Worries about gameplay...

[Schmuky]

Right, i know i might be abusing the section posting this here, but it is the only place i know you guys (devs) are constantly checking. So after you read it, you can delete it.

Also, i am putting this here as the writing is way to big for a tweet or Q&A.

The main problem i think players will face will be "I reached tot tier (or level or whatever you guys choose to implement).... Now what?"

I for one dont mind grinding. I can farm the same zone for days on end without problem in order to get enough $ to buy that legendary gun... But what benefits does that gun bring me? If it is only to play the same as before, just fighting in invasions and grinding some more...well that aint fun

That is the reason i stoped playing Firefall. Not the bugs or the content going away ( that was irritating, for sure) but the main reason was that i reached lvl 40 on a frame, had decent equipment to take on bosses and...that was it. Started some new frames, but got bored as every night o ended up in Devils Tush at the Magma Worm.... And that was it.

So the question is "What do players do after getting the top tier on a frame?". They just start over with another one?

Thats fine for casual player, they play once a week and take an ungodly amount of time to finish it. But for active players? And lets say they do that. They take another frame, then another. An active player will sooner or later finish will all frames. Then..hes done? Nothing else to do except log in for invasions. There you guys might lose quite a lot of players...

There are 2 ways (in my mind) how you can prevent this:
1. Make it a veeeeeery long process to be able to get to top tier, in such a way that even is someone gets all his frames to top tier, it will take him some years.....and this SUCKS! You will lose casual players as they wont feel they are progressing in the game at all and infuriate active players as grinding will become law.
2. Make some sort of competitive. Make players compete in something, in order to make them want to get better gear and, after they got everything, to want to come back to the game and prove over and over they are the best.

One way you cound do this and NOT be PVP is kinda like a arena: 2 teams of 5 (or more) players take on..let's say a cat. 3 Kaiju. First team that kills it wins (reward, currency, maybe some decal etc). Could also make it a spectator "sport" have a arena filled with other players, maybe new players that can learn from the pros in the arena.

There could be tournaments and events and you dont have to recaliber the frames for PVP, as the players will fight a Kaiju.

I understand you guys dont want to put pvp, as it can make a comunity toxic and a lot of other stuff....but look at rocket League. They are solely skill based and they are doing fine because it is competitive...

I just dont want to get to a point in game and be like "well, that was fun, time to move to something else" and your attitude towards competitive kinda scares me...

If the game has a end, a point where players wont be able to progress at all, players will leave.

Now, this is my point of view and i hope that this wont even be a problem...but it might and i can see you guys are passionate about this game and i am too and dont want it to die 3 years after launch.

 

[Torgue_Joey]

ONE COMPETITIVE THING IS THERE.
WHO SPENT THE MOST RESOURCES ON TERRAFORMING. (or what did Grummz said about that certain leaderboard thingy)

AND THE SAME THING WHY I KEPT GOING BACK TO GUILD WARS 2: FRIENDS
IT'S NEVER BORING TO PLAY WITH FRIENDS.

 

[Terricon4]

There are 2 ways (in my mind) how you can prevent this:
1. Make it a veeeeeery long process to be able to get to top tier, in such a way that even is someone gets all his frames to top tier, it will take him some years.....and this SUCKS! You will lose casual players as they wont feel they are progressing in the game at all and infuriate active players as grinding will become law.
2. Make some sort of competitive. Make players compete in something, in order to make them want to get better gear and, after they got everything, to want to come back to the game and prove over and over they are the best.

One way you cound do this and NOT be PVP is kinda like a arena: 2 teams of 5 (or more) players take on..let's say a cat. 3 Kaiju. First team that kills it wins (reward, currency, maybe some decal etc). Could also make it a spectator "sport" have a arena filled with other players, maybe new players that can learn from the pros in the arena.

There could be tournaments and events and you dont have to recaliber the frames for PVP, as the players will fight a Kaiju.

Alternative option 1. Make it relatively quick to reach top tier, but have so many different pieces of equipment that it takes AGES to unlock all of them and max them (the Warframe approach more or less).

