What happened to this game ?.

[Grimaldus]

Me and my 40k friends were waiting for a Planetside 2 with 40k universe,
and then this game was announced and we were awating it's release.
Then during the development we heard that basically the whole game as it
was planned, was scrapped and what was released was a shell.

We haven't played the game at all, so i will try not to speak negative of it,
it looks afterall as if the developers were trying their best.

So ... what really happened ?. I know the devs can't be held to blame
since they had a great idea. Was is a failed interest of investors ?.

[Skullface]

Long story short: Deathgarden.

Long story long: Havent been there for the "funding" era, but after stalking these forums about since release the story went kinda like this:
After kickstarting and developing for 2 years, harking in GW licenses and Pico Server Technology, halfaway throughout developement, the old head dev realized with their technology they couldnt realize what they aimed for.
Change of directions - middle part middle part middle part - ELDAR OP! - Muh Bolter? - NERF ELDAR! - Terminators coming Christmas 2016 - "Vehicle map in the working" - "Lets make the Hand to Hand combat stun duration different to gimp it further!" - "Theres only 1 dev left." - "Final letter from the devs: We will shut down Deathgarden".

Basically most funders felt backstabbed, and even further so with the Free2Play switch. During that time, the games servers crashed about 2-5 times daily due to overload. Fortress Maps (30vs30) were a major stutter, and a from what it read like, a wide base of the players had issues getting this game to run on their machines.

The chats during matches were fleshing the bad fame of EC in even further, being at times more toxic than chernobyl.

What else... did i say NERF ELDAR! yet?

[Ishan451]

Originally posted by Grimaldus:

So ... what really happened ?

A dev team whose biggest acheivement had been mobile games and Nintendo DS ports of movie tie in titles... set out to deliver a MMO, without having the necessary skill set... wasted all their money desperately trying to achieve this pie in a sky that was vastly beyond their skill set.

They eventually, and expectedly ran out of funding.. and either bailed or were canned.

New Team came in, gave refunds after admitting the project was beyond any scope of reality and the community responded by berating them and telling them that they were promised Planetside and Dreadnoughts and Terminator armors and Bikes and that if they don't ♥♥♥♥ing deliver they will do unspeakable things to the devs and their favorite pets in the dark of the night....

New Dev team did their best to salvage the project into something, anything really, but the community kept harassing and insisting on all the promised features, which stalled the development as it vastly overshot the budget and scope of the title.

Then the publisher bailed, refusing to throw good money after bad... and the Dev tried their best to somehow get new investors and funding... haphazardly blew it with a premature F2P launch of the title... and that is all she wrote, as the game suffered the slow death of lack of optimisation and chiding of the community for not delivering on the unrealistic promise of a Planetside game.

There is after all a reason there is only one Planetside and not even EA attempts to go that route with Battlefield and instead goes smaller and smaller with their server sizes.


And of course, in an attempt to somehow salvage the masses the game got balanced further and further in favor of the space smurfs, while everyone screamed "Xeno OP" at the top of their lungs until they nerfed them to the point where nobody wanted to play them anymore... and lets not forget the infamous Q&A where they literally went "We know the Ork Painboy is supremely underpowered to the point of being broken, but we are not going to fix it, we are working on Space Marine stuff", which resulted in the Ork Players going "We outa here".

[Deathwish40K]

ya know, it's weird. they initially pitched it as Planetside 40K but then got stumped and blamed it on lack of technology to do so. it sounds like a valid reason why that game could never exist but then again.... Planetside exists. obviously technology has the ability to execute a massive battle framework. so why can't you just replicate how Planetside works and reskin it with 40K flavoring?

[Thundercracker]

Originally posted by Ishan451:

There is after all a reason there is only one Planetside

you are right. i dont know what that abomination is that calls itself the sequel, but it sure isnt planetside.

Originally posted by Deathwish40K:

ya know, it's weird. they initially pitched it as Planetside 40K but then got stumped and blamed it on lack of technology to do so. it sounds like a valid reason why that game could never exist but then again.... Planetside exists. obviously technology has the ability to execute a massive battle framework. so why can't you just replicate how Planetside works and reskin it with 40K flavoring?

because that tech is copywitten by a different publisher, one that will not share it cheaply, if at all.

server costs are a thing too. SOE could afford them because everquest money, here, not so much.

[Ishan451]

Originally posted by Dr Gori:

because that tech is copywitten by a different publisher, one that will not share it cheaply, if at all.

server costs are a thing too. SOE could afford them because everquest money, here, not so much.

