other shoes gettin' ready to drop ...
Firefall's Red 5 Studios lays off 10% of staff in 'pre-launch reorganization' | Massively
Firefall's Red 5 Studios lays off 10% of staff in 'pre-launch reorganization' | Massively
[FireFall] New patch, more content
- Thread starter Hansel
- Start date
HaPpY
Veteran XX
i would argue that 38 studios + copernicus is the greatest mmo fail... not monetarily specifically. though it was quite high (possibly the highest)... but more in general in terms of false hopes raised, lies told, lives hurt, political scandals, etc.
HaPpY
Veteran XX
dont even need reward. just need some ranking system. thats what motivated pvp in wow first... loot/gear second.
AFireInAsa
Veteran X
I thought they had some sort of ranking system.
Does Firefall have different tiered gear like WoW? At some point I remember reading you just got "different" items rather than better items.
And do they have bosses and special raid/dungeons that require a big group to complete a set goal for a chance at a rare item? Just copy the way WoW instanced dungeons work even to make it easier to implement, it'd work just fine.
If they don't have giant multi-stage bosses, they need to add them. Like fighting a giant mech or alien queen etc.
And does new gear change your physical appearance so you look cooler once you get rarer gear?
If not, these are the things they need to do to encourage hardcore PvE fans. Then just make a separate tier of items that contains PvP only gear and people will play it even at the mediocre state it was at when I played.
There aren't much to do in PvE at all, there is one boss that you can summon after gathering a shitload of mats, and there is one instance you can farm. Those are about it on the PvE side. All the open world stuff get boring pretty fast. Really makes you wonder wtf they are spending all their time on.
I really like the game, the controls are as perfect as it gets IMO, and combat is a ton of fun, but the contend is seriously lacking. Taking out PvP, the only thing that's not repetitive in the game, is pretty damn stupid right now.
Happy: They do have a leader board, but it's rather useless. I was ranked 5000 something yesterday in Jetball, then won 5 games in a row and now I am ranked #4. Without being able to group queue, you are at the mercy of how shitty your teammates are. It's very common to play a game where I have 30+ kills and the second highest on my team is 2.
I really like the game, the controls are as perfect as it gets IMO, and combat is a ton of fun, but the contend is seriously lacking. Taking out PvP, the only thing that's not repetitive in the game, is pretty damn stupid right now.
Happy: They do have a leader board, but it's rather useless. I was ranked 5000 something yesterday in Jetball, then won 5 games in a row and now I am ranked #4. Without being able to group queue, you are at the mercy of how shitty your teammates are. It's very common to play a game where I have 30+ kills and the second highest on my team is 2.
Atreides
Veteran XV
I'm pretty sure the motivation was the forced need to fight the decay if you wanted to climb.
If you weren't running in a premade, you probably weren't going to have an easy time of reaching Rank 11+.
There are four tiers, and "stock" gear. The stock gear has unlimited durability, and lasts forever. Looted tier pieces can't be repaired. Crafted tier pieces have durability pools that limit the number of times they can be repaired. The difference in items is determined by the materials used to craft, which can adjust the durability pool, rate of recharge, speed, damage, etc. of an armor piece or weapon.
The whole durability pool thing is stupid, and why I quit playing.
Dangerdoggie
Veteran XV
Did colossus get fired?
Got Haggis?
Veteran XX
splain
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Daergar @mattdewald Sorry to hear about the layoffs at Red 5. Hope you came out unscathed. -Blitz@TW
mattdewald @Daergar yeah. I'm still here. Saddened but continuing.
looks like one of the people they let go was a narrative designer for firefall (also worked on The Old Republic according to Moby Games)
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Former co-worker of mine was let go from there during the layoffs, and he was on the development side.
I've also played Firefall recently for about 100 hours. Had some fun with it. Summary:
Firefall is an Open-World, PvE-focused, MMO shooter
PvE-wise, the core experience is semi-randomly generated quests, very similar to the open-world game Red Faction Guerilla, and this causes Firefall to feel more a bit like an open-world game, rather than like a traditional WoW-ish MMO. There's only 1 'full' instance and 3 'miniature' instances at this time. There's also only one real 'zone' right now, and it's about 1/2 to 1/3 the size of a single continent in WoW. There's 1 very simple raid boss that doesn't provide great rewards, but he's spawned in the open world, not in a 'raid instance'.
PvP was functional, but it was incredibly imbalanced (15 classes and roughly half of them were garbage in pvp) and had almost no rewards tied into it. They tried to make PvP an island, with almost no tie-in to the PvE, and basically had no time to make any rewards for it. It had 4 game modes, but only TDM had more than 1 map. Their core 'eSports' mode, Jetball, had huge balance issues that favored highly mobile classes above almost everything else.
The game is attempting to have a 'flat' gear hierarchy at the top, where you are limited by constraints (like mass, power) rather than by simply having a loot hunt. Gear is mostly crafted, and the game uses a resource/crafting system like Star Wars Galaxies originally did. While an interesting concept, the crafting/resources system was confusing and complex, with bad interfaces and several buggy items. The game did have limited durability on almost all items, ostensibly under the pretense to encourage players to eventually replace old items, but given the lack of content, nobody really has played a single class long enough to have an item break yet (I've never had a crafted item come close to breaking). Biggest flaw is the game does nothing to explain it's unusual repair/durability system to new players, and most players don't understand what's going on at all.
