Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade (MMO)

[Batpimp]

The alpha invites are coming out!

http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads ... ost-848404





New



Hail all, xenos, infidels, heretics, demi-gods and assorted immortals.

This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. It’s time for Founders to get early access into Closed Alpha. Not just to play and drool on your keyboards like we’ve been doing for months, eagerly awaiting this moment, but to participate as Founders in the development of the Eternal Crusade, becoming an integral part of the team and giving us the feedback we will use to iterate and evolve.

That it has been almost 9 months since I joined this team is surreal. The Warhammer 40,000 universe is massive and an inspiration to all of us and it’s an honor to deliver to you, the first massive online shooter experience in this universe. It will be amazing, especially because of you.

On Monday September 14th, the people that have Captain’s packs or higher in terms of RTP and were the first to buy, will start to enter the Closed Alpha. We will start slowly with admission in the 100s, with the eventual goal of getting all Captain’s pack and higher in by October.
If you want to get in as part of the Captain’s wave, you can still secure your spot in it by buying, or upgrading, to a Captain’s pack before we start the Sergeants’ wave. I know; shameless plug but more Founders means more war. In the grim darkness of the far future, there can be only more war.

So you might be wondering what’s in this Closed Alpha and what you are getting early access to as Founders?

Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade is far from complete. It is still in development, will evolve and will be updated weekly. We are a Massive Online Shooter and the Closed Alpha focuses only on creating a great Shooter experience, before becoming Massive.

The persistent world, meta-game, continent, territories, theater of war, campaigns, character progression, thousands of items, customized loadouts, visual personalization, more game modes, commanders, PVE and other MMO aspects, as well as the last factions will gradually be added to the Closed Alpha and well into Beta.

It’s true; we once said we’d have individual modules of these available, then we changed focus and scope to a full vertical slice available this Fall. Then we got Unreal, good people left, good people joined, things changed, designs iterated and optimized, playtesting lead us in new directions and voila, we were confident we could move Closed Alpha, a vertical shooter slice from Fall to Summer.

And here it is, still technically Summer.

How is it different from what I’ll experience when we launch, you ask?

Besides many of the core systems mentioned above, what you will find is a very traditional entry into individual maps basically. These are individual outposts or fortresses with various game modes. Soon there will be different biomes like snow or lava and “mutators” as we call them, like a warp storm or night mode, which highly affects the factions abilities to fight on the same map. You will enter a queue and jump straight into the fray.

This will evolve over time when more core systems are added. Culminating in the larger theater of war on a continent with territories which have outposts and a fortress, mutators and instanced PVE encounters. This moves us more and more away from the “map” mentality, to the “open world” territories and massive battles.

How that evolves and how long that takes is entirely dependent on our progress, feedback, technology and of course, you.
We are excited that you want to help us develop the game in this early state, give us feedback, test and be able to have a great impact on its direction.

We will be with you, shooting you and on the closed Founder’s forums. The first rule of Closed Alpha is: you do not talk about Closed Alpha. You will be under NDA, which we hope we can lift as soon as possible, so you can spread the gospel as evangelists, leading the masses to the light.

A very excited Nathan

[Indrid]

Woot. Hopefully it's not too long before my Sergeant pack gets me in.

[Ar-Aamon]

I only have a Warrior pack. Time to upgrade?

[Batpimp]

I want to clarify what Katie the community manager told me.

Monday, if you get the email invite with a key, you will be able to play.

[Batpimp]

Visual and Audio update

Looking and sounding good!



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTtpBDO ... youtu.be&a

[Batpimp]

Played the alpha today. These were my comments.

so far everything really good.

1. I REALLY dislike how when i use S and D keys to move sideways while aiming straight my characters' body moves in that direction too. I wish i could aim one way and walk in another. For example, if i try to move forward with W and left with D my character starts to look left. With my mouse though i aiming the cursor to the right and it overrides this.

2. also blocking doesn't seem to be working for me.

3. if i leave a match it completely shuts down the game instead of taking me back to the main menu.

4. it would be nice to know how many of each class our team currently has on the map.

Once we get better map balance for point A and the ques working correctly for auto faction select it will be more fun. Right now i havent seen or played as a single CSM win. Either the SM is always over populated or the CSM guys are new. Basically both.

----------------

sycho..

i think it was noah whom stated that the map isnt balanced at all. not only that but when you select random faction it always defaults to SM. This has created not a single win ive seen or been part of for CSM.

once Point A gets looked at and the random faction selection works hopefully this alleviates the stall out of games where they never get past point A

[Batpimp]

NEW SOUND TRACK!

SM CHAOS and more!

http://maximegoulet.com/warhammer-40000 ... l-crusade/

[egewithin]

NEW SOUND TRACK!

SM CHAOS and more!

http://maximegoulet.com/warhammer-40000 ... l-crusade/

CHAOS THEME IS EPIC!