For option 2, I do more or less agree. Some type of scoreboard or competitive aspect is nice to have for those who have time and try hard. Be it fighting directly against others ala pvp, or in having a scoreboard or something for total weekly resources mined per player/army,etc. Or there could be some types of challenges, more specific but samey things like raids, time trail missions, or whatever. Though those don't seem like they'd fit as well with the current goal/direction of Em-8ER they do have the advantage of letting people compare a specific skill/capability in a constrained setting to see who's the best (and not just who has more time). Arenas could work... but lore wise I do question it a bit (though that could change as a lot is still unknown/undecided).

You could also have it so there is a weekly tournament or goal that the gatestriders post, like gather as much of X resource as you can, or kill as many kaijus as possible or as many smaller Tsi-Hu or whatever. Maybe you have one for building/upgrading and maintaining bases. The idea is that it's a current objective that's overall considered important for the war effort so everyone focuses on that for awhile and the better you do the more rewards you might unlock in tiers (basic rewards at first). And then for those at the very top, there will be a second set of rewards for those who get the top positions (more likely to have unique stuff here). Preferably scale the upper number of spots for people by total percentage of players who participated and achieved at least the first reward tier in the event so that it will feel rewarding and hard, but doable with 500 people playing, but also still the same with 50,000 playing.

 

[Torgue_Joey]

OK. THERE IS ONE SCORE BOARD I WANNA SEE.

WEEKLY AND MONTHLY BODY COUNT.

IT'S BLOODY RABBIT HUNTING TIIIIIIIIME.
MEEDLYBEEBLYFEEBLYMEEEOWWWWWWEWEWEEWWWW

 

[EvilKitten]

The solution is simply to make the acquiring and "maxing out" of frames to be not a significant part of the game experience. Remember that unlocks are community wide. I don't think frames are intended to have levels (possibly addons do but if so, again community unlocks). This is the same problem we have in another topic, your treating this as a standard leveling and player gear focused MMO.

 

[Shokolad]

I can farm the same zone for days on end without problem in order to get enough $ to buy that legendary gun...

But there will not be a marketplace at all in Ember, as far as i know

 

[Silenieux]

Right, i know i might be abusing the section posting this here, but it is the only place i know you guys (devs) are constantly checking. So after you read it, you can delete it.

Also, i am putting this here as the writing is way to big for a tweet or Q&A.

The main problem i think players will face will be "I reached tot tier (or level or whatever you guys choose to implement).... Now what?"
snip
Now, this is my point of view and i hope that this wont even be a problem...but it might and i can see you guys are passionate about this game and i am too and dont want it to die 3 years after launch.

this won't happen if enough players continue to support the game and the game is fairly horizontal while still have some degree of climb, much like GW2 has done there's always new gear and stuff to earn, classes, upgrades etc without pushing too much on a power creep.

That being said this is always going to be a risk, i found early in its life firefall was an amazing adventure between exploring, thumping for resources and even learning to drain resources so they would be forced to re-roll for a given type. I personally think if there's a good balance between exploration, grind, and grouping the game will do well!....then again it wasn't too long after mark's ....departure from red5 that the game began to go down hill very quickly, they pushed pay to win, pay to advance etc...

one of the ways to keep content coming as many games are learning are shiny costumes paints etc as well as in game currency trade for real currency, these kinds of things will support the game as well as future content release...sorry i strayed...back on point
when it all comes down to it a good balance for grinding exploration, etc is what the game will need, reward players for grinding and exploring, for question, and running story arcs ^^

ps: frame management, cpu load, reactor load, etc is a system i loved when i first saw firefall...

 

[Tyler]

You can also add in Army Tournaments, or a season set-up. (Where Army is like a "Guild" or "Clan". Believe it was called Army in Firefall)

There could a couple of instance-bosses that requires a large army-only group of players. With this Armies could compete for fastest kills or kill-counts.

