Some of the Top things that pushed me out of FF

[ToorimaKun]

1: No more NON-skill shot skills for Healer.
I am not really a shooter player... but i still loved playing FF and could be useful to my team threw the old healing skills.
With the FULLY skill shot update for PVP balance... i kinda lost my place as a healer.
*also a lot of girls that play with their boyfriends would play this class even if not shooter players... it is good to have PVE NON-skill shot skills.. probably for all classes*

2: The merge of AI and simplification of mobs.
In old firefall the mobs all had a unique attribute and they all attacked you in different ways.
In new fire fall they all just shoot projectiles at you and can climb over any surface... even if they are obviously a water/land mob.

3: Durability
In such a fast passed game like this durability takes away from the gameplay.
I mainly play MMORPGs and Durability works fine in those games... but not a shooter game.
I could understand Items above a set quality/rarity being bind on equip... but not durability loss.

4: Crafting
Crafting has been so simplified now
This is some thing that both finding the rare mats and having the skills should be the focus... this is the one thing that should be a slower grind.
also would be nice to have item drops that you can equip and/or crafters can reverse engineer to learn and/or better said crafting item(s)... maybe have durability for these dropped rare items.. giving the crafted versions much more value and worth the reverse engineering time investment.
It should be easy to understand, but complex enough to make up for the lack of durability.


also the loss of my "for life" XP boost for me and my party was kind of annoying....

 

[Kouyioue]

It seemed like the devs at the time spent too much time trying to cater to every little user suggestion and complaint so instead of FireFall ending up as an expression of Red5's idea, it just ended up as a wowclone with guns. ""Design by committee"", Red5 trying too hard to please everyone.

An artform is to express yourself, not others.
Like the first generation bungie team(myth, pre halo and halo 1, older), they were making games to appeal to themselves, not customers, and have said so under quite a few documentaries

 

[TankHunter678]

It seemed like the devs at the time spent too much time trying to cater to every little user suggestion and complaint so instead of FireFall ending up as an expression of Red5's idea, it just ended up as a wowclone with guns. ""Design by committee"", Red5 trying too hard to please everyone.

An artform is to express yourself, not others.
Like the first generation bungie team(myth, pre halo and halo 1, older), they were making games to appeal to themselves, not customers, and have said so under quite a few documentaries

More like spent too much time trying to cater to every investor suggestion so instead of Firefall being Red5's idea it ended up as just a wowclone with guns. Against what the community were calling for.

 

[Omnires]

It seemed like the devs at the time spent too much time trying to cater to every little user suggestion and complaint so instead of FireFall ending up as an expression of Red5's idea, it just ended up as a wowclone with guns. ""Design by committee"", Red5 trying too hard to please everyone.

An artform is to express yourself, not others.
Like the first generation bungie team(myth, pre halo and halo 1, older), they were making games to appeal to themselves, not customers, and have said so under quite a few documentaries

Things started to go to hell when RED5 stopped paying heed to the community and did whatever the investors told them. RED5 staff knew that many of those changes going to drive people away but felt they had to make them anyway because the people who sign their paychecks said so. Many of the people in the community after seeing the changes, as many of them were done without telling us, foresaw the outcome of such changes and warned of the pitfalls of such things as well as how to possibly avoid them. But they didn't take the advice because doing so would go against what the investors wanted, who didn't care about the community the game built in the first place. And it is not like RED5 didn't know who in the community could be trusted or not as they did read the forums, watched people as they were playing, and would even play with them from time to time. So they were aware of the main voices and personalities within the community who, even if they disagreed with them from time to time, always had what was best in for the game and the community as a whole in mind.

TL:NR
Something some of the people I know sometimes say is "money talks and honey walks". Basically meaning that when you let money start to rule your actions your real love walks away from you. In the case of RED5 the thing that walked was both the game they loved and the awesome community it had made for itself.

 

[MattHunX]

Well...

You could only log-in, play for 2-3 hours, just get your daily, weekly bounties, gain back the Crystite you converted to credits, run around to do the same jobs, run into the same encounters at every step, fight the same mobs, rinse and repeat...so many times, before it got boring. I didn't even make a big deal when the servers briefly died. I didn't even rush back to it. Don't want to. Not even with a major update (1.8).

 

[DARKB1KE]

I dunno what it was exactly. The focus on the hardcore meant that casual players couldn't get very decent gear, meaning you weren't able to join other groups and play certain content. You had to play hardcore in order to earn vendor currency, there was no other options for getting gear.

Lack of storyline progress for years. That's all I cared about was pushing back melding and restoring humanity.
That's no longer possible with the cliche enemy we currently have. They are not Chosen we once knew.

