Rethinking the THMPR encounter

[PartTimeJedi]

After countless hours playing around in the Demos trying to perfect my solo Thumping I came to the conclusion something was just.. OFF about the basic premise of the Em8ER Thumper encounter.

Back during Firefall Beta I Thumped 100s of hours. I was addicted. The simple Firefall Thumping formula was perfection. What was the basics of this that our Em8ER Thumping encounter is missing? Of course it is 2 separate games and we are not going to copy paste Firefall, but there was something missing.

I think what is missing is the risk/reward component which was the bases of FireFall Thumping that is missing in Em8ER.
In FF we had 2 variables- the percentage of damage being taken to our Thumper VS the amount of material being excavated. You only got your material IF you sent away the Thumper at 100% before the damage reached 100% and it exploded .. and then you lost everything.

In Em8er we are the ones picking up the minerals as Grummz wanted us to have to get in close to the action to pick them up. And if the Thumper is destroyed, just as in FF we lose all our collected minerals.

Between the 2- FF and Em8ER, the risk/reward is sooo much greater in the FF version IMHO
why?
1st, In FF I can not tell you how many times I pressed the "launch" button on a full Thumper when the damage was a 98%-99%. That is some heartpounding action! It was exciting and addicting. THATS WHAT MADE IT REPLAYABLE

Now in Em8ER at the moment we dont have that 'fight to the last minute' excitement, its more a basic 'defend this thing for a while" type thing. We have to call in a ship to pick up our Thumper so there is no way to implement the type of last second excitement that FF Thumping had.

Also in FF we had 10-12 different types of enemies all attacking your Thumper. Yes they primarily attacked the Thumper but they still attacked you if you got in their area.
In Em8er we have kneebiters attacking the Thumper and Tsi-hu foot soldiers attacking the player. This in itself is not unfun but makes it almost impossible to solo Thump.
I know the balance will be fine tuned in the encounter, but it still doesnt feel like the excitement is the same.

Maybe I can explain better with an example of what IMHO would make the encounter much more exciting and more important, replayable.
1- Introduce a variety of kneebiters, some crawl, some hover/fly, some hop and they each attack the Thumper/player in their each own unique way.
2.- make Tsi-Hu warriors showing up during a Thumping encounter more of a random thing and if they do have them trickle in one at a time for the solo players. I am sure the AI will be so much better in the future Demos that adding 1 or 2 Tsi-hu to an encounter will be a hard fight for players. This also differentiates the type of fighting and type of enemies between those encountered during Thumping and During invasion fighting. Meaning that during invasions we will primarily be fighting mass Tsi-hu/ +beast mode and Kaiju.
3- .Go back to the Firefall method of risk/reward by including a visual damage meter and capacity meter on the Thumper. ALSO as Grummz has mentioned in the past he wants to also implement an audio component to this encounter that I agree will get the blood pumping. During the encounter the Thumper will be making the classic "THUMP THUMP THUMP" noise as it digs. BUT as either the damage or capasity meter gets closer to 100% the Thumping gets faster and faster. Think Jaws theme song. Friggin AWESOME
4.- With a capacity meter that means going back to the Thumper being the one who is collecting and holding the minerals.
5- We need to have some way of Thumping to the last second. Think about it. The Thumper is almost falling apart, the damage meter is rising - 95%, 96%, 97%. Its being swarmed by kneebiters and you are doing your best to fend them off while also dealing with a nasty Tsi-hu taking pot shots at you from behind a rock meters away. The capacity meter is almost full- 97%, 98%, 99%. The THUMP THUMP THUMP noise is at its peak chugging along like a freight train now! AND.... You hit the Launch command exactly when the capacity hits 100% and the Thumper launches up to safety.
Now here is the problem. With the personal Thumper it could launch just like they did in FF, but what do we do about our mek Thumpers? Maybe they get air lifted to the Thumping spot by drop ship but also jet away to safety on thrusters like the personal Thumper? not sure, but it needs to be able to get out of danger instantly to get that heartstopping risk/reward.

I know this is a lot to take in. But if you ever played Firefall think back on what made Thumping so exciting and replayable. I think you may come to some of the same conclusions I did.

