Hmmm... we will see.

[Nightallen]

I played FF in closed beta for quite awhile I even bought in the founder deal. Its original concept was amazing until they decided to base the game around the economy and it just went downhill from there. I'm here as more of as curiosity then optimistic hype.

I said this on the FF forums many times but a FPS open world MMO game is REQUIRED to have 2 things to make it successful. The first is smart and adaptive AI as opponents. This HAS to be there. No amount of crafting, gear hunting, or other non combat activities will make up for stupid, predictable AI.

Second is fun fluid game play across all classes/frames/mechs. Shooters that are big make it big because skill is the deciding factor. Playing in those games is fluid, it feels like you can go and go as far as your skill will take you. Skills feel fun and intuitive. Weapons are reliable and consistent. Firefall did have this in closed beta every frame was smooth and a blast to play.

With horizontal progression, gear isn't as important as knowing how to use the gear you you do have. Synergy between frames is one thing to keep in mind. Overwatch is a perfect example of good synergy. One char shields and distracts giving time to faster damage dealers to flank. Other support using area denial to let snipers focus on specific routes. Admittedly small maps in overwatch but thats the kind of synergy and game play you will need.

The rest like crafting, call downs, vehicles, they will need to be done right too but if you mess up on the first two it really wont matter.

As for content and players being able to expand there own world. It will need to be done by making the world difficult and requiring many players to do. Make it so taking an enemy base requires 5-6 points needed to be captured simultaneously. Each with its own defenses and unique AI. Force players to use all the frames skills to successfully reach and capture the objective. (again we are back to good AI). A single really good FPSer should never just be able to go out and solo everything. Teamwork is a good thing. That said there should be things that solo players can do too.

Right now I am going to wait and see how things progress, cause fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice....

 

[Ronyn]

Hey as long as you are here we are happy to have you.

 

[Grummz]

I'll be baking a skill based component into most gear, so that to get that extra "edge" out of your gear or ability, a skill based component will often be involved.

What did you mean about FF going downhill by "basing it around the economy?" Just curious as to specifics that bothered you. I have many pet peeves wanted to hear yours.

 

[TankHunter678]

I'll be baking a skill based component into most gear, so that to get that extra "edge" out of your gear or ability, a skill based component will often be involved.

What did you mean about FF going downhill by "basing it around the economy?" Just curious as to specifics that bothered you. I have many pet peeves wanted to hear yours.

Perhaps the absurd 1000 variants of every single resource combined with the decay and permanent item loss.

 

[DARKB1KE]

Perhaps the absurd 1000 variants of every single resource combined with the decay and permanent item loss.

I think there's 2 different types of what can be considered "economy."
Keep in mind this term is used very loosely and it may be different for everyone.

The first one I consider "economy" to be player to player trading, moving goods around, selling and crafting items for other players. You're moving money and resources around much like the real world economy. FireFall shifted at one point when the market first introduced and then there was focus on "professions" and locking people into certain jobs. So you had weapon makers, or only armor makers, etc. with the idea being that one person couldn't do it all, you had to rely on others (economy). We never really saw this concept in motion, nothing changed.​

The second one is more your core gameplay loop, where you need to go do X activity to get Y rewards. So for example, players went out to get resources so that they could craft better gear, or improve certain skills, etc. and then you mention the item destruction, which was supposed to further push players to keep playing (but had opposite effect due to how it was implemented). I consider it a loop because you repeat actions. Get resources to repair or make new weapons to replace broken ones.​

So if we can take the OP's statement,

Its original concept was amazing until they decided to base the game around the economy and it just went downhill from there.

What was that turning point? Basing it on "economy" is too vague of an answer. Needs more explanation, as Grummz asked. Who's to say that economy wasn't always planned to be a part of the original concept anyways? At that point it's more a question of was it executed well? And that's a valid concern.

 

[Nightallen]

I'll be baking a skill based component into most gear, so that to get that extra "edge" out of your gear or ability, a skill based component will often be involved.

What did you mean about FF going downhill by "basing it around the economy?" Just curious as to specifics that bothered you. I have many pet peeves wanted to hear yours.

Quite simple, when "trading" was first talked about there were a few "crafters" who were very vocal about durability, item decay and so forth and I also remember except for those small few, almost no one wanted it in game. Crafting itself was also changed at the same time to be much smaller increments of actual power increases. It also increased the amount needed to craft. Thumping or "buying" became necessary and turned FF into a job instead of a game. Don't get me wrong thumping was fun when it didn't feel necessary and it gave enough resources that 2-3 thumps and you were good. The dev team at that point seemed to almost completely abandoned the chosen war, there was little to no increase in invasions and random events. No new enemies, and no way for us to push back the melding when and where we as players wanted to. Instead there were multiple changes trying balance the new crafting/economy which I didn't care about to begin with. A simple auction house would have been fine. The fixes that were really needed at that point should of been improved AI so we didn't have aimboting enemies that could track you out of LOS to give a false sense of difficulty. Then it spiraled down with the massively expensive 3 branch frame upgrade system which was tweaked and patched multiple times often times for the worse in my eyes. Every system put in place after perm item decay was balanced around thinking people would buy resources or weapon. I want to shoot stuff not run spread sheets about crafting and how to play the auction house. Do you even know how many people told me they just said screw it and ran with stock gear because then they didn't have to worry about any of it. Then it was stated that you were having server limitations issues which is why every instance felt empty cause we could only get like 100 people on one shard, in my eyes that doesn't even come close to "MMO". What you had outlined back in early closed beta about the shooter first mentality MMO went out the window in my eyes. I am not sure what direction you wanted to go at that point but the potential that had been immense was gone. I felt betrayed that I bought a founders pack with the promise of one game and was actually delivered something far from it.

