Firefall Catch-All

The Conformist wrote:

I would like an invite if that's ok?

PM sent. I'm "dimmerswitch" in-game, too - feel free to friend me up.

Dimmerswitch wrote:
The Conformist wrote:

I would like an invite if that's ok?

PM sent. I'm "dimmerswitch" in-game, too - feel free to friend me up. :D

dang just beat me to it

seswa wrote:
Dimmerswitch wrote:
The Conformist wrote:

I would like an invite if that's ok?

PM sent. I'm "dimmerswitch" in-game, too - feel free to friend me up. :D

dang just beat me to it :)

I pm'ed him a bit earlier, too. Oh well.

Everyone, if you want in, we've got invite to hand out.

WHO WANTS AN INVITE!?

Blgo post from Xenogenic with more depth on the upcoming battleframe changes.

Big takeaways for me are:

* Confirmed no Tiers for PVP anymore (unclear what this means for PVE - assuming the desire to have more vertical progression there means a return to levels?)
* Battleframes will have 'regulation' loadouts for PVP, with what sounds like less customization than currently. Sounding like PVP frames will be much more like a straight-up class choice.
* Stronger differentiation for the Battleframes. All will have unique weapon / passive / synergistic abilities.

Not clear whether unlocking a frame will open it up for both PVP and PVE (hoping this is the case - as otherwise it'll be really confusing for new folks).

Xenogenic wrote:

And to make it even more interesting and thought-provoking, we’re adding the notion of passive effects to every frame. The overall impact of these passive effects is that they will change your gameplay or rhythm in some fashion. A working example that we’re testing right now is on the Raptor Recon frame. Every time a Raptor Recon lands a shot, he gains an electrical charge. At 3 electrical charges, all of his abilities become “empowered” and have an added secondary effect when fired (which then consumes the 3 electrical charges).

I like the passive effects idea. I'm less-fond of the locked-down PVP frame loadouts, but if that helps them balance PVP better I'm for it - as long as in PVE I have more options to choose from.

Awesome! Thanks for the invite guys! Dimmer I used yours. Got a chance to play a little bit with Wiz last night, so far I'm enjoying what I see. I'm just hoping there is more to do within the final product.

Here are 2 beta keys

KD8G1-95AA5-MSAGB-3636U

GGRNL-OCH98-XP1XA-5FEHY

reply if you used one.

Installing patches now. I don't think I've played since mid December. My busy work days have forced me to prioritize my time and suddenly single player campaigns (Portal/2, hot line miami, Dead space) have taken precedence to MMO grinds. I would love to participate in a weekly hour to two hour session with fellow goodjers though.

Edit: Haha, 3 gigs of downloads await

Overview of features in the Q1 2013 milestone:

Phobos[/url]]Armies & Social Features
A team is dedicated to bringing basic army functionality to the game. This means things like army names, rosters, tags, chat channels, etc. The army tech tree and gameplay elements are further in the future.

Matchmaking Team
This team is focused on fixing bugs and balance issues with the PvP matchmaking system. They are also reworking the challenge mode tool to make it easier to use and understand.

New Objective Gametype/Map
We are working to create a new PvP gametype that focuses on a single objective to create something that more closely resembles a sport and provides fair and balanced gameplay.

New User Experience
The New User Experience in Firefall is currently non-existent. We want to build a system that introduces new players to the game and helps them get introduced to the nuances of what makes Firefall great before they are thrown into the open world or PvP for the first time.

Open World Content
This team is working on additional open world content that will help bring life to the world and create fun encounters for you to stumble upon or seek out.

New Progression System
We are iterating on the existing progression system to create something that is easier to understand and more fun to use overall. This includes the split of crafted gear from PvP, but also many changes to the tier and constraints system.

New Crafting System
The goal of the crafting team is to create a more engaging, easier to use crafting system with more depth to gameplay to really bring resources and crafting to the forefront of Firefall as it should be.

Chosen Warfront
The Chosen Warfront team is back on the case making more changes to how the Chosen interact with the world and how engaging the overall war is to players.

Chosen Combat
A separate team is working on making the Chosen more fun to fight through AI behaviors, animations, new types of Chosen, etc. If the Chosen Warfront team is focused on the macro-level gameplay, the Chosen Combat team is all about the micro-level gameplay.

Multiple Freelancers
Multiple team members are working on things that don't require large teams and so they don't have a particular team name. Expect to see changes with Thumpers, customization, UI, and more.