Early crafting made no sense because things were half-implemented, recipes were broken, and the UI was a hot mess. I'm not a huge crafter type of gamer but it would have been nice to experiment with gear, but the costs were astronomical. Gave up on that.

 

[Pandagnome]

For me it was

- Removal of alt fire
- more bugs that took longer to sort out
- There was a lack of things to do eventually and became dull
- crashed more often than before
- it wasn't as fun as it used to be firefall had more of a uniqueness but it all changed

 

[Silv3r Shadow]

I miss triage, was a good ability, only if the removal and replacements for primary weapons never happened but instead add the 'new' weapon fire function as an additional primary weapon. Dragonflys could link heal or the old healing wave, if i could choose i'd pick the old rapid fire with link heal for example.

 

[Astro]

The ability to fly across the entire map in a very very short amount of time ruined the dynamic ARES missions, because people were just speed running them and nobody had much of a chance to complete them themselves. By the time you got there the mission was over thanks to the 20 other people that showed up.

The movement potential was way too high and fantastic elements of the game were ruined, and ultimately removed or degraded, because of it.

Stack that with the high jump jet mobility allowing you to just hover over any and all creatures, rendering melee creatures essentially useless.

 

[203]

It seemed like the devs at the time spent too much time trying to cater to every little user suggestion and complaint so instead of FireFall ending up as an expression of Red5's idea, it just ended up as a wowclone with guns. ""Design by committee"", Red5 trying too hard to please everyone.

An artform is to express yourself, not others.
Like the first generation bungie team(myth, pre halo and halo 1, older), they were making games to appeal to themselves, not customers, and have said so under quite a few documentaries

The 9 gave grum the boot and took over red5, that's the result.
Iiirc he said to me in regards to my config idea, that that was his original intend but at the time it was implemented it was already out of his control; he never intended for the durability system as it was put in - originaly, it was to just degrade your gear until you repair it, without a permanent damage ticker.

Should be public knowledge by now that the9 is responsible for the massive charlie foxtrott that is firefall.

 

[Firemoth]

3: Durability
In such a fast passed game like this durability takes away from the gameplay.
I mainly play MMORPGs and Durability works fine in those games... but not a shooter game.
I could understand Items above a set quality/rarity being bind on equip... but not durability loss.
.

somewhat offtopic, but durability's always been a sore point for me. worst example ive had experience with was a anime-styled mecha TPS from called Exteel. armor (head, torso, arms, legs, backpack) and weapons (and skills/abilities too, i think) all had durability values that decreased in combat with each round played, eventually requiring repair with ingame currency or Real Money Items™ (yes, it was P2W. why do you ask?). higher grade gear had more durability, BUT would chew up durability at a much faster rate, to the point where cheap, low-durability gear would last longer than the top-tier stuff.

 

[NitroMidgets]

So much hate about what happened that I try not to talk about it. If left to collect in one spot it would begin to exhibit blackhole like behavior. Lets just say some of the staff actively worked to mislead the community and get rid of those who were too vocal about the developing shit show. I do not blame Mark for it.

 

[ToorimaKun]

yah that sounds like a bad way to do durability.

yah, i have played some games that push even players away that are too vocal about bad choices.

 

[Daynen]

What pushed me out of FF: Some of these things were a gradually increasing dislike, some were immediate turnoffs.

The level chart: In Beta, there were constraints to unlock and gear used them up, so gaining XP did not automatically make you more powerful. You had to make meaningful choices and then work within them. Launch tossed it all out and just went 1-40. Blech.

Level requirements on gear: Same as above.

Durability: Again, knowing you could lose your gear to overuse was important to beta FF. People hated seeing their epic gear break, sure, but that was a reality of the game and it gave you a reason to not only keep playing, but choose your gear for each run wisely. I agree it was draconian, but that's only because the loss of gear was absolutely inevitable and quicker than most would like. Were there ways to restore some lifespan to your gear through resources and effort, it would've been better received, even if the loss WAS still inevitable over a much longer period of time.

Level gated zones: F*$& you. Quit that this instant. There was zero need for this.

New players getting stuck with one frame until 20: again. F*#$ you. This was idiotic. It was pigeonholing, handholding, and insulting. I didn't have to suffer through it because all the frames I wanted were already over 20 when it hit, but I still empathized with all the future players who would find frustration in this.

Raids: Here we f*@%ing go again. Big stupid bosses with absurdly predictable patterns, ludicrous health pools, absolute death timers, and Texas Lotto loot tables. Good luck getting an army that pays attention and good luck getting something you want before the tenth run or so.

