Some thoughts about crafting/durability/items/lootz

[Ronyn]

At the risk of sounding like I'm hounding you (Which I am not. lol) I have more to say on this.

the difference between finding the game you like and trying to avoid the challenges are two different issues, one with real merit and one just a show of immaturity--.

Looking to avoid challenge from the entertainment medium of video games isn't necessarily a sign of immaturity. In some cases it certainly is, in other cases it is simply a person who has had enough challenge in their real life so they want something easy for their recreational time. Likewise there are those who look to overcome challenges in the digital space so they can feel a sense of accomplishment while shying away from hard things in real life. Easy games, hard games, nothing is wrong with either preference as long as one is honest with themselves about why they play.

As for Bl4ckhunter, you're not wrong; distilling the true essence of the game is important and removing unnecessary components can often make a better game. Having said that, riddle me this: isn't the goal of a shooter game to be the one who survives the battle?

In a larger context, the need to maintain things is a part of life and a motivator for many. While it may seem silly to include it in a game where shooting things is the 'core gameplay,' I still posit that we do ourselves a disservice by not trying to tie two kinds of gameplay together into a more rewarding whole while also creating a world that is more alive and memorable for having such things. We already have a plethora of games where we 'just shoot things;' frankly, guns and jetpacks simply aren't new and exciting anymore. Ember, and indeed any game in the works, can stand to be more than that. The core gameplay of a shooter doesn't HAVE to be JUST shooting; it really can be more. There's no need to keep using such limited vision when we have so many possibilities available for something grander.

Finding the right sentence to describe what the fundamental goal of a shooter is a remains a tricky thing. So I won't butcher it here. lol
I do want to say, if we are being real, this threads discussion hasn't really been about whether Ember's shooter-first-experience should include maintenance. There is going to be maintenance of a sort. The debate has been about the HOW that maintenance should be expressed.
In essence: the need for repairs verses the need to remake. Which one fits where, how, and why.

 

[Sik San]

Looking to avoid challenge from the entertainment medium of video games isn't necessarily a sign of immaturity. In some cases it certainly is, in other cases it is simply a person who has had enough challenge in their real life so they want something easy for their recreational time. Likewise there are those who look to overcome challenges in the digital space so they can feel a sense of accomplishment while shying away from hard things in real life. Easy games, hard games, nothing is wrong with either preference as long as one is honest with themselves about why they play.

So casual style is for successfull ppl IRL while seeking challenging games with good gameplay depth is for losers, you say? I hope I understood your post wrong.

 

[Ronyn]

So casual style is for successfull ppl IRL while seeking challenging games with good gameplay depth is for losers, you say? I hope I understood your post wrong.

Whoa. You misunderstood entirely. The point is that there is no simple equation like that.
The level of difficulty/depth a person likes in their game does not indicate their overall level of maturity/success in real life.

 

[Sik San]

Whoa. You misunderstood entirely. The point is that there is no simple equation like that.
The level of difficulty/depth a person likes in their game does not indicate their overall level of maturity/success in real life.

Aight, I'm sorry then. Tough morining I guess.

 

[Ronyn]

Aight, I'm sorry then. Tough morining I guess.

Heh. No worries.

 

[Kryusien]

Personally I would hate "permabreak". Especially if the weapon you got was rare and you don't feel like jumping through the hoops to get another one. How about something where the more damage a weapon has taken, the more resources it takes to repair it? And at 0 durability the amount of resources needed for the repair would be nearly as much as it took to build said weapon in the first place? (I apologize if I just repeated what's been said but I didn't have enough time to read the entire thread at the time I posted this)

 

[Sn0wfIak3]

Item breakage remains a touchy subject.

On a mechanical level it's almost the same as enchantments, yet most people love enchantments and hate decay.

 

[Sn0wfIak3]

Imma repost something i posted on the FF forums, it's not really relevant but i think it shows the potential difference between an enchantment system and a repair system:


Turn the perk system into an enchanted gem system. I think this could even be done with the current perk tab intact or with minimal changes. It's not item decay, it's enchantments.

