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Firefall - One of the Worst MMO's I have played.
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And here an update from their dev blog. A major overhaul to the progression system etc etc. :
http://www.firefallthegame.com/2013/03/15/firefalls-new-progression-system/
Senior Game Designer, Cameron Winston, sat down to write up a detailed guide on the new progression system all of you can expect to see in the March 22nd milestone patch. Without anymore delay, here is Cameron’s blog…
Hello, everyone! I’m Cameron Winston, a Senior Game Designer here at Red 5 Studios, and I want to talk to you guys for a bit about the work we’re doing to tweak player progression. A while back, when we first overhauled player progression entirely, we made the switch from traditional leveling to tech trees for each battleframe. It’s a decision that we believe was for the best, but it came with some problems of its own.
What were these problems?
Well, as it turns out the previous iteration of the tech tree was hard to understand, and it had arbitrary limitations that prevented players from exploring how they could customize their frames. Additionally, the way our system was built before prevented us from really expanding in a way that worked, as progression would be tied to an ever-growing combat system which would have to be built on itself. This doesn’t make for a very sustainable form of expansion since the number of possibilities would continue to grow, and trying to balance all of those possibilities would drive us all completely mad.
This also affected our PvP, as this vertical progression would put new players at a disadvantage in competitive PvP.
So, how are we fixing it?
Our ultimate goal with Firefall is to let you play the game however you want – so long as it’s a shooter. The purpose of this retooling of the progression system is to give players like you the ability to drive your own Firefall experience within as much variance of the shooter gameplay as we can support. What that means is that if you want to play as someone who wants to run around shooting things, you can. If you want to sacrifice speed for survivability and march through the world with your massive Gatling gun, you can. If you want to stick to the shadows and pick enemies off from impossible distances, you can.
The point is that we want you to feel like you can do whatever you want.
To help achieve this, we’ve started by changing how you unlock battleframes going forward. Rather than having you level up a particular battleframe to unlock its more powerful iterations, you’ll have a far more flat access to the frames. You’ll still have your different classes, like Assault and Recon and so on, but each battleframe will now have its own unique progression tree. By being able to level each battleframe uniquely, and by allowing you to choose how you level it, we hope that you’ll be able to develop a stable of battleframes that play to your strengths for each battleframe archetype.
Each battleframe tech tree will be split into three different tracts, each of which represents a different constraint – one each for Power, Mass, and Cores. By traveling down a particular tract and unlocking certain abilities, you will increase the limit on that constraint, allowing you to use more potent abilities. So how do these break down?
As you progress your battleframe, you’ll unlock new visuals for that particular frame, and tokens that you can use to unlock other frames along with the option to purchase frames for Red Beans. There will also be an added emphasis on crafting items with the inclusion of a four-stage progression of item crafting. This will offer more powerful gear and abilities, but will come at increased constraint cost.
While early unlocks will come quickly, the progression of each battleframe will be a much longer process than it is at present.
Great! What does this mean for PvP?
We’re also making changes to our PvP that will level the playing field. All players who jump into a PvP match will be competing with stock versions of the battleframes they have unlocked. These battleframes have power levels that are higher than what a player will typically start off with in PvE, but lower than the very top-tiered frames. You will not be able to alter the stock PvP frame loadouts, but you will have access to all the frames you’ve unlocked when you spawn – just like now.
We are super eager to see how players find interesting builds to min/max their battleframes. If the net result is there is no one “perfect” loadout for any given battleframe and that the right loadout is fully dependent on an individual’s play style, I think we will have accomplished a big part of what we set out to do.
-CW
Lets start with explaining.. what lie? and what issue?
Ive been testing this game for quite some time and Im puzzled with what problem you are talking about.
"Lies" as in "the heart of the matter", not as in "not telling the truth".
I played Firefall beta as long as my old computer would let me. Several of the last twelve months. Eventually the patching pushed the game beyond my current pc's limits. When I finally do get a new gaming computer, I hope to dive back in.
Regarding the statements of too small a playable area, and lack of interesting content, both of these have been addressed by developers. The melding is only a temporary barrier. Player participation will eventually push it back, and if the game continues, there is a design to encompass the whole globe. The devs have also said that they have surprises (read "interesting content") in store as players reveal new areas of the maps. Thus, what today look like the whole game, will in the future just be the starting zone. Its roughly akin to saying Wow will beta in Durotar but will eventually reveal several continents and another planet.
That said, their concept of a long-term beta, and one day just casually turning off the beta sign, does look like it could backfire.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
I think that's why he's saying it's BS for somone posting something like that. Someone's first impression is seeing a thread title called "The game is one of the worst MMO's I've ever played".
I gotta Disagree.
Firefall is a great game, and its f2p. Better then Defiance which cost 60 bucks with dlc too inc.
Firefall is great fun. Its not a 10 hour a day MMORPG so dont take it in that aspect.
MMORPG.com's community is really just starting to come off as a bashing sight for new MMO's. This sight bashes on every damn game iv seen, but of course its not everone, just a good amount of people.
