March 28th, 2020 Updates Missile Demo Live! March Skin revealed! Scheduled Chief Chats!

[Ronyn]

11. At low durability gear becomes nerfed (no permanent durability loss/breakage). They can be repaired using any resource (no necessity for the original resource used to craft the item). All resources can be converted into a Common Exchange. This can be used to repair anything in the game.



Didn't hear this during the Chief Chat..
Just a warning- I regularly cruise Steam to find new games to play and read a lot of reviews. VERY MANY negative reviews from games that have crafting mention variations on the above stated mechanic being suggested for Em-8ER.
Players have written that grinding to level up and craft gear then having to grind just to keep it up to par felt like a predatory mobile game feature. (Their words not mine)

I personally stay away from games built around grinding just to keep weapons/gear working to the level that your original grinding got them to.

Firefall was a joy to spend hours Thumping and crafting because the reward was always going on an upwards scale- you craft it you own it- no worries about it nerfing or falling apart. The work/reward balance was a 100% positive feeling. If you implement degenerating gear mechanics the feeling of WORK starts to out way the feeling of REWARD.
I do hope the Devs rethink this as there doesnt seem to be any positive reason to have it except to grind more and I think it will only diminish the feeling of achievement in THMP/crafting in the first place. And if it is implemented I do hope it is in a way where it works without noticing. the nefing . Meaning a VERY SLOW gradual breakage period.

I totally understand your concern with how durability works. I can assure you that how good or bad this feels is based primarily on how it is tuned. How much durability loss verses how much resource is gained. That is to say, it shouldn't feel like a "grind" to keep your gear working, so much as just something you have to be aware of.

For what it's worth, even World of Warcraft has a durability system where your gear takes damage and, if durability is allowed to reach zero, the gear will stop working. To repair gear is as simple as paying to have it fixed. In most cases, it's not a particular problem for folks to keep their gear in perfect working order, though it does make folks care a bit more about getting into a long cycle of deaths as that can start to get expensive. One might say that it's not so much a source of grind as it is just something that makes players respect death just enough to not put themselves in a position where they will die every 2 minutes for an hour.
Now obviously EM-8er isn't World of Warcraft, I bring up this contrast only to show that a similar durability system is used in the biggest MMO in the world, which suggests that players can accept it if it's done properly.


Also you mentioned how firefalls durability worked. To clarify the history on that: Firefall went through many iterations. There was a time in firefall where gear had durability, and there wasn't even a way to fully repair that damage, when durability reached zero the gear would permanently break. Completely break, as in the gear no longer existed. The player then had to completely replace that piece of gear. It was an extremely controversial thing in Firefall. To this day some hate it, some love it, and some didnt care either way. At any rate, Grummz decided very early on not to go in that direction for Em-8er.

 

[PartTimeJedi]

I totally understand your concern with how durability works. I can assure that how good or bad this feels is based primarily on how it is tuned. How much durability loss verses how much resource is gained. That is to say, it shouldn't feel like a "grind" to keep your gear working, so much as just something you have to be aware of.

For what it's worth, even World of Warcraft has a durability system where your gear takes damage and, if durability is allowed to reach zero, the gear will stop working. To repair gear is as simple as paying to have it fixed. In most cases, it's not a particular problem for folks to keep their gear in perfect working order, though it does make folks care a bit more about getting into a long cycle of deaths as that can start to get expensive. One might say that it's not so much a source of grind as it is just something that makes players respect death just enough to not put themselves in a position where they will die every 2 minutes for an hour.
Now obviously EM-8er isn't World of Warcraft, I bring up this contrast only to show that a similar durability system is used in the biggest MMO in the world, which suggests that players can accept it if it's done properly.


Also you mentioned how firefalls durability worked. To clarify the history on that: Firefall went through many iterations. There was a time in firefall where gear had durability, and there wasn't even a way to fully repair that damage, when durability reached zero the gear would permanently break. Completely break, as in the gear no longer existed. The player then had to completely replace that piece of gear. It was an extremely controversial thing in Firefall. To this day some hate it, some love it, and some didnt care either way. At any rate, Grummz decided very early on not to go in that direction for Em-8er.

Very nice explanation, much appreciated Ronyn.
Not sure if I understood exactly how its planned for Em-8ER but Iit would definitely be easier to swallow gear durability if it was linked to player death rather than usage.. But well wait and see.
As for the earlier durability in FF, that was definitely before my time in Beta (thank goodness) I never knew that that was a thing.
Never played WOW. I was always playing shooters when WOW was on top of the world. LOL. I have nothing against WOW but when Grummz left during Beta and then slowly FF was being turned into "WOW with guns", as many people were exclaiming, and they started taking out everything that was fun and implementing progression walls I just stopped caring and playing.