[Caeltos]

Yeah, I've gotta say, they really NAILED down the music.

The game is shapening up really well now, they do it more justice showing off the 32 gameplay footage, and even with that, it still looks pretty nice, and they want to stretch that furthermore as well.

Seems to be only good things ahead?

I'm going to change my attitude from pessimistic to optimistic for this. Because I'm honestly excited for this. I regret not buying a founders pack, due to my scepticsm.

[Batpimp]

Yeah, I've gotta say, they really NAILED down the music.

The game is shapening up really well now, they do it more justice showing off the 32 gameplay footage, and even with that, it still looks pretty nice, and they want to stretch that furthermore as well.

Seems to be only good things ahead?

I'm going to change my attitude from pessimistic to optimistic for this. Because I'm honestly excited for this. I regret not buying a founders pack, due to my scepticsm.

I WISH I could show you the gameplay I have recorded its pretty damn good. I don't wanna hype the game but so far here is what other people have said 1st day of launch mind you. With every possibility the servers would just crash and crash and bugs everywhere. All the frustrated and impatient people HOPING that the game would be crap just to be right but so far. The issues are either minor or being fixed.


Also, I have a thread in the Closed Alpha forum which gathers first impressions. I only had time to update it yesterday morning, and as you can see, the feedback is getting more detail. We also have huge great threads of insightful feedback on changes, which we are implementing many of. As these first impressions don't break NDA, I'll post them here to assure you, the days of wait while we sort these things out, after all these years, are indeed worth it.


Ziegfried: “Yep, killed two dev's so far. This game ROCKS !”

Sven Van Heerden: “I got to shoot from a predator, and drive a rhino. Ima go take a cold shower now.”

Terry: It's like Christmas, without the presents, food, family and other assorted accoutrements.
Just the anxiety and post-depression.

Falwell: I pretty much made Michael Chan my property today, and I just wanted that to be taken into design consideration.
Real feedback: It's a pretty damn good start.

Intercept: best alpha-starting I have been present. Good Performance, Good Game!

MintyFiz: “after playing a few games.....you guys my may have something hear here its fun

Psychopski: "Alpha is awesome!" ... "How do we report Brent because he's always killing friendlies??"

Grigdusher: "I have fight against a tank with a sword and it's awesome"

DreamorCZE: “Lovely start, lovely alpha, lovely to shoot and to get shot.”

Valrak [V-M]: Amazing, really enjoying it this far!

Board_Norse: Dear everyone at Behaviour, I LOVE this game ! Thank you all so very very much

Crioxus Arigulius: “For a Alpha start it's very promising !”

Kappa: “Really enjoying it, I also love the animation and sound work on interaction with control points, especially since its Alpha. Good stuff.”

Sanguinary Priest Orr: “In the grim darkness of the far future there is only a desire for more! Whether with bolter or chainsword combat is fast and fun. I can't wait for launch!”

Black Cardinal Peaches: You guys are doing a superb job. This is great fun already. o:

WNx Vociferous: Great game sir, absolutely loving it

Jean-Marie Gueirard: “EC is so awesome!

Angry Mailman: Awesome game so far great work!

Batpimp : so far everything really good. Once we get better map balance for point A and the ques working correctly for auto faction select it will be more fun. Right now i havent seen or played as a single CSM win. Either the SM is always over populated or the CSM guys are new. Basically both.

Thrishmal : « A promising start to the 40k game we have wanted for so long. With founders joining the fight and providing feedback, I can see this game being great!

Sapientiam : « I played quite a few rounds with several of the folks I'm seeing already commenting here. Very good start for an Alpha. Very tight start, very good feel. Thumbs up to the whole team. »

Grim : « I enjoyed myself - both hating and loving the game. But well when you log in for the first time and get instantly killed because opposite side was attacking the the spawn point can be frustrating - but i understand the map-updating is W.I.P
Amazingly smooth for an Alpha, as I remember both WAR, Rift and AOC - and i renamed those to "restart client online". It's going to be fun help progressing this game as the core already seems so solid. So on to those metrics eh? »

Crioxus Arigulius : « For Alpha, it's more stable and it runs well. Apart from some problems to load a match. It promises good ! »

El Bearsidente : « I was whooping to loud after killing my first Chaos Rhino. Combat feels good. Love the bolters. Nice to see my favorite weapon, the stalker bolter. Always used it in Space Marine. »

Daemoneyes : « Dislike: A/D is a weird mixture of strafe and turn, strafe plz, Laser cannon pre loading time is fine but reducing mouse speed is not! (reality check, people will bypass this with macros to adjust mouse input, so plz remove), No multiplayer lobby, Need to search game and confirm loadout each time, No graphics menu, Like: Attacks feel heavy
Only played for a few rounds, will report more later. Good work so far. »

Mephistophilese : « Totally addicted already! Loving it.This small "Slice" Bodes well for the future of the game. Running smoothly with only issue so far being server connection loss during match load. »

