Firefall

Is this game any good fun or does it still suck?

I don't wanna waste time mates if it still sucks.

Is this shooter defiance bad or even worse?

Cheers.

I find the combat infinitely more fun than Defiant. I can see how there isn't a whole lot to progression -- there aren't any raids (yet?). This is especially true if you pay $$$ and get a founder's pack that includes all the advanced classes. Unlocking these classes is a big part of progression. I do agree that item progression doesn't seem very substantial, but I was playing with someone who had the advanced classes unlocked and some of the high-end gear -- and he was able to do substantially more than I could. So maybe it really just adds up, or there's a major upgrade on the highest tiers?

In any case, I think the game is worth the download and spending some time with it. I do agree that the tutorial is shit, but you're not playing the game for the 10 minute tutorial. You can also switch your class (battleframe) at any time and gain separate exp for each class. So it's not like you're ever stuck with what you choose initially.

Been playing the game for the past few days. Once I got into the feel of the graphics and game-play, and got my initial engineer stuff, I got into the zone. Played for 4 hours straight! The FPS combat is fast and furious and grouping with people is completely seamless within the action. There are some issues but overall, I'd say it's a fun game and definitely worth a download.

Felmega_sl said:

Been playing the game for the past few days. Once I got into the feel of the graphics and game-play, and got my initial engineer stuff, I got into the zone. Played for 4 hours straight! The FPS combat is fast and furious and grouping with people is completely seamless within the action. There are some issues but overall, I'd say it's a fun game and definitely worth a download.

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I tried playing on the day it went open beta, however it was fairly unplayable. The SIN system kept breaking. Seems everything is server side, from the inventory to the stores. Basically every single menu. So I could not even complete the first missions due to objectives not completing. First it took around 30 minutes for it to register that I bought a secondary weapon, then the same problem happened with using the battlegear station to equip it, that even crashed the game momentarily creating a dump screen with a bug report that I was unable to send because it said "my username and e-mail address is not correct", no idea what that ment. Then it kept asking me if I really did not wish to send it as it might be the bug they were looking for. So even their bug reporting was broken.
I did the mission with learning to harvest with the thumper, worked fine, then suddely the mission after required going into the SIN network again which suddenly went unresponsive again. Logged off then.

Only thing that did work was the combat. Placed a thumper and since it registers as an event in the world, there were suddenly lots of people helping out. That was fun. And combat, even though I only got to play the very first part, seems more action oriented than Defiance.

Downside is that it is not as controller friendly as Defiance. It is more like a combo of controller + keyboard. A shame, as I find Defiance much more entertaining with a controller. Would certainly like the ability like in Final Fantasy 14 to click a button combination to get control the mouse crusor with it.

Also, can anyone explain the F2P mechanic in this game to me? One thing most F2P games try to avoid is the pay to win ability. In this game though, it seems I can buy tons of different suits, that start with what appears to be fairly advanced weapons. Are those unlocked by playing or can you just outright buy them from the start using real money? It certainly does not seem right if the game is as heavily focused on PvP as it sounds like, and then give the ability to buy massive power upgrades.

I will check back on it later when the initial open beta rush has subsided and I can use the menus. The gameplay appears to be a combination of Defiance + Tribes so there is potential for enjoyment there, certainly worth checking out at the price of 7 gigs of HD space. However, even after just having played this for an hour, I doubt this will be the next major mmo for anyone related to this forum. But considering my extremely unreasonable hope for EQ next, that goes against every lesson learned from every mmo release since EQ, anything that can take my mind off that future dissapointment is worth trying out.

The tutorial was indeed awful, and it is a terrible mistake to drop me in the middle of some empty city with nothing obvious to kill. I don't understand why MMOs feel the need to over-environment and under-populate their games. Starter places should be teeming with mobs to kill. That's all that really matters to me in these games anyay: do I enjoy killing enough to get involved socially? The weaponas also felt terribly under-whelming. No heft and no sense of weight.

But: jumpacks.

I played for a few hours last night before logging and I'll likely give it another try tonight. I found it intriguing but it does seem not fully-fleshed.

The server-side SIN stuff is retarded and will kill the game if they don't fix it. Making me sit there for 5-7 seconds to buy my first secondary weapon while the server decides what to do is a bad, bad decision.

I didn't understand the cash vs in-game currency model either, but I didn't look specifically into it. I just tried to re-camo my suit and realized they wanted me to spend some money or something. Fuck that.

Is it just me or are these graphics like from duke nukem from 10 years ago?

Cheers.

