Firefall - Red 5

[Ratman_tf]

Well, that was fun.
I had some time today, so I downloaded the beta client, found my old character was still there, entered the game and went through a new tuorial.
I then got dumped into the world at the point where I left off. With all the quests completed and nothing to do. 

I mean, I had one notice to "Participate in a group event" on my quest log, but there were no group events I could see on my map, and the terrain is so fucking frustrating for overland travel, that I just logged off.

Back to Scarlet Blade!

[Pennilenko]

With all the quests completed and nothing to do. 

It's not that all of your quests were completed, because there are literally no quests.

[Margalis]

This seems like the kind of game that is progressing slower than the state of the art is moving and is just falling further behind. By the time it releases I suspect nobody will care.

.

[Simond]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/06/28/firefalls-kern-i-look-at-wow-and-think-what-have-we-done-w/

He aims plenty of disparaging remarks at WoW's accessibility formula and its mandate to acquire casual players by streamlining or omitting traditional MMORPG systems. "And it worked. Players came in droves, millions of them," Kern writes. "But at what cost? Sometimes I look at WoW and think 'what have we done?' I think I know. I think we killed a genre."

Kern goes on to lament the lack of difficulty inherent in post-WoW MMOs, and naturally he says that Firefall has found just the right balance between accessibility and challenge.

This will end well.

[Venkman]

He's right, in a sense. The post-WoW world is replete with smaller games offering narrower experiences to whatever bit of the pie they could carve off of the game they were knocking off.

But when FF goes into open beta next week, the first thing I'm going to check out is this "complex" crafting system of his, which for him to compare it to SWG means it includes the player shops, harvesting abilities, harvesting machinery, dynamic rotating resource fields of SWG, slew of player craftables, and so on.

[Fabricated]

Guy that makes also-ran MMO wants you to know that he and his game still exist. News at 11.

[Simond]

He's right, in a sense. The post-WoW world is replete with smaller games offering narrower experiences to whatever bit of the pie they could carve off of the game they were knocking off.

That's really what you get from that? Because all I'm getting is "Bloody casuals and their welfare epics ruined gaming!  "
Which is pants-on-head mental in the present day and age.

[Merusk]

That's what I get from it, too.

Well that and, "WTF nobody wants to spend 12 hours camping rare mobs anymore. This genre is dead to me!" 

[Hayduke]

That's an exasperating statement, and I'm not even sure he believes it.  Just seems like a cynical way to troll for pageviews.

[Pennilenko]

Firefall is a steaming pile of poop. I didn't have any expectations for it other than it actually be something rather than nothing at all.

[MrHat]

Firefall is a steaming pile of poop. I didn't have any expectations for it other than it actually be something rather than nothing at all.

I enjoyed the gameplay, the characters were smooth and it played well that way.

However, I had no idea what the hell was going on with the item system.  It seemed complicated to be complicated, which is what I'm sensing from others here.

[Pennilenko]

However, I had no idea what the hell was going on with the item system.  It seemed complicated to be complicated, which is what I'm sensing from others here.

Okay, I can adjust my comment. The game play was smooth. Every other thing about the game is poop.

[kildorn]

The gameplay was smooth, there just wasn't very much of it. And as I understand from other people the crafting system recently went from overly confusing and annoying to use, to overly confusing and annoying to use and mandatory as item decay is now enabled.

[Kageru]

It's worn out its welcome before it even launched... that's somewhat tragic.

[luckton]

Got an email that open beta was here.  Guess I'll give this a crack.

[Kageru]

It seems to be a bit of a mess... doesn't look that great, the game-play seems simplistic, the content appears to have depth mainly because the interface is terrible and the progression path is chaotic and punctuated by sudden and random death. I'll play a bit more but the initial impression is pretty bad.

[Malakili]

They signed a deal with ESL to have Firefall esports tournaments starting up soon (next month).  It seems like they are trying hard to make something of this, but everything I've seen just tells me I have no particular reason to play this over anything else.

[Draegan]

I found it odd that they were like a major advertiser at PAX Prime in fucking 2011 and here we are in open beta 2 years later.

C'mon.

[Hayduke]

2010 actually.  And yeah those first videos I thought were pretty interesting looking.  But now?  Waste of bandwidth.

[Kageru]

It must be really tough being a developer on it. Deeply committed to releasing it, lots of money and time invested, but it's already non-competitive and becoming more so as time passes. The shooting mechanics seem too simplistic to make it an interesting e-sport on top of others already out there that do it better.

... best chance of survival remaining I guess, even if it is a slender reed.

[Senses]

This is just another one of those games that's worth downloading to enjoy for a week and spend ZERO money.  Its confusing as all hell, though, and while I certainly have no problem with forcing people to figure things out, it probably won't work for the average gamer.  Reminded me of the week I spent in tabula rasa.  If someone ever makes a game like this that isn't garbage, its going to be popular.

[Pennilenko]

Firefall is a horrible and shameful game. Its been re-invented more times than Joan Rivers has had plastic surgery.

[Kageru]

It's got quite a few similarities to defiance in terms of world events and being a MMOFPS, but that's bad too... though the shooting was more fun. This is mostly interesting in how to present a path of progession really badly.

I suspect wildstar will distract any MMO audience this might have had.

