What happened to FF?

[DARKB1KE]

Job boards felt so static. Probably doesnt make a whole lot of sense does it.

http://www.firefallthegame.com/news/path-to-launch-blog-3-ares-job-boards
Sounds good on paper but yeah, I think too much importance was placed on the job boards instead of creating interesting dynamic content that happened around the player. They're okay for when you don't have a purpose for logging in, you can just go up and select a mission, but they made it so reliant for reputation and made it very basic mmo quests.

 

[TankHunter678]

I actually preferred the job boards over having to look for job handout NPCs.

The reason being is that job boards ensured that a job was available, even if you had to do a different job to make space on the board for one you wanted to do. The roaming NPCs would regularly get knocked into pits or killed by mobs because some stupid accord guard decided to aggro a terrorclaw that wandered into their gun range. Or a hisser hive got spawned in the middle of town. Or there was a chosen dynamic event.

When they took the jobs off the board they became a lot more annoying, especially combined with all the other job/npc bugs that were spawned in the change.

 

[Squid Boss]

I actually preferred the job boards over having to look for job handout NPCs.

The reason being is that job boards ensured that a job was available, even if you had to do a different job to make space on the board for one you wanted to do. The roaming NPCs would regularly get knocked into pits or killed by mobs because some stupid accord guard decided to aggro a terrorclaw that wandered into their gun range. Or a hisser hive got spawned in the middle of town. Or there was a chosen dynamic event.

When they took the jobs off the board they became a lot more annoying, especially combined with all the other job/npc bugs that were spawned in the change.

Nothing wrong with a good job board. Problem was that the open world content never got up to bat and made a swing that connected and counted. Firefall was always plagued with the "Why am I doing this?" and there was always a very hollow answer; XP, Gear, Resources. You never HAD to take back towers or areas. Map control was yet to grow complex or be it's own living breathing entity. It made job boards all the more painful in the end because that was really the highlight to Firefall's experience at launch. They never even got to the rather limited open world dynamic quests/activities even now and it wasn't that much before.

Job boards can exist, and they should exist in some major hubs, but breaking them down as a repeatable leveling tool is throwing the grind in your face. In such a technology filled setting would it not have been more logical to spontaneously offer via radio communication a quest for a specific area out of the blue. Allowing you to accept or deny. Completion could require turning in items to a specific place and jobs may open then, a few from a large variety, or reputation daily quests open at that location. Anything to tie it to the open world so that sense of discovery is still there would be much preferred than looking at the map for a level marker and visiting the same bland board twenty six different times.

 

[TankHunter678]

Ultimately Firefall was always plagued with an identity crisis. If it was being made a WoW clone from the get go the dynamic event system would of never been designed for it. Dynamic events in a sense were designed to replace questing entirely.

Map control was a thing when the map could be lost but that was removed, which made map control ultimately pointless. Until the Amazon where map control became a thing again because sections of the map could be lost and had to be reclaimed in order to access the content in that area.

In the end though questing and dynamic events were never integrated into one another. Quests were treated as a way to tell a story. Dynamic events were treated as something to make the map active and give you something else to do.

It probably seems like a pipe dream to have the two systems work together, because that would put massive load on the design team to have all the little nuances and variations in the story based on what dynamic events are encountered. Lotta work for what is probably considered little gain.

The big question of "Why am I doing this?" was simple. Its a vertical progression MMO. Go and progress. When you hit the end, wait for the next content update.

 

[Vladplaya]

I think all those options can work just fine in a single game if implement correctly. I liked the Ares missions that you stumble into randomly, but I also wouldn't mind little bit of standard chain questing here and there, with pieces of story and fun our interesting npcs. Mission boards are way to straight forward and boring to me, but you know what, I still can see appeal of them from point of view of people who maybe just want to log in, and get a straight forward task from the get go, without need to look around for a random event or certain npc.

All three are different and serve their own purpose, and work great by providing good amount of diversity, especially when each focuses on different gameplay style, tasks that player have to perform, etc.

 

[Daynen]

hmm... then did you find the person or people that was responsible for that screw up? If so... what did you do them?

Classified.

 

[EvilKitten]

It probably seems like a pipe dream to have the two systems work together, because that would put massive load on the design team to have all the little nuances and variations in the story based on what dynamic events are encountered. Lotta work for what is probably considered little gain.

Personally I think having a mix would actually be a good thing. Every "MMO" I have ever played always ends up with daily repeatable quests, particularly for end game content. They don't exactly tell a story, they are simply there to provide the player with something to keep them active and interested in the game. Dynamic events was (IMO) a major upgrade over static repeatables because the dynamic aspect made the world come alive. One of my pet hates in MMO's is the whole "going back to town" mechanic where you would gather a dozen quests, to out into the world to do them...and then have to go back to town to turn in the quests. Often times games will artificially lengthen the content of their game by using that mechanic to force the player to transverse back and forth across the entire map multiple time for each quest in a chain. Yeah I hated that.

On the other hand having a single quest arc to tell the story of your game should be just as important, particularly for those of us who are just as interested in the lore and story as we are in pulling the trigger. You can however make the quest chains semi dynamic by not associating them with an fixed quest giver and rather have them trigger based on player or even global states. If the next quest in the chain simply triggers when you meet the requirements then there is no need to "go back to town". You can still choose whether to do the quest immediately or wait.

 

[Deso]

I wish it might happend an single player of Firefall, something like Mass Effect 2 ya know.

 

[Stoned Wookiee]

I'm downloading the game just to see what's it's like. I don't remember the last time I played. Hopefully crappy steam lets me use my original login information.

 

[NanoTechnician]

What I didn't like was the constant banter from Oil Spill and Aero about missions in the area, that really was way too much banter.