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[General Article] Firefall: Review in Progress #2
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Red 5's Firefall has been in our sights for some time, waiting for the time to play. With the launch of the open beta, that time has arrived and we've started our Review in Progress. This week marks our second installment and we take a look at crafting and mining. Read on before heading to the comments.
When you log into Firefall for the first time, if you haven’t already, one of the first things you’ll see in chat that confuses you is something like this: “Anyone want to join up for some thumping?” No, it’s not a weird plea for cyber-sex. Thumping is the physical act of mining for crafting resources in Firefall. Said resources can and will be used for any number of things from leveling up your battleframes, to making new gear, and even gaining access to the game’s first (and currently only) full-group instance.
Read more of Bill Murphy's Firefall Review In Progress #2.
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You can also get resources from random events in the world.
Comments
nice.
...all thats missing is - open world pvp,base building/capturing, outposts, convoys, and im in!!
If I want a world in which people can purchase success and power with cash, I'll play Real Life. Keep Virtual Worlds Virtual!
Yeah I've been playing this for a couple of weeks now. It's good fun, very accessible and deeper than those first 30 minutes with it might imply. It's still a little more shallow than it ought to be given the devs claims though, it sorely needs a proper campaign, more mobs populating the maps, more missions, some open world pvp, and the ability to uncover more regional content as part of the invasion mechanic sounds promising. I'm sure all that will come with time.
The cash shop side of things seems pretty fair. considering you don't pay for the client it's no more in your face than say, GW2's is, it's all convenience or aesthetic customisation stuff, no gated content so far. Other FTP devs ought to make a note of that, I feel more inclined to spend cash on this game than I would most of the others because it's not trying to rape my wallet every time I open my inventory. .
They are trying to achieve EVE's player-run economy status without the balls to go full-loot PVP/PVE. They obviously understand that to make such an economy work, the players must be able to "lose their stuff", but their approach to this is very lazy and transparent.
All gear and items (aside from your starter "default" gear) has durability loss on USAGE and on DEATH. Details aside, even with a shady 'repair' mechanic in game, these items will eventually break. Nothing is permanent, regardless of how careful one plays.
I actually am impressed in the crafting system, but, forcing players to craft for pretty much anything, including progressing their character's abilities and weaponry, is fair if we kept what we make (or acquired at any rate) --- But not in Firefall. All items and gear are essentially buffs.
That, and the transparently shallow attempt to make an organic terrain by making travel UNBEARABLE are my two caveats with Firefall.
Otherwise, I think it's neat.
FireFall is not a sandbox at this point. People need to stop saying that because it simply isn't true. It may turn into one, but it's not there yet.
Smile
Same for me, Im a PVP sort of player. Waiting just like you.
They have been selling "starter packs", "founder's packs" or other bs for 20-100$ for years and you are saying that we can't judge the game now, becouse it's not even close to beeing finished? The game has been in beta for years and they heaven't done @#$! with it, it is as tiny, simple, boring, repetetive, empty, uninspiring joke-of-a-MMO as it ever was. Best thing you can do with this game is download it, do everything there is to do in 1 day, delete it and forget it ever existed.
Steam: Neph
nice write ups so far bill.
absolutely right abt the ui- needs to be more mmo friendly. and should be a priority on their todo list along with lore!
Thumping isnt the only thing todo to get resources- there are a handful of different things.
right off the bat= the Daily. you get gear and resources.
I find thumping a great exercise to get familiar with play style. and battle frames.
I keep finding myself putting in more hours in this game slowly seducing my gaming time which i usually split between my fav mmos.
i can only see myself delve deeper in the game as they introduce new things!
You still wear ur shoes you wore 5 years ago?.... durability is implemented pretty cool imo- as well as weight mass of gear when in water...
Bill,
A few points.
You wrote off people saying thumping being boring because they use lower tier thumpers. This is not true. People say thumping is boring because there is nothing to them. All higher tier thumpers do is increase volume and "difficulty" (hp, dmg) of the creatures. There is absolutely nothing to the enemy NPCs thus nothing to encountering them, thus nothing to any encounter. There is no game lore related reason to thump either. There are no special orders from the Accord or hubs. You can't build anything that has effect on the world with your resources.
You also didn't mention how crafting times jump from 10s, to 20 minutes to 3hrs to 10hrs to 24hrs for many crafting items. At the moment crafting isn't worth it because the items you find (which are purchasable on the market) they out perform crafted items. Currently the only draw back to using picked up gear is the durability pool is meager compared to crafted items. Pick up items tend to be tons cheaper are more effective though. Not sure if this is intended or related to glitches in crafting. You have these options, craft an item and wait absorbent amounts of hours for results, pay high prices for people wanting compensation for time and resources spent to craft, pick up items, or pay nominal fees for pick ups.
Another glaring omission of crafting vs pick ups is you can't even tell the difference between the items. They have no visual difference. Low quality items and skills look exactly the same as the highest tier and quality items and skills. Is an item an Accord Elite model? A Chosen model? Or Player Crafted model.
Crafting is essential to the game but many of the silly time and resource constraints take away from the gratification. The poor enemy encounters and design also take away from thumping which is hella repetitive.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Like everything about the game so far, especially the crafting! In almost every other game I avoided crafting. I don't want to spend my time watching bars go by. Firefall crafting is my cup of tea. I am not making 500 of something to advance crafting. You have limited spots to refine, build and research. Those can take a long time, there by locking that spot for that amount of time. The great thing is I don't have to sit there and watch it. I can go out and play the game while my manufacturing que is full.
I certainly do not thump all the time, but it can be quite fun. It can be a fun challenge, especially solo. I have lost quite a few thumpers already trying to test my solo chops on em.
Firefall is the first MMO in a long time that I can't wait to get back to. There are just a lot of little things that make it all come together.
If you are going to focus on thumping, I recommend getting into a squad with your buddies and just hanging out. Thumping is boring as hell alone and I only do it when I needed resources right away for progression (getting arcfolds mostly).
I guess this sentiment is true for every aspect of online games - but yeah, thumping is boring as hell when you do it alone.
Played-Everything
Playing-LoL
This.
And this as well.
This
Nice review. Of the two games I switch between now is Firefall and Secret World, even though I have lots of other, and think you have found all good points about this game
See some flame the crafting bars time, but why watch em? Go pvp, farming, questing or exploring. Dynamic world, so plenty to do while waiting for the ding..
Less gated content ? Have you even seen the new zones in Firefall ?
There are 3 new instanced zone and 1 raid .
To unlock one of the instanced areas you need to :
1) Collect 16k resources
2) Use the 16k resources to craft a Key
3) Power up a city with another type of resource ( i will admit , sometimes the town could already be powered to level 3 by other players , but sometimes its not )
4) Now you can enter the new zone . Your first mission ? Farm more resources to unlock the map again .
5) There will be a mission at the end . This mission has a small chance to drop a key fragment ( used to build the key to the raid instance )
To unlock the raid :
1) Repeat the steps above for all 3 instanced zones , collect a key frgment from each of them ( like i said , key fragments have a low drop chance , doesnt matter how well you complete the mission at the end )
2) Build the key to enter the raid
Yep , more open world
This article misses pointing out that converting resources to crystite is not a 1:1 ratio.
For conversion it would be best to use the lowest white quality you have or just sell it on the market for at least a 1:1 ratio.
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