Firefall Catch-All

You're right Hyp, except "convenience" can also mean, "accelerates XP/money gain to a point where the game is playable." Imagine if you will, needing 1,000 FireBucks to buy your first gun, or paying $0.99 to get a 99% discount (good for five minutes).

If I like this game, it will be my first f2p game. I kind of like the idea of only paying for content, etc. that I want right then. I've played a ton of WoW, but there were times when I was paying $15/mo and barely playing, as well as times when I was playing but not really getting anything new or cool for my character.

Similarly, we all have game piles because we've invested $60 in a game that we ended up not playing right then, or ever.

It's going to be a cool little experiment for me. And if I do like it, I definitely don't mind paying a little to make my guy look good.

gains wrote:

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

Part 2:

hannibals wrote:

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

Filthy skimmer. This was just up the page. PAX is this coming weekend.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

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.

Meaning, GWJ will rule the beta!

mrtomaytohead wrote:
hannibals wrote:

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

Filthy skimmer. This was just up the page. PAX is this coming weekend.

Skimmer happens to be my middle name!

hannibals wrote:
mrtomaytohead wrote:
hannibals wrote:

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

Filthy skimmer. This was just up the page. PAX is this coming weekend.

Skimmer happens to be my middle name!

So that's what the "s" is for, Hannibal? I think I just thought up a tag suggestion for you.

I had a similar thought yesterday when I read that: Skimmerbals

Beta invites start at the end of this week:

Red 5 Dev Team Member, today wrote:

Hey all,

Hope you all are digging the news coming out of PAX for Firefall. We had a great time. I will do a write-up about the show and grab some pictures from the event, but first I really wanted to jump on here and clear up a few misconceptions that are going on about the beta.

- People that registered at PAX are given just as much weight as anyone else who registered here or at any other show.
- We need to merge the database for all the people that registered on the show floor and then give those people time to confirm their e-mail addresses.
- Our goal is to send out invites by the end of this week (pacific time, so don't go all GMT on me )
- I will announce when invites are sent so you all know when to check your e-mail.
- Invites will start out small, but will grow over time and grow quickly.
- Tests will be scheduled, not 24/7.

Hope that answers most of the questions and concerns I've seen flying around. Let me know if you have any other questions and expect to see a lot more news over the next few days.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to not have a new PC yet.

Frequented the booth at PAX but never got to try it, the multiple stances (solo+co-op+pvp->1 open world*) are intriguing though. Especially considering the PAX demo appeared to be set in some sort of an arena. Hoping to squeeze into the beta, luck be with us all.
I anticipate it will cease my Borderlands 2 cravings at least for a while ;).
[size=8]*maybe I don't play enough MMO's...[/size]

Beta notices got mailed out yesterday with more invites given to those initial people.
Consider this my humble request for an invite if anyone here got one.

This does look rather intriguing. I would not turn away an invite should one be available and unclaimed!

They only started with 500 and only 1 gift invite with each invite currently, so only 1000 people are getting in right now. Who knows where it'll go from there.

Firefall had a HUGE presence at PAX. Advertising everywhere, one of the biggest booths I can remember. But seriously, that chick's armor is ridiculous.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

But seriously, that chick's armor is ridiculous.

I think games like firefall are at the point where they know how stupid the big bulky armour slash chainmail bikini armour is and just took it to a ridiculous level from the start rather than building up to it. If nothing else, I'd say it makes it memorable and makes for a better art style than messing around with realism and destroying it later.

I just find the whole skin-ARMOUR-skin-ARMOUR-skin-PISTONS aesthetic a little irritating. They obviously went for stylized, which is okay. Just not to my tastes I guess.

Tamren wrote:

I just find the whole skin-ARMOUR-skin-ARMOUR-skin-PISTONS aesthetic a little irritating. They obviously went for stylized, which is okay. Just not to my tastes I guess.

I think it's all part of them trying to beat you over the head with the energy source everyone is fighting over.

I kind of like the pistons, and I think at this point everyone knows that yeah, bikini armor is silly. Firefall looks like it's going for ridiculous. That's fine. Not everyone needs to break out the Gears of War armor. Gears of War does that nicely.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I kind of like the pistons, and I think at this point everyone knows that yeah, bikini armor is silly. Firefall looks like it's going for ridiculous. That's fine. Not everyone needs to break out the Gears of War armor. Gears of War does that nicely.

I think the problem is that the art designer needs to know their intent, and stay consistent to it. There's an image I link from Gausswerks designrboot that I can't find right now showing the progression from a guy with a gun in light fatigues, and you keep adding armour and glowing bits of tech to it ending up with something very similar to most 'generic space marine' characters.