[Kageru]

So reading some of the media it's some ex-Blizzard developers (most now left), ~20 mill in one announced funding, 100 developers (most now sacked), working on this game since 2005 and now owned by The9. And they are opening a Asia and Eu office to support the game nearing release.

If this was an indie game by a small studio it would make a lot more sense.

Really the most I hope for from this game is an interesting post-mortem explanation of how they got to where they are.

[luckton]

The embarrassing thing about this is that its from ex-Bliz peeps.  I guess maybe that's why they're ex-Bliz? 

[Margalis]

I suspect that working at Blizzard can teach you some poor lessons. A lot of high-profile Blizzard people have been fairly unsuccessful in later ventures.

Every Blizzard project is delayed, rebooted multiple times, squanders resources - and is ultimately very successful. But a development process composed largely of flailing is not a recipe for success. This has the hallmarks of a Blizzard project but without the budget, marketing or fan investment of one.

[Kageru]

It's basically a character development grind in search of a game. The amount of XP and resources to progress is substantial but the range and variety of game-play is minimal.

It reminds me a lot of APB, lots of potential that is never going to get built.

[Simond]

The embarrassing thing about this is that its from ex-Bliz peeps.  I guess maybe that's why they're ex-Bliz? 

Nah, this mindset is why he's ex-Blizzard.

[Kageru]

Delusional or desperate... you can never tell.

[Kageru]

So, for those who will never play this terrible game but are interested..

The game has one map which is very vertical (even with jetpacks) such that traversing it is a pain in the neck. This is made harder by there being a really dark night cycle and getting a vehicle requires either buying the founders pack or a massive crafting grind. There's no zone progression or differences outside of scenery. The map is walled by a alien death field which can move a bit in response to player or NPC actions. Around this map there are a bunch of bases and empty buildings which become the stage for fairly basic events in which bad guys spawn and need to be killed. The mobs density and balance is fairly random so it is pretty easy to get swarmed and killed. The mobs run around quite a bit but there's not much in the way of tactics other than superior firepower (not even head-shots), kiting when outnumbered and giving thanks they drop health and ammo packs. Once you go into the missions based on a building and pick up the "thing" the base respawns on top of you and you probably die. There's enough bored players though so these events get brute-forced, often being completed before you even get there given transport is slow and the veterans know each event so well. There's not much variety so in a couple of days you'll have seen all the events there are. It also means players are effectively competing for access to the content.

Finding some random ground spawns, completing missions or mining (the thumper idea is sort of cool) gives you resources. XP unlocks your class powers and allows you to level up three values for that class (mass, CPU and energy, also needs crafting resources) which lets you equip high level items. Those higher level items need to be researched and built using a lot of resources. They have exciting names like "shotgun II" which replaces "shotgun I" and has marginally better numbers. Some of the higher capability upgrades give you "pilot points" which allow you to buy the tier II warframes, with each of the five tier I warframes having 2 upgrades. Or you can pull out the wallet and get to the point you burnout much faster.

Some of the bases are large, though most are cut and paste, and try to evoke some variety in their ambience, but really they only have a small amount of identical functionality. You can swap suits (classes), you can upgrade the suit and you can craft. The city maps have all these spots for defensive structures like turrets, and I remember them featuring in a 2010 PAX video about a huge monster attack on a city, but apparently that never actually worked properly and isn't in game. You can get mob invasions of player bases though.

There is death-match PvP, one 5 man instance and 3 pocket dimensions all of which need a crafted key. So I haven't got it and ideally will be able to resist any temptation to invest that much effort.

The amazing thing is that, given the long development of this game, the content is really really sparse. It's also buggy with server latency, bizarre UI errors when doing basic actions, and a host of other weird bugs. If I was in a real beta and it was a game I cared about I might file bug reports but they've promised no more wipes and they have the cash shop up and running so it's not really a beta. They're just not brave enough to admit this is a soft-launch. Besides, I'm sure they have a huge list of known bugs to work on. I have no idea if they seriously think they are going to have a competitive game one day.

The ability to get sucked into a progression mechanic is also impressive. Even though the gameplay isn't much fun, and getting a tier-II warframe won't make it any more fun, collecting resources and XP becomes addictive. The urge to unlock one more box is palpable. Although looking at the top level unlocks, and realising how much grind that would involve, is a healthy antidote.

[Ginaz]

I played it for a few hours and then uninstalled.  I actually enjoyed playing Defiance more than this.

[Kageru]

Same... Defiance has a story that gives meaning and forward progression to your actions. This one is purely about grinding the resources needed to advance your character. Of course once you do the content in Defiance I suspect you end up at the same place.

Both pretty bad games though. Someone is going to nail the MMOFPS but the efforts so far have been incredibly poor. Tabula Rasa, APB, Fallen Earth, Defiance and Firefall promised a lot but just don't deliver.

[Malakili]

World War 2 Online is still my favorite to date. 

I should actually probably reinstall PS2 now that they put the lattice in, but I hear that is only on one continent right now.

In any event, I watched a guy play Firefall for about 30 minutes the other day.  The gameplay didn't look 1/2 bad, but I don't see how a game which seems to focus on 5v5 or 10v10 PvP can be called an "MMO."  Team Fortress 2 is practically as much of an MMO as this is.

[Nija]

That's the PVP minigame.

The PVE area is open world with instancing of the entire zone.

[Malakili]

That's the PVP minigame.

Which seems to be the part they are actually most aggressively pushing what with their eSports announcements.