Some of the Top things that pushed me out of FF

[Ronyn]

we DO NOT NEED durability to have an economy.
-
because for a VERY LARGE portion of the old community having or not having durability will make... or break.... the game for them.

There is almost always an economy of some sort. A game certainly doesn't need durability in particular to have one, there are many ways to go. That is what I have been talking about in this thread. That there are many options, a games developers must choose the right style of economic model for the game they are looking to make.
Sinks can come in many forms. Gain loss ration can be made to a be something the player thinks about a lot, or a little, depending on the system. Etc. Again, the developer must choose what is best for the type of game they are looking to make.

For what it's worth, I don't believe the big community schism was over whether gear needed to be repaired. I believe the big controversial issue of the community was whether or not items decay and/or break. The controversy was over the amount of time required to spend crafting and in markets.

We are very aware that among the community there are different preferences on which way we go. Ultimately the choice we make is based what we feel will best represent a cohesive, unified vision that Grummz has set out for the game. No game will please everybody, but if a developer doesn't stick to a clear direction then youre likely to end up with a game that barely pleases anybody.

this is a bit disheartening, hopefully the decay will be very slow and NOT linked to deaths.

Let me be clear. For Em-8ER the teams plan is to put in just "durability", which means that the weapons and gear will need resources for repairs to stay in good shape. It's not "decay", as your weapons and gear will never get to the point where they permanently break. This is not like the old FF systems of patch 6.0 to 9.0 where items would decay to the point where they inevitably, and permanently break. This is not like EVE online where items permanently break on player death. This is not a system where your weapons and gear permanently break at all. They simply need repairs. Whether or not the gear takes a larger durability hit in death is still to be decided, but either way the items are not going to permanently break.

However, the buildings and defenses we make in bases can be destroyed. And vehicles will likely be able to be destroyed as well. Those are consumables of a fashion. And consumables of other types may or may not end up playing a larger role in the system as well, for that we will see. We have never announced "no consumables", we have only announced the basics of primary gear,bases and vehicles.

 

[Mahdi]

Ultimately the choice we make is based what we feel will best represent a cohesive, unified vision that Grummz has set out for the game. No game will please everybody, but if a developer doesn't stick to a clear direction then youre likely to end up with a game that barely pleases anybody.


Let me be clear. For Em-8ER the teams plan is to put in just "durability", which means that the weapons and gear will need resources for repairs to stay in good shape. It's not "decay", as your weapons and gear will never get to the point where they permanently break. This is not like the old FF systems of patch 6.0 to 9.0 where items would decay to the point where they inevitably, and permanently break. This is not like EVE online where items permanently break on player death. This is not a system where your weapons and gear permanently break at all. They simply need repairs. Whether or not the gear takes a larger durability hit in death is still to be decided, but either way the items are not going to permanently break.

The 1st, with the reins fully in Grummz's hands this part is what I can't wait for. Just knowing he will have free will to deliver this vision without a corporation pulling strings is a huge amount of stress relief.

The 2nd, pretty clear cut to me. Maybe some folks on here will stop misinterpreting your point and understand now.

When I think of where Em-8ER is at right now, economy is not a priority. The exe's and playable demo are all that should be focused on for the moment. When it comes to any kind of online, multi gamer testing, then lets see how resources are and what currency will be. Let the team deliver, then let them tweak sinks and consumables based on our feedback. I'm all for open discussion but things have no place being as heated as they have gotten in here. Not yet, far too early.

With that said, I do look forward to having those talks with the awesome folks around here and brain storming/theory crafting the game and then shout back at the devs.

 

[Nightallen]

I all this talk about resource sinks, power creep, and consumables strikes me as not being able to see the forest from the trees.

This is supposed to be a massive planetary war game. I think it would be better served to instead of pulling ideas from MMORPGs to start looking at RTS games and imagining the players are more like the individual unit that are built and consumables are like the special units and vehicles.

All marines in single game or level starcraft have the exact same stats and except for a few researched upgrades never get more powerful. Its true horizontal progression. You can choose to be a marine or a fire bat or a medic. But you get what you get and that it. The war is the carrot, the strategy and tactics are your power creep, and your tanks and wraiths are your consumables.

With true horizontal progression consumables would be your resource sink, you build a tank, it get destroyed in a battle, you have to build another tank. The key is to make the AI and encounters hard enough that it really does require strategy other then zerg rush.

