Firefall Catch-All

cyrax wrote:

PvP with Assault, Medic, and Sniper

Anyone get to play this at PAX?

Yep, I gave it a shot (ha!).

At the risk of being ostracized, it didn't really feel like The Next Big Thing; honestly, I thought it was kinda bland, and that I've seen other games do the same things already, better. Hopefully it's just because it's an early build, or that the demo was intentionally extremely limited, or something.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

TF2 + Ex-Blizzard Employees = Winning 24/7. In general anything Blizzard related is at least worth a look.

Hellgate.

LobsterMobster wrote:
EvilHomer3k wrote:

TF2 + Ex-Blizzard Employees = Winning 24/7. In general anything Blizzard related is at least worth a look.

Hellgate.

*laugh* Maybe not a 100% accurate comparison, but I feel your pain Lobster. I came close to being one of the $150.00 suckers on that one.

I announced my presence in the Firefall thread. I think this looks pretty decent and free is usually worth a look in my book.

Hellgate/Flagship is an odd one, as the game wasn't necessarily bad just had a load of bad decisions made around it. It also led to Mythos which is up for a relaunch soon and Flagship Seattle splitting off as Runic games, who made Torchlight.

Hellgate has an epic framework, it just needs refinement in practically every area. All of the design decisions are inventive they just needed more focus. They didn't have someone to say "No, you have to choose one or the other. We can't be cohesive if we try to be this and this and that and the other ad infinitum."

Its long gone but its too bad someone doesn't buy the guts and make a reboot that spends more time making sure existing features work well rather than being creative with more features.

There are still rumors of Hellgate being either rereleased by Namco Bandai or the rights being sold to some other company to either rerelease it or use it as the foundation of a new game. I still like Hellgate. Yeah, it was in need of some serious polish but I had some fun and enjoyed delving for better sniper rifles. It could be that tenuous link that has me interested in Firefall.

Wasn't there Hellgate Korea or something similar?

Hellgate Tokyo was actually released in the middle of last year. It was just more content so it didn't appear to correct any of the lack-of-focus issues.

Don't get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed Hellgate London. I am just pointing out the things that hurt its longevity and prevented it from reaching classic status (it had the atmosphere and style for sure). In addition to the things mentioned above, coop/multiplayer performance was pretty attrocious.

There was a giant patch with a ton of new stuff that was just about to hit when Hellgate died. I tried it out on the beta server. Didn't fix the problems but it did improve things a little bit.

tagged for later edification.

/tagged

Looks interesting.

I too am tagging this.

Sorta cross posting this from this week's CC thread:

One of the devs on the Firefall forums say the beta will begin opening up just after PAX, and they'll be doing a system where, when you are in, you can send out invites to your friends. Sounds cool to me.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Sorta cross posting this from this week's CC thread:

One of the devs on the Firefall forums say the beta will begin opening up just after PAX, and they'll be doing a system where, when you are in, you can send out invites to your friends. Sounds cool to me.

I just saw that as well. It looks like they are picking small numbers of people from the beta applicants each round. For anyone that's skimming, all you have to do to apply for the beta is to sign up for their forums. Given the number of us that have posted in the Stanley's Strikers thread, I'm hopeful that some Goodjers will get in early and invite the rest.

Taggeditagged.

I assure everyone on this thread that if I have the good fortune of landing some beta invites I will distribute them to my GWJ comrades in a fair and equitable manner which may or may not involve knife fighting on a slowly rotating platform over a lake of acid for my amusement.

I'm acid-proof.

BRING IT ON Female DoggoES

Here's hoping its still going to play as fun as it looks. Seems like it's been a long time since I signed up over there.

Here's TotalBiscuit's hands-on at Gamescon:

gains wrote:

Here's TotalBiscuit's hands-on at Gamescon:

Interesting that they're taking such a stand against RMT for weapons and game-affecting equipment, especially when you consider the trajectory of TF2 and this talk from BF:H's dev Ben Cousins:
http://www.slideshare.net/bcousins/p...

vbl wrote:

and this talk from BF:H's dev Ben Cousins:
http://www.slideshare.net/bcousins/p...

I read that a few days ago. It's quite funny really given most vocal people's stance against RMT mixing with gameplay.