If not instance-bosses (if only for these tournaments), it could be a "Stock-Pile the Resources" setup. Perhaps an Army could build a temporary base. The base would require resources to continue functioning, upgrade defences among various other things and occasionally Tsi-Hu and Kaiju raids would occur on the base. The size of the raid could relatively large to the size of the base.

To add a twist to it, any part of the base (including any buildings and walls) could be destroyed/damaged and would require resources to rebuild and repair after the "raid" is done.

Furthermore, you could make the exact location of the buildings matter. For example, if warehouses were to be destroyed; then all the resources in that particular warehouse would be lost, on top of having to use more resources to rebuild a warehouse. So you would want to position the warehouses in a place that is safe; however, don't cluster important buildings so if something does get through, it can't destroy all the important buildings.

Other buildings could include things like AOE Power-Boosts, or Shield Generators.

There could also be "Critical Buildings" such as Energy Generators (to supply the base with Energy to function), and 1 "Control Centre" that would control communications and be able to control the functionality of the base; such as diverting power supplies to particular buildings.

Naturally if these buildings were to be destroyed then it would be a massive blow on the base and potentially lead to the complete destruction of the base.

With this said, you should be able allowed to make quick field-repairs on certain functions; for example, repairing damaged Shield Re-generators so they could at operator at a lesser capacity.

Just for another twist, the required resources to make the field-repairs could require you (or another Army Member) to get resources from a Warehouse and then make the repairs.

At the end of a "Season" (however long they would be), there would be rankings based on the total amount of resources the base has at the end of the Season. The resources would be the sum of all existing buildings, upgrades, defences, and all stored resources.

If Army could collect resources (that the Army holds, rather than individual players), then at the end of the season the "temporary base" could be deconstructed and converted in resources that goes into the Army's reserves, on top of any rewards that comes with the Army's rankings.

Some restrictions should include that only resources that were collected during the season can go towards the "temporary base" (no pre-collecting).

Also, raids should only occur if X percent (or X amount) of Army Members are currently on. This should be added to prevent a raid from occurring when no one is online so that an Army doesn't wake up to see their base completely destroyed overnight.

The biggest issues regarding the idea would be:

Where the bases be built? Where would the space be?
Can players outside of the Army influence a raid? If not; how would the influence be prevented?

If an Army Leader could choose a spot in real-world, which would then generate an instance-area where the center of the instance-area would the exact position the Army Leader chose; then, not only it would create a exceedingly interesting part to the entire building a base concept. It would also answer both of these questions; however, if we are avoiding creating instances...

This was just thought of off the top of my mind, so there could be a lot of other points missing.

PS: To any other player, feel free to take the idea. Don't need my permission or anything. As for Devs, naturally that is a given.

 

[Aphaz]

you've got some interesting ideas here, speshully about seasonal/army events.

if you'd like, take a look at some things i did and tell me what you think.

https://forums.em8er.com/threads/abilities-omniprotocols-armor-stuff.523/

 

[Carter154]

Grinding can be included in support of the purpose of the game. But the purpose of the game cannot be grinding.

That's what happened to FireFall. The purpose became grinding. Horrible. Unforgivable given the initial vision.

As long as every time I log on and play I feel like I'm progressing in some way, getting more effective relative to the enemy I'm fighting in some way, and contributing to the war effort, I'll be a happy camper.

 

[spiralofhope]

(I have no comments on this topic.)

Perhaps you're concerns can be better described with the term "endgame".

This is a concept where a player "caps" at doing all the basic things, such as leveling their character. It's the gear-grind, crafting, raiding, events, etc. that exist for that game.

 

[Ranyor]

Just going to toss out a couple things and sorry if I repeat what someone else has said in my short memory span. The current plan there is not going to be loot drops in the traditional sense. You will loot crafting materials but not full blown weapons and gear.

It is planned that there will be some sort of marketplace/auction house and direct player to player trading.

The leaderboards are going to be a base by base thing with your personal banner flying at a base if you are among the top (ten I think it was) contributors. I am a little fuzzy if this next part was a recommendation or something that was planned. But leaderboards for regional or world contribution that you can see via the map or some other ui function was mentioned.

