Chief Chat "CLAIM STAKES" VOD - 7/28/2022 - BIG REVEALS!

Ronyn

Commander
Staff member
Community Manager
Director of Marketing and Community
Jul 26, 2016
723
2,704
93
#1
Welcome back Gatestriders,

Due to the complex nature of todays announcements, I want everyone to get the information straight from the mouth of the man himself. So without further ado.... click the link!

if you've already watched it then jump right to giving feedback and asking questions below!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1545518434
 

PartTimeJedi

Em8ER Adjudicator
Staff member
Archon
Ember Moderator
Nov 13, 2018
1,315
2,929
113
Holy Terra
#2
Ughhh I didnt want to be the first one to leave feedback.
I am going to be VERY general and meandering in my explanations and thoughts.

Ive been following Em8ERs progress since 2017 and became a backer 2 years later. I cannot tell you how excited I was back then to back a game that would bring back the excitement, thrills and wonder of my all-time favorite game FireFall (closed/open BETA).

There are around 37K people signed up on the Forums and thousands of them are financial backers. Most of them are people who loved Firefall and are only interested because they want that old "Firefall" feeling back, and there is no game out there ATM that does that.
If you asked those thousands of backers who had played Firefall what was it that made it special? What are you hoping to get out of this "spiritual successor" Em8ER?
I can tell you now that if you asked this question to them, at the bottom of the list would be "It was because of the crafting"

Every big Em8ER announcement I get excited but also sad by how far the game is getting from those simple pleasures I was hoping Em8ER would recreate. To many of us FF was an MMO shooter that had crafting. It kinda feels like Em8ER is turning into a crafting game that has combat.
Its starting to look to me like Valhiem in space, or a No Mans Sky with combat, or any other of the cookie cutter crafting fighting games out right now.

Why did Deep Rock Galactic take off and become so popular ESPECIALLY with Firefall vets? It has crafting and collecting yes.. But its the COMBAT the THRILLS the EXCITEMENT the SMOOTH MOVEMENT that keep them coming back. That was also at the heart of FF,

If you read the Em8ER FAQ "What is Em8ERs core gameplay?" which was written years ago, it doesnt even mention crafting until 5 paragraphs in. Why? Because what made FF so awesome and what made people want to get this project off the ground was everything else...

If you watch any old FF video on YT made by a player what does it show? Fast combat, exciting gliding, heart pounding THPING, beautiful scenery and exploring etc etc.. You know what videos you rarey can find? FF players excited about Crafting videos.

It just seems Em8ER is heading in a different direction than what I was excited about originally; Its so hard to explain, but it feels like the things that made FF so great and were promised in Em8ER are being tossed or downplayed for things that didn't make FF great or unique.

Also, If you begin a game with no weapons and you must craft for a couple hours just start shooting something, I am guessing most Firefall shooter fans will not be impressed. When Grummz was describing how he envisioned the start of the game all I could think of was.. WHAT? Id rather put needles in my eye than play a boring game like that.
Even back in FF you were dropped off in the middle of a bustling town and THMPIN and fighting alongside new friends 30 seconds out of the drop ship. Things like that made it special.

If Em8ERs market is now leaning towards the MMO crafting community I would say this direction will get some of them...
But the Firefall MMO action orientated shooter community that begged Grummz to make Em8ER?
I'm not so sure...

that is all
 
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May 25, 2020
4
15
3
UK
#3
i dont like being negative but i care about this project, you have some serious potential here to be one of the big MMOs.

However this latest chief chat made the game sound like less what it was originally pitched as and more a "survival crafting MMO" we have had hundreds of these, so much so that seeing the tags "survival" and "crafting" together on steam is a huge turn off for a lot of people, i think if we go this route alot of people looking at the kickstarter wont see the amazing potential you have and will just see ANOTHER early access survival crafting game.

On a personal note the gameplay loop that was described sounded extremely shallow and grindey "kill stuff to get materials to upgrade your stuff so you can kill stuff", now thats not saying you cant pull that off, some games take a simple concept like that and are amazing (stuff like satisfactory or factorio) but its a hard thing to pull off so if this is the main goal then i wish you luck.

and the last thing refers to all those other survival crafting MMOs we have had in the past, and trust me there have been many, i cant think of many that have made it to a full release, and i cant think of a single one that was huge and is still around today, i dont know whether the games are just hard to pull off or if it is just a genre that shouldnt exist, but there is a reason that the genre is littered with the corpses of dead games and nothing else (remember everquest next? or wurm online?)
 

