FireFall: Free to Play shooter/rpg/mmo amalgamation

[Scorch!]

http://www.firefallthegame.com/

In development by Red5 Studios, a new company on the block. This will be their debut game.

The company has some pedigree, with the lead designer previously heading up the Tribes series of games (jetpacks, skiing down hills at insane speeds, remember?). This shows in the game as well, with the aforementioned jetpacks making an appearance, along with weapons awfully familiar to some of the Tribes weapons. The vehicles movement reminds me of how vehicles in Tribes move as well, the gameplay video clearly showing a troop carrier moving like the ones in Tribes.

The interesting thing about it is that its an amalgamation of Coop Shooter/MMO style gameplay/rpg elements with competitive multiplayer support. Players work together to achieve objectives and such in a dynamic open world. It looks to be a very fun game, and the first to tackle this style of gameplay in recent years.

The best thing about it (depends on how you look at it) is that the game is a free to play game model, with players buying things from the gamestore to access certain content to fund the game. The devs were adamant about saying that they wont have buyable items that can upset game balance in any way.

There is a beta coming soon, to sign up for it you simply register on their forums on the above link, automatically putting you into application for the beta.

 

[russik112]

****, these grapichs will rape my commie

 

[Revilo]

Looks pretty frickin' cool.

 

[Kazzan]

The art style isn't really my thing. Might try it though, once it's released.

 

[Kevlar]

Warning: this topic has not been posted in for at least 182 days.

http://www.firefallthegame.com/news/your-last-chance-to-play-firefall-before-open-beta

With Firefall fast approaching Open Beta, we’re holding one final Firefall Beta Weekend! This will give gamers who have been curious about Firefall one last chance to try the game out before we open the gates and usher in Open Beta.

Guess I will try it this weekend.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

So after a year in open beta they now launched it, nobody cares anymore.
Saw it on Steam, decided to give it a go.

Been playing yesterday and the better part of today.
The pay-walls are so in your face, it's ridiculous. You don't have to pay, you can get everything including the premium currency, can be earned by ingame means, but man... they push the store so much.
For example if you press escape you get a normal menu that also doubled as a storepage. Everything can be shortened with premium currency and not having a mount (you get one at level 25 via quest, in the marketplace for ridiculous prices or by buying one) is a pain in the arse.


Gameplay is pretty cool. It's essentially Borderlands - sans the ridiculous amount of weapons, there's still a lot, but not Borderlands levels - as a MMO.
It sucks that each suit (effectively classes, but you can change at will) has its one primary weapon and you're stuck with it. For example I love the Dreadnought, but I hate it's weapons. I hate the Recon, but I love its weapon.
You can pick whatever secondary weapon you like, but those are always weaker than the main weapon and don't have the extra abilities of the main gun. On the flipside they have unlimited ammo.

Enemies are a bit same-y so far, but I hope there will be more once I get off the god damn first large "area".

There's a story of sorts that's pretty forgettable but not atrocious and some quests build on each other as you progress through the world. Quests are fully voiced.
Random events and random missions pop up all over the place, but to be honest, so far they aren't all that random but rather variants of each other. Similar to regular quests by the way. You can (and have to if you want to level another suit) repeat them, but while the tasks stay the same, the locations are randomised.
You level up mainly via quests. There's no reason to grind/farm mobs other than for crafting mats, it'll take you years to level that way.

Dungeons are the story. You unlock them every x levels and then go in there and do a bit of the overall main story. Instanced of course, the game finds a group for you if you have none.
No idea if there's raid content.


Now the important bit:
Then there's "thumping". It's mining, but with a twist.
You call in a mining drill and then have to defend it for X minutes. Enemies spawn in waves and you fight. Everyone that randomly comes along and helps you defend it gets a reward as well, which I find a good addition. You can also abort whenever, then you get what you mined so far which of course will be less than when you stick with it.
And then there are "squad thumpers". As you can imaginme they're designed for groups. After a few minutes you get this massive, MASSIVE attack that in the starter areas regularly kills everyone in the area
Fifty or sixty enemies spawning all at once and start murdering everyone.
That's are always good fun, well, unless you're trying to do something else, but it won't let you have much choice there. This bit is definitely the one that is the most fun to me so far. :p



From what I've seen from vehicles they're pretty cool. You can have regular gliders to get off the high peaks everywhere and such, "bikes" and the ultra premium BS edition on Steam gives you a Jeep for multiple passengers.