Cant remember the stance on pvp if that was a no or just a wait till after launch and add in later. But instances were a no I am pretty sure.

Top tier was touched on a little bit but I will try and explain it a little more in depth. Your ability to craft and repair gear is based on the world tier. World tier is basically how much territory the players currently have control of. So you can take all the current territory and make really good stuff but then get hit by a massive invasion and lose ground. This will make it so you can no longer repair that top tier gear until you regain that ground giving you a reason to keep fighting. They will also continue to expand and add new area to the map after the game launched.

The idea is that the game itself is so fun to play from a gameplay stand point and collecting/crafting new frames and equipment will keep you playing.

If I am wrong about any of that or have something to add let me know.

Edit: Darn forgot to mention power creep which I think plays a part in this discussion. There will be power creep but it is going to be shallow. Progression will be more horizontal then vertical focusing on giving you more options and ways to play.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

The war is supposed to keep people engaged. Planetside 2 doesn't have much progression. It's the constant fighting, the constant push and shove that keeps people involved. Em8-er is going to be similar. Updates to content, how far we can progress, and what we can build means we'll always be experimenting or progressing from one play session to the next. This game is supposed to be enjoyable in its entirety, not a grind to reach a specific level.

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

The war is supposed to keep people engaged. Planetside 2 doesn't have much progression. It's the constant fighting, the constant push and shove that keeps people involved. Em8-er is going to be similar. Updates to content, how far we can progress, and what we can build means we'll always be experimenting or progressing from one play session to the next. This game is supposed to be enjoyable in its entirety, not a grind to reach a specific level.

Yeah!

https://em8er.com/thmpr/

Terraform
Each zone in Em-8ER can be terraformed. Starting in an icy volcanic state, players combine efforts to contribute resources to terraform the zone. Each stage unlocks new and rarer resources to mine. The zone will switch in stages from barren icy rock to lush landscapes.

This part interests me. Which is different from Planetside. The constant push and shove gets boring after awhile. I know Red5 tried experimented with this in the Amazon. The problem was nothing changed in the world after unlocking the entire map. You just would lose it after a certain period of time and players would have to fight to conquer it again. It's boring after awhile. Even with the carrots they dangled in front of us.

 

[AdmiralStryker]

Yeah!

https://em8er.com/thmpr/



This part interests me. Which is different from Planetside. The constant push and shove gets boring after awhile. I know Red5 tried experimented with this in the Amazon. The problem was nothing changed in the world after unlocking the entire map. You just would lose it after a certain period of time and players would have to fight to conquer it again. It's boring after awhile. Even with the carrots they dangled in front of us.

It's going to be push-and-shove, but unlike Planetside, there's more to invest(and consequently more to lose) in each zone. Our own investments in each zone are going to give motivation to keep and retake the respective zones.

Additionally, the Tsi-Hu are going to ramp up as we get stronger and take zones. Which means that the war's never going to get to be like the Amazon, where we could just steamroll. We're going to have to work at it if we want to keep our fancy stuff from higher tier zones and an upgraded world.

 

[Wraithbane]

What I want to see, is for this game to be a true "SKILL based shooter". Having the best gear is just the start. Now you have to learn how to use it in the proper situations. Remember the old quake and unreal games? This is going to be made using the Unreal 4 engine.

With the proper design, there will be a LOT of horizontal progression. Many, many weapons to collect and master. If they can get even a semi decent AI system, this is going to be really entertaining.

I'm really tired of people using PvP as a crutch. There are some VERY good AI people out and about these days. Granted, they can be expensive, but look at the ROI involved in hiring one or more. In a game like this, someone like that would be invaluable.

 

[R0AHN]

Yeah!

https://em8er.com/thmpr/



This part interests me. Which is different from Planetside. The constant push and shove gets boring after awhile. I know Red5 tried experimented with this in the Amazon. The problem was nothing changed in the world after unlocking the entire map. You just would lose it after a certain period of time and players would have to fight to conquer it again. It's boring after awhile. Even with the carrots they dangled in front of us.