Overall, the first hour of playing Firefall was a mess. Hours 1-5 were not very fun for me, because of the number of complex/unusual and poorly-explained systems in the game. Combat was pretty basic and relatable, yes, but everything else is very non-standard and has minimal tutorials. Hours 5-10 got better, and hours 10-80 were pretty fun. I've got a decent tolerance for grinding, but after 80 hours or so, the randomly-generated missions stopped being fun, and after doing the only 'full' instance a few times, I no longer felt compelled to do any of the available content.
I'm in-game under Nordramor, but I probably won't go back in until they have another content patch, at least. I had some fun with it, and the differences in crafting/resources/random quests were somewhat novel, but they simply don't have more than about 75-100 hours worth of content in the game right now (regardless of how long it's been in development).
I've also played Firefall recently for about 100 hours. Had some fun with it. Summary:
Firefall is an Open-World, PvE-focused, MMO shooter
PvE-wise, the core experience is semi-randomly generated quests, very similar to the open-world game Red Faction Guerilla, and this causes Firefall to feel more a bit like an open-world game, rather than like a traditional WoW-ish MMO. There's only 1 'full' instance and 3 'miniature' instances at this time. There's also only one real 'zone' right now, and it's about 1/2 to 1/3 the size of a single continent in WoW. There's 1 very simple raid boss that doesn't provide great rewards, but he's spawned in the open world, not in a 'raid instance'.
PvP was functional, but it was incredibly imbalanced (15 classes and roughly half of them were garbage in pvp) and had almost no rewards tied into it. They tried to make PvP an island, with almost no tie-in to the PvE, and basically had no time to make any rewards for it. It had 4 game modes, but only TDM had more than 1 map. Their core 'eSports' mode, Jetball, had huge balance issues that favored highly mobile classes above almost everything else.
The game is attempting to have a 'flat' gear hierarchy at the top, where you are limited by constraints (like mass, power) rather than by simply having a loot hunt. Gear is mostly crafted, and the game uses a resource/crafting system like Star Wars Galaxies originally did. While an interesting concept, the crafting/resources system was confusing and complex, with bad interfaces and several buggy items. The game did have limited durability on almost all items, ostensibly under the pretense to encourage players to eventually replace old items, but given the lack of content, nobody really has played a single class long enough to have an item break yet (I've never had a crafted item come close to breaking). Biggest flaw is the game does nothing to explain it's unusual repair/durability system to new players, and most players don't understand what's going on at all.
Overall, the first hour of playing Firefall was a mess. Hours 1-5 were not very fun for me, because of the number of complex/unusual and poorly-explained systems in the game. Combat was pretty basic and relatable, yes, but everything else is very non-standard and has minimal tutorials. Hours 5-10 got better, and hours 10-80 were pretty fun. I've got a decent tolerance for grinding, but after 80 hours or so, the randomly-generated missions stopped being fun, and after doing the only 'full' instance a few times, I no longer felt compelled to do any of the available content.
I'm in-game under Nordramor, but I probably won't go back in until they have another content patch, at least. I had some fun with it, and the differences in crafting/resources/random quests were somewhat novel, but they simply don't have more than about 75-100 hours worth of content in the game right now (regardless of how long it's been in development).
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Guess I'll also note that while the game has 16 classes, in PvE, the 5 'free' or 'base' classes are wastes of time.
There's 11 'advanced' classes which must be purchased or unlocked (maybe 10-20 hours to unlock one), and the advanced classes are completely superior to the free classes for PvE. They basically allow advanced classes to use more abilities / items than the base classes in PvE, which means that the base classes are completely worthless in the long run.
Most of the 'advanced' classes are not genuinely harder to play/learn than the 'base' classes, they're just better, so it's a pretty sketchy design right now.
There's 11 'advanced' classes which must be purchased or unlocked (maybe 10-20 hours to unlock one), and the advanced classes are completely superior to the free classes for PvE. They basically allow advanced classes to use more abilities / items than the base classes in PvE, which means that the base classes are completely worthless in the long run.
Most of the 'advanced' classes are not genuinely harder to play/learn than the 'base' classes, they're just better, so it's a pretty sketchy design right now.
Nord to cut through most of your post, you can just sum up the item system as:
The item system was a needlessly complex grind with no real payoff.
All anyone ever received for going through countless hours of farming were increases in base stats. No special effects, no unique modifiers, no cool graphical effects for prestige. Progression is supposed to make your character feel awesome. Firefall's progression never had that at any stage of development. Just bland all around.
The item system was a needlessly complex grind with no real payoff.
All anyone ever received for going through countless hours of farming were increases in base stats. No special effects, no unique modifiers, no cool graphical effects for prestige. Progression is supposed to make your character feel awesome. Firefall's progression never had that at any stage of development. Just bland all around.
Agree. There is little payoff in the game, and what payoff that does exist is often buried in complex systems.
The developers don't want the game to be as progression-focused as Borderlands or WoW, but there's an obvious hole in the game right now where it feels like that should have gone.
Got Haggis?
Veteran XX
Nordramor = designer of Section8
Also, yeah the first 5 hours of the game really are a total mess. The crafting system isn't really explained at all.
Also, yeah the first 5 hours of the game really are a total mess. The crafting system isn't really explained at all.
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Got Haggis?
Veteran XX