There's also PvP but I think that's limited to guilds and higher levels, I haven't checked either way.

Graphics are good, but not amazing. Apart from the flashlight and headlights, those are sweet.
Animations are ok.

There are no separate servers to select. It's a megaserver with multiple instances. So if you squad up it pays to use the "/joinleader" command.
Oh and /rui is your friend. The UI likes to bug out a lot right now and with that command you reset it.



So yeah, some minor complains, but overall it's really solid so far and I'll continue playing for a while.
And for a F2P game I won't complain, especially since despite the numerous pay options, everything can be attained in-game with patience.
An example:
Enemies drop "crystals", those you need to craft and research and repair your stuff. You can exchange those for "credits" which will allow you to trade in the marketplace with other players and some other minor stuff. But you can also exchange the credits for the premium currency "red beans", the exchange rate is dependant in the market, but capped on the low end by 100 credits. And looking at the exchange, there's no reason to get it for more, most folks sell at that price at the moment.




If someone else plays, feel free to hit me up. I was creative again and go by "Wellenbrecher".

 

[Splintert]

Downloading, looks moderately interesting at the least.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

I've started to run into a rather absurd problem, considering it's a F2P game.
I level too fast. You get bonus XP for logging in every day and certain tasks and all that stuff, in fact I haven't come "off" the boost since I started playing.
But even without it you'll constantly over-level yourself long, long before a questing area is done, meaning you'll likely miss stuff of the story if you should care about that, or bits and pieces of quest chains that start again later on.
But ignoring that, the more important problem is that you level too fast in comparison to how much it costs to keep your equipment up to date. And that's with me skipping certain research and manufacture of items to save myself expenses.

So yeah, F2P game where the progression is too fast. That's a new one, eh? 
I guess you could argue that it's a problem of not enough money, but there are no buy-able money boosts either. Apart from the subscription but that also boosts XP which means they're cancelling each other out again, leaving you exactly were you started.
This seriously seems to be the intended rate to earn money at.

 

[Splintert]

Have you tried going into crafting?

I find that grinding through the missions does in fact level me too quickly. However I keep myself geared by making my own gear. Granted, I'm only level 10. There doesn't seem to be much of a coherent global trade like most MMOs, the currencies are all mixed up making things quite obtuse. This probably contributes to the gear issue as there's no where to acquire gear on the cheap.

Consider, also, that you're only leveling one of your battleframes. There's 5 available without any extra effort, all that can be leveled to 40. Each of the 5 has another 2, and one has 3 alternate versions. That leaves... 16 total that can be leveled 1-40, 640 total levels to acquire.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

That's what I do.
And now at level 16 I don't have the money to craft and research the up to date stuff any more. In fact all my red and yellow boost modules are still level 7 green ones, the bonuses are the same and it saves me the multiple thousands of crystals to research the lvl 11 ones. Green level 11 ones are 2400 crystals each time. Not to mention cores, weapons, secondary weapons and ability modules.

Finding up to date stuff is too random.
And of course I don't buy it in the market, that's the highway to financial ruin if you're not willing to pay real money out of your arse.


And with the other battleframes:
Exact same issue. How could I possibly afford keeping those up to date on top of the main one I intend to use? Abilities and weapons all require separate research.
I guess I could get them all to level 6 as there's nothing to craft below that, but that's retarded grinding for a pittance in money that'd be gone in two days.



Hnnng...
I still have the 25% boost from god knows where. And now on top of that three bloody 10% boosts from quests that get activated by default >.>
So I went from 17 to 18 in three missions. Good job.

