Kern's firefall had pvp intended as bloodsport for the masses, but he missed the detail that using "unregulated" equipment meant to fight invading alien hordes ruins it for people unlucky enough to find jack shit.
When the holmgang equipment was introduced to make it separate (way too late imo), they gave it performance equivalent to base gear and that turned a lot of people away who got a decent layout for their frames but couldn't handle the snailing anymore.
When the holmgang equipment was introduced to make it separate (way too late imo), they gave it performance equivalent to base gear and that turned a lot of people away who got a decent layout for their frames but couldn't handle the snailing anymore.
I'd prefer to see old-baneclaw mechanics, where you need to do something to get into a fight. You can still have the same effect as a portal, but the fight takes place in the same game world, without a loading screen. It also places more import on the entrance to a fight than instancing-you need to have a key or what not to get in that you have to dedicate yourself to making, which means that the fight in-and-of-itself will be rare and an accomplishment. (And of course a lockout mechanism can be put in place for those who die, to whatever degree.)
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Likes:
Mahdi
which actually is what Kern & Co proposed for their battles.
You got multiple fights here. We know the gigantic monsters {Kaju} is going to to attack the THMPR while other smaller beasts harass everyone during the mining phase. Though I wonder if they'll make it so that Kaju is attracted to the mined stuff that is being stored in the THMPR. Which means there might be a potential of seeing a Kaju appear during the both the escort and mine phase.
That would make mining difficult and probably rewarding if you & your team can pull it off. I can even see how pugs could help out teams/guilds. Let them get experience pts or something on things they kill but limit all of the mined elements to the team that owns the THMPR/home base.
That way players don't need to risk a potentially expensive THMPR to level their stuff or character up but will still need to use a THMPR to get better equipment.
That is as long as this is happening in the world and not in a instance.
- Players find a site to mine.
- Call down THMPR.
- Mine.
- Escort THMPR back to base.
- Reap rewards at base.
You got multiple fights here. We know the gigantic monsters {Kaju} is going to to attack the THMPR while other smaller beasts harass everyone during the mining phase. Though I wonder if they'll make it so that Kaju is attracted to the mined stuff that is being stored in the THMPR. Which means there might be a potential of seeing a Kaju appear during the both the escort and mine phase.
That would make mining difficult and probably rewarding if you & your team can pull it off. I can even see how pugs could help out teams/guilds. Let them get experience pts or something on things they kill but limit all of the mined elements to the team that owns the THMPR/home base.
That way players don't need to risk a potentially expensive THMPR to level their stuff or character up but will still need to use a THMPR to get better equipment.
That is as long as this is happening in the world and not in a instance.
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I think Firefall failed on two regards in the end:
1) Completely changing the game to suit a foreign audience, to the detriment of your current playerbase, well after the full release build. When I finally got into the 1.6 version of the game, basically all of the frames were unfun for me, where previous builds left only the Accord Engineer as unfun. The new campaigns were a breath of fresh air, but the unfinished voice work was jarring. The new stuff added into the game barely worked. Crafting was gone and thumping was useless, just so they could implement it again at a later time. I just couldn't justify putting much time into the game after over 2000 hours of game time, and was honestly just logging in to see if they bothered to fix anything.
2) Removal of anything significant to purchase in the store. Whereas, I purchased quite a bit of Red Beans to get cool new gliders, vehicles, pets, and other cool things, there was no reason to buy anything. Cosmetics were still there, but permanent vehicles were gone in favor of rentals. Frames were no longer purchasable. They were honestly just counting on p2w mechanics with the boosts and vehicle rentals for their income. Combined with the lack of confidence many preexisting players had in the game after the 1.6 release, and the lack of significant content to purchase, led to the financial woes that eventually killed R5, and left the game in freefall.
1) Completely changing the game to suit a foreign audience, to the detriment of your current playerbase, well after the full release build. When I finally got into the 1.6 version of the game, basically all of the frames were unfun for me, where previous builds left only the Accord Engineer as unfun. The new campaigns were a breath of fresh air, but the unfinished voice work was jarring. The new stuff added into the game barely worked. Crafting was gone and thumping was useless, just so they could implement it again at a later time. I just couldn't justify putting much time into the game after over 2000 hours of game time, and was honestly just logging in to see if they bothered to fix anything.