Lord Reithas : « Loving it thus far! It's not laggy, and it runs well. Keep up the good work! »

OptimusMaximus : « so i played my first match in EC as a son of Macragge and i have to say the game feels and looks just fantastic and yes i know that this is a very early stage of the game but im sure it can get only better »

Hienz : « Great first impression, really surprised at some of teh early depth! More blood and projectile limbs needed!Im bloody loving it! First couple of games - bit meh Grig camping and farming kills but then played the sorc.....game changer ! Such a fun class! Kills and heals galore upload_2015-9-17_9-57-24.png I like the tanks but they seem pretty light looking, papery if that makes any sense? Overal day one in alpha very enjoyable and looking forward to more team stuff coming in »

Mordred Alixander: I'm sure you guys'll get it easy, have a fantastic foundation it seems, works beautifully for an alpha. My only regret is how little I can tell my friends and having to just resort to 'So damn fun'

Kaela Mensha Khaine : « Really happy to begin at last to wage war in the Founder Access. At the moment all my being is invested in firing as many bullets as possible, and although there are obviously some balancing issues it is really a very good first impression. I can't wait for the Eldar faction... »

Zoatibix: “Dear Planetside 2, It's been fun but I think you should know I've met somebody else. ... Liking the feel so far. Surprised by how low the TTK is.”

Ziegfried : «I love it. And I am getting way to fond of the Predator”

Archmike : « I die too much. You should stop me dying. A plan with no drawbacks
Pretty good so far but i think melee needs a lot of work

Attias : « I played for about 4 hours last night and my initial impression was good, I'm quite pleased. I only had 3 instances where things slowed down to a slideshow. Not too shabby ! I also experienced the rolling Rhino bug, some invisible executions.... uh, I think I got stuck in the rock terrain around point A a couple of times. That's really it though. That's not too bad at all for a first cut ! Sure there's still a lot to do, but I feel very confident that we'll get there. Good luck guys, keep up the good work ! »

Brother Korealis : « amazing game so far, loving it »

Solokahnir : « Brutal. Just like it should be. »

LordTyrannus : « its amazing! i had a blast! most promising »

Lacedaemonian : « The first impression is , - Pain , a lot of Pain. »

Jericho : « When the day one Alpha is so much fun and then I stop to think what else will eventually be added to the game my mind is literally blown »

[Batpimp]

I am actually asking them to apply the best parts of the mod you guys created. Here is hoping they take some of the aspects of the mod into the gameplay. The suppression effect is SUPER cool. The voiceovers and executions are dope and they are done by amateurs not actual voice actors!

[Batpimp]

highlights video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZtH2iv144M

[Batpimp]

Update from the Senior Producer

---------------------------------------------------------------------

I have updated the first post again with some news, which should be remotely satisfying, as well as give some a warm fuzzy feeling. Except me, I hate doing nice things.

Edit: 9:31 PM 9/22/2015
•Good morning to you all. Today is a good day. Key facts to remember.
•At the beginning of the year, reviewing scope and plans, we did not expect to have anything playable in the near future. Fall was our best hope.
•We pulled that into the technically still summer, on Pluto. Imagine our surprise and joy.
•You are also enjoying the Alpha as much as we're doing, this increases the joy, likealot.
•Instead of 500 invites total that were planned to be out today, you are now 4000 Captains, DOI and Xenos.
•Even better, today, 1600 invites are scheduled go out so that all Captain's+ are in. All. Maybe even the 63.
•That means that in one week, instead of in one month, you all have access. And that access is months before we ever expected to be able to have this Closed Alpha open.
•Sergeants will be in October. Warriors November. On TURBO too. So help me, Emperor.


•Almost forgot. More servers for the server god.
•More weapons for the weapon god today in our patch, with further balancing and so on.

[Batpimp]

not that I particularly like Angry joe but he did stream some ALPHA footage of Eternal Crusade.

http://www.twitch.tv/angryjoeshow/v/17596304


sorry I cant embed or I would.

[Lichtbringer]

I got also in, sadly my machine runs it really badly
25 frames if its good with drops to 10.
It looks nice, but still has many problems gameplay related, but honestly I can't give a accurate analysis because of my Lag. Still, the shooting and aiming feels a bit clunky. And the controls/movement too.
But that will all come, I am quite happy for such an early state.

I also can't get really hyped for it aslong as there are no Eldar )=. I bet I would play nothing else right now if it had them, even with the problems!

[Caeltos]

Please understand that, if you're in the alpha - you're under NDA (Non-disclosure agreedment). You are not allowed to talk about it, or show anything.

Despite, I very much like the tidbits and information, please respect the NDA.