I think they went for some sort of cartoony style not completely dissimilar to TF2 or WoW or something but they missed the mark and it just looks like a really cheap game

Just fired this up. I can't really complain about the graphics much, it's cartoony. I really like the combat though, it's fast and fun. Having a big problem with my toons though, I'm unable to loot anything, started a new character and same problem can't loot anything. Pretty much means I cannot advance my character or finish the tutorial. But once that gets solved I could see myself playing this a good bit.

did they ever put in more than that one tiny zone

Supposedly the entire marketing team for Firefall was fired on August 6th. And at least one of their "major" PvE guys left the company this last friday. Ship is sinking fast.

edit: Wow. In terms of treating your employees like shit. The major PvE guy who left made a goodbye post, which they subsequently deleted after banning him. There was nothing negative in it, just a thank you to members in the community. What a terrible attempt at a cover up.

Hey yawl!

Because I feel I've grown close to you all and value the communication we have, I wanted to personally let you guys know that today is my last day at Red 5 and thus working on Firefall. It's been quite the journey, and rather than go into the reasons why I'm leaving (a forum isn't the proper place for it), I want to instead thank you guys for making Firefall fun and my experience working on it great.

Over the past year, I've been growing closer to you guys (the Firefall community) and posting information on things that I'm working on and likewise, reading what you guys have to say. You guys are crux to the development of Firefall, and likewise were part of my dev team. A good development process includes its core audience in the playtesting process early and often, and some of you have been able to do just that either on-site with Psypoc's playtesting and others on the public test servers. Thank you for being awesome and continually shaping how Firefall progresses!

The interactions I've had with you guys have been great, including general feedback to playing in squads to even meeting some of you in person. It's not only made my own experience as a Firefall player more positive, but it's also strengthened my skills as a developer. I've learned invaluable lessons developing Chosen Warfront activities and Blackwater Anomaly, and neither of which would be as good as without having you guys are the core. The interactions that I've had with the Firefall community have been some of the best I've had in any MMO, so again, thank you for being a great community!

While I can't answer all of what the future may hold for Firefall, Chosen Warfront, open world, or instances right now, what I can say is there are plans already in motion to create even better iterations and evolutions of all of these. The future is exciting, and watching you guys experience it over streams and in-game will be a fun thing to see.

Once again, thank you for everything! I'm sure I'll see you around, either in Firefall or other games.

Sincerely,

Clancy Powell, aka AmnDragon
http://twitter.com/amndragon

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From The9's quarterly reports:

Firefall took 7 years to develop and cost more than $130 million.

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I think Firefall might officially be the biggest MMO failure of all time. Given that the game has made close to zero money, a 130 million dollar budget isinsane. Holy shit. At least SWTOR made most of it's money back.

ZProtoss_sl said:

From The9's quarterly reports:




I think Firefall might officially be the biggest MMO failure of all time. Given that the game has made close to zero money, a 130 million dollar budget isinsane. Holy shit. At least SWTOR made most of it's money back.

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I can't find that anywhere in the investor report here:http://www.corp.the9.com/news/2013/news_130906.html

Are you referring to a different one? The only cost quote I could find was "We have great expectation for these two games on which we have invested more than $100 million in the past three years.? So between 2 games they possibly spent that in the last 3 years.

It isn't inconceivable that the game cost 130 million but I find that a little high, unless they have ~200 people working on the project (and have for years) then hitting the 130 million mark is quite high. That might include marketing however, marketing costs can get surprisingly high but they aren't related to development.

I ran some quick and dirty numbers assuming a smaller team size (50) over the entire 7 years and came out with a development cost ~42 million, which without marketing seems to be more in the ballpark of what I would expect the game to cost at the higher end.

Since this thread is active again, I have been playing the game again for the past couple of weeks. It is still more fun than any MMO I've played since... the first month of Darkfall maybe? It does need more content though and a higher difficulty, and the crafting system could stand to be less convoluted (not less complex, just less convoluted). I'm not paying a monthly fee so I just pick it up when they have major patches and play a couple of weeks.

I think I've put more hours into it than any MMO since WoW with the exception of Global Agenda, depending on whether you consider it an MMO or not.

Denaut_sl said:

I can't find that anywhere in the investor report here:http://www.corp.the9.com/news/2013/news_130906.html

Are you referring to a different one? The only cost quote I could find was "We have great expectation for these two games on which we have invested more than $100 million in the past three years." So between 2 games they possibly spent that in the last 3 years.

It isn't inconceivable that the game cost 130 million but I find that a little high, unless they have ~200 people working on the project (and have for years) then hitting the 130 million mark is quite high. That might include marketing however, marketing costs can get surprisingly high but they aren't related to development.