Sy

Well-Known Member
Nov 16, 2018
363
719
93
sya.li
#4
I don't want to play as a pilot. I don't want to mine as a pilot. I don't want individual housing. I don't want individual zones for players because I don't want to zone into a ghost town of just me. I don't want a single-player game.

I want a shooter MMO.

Stop this nonsense right now.

Now.

Do not do this, this is a mistake.

I am immediately and thoroughly revolted by this gameplay and philosophy. I, and I argue many people, will look at this game, log in, wonder where the game is, and leave. I don't want to have to struggle through this forced-boring early "gameplay" only to get to the actual "endgame" of a shooter MMO when I will finally get to play with my friends. Whatever this monstrosity is doesn't even let me make friends before getting to endgame. People will be separate by default and open zones might (might!) only accidentally give a couple of "neighbors"; not that it matters.

Just like Firefall's inability to customize characters at it's start screen had it cut out half it's player base, implementing this myopic base building vision will do the same.

I want to log in, get a character customization screen that I can give the finger to and decide on later, get a frame selection screen that I can give the finger to and just switch to something else later, then actually get dropped down straight into combat. If there is a tutorial, I want to give it the finger and play the real game until I choose to do it for my 5 credit award. I don't want bait-and-switch gameplay, and I don't want an hour of "early play" or tutorial garbage from my games.

I WANT TO DOWNLOAD, INSTALL, AND PLAY.

This is not the spiritual successor to Firefall. This vision is bad and it will fail.


-


Additionally..

I hope a campaign is not just optional but not implemented at all. I want to play with other people and not have them stuck in campaigns. The worst thing that happens is when new players are thrown into a campaign instead of the MMO so they don't get to see the real game. Destiny is absolutely terrible for this. Their campaign stuff is mostly a time wasting playable cutscene to sleepwalk through to get to the real game with other people.
 

FCM

Deepscanner
Oct 18, 2018
6
16
3
26
France
#5
i am personally worried about how massive the game is planned to be
what if it doesnt have that much traction ? what will happen if the number of active players is too low to expand past 3 "domes" ? what will happen ? is there some form of failsafe ?


not to mention, people are ""lazy"" by default, and i dont mean it as an insult, i mean it as a human thing
people in general aim to get things with "the least time consuming way" or dont want to invest too much on games to enjoy them, which is completely understandeable
of course people who are willing to be really active on a regular basis do exist, but they are mostly a minority
which raises another point : what will happen if many people, say, dont want to take part in defenses or terraforming, or whatever community based activity this game seem to entirely depend on ?
since your audiance is already relatively niche, can a game that wants to be THIS BIG even make it past 4 "domes" ? of course i sound super negative and i'm sorry for that, i really hope this game will work well and im willing to invest more energy than i ever invested in a game, but i can easily see other people not wanting to do that


another point that has been raised above that i relatively agree with, is that right now, with how it's been presented during that stream, it looks like the game will have that "overdone" gameplay loop of survival games ( drop without gear on world, do basic ressource gathering, build stuff to upgrade/unlock stuff to kill stuff to upgrade and build more stuff, etc ), which is quite different from what FF players were used to, despite the game being advertised as a "spiritual successor"

not saying it cant work of course, nor am i in every ff player's heads, but adds to my worries i described above

Though amma be honest here chief, i just wanna play my heavy frame and aimlessly wander the battlefield to blast anything in my field of view, lookin cool and havin fun
its something i liked to do in ff, just wander around, random event pops up, kill stuff there, and just wander the land waiting for another small random event to show up around me as i travel
i assume im far from the majority, and i wont do that until i'm pretty well geared up anyways, which means good time investment i'm sure, however i still do feel like combat is something ff players had their main focus on, and was something ff had that was pretty unique
although i need to point out that im kinda bringing my "facts" out of my arse, but just the impression i have with nowadays gaming landscape and past experiences, so yeah paranoïa actin up over here



TL DR : im worried that the game wants to be too big and flashy when it seem to tackle a genre that is very populated with no guarantee to be able to self sustain its visibly user dependant growth, + game view can possibly quite differ from what FF players were originally seeking

then again its just my opinion, as someone who has already weird habits in video games and mainly driven by "visuals over everything else" so... eh

EDIT : it seems i misunderstood the playable zones concept, but my worries are relatively the same
maybe even worse since im convinced many people will try to do their own thing alone unless they have friends with who theyre gonna stick with
 
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Wyntyr

Omni Ace
Ark Liege
Jul 26, 2016
6,336
11,601
113
Florida
#6
Currently I give the newest announcements a 4 overall.