[Batpimp]

more angry joe impressions.

http://www.twitch.tv/angryjoeshow/v/17961432

[Batpimp]

new hightlight video


Show Highlights: Defense map, power sword, plasma gun, jump pack animation, CSM defending, funniest bugs, Sergeant access

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB1r2KLrkKw

2:45seconds total

[Batpimp]

They have now added sergeants to the game!

http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads ... ost-896425

"It's time for our Sergeants to begin arriving on Arkhona! The first invite just went out to 2,250 of you. Make sure to check your email for your invite and Founder Sheet for your Steam key.

I'll update this OP as we send more!

See you on the battlefield! "

[Dark Riku]

But I'm a Warrior only QQ

[Batpimp]

Here is a link to the new patch today. that's a patch a week if not more!

http://www.twitch.tv/40kcrusade/v/20959833

Added new map. Fortress map
added Vindicator tank to assault the fortress destructible points
updated movement
updated sounds
added comma rose
balanced the las cannon
updated the melee system
balanced the plasma cannon and plasma gun

and much more!

[Batpimp]

patch notes!

Patch #5 - Patch Notes + Hotfix:

New and Noteworthy Additions:

- Larger map: Blackbolt Defense Outpost - Extended cut (now with 100% more TRENCH WARFARE!!!!!)

- New game mode: Stronghold!
•Siege mechanics, destructible objects and the VINDICATOR are IN! Goooo bananas with dat cannon!
•This mode features a linear point capture (that cannot be recaptured, it’s a one directional capture) where SMs defend and CSMs attack (as it should be... Muahahahaha ).
- A better and smoother vaulting experience (we think... let us know on the forums!)

- New Assault/Raptor jump pack trails (with 75% more purple jump pack trails!)

- Strafing is now possible (mouse & keyboard, controller players stay tuned for this Soon™)

- New Lascannon revamp, Plasma balancing and (under the hood) Grenade overhaul, OH MY! Details below...

- Steam integrated voice chat with the L key (push to talk).
•Note: this is faction-wide only.


Bug Fixes

- When keeping the same loadout, fire modes are kept throughout death

- We made some changes to the way damage gets dealt, which can make it so the Assault/Raptor class health buffs work for the aerial attack (not just melee!).

- Fixed several incorrect peek-and-shoot cover being chosen when both cover edges are reachable, which should now uses the closest one! Let us know if you’re finding any other problem spots via a support ticket please!

- Force/Power Sword effects in particular were causing some problems when in the downed state, these should have been fixed! No more phantom weapon Warpys around your Marine!

- Pressing the same seat button twice no longer disables the seat controls... Yeah. Don’t ask, you saw nothing, heretics!


Weapon Changes:

- Predator Heavy Bolter:

•Ammunition Capacity increased from 500 to 1000.
•Zoom Camera FOV decreased from 90 to 70.
•Far Damage Modifier reduced from 0.9 to 0.75.
•Decreased accuracy.

•Now applies suppression.

- Heavy Bolter: Letting go of the fire input before the aim animation is done will now interrupt firing.

- Plasma Weapons: Tuned the plasma projectiles explosion camera shake (area of effect and intensity of the shake) and adjusted the AoE damage and damage fall off for shots

- Lascannon updated with new design!

•It now has a soft “lock-on” instead of the aim speed reduction. Now you won’t be able to shoot till you’ve got your target in your sights.
•Cooling and overheat sync re-worked for ranged weapons.
- Fully auto weapons will fire at least one shot after the aim animation.

- We’ve also added a new mechanic to weapons to allow for the heavy bolter to interrupt firing if you let go of the input before the aim animation is done.

- Grenade throw updated with new design!

•The grenade now uses a different calculation to throw which should be more accurate and predictive of where you want to throw.
•In addition, you will now underhand toss if you aim down, which means you'll be rolling instead of bouncing the grenade.
•Lastly, it now should be easier to throw grenades on enemies on high ground!
Animation Tweaks:

- Some changes were made to shooting angles to be more useful. Aim angles have been updated when charging weapons that actually... you know, charge

- We did some wounded state tweaks to make it more fluid and responsive by standing up faster. Let us know what you think!

- High vaulting animation has been sped up, thanks to cans upon cans of energy drinks pumped straight into Marines!

- Some improvements were made to fire rate anims and charged shots.

- Fixed an issue with the stand up animation’s loooong duration.

- Chaos specific rescuing animation added!


Gameplay Tweaks:

- Jump Packs now have trails behind them.
•This should make it easier for you to understand the movement of a jump pack character when fighting them in an enclosed space and easier to chase those sneaky bastards down!

- If using the keyboard, you will now strafe instead of turning when you press the left or right movement keys while sprinting.
•This will be mappable on the gamepad at some point in the future so you can have a full standard shooter-style scheme if you want.

- You must now press the evade button while pressing towards a wall to vault/climb!

- Climbing is now faster!

- Melee revamp phase 1 includes a new control scheme for the Defensive Bash melee attack!
•Press both mouse buttons (or RB on your gamepad) to perform this incredibly useful close quarters shoulder tackle that you are guarding for the duration of the dash! AHHHHHHHH THE POWWWWWER!!!!