We need to start being optomistic because games back in the day didnt even have half the shit we have in MMORPG's these days and yet they boomed back then. What makes MMO's is Community, and if the community is a bunch of haters then......
Just sayin stop hating cuz it aint helping, if you dont like it just leave.............and go back to your console games.
+1
The last patch has turned the game into a korean grindfest and resource hogging party. I can already see next step: "pay to skip the grind". Ah, the joys of F2P.
What was announced as a milestone patch is just a few minor addings. The map is still ridiculously tiny. Very little things to do. Once you have played for a few days, that's it. You have seen it all. From then on, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat and then repeat again.
The "this is beta" argument is no longer valid too since you can pay to access the game and the cash shop is totally operative. The "beta" tag is just an excuse for the company to do whatever they fancy and for fanbois to justifiy anything the company does (or doesn't).
and tell me, wich game doesnt have the function ,repeat ,repeat ,repeat if you know 1 il go there right now and play it
None really. However, this is the first time it took me a few days to see all the content. I am used to get to the "repeat, repeat, repeat" situation a few months later, sometimes a few weeks later, but not the same week you start playing the game.
Well.. the beta tag still does apply, its irrelevant you payed to get in or not, even after release companies put changes into games as they see fit.
But you are right, they changes did turn the game into a painfull grindfest. I dont even mind a grind per say, theres always a grind in 1 form or another. But in this case they moved the grind away from the action game to the crafting station. Thats the part I mind, For 15 minutes of gathering materials through loot thumping or what ever mean you can get them from you spent a hour at the crafting station just to refine it. That and.. now both crafting and gathering materials are made mandetory.
However some of the changes IMO are good though.
You can pay 100 beans to unlock a frame so you can skip a big part of the grind. Although the new (and apparently good) idea is that you don't advance through the frame but sidestep i.e. the accord(noob) frames are going to be just as good as whatever you unlock.
That is true. What I meant is that fanbois defend the ridiculously tiny amount of content with the "beta" argument. Well, after a milestone patch that has added almost no content and only grind, when the cash shop is operative, I can't consider that a valid argument any longer. Beta started 2 years ago!
loved the game prior to the recent patch
as it is now, it is just annoying
ridiculous resource requirements for everything
and processing those resources is way over the top time consuming - but of course you can buy "red beans" to speed that up
in its current state there is nothing to do but grind/thump if you want to progress
do i agree with the OP that it is the worst mmo i have ever played? no
right now it is the most disappointing turn of events for any beta i have participated in (well, except for maybe one...)
it really does seem to be fanboi's that defend the game same thing here as on the FF forums themselves everytime there was some sort of negative feed back same 5-10 ppl always came in the thread bashing the OP.
Fact is the games current direction isn't a good one in any shape or form especially with the new patch. Don't call this an rpg either there is no role to play except lets all play the op frame. Theres no incentive to encourage diversity amongst frames furthermore its going to end up like LoL and their champions being released every so often with them releasing new frames. Crafting is mind numbingly boring and just a head ache (having 5 more parts to craft the same item as before does not create depth) yea the 2nd tier craft gives you the abilit to control clip size woopty d do thats the only difference between t1 and t2 currently other than t2 takes 3-4 times longer to craft and 3-4 times as many resources any other possible upgrades such as splash damage/dps is unnoticable. So I can fight everything from the very first frame I pick O cool guess nothing is going to get harder later in game the moment you hit the ground running is as difficult as the game gets.
They're not headed in a direction that makes the game unique anymore other than the design of the open world and furthermore creating content such as melding wall push backs changing the world around the players isn't enough opening up a new part of the map is just gonna give you a new place to thump.
Theres nothing inherently difficult about this game it at its current stage caters to less skilled gamers by making purposeful imbalances of classes to basically make short bus characters for people to play with. Basically its herp derp I suck so I play this char and I do just as good as this guy thats pro on any other char and they're ok with this. Right now pve is non existant as others have said its a thumpfest which yea looks cool in the few vids you see (go do it four or five times you'll be just as bored with it as everyone else) yes thumping is a unique way of gather a resource however its just protecting an object from monsters for a specific period of time and people like to glorify the hell out of it. Difficulty is supposedly increased as thumper size goes up this is not true they just throw more monsters at you and its always the same monsters just depends on where you go in the map theres basically about three differences of the waves depending on where you are on the map.
Progression is a joke there is no progression as I said its going to turn in to LoL with the champion style of unlocking new characters so any progression you make on any specific frame with be deamed worthless later on a few months down the road when that frame is obsolete and has no purposeful role that makes it a viable option wether it is an enjoyable frame for your playstyle or not.
Honestly dont play the game at the moment I had high hopes for it as well It still has a large amount of potential but that potential is dwindling fast as well as the fact that I can't see the game even hitting an open beta for another 2-3 years at best. (which isn't uncommon for an amount of development time most games take 4-5 years before they hit an open beta state) However think of how gaming will have evolved by then think of how often computer upgrades can happen and with the frequency of graphic improvements on gaming.
