Well, after reading the whole article, my BS alarms are screaming a Magenta-level alert. It's time for a double post.
It's not that I think it's a scam, it's that I think this guy is seriously over promising already for a game 1.5 years in the future and the F2P model sounds abusive form the outset.
I studied war strategy in university and worked for the Canadian army when I was younger, so we are really applying real military strategy to the game and to the Warhammer 40K lore.
I say up to three months, because if a bunch of Navy Seals decide to form a guild or a chapter and play our game, most likely they will defeat everyone else very fast because they know military strategy, and our game will be a realistic representation of military strategy.
Uh huh. Where have I heard that before....oh right, just about any military-based game claims to take a real military angle on game play.
we’re doing tests right now and while my team doesn’t want to tell numbers, we are able to have twice as many players on a single battlefield as the number one massive PvP game out there.
Well, either he's talking about LoL, in which case 20 players isn't that many. Or he's not got his numbers wrong and he's talking about Planetside 2, which makes his claim pretty goddamn hard to take at face value. Or he's talking about Call of Duty, in which case, 40 to 60 players isn't the "thousands" he's hyping.
[3rd Party Engine]We will be the first ones to maximize its features.
Again, this is a hard claim to substantiate....and it's also arrogant as hell to make a claim like that, for a developer who so far has made mostly shovelware of no particular note.
We will have the best combat ever.
*sigh*
Depending on which class you’ll choose in the game, it’s going to be exactly the same as the tabletop
Famous last words.
You can’t be an Ork Nob or above…Those are buy to play as well even if we’ll have very affordable pricing, definitely cheaper than Guild Wars 2.
I don't know what GW2's pricing model is, but that sounds exactly like the kind of monetization BS that I do not appreciate. They say they have horizontal growth within each class...but vertical growth is paid for. If it's ANYTHING like other F2P games, horizontal growth is usually not that engaging or deep. He's making it sound like it will be....which is another thing you can add to the pile of unrealistic expectations.
Otherwise, if you’re ok with being a grunt and experience everything, then you can be an Ork Boy, and the reason for that is that you need at least three to five Ork Boyz in the Warhammer 40k universe to kill a Space Marine. If we made Ork Boyz as powerful as Space Marines, everyone would hate us, because it would fly in the face of the lore.
The fanbois rejoice!....While every other F2P, non-40k wonk out there goes "What the **** kind of **** is this! You want me to pay not to completely suck next to the Spesh Mahreen?! I can't even earn my way out of sucking?"
The other reason is because the difference in personality between committed players and free players is exactly the same difference between the culture of Space Marines and Orks.
Oh FFS. I know you're pleased with your lore-friendly microtransaction model, but now you're over doing it. The analogy and the whole next paragraph, while it has some merit to it, is already making qualitative judgments about their player base and, in truth, reads like a giant ****ing justification for the fact ANYONE who wants to play the game is going to pay, where most other F2P games only say you "might" pay. Think about it. LoL's hero rotation gives you the chance to play all heroes without paying a dime, eventually. Mechwarrior Online lets you buy 80% of the mechs and variants with in-game credits, eventually. Planetside 2 lets you play all classes and you can unlock (slowly) the chance to play pretty much everything, eventually. Warframe lets you find pretty much all things in game, eventually, or buy your way to them as a shortcut. Path of Exile let's you play the whole freaking game for free. The Secret World, likewise, has no pay barriers to content or advancement.
I could go on but the point is: no F2P game restricts 95% of your play options 100% behind multiple microtransaction barriers. That's the definition of abusive pay2win. Unless their pricing model is incredibly low, like .99 cents cheap to start with, they're going to get a massive backlash for stretching the word "Free to play" to credulity. And considering he ballparks a ****ing animation at $1, I shudder to think what they will want to charge for access to a class. Let me guess. I'll have to buy 80% of the paint colors, emblems, embellishments and war gear as well, if all other F2P games are anything to go by.
Just imagine: you spent two hundred dollars on the game.