- Loadouts: Updated Apothecary loadouts to remove grenade. Toooo OP!

- Adjusted the XP system to no longer grant XP for interrupting a capture attempt.

- Added a look-ahead vaulting time window when sprinting.

- Jump pack users will now be doing a vault automatically on low cover instead of a jump pack evade.


Art/Visual Improvements:

- Lots of texture updates, such as the Missile Racks (near B, only in the Domination game mode on this map) and the 12 x 6 m elevators.

- LOD tweaked across the board!

- Spherical tank texture issues on rings have been fixed as well as some improvements to them!

- Fixed the missing texture on loincloths of the statues throughout the map.

- Added the jump pack trails to the jump pack, and re-factored the way the particles + trails are activated / deactivated.

- Treads now appear behind your vehicles when driving!

- Poison VFX added to the Apothecary melee poison debuff.

- Added temporary / WIP (work in progress) quad cannon interior view.


Audio Tweaks:

- Added a breathing recovery sound event at zero stamina and tweaked all grunt volume levels to bring them out more! HEAVY BREATHING!

- Fixed footsteps SFX during cover animations.

- Updating audio for rescue animation to be even more awesome!

- Plasma Gun audio is now set up to use the Plasma Cannon assets but sound slightly different...


Vehicle Changes:

- Rhino and Predator: Re-positioned driver camera to better show tank treads.



Map Tweaks:

New Maglift elevators have been added!

- Updated positions of things with the floor movement to prevent situations where props were blocking vaulting.

Menus/Front-end/UI Changes:

- Fixing resizing bug for map icons when pressing Alt-Enter to force full screen.

- Controls: Added keys for Chat (Entre, Y, U, I) in the controls scheme on the loading screen.

- Fixing an issue where map would be stuck as dimmed when returning from change loadout screen to deploy screen.

- Fixing main menu to open and close properly from deploy menu (adding input delay to key presses when entering the screen).

- Fix Kick player not working. /Voteban PlayerName to initiate, /Vote PlayerName to cast your vote (no vote means no ban counted for you).

- Chat gets a mini makeover, yay!
•Chat/kill log text resizing and font changes.
•Chat/kill log text resizing and colouring.
•Renamed chat channels from Global, Faction, Group to All, Faction, Squad.
•Fixed bug with squad chat not being appended to All log until tabs were toggled between.
•Added group chat tab. This tab contains only group channel messages.
•Reduced space between kill log entries.
Loadouts got some lovin’:

•Updating localization text for the Power Sword loadout.
•New assets to be used with the Assault - Power Sword loadout

Localization:

- Updated localization issues both in French and English.

- Fixed the localization text for Power Sword loadout in FR on the loadout selection screen.

- Increased the textbox size of loadouts a bit to fit longer text strings


Stability/Server/Matchmaking Improvements:

- Fixed a crash when not in-game (loading, menus) when pressing CTRL on the splash screen.


Known Issues

- Camera while driving uphill is a little bit... let’s call it rough... at the moment. Players who are prone to motion sickness, don’t drive until it’s fixed J You’ve been warned...

- Quadgun madness! There are occasionally issues with the Quadguns in different situations, such as ownership changes, swapping between Quadguns... We’re working on it, but it’s taking some time to get right.

- The button to vault has changed to Space bar / A button, however the in-game prompts still use the old buttons. This will change in a patch hopefully next week! We couldn’t wait to deliver you guys the goodness of the Stronghold game mode!

- The CSM initial deployment zone has some floating props... Look away, you saw nothing!

[Batpimp]

New highlight video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck8A6kXDxvU

Melta bomb
Storm Bolter
Better hit registration

some questions answered.

[Batpimp]

more info

For those who missed last week's livestream, here are the summary notes in order to catch up.

Link to this week's livestream

Just a reminder that while I try and get all of the important details down, this isn't a word for word transcript and I have to condense things down to save on time, if you aren't happy with an answer that has been written down please watch that section of the stream so that you can get the full answer along with the context.

This week we're joined by Katie and Brent, other members of the team join the stream later on during Meet the Team.

[1:00] Schedule:
•Production Update
•Meet the Team
•Gameplay (Live with fans)
•Q&A / Giveaway

[1:54] Meltabomb

A specialised anti-vehicle device for use up close. Tacticals have access to 2 in their inventory. Will be able to use it against fortifications (Such as the gate on the fortress map). Right now in it's current state it brings a Rhino down to about half health. The meltabomb is going to be one of the reasons why people would choose to become a Tactical, one of the uses mentioned is to use them against AA guns so that droppods can land (Secondary objective teased). As with many other things, the effects are only a first pass to get it functional, and are not final. Small question later reveals that the meltabomb can be thrown about 4-5m, the "throw" may be removed later and made so that it has to be placed.