Like for example say an enemy encampment has entrenched pill boxes and multiple generators powering automated sentry gun killing anyone or and vehicle who get within range. No amount of dodging is going to help. Get a few scout who can avoid detection to find the generators and report it to the players. Then send teams after each one with say 3-4 tankier suits with shields that can alternate out as the shield are destroyed and advance til you can get to the right terrain for cover. Then following right behind those shield mechs you can get some snipers or grenade launcher units in close enough to destroy the generators and shut down the guns. The other teams will have to succeed with there generators as well. The you can mount an assault with your consumable tanks and planes or what have you, take the base and then set it up as a player base. Now the players have to defend if they want to keep it. That should be the reward and the devs need to make AI and encounters and invasions that push back so defending a forward base means something.

This is just a randomly made up idea pulling stuff from RTS games not MMORPG's. I think you need to make players think outside the box, force them to use strategy as well as FPS skills.

So many games are just fine with having a simple trading post or auction house, no need to complicate it. The devs have so much more to worry about, and to get right then trying to balance an economy around a game that doesn't even have a running mockup yet. Let them make a good war game first and then worry about if durability is needed.

 

[Kouyioue]

Hmmmmmm.... Oooohhh! What about having it in installments like Minecraft. Have an update for single things at a time xD

So that there's less bugs to fix every snapshot

 

[Torgue_Joey]

Hmmmmmm.... Oooohhh! What about having it in installments like Minecraft. Have an update for single things at a time xD

THAT'S WHAT OUR MIGHTY GRUMMZ HAD IN MIND.

 

[HighCaliber]

The 1st, with the reins fully in Grummz's hands this part is what I can't wait for. Just knowing he will have free will to deliver this vision without a corporation pulling strings is a huge amount of stress relief.

True that. What I find funny is the small group of folks on the forums who are trying to take the place of the corporate overlords and get Grummz to change his vision for their tastes. Those people don't really expect Grummz to let other folks change his vision again do they?

pretty clear cut to me. Maybe some folks on here will stop misinterpreting your point and understand now.

I'm sure they will keep misinterpreting the point anyway. It has been clear since the first indiegogo campaign before the forum even came online. If people don't have it straight by now, it's because they really just don't want to hear it.

When I think of where Em-8ER is at right now, economy is not a priority.

Let them make a good war game first and then worry about if durability is needed.

You both wrote some good posts there except those last parts are just begging for some folks to mistake the message. Let me spell it out for those who are still reading.
The direction for the economy is already set. The Ember team will sort out the details as they go, just don't expect it change into some other form of economy. The last thing we need is a bunch of people thinking they can try to change the teams mind at some later date. It is what it is people. Accept it or move on.

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

*wanders in and sees a bunch of nonsense*
*leaves to go play Titanfall 2*

 

[NitroMidgets]

I like stuff.

 

[Warmonk]

You both wrote some good posts there except those last parts are just begging for some folks to mistake the message. Let me spell it out for those who are still reading.
The direction for the economy is already set. The Ember team will sort out the details as they go, just don't expect it change into some other form of economy. The last thing we need is a bunch of people thinking they can try to change the teams mind at some later date. It is what it is people. Accept it or move on.

Yeah, let's wait a bit before you act like the team won't change their mind once the rubber meets the road. After the insanity that was FF's development, I'll only be going on what this team actually DOES, not what they say they will do or their great vision.

The minute they decide to lie, or backpedal... Let's just say the only place that will have even more flames will be hell.

 

[NitroMidgets]

Or the cumulative bar b q's in Lockhart, TX. Man that place does bar b q right.
I'd kick a puppy if it meant some Brisket from Blacks.

 

[daggoth1408]

The top things that pushed me out, was the horrible decisions that r5 made with the crafting system, not working on important bugs, imbalance on the classes, and many other things. It was just too many wrong things for me to try to push it any further in my devotion to that game.

 

[Sn0wfIak3]

Man i'm having a blast just re-reading my arguments in this thread. I always have trouble explaining things simple, so i just go all out.

There will always be some form of powercreep, it's unavoidable. If you look at the craft break cycle system from open beta firefall. There was powercreep. Instead of gaining levels you gained wealth. It's economical powercreep VS physical powercreep. It's still powercreep. Item decay or a consumable based economy was never going to be a solution to physical powercreep but it would serve as a buffer to allow devs to come up with new forms of progression other than vertical progression.

All this stuff is still a long way off anyway. A decent down-scaling system could work just fine too. The thing though is that MMOs are ecosystems. Single player games are fantasies, multiplayer games are less so i think. Ember being a drop in drop out game is a great idea imo but there will always be the hardcore that plays it a lot more and you'll need one way or another to satisfy those players as they tend to be the most vocal.

 

[Sn0wfIak3]

The most balanced way i could imagine a progression system for an online game is,

• Four tiers for every frame
• Consumable based regressive progression system on top of that (the more power you want the more it costs. Expense curve)
• Horizontal progression not only in abilities but in new reboots of frames designed for different environments (snow, sand, water)
• Pray to Pan you come up with something new before you run out of the first three options.