2) Removal of anything significant to purchase in the store. Whereas, I purchased quite a bit of Red Beans to get cool new gliders, vehicles, pets, and other cool things, there was no reason to buy anything. Cosmetics were still there, but permanent vehicles were gone in favor of rentals. Frames were no longer purchasable. They were honestly just counting on p2w mechanics with the boosts and vehicle rentals for their income. Combined with the lack of confidence many preexisting players had in the game after the 1.6 release, and the lack of significant content to purchase, led to the financial woes that eventually killed R5, and left the game in freefall.
Likes:
Zebdabar and AdmiralStryker
What I would love to see from Firefall's old model is the settlement attacks. Most fun I ever had in the game was right after I got into the game for the first time in Closed Beta. Immediately, I'm greeted with Copacabana being attacked by the Chosen. It was a blast trying to fight them back, even unleveled as I was.
PUNCHSCANNING!
Apparently instead of scanhammers, you will literally punch the ground with a spike or something that comes out of your fist and scans the area.
This is actually somewhat reminiscent of one of the things you can do in Elite Dangerous.
You can equip a ship with mining lasers and equipment (collector drones, refinery, cargo racks) then go look for an asteroid belt.
While you're mining though, depending on the difficulty of the area you dropped into, you can have enemy npc's, or players, show up and try and blow you up, so flying in a wing with people to protect you is a good way to protect you as you mine, and selling commodities gives wingmates a % reward based on how much you sold, alongside any bounties they managed to get from killing wanted pilots that tried to attack you during mining!
Apparently instead of scanhammers, you will literally punch the ground with a spike or something that comes out of your fist and scans the area.
This is actually somewhat reminiscent of one of the things you can do in Elite Dangerous.
You can equip a ship with mining lasers and equipment (collector drones, refinery, cargo racks) then go look for an asteroid belt.
While you're mining though, depending on the difficulty of the area you dropped into, you can have enemy npc's, or players, show up and try and blow you up, so flying in a wing with people to protect you is a good way to protect you as you mine, and selling commodities gives wingmates a % reward based on how much you sold, alongside any bounties they managed to get from killing wanted pilots that tried to attack you during mining!
Likes:
SomeUnregPunk
STICK TO YOUR VISION, BELIEVE IN YOUR GAME, HAVE AN ADAMANT LEADERSHIP AND DON'T FALL INTO THE FIRE.
PS: F2P can never end up well. Failure, one way or another, is inherent to its nature.
PS: F2P can never end up well. Failure, one way or another, is inherent to its nature.
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Likes:
Degiance and Xeevis
I believe a lot of things were learned.
In particular, I believe that they learned a thing or two about itemization. They are also making Em-8er a pay to play game, where you have to purchase the initial game. That is a model that is actually extremely successful for games these days.
Investment is part of the key to retain players to a degree. What I also believe is that Em-8er should not go on Steam. Yes it will be easier to buy but steam has a bad track record of absolutely shitting on companies with their review system, and people will do as such not because of the game, but because of its predecessor.
In particular, I believe that they learned a thing or two about itemization. They are also making Em-8er a pay to play game, where you have to purchase the initial game. That is a model that is actually extremely successful for games these days.
Investment is part of the key to retain players to a degree. What I also believe is that Em-8er should not go on Steam. Yes it will be easier to buy but steam has a bad track record of absolutely shitting on companies with their review system, and people will do as such not because of the game, but because of its predecessor.
Likes:
Mahdi
One annoying aspect of Closed Beta FF was the lack of getting resources outside of Thumping. Thumping was fun but it could get annoying grinding for resources like that all the time. I also feel that the addition of dropships for fast travel, while cool, also detracted from the experience of exploring New Eden. So a two-fold solution that also helps for immersion: large, armored supply convoys carrying large quantities of resources where players can dock their Omniframes (aka sitting down) and if the convoy is attacked and the attack successfully repelled, the players involved are rewarded with an amount of resources corresponding to the threat level and their effort. If a player wants to back out they can skim away from the fight altogether, and it adds some amount of risk for getting to places quickly. In the event of an invasion Tsi-Hu attacks could be disabled on the Convoy (they're already spawning somewhere else) or the dropships could come out.