LOL, listen to this ****ing guy! You can almost hear him furiously masturbating at his desk thinking about the legions of players he's going to get roped in to spending that kind of money. He is literally like a GWS exec emerging from the shadows of their space fortress, saying "Yes, yes, they will pay, because they're ours! Muwhahahahaha."
Buddy: listen. I haven't spent $200 on a F2P game yet. I won't, not until I've played one for a solid couple years. The research shows that people who spend sick amounts of money are between 1% and 5% of most F2P games' populations. That's $50, paid subscription levels of investment you're banking on people paying because your game is "so damn good."
So all the free players that see that video will want to buy all kinds of humiliating executions to troll the space marines as much as they can. With this we’ll even be able to monetize trolling.
Sweet Emperor on High.
In response you’ll be so pissed, and I promise you, you’ll remember that Ork’s name and you’ll make it one of the next objectives of your chapter to obliterate that guy. He’s going to hide, because your whole squad is going to run all over the place to find him. Those free players that like to piss off other players and grief their gameplay will be trying to avoid contact and just wait for someone else to fall on the ground in order to run to them and execute them with another humiliating animation. And that’s what Orks would do in the Warhammer 40k universe. They would kill you while you’re defenseless, and then sit on your face and dance around you. This will be our approach to monetization.
#1- In massive battle spaces, the one thing that's hardest to do is track down one random griefer. In an entire army of griefers, it's even harder.
#2- So you're monetization scheme is essentially "Pay money not to be a scrub grief bot, who is basically a bullet sponge for paying customers, which is the only avenue available to you for free." That sounds ****ing terrible.
We are keeping the equilibrium between different powers and races as close as possible to the real rules of Warhammer 40k. The only time we’ll tweak it is when it’ll risk to kill the gameplay.
Again, I'd point to the number of games that have said the same thing, none of which have lived up to it.
M: Unlimited.
G: Unlimited? That’s a tall promise…
M: We’re going to give you the tools to paint your armor the way you want it to be. Some parts of the armor are set in stone, as you’ll need to be recognizable, while others will be left to your creativity. With most of your looks you’ll be able to express yourself in the same way you can express yourself with miniatures.
Hey, Hypemaster McMoneybags,
that's not unlimited.
Ok.....I DO like a lot of what is being said, it's hard not to, because he's promising the moon. Some of what they're talking about is, disturbingly, almost exactly what I've written about for a 40k MMO in the "Games I Wish Existed" Thread.
But it smells wrong on so many levels. Features galore: 3 month campaigns, elected war councils assigning objectives, cross-faction allegiances with its own mechanics, guild strike cruisers where you have your own quarters, "best" engine, "best" combat, "true" adherence to the table top, "No Balance", GM run weather and NPC races, thousands of players, destructible terrain, cover shooting, vehicles and artillery, 4 races with multiple classes having horizontal progression each using race-specific weaponry, procedurally generated side areas with dungeon-like content and AI foes....
I mean, let's take a look at what Planetside 2, probably one of the most massive and polished F2P games out there right now. It doesn't even come close to features like that, nor to the kind of meta-game these guys are envisioning.
If these guys delivered "the best F2P game ever made" that also happens to be 40k-themed, you know what? I might
almost say "What the hell" to whatever insane pricing scheme they come up with. But this sounds like a pipe dream, it really does. The reality, probably 2 years from now when this might actually be playable, will be quite different. Or it will probably go into Payable Beta in 1.5 years with 20% of this content.
I'd really like to believe, but this guy is making it difficult because of his hype. And they seem to be treating customers paying as a given, as if the game is going to be so ****ing awesome, people are going to be throwing money at them. The arrogance and hubris of it appalling. Every F2P game is like this, but they at least do us the courtesy of ACTING like actual Free To Play deserves consideration. It's a footnote to this guy.
I think it's safe to assume how GWS ever greenlighted something this insane and ambitious: they came to them with a Pay2Win model that is as close to the hobby miniature market as possible. GWS finally sees a place to do video gamers what they've done to table top players.
