I saw that video a few days ago. If anyone is curious how the game has evovled, here is footage of what the game looked like 10 months ago.
[video=youtube;E4RO-N7xMpc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4RO-N7xMpc[/video]
Corny as hell.
I have a feeling that this game will never be finished and even if it is, it won't be any good.
I can almost gurantee you they will finish it. They're entering Early Access this summer (they've moved up the date
@AutumnalWanderer) and are planning on releasing it next year.
I've been researching this game a lot lately and I can't deny I am really excited for it. So be warned! Wall of text ahead!
Their Current Vision
Their current vision is to have the Space Marine, Chaos Marine, Eldar, and Orc faction playable, four playable classes, and a few hero classes and vehicles per faction. It's questionable how big the battles will be at launch. For early access they're having 32 player battles. The reason why is so they can iterate on the vehicles and classes until they get combat perfect. For the retail launch they're planning on having 100 player battles, but they might go higher if their server technology allows it.
They've attracted controversy for reverting their original plan to have giant open-world continents with thousands players per mapt. The reason for this change is the server tech they purchased didn't work out, so they had to start over. However, they are planning on moving to 500+ player maps shortly after launch. The producer has confirmed on multiple occasions that the tech to do so is ALREADY IN DEVELOPMENT and WILL BE FINISHED before 2017, but not in time for the game's launch.
What they ARE planning for launch is a little difficult to explain. It can best be described as a
tiered battle system where there are several battles in each zone, and when one side is winning the majority of battles they unlock the ability to attack an Outpost. Controlling 2/3 Outposts unlocks the option to attack a Stronghold and take control of the zone.
There are 28 zones in the game and each zone has one Stronghold and three Outposts. As I said before, they plan to combine Strongholds, Outposts, and Battles into a single 500 player map shortly after launch. As a stretch-goal they'd like to combine three zones together into a single, 1500 player map, and reduce the number of zones on the continent from 28 to 9. Eventually they'd like to have each continent be its own map and add new several new continents to the game, but who can say whether that will ever happen. The best we can hope for is they make each zone into a single, 500 player map since they already have a timeframe for that.
Why 40K: Eternal Crusade Stands Out To Me
Their F2P/B2P/Cash Shop model is really good. They plan on selling cosmetic items and side-grades in the shop. For F2P players they're planning on selling additional classes and pressumably they'll have a couple expensive skins for the whales. Their economics designer was just on their Twitch stream and confirmed that all of the above is still the plan.
What I like about the cosmetics is they specifically want to sell items that will let you create a unique appearance for your Squad or Strike team. This is cool to me because it's about player recognition. They intend to sell additional color schemes, insignias, and minor cosmetics that comibined should make your fireteam stand out. Combined with the cosmetic medals you unlock for completing objectives during seasons (see below) I think this game will have a lot of player prestige.
The feature that makes Eternal Crusade stand out to me the MOST is seasons. Seasons are inspired by Diablo 2's seasons. Guild Wars 2 already adopted a similar system for their 500 player PvP gamemode and it really helped boost the game's population when seasons are on-going.
Seasons are a period of time (roughly 10 weeks) where each faction has a set of objectives and a limited amount of time to complete them. The player council (consists of 10 elected players) for each faction decides which objectives they want to completes and assigns objectives to the Strike Team leaders. The Strike Teams (consists of 100 players) then have to co-operate to accomplish the goal assigned to them. They might share goals with other Strike Teams, like capturing or defending a territory, or might be assigned a solo mission, like amassing resources to build vehicles. The objectives each faction completes during a season determines how the story progresses and hence what objectives will be available in future seasons. Presumably, at the end of each season the economy and/or territory controlled by each faction will be reset, but I don't whether this is the case.
In my opinion, seasons are GENIUS for a game like this. They take the massive level of competition and give it organization and goals. It also let's players organize their playtime around seasons. Got finals coming up you need to study for? No problem, just take a season off and join back up in the summer.
Potential Pitfalls
The biggest pitfallt is they want to release the game on consoles after launch. I can almost gurantee you that will be their #1 priority once the game is out. If it is, it could cut into their development resources spent on the regular game. We already saw this happen with Guild Wars 2, which had wonky post-release support for a long time due to their focus on releasing the game in China.
Another important point is the absurd amount of features they put in the "we might add it after launch" bucket. So far the list includes: aerial combat, additional classes, new factions, additional continents, and the 10,000 player maps they originally planned. And those are just the ones I know of! I think it goes without saying that 99% of games that promise features after launch never add them in. For Guild Wars 2 it was precursor treasure hunts, for Diablo 3 it was PvP, and so on.
I pitty anyone who buys into founders access due to these promises. For my sake, I am assuming they will never be added.
Conclusion
At best, I think they will release the game will all the PvP and PvE features planned, 100 player battles, a fair cash-shop model, a fun combat system, and they will move onto 500 player servers by early 2017 at the absolute latest.
At worst, I think they will release the game with only Space Marine and Chaos Marine factions, they won't have 100 player battles, the cash-shop will be money grabbing, and they will never move onto 500 player servers.