 

[zdoofop]

Okay, for the purpose of this feedback thread know that I am measuring damage in rifle bullets, or RBs. 7 RBs = 1 kill, by my estimate.

1. As I said previously, the glider pad should be in the same calldown menu as the THMPR.

2. there should be a correlation between the number of missiles used (up to 10) and the cooldown of the ability. If you use 0 missiles, there should be no cooldown.

3. Is there a way to call off missiles between pushing 2 and clicking? If not there needs to be. NVM rmb does it.

4. 1 plasma blast does 6 RBs of damage. That is pointless. Please either bring it up to a full 7 or knock it down to a 4.

5. 1 missile does 4 RBs of damage. I don't really see a way that missiles do less damage than plasma, unless the dummies have some sort of invisible energy shield. I'd bring that all the way up to 10-12 RBs for when we get tougher enemies.

6. The missiles should have at least a little bit of spash, so that enemies very close together can be taken down with 1 missile.

Other than that, nice job!

Edit:

7. It appears the missiles are a little too cinematic and sometimes miss as a result. Please make them less showoffy and more direct.

8. Ideally by the playable mockup, I would like a keybind menu and controller support that's embarassing.

9. Instead of the current auto-lock on, perhaps when you point at a compatible target, you get an indicator, then you can have a keybind that sets as many missiles as you want at said target. For instance, say that in humanoid mode, a tsi-hu takes 1 missile to kill, but in beast mode, it takes 2. Now further say that you have 4 humanoids and 3 beasts around you. What you would do is activate the targeting system, point at a humanoid, press x, point at a beast, pres x x, point at another humanoid, press x, and so on, until you have all 7 targets locked on, then fire them all. Failing all that, perhaps you could increase the time between additional missile lockons, it's too short.

 

[jetdabear#7787]

[EDIT]: I have resolved the issue. while working on it with Faeryl I noticed my oculus software would open and boot up. i unplugged my Oculus and the demo works without a problem. It seems UE4 has VR enabled by default.

Hello I tried out the missile demo and i am encountering a problem I am not seeing anything and it appears to be zoomed in oddly. (screenshots to show attatched)
Current specs:
2560x1080 ultrawide monitor
CPU: Intel I9-9900KF
GPU: 1080Ti

 

[PartTimeJedi]

8. Ideally by the playable mockup, I would like a keybind menu and controller support that's embarrassing[/QUOTE]
Lolololol awesome

 

[PartTimeJedi]

Messing around in the Missile Swarm demo I found that if I do a Deepstrike behind the huge black thorny coral plant on one end of the Tsi-Hu shooting gallery area I fall through the map.
I tried around 10 Deepstrikes and fell through 2 more times just to see if it was a one-time glitch.

 

[Nekora_Xal]

About missiles: So it appears that missile locking uses line of site to lock targets, which is fine except that the missile lock icon is treated as opaque so should you lock a target in the foreground you will no longer be able to lock a visible target beyond it if it is occluded by the lock overlay.
As a gameplay suggestion it would be nice if the skill cooldown was scaled to missiles fired, that way firing just enough missiles to kill a target would be recommended. Unless there were more than one target about. I still think that DPS efficiency wise it should still be better to lock all 10 for maximum dps but there should be some situations (run and gun vs smaller targets etc) where snapping off less missiles would feel better with a shorter cooldown.

Game play suggestion About the Deep Strike, Don't know about others but i find the way Deepstrike cancels all Horizontal motion a little Jarring, Maybe have it reduce horizontal speed over time so you don't immediately come to a dead stop, giving the illusion of inertia ?
Also How is the damage calculated? it feels like a flat damage event regardless of distance dropped and if so i would suggest the damage include a calculation based on distance dropped to reward getting some air above a target. Now i'm not saying linear scaling here, god no, you should not be able to drop off a mountain and KO Kaiju here, but some logarithmic bonus to damage would be nice. It's a bit silly to hop 1 cm off the ground and explode with this ability... not saying there shouldn't be an ability like that though.

 

[ViridianVole]

If you try to jump and Smash on the very inside one of these big Ear things in the large organic structures, your character slides outward to just above the edge of it and just stays stuck in place and you can't do anything anymore aside form re-log.

 

[themisanthrope#7475]

Finally got around to trying the missile demo today and was sufficiently satisfied with the introduction.

Performance is exactly where a baseline model should be.

That being said, here are the four ways i would recommend going about implementing upgrades to the basic module itself via modifications or module upgrades/levels.

1) Accuracy. I noticed that a few of the missiles would veer off target and just go in a random direction. I'm certain this is quite intentional. So, I think this is perfectly fine.

2) Damage. Self explanatory.

3) Number of targets. Again, self explanatory.

4) Targeting Speed.

So far, I'm quite pleased with the development and the progress therein. Keep up the awesome work.