1. 25% sale on all packs and upgrades until they are removed from being purchasable. 10

2. No interim "Rumble" packs, next packs will be Kick Starter packs. 10 (only if these packs are not purchasable pre-KS; a recommendation - show the packs 2-4 weeks out so folks have a better idea of how much cash to store up; also this would allow the Team to gather info on what the Community thinks of them and what they may have liked to see so those items/ideas might be added to a pack pre-KS or used as a funding goal reward that the Team hadn't previously thought of to add or use; if purchasable pre-KS but is a true KS pack then I see it as slightly better than a "Rumble" pack name change 5 score; if there will be KS packs then new KS packs at KS then I score this as a 1)

3. Glad to see the male pilot in engine and can get in/out of the Omni-frame...with textures on the way. 7

4. Going full bore as much as possible to get KS demo completed. 8

5. Building to craft, clear/adjust terrain, open tech tree, etc. per player and in separate zones. 1 (I don't care to play Minecraft or No Man's Sky or Valhiem in Em.8ER. Especially to open up crafting trees. I don't mind separating build stations that have to be fed resources so they are built in a base in the open world that everyone can contribute to if they'd like. I'd prefer a crafting/tech tree that perhaps is opened by earning "Rep" with the Gatestrider clan. Gaining "Rep" by killing, resource gathering, exploring, crafting, resource transport, etc. Could even use "Rep" to lower crafting resource costs a little. My focus in Em.8ER is to be a murdering machine by going into live spontaneous events like invasions, but also player driven events like thumping or calling in a Kaiju like Baneclaw with some downtime resource transporting, exploring, and hanging out in social spots or not. I believe that once the appropriate station/building has the resources needed plugged in at an open world base that a dropship or ECV can bring it in or build it in that base's particular location. When used it will go to another appropriate screen/UI for that station/building and when the construct button is pressed either in that screen or in the open world location you will watch you're weapon, ability module, vehicle, omni-frame, etc be built taking only a few seconds up to 30 perhaps. If however crafting and it's tech/tree will be this particular route, then many players, includes me, will need a way around it. I.E. gaining money/resources/something so they can trade/buy with a specific crafter or buy off all items/vehicles/etc. from the market. With resource quality and it's effects on item specs, crafters will have a blast. But I think putting the crafting/tech tree to coincide with buildings, crafting tables, land clearing, monster hunting, etc. will not only keep players like me from caring about that but also those who just want to craft things.)
 

Pandagnome

Kaiju Slayer
Fart Siege
Welcome Wagon
Happy Kaiju
Jul 27, 2016
7,730
10,079
113
Island of Tofu
#7
For a short chief chat the information seemed good but i have some thoughts on this just like you all.

- The tips for the month sub to get the cowgirl skin & upcoming mount skin is certainly a good thing.

- Building up from @Wyntyr's thoughts on 2)

* PCP (Pack Community Planner) 2-4 weeks, this is where community feedback helps to build the ideal collection for Ks.

* The EKS - (Essential Kick-starter) pack, this is the pack where new users could have a cross over of certain previously selected pack content and new pack content mixed into one special pack to get going.

The KSC (Kick-starter Custom) pack with selector as an example you have several empty slots with a choice of perks you may like such as
- Tactical duck (enhanced battle water ready duck)
- Shadow Mek (Recon specialist skin the perfect operative for sneaky play)
- Crafty Box (A portal craft unit to craft Pilot focused gear)
- Hyper-drive (Special effects/Sound effects towards maximum speed upgrades)
- Plant (A decorative plant that is a trap explodes with happiness when visitors come and regenerates by supplying dirt and trash resources)

From the list of many many choices there is only a certain number you can pick to complete the pack. That gives the player choice to create their own pack towards individual preference.


* KSA (Kick-starter Add-on) Pack, here we have a straight to the point add on for those who just want the new stuff.

- I am happy with the pilots appearing, just wonder if pilot animation of getting out or stepping inside the mek will be shown for more immersion?

Also how would this be like in 1st person to step in and out of the mek or will it be more of a transference into the mek ?

- with crafting
prefer a crafting/tech tree that perhaps is opened by earning "Rep" with the Gatestrider clan. Gaining "Rep" by killing, resource gathering, exploring, crafting, resource transport, etc. Could even use "Rep" to lower crafting resource costs a little.
I like this as the reps goes towards what you'd want saying that what if some npc could craft for you, or if you wanted to craft at a more advanced level then you would have to specialize this with a crafter kind of work. In Guilds or even help others in crafting with no expensenses apart from some extra resources or recipe collection to have more crafting variety.