Its not like its entirely impossible to do, but you need a Developer with the skills set to create an MMO from scratch, and not just a MMO like Warcraft, but actually one that works with FPS.

One of the biggest complaints with Planetside 2 is the Netcode and the whole lag compensation that has your "ghost" follow behind you about a second. Nothing you can't work around or accept that its a thing, but its a complaint.

And Planetside 1 and 2 were developed by a Developer that could easily be named as one of the most experienced MMO developers we had back then.

Behavior Interactive simply didn't have the know how. They thought they could buy an engine and use that engine to realize an MMO. If were that easy to develop an MMO everything would be an MMO these days.

Battlefield has been doing the combined arms thing for a long time now, and their server sizes have grown smaller and smaller. I still remember 128 player servers. We are down to 64 player servers, and even then people complain a lot about Netcode.

I am sure if it was easy to do, EA had long gone Planetside 2 levels of persistent world with Battlefield to sell you all the lootboxes and skins and whatnot the way Planetside 2 does it.

But MMOFPS are rare. Outside the Plantside Franchise i only remember Tabula Rasa, which didn't really exist that long and Fallen Earth, which also was considered terrible on the FPS aspect.


I mean, i get that i speak with hindsight, because i never backed Behavior, simply because i didn't think they could pull it off. I did however buy the title once they decided to go Arena shooter, because i thought that was something they actually would be able to do, back when it was still in Early Access. I got my money's worth from the title, so i am not disgruntled, just disappointed, and i would have preferred Behavior wouldn't have abandoned the title. I think it had great potential... but in no small part do i blame the community for the state this game is in.

Instead of cutting their losses and simply push the developer to make the best of it... people kept constantly harping on about features that have no place in this game. Such as Dreadnoughts, Terminators and whatnot. And then of course the constant complaints from our dear Space Marines. We had videos of people running, like headless chicken, around a capture point that was ticking down and not a single one of them stopped to stop the cap. But then went to the forums to complain about how OP the enemies are. And the Devs, in their panicked state did everything they could to oblige the largest faction.

I mean towards the end.. the whole balance got so bad that you barely could find Xeno matches, and people still complained about how OP the xenos are... because obviously the internet abhors OP factions and nobody wants to play them, which is the reason you don't find xeno games and Space Marines are the most numerous players around. And in my mind this is what killed this game in the end, along side the toxic behavior in the matches... the insults and childish names and whatnot.

I mean its not dead, but its close enough, and i think while BE can be blamed for a lot of this, i think a large portion of the reason why the game is in this state is because of the Community.

All the brigading... the threads calling to abandon matches against Eldar or Orks... the deliberate actions to join matches and drive vehicle spawns off cliffs to hamstring barely played factions during the campaigns even further.. and so on and so forth. The Developer didn't really have anything to do with this behavior... even though i suppose the lack of Bans for these actions could be pinned on them.

There is a lot that went wrong with this game on side of the developer and the community.

[cleric66]

yup well said.

[Thundercracker]

Originally posted by Ishan451:

One of the biggest complaints with Planetside 2 is the Netcode and the whole lag compensation that has your "ghost" follow behind you about a second. Nothing you can't work around or accept that its a thing, but its a complaint.

at this point, i prefer the PS1 method using client side hit detection. my recent time in EC has resulted in me not connecting with countless things that hit on my screen.... it feels like the lag is always working against me, never for me.

it's especially bad when an enemy outright eats like 20 heavy bolter shots from my view, but only like one even registers on their end.

[Faptor]

Man, this game used to be so much fun but they slowly started killing it. When it first came out it was a wall to wall ♥♥♥♥ flinging match with All chat, mass charges and an orgy of melee.
Once they took away the All chat you could tell it was going to go down hill, shortly after they announced its never going to be open world, ruined the melee, made factions OP-worthless-OP again..

The worst part about this failing is that we will probably never get anything like it again. It had such potential and was awesome until the devs started removing features D:<
I swear, that All chat really made a match. Everyone was typing like mad bastards lol from litanies of the emperor to the chants of chaos, it really got you in the mood.

I miss the original melee, fellas. Hell, keep the stability updates and maps but roll the entire game back to the alpha version lol

Im pretty sure it was the community that ruined the All chat and Melee tbh, I always rememberd reading threads of people complaining that its not fair that they keep dieing in the middle of a melee moshpit and that its too toxic reading everyones RP. At the time the 2 best features.

Your life didnt matter, only the objective. Kill as meny Traitors/Loyalist dogs as you can along the way but get to that point.

Originally posted by Ishan451:

lots of stuff

100%, well said.