Long story short? Pre-launch FF was unique and exciting. It needed some common sense design tweaks, sure, but it was a pioneer. Launch FF just...gave up. They jumped right back into the neat and tidy little mold the genre had set for them and tried to pretend their new chinese overl--ERRRR, I mean "investors" had no say in the matter, when every soul on the forums could read the writing on the wall.

 

[ToorimaKun]

Yah, i like it when skills and how you activate them matter.

even with longer durability time how it is set up would not be revised well....
this isn't an RPG were the healer can keep you from dying... in this game you ARE going to die... so being punished for that is BS.

 

[Ashreon]

1: No more NON-skill shot skills for Healer.
I am not really a shooter player... but i still loved playing FF and could be useful to my team threw the old healing skills.
With the FULLY skill shot update for PVP balance... i kinda lost my place as a healer.
*also a lot of girls that play with their boyfriends would play this class even if not shooter players... it is good to have PVE NON-skill shot skills.. probably for all classes*

2: The merge of AI and simplification of mobs.
In old firefall the mobs all had a unique attribute and they all attacked you in different ways.
In new fire fall they all just shoot projectiles at you and can climb over any surface... even if they are obviously a water/land mob.

3: Durability
In such a fast passed game like this durability takes away from the gameplay.
I mainly play MMORPGs and Durability works fine in those games... but not a shooter game.
I could understand Items above a set quality/rarity being bind on equip... but not durability loss.

4: Crafting
Crafting has been so simplified now
This is some thing that both finding the rare mats and having the skills should be the focus... this is the one thing that should be a slower grind.
also would be nice to have item drops that you can equip and/or crafters can reverse engineer to learn and/or better said crafting item(s)... maybe have durability for these dropped rare items.. giving the crafted versions much more value and worth the reverse engineering time investment.
It should be easy to understand, but complex enough to make up for the lack of durability.


also the loss of my "for life" XP boost for me and my party was kind of annoying....

1: As much as I understand the hate for skill shots, it's also what makes games like these. Sorry, but tab targetting or even AoE healing is just not.. That engaging. In a shooter more so, we really have to be aiming in order to hit both foes and allies a like.

3: Durability - is necessary to have an economy continuously being healthy. Mostly because gold sinks are a necessity lest you want the currency to devalue and eventually become worthless. Now, there are several ways to make Durability and engaging aspect of Em8er - one such way could be to use resources you Thmped/Refined to repair various modules/equipment you have slotted in. This would also make it a part of the harvesting and/or crafting making for a much more engaging game.
Shit degrades, that's just the way of life. In order to keep it in pristine condition one must repair it every now and then.

2 & 4: I absolutely agree (except the part about durability in 4 obviously). I do think that crafted > drops in terms of power.

Have you ever seen the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes crafting system? It was -fucking- amazing.
You literally had ALL the power. You choose everything from stats to abilities and even secondary stats (this would be so cool). The mini-game (whether you would succeed crafting or not) can be skipped - although personally having negative effects turn up during crafting that you have to deal with in order to succeed the craft - makes for a lot more engaging albeit slow crafting!

this is just simple items being made without the possibility to add stats, abilities, passive etc but it shows how the system works (higher grades would improve the stats, passives/abilities etc)

 

[ToorimaKun]

1: As much as I understand the hate for skill shots, it's also what makes games like these. Sorry, but tab targetting or even AoE healing is just not.. That engaging. In a shooter more so, we really have to be aiming in order to hit both foes and allies a like.

3: Durability - is necessary to have an economy continuously being healthy. Mostly because gold sinks are a necessity lest you want the currency to devalue and eventually become worthless. Now, there are several ways to make Durability and engaging aspect of Em8er - one such way could be to use resources you Thmped/Refined to repair various modules/equipment you have slotted in. This would also make it a part of the harvesting and/or crafting making for a much more engaging game.
Shit degrades, that's just the way of life. In order to keep it in pristine condition one must repair it every now and then.

I can understand not having tab targeting for the mobs, but this isn't a DoD/CoD game... and a lot of the people that played at FFs peak were actually MMORPG players. A very large portion of my guild started to play FF... we actually had to make multiple armies because there was so many of us. It was pretty awesome to have so many of us playing the same game. About 1/3 of our MMORPG players in my guild are girlfriends of one of the guys and usually wouldn't be playing video games at all. When all the healer skills were changed to skill shots we lost them and there boyfriends in FF. The game was plenty engaging for us... and i would say that the player count of the game at the time shows it was fine for quite a lot of people.