Just like there are various kinds of npc's with personalities i'd imagine there are those with specific roles and skills who can unlock other pathways to do something.
Such as an npc that lives near the beach could give you a way to do fishing jobs or provide shore defense options to stop e.g. bandits and sinister things getting into the mainland etc etc
 

Maven

Kaiju Slayer
Max Kahuna
Philanthropist
Jul 26, 2016
262
1,197
93
#8
Well, this is my first bit of feedback in a significantly long time, but I feel the new design update warrants it.

I'm gonna start off by saying that I hope that this new 'direction' is solely meant to be testing the waters, and not something chalked in as approved and confirmed.

The claimstakes idea seems like an evolution of the player zones concept that was bandied about a few years ago. I was not a fan of that idea, not a fan of this either.

Before getting into the idea itself, I feel the timing of the announcement warrants criticism. From the discussion it appears this is meant to be the new direction for the gameplay loop. But shovelling in a major revision, a crafting/survival-esque element, into Em-8er, after six years of production doesn't seem too smart. I understand that Em-8er isn't supposed to be exactly the same as Firefall, nor is it expected to be. But introducing such a major design change after all these years, and so close to kickstarter (in a relative sense), does not sit right with me.

With all the concerns and negativity surrounding the lack of updates and the rather sluggish production, adding yet another 'design twist' makes no sense. And this, immediately after a roadmap was released to the community, after years of complaints.

Adding this new element means that the team has spent manhours, and effectively community funds, on conceptualizing and actualizing a new idea. As to how this affects the roadmap is yet to be seen. At this point, as a fan and as someone who has monetary investment into this game, I'd say, please, stop. Stop attempting to shoehorn every which niche into the game.

The team sold a concept six years ago. A very clear concise idea that was welcomed and supported by the community. It baffles me as to why the team would not look to deliver on that core concept first before chucking in new things. I understand the team have a vision of their own, but with all this talk about how funds are tight and how there is a general lack of resources, every new concept comes as a slap in the face of the community that has patiently waited for some semblance of a game for six years.

KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Please deliver on what was promised, before trying to reinvent the MMO genre.

Coming to the idea itself, all I can say is, Why?

Firefall was about the community. Coming together and fighting side by side. It gave me what I did not see in other MMOs. I hated the segregation by design that was prevalent in themepark MMOs. Firefall instead brought players together.

And now with this design change you are looking to apparently scatter them everywhere yet again. Yes, I am aware that the claimstakes are only a part of the loop, and that players will be fighting together regardless, but it seems like an unnecessary addition to the game.

This new change comes across as someone having been so impressed by a crafting/survival game that they felt the need to include it. I understand that it is all the rage these days. Valheim, Ark, Conan, V Rising, everyone's doing it. But the market is saturated with such games. When every new MMO attempted to copy WoW, it led to stagnation and recession of the MMO industry as a whole. So why is there a necessity to add more of the same overdone loop to a game that already had a clear idea of what it wants to be?

Firefall's core gameplay was simple. Get in, shoot, get out. It did not demand too much of the player. It did not have convoluted gameplay loops and systems that required anything from the player. it was all about having fun from the outset. And as a spiritual successor, I would expect Em-8er to subscribe to those basic tenets as well.

Thematically, it makes no sense either. You are a player landing on an alien planet, threats and dangers at every corner, and you are asked to randomly plop down in the middle of nowhere, alone, and start building a base? If the Gatestriders are so starved for resources, how do they have enough to create individual terraforming units for every Tom, Dick and Harry out there who wants to establish a claimstake.

Would you not rather establish a single FOB, fortify and secure it, and then work outwards to claim the planet?

A few years ago, there was discussion about how bases would be modular and established as units, to avoid 'colorful' base designs and minimize effort. Here we are today going back on that design basis. There was also a lot of value put into close-knit, smaller communities, 500 players per server was the discussion that was had back then. And here we are today, talking about millions of hexes on a map 1/10th the size of earth.

I understand that with new technology, games evolve and improve. But this seems like a regression, a departure from what was sold to the community and got them excited. Not all change is good. Not all change is necessary either.

I will repeat what I said earlier. Firefall was about the community. Fighting together against a common enemy to reclaim and protect something. Defending POIs, bases and thumpers. I had infinitely more fun in that small stretch of land called Copa than I have had in any world that was multiple times more realized and developed.

Games need not be complex to be fun.

Now, all that said, I do understand that there is a subset of players that enjoy the survival genre. Perhaps the team are looking to appeal to them in addition to the others. If so, I would rather have this new system be an option, far removed from the core gameplay. If you must absolutely give personal sandboxes, feel free to, but perhaps look to achieving that without bastardizing what made Firefall great.
 
