Tyranids will play a prominent part in Warhammer 40K: Eternal Crusade, just not as a player-run faction. We had the opportunity to chat with Brent Ellison about the PVE in Eternal Crusade and how it's tied to Tyranids so keep reading
MMORPG: We know that the Tyranids are a sort of “balancing factor”, how will that work exactly?
Brent Ellison: Hive instances appear in any territory where the Tyranids are present – the more Tyranids, the more instances that must be cleared. There is a constant drip feed of Tyranids creeping into any territory, and then there are occasional full-blown invasions that merit a quick response.
The more territory you own, the more often you’re going to have to deal with this problem and there are additional valves to make invasion more likely for factions that are having a lot of success on the front line. When a faction’s territories are under Tyranid threat, they must divert resources away from fighting other players and into the co-op Tyranid battles. As a result, they won’t be able to contest as many territories.
MMORPG: How dangerous/disadvantageous would it be for a faction just to let Tyranids run rampant in their territory while the faction concerns itself with winning the PvP portion of the game?
Brent Ellison: If you don’t clear Tyranids from your territory by fighting in PvE instances, you will eventually lose that territory to the Tyranids. Losing territories means losing any bonuses that come from them as well as the possibility of cutting off front-line territories and making them orphans. Orphaned territories no longer count as your front line so you won’t be able to continue conquering from them.
Losing territory can also spell trouble for accomplishing campaign goals. If high command is telling you to capture the Governor’s Palace by dawn and your staging ground just got gobbled up by the Tyranids, then you’re going to need to get it back before you’ll be able to make any progress. We intend to make good use of this since Tyranid invasions can also be triggered as part of campaigns to create interesting narratives and challenges for the factions to react to.
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MMORPG: Will Tyranids take action outside of their “hive dungeons”, i.e., will there be opportunities to fight them “out in the world”, as opposed to within instanced areas?
Brent Ellison: Our focus for the PvP right now is to get the highest number of players in together as possible and adding NPCs competes with that goal. Conversely, adding more players to a Tyranid-focused experience reduces the number of Tyranids we can put in the map. And on top of all that, it’s just extremely difficult to make a high quality experience for both massive PvP and horde-based PvE at the same time. When we’re making a fortress for massive combat it needs to support jump packs and tanks – you can imagine how difficult it would be to create a tight bug hunt in that same space.
So at first we’re going to be focusing on making each of these types of gameplay as strong as possible on their own. Then, based on feedback from the community about where they want to go next, we’ll look at what it takes to mix the two.
MMORPG: How many different types of Tyranid will we see, and which ones?
Brent Ellison: There are five different types of base Tyranids in production right now - we may have more before launch, and of course there will be many more after that. However, we’re building them in such a way that they can have different weapons and loadouts just like players so each Tyranid can be used in a multitude of different ways.
We haven’t revealed all of them yet so right now I’ll just say that you’ll definitely see Hormagaunts, Termagaunts and Warriors.
MMORPG: How many types of game modes will there be for the PVE Tyranid battles? A version of Gears of War’s famous Horde Mode seems like an obvious choice.
Brent Ellison: For the PvE we’re trying not to create a bunch of different types of game modes, but instead set up a single ruleset that allows for a lot of variety across different pieces of content. We don’t want you thinking “I want to play a Horde Mode right now”, but instead thinking “I’d like to take on a Nesting Grotto”.
Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, Left 4 Dead and of course Space Marine’s Exterminatus mode are more our primary inspirations for hives. Rather than just killing all the Tyranids in a zone you’re tasked with surviving to reach a certain position or completing objectives that fit the narrative while at the same time fending off the hordes.
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MMORPG: What are the rewards that can be gained from battling Tyranids?
Brent Ellison: XP, weapons, mods and consumables can be earned through PvE, the same types of items that you can earn in PvP. However, while the PvE is available on demand most of the time PvP is more rewards-efficient than PvE because we want people to get out and fight!
That said, when you’re benefitting your faction by clearing out an invasion that really threatens your place in the world then rewards will be increased. We want to promote variety through our rewards schemes as much as possible and it fits our intention to “balance” the populations by incentivizing some players to move to PvE when it will make the PvP experience better for other factions.
MMORPG: Are Tyranid encounters varied? What I mean by that is: do Tyranid encounters support a variety of mission objectives other than “kill all the bugs”? And, if so, what other sorts of encounters will there be?
Brent Ellison: For the PvE we’re trying not to create a bunch of different types of game modes, but instead set up a single ruleset that allows for a lot of variety across different pieces of content. We don’t want you thinking “I want to play a Horde Mode right now”, but instead thinking “I’d like to take on a Nesting Grotto”.
Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, Left 4 Dead and of course Space Marine’s Exterminatus mode are more our primary inspirations for hives. Rather than just killing all the Tyranids in a zone you’re tasked with surviving to reach a certain position or completing objectives that fit the narrative while at the same time fending off the hordes.
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MMORPG: What are the rewards that can be gained from battling Tyranids?
Brent Ellison: XP, weapons, mods and consumables can be earned through PvE, the same types of items that you can earn in PvP. However, while the PvE is available on demand most of the time PvP is more rewards-efficient than PvE because we want people to get out and fight!
That said, when you’re benefitting your faction by clearing out an invasion that really threatens your place in the world then rewards will be increased. We want to promote variety through our rewards schemes as much as possible and it fits our intention to “balance” the populations by incentivizing some players to move to PvE when it will make the PvP experience better for other factions.
MMORPG: Are Tyranid encounters varied? What I mean by that is: do Tyranid encounters support a variety of mission objectives other than “kill all the bugs”? And, if so, what other sorts of encounters will there be?
Brent Ellison: Yes, absolutely. It’s actually easier to balance these experiences and prevent degenerative kiting behavior when you have different types of tasks. Examples of objectives in hive modes include destroying Tyranid pods, retrieving artifacts, activating “bug bombs”, assassinating a particular Tyranid synapse creature while hordes of Tyranids continue to spawn around you, etc.
We don’t want you to just go into one of these fights, have an announcer say “Go”, and then just fire away until all the monsters are gone. We want you to have a small narrative alongside your battle brothers in the 40k setting. And that’s our goal with the whole of Eternal Crusade – not to be just a persistent shooter with a 40k skin, but to actually set the player up in the 41st millennium doing great deeds that fit the motivations of the Emperor or Abaddon or a warboss or what remains of the Eldar empire. There’s a whole universe out there that not only has an effect on the war but will feel the ramifications of it.