So instead of unlocking perks, we unlock (Crystite) gem slots, bandwidth and recipes. The ingredients could come from thumping but also maybe from missions, raids or even PvP. The perk system could actually make for a good, deep but pretty easy to understand crafting system. There could be tiers or qualities to the gems too. Higher quality is better, but takes up the same bandwidth. A big issue with Firefall now is that there's no downtime.

The perks are already round, there's a lot of them, so they could even drop as loot.

Pretty shiny right? This could also eliminate the need for so much RNG in all the other systems.

Get rid of some of the RNG in stuff like tinkering and put it into resources. Like in the old open beta days. RNG felt a lot less like a cheap mechanism back then. It was more organic. Sometimes there was more of X, sometimes there was less. It even inspired me, a person who hates grinding to spend entire weekends farming these materials, when they eventually spawned.

Think about it this way, what if perks would have never been introduced in the first place. What if Firefall was a game without perks. Would this still have been an unpleasant suggestion? Or what if i were to suggest an additional system based on consumables on top of the perk system, that basically does the same thing?

Charged items or consumables are not that uncommon in games. The perks system already is, the perfect gem system.

 

[Wintersiege]

I think the main purpose that a durability/perma break system is trying to fill is an admirable one, ie. promoting intelligent and/or skillful game play contre courant to Run&Gun/Zerg play. Without a mechanic like this in place you may as well go play CoD/CS:GO, Overwatch etc, where death means next to nothing and you can get right back into the fray (which arguably, is exactly what Firefall does now).

But if Ember is going to actually try and be a MMO Shooter, then I feel like death has to be penalized and skillful play on the other hand should be rewarded. Then again most MMO these days have next to zero death penalty, dumbed down mechanics, and a ton of other ""conveniences"" that have drove away much of their playerbase, and left most of the remainng scratching their heads wondering why their beloved game is so boring. I dont think movements like Nostalrius (now defunct Vanilla WoW server) would have a hope of existing if games were not dumbed down and handing everything to their players on a silver platter while simultaneously driving away any of their hardcore players.

TLDR - Ember should promote intelligent/skillful gameplay while punishing zerg gameplay. The means to which this should be accomplished doesnt have to be item destruction but unless the player ""feels"" something when they die, then why not simply remove dying as a possibilty outright.

 

[Krhys]

Crafting, has it's loss impacted FF negatively? I would say yes, when I started playing again in 1.6 after leaving when OB ended so many players (including myself) were asking what happened to it. Today, it still remain absent, reducing the amount of enjoyable (for many) content that is actually quite important.

Durability/perma-break - while we still have durability and perma-break seems to have disappeared, when these were first introduced back in OB did it break the game, I mean really? Sure it took a bit of getting used to but by the time my purple sniper rifle expired, I already had plenty of mats to build another and plenty of Cy to buy another the store as well. Durability, well, paying for repairs, still exists today in the game and I can't remember anyone in zone chat whinging about it.

The market - might as well not even have that option in FF anymore. Don't really need to say much more on it.

So while I fully appreciate that crafting, etc. are secondary mechanics to a shooter (hell, who among us would want to play a crafting and market simulator with a bit of shooting on the side?) it's pretty clear that FF has been severally diminished by the loss of these great additions.

 

[Bl4ckhunter]

Durability/perma-break - while we still have durability and perma-break seems to have disappeared, when these were first introduced back in OB did it break the game, I mean really? Sure it took a bit of getting used to but by the time my purple sniper rifle expired, I already had plenty of mats to build another and plenty of Cy to buy another the store as well. Durability, well, paying for repairs, still exists today in the game and I can't remember anyone in zone chat whinging about it.

No one whined in zone chat becouse virtually no one used purple gear as durability made a good half of crafting turn into pointless "why bother" becouse rare items simply didn't warrant being used, and that is extremely bad since it invalidates dev time.
Perma break and durability loss on use makes it disadvantageous to use expansive gear becouse the increase in efficiency didn't overcome the base cost. This gets even more exacrebated with horizontal progression since with item break you end up creating a "budget meta" where only the cheapest items are used and that is behind bad

 

[Wintersiege]

I never cared for durability loss due to use but I have never had a problem with durability loss from dying as it goes a long way to promoting intelligent/skillful game play ie, not zerging to die over and over.

