Hi, first post! Been getting into the warhammer 40k universe more and more lately...been reading the books, played all the games. Sadly not a tabletop fan! needless to say, this MMO couldn't come sooner for me. Anyways. On to the topic of discussion. Posted this on MMORPG.com, thought I'd neaten it up and post here to see the feedback.

So why do I think Squad based gameplay is the way forward for DMO40k: Lets look at 40k's history:
-The Universe originated from a table-top game where players take part in large scale battles.
-The lore and fluff/codex/novels are nearly always about at the minimum a squad and all the way up to interplanetary conflicts/Crusades even.
-The games thus far have been focused on squad based gameplay. Yes even Space Marine tried it..but offered no squad based gameplay. STILL you were part of a squad! MultiPlayer you are effectively a Space Marine Squad and need to work as one. Its amazingly cool when this happens though.

IMO for the game to work, we need players to command a squad. You can argue in other games like FPS you dont need NPCs - it works fine and you dont need your own squad, because everyone is for e.g. in Call of Duty a human being playing with other humans...hence player controlled squad. You don't see a group consisting of a Navy Seal, Chinese Infantry and a British Commando now do you!
Coming back to 40k, this just doesn't work THAT well from a Lore perspective. Space Marines stick with Space Marines, Inquisitors work with them sure but they usually have their own manpower of Troopers. My point is, while different races may collaborate they typically do not have a representative of each one that represents that race as a part of a squad. I.e.
A team consisting of 1 space marine, 1 Eldar, 1 Imperial Guardsman, 1 Apothecary just does not exist!! This goes heavily against the lore IMO.
Therefore I propose each player has their own mini Squad (Solo) with 2 NPCs which forms into a Force (Group) with other players say 5...Which would eventually become an Army (Raid) say 20 actual players.
3 person squad is the ideal number, IMO. E.g. Yourself and two Space Marines. For example, Yourself and two Orks. Yourself and two Chaos Marnies. Yourself(Commissar) and two Imperial Guards. (shooting your own guy would be hilarious xD).
There is already a similar system that does this. Anyone who has played Dawn of War 2 / Retribution has seen how you can customize yourself and your squad members. I personally think with a more MMO-related level of depth it could be a great system.

As far as AI is concerned, being simple 'sidekicks' or being 'so good you can just sit back' I think its a question of balance that Vigil needs to establish. Like in other MMOs I've seen both underpowered and overpowered 'pets'. This is why I suggest your squad being only 1 type and having to 'respec' to change from lets say a Devastator to Assault Squad. AI would just assist you and would effectively form a key component of your Squad DPS. So that could work IMO. AI wouldn't need to be particularly complex. This system could easily be transferrable to different races/adeptus to allow a degree of army/class customization. E.g.

Space Marines - Devastator, Assault, Tactical.
Imperial Guard - Guardsmen, Infantry Platoon, Commissar Squad
Ordo Malleus - Inquisition Squad, Sisters Squad, Grey Knights (fk yeah..)
etc

Your own avatar would be even more customizable, but in a different way. You could perhaps specialize to have Psyker abilities, Usage of certain weapons, equipment, etc. So the MMO customization component remains as well.

So why Squads? As the Warhammer 40k saying goes "There is only War." War is not a battle of a few. War is the great battle of thousands upon thousands. Having effectively 3 'units' for each 'player' multiplies the scope of the amount of enemies on the battlefield.
So to summarise, having 2 members in your own personal 'squad' adds to the scale of the game and appeals to players of both the strategy and 3rd person shooter domain. While I'm not quite expecting ME2 level of squad gameplay, it would be nice to have unique abilities, formations and tactics you could carry out with a squad....also a group/raid. Only concern being the level of complexity the AI would have.

Thoughts?

Welcome! I'm grawss on MMORPG.com.

It's good you've come up with some ammunition against my arguments. I'm curious what other people think as well.

Uhum, well... welcome to weird forums of weirdness. Most of it stems from me, in case you were wondering.


Now, your idea of having NPCs run around with players as some kind of "pets" has tons and tons of problems that make it seem impossible to properly execute... at a glance. Then you look at it some more and realize that it's really impossible... to execute properly... because the problems are actually kinda hard to solve. Too many what ifs and way too many just plain awkward things.


And the scary thing is... that it's kinda awesome and could actually work very well.



The thing is, I don't see this happening in DMO. At least not to such an extend.

I'll say, it's a neat idea. Not hard to imagine a Tech-priest having some Imperial Guardsmen following her around. In fact, it would be a lot truer to the lore if there were actually a lot of soldiers around there and not just specialists like Mages, Paladins or Rogues in that moste evile thing where you have battles without soldiers... but packed with faux heroes.