[4:59] Storm Bolter

Another option for the Tactical's arsenal. Will cost more "loadout points" (Loadout costs/points was talked about last week in answer to a question), although is not automatically better than the regular bolter. It is not as stable in the hands of a regular Space Marine (Speculation, but it will probably be more stable for Terminators, although those are intended for post-launch). It's intended use is for close range scenarios basically the equivalent of an SMG, it has a higher rate of fire than the bolter however has more recoil and a wider cone of fire. They are balancing it against melee as they want it to be effective, but not to the point where melee is useless against it. The storm bolter will not have a supression effect - Only the heavy bolter has that.

[7:28] QUESTION: Will Chaos get the twin bolter and what will be the difference?

ANSWER: Right now it is in as the combi-bolter, very similar right now. Not intending to put in too much of a difference in the base mechanics but as with everything with Chaos there will be some minor tweaks and differences.

[8:32] General Improvements

Hit detection has been improved a lot, before attempting to hit someone in the head may result in their arm being shot due to it being the shorter path, this has been changed to be more accurate. The feedback/reactions from the player model has also been improved to mirror which part of it is being hit. There is also going to be a "double reticle" coming soon to indicate if your shots would hit a wall on the way to a target.

[10:02] Melee Revamp

Almost finished with the pass. Improved the defensive bash (click both mouse buttons), the animation has been changed due to the previous one being a placeholder. While the defensive bash is in progress, you are "guarding" which will protect against fast attacks. Getting hit by a fast attack will no longer stagger/stun your character, however fast attacks now have a little jump/leap forwards. A fast attack used against a fast attack will result in the two weapons "clanging", which seemingly does no damage; I'm not sure if this is the same for defensive bash vs defensive bash, and then the strong attack vs the strong attack.

New melee system is intended to be a rock-paper-scissors type of deal. The Strong attack will break through the defensive bash, the defensive bash wil counter fast attacks, and fast attacks will strike before a strong attack lands.

The above is with a "like vs like" scenario where the two weapons used are the same, so Chainsword vs Chainsword. When the encounter is unbalanced (One weapon having more power than the other) for example a combat knife vs a chainsword, if the weapons "clang" as mentioned above the person with the combat knife will "lose" the tradeoff by being knocked back and will lose more stamina than normal. When a person runs out of stamina they will be staggered and therefore open for the kill.

A question asked at this point is basically asking what happens in a power axe vs chainsword scenario, as the chainsword has less power should the two clang the person with the chainsword won't take any damage however will lose extra stamina and be knocked back. People should be approaching these unbalanced encounters differently to a like vs like matchup, the person with the less powerful (more agile) weapon should look to be using the faster swings to out-manoeuvre the other person.

[15:59] Meet the Team

Katie and Brent are now joined by Houman Sadaghiani and Kevin Delcourt who both work in QA.

[20:08] Inquisitor Ward (Noah) enters.

[22:04] Gameplay begins

[27:27] QUESTION: NDA?

ANSWER: Still around, hoping to lift it within about a month.

[27:46] **No exact date for Warriors yet, but it is very soon, won't be waiting too long. November for Warriors is still the plan. It will NOT be late November.

[28:31] QUESTION: Has the tilt bug on the Rhinos been fixed yet?

ANSWER: Pretty sure that it has been fixed in the upcoming patch.

[38:41] Will be able to shoot a pistol while downed soon.

[40:11] Some big improvements coming to the comms-rose regarding usability.

[48:13] QUESTION: What is the intended design purpose behind stun and stamina?

ANSWER: Going to be significantly less stun in the next patch. First major iteration of melee revamp going to be coming soon. Stunning is something that only happens under situations where you’ve been tricked or taken advantage of (e.g: hit in the back), stamina should be monitored as if you have run out of it you will be stunned.

[49:18] QUESTION: Is it possible that you add a slider that controls how zoomed in you are to the character you play?

ANSWER: It is understood that this is a potentially a motion sickness problem, similar the FOV problem; when it becomes an accessibility issue rather than people simply wanting a larger FOV to see more it would more likely be addressed. It is doubted that there will be a slider on how “zoomed” you are. Motion sickness is something that they want to get sorted, and improving the framerate will help to fix this, apparently they have basically solved the framerate issue, it is a bug and not an optimisation issue.

[52:02] QUESTION: What are the plans for vehicles and anti-vehicle weapons, the lascannon in particular after recent developments with the fortress?

ANSWER: The lascannon's timing has been changed, they are tuning the damage down however it is still supposed to vaporise infantry.

[52:56] QUESTION: Earlier on the team mentioned that the game would have some integration with razer comms, is this still the plan?

ANSWER: As of right now yes.

[53:21] QUESTION: Will sorcerors be able to equip melee weapons other than force weapons?

ANSWER: At launch they will be using force weapons, however they will have more than just the force sword.

