Firefall

[Joose]

PC Gamer are giving away instant access to the beta test for Firefall this month, so I thought I would give it a try. I'm a sucker for free shit.

Its actually rather entertaining. It is very much following the standard MMO pattern as far as the questing, looting, crafting etc., but the shooty shooty aspects makes it feel far more Borderlands than WoW.

Also: jet-boots. More games should have jet-boots. As we have said before, travel in an MMO should be either fast or fun. Jet-boots make it fairly fast and a lot of fun. Skipping across the tops of hills, bounding from rocky outcrop to rooftop to weird giant shell is pretty entertaining in itself.

I've not played enough to get a proper grip on everything that's going on, but I settled in to the basics of jumpy about combat almost instantly.

If you give it a go I have one bit of advice: turn up the graphics options. The defaults are oddly conservative, and it can look damn pretty with some of the options like the shafts of sunlight turned on. Even after turning up the refresh rate, the model detail and textures on a bunch of things and the aforementioned sun options it still runs dead smooth on my not exactly top end rig.

Its all good so far. I'm not entirely convinced how long it will keep my interest, as I'm not entirely sure how much variety there will be, but I'm hopeful at least.

[Dog Pants]

I also have a key for this, but I have managed to sum up the grand total of zero interest in it, as much as I'd like to want to play it.

[Anery]

Being a MMONG I am interested, being futuristic I am also interested and having jetpacks has me raising an eyebrow.
However, my hopes are not high - even if the game is good it could well fail because it is new and has bugs (if you think WoW didn't have big bugs to start with you either were not there to remember or you choose not to) or that people just don't want to invest their time when they have already invested so much into pokepanda. I think they are headed for a F2P straight away though? which could mitigate some of this.

I buy PCG regularly so I will give this a whirl.

[Joose]

I remember the WoW beta and launch well, and this is faar smoother feeling already. In fact, occasional graphical glitch aside (I clipped slightly into a wall once. The only regular bug is in spectator mode: when you are downed you can press space to see other peoples views instead of viewing your own corpse. If you do that when there is noone nearby your body twitches in a weird manner) its been impressively bug free. Ive certainly not hit anything show stopping yet.

As for the issue of WoW-lure (and MMO fatigue in general) its not really all that similar to the WoW standard, so I dont think the two will be in competition. I mean, its still recognisably an MMO, but in a similar way to how EvE is. Theres a couple of reasons for this:

1) The shooting is fun all by its self. MMO combat tends to be a dull means to an end. Combat in this is much more Team Fortress than WoW. Theres no standing still and facerolling across the number keys here.

2) The progression isnt directly upwards, it goes just as far out as up. In something like WoW you gain experience to unlock new, more powerful abilities. This has gone for the alternative approach of experience unlocking customisation options. Some are strictly upgrades, granted, but a lot are...sidegrades, I guess: things like lowering your armour to improve your speed or doing more damage at a reduced RoF. A nice touch to this is that you can use in game money to buy new battleframes (think Iron Man suits) that dont have to be the same class as your starting class. Essentially you can buy new classes.

I think they are headed for a F2P straight away though?

Yep, and they have been keen to highlight that the real money stuff will be only for decorative stuff or XP boosts. There wont be any pay-to-win element to it, and you could happily get everything out of it without spending a penny.

[Dog Pants]

When I think of MMO shooters I think of Tabula Rasa or Global Agenda. I didn't really go for either, and I'm not sure how this could be drastically different without being an all-out shooter. Anything that can alleviate my fears and make me consider the download?

[Joose]

When I think of MMO shooters I think of Tabula Rasa or Global Agenda. I didn't really go for either, and I'm not sure how this could be drastically different without being an all-out shooter. Anything that can alleviate my fears and make me consider the download?

Those two were shit? Ok, more detail:

Tabula Rasa was horrible. It had a fiddly interface and the shooting was actually dice roll based. Essentially, it wasn't an MMO shooter, it was a regular MMO where every class was ranged.

Global Agenda was...well, I cant speak for anyone else, but I thought it was dull. The environments were big flat open areas where nothing much happened, the enemies were standing around waiting to be shot at. It bored me to tears very fast. Its big problem for me was that the shooting itself just fell a bit flat.

Which is the problem here, the main thing about Firefall is that its just fun, which is kind of hard to quantify. Its got a lot of elements that you will have seen before in games that were not great, but they seem to have hit that sweet spot where the jumping about shooting gribblies is good, not dull.

Its a bit like comparing Generic Shooter 5 from BlatantRipoffSoft to an FPS by Valve. Break it down to bullet points and they might both be very similar, but one will be messy and uninteresting whilst the other will be polished and fun.

That's not to say that I'm completely 100% backing this. They are going for a dynamic events based system rather than relying heavily on quests. That could be a very good thing, but they will have their work cut out for them to make the dynamic events not the same general things over and over. Although saying that, people are quite happy to do basically the same thing over and over in other co-op shooters. *looks pointedly at Dejects ME3 multiplayer stats*

[Anery]

So open beta is here, I am patching my client to see what has changed. Last time I checked the game was very much a work in progress with just about everything breaking at one point or another - or all at once.
Some things I want to see

1. More information about what the fuck is going on mechanics wise
2. More quest based adventuring
3. A map which makes sense
4. Massive lag improvements
5. Less shit breaking - quests, the garage, guns, abilities...

If anybody fancies a blast I will be having a pop this weekend.

It has jetpacks...

Not enticed by jetpacks? who the fuck are you?!

[spoodie]

When I tried the closed beta 6 -12 months ago it seemed just another generic MMO, start in a town then go get badger arses but with a jetpack. I do remember it being unclear on this as well. I suppose shouldn't expect it to be any other way, but does it feel any more original now?

[Anery]

Don't waste your bandwidth. The lag is unforgivable, I was watching my network traffic and it not only takes as much bandwidth as it can get but it is laggy enough to make me feel seasick. I disabled my AV for a few minutes and this did improve the situation slightly but that kind of measure is unacceptable.
So, after running through the 'tutorial' I can say that:

1. There is now even less information about what is going on mechanics wise.
2. Being dumped on an outpost with no instructions is not what I call questing
3. The map is still fucking pointless
4. The lag is fucking ridiculous
5. I have no idea how to use anything so no idea if it is broken.

Oh, and...

The community is poisonous as fuck.

[spoodie]

That's a shame. This looked really interesting when it first appeared, but a lot has changed in the genre since then.

[Joose]

That's a shame. This looked really interesting when it first appeared, but a lot has changed in the genre since then.

Indeed. I was quite interested in it initially. I am now entirely uninterested.

[Anery]

So, they actually decided to launch this thing. I'd not logged into the beta for fucking aaaaages so I now have no idea what it is like.
As they are keeping the F2P model are any of you chaps thinking of giving it a go? I understand a lot has changed and that the director was given the boot some time ago so it might be worth a look in - I'll be giving it another go of course.