They have a plan at R5 and fanbois are eating up this ponzy scheme like asian ppl and rice cakes (really not trying to sound racist here if it makes you feel better I can say like white ppl and corn). The fact is alot of people are just taking this companies word for it yea they do implement some of the feed back given (however its very minimal and doesn't really show in the end) Remember one of the guys heading up the development of this game was part of the wow dev team and we all know what wow has done to hundreds of MMO's over the last decade and how its corrupted the gaming industry.
People have said well look at the kind of games we have today compared to those 2d side scrollers from 15-20 years ago. Guess what I am looking and that 2d side scroller was still funner to play than 50% of the crap the try to spoon feed us today and I'd still play them over this new crap they try to pass off as gaming. Again just wait You will be playing LoL with guns and an open world. Wait till open world pvp hits (if it ever does) and see how this frame balance crap they try to say is a good idea everyone that actually has skill will be out in the open while everyone else that thought they had some is stuck in copa cause they get faceraped the minute they step out in the open. Btw if you consider WoW to be a good game please don't respond the second you thought it was good your opinion was rendered invalid yes it made money and had a huge audience but it got that way by dumbing down gaming and catering to the ignorant masses which has in turn taken modern gaming with it.
We now have perma-breaking gear in the game. Thats right! Your gear that took you days/weeks to get will now crap out on you after a set amount of time. I am sure the next thing to be added will be a way to bypass this with beans, this is why the old beta testers tried to convince r5 not to make FF into a ftp game.
The devs only response to this is to tell us its all about the economy, and i really wonder which economy they are talking about.
A statement from our mods/devs/whatever.
Kaerbear Stare O______________O
1) Get Battleframe
2) Progress Frame
3) Get Resources/Crystite to craft gear you want
4) Use better frame to Progress more
5) Get Resources/Crystite to craft the "best" gear
6) Gear breaks down over time, Back to step 5.
6a) Unlock new frame, go back to step 1.
Without durability, the loop "ends" at step 5, and there is nothing left for a battleframe to "do". This leads to "I'm bored/where is my content" style threads on the boards
and because i always cite my sources
http://forums.firefallthegame.com/community/threads/the-solution.207741/#post-4373741
Good God, that's retarded.
The reason Firefall lacks longevity is because of low content variety and very limited content. Within hours, you can experience virtually everything the game has to offer. Adding in retarded mechanics like the one above only serves to frustrate players with a bandaid alternative to content.
and for most players that will try out this game that loop is actually gonna end at step 2
the resource requirement to advance your frame is way over the top and then we have had a statement from the "devs" that you actually can't max your frame unless you are an unemployed troll living in your mothers basement - there are three lines of progression for each frame - one is a painful grind - two is "impossible" and three well.......................
More over it seems incredibly cheap to build in a grind loop like this just because you cant seem to create content to meet player demand.
And yet World of Warcraft and all its bastard offspring are based on such grind loops though they are power creep based not deterioration based and as such they make crafting a hobby.
This is why I quit WoW long ago. :P
Though to you do raise a good question, what is "better"?
Borderlands multiplayer is more enjoyable than Firefall imho.
Firefall has fall into the same trap as 99% of all MMOs and that would be item-progression and uninspiring PvE-content.
To really make a diffference you need good immersion and tons of content, paired with interesting storylines and storytelling, and yes WoW actually offered this or you need a playerdriven universe like found in EvE Online, where players can create their own stories and built up empires, controlling the markets etc.
The reason why none of the MMOs released during the last years (since 2005!!!) has had a longlasting success is the devs and publishers who lack imagination. The devs and publishers these days only want to make money with as little effort as possible instead of thinking big and taking a risk.
It's because a lot of posters here become overly-attached to a game, or in some cases even the concept of a game, hehe, or sometimes even just a concept *cough* sandbox *cough*. They identify with it at a very personal level, an irrational behaviour, but that's how it is.
So whenever they see anyone posting anything less than a glowing fawning testimonial to how absolutely awesome their game/concept is, they strap on their Fiery Avenger and set forth to defend the realm. Further to that they will develop notions of competition within the niche, a kind of preemptive strike on existing games/concepts in their niche that they feel may present some future threat, check out the CU posters active in the DFUW forums for example.
On the plus side it has nothing to do with you personally, or even with the content of your post. This over-reaction will occur in all cases, even if the poster is a tried and true supporter that happens to post a one-off doubt about said game/concept. Check the CU forums for examples, they're the best example right now, although GW2 forums used to be the go-to.
Sadly this crazy-ass love affair with their game concept comes at the cost of reason, understanding, courtesy and usually a sense of humour.
It really reminds me of born-again converts to religions, or freshly quit smokers.
Games are serious business to these poor buggers.
If you're not afraid of being labelled "troll" you can have some fun making them "dance" at will. The nutjobs seem to enjoy it, they'll bite every time, like throwing a stick for a dog to fetch. I think MMORPG likes it as well, generates forum activity.