 

[HighCaliber]

We already know Ember will have resource collection, crafting and durability loss. Why are there still people talking about that stuff like they have to convince someone to put it in the game? Stop telling everyone how many people like crafting, stop telling everyone about how durability promotes skillful play, stop telling everyone that we need gameplay variety. All of that is already going to be in the game. You're hamming a nail that's already all the way in.

Wait is it one of those extreme things where some of you folks act like just because your main gear won't perma-break the WHOLE system falls apart? It is isn't it. It's got to be exactly your way or you're going to go on and on about it day after day. OMG people. Learn to accept some compromise for goodness sake. Wasn't someone saying about signs of immaturity?

 

[TankHunter678]

Crafting, has it's loss impacted FF negatively? I would say yes, when I started playing again in 1.6 after leaving when OB ended so many players (including myself) were asking what happened to it. Today, it still remain absent, reducing the amount of enjoyable (for many) content that is actually quite important.

Durability/perma-break - while we still have durability and perma-break seems to have disappeared, when these were first introduced back in OB did it break the game, I mean really? Sure it took a bit of getting used to but by the time my purple sniper rifle expired, I already had plenty of mats to build another and plenty of Cy to buy another the store as well. Durability, well, paying for repairs, still exists today in the game and I can't remember anyone in zone chat whinging about it.

The market - might as well not even have that option in FF anymore. Don't really need to say much more on it.

So while I fully appreciate that crafting, etc. are secondary mechanics to a shooter (hell, who among us would want to play a crafting and market simulator with a bit of shooting on the side?) it's pretty clear that FF has been severally diminished by the loss of these great additions.

Rare items needed really rare numbers on the resources (#1000variantsofeachsingleresource). So besides a small few crafting basically amounted to just make what works and use it, you will lose it anyways regardless of how well you stay alive and take care of the piece of gear due to decay and perma break.

When perma-break left people at large got back to crafting. Because they would not worry about losing what they put so much hard work into before.

Durability where you need to repair is generally a non-issue for people. It becomes an issue when paired with a system like perma break.

 

[Bl4ckhunter]

Durability where you need to repair is generally a non-issue for people. It becomes an issue when paired with a system like perma break.

i honestly think it's a bit overcomplicated a far as death penalities go tbh, a flat fee on respawn is more clear and you avoid that 0.01% of players who end up with no gear at all and having to contact support/beg for help becouse they can no longer play (once a pal in my army ended up with broken servos and weapons and since he had just wasted all his cy to buy some ability couldn't even move anymore, that was just hilarious, broken but hilarious.)

 

[OziriusSVK]

(once a pal in my army ended up with broken servos and weapons and since he had just wasted all his cy to buy some ability couldn't even move anymore, that was just hilarious, broken but hilarious.)

https://media.giphy.com/media/3NtY188QaxDdC/giphy.gif

that was just hilarious, broken but hilarious

 

[Sage]

The problem with Red5 was the fact that they tried to directly copy the SWG system without knowing what they were doing.

There were a handful of devs at best that had ever played SWG. Unfortunately after suggesting the system and people liking the idea, the system was handed off to many, many others before I was able to have any sort of real influence over the system (around 0.6 era).

It's not as simple as saying that Red5 was clueless. In a company of that size there are a lot of complex things happening, most of which I don't understand to this day. Ultimately, as Ronyn said at some point in this thread, the most important factor in bringing together a fun game is a cohesive, well-defined vision. That can't happen when features are constantly changing hands, and everyone has very different ideas of what the game is or should be.

This thread is an analogy to the experience of working at Red5. No one was stupid, or bad, or whatever. People just have different and often conflicting opinions about how they define fun, which is why it's so important to have a set of principles that the game must follow from the get-go. Only features that abide by all principles should be considered for implementation.

 

[Squid Boss]

I am fine with item break so long as there is the ability to Salvage the broken part afterwards with a random chance of recovering various parts and materials in the process; ranging from unfortunate and little to wonderfully sucessful.

I hate losing things entirely because it is used to keep me playing. Cheap and uninteresting and frankly calls to question if the rest of the game even offers enough meat on the bone to chew.