Thankfully those additional boost don't last too long.

 

[Splintert]

Hmm... Do you thump -> ore -> money stuff -> crystal stuff? Seems like that may be a decent way of acquiring crystal if your ore gets sold.

 

[Cookie Eating Huskarl]

Depends on the grade of the ore you're thumping though. I never bought ore below purple grade since anything below purple is readily prospectable in large quantities. In the beta, the ore composition of an area changes daily IIRC, so prospecting becomes a never ending job.

 

[Splintert]

I'd argue that looking for ore is more fun than logging in every day to mine the exact same spot over and over.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

Ore positions change daily still, yeah.

People actually buy regular ore? Wut? Or what do you mean with "money stuff -> crystal stuff"?
Also I don't thump too often, the regular thingies you can crack with sonic resonators give me more than enough ore and you find them everywhere. Plus I don't kill hundreds of enemies, drowning me in even more XP I don't want.

 

[Splintert]

I found that going into a low level area with a nade launcher and slaughtering little bugs by the thousands netted me so little XP as to be negligible. The marketplace uses a different kind of money than crystal stuff, which can be converted at a rate of like 100 crystal = 1 money stuff.

Iron sells for 1 money stuff a piece, so people buying in bulk may want to buy it rather than collect it.

 

[Sir Prince]

Enemies drop "crystals", those you need to craft and research and repair your stuff. You can exchange those for "credits" which will allow you to trade in the marketplace with other players and some other minor stuff. But you can also exchange the credits for the premium currency "red beans", the exchange rate is dependant in the market, but capped on the low end by 100 credits. And looking at the exchange, there's no reason to get it for more, most folks sell at that price at the moment.

So... will it end up like the exhange rate for gold -> gems in GW2? Started out cheap at like 1, eventually worked its way up to 1 gold, then 2 or 3, still not horrible but not cheap. Now its at over 11 gold for 100 gems which is butt ****ing retardedly expensive.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

Yeah, maybe. I guess that is the usual long-term economy of MMOs.
Currently the overwhelming majority of red beans go for 100 credits though and the only reason it's not going lower is because it's capped at that. In fact since I started playing the amount of low-end beans has increased from 50k to 80k.

I found that going into a low level area with a nade launcher and slaughtering little bugs by the thousands netted me so little XP as to be negligible. The marketplace uses a different kind of money than crystal stuff, which can be converted at a rate of like 100 crystal = 1 money stuff.

Iron sells for 1 money stuff a piece, so people buying in bulk may want to buy it rather than collect it.

A "yes" would've sufficed, I know about the currencies, thank you
Interesting, gonna take a look. Even without thumbing I have upwards to 700 iron by now just from surface deposits.

But, is there a way to exchange credits back to crystals? I've never seen such a thing.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

Since the instance servers are finally working again I did the lvl 18 story mission today.
Got out of there with 2500 crystals plus before even starting to salvage all the crap I found.

Highly recommend, not least of all because it's fun as all hell. Really well made mission.

Also I sold a purple I found yesterday, so credits are rolling as well. A good day.

 

[Kevlar]

Hello ARES Pilot,

Thank you for your participation during the Firefall Beta!  To celebrate the upcoming LAUNCH on July 29th, we are gifting our most loyal players a FREE Pre-Launch Package for a limited time.  Simply login to Firefall today to receive your FREE GIFTS and EARLY ACCESS.  (Gifts must be redeemed by August 8, 2014).
A Red Panda Pet
7-Day VIP Access
An Exclusive Title: “Unbroken”

Guess I will try it out since I get free crap for trying out beta last year.

So many F2P games coming out lately and I still have a million games in the backlog.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

In Broken Sunken Harbour there's a open PvP arena. Also a PvE quest-line takes place in there. I guess you can see where the problem will be, eh?
I was just done with my quest, on my way back out, when came across two morons trying to gank me. Well, turns out I was better.

Also Melding Tornadoes are fun. Last one gave me 1700 iron ore.