Then again, I suppose it depends on how much of Em-8ER is going to be an icy glacier and how much exploration is going to be worth doing.
Then again, I suppose it depends on how much of Em-8ER is going to be an icy glacier and how much exploration is going to be worth doing.
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Remember that even in PvE combat skill is still a large factor. In a game like Dark Souls your skill will influence the outcome of combat, you either die or live without any handholding to back you up. The Vision Book has detailed some (vague) examples of player competition, but I'll get to that later.
As for competition between players, we know that banners showing off players with the highest contribution to the base (and thankfully not ALL bases, ugh) and in the case of Base Commander and higher backers custom banners for these players will be a thing. We might see a basic emblem customization system like Halo Reach's for players for this.
I wouldn't be too worried about skill/competition just yet guys. We've got a long way to go before Alpha and once the main functions are working there'll be plenty of opportunity to add encounters and systems to reward and push players beyond what's been promised. Feedback on this is probably going to be more relevant once we actually get to those stages of the game because a lot about Em-8ER will change during development to work better.
- Melee is one of the most devastating forms of combat in Em-8ER. As it goes through shields, any damage done will be immediately felt as health and armor do not regenerate, with critical hits (???) able to ruin your abilities and movement. On the flip-side, enemies will suffer those consequences if you're the one bashing skulls in instead.
- The THMPR mini-game is based around players pushing themselves for greater rewards. Unlike in FF there is no "percentage to completion" bar and it's solely up to the players not only to make sure the THMPR safely completes mining but then escorting it to a nearby base. If you screw up and let the Tsi-Hu Beasts get too close to the THMPR, it dies. If you continue mining and get progressively more enemies, it dies. If you underestimate the journey back, it dies. And if you die, you make the enemy more powerful and the THMPR dies. But if you're skilled enough to quickly take out Tsi-Hu before they damage the THMPR, if you use your abilities wisely and carefully and pull through, you'll be rewarded with the resources to continue the war effort and depending on how far you got isotopes and phased ore that you can use to construct better weapons and armor.
- Bases are destructable, which means every time you fail at thumping or don't get enough resources, congrats! Reconstruction and repair efforts are screwed. If a large Kaiju gets in range of a base before it is stopped, it's going to start munching on buildings faster than a Heavy that just discovered a Sandvich. Case in point of what will then happen to the remaining players.
- Kaiju. Since the player is meant to fly up on their backs and get up close and personal with DEATH INCARNATE I'd imagine that the "boss" title is more than apt and they'll have their own defenses to deal with up there. That's entirely speculation on my part, mind you. So just ignore this section if you want.
As for competition between players, we know that banners showing off players with the highest contribution to the base (and thankfully not ALL bases, ugh) and in the case of Base Commander and higher backers custom banners for these players will be a thing. We might see a basic emblem customization system like Halo Reach's for players for this.
I wouldn't be too worried about skill/competition just yet guys. We've got a long way to go before Alpha and once the main functions are working there'll be plenty of opportunity to add encounters and systems to reward and push players beyond what's been promised. Feedback on this is probably going to be more relevant once we actually get to those stages of the game because a lot about Em-8ER will change during development to work better.
Dark Souls is mainly SOLO PvE.
Ember is supposed to be MULTIPLAYER PvE.
That makes a massive difference. How can you not get that?
In dark souls, you run around alone.
Enemies are balanced to fight against 1 player.
If you play bad, YOU DIED and can not progress any further than you deserve.
Ember is supposed to be a multiplayer and entirely open world.
How do you plan to balance enemies?
If you play bad, you might deal no damage and die all the time, but the enemy and the 100 other players in your area won't even notice (unless the game has no success, the player base is tiny and there are no big battles).
NOTHING will happen if you play bad. You get your participation rewards and thats all you need to progress through the game.
If there is no plan on how to actually make the game skill based, probably NOW is the time to talk about it.