[54:10] QUESTION: Will we see some variety in capture point design which is based on the surroundings on where it is located and the purpose that it fulfills in that context.

ANSWER: Not in the art (design), there will see some secondary things in the game eventually. Stuff that can be blown up for example. Work has been done recently on "captured buildings" where the defenders can dig in and the attackers have interesting ways to route and remove the defenders from the position.

[54:59] QUESTION: Has the team considered swapping the armour bar functionality with the health bar so that the health regenerates but the armour doesn't?

ANSWER: The idea is that the armour is self-repairing, wounds heal but not that quickly. A new feature in the next patch is that health will regenerate about 20 health, the same amount if someone rescues you.

[55:50] QUESTION: Will vehicles ever get horns?

ANSWER: Ork vehicles will have horns, no other vehicle will. Still trying to find something that will serve the purpose of a horn but not a "honk honk".

[56:55] QUESTION: Do you plan on adding a fog effect to the game to help with the stealth aspect for example a warp power that causes fog or mist?

ANSWER: Going to be adding mutators in the future, they have the possibility of changing quite a lot, it is something that could potentially be done with warlord powers, not something that is coming soon though. Something that is being looked into is smoke launchers for Rhinos specifically.

[57:50] QUESTION: How will you avoid corner camping - abusing the 3rd person camping?

ANSWER: Don't considering it "camping" or abusing, it is kind of representative if you could peek around the corner.

[59:02] QUESTION: Have you considered removing kill-death stats or are they important to too many people?

ANSWER: They want to de-emphasive those stats. The first goal is to add more stats and more recognition on different types of actions such as healing, capturing and rescuing.

[1:00:24] QUESTION: Will you also apply the tactical-assault-devastator-support class scheme to Orks and Eldar?

ANSWER: Yes, it is very similar to the tabletop in that the Eldar have some of these classes split up more, overall

A couple more things that I typed up while watching the stream live but missed when finding the timestamps:
•Promethium map coming soon (This is the first map that the Captains got to play on)
•Space Marines and Chaos will soon be randomised in deciding who are going to be the attackers, and who are going to be defending on the map.

[Batpimp]

Good interview. Brief and to the point at least at first

https://t.co/yPZ25KFezT

MMORPG: Now we all understand that game development it subject to changing goals and timing constraints, but having said that, there are lots of features that players are clamoring for. Without asking you to give us specific dates, I will talk about the feature and you tell us if we will see them soon-ish, not for a while, or a long way off still. Rapid fire session… here we go!

Orks and/or Eldar factions?

Nathan: Eldar is ahead, hopefully before Christmas with a basic compliment of loadouts, vehicles and classes, Orks long way off still. The problems are animations for both. Couldn’t find any Eldars or Orks in Montreal, you know? It takes a while to get them mo-capped and rigged right.

MMORPG: More subfactions (not new ones, just the rest for each faction)?

Nathan: Before Christmas!

MMORPG: Advanced/Hero/Special character classes?

Nathan: Long way off still, except the Warlord, he is soon.

MMORPG: More vehicles?

Nathan: Soon, variants of the Predator most likely.

MMORPG: More maps?

Nathan: About 2-3 weeks!

MMORPG: More Game modes?

Nathan: We’re still working on improving the three we have now, so not for a bit. But different game modes on current maps, probably soon.

MMORPG: More weapons?

Nathan: As fast as we can make them. I’d say every 2-3 weeks, sometimes faster if a new class is coming in.

MMORPG: Updates to the Rogue Trader Store?

Nathan: Before Christmas, when you can actually use the items you buy! That’s very important for us. That they actually exist, have stats, work and are usable in-game in personalized loadouts

MMORPG: Tyranids or anything to do with Tyranids or PvE?

Nathan: You’ll see it before Christmas on our Twitch and other previews but I’d be really happy with some of it in game as well before Christmas. But realistically, next year.

MMORPG: Now that we are stably playing the game on several maps, how do you feel about the overall progress since Alpha started?

Nathan: I’m incredibly happy with how things are progressing. We’ve been able to deploy pretty regularly new things, more balancing, new features at a regular pace and that’s part of the founders being part of the development. Of course we’re so far out from launch that this is about massive prototyping and experimentation which this early on should lead to a much better final product. We believe in agile development and early feedback despite some things breaking all the time but that’s what we’re there for, to break all the things!

MMORPG: How has player feedback been thus far?

Nathan: I’d say somewhere between incredibly good and fantastic. Two reasons for that because one is that it’s been predominantly positive from all sources but also, the Founders are giving us incredibly good constructive feedback. Yes, not everyone is happy, if we’d manage that we’d be ordering ourselves a Thunderbird but when we get to hear why people are not happy, based on trying out the game right now we understand better why and can do something about it.