There's nothing particularly wrong with that art, it's just how you use it, particularly in a world where you're going to have a mix of players at different stages of character development, how come the person fighting in a normal shirt and pants isn't getting torn apart by a spider when there's a high level character using super armour to fight a corresponding high level spider. There's obviously a game mechanic explanation, but I think putting everyone in decent armour keeps the world consistent.

I think what I dislike the most about it is that it doesn't differentiate enough between different classes of armour. They all blend together into an armoured bikini theme, which doesn't allow you to identify different classes and different levels of strength on sight.

Games like TF2 are GREAT at giving you ways to identify each class, you could recognize them by silhouette alone. Planetside did a progressive armour set up. Players without armour have overalls and a flak jacket. Medium armour covers the torso and extremities with an open faced helmet. Heavy armour went a step further and filled out the limb protection and added a heavier helmet. In combat its almost impossible to confuse them and not understand what you are fighting.

Seems reasonably clear to me. Recon is light and skinny with pointy spines, Medic is medium and has two ridges of spines sticking out of their back, Assault is big and heavy with lots of round edges. There also seems to be increasing amounts of illumination on the model from recon - medic - assault, so visibility is also a factor there, recon will be sneaky, assault will be in your face.

It's also a lot easier to make out the details if you're not peering down a sniper scope. ;D

Scratched wrote:

Seems reasonably clear to me. Recon is light and skinny with pointy spines, Medic is medium and has two ridges of spines sticking out of their back, Assault is big and heavy with lots of round edges. There also seems to be increasing amounts of illumination on the model from recon - medic - assault, so visibility is also a factor there, recon will be sneaky, assault will be in your face.

When you factor in armour customization it still doesn't provide that "at a glance" feedback. But it hopefully won't be a huge issue.

Have they actually gone into armor customisation yet? To use a parallel, for all the whining about TF2's art style and visual readability being 'ruined' by customisation, I can't remember the last time I mis-read a class owing to it. I expect something similar for Firefall, the broad strokes of the battleframe won't be overridden.

I'm really looking forward to this. Thanks for bringing it to my attention! I agree, it does look a lot like borderlands. I'll definitely end up playing it at some stage.

I must guess from the resounding silence that none of us were the lucky recipients of any beta keys so far.

gains wrote:

I must guess from the resounding silence that none of us were the lucky recipients of any beta keys so far.

I have a couple of Tribes Keys... Would love to snag a FireFall code. Firefall looks great.

Phobos on the Firefall forums[/url]]Hello everyone. It's been a while since the last update, so I wanted to take a few moments and give you all a heads up on where we're at with beta and where we're going. As a reminder, beta participants are still under NDA. If you have any questions regarding beta, they should be sent to me or FadedPez, not to other participants.

Current Status

As I've mentioned before, Firefall is currently holding beta tests twice a week in order to facilitate getting players into the servers at the same time and to make sure we have staff on hand to watch everything as the test progresses.

The last few tests have been great. Our server stability has gone up tremendously, the number of users affected by inability to connect has gone down, and our matchmaking processes are putting people into matches consistently. There are still a number of bugs that we are tracking down and working to resolve, as with any real beta, but we are definitely feeling confident about where we are at currently.

All current tests are testing out PvP matches. The reason for this is two-fold. It allows us to test specific features (core combat, matchmaking, server-side code, etc), and the open-world is not yet ready for testing. Because of this, testing required that people stare at a loading screen while waiting for matches. This presented problems in that we couldn't identify where issues with matchmaking were, and people thought it was extremely boring.

Since that was not the way the game was meant to work, last week we added a temporary open-world zone (very small) that players can connect to, change out equipment, test out battleframes, and queue for matches.

This has been a big hit. It took a lot of effort to put in place, but we are glad it was able to get in as a temporary stop-gap while we continue to make open-world ready for beta testing.

The Future

We have reached the point in beta where the data we are getting for the server-side infrastructure is limited by the players we have. As such, we are going to be rolling out smaller waves of invites more frequently.

We are still going to be utilizing a combination of invites from current testers and invites directly from Red 5. There is no set schedule for the release of these invites, and I probably won't be announcing each wave, but we are sending out many more invites over the next month into January and February.

The Red 5 Studios offices are going to be closed over the holidays, but the beta tests are still being held.

As of today, I've given more invites out to current testers and I will be sending out invites myself to additional testers throughout the day.

Have a great holiday, be safe. Thank you for reading and being a part of this community.

Sounds good to me. This also makes me ok with not being in the beta yet as I'm not sure how I'd do with a set schedule of just PvP.