All very positive.

Also, stumbled into a site that folks might be interested in - RAWR4Firefall has a widget at the bottom of all their pages showing the current resource spawns for various minerals. If you wonder whether it's too late to get any more of that purple bismuth, it's a great resource.

Spoiler:

It is too late for purple bismuth.

Do I see purple Regolith there? Time to log on and find some before Dimmer gets home from work!

There was purple bismuth? ARGH.

Good run tonight, folks - two full squads of five for a little bit there, and lots of fun thumping along the northern shore (although I did not miss those diseased scavengers one bit).

Yup! Great fun! Looking forward to having another run here soon

I had fun. I wish I could get home earlier on Thursdays, but I managed a good 30 minutes or so. I think I need another 4 melded muscle tissue and I can finally build my destabilizer.

While nobody was looking, they put out a pretty nice patch, (notes) had an issue with the garage, and fixed it.

Added bold for emphasis in thing of interest. Looks like we can launch through Steam again!

Twitch
We added full Twitch support to Firefall! You are now able to stream your Firefall gameplay and your microphone input over Twitch with a simple push of a button. A Twitch account is required. For further information about Twitch and the creation of an account visit http://www.twitch.tv/

General
Smooth progress bar added for uploading big dumps after a crash
The Highlight and the focus is now on the text field of DumpTruck so players are able to directly write a report
Founder rewards are delivered - including the Tiki Thumper. Check the manufacturing station for the Tiki version of the thumper
0.4 second delay between slotting a consumable and seeing it slotted in the ability bar has been removed

Open World
Added a new “Light Personal Thumper” to the game to fill the gap between the Stock and Improved Thumper. It’s cost is similar to the Improved Squad Thumper
Fixed an issue where two Crashed Thumpers would spawn in close proximity to each other
Signal Scan event is now working
The Melding Guts refining process has been improved to get guaranteed refined items
Increased the resources gained from supply crates in the world
Removed explosive barrels from the world
Players are no longer able to spam El Terromoto which would produce audio and text repeats
Fixed the loss of the Hammer Time mission thumper when players joined a PvP match right after calling down the thumper

Interface
Steam overlay is now working with Firefall if you add Firefall as a non-steam game in steam.
The W-Key now works when exiting a vehicle
Stylized cursors have been added to the game
Added a tooltip for water damage
Added a “drowning” damage type
The mouse is now able to use during chat and players can click the text input box
Loot from encounters are now shown in the UI
Clicking on “create” in the zone selection screen is working now
Fixed the “SIN System Error” message when selecting the portable antenna in the manufacturing terminal

Performance
UI memory leak has been plugged
NPCs should now be displayed animated at long distances
Increased the cache size of 64-bit systems to handle high performance areas with high quality graphic settings

Audio
Players will now hear sound effects when using the Nav wheel
Fixed an issue where players sometimes stopped hearing audio dialogue while playing
Fixed an issue with players losing audio while thumping

Account & character creation
Users can now register for a new account from within the Firefall client
Gender icons in the character creation screens have been optimized to better differentiate them from each other
Fixed a blank tutorial tip when logging into the game

Recon
New Year glasses and SIN antlers are now invisible when recon uses the Decoy ability

Interested to check out the (functioning) Signal Scan quest. I won't be around for tonight's thumping run as I've got a date with Mrs. Dim, but will be sure to set up a Steam event if I hop on Friday to poke around.

I'll miss the exploding barrels with the huge "ERROR" text, though.

So I played a bit last night after a long time absence. The core game is still really enjoyable but as a founder I'm getting a bit worried. The amount of actual content in the game is still minimal. It's coming up on almost a year since the closed-beta started and there is only one zone and that one zone isn't even close to finished. There are work in progress textures everywhere, towns/cities have no functionality and there are barely any quests. And this one zone isn't even that much larger than a standard MMO zone.

When the beta started I assumed this would be one of many areas but now it seems like this is all they have and it's progressing at a snails pace. It seems like this game is either years away from launching or they plan on launching with only one playable area.

I don't like being a negative Nancy and am not regretting becoming a founder but I am getting a little worried.

BNice wrote:

So I played a bit last night after a long time absence. The core game is still really enjoyable but as a founder I'm getting a bit worried. The amount of actual content in the game is still minimal. It's coming up on almost a year since the closed-beta started and there is only one zone and that one zone isn't even close to finished. There are work in progress textures everywhere, towns/cities have no functionality and there are barely any quests. And this one zone isn't even that much larger than a standard MMO zone.