So yeah, it'd be neat... but I wouldn't go as far as to say something like:


Yeah, obviously it'll work without that and obviously a Sanctioned Psyker, a Space Marine and a Banshee could walk into a bar... I suppose.

It's hard to stick to the lore, sometimes.


Yeah, anyway... thumbs up from me.

Despite what you may think, MMO Netcode has actually come a long way!

Look at Age of Conan. You would have Necromancers who would literally have a horde of 10 zombies. Sure they were pretty limited, "attack", "defend". But they worked. Initially this was an issue in Mass PvP, but once they dealt with the majority of the game bugs it was streamlined and was not a cause of lag. Hell they even had their own particle effects too! :p

Lelorelyn - Good to see someone is a bit realistic here. :p. Sadly, I know this all too well. This idea, while IMO being ideal is very unlikely to be part of Vigil's implementation.

But its the only way I could justify having an MMO Character customization system, whilst maintaining some form of group based gameplay.

Lets stop and think about this for a minute. Lets say I role a Space Marine. I don't want to reach the level cap (yes there may be one..unknown) and look like what I would describe as a 'Grunt' in Space Marine terminology. I.e. nothing to make me stand out from the Space Marine right next to me. End of the day MMOs are about making your character unique. What I want is to look like is something like this friendly chap:


But what I doubt anyone who wants to remotely abide by lore, is for everyone to look so ornate!! That would just make such little sense!

Either way, who knows what approach Vigil will take. I just hope they let distinguish our characters as much as possible. If I'm going to play with a 'Grunt', you may as well let me choose different classes and make it a scenario/battleground based game. If you adopt the 'My Avatar' approach, you need to offer players a way to distinguish themselves.

Here's hoping they come up with a good solution to all of this >.<

Lag will probably not be an issue... look at eve, with hundres of indivudal ships + drones, not only showing some graphics, but constantly sending information to servers.
However, commanding a squad should be done like grouping is done in any other mmo... everone having a couple of NPCs following you around should be limited to Guardsman, if it indeed is a class...

I think the idea could work, since every MMORPG has a pet system anyways and it seems your idea would just be an extension of that,but the selling point I would need for that idea to fly is to have absolutely FULL character customization over your squad. Otherwise, you get the problem that SWTOR was having, and still may be, that everyone was running around with the EXACT same companion which is a HUGE turnoff if you are trying to get "into" the game. Albeit that not EVERY companion will look unique, but as long as each person is able to put their input into how to run their squad cosmetically, then I think this idea would be great!

No for it. It takes away from alot of personalization and this is supposed to be a vehicle centered game. I dont see you commanding a squadron of bikes or speeders...

What, like that wouldn't be awesome? :p

Well I see SWTOR incorporating a VERY in-depth companion system, while still maintaining a heavy focus on your own personal story. Why couldn't WH40k repeat that process with 2 squad mates?

End of the day, Space Marines have always been about working in a squad with other space marines. Given the nature of this game and the fact that people will likely be able to choose from different schools of combat within the Imperium and possibly even group with xenos...My system tries to ensure that the concept of Squad/Chapter/Legion remains in tact to some extent.

Again, I still stand heavily against the idea of:

Group:
Marksman Sniper
Assault Space Marine
Techpriest
Eldar Scorpion
Infantry Trooper

It just screams of WRONG to me. The only other way I could see it working is if the races are limited to 3 and the group size is 6. That way, you'd have a better representation/perhaps less of each race within a group...indicating that some form of coalition was made. Rather than a bunch of random people meeting up. E.g.

Group:
Assault Marine
Devastator Marine
Assault Marine
Techpriest
Infantry Trooper
Marksman

In that respect, its a bit more bearable.

TLDR, Group sizes should be larger if my system is not implemented.

The problem is... NOT EVERYONE LIKES PETS. Essentially you're trying to force everyone to be a pet class. Squads are supposed to be a unit built of individuals. So, a squad would be you and your buddies playing together. Pets are for the more "brainless" aspects in the universe like grots, squigs, servitors. Pets have a big tendency to run into walls, get hung up... and I particularly dont like the idea of seeing Graelius, your plasma cannon dev, walking into a wall like a zombie.

Did it ever occur to you that real squads don't move in "pretty" formations or be forced to stay within 3"? By having a mob of formation bound squad mates you essentially take us back to Napoleanic feel and you detract from the action-based feel that this game is supposed to portray. Commanding a squad is going to take all your concentration and instead of killing the bad guys you're going to be directing pets. It'll be just like that retarded squad based full spectrum warrior. Not realistic... and not fun for everyone.