If nobody can figure out a way to properly balance a game like that, there should be no promises to produce anything like it.
Once those stages (you are talking about) are reached, what do you suggest should happen, if they still can not figure out how to properly balance the game?
Trash it all and then start all over (like FF did)?
They need a concept that works.
If they follow a concept that does not work, it will end up like FF.
Constant changes, trying to fix problems and move in another direction, wasting thousands of hours of work and lots of money.
A basic idea is not worth much, unless you know how to make it reality.
Saying "I will build a device that can cure all illness and this is how it will look like", is useless, unless you know how to actually make such a device work.
MANY start up companies make this "mistake". They start designing and advertising their product with nice animated pictures, before they have even figured out how the product will work (and if it would even be possible to make it work in the first place).
You can call it a mistake or not, but two things are for sure:
1. they get lots of money from stupid people, who have no idea of the matter, but get blinded by the nice pictures and the promises
2. they do not deliver the product, because they never figure out how to produce it (or it is simply not possible because of physics/thermodynamics, etc.)
When you want to build a house, you do not just start building on quicksand and say "Yeah, lets think about that problem, when we are half way done. Far too early for that, right now."
You have to think and plan before, because otherwise, you are gonna have a bad time.
Ember is supposed to be MULTIPLAYER PvE.
That makes a massive difference. How can you not get that?
In dark souls, you run around alone.
Enemies are balanced to fight against 1 player.
If you play bad, YOU DIED and can not progress any further than you deserve.
Ember is supposed to be a multiplayer and entirely open world.
How do you plan to balance enemies?
If you play bad, you might deal no damage and die all the time, but the enemy and the 100 other players in your area won't even notice (unless the game has no success, the player base is tiny and there are no big battles).
NOTHING will happen if you play bad. You get your participation rewards and thats all you need to progress through the game.
If there is no plan on how to actually make the game skill based, probably NOW is the time to talk about it.
If nobody can figure out a way to properly balance a game like that, there should be no promises to produce anything like it.
Once those stages (you are talking about) are reached, what do you suggest should happen, if they still can not figure out how to properly balance the game?
Trash it all and then start all over (like FF did)?
They need a concept that works.
If they follow a concept that does not work, it will end up like FF.
Constant changes, trying to fix problems and move in another direction, wasting thousands of hours of work and lots of money.
A basic idea is not worth much, unless you know how to make it reality.
Saying "I will build a device that can cure all illness and this is how it will look like", is useless, unless you know how to actually make such a device work.
MANY start up companies make this "mistake". They start designing and advertising their product with nice animated pictures, before they have even figured out how the product will work (and if it would even be possible to make it work in the first place).
You can call it a mistake or not, but two things are for sure:
1. they get lots of money from stupid people, who have no idea of the matter, but get blinded by the nice pictures and the promises
2. they do not deliver the product, because they never figure out how to produce it (or it is simply not possible because of physics/thermodynamics, etc.)
When you want to build a house, you do not just start building on quicksand and say "Yeah, lets think about that problem, when we are half way done. Far too early for that, right now."
You have to think and plan before, because otherwise, you are gonna have a bad time.
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I was going to reply to the current conversation, but generally I think what attracted MANY founders to Firefall was not the attraction to endlessly grinding Thumpers and doing spaced out, dull PvE content. It WAS the Player-versus-Player aspect and how players interacted with the world and each other in PvE.
At Pax East the number one thing I got asked about Firefall was how the PvP was going to be, how it would integrate with world content and how the overall implementation was. The thing that we hyped in the showing was a lot about of player-vs-player and at one point we did a community-v-devs match up. The number one comparison I got was how Firefall would rejuvenate the MMOFPS genre with people likening it to games like Tribes, Unreal Tournament and Planetside.
The launch of Firefall wasn't good - it was a departure from what we were promised in CBT1 and before Open Beta. So I'm going to be coming from the perspective of a person who played one of the first closed 'public' builds (back when you would login and be directly taken into a match).
Here's what Firefall did right before launch:
PvP was definitely imba, but it was fun. Balance does not always mean fun. The big issue later was newer players getting rofl stomped by vets due to poor matchmaking.
