DevTracker

[Grummz]

Hello everyone!
There were 2 systems that ruined Firefall community after 1.6: Tinkering and Elite Ranks. They were expensive, grindy and gave players massive advantage over non-paying players. So in my opinion, tinkering and elite ranks should never see the light of day in Ember.

Not having made those system or even played them, I'll have to read this entire thread just to figure out what they are.

 

[Grummz]

I agree that fewer resource types are better and that FF had WAY too many. I only see one or two dozen types at most.

As for units, that's hard. For gameplay reasons its very limiting to keep mass and amount realistic while still making a fun system. Its a bit of suspension of disbelief required here for the sake of gameplay. But yes, Firefall numbers were silly in that regard.

Grinding. I think that once you see how we put a progression of encounters into T.H.M.P.R. encounters, that there will be a lot we can do with just that encounter alone. Not sure why those other mission in FF used fixed locations, it was never the intent. Ember events can occur anywhere they make sense and not in the same places.

Without having read every thread, so I'm not sure it's been discussed... I'd like to discuss grinding.

Firefall, was a royal pain in the behind for this. Early in the game, the thumpers were decent and could defended by a single low level individual and generally gave some decent materials. Once they became so much that they required a team to defend, the materials dropped.

For a while, with one of the sniper frames, you could sit outside one of the fallen spawn points and kill hundreds of them over an hour or so.

At one point, I basically spent 2-3 hours a game day doing the race between the three main towns. It was much better than grinding on thumpers for getting materials and stuff. I built an Asernal from scratch to nearly top tier just doing races and the occasional mission.

The problem, of course, is that all of it was boring to the extreme.

I would finally go hunting for meld tornadoes and try to get into the center, just to get some decent minerals in order to upgrade my gear... which may or may not result in higher quality gear. It would take 10 or so nados to get enough minerals to, maybe, get an upgraded rifle.

That's the complaint. The solution is in several parts.

First, the crafting system needs to be significantly improved from Firefall. Having 999 different levels of materials is just nuts. Reduce the number and values (purity) of materials. We build aircraft carriers, jet fighters, tanks, and everything the infantry requires from oil, aluminum, titanium, iron, carbon, silicon, and copper... and depleted uranium. Further, random results from expensive, hard to grind materials is very frustrating.

Solution. Gear is gear. The plans are fixed. Jacketed ammunition requires copper in addition to lead, results in slightly better penetration, is slightly heavier, and takes a little more time to construct. Simple, results are consistent, and you know what you get when you put those materials and plans in the printer. No randoms. Maybe use titanium instead of copper for jacketing gives lighter weight and slightly more penetration, but at the cost of rarity and/or expense.

Second, the amount of materials seemed crazy weird in Firefall. Each deposit (IIRC) was 5-50 units of material. That must have been grams, because one needed 1500 units of x and 1000 units of y and a 1000 units of z to make a rifle. For example.

Solution is to use reasonable, well understood units. An AR-15 masses less than 4 kilos. Most of that is plastic and steel. Maybe some optics. So, with a molecular printer, you need 4 killos of plastic and steel, maybe some silicon for the optics. Magentite and hematite are each about 70% iron. Other iron ores are less. So maybe you need 4 kilos of iron ore to get the 2 kilos of iron you need for the rifle. Plastic is easily formed (in a molecular printer) from any carbon source... heck, there's a system that makes kerosene and diesel from turkey offal. So maybe another 2-3 kilos of plastic stock material.

That gives the added bonus of making it easy to calculate the change in running speed, etc, for a frame, when weighed down with a couple of tons of iron ore.

Make things interesting. Anyone who played Firefall more than a few weeks knows exactly what mission will occur in which location and how to beat it. I personally found it extremely annoying to be in a location and, all of a sudden, there was a bunch of Fallen popping up because a mission triggered while I was there.
Don't even get me started on the Hunt the White Wolf daily.

Finally, I would encourage a revised and updated economic system. I think that people should be allowed to be dedicated miners or hunters or fighters, without having to have penultimate gear to mine the good stuff. Maybe a bare few people have found the secret location for high quality titanium. So let them mine it (and this encourages the purchase of vehicles, if they are capable cargo haulers) and make a profit.

I know at one point, put orders were being considered for Firefall and I think that would be a great way to encourage activities other than grinding on racing bikes.

Thoughts, comments, and suggestions are encouraged.

 

[Grummz]

To be honest I haven't sat down to design anything about the progression system. But my personal tastes have been tiers and frames as "shells" that affect what upgrades you can put in them. Think racing games. Honda's get some upgrades, Ferraris get more options, dedicated race cars get even more. So a tier system could unlock those "shell" frames. BUT, I've no idea right now. Need to put a lot of thought into this.

Also pointing out we have an update on http://www.crixa.io/emberthgame for T.H.M.P.R. orthographics. Formal updates on the game will be posted there, so pls bookmark it.

 

[Grummz]

I was Grummz in game and logged in every day to see how players were doing in Copa and ask questions. When I played for real I was Orianthi.

 

[Grummz]

Yep. Those will be replaced by corporate logos of fictional companies in the game. Or maybe nVidia will let us put a logo on it. Reaper Teams are sponsored by corporations for a stake of the "minings"