 

[PartTimeJedi]

Forgot to mention this.
When using the plasma cannon I understand there is a short cool-down period before you are able to fire again. Sometimes this cool-down period gets stuck. for example.. Fire..wait... Fire.. wait.. click.. click... click... click... fire.. wait.. fire... etc..
I know its not my mouse as this never happens with the assault rifle, or anytime ive left clicked my mouse in general, I have a Razor Deathadder Chroma which has never given me a problem. I think its a glitch with the plasma cannon somehow.

 

[axelium#4850]

Hey there, been trying out the missile demo and it's pretty solid!

In terms of fiddling around with controls, I noticed that if the button to enable the missile lock function is pressed while the left mouse button (fire) is pressed, you'll continue to fire your weapon even after you've launched the missiles, until you click once to stop firing. Hope this helps!

 

[SeductivePancake]

I know this is super late to talk about but seeing this post now I'll touch on it just in case no one else has. I agree that durability should feel like a constant worry or chore to keep up with. I think Black Desert Online's system is really good, you only need money to repair an item and you just bring it to a forge master or blacksmith, pay them, and they will fix your gear. while Em8er might not specifically use lets say in game money to repair weapons, maybe do resources similar.

in BDO you get basic resources from enemies when you kill them, usually 1 resource you always get (silver/money), then 1-3 other common to rare resources or even gear that might appear when looting the monster or person you killed. you could use the 1 resource you always get for armor and weapon repair and scale it up depending on gear level or player level. This will allow people to think, "Okay so I got my gear in order and I can go and do this dungeon mission thing now but I might not have enough of this resource to pay the blacksmith/forgemaster to repair them. So I will farm a little of this resource first so I'll be good for a few days/weeks and then go on the big mission." This will get players to explore the map, discover near areas along the way, and maybe even discover npc side quests to do. I think of this way of doing things as the same way a retail store gets customer with the only intent on buying one item see more things they like in the store and walk out with maybe a cart load of items they didn't know they wanted. same thing for exploring in Em8er, plays could go out with only the intent on killing baddies for said resource to fund their repairs, but might come out with a newly discovered area, 5 more side quests to do and a new gun to test out. This gives just a bit of boost to the incentive to go out and explore.

FireFall did this mildly well with the small bases, and bandit camps you might come across along your journey. But the issue was, missions, special items/resources could only be found in these specific areas unless you spent a few hours killing the same enemy in the wild a thousand times over waiting for that 1/1000 chance drop of a rare sniper wild meh stats. If Em8er could do something with more of a wilderness style of a hunt for enemies players would be everywhere on the map, not just in towns or outposts, but literally everywhere. and it would give the game a whole new way of being fun.

jut an idea though.

 

[PartTimeJedi]

I agree that durability should feel like a constant worry or chore to keep up with.

I actually disagree with this.. if durability has to be in Em-8ER it has to be done in a way that doesn't take away from the core feature of the game, which is fighting. Even when thumping for resources your fighting. If the only time your weapon/gear is at 100% is when you craft it, then it will absolutely take away from the fighting aspect. I mean work for hours to get a great gun and after your first shot it's at 90% efficiency? That's not an attractive feature for this type of game, maybe for a scavenging crafting game, but Em8er is a fast action shooter mmo first and foremost.
The higherups have stated that they will implement durability in a way which doesnt overwhelm the player. And I know they will. Just like any other game being designed if the devs add something that doesnt work, the Alpha/Beta players are there to give feedback.

 

[SeductivePancake]

I actually disagree with this.. if durability has to be in Em-8ER it has to be done in a way that doesn't take away from the core feature of the game, which is fighting. Even when thumping for resources your fighting. If the only time your weapon/gear is at 100% is when you craft it, then it will absolutely take away from the fighting aspect. I mean work for hours to get a great gun and after your first shot it's at 90% efficiency? That's not an attractive feature for this type of game, maybe for a scavenging crafting game, but Em8er is a fast action shooter mmo first and foremost.
The higher ups have stated that they will implement durability in a way which doesn't overwhelm the player. And I know they will. Just like any other game being designed if the devs add something that doesn't work, the Alpha/Beta players are there to give feedback.

Meant to say "shouldn't", but either way yes I understand a fact acting durability would suck. I guess I didn't explain it easily since im quoting a game not everybody plays. In BDO the durability works by level, BUT if you improve your weapon or gear AND, give it a durability upgrade you can basically make the "need to repair" non existent depending on what your doing. but yes durability can be tricky and I would wholeheartedly say that I prefer no durability. But because they want to add it in, I wanted to give an example of a durability system that I used that had almost no impact on the way I played.