PvE was fun to a point, the Thumpers were definitely a fun thing to do with a clan, but overtime the novelty wore off and it became a grind, nothing wrong with that of course, but the variety in PvE content simply wasn't there. On top of that - outside the thumper and meld events the rest of the game was thoughtless and boring.
What Firefall did wrong:
Killing off PvP caused many founders and die hard folks to quit. I would casually play Firefall as I didn't like the released game (and let's be honest: there were better games to play), but completely quit when this happened.
PvE content stayed boring. Firefall did a LOT of things wrong. It's very easy to try to ignore this, but Em8er should completely stay away from everything Firefall did outside of Thumping/Meld Events. It just wasn't fun - and as mentioned earlier the novelty behind Thumping and the Meld eventually faded. There was a lot of downtime when we'd wait or would have to take a break from Thumping because it got too boring with little alternative content.
What three things Em8er needs to do imo:
- Variety in PvE that encourages team play with adequate rewards, but also provide some content for solo play (for those late night sessions). PvE content NEEDS to be updated frequently. Unlike PvP where the large variety comes from the map, but most importantly the players/team composition - PvE needs a constant refresh to remain interesting (by refresh I don't mean tons of wipes and completely 180ing the direction of the game). Firefall lacked this.
- PvP content that integrates with a balanced PvE life, hell even PvPvE content would be better than absolutely no PvP. A great example would be node or territory control where teams of 5-10 people compete against each other and enemy AI (we're talking competent AI - not push overs) to control areas that provide valuable resources or strategic deployment areas for the fight against the enemy.
- Due to the scale of the game: Strong in-game/forum clan management tools that integrate with each other. Firefall had awful community management tools. If you are going to build a game around strong community participation then there needs to be the tools in place to make that happen. I can imagine Discord/Twitch/Third Party integration playing a HUGE boost in activity/consistency for Em8er. Consistency of population and activity is the most important thing imo rather than becoming the next WoW. This game is niche by its nature.
We need content and good amounts of it along with a healthy amount of future updates. Variety. Variety. Variety. We need things to do. And given the lore of this game, there SHOULD be plenty to do. Lots of little tasks that add up to larger things happening. Larger things that need to be accomplished in order to pave the way for other areas of the game.
Tl;dr: This game is begging for epic content, and the path to epicness is variety and consistency in providing that variety along with the tools needed to the community.
At Pax East the number one thing I got asked about Firefall was how the PvP was going to be, how it would integrate with world content and how the overall implementation was. The thing that we hyped in the showing was a lot about of player-vs-player and at one point we did a community-v-devs match up. The number one comparison I got was how Firefall would rejuvenate the MMOFPS genre with people likening it to games like Tribes, Unreal Tournament and Planetside.
The launch of Firefall wasn't good - it was a departure from what we were promised in CBT1 and before Open Beta. So I'm going to be coming from the perspective of a person who played one of the first closed 'public' builds (back when you would login and be directly taken into a match).
Here's what Firefall did right before launch:
PvP was definitely imba, but it was fun. Balance does not always mean fun. The big issue later was newer players getting rofl stomped by vets due to poor matchmaking.
PvE was fun to a point, the Thumpers were definitely a fun thing to do with a clan, but overtime the novelty wore off and it became a grind, nothing wrong with that of course, but the variety in PvE content simply wasn't there. On top of that - outside the thumper and meld events the rest of the game was thoughtless and boring.
What Firefall did wrong:
Killing off PvP caused many founders and die hard folks to quit. I would casually play Firefall as I didn't like the released game (and let's be honest: there were better games to play), but completely quit when this happened.
PvE content stayed boring. Firefall did a LOT of things wrong. It's very easy to try to ignore this, but Em8er should completely stay away from everything Firefall did outside of Thumping/Meld Events. It just wasn't fun - and as mentioned earlier the novelty behind Thumping and the Meld eventually faded. There was a lot of downtime when we'd wait or would have to take a break from Thumping because it got too boring with little alternative content.