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Sy

Well-Known Member
Nov 16, 2018
363
719
93
sya.li
#10
I roughly discussed the topic with an expert friend of mine, and he said he would not even try it if it were free. He said it was another Fortnite.

Ouch.
 
Jun 25, 2017
2
9
3
48
Austin, TX
#11
I hate to echo the comments above as I have quietly and patiently awaited this game for so long. Old school firefall backer here.

Please no. 7 days + Kaiju = no.

That to me is not a spiritual successor to Firefall. I was also a massive backer of Crowfall. Look what became of it. Please learn from others failures.

Sorry for negativity. Love my old Firefall community and miss you. ( My now dead IRL best friend and I had some of the best of times playing Firefall together so this is a bit emotional to me.) Would pay anything to have the old Firefall back on an open source server . Anyhow. I hope we end up with something that feels like the old school thumping semi-mobile tower defense shooter that was Firefall back in some form with em8er.

StreetPreacher

RiP Pontifex
 

cyriann#5305

Omega Founder
Oct 27, 2019
8
15
3
28
Paris
#12
Like most of the people that took time to do feedback I am not greatly impressed with the starting set idea. As many have stated, it is THE overdone "crafting&survival" set with a small flare added but not much else.

Main issue being that it's not what EM8ER has presented itself as up until now in my eyes at all. While I was interested to see the crafting coming in for making weapons, building the city(ies) with everyone, making attachments and upgrades to the Omniframes or even create a base with my friends, I was NOT seeing it being the main focus of the game this much, going so far as to entirely gate the progression.

I am someone that likes both ends of the spectrum, calm and collected time spent around the crafting table working my mats to their best quality to create my very own gear, or hectic and explosive mech combat to protect the last specs of humanity we are helping survive.
Thus my issue with what was presented, instead of both systems living together and feeding from one another, Crafting seems to be taking the entire focus making combat only a means to craft more. Furthermore, gating content behind crafting feels extremely weird to me, while I get the concept, skills and gameplay should, in my opinion, still be the deciding factor, instead of one's ability to amass ressources. Unless of course crafting is not automated and requires players to actively craft with various levels of quality results possible, think Final Fantasy XIV crafting but with more than just normal and High quality, there I could see a meaning as you'd be asking Gatestriders to hone their skills in combat to get the Kaiju parts, but also in crafting to make the craft reach the desired quality for the "challenge".

As a sidenote, I commend in all this negativity the desire to make everything diegetic to the world, so that we can immerse into it 100%, like not forgoing the fact some may not be interested in building their base tile by tile, like me for example, by having some prefabricated options and player proposed options. Though I daresay I'd rather have a pre-built base that evolves following my effort and that I can move the rooms around, or change the architecture of, than to have to call onto my architect grandfather to draw plans to build a correct place with a functional structuring.
 
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FCM

Deepscanner
Oct 18, 2018
6
16
3
26
France
#13
I roughly discussed the topic with an expert friend of mine, and he said he would not even try it if it were free. He said it was another Fortnite.
man thats a bit too rough, the only common point with fortnite is how you build stuff

while what we have here reminds me of games like ARK and games in that vibe
which would be fine if it was optional imo
 
Apr 18, 2021
2
9
3
26
Italy
#14
So, I gave the idea of claimable zones a 9/10 in the chat yesterday during the stream, now I've slept on it and to be fair I'm not feeling that great about it.

I think that this game is slowly but surelly going for feature creep and losing focus on what It should go for, what got my intrest in the first place about the project other than it being a Firefal spiritual successor, was the fact that it had a constantly alive open world where everyone contributes to everyone elses progress being it thumping for resources, building forward bases, fighting the Tsi-Hu to reclaim territory from them and (maybe) going for space trucking to deliver what has been scavenged to refining sites, by adding more to the loop I think that would either cripple the flow or ( in the case of personal territory claim ) split the focus of players too much on working for themselves rather than helping eachother progress further.

A game that could be taken for inspiration in my opinion should be Foxhole, as It basically does what I mentioned above although in PvP.

TL DR:

Personal zones bad, split players in different territories bad, players playing off eachothers work should be the focus in my opinion.

Edit:

Fixing typos
 
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lkw#0593

Omega Founder
Jun 9, 2020
19
55
13
#15
My interpretation of where we've been headed for a while is a bunch of optional game loops in parallel the player can participate in: thumping, fighting, trucking, crafting, etc...
An example that's been mentioned by Grummz before is FFXIV's job system, where your abilities and therefore gameplay are determined by what you have equipped. Want to fight, get a sword and go fight. Don't like fishing, that's fine, don't make a fishing rod.
Is this still the case?