Yes tankhunter, the 1000 variants is one of the things that made thumping so tedious.

 

[Daynen]

I'd like to bring up one slightly contentious point with a very simple perspective: the perma item loss and it's effects. While it wasn't implemented in an ideal way, it was an important part of Firefall's identity back in beta. It's easy to say most people didn't want it, but I do add this:

Sometimes, what players want isn't what they really need.

I think the FF launch proved that...

 

[Nightallen]

"Sometimes what a player wants isn't what they need."

I heard this so many times and find it completely false on every level. If this was RL then it would be different but its not, its a game If a player doesn't like part of a game they play a different game. It's that simple

If they wouldn't have reverted the perma decay changes for launch, FF wouldn't of had enough players to to even support the F2P model. That just proves my point not counters it.

In this digital age when there are 1000's of indie companies making games, you have to consider "majority rule" if you want to keep even a modest player base. There wont be another WOW with 12,000,000 subs. But even keeping 200,000 will be impossible if you forcefully keep alienating your player base. Know your audience, that is the key. FF was heavily trying to bring in the FPS/TPS crowd, especially with the original plans for E-sports. I can safely say most FPS's don't care about anything besides actual combat mechanics and fun. If that's the crowd you want, then you have to cater to those type of needs.

 

[TankHunter678]

"Sometimes what a player wants isn't what they need."

I heard this so many times and find it completely false on every level. If this was RL then it would be different but its not, its a game If a player doesn't like part of a game they play a different game. It's that simple

If they wouldn't have reverted the perma decay changes for launch, FF wouldn't of had enough players to to even support the F2P model. That just proves my point not counters it.

In this digital age when there are 1000's of indie companies making games, you have to consider "majority rule" if you want to keep even a modest player base. There wont be another WOW with 12,000,000 subs. But even keeping 200,000 will be impossible if you forcefully keep alienating your player base. Know your audience, that is the key. FF was heavily trying to bring in the FPS/TPS crowd, especially with the original plans for E-sports. I can safely say most FPS's don't care about anything besides actual combat mechanics and fun. If that's the crowd you want, then you have to cater to those type of needs.

It also helps to have a unified vision.

Investors wanted a WoW clone.
Mark wanted to break into a new market for MMOs.


I will say this: The first Closed Beta iteration would have made for a great potential e-sports. Sure it played a lot like TF2, but it have good balance, there was visible differences in skill, and team tactics were very important.

What shot that in the foot was the one thing I always dread hearing from MMO developers "We are going to balance pvp and pve together."

 

[NitroMidgets]

The economy was not an important part of the beta until The9 got to fucking the concept deep and frequent with a pack of Rough Riders.
The vocal people who said it had to have so much importance placed onto crafters, selling, trading, the economy and all that shit ignored the original vision that we were told was to use call downs as a way to use up our resources. Things that were used up like ammo, vehicles, army related stuff.
The idea that you can force a game to take off with the e-sport moba crowd was another bad idea.
Decay caused lots of arguments on the forums when it was announced. It pissed plenty of people off. Some refused to take part and as you recall there were some people who refused to play with anything but the base gear because of it. Not to mention it kept the game closer to the original vision by preventing the power creep.
I stopped playing right after they added decay, made the game revolve too much around an economy, added way too many variations of resources and otherwise turned the game into a pseudo job.
The game was essentially in a death spiral before The9 claimed to have launched it. We all knew it was hiding behind the "it's beta" excuse and wasn't progressing. Beta is one thing but when beta is nothing more then throwing handful of handful of shit into a fan and hoping it spatters you a Picasso replica only to then blame the fan. Well, that's when people started to leave.

Some community members tried to get some better ideas heard, voice concern and so on. They were either ignored, told they were simply wrong (eat your vegetables) or sent packing by a CM.

I agree with the OP. I am also glad the Mark wants to hear things like this.

 

[Nightallen]

Ok I have said my peace, all this being said, this is not FireFall this is Ember. I really do wish for the best and hope you learned your lessons from FF and now have a better understanding of what works and what doesn't. If you keep your focus on the most important points of the game and what type of players will be drawn to that, you should do fine. Good luck.