What three things Em8er needs to do imo:
- Variety in PvE that encourages team play with adequate rewards, but also provide some content for solo play (for those late night sessions). PvE content NEEDS to be updated frequently. Unlike PvP where the large variety comes from the map, but most importantly the players/team composition - PvE needs a constant refresh to remain interesting (by refresh I don't mean tons of wipes and completely 180ing the direction of the game). Firefall lacked this.
- PvP content that integrates with a balanced PvE life, hell even PvPvE content would be better than absolutely no PvP. A great example would be node or territory control where teams of 5-10 people compete against each other and enemy AI (we're talking competent AI - not push overs) to control areas that provide valuable resources or strategic deployment areas for the fight against the enemy.
- Due to the scale of the game: Strong in-game/forum clan management tools that integrate with each other. Firefall had awful community management tools. If you are going to build a game around strong community participation then there needs to be the tools in place to make that happen. I can imagine Discord/Twitch/Third Party integration playing a HUGE boost in activity/consistency for Em8er. Consistency of population and activity is the most important thing imo rather than becoming the next WoW. This game is niche by its nature.
We need content and good amounts of it along with a healthy amount of future updates. Variety. Variety. Variety. We need things to do. And given the lore of this game, there SHOULD be plenty to do. Lots of little tasks that add up to larger things happening. Larger things that need to be accomplished in order to pave the way for other areas of the game.
Tl;dr: This game is begging for epic content, and the path to epicness is variety and consistency in providing that variety along with the tools needed to the community.
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Likes:
AdmiralStryker
One thing to remember is that a THMPR run in Em8-er probably won't be like Firefall. The enemies are going to be warriors, not the local fauna. Your average THMPR run in Em8-er is going to be like a Melding Thump in Firefall.
Additionally, when the Tsi-Hu attack us with their Kaiju, they're not limited by the number of players. As long as the servers can handle it, they can attack with whatever they have. While it's not forcing "skill" per se, it can force intelligent play or the usage of group tactics to drive the enemy back. Kaiju can also easily be designed to require skill and cooperation to take down. (Trust me, get a group of 100 people to take down 6 things at the same time that are moving, ie body-mounted shield generators on a Kaiju, it will take them a while.) The beautiful thing about this is mechanics can be inserted and trigged by player numbers, and they can be developed, put in, then only used when RNG determines that the "EMP-No-Fly-Zone" Kaiju should come out.
If we're looking for competition, look to charts. Damage done, healing done, people revived, automated turret damage, defense repair values, time spent airborne in combat(silly but whatever), damage taken before death, enemies killed, headshots achieved.
Not to mention you can have open-world enemies drop different things based on how you killed them.- If you kill an enemy with all torso-shots, they might drop a piece of tech from their head, or if you kill them with headshots alone, a piece of armor from the torso that can be used for research or it could be combined with other tech to modify a crafted item. Skill can definitely be rewarded in the open world, and the Tsi-Hu can and should be able to overcome a wall of gunfire. It just takes some creative design.
Additionally, when the Tsi-Hu attack us with their Kaiju, they're not limited by the number of players. As long as the servers can handle it, they can attack with whatever they have. While it's not forcing "skill" per se, it can force intelligent play or the usage of group tactics to drive the enemy back. Kaiju can also easily be designed to require skill and cooperation to take down. (Trust me, get a group of 100 people to take down 6 things at the same time that are moving, ie body-mounted shield generators on a Kaiju, it will take them a while.) The beautiful thing about this is mechanics can be inserted and trigged by player numbers, and they can be developed, put in, then only used when RNG determines that the "EMP-No-Fly-Zone" Kaiju should come out.
If we're looking for competition, look to charts. Damage done, healing done, people revived, automated turret damage, defense repair values, time spent airborne in combat(silly but whatever), damage taken before death, enemies killed, headshots achieved.
Not to mention you can have open-world enemies drop different things based on how you killed them.- If you kill an enemy with all torso-shots, they might drop a piece of tech from their head, or if you kill them with headshots alone, a piece of armor from the torso that can be used for research or it could be combined with other tech to modify a crafted item. Skill can definitely be rewarded in the open world, and the Tsi-Hu can and should be able to overcome a wall of gunfire. It just takes some creative design.