 

[McJigg]

I am so very late to this discussion, but I wanted to place my thoughts here.

Durability in general can be a good addition to add immersion to a setting, as well as add a bit of a sink. But it's a very fine edged sword. On one hand, you don't want it expensive enough to become a barricade to play, on the other hand, if it's too cheap it's only purpose seems to be to make sure you hit an extra button at a vendor.

Whether or not an item decays to the point of permanent breakage being good greatly depends on the kind of game and how easy it is to reach the power ceiling. Minecraft if often looked at as a very casual game, and things break forever. Some people play Warcraft in a very hardcore way, and gear does not break forever.

I love classic Firefall, but admit permanent breakage was something that made me hesitant try and get higher tiers of equipment. It didn't stop me, but I was hesitant. And when I had the equipment, I rarely if ever equipped it because when the groups were large enough, I could run into purple difficulty missions and still contribute.

Attaining better equipment needs to feel rewarding, but higher tier materials needs to continue to have a use once the majority of the playerbase has it.

An idea I've always kept in the back of my mind, is the idea of short term and long term maintenance on items. If we assumed max tier is 5 in this example, a tier 5 weapon should always be more beneficial than a tier 4 weapon, but that doesn't mean the player is finished spending tier 5 resources on weapons.

In terms of short term maintenance, through use (and perhaps through death), durability of the weapon goes down. As the durability falls through thresholds, the weapon falls to a lower tier. Getting your weapon repaired will of course fill durability and have the weapon working at max tier again. This could be accomplished with either basic currency through NPCs, or perhaps through the crafting system for basic materials. The point is, this is cheap. Unless you've put yourself broke through other activities, one should never worry about whether or not these repairs can be afforded.

Long term maintenance is different however. At a much slower rate (perhaps one tenth or less), max durability lowers as well. Even after repairs, your weapon doesn't stay tier 5 as long, or perhaps can only be repaired to tier 4. This will be the more expensive repair, with materials matching the tier that's trying to be re-obtained. If this theoretical tier 5 weapons looses all it's max durability and is now tier 0, it should be cheaper to repair back to tier 5 than to obtain a new weapon. From 0-max should perhaps cost somewhere in the 70% range of resources of what the item took to craft from scratch, which would be much much cheaper for someone keeping on top of it. For someone who plays every day, this should perhaps be aimed at something needed to be done every week. While not cheap, this is not meant to be expensive. Unless the player is suiciding into a brick wall, this should be readily obtainable by the average player either through their own farming, or buying resources from others. The point is that this keeps the economy moving without stopping the player to look for rare materials every play session.

The weapon never fully breaks, getting a better weapon is always beneficial, you don't need high end materials on hand at all times, but there is still reason to search for or buy them. You never fall out of need of good materials, and hopefully manages to keep an economy spinning.

Perhaps the wall of text was too long, but I hope the idea is clear enough.

 

[Genobee]

Seeing people heavily push for limited item durability pools concerns me. That was one of the factors that led me to leaving Firefall at one point.

The other was what became the never ending grind. What caught my eye about Firefall originally was the semi horizontal progression. I didn't lose out for not playing constantly - but at the same time I wanted to play more. For me not needing to grind means I will just because. I like getting those extra or alternative items for the sake of it. That's more enjoyable to me then being told I NEED to do something to keep up.

 

[Shadowxsx]

What drove me out from firefall is taking away crafting. I spent far too many hours thumping and credits crafting only for the9 morons taking away all the millions of credits and time I spent upgrading my gear. Plus the fact that firefall was established and the9 morons totally remade the game, which I have played games long enough to see many games fall flat on their tails and fail after a total remake. Plus taking away the base classes as I had all my frames maxed and geared

After the big update I played for less than an hour and logged out permanently and totally uninstalled it.


I can not wait for Em-8er


What I loved about firefall was the fact i could be any class at any time, as I hate being locked into a class

 

[Beeper23]

Seeing people heavily push for limited item durability pools concerns me. That was one of the factors that led me to leaving Firefall at one point.

Yeah I kinda find durability on gear more of a waste than anything (both in terms of design and resources) . I think a better sink would be consumables like ammunition (basic, HE, incendiary, and such) for example making a sort of pseudo durability by just making ammo hard to find in the field and that could open up possibilities for builds or more importance for player bases as resupply points. Heck I bet the bases would be a huge sink on their own.
Now I think about it you could maybe even take away some powercreep by making more powerful weapons need more expensive ammo to refill and doing what payday does with each weapon having a pickup rate (more or less high damage guns might only pick up a single round per pickup while the weaker ones pick up like ten). Oh well whatever they do in the end I'm sure the games gonna still be alright at the very least.