It’s pretty key in our philosophy, addressing something now is faster, cheaper, fun and more sexy now than in 4 months where it’s painstakingly slow, no fun and costs us lots of resources. One might even say that we’re doing this in an intelligent and pragmatic way to decrease risk, increase quality and that the Eternal Crusade becomes the fun epic game it deserves to be. Or we stumbled upon a book with cool buzzwords and it’s going to be a mess.

MMORPG: Will you (BE) be allowed to create some original weapons in order to flesh out certain aspects of some classes (no pun intended)? FGor example Fire Dragons are largely anti-vehicle troops according to Lore, but they are also a Capping class for the Eldar, and those two purposes don’t exactly go hand-in-hand.

Nathan: We do have a lot of freedom with certain things, like the classes, their loadouts and so on but some things in the lore are not up for change. Up till now though we’ve found solutions and essentially that the factions have asymmetric classes helps with that as well.

The Ground Assault for example for space marines has a Shield, but Chaos doesn’t very much use shields, so we have the Mark of Nurgle for them instead. We’ve also been surprised that there are exceptions all around which helps us with balancing so I’d say in general, we stick to lore but we have more options than we thought in the beginning.

And for all the free expansion material, JC on a treadmill, our minds can’t stop racing to what we want to add… we’re all over the place.

MMORPG: In its current alpha form EC is pretty much a 40K-themed shooter, not much different than CoD or Battlefield. What sorts of unique features can we expect to really make it stand out from the run-of-the-mill shooter and working more towards the MMO side of the fence?

Nathan: Yes, Closed Alpha is a very, very early stage of the development of the game. This stage hasn’t really been open till lately where we have more indy developers which see the value of early feedback. So we decided to focus first on the core “shooter” of “massive online shooter”.

That means it is very much like many shooters, since it helps a lot with feedback and balancing with this part of the game. What we’re aiming for next, much of which you’ll start seeing early versions of before Christmas is character progression, your own inventory of items and stuff, personalized loadout with that as well as visual customization.

We call it “Deep Sexy Shooter” because instead of being a jump-in shooter, you will have persistent characters that you progress and fit with loadouts. This will continue to evolve and expand all the way till launch, adding more specialized weapons, character progression with flavors for the sub-factions and so on. Depth of character. We’ll also unleash more technical work, on number of players and graphics work to make it far more beautiful. And sexy of course.

MMORPG: The idea of having three outposts plus a one stronghold as a single territory, does that still look like a viable end goal, or are we looking at deviating from that?

Nathan: We’ll get to that in the New Year, where we start to see the territorial conquest over maps and then hopefully be able to start testing out the 16×16km “open territories” which contain 1 fortress and 3 outposts. There is also a PVE aspect to them and while at first they won’t be fully open, that is eventually the goal. But we have various modes of transports to give you that resemble and surprise you with encounters of various kinds.

The good thing about this new strategy is that instead of just one huge territory cramped with outposts, we can have hundreds of these huge territories open for battle to scale up in the conquest for Arkhona. I could be really cocky and say “you ain’t seen nothing yet” but you actually have seen some stuff in the Closed Alpha, so… let’s settle for “we’re bringing sexy back”.

MMORPG: Originally the mechanics for the melta gun were loosely modeled on the original lascannon mechanics. Has the changing lascannon mechanic had an impact on the planned Melta mechanics?

Nathan: Not long term no, because we often use mechanics we already have to create prototypes. The melta will have its own mechanics when we have a good idea of how we want it to be. That’s essentially how we work this early on, placeholders that are easy to work with and get us 80-95% of the way and then we create the final mechanic.

With Unreal Engine 4, this prototyping and creating mechanics happens even faster and sometimes we get stuff straight out of the box. Ok, we didn’t actually get a real box from them with stuff in it, it’s a metaphor.

MMORPG: Many thanks to Nathan for taking the time to answer a few questions for us, I hope everyone reading this is as excited as I am about where our Crusade has brought us thus far, and where we are headed next. As always, if you want to jump straight into the Alpha test with the rest of us, the founder packs are still on sale!

[Dark Riku]

Would love to get rebindable keys
Only managed to do so little with the text file and can't make it work inside vehicles

[Batpimp]

Would love to get rebindable keys
Only managed to do so little with the text file and can't make it work inside vehicles

actually ive been trying to reach out to you. They said that they have two top things to fix. One of them is the AZERTY keyboard issues for Europeans so look for that soon. It was mentioned in their last twitch as top two complaints about the game lol.

[Dark Riku]

Great

[Atlas]

I can haz key because I am DoW ESPORTS famous?

[Lichtbringer]

Orks and/or Eldar factions?

Nathan: Eldar is ahead, hopefully before Christmas with a basic compliment of loadouts, vehicles and classes, Orks long way off still. The problems are animations for both. Couldn’t find any Eldars or Orks in Montreal, you know? It takes a while to get them mo-capped and rigged right.

Really looking forward to this (Even though I will be suprised if we get eldar before chrismats, optimistically I would guess January.)