Thanks for reading
PTJ

 

[ChAzZ_NuT]

Hey Jedi! I agree to some extent, though it's hard to really know what the intentions are with thumping at the moment. Grummz did mention that he was going to change how the resources themselves are gathered, think he's going to make the Mech store them as opposed to us picking them up. So there is still some adjustment and refining that's going on with the thumping system.

I agree that part of what made thumping so fun in Firefall was the high-risk/high-reward gamble.

I am not saying that it is the only way thumping can be fun, but something does feel missing without it.

 

[Maven]

I'd say its not the right time to be drawing the line under what a full fledged THMPR encounter is expected to feel like. The mechanic is far too early in dev to be drawing final conclusions.

For starters, I highly doubt the knee-biters and the Tsi-hu are the sole enemies in the encounter. Currently, yes they are, but there previously had been talk of thumping sessions attracting mini-kaiju as well. This is an element that would raise stakes by several degrees. Additionally, there were discussions about 'pushing' the encounter past 100% capacity, which would attract waves of increasingly stronger enemies. Judging an entire mechanic on the basis of what it is now, a basic draft, is quite unfair. You are basically comparing an alpha build to a fully fleshed out thumping system (in FF).

Basides, there are multiple elements yet to be clarified. I would wager that once the music, ambience and visuals are added to the mix, along with varied enemies (melee, ranged, heavy, fast), to create a fully realized encounter, it would feel like a completely different experience to what it is today.

A comparison would be best drawn once the Playable Mockup is released.

That said, there is no harm in talking about what one would expect of such an encounter.

 

[Mahdi]

I'd say its not the right time to be drawing the line under what a full fledged THMPR encounter is expected to feel like. The mechanic is far too early in dev to be drawing final conclusions.

For starters, I highly doubt the knee-biters and the Tsi-hu are the sole enemies in the encounter. Currently, yes they are, but there previously had been talk of thumping sessions attracting mini-kaiju as well. This is an element that would raise stakes by several degrees. Additionally, there were discussions about 'pushing' the encounter past 100% capacity, which would attract waves of increasingly stronger enemies. Judging an entire mechanic on the basis of what it is now, a basic draft, is quite unfair. You are basically comparing an alpha build to a fully fleshed out thumping system (in FF).

Basides, there are multiple elements yet to be clarified. I would wager that once the music, ambience and visuals are added to the mix, along with varied enemies (melee, ranged, heavy, fast), to create a fully realized encounter, it would feel like a completely different experience to what it is today.

A comparison would be best drawn once the Playable Mockup is released.

That said, there is no harm in talking about what one would expect of such an encounter.

Stop making sense with words of reason!!

 

[vadio#5055]

Hum

if thumper is above 80% need repair , just money
If thumper is above 50% you get full resource , but you need spend repair(money and materials) thumper or craft new one
if thumper is between 1-50% you start lose resource yield and still need repair...
if thumper get 0% Kabum , you lost thumper and resources

yea or nah? i see risk vs reward + economic sink , even can extend this concept to make several kinds thumpers , fews more resitant , others with more hp , others extract more fast , etc etc

 

[liandri]

The encounter is bland, but it is missing some elements at the moment too.

- We're missing different Tsi-hu models, with some being ranged, melee and specials (like the grapples).
- Kneebiters. They only attack the player, but it sounds like there is meant to be even more of them. They jump up and bite at the THMPR. They have a beam attack for ranged.
- The low category Kaiju.
- The encounter would probably change depending on our control of the area, with areas less terraformed being harder?
- Lack of natural cover. More tactical options for the player, but less visibility of the enemy. You go higher, you're more at risk of a hidden grappler.
- To mention collecting resources, we'll just have to see what the final mechanic is.

This is just to say for the "old" encounter. They might get rebalanced and reworked since there are different types of THMPRs now.

Pretty much mirroring Maven, it's so early Alpha. It definitely needs work, but it won't be this I don't think.

 

[truekillerstar#4280]

These are all excellent points. The only thing I wanted to contribute is that I think core materials should be held by the drone as mentioned in the Vision book. However, I think it would be nice if the Rare Isotopes were what dropped on the ground, since it should accomplish two goals:
1) Keeping us close to the battle
2) Give players who seek loot drops (as their reward mechanism) a system to use