When the beta started I assumed this would be one of many areas but now it seems like this is all they have and it's progressing at a snails pace. It seems like this game is either years away from launching or they plan on launching with only one playable area.

I don't like being a negative Nancy and am not regretting becoming a founder but I am getting a little worried.

Actually, it's been Since Sept 2011 since closed beta started. So more like 1 1/2 years. I got in about this time last year. Then again, even by the time I jumped in, it was all just PVP. There's a reason why I am forcing myself to not play this game right now. It really is going way slower than anticipated. I have no doubt they have some great stuff in store, but they've been hitting too many walls with the fiddly bits, and I'm just gonna sit on the sidelines and watch. I've already dropped ~130 hrs into the game, and for me, that's a huge amount.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Ninja Patch

That patch broke quite a bit of the UI I see.

Just checked in for the Thursday night meet-up and I was the only one in for the last 2 hrs :(. I can understand wanting to wait for the next milestone though, as I've done that in the past. Hopefully next week will be a better all around turn out.

Eldon_of_Azure wrote:

Just checked in for the Thursday night meet-up and I was the only one in for the last 2 hrs :(. I can understand wanting to wait for the next milestone though, as I've done that in the past. Hopefully next week will be a better all around turn out.

Bah - I hopped on slightly earlier as a break from work and played with Psych for a little over an hour before realizing I hadn't blinked for most of that time, and needed sleep. I should have thought to put up a Steam event when I fired it up - totally my fault.

Agree that things are still going slower than I'd like. Some of that is the fact that Red5 is a very small team, and some is that they're still doing major overhauls of core game systems (crafting will be heavily redone it sounds like).

The core game is definitely a blast, and I hope they can get to the point where new content can start getting dropped on a regular basis - in the meantime, I play when I'm in the mood to crush some bugs.

Speaking of bugs - saw new (to me) behavior for the mosquitos last night. They were showing up as swarms of a half-dozen or so, close together and with a faster movement speed than before. Felt a lot more natural for them, made them a little more challenging, and strengthened their role a little.

Big patch on March 22nd, hopefully. Dimmer, looks like you'll get tons of rewards for all the saved up crystite you've got when it gets converted over.

The patch containing all the work put into this quarter’s milestone is near! Set your calendars, the date we’re aiming for is March 22nd. We have a lot of changes coming in this patch and while not everything will be perfectly polished and balanced, there will be much for our beta testers to test out and provide feedback on these implementations.

A lot of people have been asking what will happen to resources and items in the coming patch. We have a little bit of news for you on what we’ve decided so far. Here’s what’s going to happen:

Existing Crystite (pre-March 22nd) will be changed to Beta Crystite
All resources (pre-March 22nd) can be refined into Beta Crystite
We will have a vendor available for players to buy rewards with Beta Crystite
All crafted gear will be wiped
Crafted items such as ammo packs, Melding Anomaly Neutralizers, Thumpers, etc. will NOT be wiped
Any battleframes you have unlocked will be available to you and all XP earned will be refunded to you
Battleframes will retain the warpaint you last applied to the battleframe

Ooo, I'm looking forward to trying out the new changes. Hopefully I can work through some of my SimCity addiction before then.

Have they said yet what the rewards will be?

WizKid wrote:

Have they said yet what the rewards will be?

Phobos[/url]]As I mentioned on the stream, the most likely thing would be resource boosts. You're trading in resources for resource boosts. We do not have time to create custom items as we're trying to get the milestone done already as it is. We don't want to do cosmetic items as those cost red beans and trying to figure out a valid conversion rate on crystite to red beans is near impossible due to the current economy. There is no way we're going to create something that everyone will want. I'd rather you expect disappointment and be surprised than expect awesomeness and be disappointed.

Disappointed that the resource / crafting rebalance requires a wipe, but am fine with the wipe, ultimately. Anything that's available (even just resource boosts) is a bonus, IMO.

For what it's worth, Grummz had a post that I wanted to share.

Grummz[/url]]In hindsight. running a 24/7 so early in beta was probably a mistake. We didn't have enough in place, and most people came into beta expecting a nearly finished game.

I've been toying with the idea that next time for some other game (nothing planned or worked on yet), we'd still open early, but only run 24/7 in short bursts with breaks in between.

Red5 has some smart folks. It's difficult learning "in the open" like they are with Firefall, but I'm glad they're willing to own up to things and learn from their mistakes - makes me optimistic they may just be able to pull this thing off.

