incapable of hatred.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

One thing I would like to add about a 40k MMO - is that I think it shouldn't be very "character centered" and a lot more "Universe centered" - the main point of the game is War, and instead of adding new levels and quests for people, so that they can whore up on items and stuff for their avatar, it should just be new "opportunities" to defeat the OpFor. Instead of "New Quest" it's "Chaos command post discovered in this region, raid will commence in an hour, report to this location when you are ready, but don't take too long!"

and of course, the Chaos will get something saying "Invasion incoming! Report to [wherever] soon or we'll lose the territory! Be Prepared! Enemy E.T.A. 60 minutes!"

That's why Tabula Rasa appealed to me so much, but turns out, it's just another "character centered" MMO, where the whole point isn't to "fight the good fight!" - it's just to beef up your character -_-

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Do you think the WH40K thread will be balanced?

Why does the poll question say this? I just noticed since..I just voted.

 

[Kovash86]

BOOM!! TEXT WALL!!!

EDIT: By the way, no one is really sure how many chapters are out there, they only keep 1000 chapters on the books, but the Dark Angels are proof enough that there is a lost of stuff kept off the record. The rule the Dark Angels break is the one about not having more than 1000 marines, they break that rule by making all of the chapter masters, of the Dark Angels successor chapters, report to the Grand Master.

And the Black Templars break the rule just by ignoring it. To be honest, I've always had a problem with the 1,000 man fluff. I can (mainly) understand it in the fluff where a squad of SMs can kill armies and deflect bullets with their gigantic...armour. However, having 1000 SMs per chapter and- let's overstimate- 1,500 chapters would mean 1,500,000 Space Marines total, not including casualties at any one time. In the whole galaxy. I'm just guessing but I'd expect that the Imperium has many, many more planets than that (inhabiting almost all of the galaxy as they do) and more crises in need of SM support than there are SMs. This is understandable, though, SMs being the elite of the elite and exceedingly rare in the fluff.
If you look at things from the tabletop, though, it gets ridiculous. When outnumbered three to one by (say) Orks, an SM force will lost a lot of soldiers, if not lose outright. Let's say it has 50% casualties, and 25% deaths. For a chapter that's a 1/40 loss from a single battle, and for the Company it's a 1/4 loss. Considering SMs take years to train to Battle Brother level no chapter could possibly sustain a fighting force that was actually useful for very long at all.
[/geek rant]

I never said the emperium of man made sense, I said the spacemarines don't play by the rules. Generally though the spacemarines rarely suffer any actual deaths unless it is a rough fight, or the writer feels the need to kill a bunch of them which is a fairly common occurrence. Individual chapters don't fight all that much anyhow, spacemarines are generally reserved for crusades and emergencies, to get more than a company is almost unheard of. None of this means anything really, because trying to sustain the emperium of man is impossible with the way they wrote the system.

 

[felixader]

I think i have an idea how it possibly could work.

It is part of the Warhammer 40 000 Universe that those human armies have to live in the gigantic space carriers and stuff like this.

So the start of the different races could start at ships or bases or something like this, If you then want to start a mission you can get your briefings in different rooms fom diferent NPC's.

You can form a group before the briefing or after those and the go to something like the docks where you enter the vehicles that are needed to appoch the mission locations, which in fact is than an instanced level.

This way, really big battles could be brougth up to play through.

If you get up somelevels you will be ordered to the next (storybased) Startbase or -location.

This way mostly different missions on different planets troughout the 40 000 Universe could be seen or played on.

When i remember rigth than it is so that SpaceMarines are partly normal soldiers who get the offer to join their lines, after they had shown that they are worth it.
So that could mean that after a specific level and absolving specialy heavy battles (levels) you get the offer to join the Space Marines.
You can now decide if you want to stay an normal Soldier of the imperial guard or you start as an Space Marine, biut there on level zero again.

After that you have to accomplish several missions where you are learning to be an Space marine.

As part of the Gameplay i would suggest that you can outfit yourself with the different weapons you want to have for a mission, but you have to accomplish different weapons (like abbilitys) levels to get better versions of them or to increase several stats of them.

 

[Ultrajoe]

I love the innovative approach to MMO's that this has generated, from true territory control right up to mission selection ships.

Escapist... than you, i don't think i've ever said it before but thank you.

i have faith, and when the true hive fleet approaches (leviathan? HAHAHAHAHA, thats a millionth of the Tyranids) you will be made into something cool... i promise.

 

[Saskwach]

I never said the emperium of man made sense.

Never meant to imply you had. It was just a rant I'd been holding in for a while and you seeded the topic for me.

 

[monostable]

i don't think a MMORPG could be done, but a tactical shooter where you play as a sort of SAS style marine leading a squad of similar guys would be good, if it included things like suppression and decent squad AI.

Only now thinking about it this would kind of be just a future version of Brothers In Arms

 

[Martenzo]

Ok, I see several options how this could work.
1) The easy option, they make it Dark Heresy style. You can only play an imperial human, and even then you couldn't actually play as an SM or something else that's too strong to be individual.
2) All races are available, But each race has limited options. Again, no Space Marine players, chaos humans can be various flavors of cultists, etc.
3)I had a third idea, but I was interrupted and I forgot it

But there's one big problem. Interstellar travel is quite heavily restricted. It would all probably take place on a single planet. And there's no way a good background can be made for all the various factions in the 40k universe to be present on a single planet.