[Grimaldus]

Such a shame then. The Warhammer universe has much potential
for a great mmo. Warhammer Online is still rocking, and improving.

[The_Camper]

They overpromised, pure and simple. Still a fun game, though.

[TotallynotaBot]

Originally posted by Ishan451:

Originally posted by Grimaldus:

So ... what really happened ?

A dev team whose biggest acheivement had been mobile games and Nintendo DS ports of movie tie in titles... set out to deliver a MMO, without having the necessary skill set... wasted all their money desperately trying to achieve this pie in a sky that was vastly beyond their skill set.

They eventually, and expectedly ran out of funding.. and either bailed or were canned.

New Team came in, gave refunds after admitting the project was beyond any scope of reality and the community responded by berating them and telling them that they were promised Planetside and Dreadnoughts and Terminator armors and Bikes and that if they don't ♥♥♥♥ing deliver they will do unspeakable things to the devs and their favorite pets in the dark of the night....

New Dev team did their best to salvage the project into something, anything really, but the community kept harassing and insisting on all the promised features, which stalled the development as it vastly overshot the budget and scope of the title.

Then the publisher bailed, refusing to throw good money after bad... and the Dev tried their best to somehow get new investors and funding... haphazardly blew it with a premature F2P launch of the title... and that is all she wrote, as the game suffered the slow death of lack of optimisation and chiding of the community for not delivering on the unrealistic promise of a Planetside game.

There is after all a reason there is only one Planetside and not even EA attempts to go that route with Battlefield and instead goes smaller and smaller with their server sizes.


And of course, in an attempt to somehow salvage the masses the game got balanced further and further in favor of the space smurfs, while everyone screamed "Xeno OP" at the top of their lungs until they nerfed them to the point where nobody wanted to play them anymore... and lets not forget the infamous Q&A where they literally went "We know the Ork Painboy is supremely underpowered to the point of being broken, but we are not going to fix it, we are working on Space Marine stuff", which resulted in the Ork Players going "We outa here".

They did not try there best.They lied over and over and over again and was replaced with ONE GUY,one guy who was not even a dev, who got more done in two months than that entire lying team did in two years.
Granted his maps where some of the worst I have ever seen but he had no qualifications and was alone.Guy needs a medal.

The reason it got so toxic was because of the constant lies.steam workshop support?all we got was a greyed out button for it "engine update is ready to ship and is coming in a few weeks" (never came).Even big fans of the current game,guys who would defend it till the end even changed into hating the devs.

I agree with your last point tho,I was one of those players who said "we outa here" .That was still the devs fault tho,they didn't have to cave in and cater only for LSM whining.They even fully stated on this very steam page "catering for only one faction is an easy way to kill your game" right before nerfing Orks for 5 patches strait not to mention the nerfs before that.

They won't even give us mod support so we can fix the game ourselfs.They didn't even announce they was leaving the game,they just went silent.They deserve no praise or respect from us and shouldn't work in the industry again imo.

[Cursed Hawkins]

Originally posted by Trooper909:

They won't even give us mod support so we can fix the game ourselfs.

The community wouldn't know how to fix this even if they tried and because of stupid memes the only things that WOULD be done by the community would be the removal of Eldar and Orks for being "OP"

[TotallynotaBot]

Originally posted by Cursed Hawkins:

Originally posted by Trooper909:

They won't even give us mod support so we can fix the game ourselfs.

The community wouldn't know how to fix this even if they tried and because of stupid memes the only things that WOULD be done by the community would be the removal of Eldar and Orks for being "OP"

I've seen full blown working Terminators (among other things) made by the community when they said they would give mod tools,maps too.

[Cursed Hawkins]

Originally posted by Trooper909:

Originally posted by Cursed Hawkins:

The community wouldn't know how to fix this even if they tried and because of stupid memes the only things that WOULD be done by the community would be the removal of Eldar and Orks for being "OP"

I've seen full blown working Terminators (among other things) made by the community when they said they would give mod tools,maps too.

From the hardcore fans, most players of this game aren't hardcore fans and would only use those tools as an excuse to try and "remove unwanted classes or entire races they don't like" all because they are too incapable of learning how to properly counter them.

[BlueDreams]

I did like their view, but it was super ambitious. I think they pictured having a much much bigger fan base for their world map thing to work. If they took that out and made a better quick join option, maybe it could be better? I forget what they had before they introduced the world map. Then again, im sure they would have to rebuild A LOT of things from scratch. Is it possible for other developers to pick up this game as is? or something?

Id honestly hate to see this game tossed to the side, it has soooo much potential to being the best 40k game on the market.