Giving Chaos its own PVP identity could launch a massive franchise

I think the biggest issue you'd run into with this (beyond balancing hell) is potentially huge increases in queue times (if the SM and CSM teams stay segregated as they are now).

If you just look at making CSM in SM2 unique, with six unique classes, consider that not everyone will want to play as the unique CSM. A lot will just prefer the SM classes no matter what. We're seeing this in operations mode right now, where some folks have one or two classes that they refuse to switch off of.

So: you'll have to let folks choose what side they'll play. What if one side is more popular than the other? What if you've got 1000 SM players in matchmaking, but only 800 CSM players - 200 players now cannot get a match, no matter what. That's complicated as well by needing 3+ players per team for it to feel fun. Adding multiple other factions /might/ help reduce that matchmaking trouble, but multiple other factions are also an absolute explosion in dev time if they all also behave uniquely with unique classes.

I think a fresh WH40k title that totally focused on multiplayer, that could focus on multiple factions with unique classes, would be very cool though. Perhaps a free-for-all multiplayer structure would allow all the factions to throw in together in one arena.  I think SM2 and its codebase probably has too much other stuff going on (the campaign, the PvE operations with its own unique progression) to support that level of PvP complexity.

Personally, with this multiplayer I kinda wish they didn't introduce chaos at all. Just have it be "loyalists" vs "renegades" - there's precedent for rogue marine chapters out there. The time spent on the limited number of chaos assets could've gone into more cosmetics, and then both sides in every match could play with their fully customized marines every time.

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GLNDWR wrote:

I think the biggest issue you'd run into with this (beyond balancing hell) is potentially huge increases in queue times (if the SM and CSM teams stay segregated as they are now).

If you just look at making CSM in SM2 unique, with six unique classes, consider that not everyone will want to play as the unique CSM. A lot will just prefer the SM classes no matter what. We're seeing this in operations mode right now, where some folks have one or two classes that they refuse to switch off of.

So: you'll have to let folks choose what side they'll play. What if one side is more popular than the other? What if you've got 1000 SM players in matchmaking, but only 800 CSM players - 200 players now cannot get a match, no matter what. That's complicated as well by needing 3+ players per team for it to feel fun. Adding multiple other factions /might/ help reduce that matchmaking trouble, but multiple other factions are also an absolute explosion in dev time if they all also behave uniquely with unique classes.

I think a fresh WH40k title that totally focused on multiplayer, that could focus on multiple factions with unique classes, would be very cool though. Perhaps a free-for-all multiplayer structure would allow all the factions to throw in together in one arena.  I think SM2 and its codebase probably has too much other stuff going on (the campaign, the PvE operations with its own unique progression) to support that level of PvP complexity.

Personally, with this multiplayer I kinda wish they didn't introduce chaos at all. Just have it be "loyalists" vs "renegades" - there's precedent for rogue marine chapters out there. The time spent on the limited number of chaos assets could've gone into more cosmetics, and then both sides in every match could play with their fully customized marines every time.

I 100% agree that the idea wouldn't work in SM2, it's an end game idea for the franchise, not something to be implemented next week.

I thought the idea of allowing mirror matches and selecting multiple factions would solve the potential matchmaking issues caused by some factions being more popular as you wouldn't need a even spread across the factions for fast games, unpopular factions could suffer from this as they might struggle to find enough people to fully populate a team, but I feel this situation is more of an indicator of a problem than a problem itself, if people aren't playing a faction surely this means something is wrong, either the faction is weak, or it isn't fun or immersive, I see this as direct and loud feedback from the player base. Just as in commerce, where the majority of customers speak with their wallets not words, this would be the majority of players speaking with their actions and should be listened to.

Using typical online gaming balancing methods, this idea would be hell to implement, however I think you would be better off looking at how the table top deals with different factions and making them all strong and weak in different ways than looking at other FPS games. Tweaking numbers isn't the only way to balance. Give each faction a playstyle and identity, reward players with strength and success for following this identity and remind them of their weaknesses if they stray. 

I think I'm trying to say, each faction shouldn't be balanced against other factions. Each faction should be balanced against itself and the playstyle they adopt with factions having multiple tools in their toolbox to develop tactics from. Each faction should have more than one answer for each problem, but there should also be unfavorable match ups. Don't get me wrong, it still wouldn't be easy, but I think W40k isn't a easy or typical universe to balance, and should therefore cannot be balanced in the typical ways, a more in depth version of tactical rock paper scissors would be the best way to approach making factions fair without ruining the fun or the power fantasy aspects.

I think this different kind of balance could be a boon that gives people a reason to play different factions depending on what kind of gameplay they want to experience. If they want to be an agile combatant casting warp magic across the battle field, then eldar, or if they want to be laying down devastating firepower, the tau , or maybe they woke up in a state and chose violence, well thats the orks. I keep getting the feeling that games are trying too hard to make everything equally strong and I don't think that is the path to success for a W40k game.