I threw wallet at Firefall. Will throw wallet Ember. However... one thing I never quite got to the bottom of is this: Firefall looked so close to the 2nd milestone. It had invasion. It had repulsors. It had bases. It had turrets. It had crafting. It had escalating enemy strength. The only thing left was adding deployable platforms that allow players to pour resource to push back the melding then build stuff to defend territory.
Why did the game abandon that and go into grinding INSTANCES? Why did it abandon that to go into arena eSport? Why did it abandon player-driven narrative to... static, play-once story quests? Why kill frame customization to become DotA-clone?
Then, whatever the reasons were, how will Ember tackle those issues to stay on course?
I want to hear Kern talk about this, but while we wait... we might as well speculate.
My theory is player pressure. Just take a glance at this forum. It's already swarmed with "Do this. Do that." Yet most of the wish lists have little to do with the core vision. So I can understand how the dev can be led astray with the best intentions. HOWEVER, that same dynamic will happen to Ember too. How will Ember team figure out the best of both worlds to keep players happy while keeping the core development healthy? That brings me to a big reason why I have hope with Ember.
Kern's chosen variance of crowdsourcing is a model I've always wondered since Steam and HL Ep1 launched. In publisher model, publishers use their money/funding to decide development direction. So it would be fitting if in crowdsource model, players use their money/funding to decide what gets made. Sure, Ember can spend $1m to create extra something that isn't part of the core gameplay IF and WHEN the players fund the extra 1m, not taking from budget raised for the core vision. When making a frontier game like this, it's very important to minimize guesswork. No one knows for certain what kind of sandbox shooter-mmorpg players are willing to pay. Gotta find out and VALIDATE it with real funds one step at a time.
The audience is definitely there. You ask Warframe vets what they want. Dynamic gameplay is what they will say (aside from more guns/frames of course) and warframe vets are the biggest spenders in crowdfunding shooter genre. There is no shortage of lessons Ember can learn from games like Warframe, Planetside 2, Firefall, and Project Titan(Overwatch). Ember is technically 2nd generation of this but with the ill-will baggage from Firefall... it's going to be an uphill battle until Ember can deliver a playable alpha to rekindle people's desire for a true sandbox and prove they can do it. I hope Ember will rise where Firefall... fell...
Why did the game abandon that and go into grinding INSTANCES? Why did it abandon that to go into arena eSport? Why did it abandon player-driven narrative to... static, play-once story quests? Why kill frame customization to become DotA-clone?
Then, whatever the reasons were, how will Ember tackle those issues to stay on course?
I want to hear Kern talk about this, but while we wait... we might as well speculate.
My theory is player pressure. Just take a glance at this forum. It's already swarmed with "Do this. Do that." Yet most of the wish lists have little to do with the core vision. So I can understand how the dev can be led astray with the best intentions. HOWEVER, that same dynamic will happen to Ember too. How will Ember team figure out the best of both worlds to keep players happy while keeping the core development healthy? That brings me to a big reason why I have hope with Ember.
Kern's chosen variance of crowdsourcing is a model I've always wondered since Steam and HL Ep1 launched. In publisher model, publishers use their money/funding to decide development direction. So it would be fitting if in crowdsource model, players use their money/funding to decide what gets made. Sure, Ember can spend $1m to create extra something that isn't part of the core gameplay IF and WHEN the players fund the extra 1m, not taking from budget raised for the core vision. When making a frontier game like this, it's very important to minimize guesswork. No one knows for certain what kind of sandbox shooter-mmorpg players are willing to pay. Gotta find out and VALIDATE it with real funds one step at a time.
The audience is definitely there. You ask Warframe vets what they want. Dynamic gameplay is what they will say (aside from more guns/frames of course) and warframe vets are the biggest spenders in crowdfunding shooter genre. There is no shortage of lessons Ember can learn from games like Warframe, Planetside 2, Firefall, and Project Titan(Overwatch). Ember is technically 2nd generation of this but with the ill-will baggage from Firefall... it's going to be an uphill battle until Ember can deliver a playable alpha to rekindle people's desire for a true sandbox and prove they can do it. I hope Ember will rise where Firefall... fell...