The only major concern I see with the new proposal which I might have to agree with Jedi, Sy, and others is the start of the game.
What was talked about during the CC does not have separate game loops the player can involve themselves in. It puts crafting front and centre, forcing players who just want to jump in and fight to do resource collection before they can play what they came for, which could put some people off.

I don't see private claimstakes as an issue in general since a lot of mmos I can think of have something similar, and a majority of the gameplay can still occur outside them.

I think most of the other issues I might have with the new proposal and a number of criticisms I have seen in this thread could just be down to misinterpreting parts of the CC. I think it would be a good idea to write out a clearer description of what the current plan is, particularly with a focus on what different players have to or may choose to do and how it may or may not involve other people.

Something else that might be useful in the design process is something like the idea of user stories. For example, I don't think you'd design this: Alice and Bob are friends, they start up an mmo and wanting to have different (potentially complementary) combat roles they pick different classes. This results in them starting in different cities across the map and now have to get to level 15 to unlock fast travel in order to play together. (guess which game)

Some of my other questions and concerns
  • Are gameplay loops supposed to be opt in, how does that work with the new proposed start of the game?
  • What is currently planned for launch and is the scope reasonable? I haven't closely followed the development of a lot of mmos, but my understanding is that a lot of content, including entire parts of gameplay, is added post launch. e.g. Planetside's construction, Warframe's railjacks, etc... With all the stuff that's been mentioned I've become more confused what the current focus is and what's an expansion.
  • How much time would looking for better gear take away from gameplay? This might not be too much of an issue since a lot of games have player markets. But could become more of an issue with crafted weapons with different trade offs.
  • You seemed to mentioned crafting a light frame first, probably because it requires less resources. I assume different frame types still supposed to be different complementary forms of combat, not "graduating" to a heavy frame. How would this be balanced with crafting?
  • The previous incentive to expand the map and defend bases from enemy invasions was to advance the world tier to have access to better equipment, and I'd assume harder fights. Maybe I'm remembering the CC wrong, but it sounded like the new idea is for the tier to advance by killing kaiju in rifts, or was that just to get crafting materials?
  • I think you said that higher tier crafting will require cooperation between more players to create bigger structures on the public map, this sounds more mmo, but how does this work with the claimstakes? Do you start of with individual crafting for a while before you participate in that?
  • Is there gameplay in the dropships flying over the map, or is it just for if you like flying?
  • How do the players expand their influence over the planet now? At one point I thought it sounded like you meant there's one public zone, but I think that was misworded and more would be unlocked somehow. How do these unlock? Does procedurally generated map get replaced with a hand crafted zone when it's ready?
 
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Naku

Terraformer
Jul 26, 2016
33
54
18
#16
I dont speak out much here on the forums, or in discord, but I supported Ember development since it was annouced, and I feel this last update warranst some feedback.

To put it simple, I am concerned.

1) Claim stakes.

They don't sound as bad idea on itself, but forcing relativly slow gameplay loop of surrival game into Ember doesn't sit well with me. It's essentialy opposite of Firefall, and considering that most bakcers are former FF players, well, it might put some peopel off.

As for bulding - I think there should be pre-made templates at least for most basic buldings. You could make them staic, or allow players to modify them, but somethign that be quickly thrown in should eb there, for peopel who dont like to play around with bulding games.

Lastly, when you say you need to defend your base, does that includ monster attacks only, or other players can raid your base too? I really hope its monster sonly, becasue if this si opne pvp, then I'll probbaly wont be playing this game.

I say this again, making our own base doesn't sound like bad idea, but, in my opinion, it should be something you unlock eventually, not how you start game.

In my opinion, Ember should start the same as Firefall - you get basic frame and basic gun so you can go out and start shooting things immedietly. You get some short tutorial (like, ten, maybe fifteen minutes), that ends in scripted fight that rewards us with mats to create our own, for lack of better term, melding buble so we cna go out and claimour claimstake.

2) Size of the world.

I don't know where this idea that bigger world is better comes from. With world that big, how do you hope to make it not feel empty? 8x8km map sounds to me like something designed for tens, if not hundreds of thousand of players, and I doubt Ember will hit those numbers, not quickly at least.

3)Progression.

You said that in Firefall, you ddin't get many upgrades, rather sidegrades as it was a bad thing. I disagree, it was one of things I liked the most about that game. I'd rtaher chase diffrent things than better things. Sure, vertical progression is needed, but in my opinion focusing on horizontal one is a smuch, if not more important.