From my perspective what wound up going wrong with Firefall was the stagnation of new areas being generated. The fight to push back the mobs and their territory and the feeling of new exploration was what made the game proper interesting for me; reducing it to just reclaiming existing territory was the problem.

If the devs want to keep this pushing out and terraforming gameplay mechanic front and center this is one of the few times I'd say a procedural generation system is ideal for the terrain. It's the journey that matters, not as much the destination. You should have to fight to keep what's yours so having the threat of being pushed back is a good motivator. Still add some handcrafted areas so things don't go too crazy but with a good generation system you can keep from having to devote quite as much time on individual levels, just update the art assets or change variable weightings to get the general environment you want.

This is just me rambling (I forgot I redeemed my FF founder's pack, so hooray? First forum post!) but outside of a "starting area" hub world there could be instances of new territories that stay open for, say, a month? Give people enough time to set up shop, have a semi-familiar area for a while, and BOOM! In comes the mob horde. Either stay and try to hold them off until they retreat or perform a fighting retreat with all your base gear. If you fight them off - cool! Instance is alive for another month and maybe a little more opens up with better resources and harder mobs. But next month it's going to be a bigger and harder horde. You'll eventually hit a tipping point where people have no choice but to evacuate.

Well that's my two cents for now. TBF I haven't read through all the forum yet so I'm not sure where we're going gameplay-wise, but we're going to get there.

 

[R0AHN]

What I want to see, is for this game to be a true "SKILL based shooter". Having the best gear is just the start. Now you have to learn how to use it in the proper situations. Remember the old quake and unreal games? This is going to be made using the Unreal 4 engine.

With the proper design, there will be a LOT of horizontal progression. Many, many weapons to collect and master. If they can get even a semi decent AI system, this is going to be really entertaining.

I'm really tired of people using PvP as a crutch. There are some VERY good AI people out and about these days. Granted, they can be expensive, but look at the ROI involved in hiring one or more. In a game like this, someone like that would be invaluable.

Well Firefall had pretty good Chosen AI for a long time, all things considered. It adapted to your tactics and to the situation. You're using explosives? They'll fan out and reduce your ability to deal damage. You're sniping them? They'll duck and weave to throw off your aim. Cover? They use it (sort of).

It wasn't perfect and is on the list of things that were never perfected. After the game turned into a WoW clone instead of having smarter AI it turned into "who has the biggest numbers?" As any good tabletop RPG GM can tell you, it's not the numbers that matter but how you use them. Enemies that are on par or even weaker than the players but behave very intelligently far outweighs just slaughtering another bunch of mooks with big guns, gameplay-wise.

So yeah, to wrap this up in twine, the potential is definitely there and should be utilized. Since they want to go mainly PvE this is going to be critical.

 

[Nalessa]

Making things take a long time to get is also not that great of an idea.

In Elite Dangerous, 2 of the big 3 ships take a really, really long time to get in both credits to buy and mod them, and grinding ranks to unlock them.
Many players are turned off by something like this, I personally don't really mind, but I can see why others give up on the game all together because how long it can take to get one of those.

I think the best way for competitive design is ... don't focus on it.
Make a solid pve or pvp or whatever system that draws in player, and a competitive will start growing rapidly because of it.
Look at Starcraft, blizzard never designed it with the intention of competitive esports, since it barely existed, if at all.
But because they had solid multiplayer support through Battlenet and pretty good balancing, the game became a legendary competitive game.

Same with LoL, they just wanted to make a fun standalone Dota version, they never thought it would become the leader in esports for years to come now, but they made sure the basics were really well done.

That's what you have to focus on, make solid foundations and let the players evolve the competitive scene.

 

[Mahdi]

Right there with you. I believe resources for top tier gear should be a challenge to get and limited based on world contribution and expansion. But everything below that and bases should be quick to get because we are looking to get whooped a lot by a tough AI race. So rebuilding can't be too penalizing.