Now while I don't think this game should be considered a shooter... i do agree the combat should still have the fast pasted combat that shooters have. And i think durability takes away from that and with durability linked to dying i think it punishes you for playing fast pasted and taking the risks that shooter players like to take.
I think a better option for this would be to have binding system... where your abilities are bound to the frame once equipped to it. For this to not completely piss people off the frame would need active slots that have the abilities you can use and non-active slots that are like a storage area for some skills you would like to keep. The higher the quality of the frame based on mats used should increase the storage slots available.... and removing these skills would either damage them or destroy them.
The RPG style durability system dose not work in a game with such fast pasted combat.
I mainly play RPGs so i am usually fine with durability... the only time i had a problem with durability was with Eden Eternal when they nerfed the base drop rate so much that you could not get enough drops to support repairing your gear.... so the only way you would be able to support repairing your gear was to buy an increased drop rate off the cash shop... that was shady af and had more to do with the drop rate then durability its self.

 

[203]

Grummz privately told me durability was to be non-finite in firefall, and it will return in this way in ember.
Yes, it sucks, but it can't be helped or everyone just starts sitting on their ass, or wandering around aimlessly and getting bored since they have 99999 resources of everything anyway.

 

[Ronyn]

I'm going to jump in here and use a couple of these posts as an opportunity to get a sense of folks thoughts on this subject.
One thing I want to do is distinguish between the concepts of durability that can be repaired VS durability to the point of permanent breakage. There are some distinct differences between those two systems. Keep in that mind going forward.

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3: Durability
In such a fast passed game like this durability takes away from the gameplay.
I mainly play MMORPGs and Durability works fine in those games... but not a shooter game.
I could understand Items above a set quality/rarity being bind on equip... but not durability loss.

Do you mean durability of any kind?

Durability: Again, knowing you could lose your gear to overuse was important to beta FF.

To be specific, gear durability-to-the-point-of-permanent-breakage was an important part of the patch 6.0 and 9.0. (about a 12 to 18 month span) timeframe of firefall beta. It was not part of the closed beta prior to that, nor was it an intended part of the game before that time.

People hated seeing their epic gear break, sure, but that was a reality of the game and it gave you a reason to not only keep playing, but choose your gear for each run wisely.

I'm going to break this into multiple sections.
1: What do you mean by "the reality of the game"? Isn't everything in every game the reality of said game?
2: Why would gear breaking "give a person a reason to keep playing"? Is maintenance an effective motivator to log in or stay on?
3: Does gear need to get to the point where it full on breaks to make people choose their gear wisely for each run?

I agree it was draconian, but that's only because the loss of gear was absolutely inevitable and quicker than most would like. Were there ways to restore some lifespan to your gear through resources and effort, it would've been better received, even if the loss WAS still inevitable over a much longer period of time.

So then, going forward, are you asking for repair or full on inevitable breakage?

Long story short? Pre-launch FF was unique and exciting.

Note: Pre-launch firefall had at least two or three markedly different iterations on things like progression and economic model.

3: Durability - is necessary to have an economy continuously being healthy. Mostly because gold sinks are a necessity lest you want the currency to devalue and eventually become worthless. Now, there are several ways to make Durability and engaging aspect of Em8er - one such way could be to use resources you Thmped/Refined to repair various modules/equipment you have slotted in. This would also make it a part of the harvesting and/or crafting making for a much more engaging game.
Shit degrades, that's just the way of life. In order to keep it in pristine condition one must repair it every now and then.

You appear to be referring to durability that can be repaired, and are a proponent for it. Do you have different feelings about durability to the point of permanent breakage?

 

[Daevic]

For me what turned me away was the following.
Durability: This is not true, its mainly just for you Ronyn

Removal of Amazon: it was my favorite zone. There always seemed like there was something going on at my level, and im not talking about a mission, I mean a base retake, a harvester capture, shout outs for a zone retake, it was beautiful. DT felt so empty like it was being worked on and someone rushed it out the door.

The Voice acting: dont get me wrong early FF I loved it, Aero and Oilspill still have a place in my heart, but afterwards, meh, then came some of the new patches where it all got mix and matched you'd have a person being voiced by two different people with entirely different tones and I was just put off by it.

The Conversion from Crysite to Credits: I found this not needed. I get it, its a sources of income for the game but I felt that overall it took away from the game.

The Story Changes: I found it lacking, heres what i mean, the whole thing with Devil Hawks was memorable, you got to know them and build a connection over time and missions so when they died it held more weight. So when it came to Blackwater Anomaly finding their bodies I was was legitimently sad. Patch update, Mason chen and Kara, I honestly felt very little for these two, sure they were amusing enough, but not nearly enough to pull the story. Then the end with you being some genetic soldier and all that and i just didnt care anymore. The lore on this site sounded so much more indepth and way better.