Random poster about what was mentioned in today's Firefall LIVE. Not sure I get the point of making it live during normal US business hours.

Info that has surfaced from FFLive:

Basic Army system coming!
Battleframes no longer in tiers. Its now 15 frames, 5 of each archetype, unlocked separately, leveled up separately.
Garage slots changed, when you buy a Battleframe, you get a garage slot for that frame, one each for PVE and PVP. People who bought garage slots prior, get red bean refunds.
Removed load-outs, so single PVP, and single PVE slot (single ability set) for now.
You can now buy frames with red beans OR "tokens". Earn tokens through progression through frames, if you spend XP on frames you get tokens. For now they are only used for purchasing Battleframes.
Ultimates! Do damage/ heal/ take damage to build up for the ultimate, slowly decays over time. ARE in PVP.
New starting area "Battle Lab" for basic movement and shooting etc. Start in "civilian battleframe" you get to choose one of the archetypes, and there are unique tutorials for each ability on each frame. Future testing ground for new frames/guns etc that are to be released. By the sounds of it, on the upcoming patch can't go BACK once its over.
Also, FFLive will be streamed from PAX on Friday!

One week! Guess pile progress is gonna slow for a while once this drops.

Firefall Live has been happening at 10am Pacific since they started doing them weekly - I assume that's just because it's when it's most convenient for Red5 to put them on (since folks are already in the office).

Given that all frames you have unlocked will apparently carry over, and all garage slot costs will be refunded, I may try this weekend to finish unlocking all the tier 2 frames (think I have just the two T2 recon ones left).

I should be around on Sunday doing that if anyone else wants in - will throw up a Steam announcement if I hop on, for sure.

Speaking of Armies, I'm not sure how Red5 will be doing it (whether you can be a member of more than one army at once, but only have one "active" like Guild Wars 2), but the Army name I'd reserved was "Hero Squad" - tag [HERO].

I've done a quick pass at a possible logo.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/FXjkjxs.png)

Spoiler:

We're also super-good at sand racing.

More info about battleframes and how they'll be handled post-patch.

Phobos[/url]]* There are no more tiers.
* Each battleframe is independently leveled.
* By owning a battleframe, you automatically own a PvP and PvE version.
* The PvP version of battleframes are using approved gear so that they are balanced against other PvP battleframes.
* The PvE versions can be upgraded and use crafted equipment.
* You no longer have to have garage slots for battleframes.
* By owning a battleframe, you automatically have a garage slot for that frame.
* Users that purchased garage slots will be credited their Red Beans that they spent on garage slots.
* Locked battleframes can be purchased for Red Beans or Tokens.
* Tokens are earned by progressing your unlocked battleframes.
* All battleframes that you've already unlocked in Tier 1 and Tier 2 will be free to you in the new system.
* All XP that you've earned on those frames will be available to respend on the new progression trees for those battleframes.
* Separate loadouts for the same battleframe have been disabled for now, but should be added back in the future.

Given that frames will be unlocked via tokens after the March 22nd milestone patch, and that all frames you have unlocked prior to that patch will be given to you for free, seems like unlocking anything you're interested in pre-patch is the way to go.

Wish I was going to be around tonight - think I have maybe one thousand XP total on the T1 recon frame right now.

I can't figure out how to ask this without sounding like a troll, which is not my intention.

I've tried playing this game several times by now. Is there something more to do in this game that is not obvious or apparent after the first hour of gameplay?

P.S.
Should this thread not be in MMORPG forum?

Moon, its still missing most of the content. So, pretty much, you've seen what they have right now. Eventually they will get to the point they are happy with the infrastructure, stop rewriting the existing game and start adding more content. Its still a closed beta, right? Haven't been paying attention, really.

As to which forum, *shrug*, its like Planetside 2 that way, not exactly one or the other.

But what sort of content are we talking about? Adding more maps or diverse aliens to shoot will not change the gameplay as it is experienced in the first hour of gameplay.

MoonDragon wrote:

But what sort of content are we talking about? Adding more maps or diverse aliens to shoot will not change the gameplay as it is experienced in the first hour of gameplay.

More dynamic events, fully fleshing out the ones already implemented (melding tornado is only part 1 of that encounter), more story bits. Also, pretty sure you haven't seen baneclaw in 1 hr of gameplay. But yeah, right now, it's mostly you play it because the mechanics are fun, and the world is pretty.