BDO used the in game money to repair and that was it, given that a repair cost at most for my god tier weapon, 6k silver, and each monster gave from 100 to 10k silver depending on what I was killing and at what level, I was comfortably funding my repairs unconsciously as well as funding my progression as I could buy more weapons. Especially after a big mission to kill 100 enemies you come out +100k or more. So repairs were no issue. If Em8er used this type of system where if you didn't kill that many money rewarding things you could screw yourself over but if you knew what gave money and what levels were more profitable, then you'll basically never have to think about it ever as you gain everything you need, in a mission to repair everything. and if done right you might not even need to repair for like a week depending on play styles and level ranges you fight in.

I'm not saying this is a solution, but with experience in this type of repair system, Im comfortably saying that this would work in the favors of players comfortability in playing the game while still adding something new to think about, but nothing difficult to understand.

 

[Wyntyr]

I believe weapon/ability durability should be a small resource sink and nothing more than a minor nuisance in regards to consequence.

 

[PartTimeJedi]

I believe weapon/ability durability should be a small resource sink and nothing more than a minor nuisance in regards to consequence.

THIS 100%

 

[SeductivePancake]

I believe weapon/ability durability should be a small resource sink and nothing more than a minor nuisance in regards to consequence.

yes exactly just a small somthin. I truly don't want to have to factor in how long my weapons will last every time I go into battle. The only thing id want out of it is this one thought, "Welp, time to repair." not, "Fuck I could even use it for that long then I lost!"

 

[Pandagnome]

Forgot to mention this.
When using the plasma cannon I understand there is a short cool-down period before you are able to fire again. Sometimes this cool-down period gets stuck. for example.. Fire..wait... Fire.. wait.. click.. click... click... click... fire.. wait.. fire... etc..
I know its not my mouse as this never happens with the assault rifle, or anytime ive left clicked my mouse in general, I have a Razor Deathadder Chroma which has never given me a problem. I think its a glitch with the plasma cannon somehow.

Wonder if they could be able to just hold the fire button for the plasma cannon and it will still have that pause and fire again without letting go of the left mouse button.

Em8er used this type of system where if you didn't kill that many money rewarding things you could screw yourself over but if you knew what gave money and what levels were more profitable, then you'll basically never have to think about it ever as you gain everything you need, in a mission to repair everything. and if done right you might not even need to repair for like a week depending on play styles and level ranges you fight in.

Ah this makes me think could crafters have a part to play with repairing or even replacing things.

lets say it costs you 4000 spagetti currency to fix something
A crafter who could repair could do this for 1/4 less 3000 spaghetti currency

perhaps they have efficient things to cut cost not by much but it adds up especially with all the crafts and fix they could do.

So some might like to just fix it themself but if they were short of currency there is someone to go to for fixing also even trade some items/junk

 

[Quadrana]

Hello again, have been playing lots of fps like 76 and black ops recently and was back in the demo shooting, and I know that the enemies are currently static but I was finding myself getting frustrated by not being able to shoot while moving quickly in any manner which makes it seem like once these fast agile Kaiju start running and moving there will be nothing to do but fly away and snipe them from afar with plasma cannons for splash effect and most damage for a player using the current build.

I agree with a previous post that the missiles are too showy they took about 2 seconds to actually fly to the standing still target if the target was moving the missiles would be laughable because they would never hit anything at that speed.

For fast action paced combat the fastest movement option I found was to be always boosting the launchers and then to rapidly glide to were I wanted to be to start shooting again but found myself frustrated by the cooldown on the glider feature preventing me from doing any kind of lightning guerilla warfare tactics.

For how I was finding my self fighting either you would need a massive tank like frame that could take tons of damage and just sit there and blow them to pieces one at a time or you need a sniper class and sit halfway across the map out of site picking them of one at a time. But trying to sell the current concept as having mid range viability at all is unthinkable especially since they have grappling hooks and can yank you out of the sky, combat was hard and tricky at times in firefall and if these aliens are even half as fast as they were then combat with the current speeds and movement would be unpracticable at best.

A suggested improvement which could be made is to give jump jets more "power" instead of slowly floating around everywhere give them a rocket like punch of power that lifts you up initially and then lowers off while airborne to float around with. That initial boost is trying to overcome gravity and would be more efficient in escaping a group of close combatants.

Otherwise my overall thoughts are that the demo as a game needs to be altered a little more so that it doesn't feel like combat is done while standing still with fluid movements in between.

Thanks for listening and any feedback or critiques are welcome. Thanks for all yalls hard work on the game and hope my feed back helps.

 

[Pandagnome]

A suggested improvement which could be made is to give jump jets more "power" instead of slowly floating around everywhere give them a rocket like punch of power that lifts you up initially and then lowers off while airborne to float around with. That initial boost is trying to overcome gravity and would be more efficient in escaping a group of close combatants.

I wonder if mods and changes to reactors etc could change that i am guessing these are standard maybe.