Overall, I fear that you might be a bit too ambitious. Ember doent' have benefit of two, imo, most important thngs to succed - money and brand reconition. I'm not saying you can't succe dwithout those, I wouldn't be supporting this game if I did, but I think its very importnat to not go overboard.

Ember doen't have big company behind with milions of dolars and hundrededs of devs to theo at the project. it doesnt have large number of fans that will go play it just because it's part of the franchise they love or made by company they like and respect.
big

Ember wont be next WoW that will opo off immedietly with milions of players. Imo, it will follow simla path as PoE - start small and slowly grow over time.

Thats why, hearing sumch ambitious plans, as well as things that go contrary to initlal vision of the game has me worried.
 

Pandagnome

Kaiju Slayer
Fart Siege
Welcome Wagon
Happy Kaiju
Jul 27, 2016
7,730
10,079
113
Island of Tofu
#17
the claimstakes are only a part of the loop, and that players will be fighting together regardless, but it seems like an unnecessary addition to the game.
A claimstake is nice personal home for players i'd rather have one floating in the sky or it could be accessible to unlock on the ground after at least one biome is fully discovered/unlocked perhaps?


Not all change is good. Not all change is necessary either.
Sometimes we can get carried away with the possibilities and it is good to have discussions like this to bring us back down to the ground.


Firefall was about the community. Fighting together against a common enemy to reclaim and protect something. Defending POIs, bases and thumpers. I had infinitely more fun in that small stretch of land called Copa than I have had in any world that was multiple times more realized and developed.

Games need not be complex to be fun.
I agree.

Main issue being that it's not what EM8ER has presented itself as up until now in my eyes at all. While I was interested to see the crafting coming in for making weapons, building the city(ies) with everyone, making attachments and upgrades to the Omniframes or even create a base with my friends, I was NOT seeing it being the main focus of the game this much, going so far as to entirely gate the progression.
It puts crafting front and centre, forcing players who just want to jump in and fight, to do resource collection before they can play what they came for.
Since you put it that way it does sound forced.
Crafting should be optional and if those who enjoy that can special in this even more with the help of others and for crafters to help those who don't. Those are not into crafting could also use npc/crafting machines that can do crafting but may cost more reps/resource type.

my intrest in the first place about the project other than it being a Firefal spiritual successor, was the fact that it had a constantly alive open world where everyone contributes to everyone elses progress being it thumping for resources, building forward bases, fighting the Tsi-Hu to reclaim territory from them and (maybe) going for space trucking to deliver what has been scavenged to refining sites, by adding more to the loop I think that would either cripple the flow or have ( in case of the personal territory claim ) split the focus of the players too much on working for themselves instead of helping eachother progress further.
I think that the solo aspect of having your own claim stake is just like having a base/home of your own.
We could have this at a later point if we wanted to and have a nice place to store our collection of vehicles etc etc


The idea of having a room in the sky base in a type of sky barrcks is appealing to me with a (Dorm) when you are given more higher privileges from the Npc Reaper council after all the good work of defending and attacking etc.

It is a good way to meet others like us who are also doing their part as a Reaper to live and make Em8er the home they so long for!
 

EvilSmoo

Firstclaimer
Feb 2, 2017
3
6
3
#18
Questions:
  • Underwater zones?
  • Teleport in/out of mech, or have to watch animation?
  • Bubbles supplied by device on top, pylons on edges or pylons in middle?

I wouldn't mind the naked start, but I totally get where people are coming from. After reading their posts, I completely agree, you should have the option to start players with a standard suit that only has 75% stats or something.

Though, it does help the immersion and personal investment. For instance, in Planetside or Star Citizen, the ships are just ships. No special attachment, dime a dozen.

Now, if people hand craft all their stuff, they have investment.

But ingame lore wise, what kind of competent organization would drop new people down with spandex and nothing else?

And please forced tutorial, I'm sick of idiots just zooming into the main game clueless and spamming general chat with questions they SHOULD know from a tutorial, just because they have no patience.
 
Oct 16, 2019
12
29
13
#19
Throwing in my 2 cents:

Going to have to echo most of the posts already on here, making Em8er into an "open-world survival crafting base-building mecha kaiju shooter" game is probably not going to turn out well. Also, that buzzword description is very deliberate: the mecha/kaiju/shooter aspects now seem to be some of the least important aspects of the game, based on the last livestream. It really seems like the new vision has transition the game to wanting to be Valheim/No Man's Sky/Satisfactory with big monsters.