 

[Carter154]

I'll keep this short and sweet:

What drove me out of FF was the endless grind and barriers to participation. In the beginning, the Chosen were the Chosen. You started off weak. And gradually became more powerful in relative terms. Until one day, you could one-shot a Chosen when you had put in enough time and effort. And could contribute in an elite way to all content. YOU were more powerful than any single or small group of the Chosen. And you could actually feel it. And I mean FEEL it. You could run faster. Jump higher. Attack with more lethality. Everyone could still participate in all content. But.....it was better and more fun to be elite.

Then .8 dropped and everything started changing. No matter how powerful YOU became, it just didn't seem to matter. And a lot of the content started becoming for groups only that required you to be at a certain level in your character and gear. Or the group wouldn't take you. Which made me feel bad. Not just for me, but for everyone. Because a chance at the best gear was walled off behind that content.

I never cared about durability and permanent breakage. I thought it actually did add something to the game. Because if you got killed, there was a real penalty. So if you blasted out in zone chat that you were about to die and gave your location, everyone knew what that meant. And dropped everything to get to you before you actually died and re-spawned. I felt it brought the community closer together. Because everyone was always looking out for one another.

That's about it. A little longer than I'd planned. But that's the gist of it.

All the best.

 

[Wraithbane]

Lots of good ideas here. But for me, it was turning the game into Gun of Warcraft™, rather than being a skill based shooter.

But I HATED the perma break durability system. Why? First, it was obvious pandering to the Crafting Lobby. I have no problem with a repair system. The game does need some sinks. It also throws a bone to the "Death must have meaning" Lobby. ^^

But perma break, with the wild and endless RNG nature of gear, was just a bridge too far.

Then vertical progression (in the typical fashion of adding zeros to damage and health, and changing the color of the mobs). So many different things, that finally added up to me leaving.

 

[flyinhigh]

1: No more NON-skill shot skills for Healer.
I am not really a shooter player... but i still loved playing FF and could be useful to my team threw the old healing skills.
With the FULLY skill shot update for PVP balance... i kinda lost my place as a healer.
*also a lot of girls that play with their boyfriends would play this class even if not shooter players... it is good to have PVE NON-skill shot skills.. probably for all classes*

All shots in Ember need to be skill shot. That's the core of the game. Sure, some AOE type stuff like Recluse heal is ok, but nothing beyond that.

2: The merge of AI and simplification of mobs.
In old firefall the mobs all had a unique attribute and they all attacked you in different ways.
In new fire fall they all just shoot projectiles at you and can climb over any surface... even if they are obviously a water/land mob.

Mobs need to be dynamic. This game has to be PVE MMO focused and have varying challenges with wild card guys.

3: Durability
In such a fast passed game like this durability takes away from the gameplay.
I mainly play MMORPGs and Durability works fine in those games... but not a shooter game.
I could understand Items above a set quality/rarity being bind on equip... but not durability loss.

Durability simply needs to be in the game. With a resource/crafting progression type game you can't get around it. If this was back to the crappy leveling system.. who cares about durability. But if we're intended to seek out and hunker down for hard fights for the best resources, then save them, to make the best gear, sadly it ultimately has to have durability (although SLOW depending on effort required to make it). Things ultimately have to go away though and shouldn't stay around forever, balance needs to be finely tuned to the effort and risk put in. A core piece of Ember (and like early firefall) is built around crafting, you can't have that economy without things breaking (and even the choice of when do I bust top tier stuff vs what will work for what we're doing?).

4: Crafting
Crafting has been so simplified now
This is some thing that both finding the rare mats and having the skills should be the focus... this is the one thing that should be a slower grind.

Mat rarity and QUALITY need to be focus of good progression. Those should be limiting factors of building the next piece of gear that will add punch to your frame. Finding rare, high quality mats, and being able to put a high level thumper on them takes a well oiled crew to do well, and that's the funnest part. Building the network of people to effectively progress and be apart of the community. As long as there's a good way to blend raw resources to common quality levels, all is good in the world.

also would be nice to have item drops that you can equip and/or crafters can reverse engineer to learn and/or better said crafting item(s)... maybe have durability for these dropped rare items.. giving the crafted versions much more value and worth the reverse engineering time investment.
It should be easy to understand, but complex enough to make up for the lack of durability.

Dropped chosen equipment in FF was often the best (at least in early days, post leveling I don't know). Chosen Charge Rifles went for hefty price tags in the market for a good reason. Potentially being able to reverse eng them.. maybe.. I liked the fact that they were exceptional tier and ultimately broke. If you wanted best charge on your sniper, maybe you had to have well equipped bastion to farm thumps with to provide the cash flow (which fosters building utility in your frames).


also the loss of my "for life" XP boost for me and my party was kind of annoying....