Behaviour Interactive has a new Eternal Crusade Q&A up with a question that addresses the MMO component of the game and how it relates to its promised 120 unique points of interest. Senior Producer Nathan Richardsson writes that his next state of the game will focus on “the metagame and the latest progress and where it’s going, along with how it is designed to extend easily with new game modes, open territories, more traditional MMO mechanics and such.”
“The 120 locations were a huge limitation for us because it didn’t scale up. You could only have ‘thousands’ playing the territorial conquest, the rest were playing in so-called ‘overfow’ locations. Now, we have far more than 120 locations and it scales up to hundreds of thousands participating in territorial conquest. However, each location isn’t ‘unique’ from a map perspective, in fact we made that decision a long. Besides the Imperium being build by pre-fabricated buildings and structures, in a shooter, knowing the map is part of the skills of the player. Trying to memorize 120+ unique maps is counter-intuitive for a good shooter experience. On the flipside, we have things that creates variations and random or warlord activated gameplay elements which change things, like warp storms and such (mutators we call them) and of course time of day or different biomes affecting gameplay is also something which makes variety in visuals and gameplay, while not having to learn a new map.”
Richardsson also tells players he’ll be addressing the extensibility of the server architecture, allowing the studio to “create the experience of an open world without its drawbacks in an online shooter, as well as more structured or ‘on rails’ experiences in PVE and PVP.” He likens the game to Destiny, The Division, and Star Wars Battlefront, just inside the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
Eternal Crusade is still in early access on Steam with a price of $39.99 for the shooter-centric alpha. The launch is still expected later this summer.