To go more in depth on a few things:

1. Not everyone enjoys crafting. Forcing that to be mandatory for people that don't want to do it, especially right at the very, very start of the game, is going to turn a LOT of people off.

2. In addition to the above, considering how many games are out there with good crafting/base building there are - and, more importantly, how there are so, so, SO many more games with BAD crafting/base building - if Em8er isn't in the top 5-10% of quality, you're pretty much guaranteeing that the game will fail. Even if Em8ers systems were merely on-par with a lot of what is currently out there, it will be seen negatively - even more so, since the modding support to fix a lot of issue is likely to be very minimal.

3. The livestream detailed a bit on how Grummz wants the base building to save some sort of "save" or "blueprint" feature, that will allow people to share/sell designs. Assuming that the base building aspects continues, there should be ABSOLUTELY ZERO option to sell designs. Sharing is fine, selling is a HUGE no. This will cause the first few people that have good designs to be the ONLY ones that are ever sold/purchased, and will cause a massive gap in the economy. In addition to this fact, you would also need to implement some sort of marketplace for these designs, which is just going to be scope creep. Let people share designs, and people can make third-party websites/discords/whatever to organize and do so, but there should be NO official way to make in-game money through this kind of thing.

4. Player housing is appreciated in most MMOs, however, it should not be a mandatory things. The current vision for claimstakes seems to be going in this direction. It is nice that everyone can get one immediately, but it should NOT be the very first thing that you do in the game. Having to build up a base from nothing before you can get into the action is going to turn a lot of people off.

5. During the livestream, Grummz mentioned that additional areas of the game would be added on as DLC. I don't know if he envisions those to be paid DLC or not, but if so, that's likely going to be a bad idea. Sectioning playable areas of the game off as paid DLC is going to ruin it for a lot of players. If they aren't going to be paid content, then just call them Updates, not DLC. A LOT of people hate DLC whether paid or not - but they really like free Updates.

6. My thoughts on how the game should start/how the kickstarter vertical slice should be:
- Create your character, and start on some sort of communal space station newbie area.
- Get your first quest, where you are notified that a team on the ground with a Thumper has requested support from attacking Tsi-hu. You get issued a basic light frame, rifle, and melee weapon, then drop down to the planet.
- The tutorial fight is a small-scale fight, 1-10 players per instance, with the difficultly scaling up as more players join (so in the future, it could be done with only a single person, as fewer new players join the game, or during off-hours).
- Once that fight ends, you get taken back up to the space station. This is where the tutorial for the game itself can split off for what you get to experience during the kickstarter. For the real game intro, you can go more into various tutorial aspects; very basic crafting aboard the space station; basic tutorial missions to go into different types of combat; basic gathering missions for crafting materials; etc.
- For kickstarter, you need to get people back into the action. The next tutorial quest should be a fight against a kaiju. However, your basic tutorial light frame isn't going to do much good, so Gatestrider command issues you a temporary medium frame for the kaiju assault. You get to pick from a 3-4 different types of frames (i.e. melee-focused, assault weapon-focused, sniper-focused, heavy weapon-focused), then your dropship takes you into combat. As you drop into the fight itself, there should be a small cutscene where the kaiju attacks and damages your dropship (but doesn't destroy it completely).
- This fight should be much larger, something like 20-50 players plus NPCs (the NPCs can be used for scaling, so players can still complete the fight during off-hours). At the end of the fight, as the kaiju is dying, there is another cutscene where it performs one final attack that hits you, and completely destroys your medium frame.
- Once the fight ends, you call your dropship. The damage to it makes it so you aren't able to fly off-planet, meaning you can't return immediately to the space station. Instead, you have to pick a spot to make a small personal "base" on the planet. This section should be a VERY basic look into base building - you could heavily reference No Man's Sky intro, but I would recommend it be dumbed down even more. You get your personal mining drill out of your dropship, mine a few materials, make some sort of basic fabricator, which allows you to make the repair parts for your engines to get you back off planet and to the space station.
- Once you are done with that and back on the space station, you then have a few options, which can be completed as much as you want, in a demo fashion: the tutorial Thumper encounter, a bigger Thumper encounter for more people, the kaiju fight, and some intro crafting. Both the tutorial Thumper encounter and kaiju fight should throw players into the same fights as earlier (so there is a continuous stream of players in them), just without the extra tutorial fluff.
This would not only allow people to get into the action immediately, but it puts the parts that are going to turn a lot of players off of the game - the crafting/base building aspects - as almost optional. They are still there, and you will be able to get a glimpse of how important they are in the grand scheme of things, but outside of the short repair-your-ship tutorial, all other crafting is completely optional, and should be a secondary objective of the game.