Looks interesting.

EDIT: I posted that before watching the trailer. Now I've watched the trailer, and it looks freaking amazing.

Very nice looking. The Army features sound pretty cool, too. I wonder (apart from being free) how this game differs from ... uh ... that other recent SF-themed MMO FPS with PVE and PVP and capturable regions whose name I can not remember (no, not Planetside 2).

Global Agenda, that's it. How does this differ from Global Agenda?

vbl wrote:

Interesting that they're taking such a stand against RMT for weapons and game-affecting equipment, especially when you consider the trajectory of TF2 and this talk from BF:H's dev Ben Cousins:
http://www.slideshare.net/bcousins/p...

Wow, what an amazing presentation! I remember the big flap about Battlefield Heroes; it got through to me even though I don't much care about that kind of game. I wonder how many games journalists have reported about the success of their "paying to win" strategy? 50% profit margin for a free to play game is pretty damn good.

BadKen wrote:

Very nice looking. The Army features sound pretty cool, too. I wonder (apart from being free) how this game differs from ... uh ... that other recent SF-themed MMO FPS with PVE and PVP and capturable regions whose name I can not remember (no, not Planetside 2).

Global Agenda, that's it. How does this differ from Global Agenda?

Or Line of Defense http://3000ad.com/lod/
Or Dust 514
Or Planetside 2
Or Tribes Universe (from Global Agenda devs)

I can't wait for these to all come out. I look forward to seeing how many I can play simultaneously.

RolandofGilead wrote:

I look forward to seeing how many I can play simultaneously.

Are you secretly an octopus?

Notice the guy said there'd be customisation and 'convenience' things to buy. Watch out for that second word.

Convenience can mean faster leveling up, or enough money to buy everything available instead of just enough to buy everything you need. But those don't need to give a real advantage to people in the field.

In APB, they recently nerfed in-game cash rewards for non-premium members, which caused a lot of uproar. But the actual difference it made was to change things from "premium players have more money than they can spend, and non-premium have enough money to always have one of every top-end custom gun available" to "premium members have enough money to have one of every top-end custom gun available, and non-premium have enough to have one or two top-end guns plus less customizable weapons of other types." In reality, a customized fully slotted weapon will give an advantage, but not a very large one. Skill and teamwork count for a lot more, and even the "noob gun" that you start with is quite capable of winning matches against people with customized guns.

(In short: Nobody *needs* the best sniper rifle, assault rifle, shotgun, SMG, and carbine all at once. Having all of those does give you a bit more flexibility, but if you have one good long-range option and one good short-range option, or specialize and take one long/short-range and one mid-range option, you're in great shape. Hell, I'm a premium member and I prefer to use the unmodded weapons simply because iI don't hae to think about it.)

Of course, that didn't prevent the cries of outrage.

Free-to-play companies have to walk a narrow line, because it's important for their survival that people *want* to pay for things, but also that they don't feel the game is unplayable without paying for things. I suspect that every such game will always have people complaining about "pay to win", regardless of what you can buy and what you can't. The big question is: will the game be fun enough that you feel like you *want* to chip in a bit to supporting it.

I have now looked at too much Firefall content and am obsessed. Right now, I'm anticipating this more that SWTOR or BF3.

Hypatian wrote:

Free-to-play companies have to walk a narrow line, because it's important for their survival that people *want* to pay for things, but also that they don't feel the game is unplayable without paying for things. I suspect that every such game will always have people complaining about "pay to win", regardless of what you can buy and what you can't. The big question is: will the game be fun enough that you feel like you *want* to chip in a bit to supporting it.

Team Fortress 2 does a nice job of this IMHO. Vanity items like hats, facemasks and strange weapons give you no advantage on the field and yet these items are in high demand. From a player perspective this seems like a more palatable model than selling faster level ups or money.

AcidCat wrote:

A worthy successor to PlanetSide has yet to be found. Can this be the chosen one? An infusion of Borderlands DNA is only a good thing. Tough to get excited about a game so far away but this looks sweet.

Planetside 2 was announced last month by the way.

Also, does anyone know when they will start handing out Beta invites? There is a signup page on the Firefall website.