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http://seekingalpha.com/article/1552...its-eyed-in-q4

Here are the 5 major games being launched in 2013:

Firefall took 7 years to develop and cost more than $130 million. Its full scale open beta test commenced on July 9 and early results and feedbacks have been positive.
Planetside 2 launched its open beta test on June 25 and early results are positive. Its revenue exceeded $1.7 million within 3 days post launch.
QiJi 2 will have its open beta test on September 28. It's a 3D game built upon a successful game QiJi that was launched 10 years ago.
MU Return is a 3D webgame that was unveiled on July 15. It will become The9's primary and No.1 marketed game during the famous China Digital Entertainment Expo & Conference (ChinaJoy) from July 25 to July 28. Its launch schedule will be finalized in late July.
ReXueWuShuang is a webgame that was launched in April. It is a commercial success and also a social media hit. Its revenue exceeded $1.6 million over the first month.

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And in terms of wasting money, it's not hard to see that they had utterly incompetent top end leadership. They spend 2 million on a bus, 1 million on a statue, and 3.5 million sponsoring a chinese soccer team. Let alone the "Stage 5 group" which was 8-10 people on staff doing nothing but making useless youtube videos.

I can't read that webpage with adblock enabled, so I will take your word that is what the article says. The article though, near as I can tell, is not an official source. Not that it isn't POSSIBLE to spend that much money, which 38 studios certainly proved, but that it is unlikely to the point where I am disinclined to believe it without a little more proof.

I couldn't read the article, is it a primary source?

Firefall sponsored Pax Prime in 2011 which probably cost them a pretty penny and the game was no where near being finished then. They liked to spend money. Their booth there was huuuuge.

Holy shit , what little I know about the game , I still know enough to realize if they truly have spent 130 million and 7 years then it does trump SWTOR in a lesson on how not to spend money , at least SWTOR had much more to show for what they spent.

Is there any way they actually recoup 130 million for this thing ? I barely even hear about it any more on sites.

And now they've"suspended" all PvP content:

Dear Firefall Fans:


As you know, Firefall started with PvP. We have gone through several iterations, and for some time, pursued the controversial e-Sports route. As many of you know, its not working very well. Our last big attempt was a pure PvP eSports mode, Jetball. While very fun, its a high skill game and doesn't attract many of our players (less than 3% PvP in Firefall).


Also, PvP has suffered as our focus has had to focus on the popular PvE part of our game. People want more content, fewer bugs, and more polish on these world systems. For these reasons, we have made the tough decision to suspend PvP and take the system offline so that we can rethink it and relaunch it. PvP is an important part of our game, and we want to get it right.


So we're going to regroup, rethink, and deliver the best PvP system we can that can be enjoyed by everyone. We don't have a timetable for this, but at some near future point we will shut off the PvP aspect of the game, which we feel does not represent Firefall at its best, and relaunch that part of the game when its ready.


Thank you for your understanding. We only want to deliver the best experience that entertains all of our players, and we feel that by taking the time to completely rethink our PvP and re-implement it to the highest standards, we can do much better.


- Mark Kern
CEO, Chief Creative Officer, Red 5 Studios

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Denaut_sl said:

I can't read that webpage with adblock enabled, so I will take your word that is what the article says. The article though, near as I can tell, is not an official source. Not that it isn't POSSIBLE to spend that much money, which 38 studios certainly proved, but that it is unlikely to the point where I am disinclined to believe it without a little more proof.

I couldn't read the article, is it a primary source?

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It's a legitimate website that doesn't make up numbers. Not really sure why you're disbelieving what's in front of your face. I mean just as a reminder, we're talking about the company that:


Spammed PAX for YEARS with a huge booth and advertisements everywhere.

Bought a 2 million dollar e-sports bus.

Bought a 1 million dollar+ statue.

Sponsored a Chinese soccer team for 3.5 million.

Kept 8-10+ people on staff for the sole purpose of making terrible youtube videos (see Stage5 TV).


I think it's pretty clear to anyone with a brain that they went through an enormous amount of money with almost criminally reckless internal spending. It's entirely possible that when it's all said and done the final number actually exceeds the 130 million number substantially.

ZProtoss_sl said:

It's a legitimate website that doesn't make up numbers. Not really sure why you're disbelieving what's in front of your face. I mean just as a reminder, we're talking about the company that:


Spammed PAX for YEARS with a huge booth and advertisements everywhere.

Bought a 2 million dollar e-sports bus.

Bought a 1 million dollar+ statue.

Sponsored a Chinese soccer team for 3.5 million.

Kept 8-10+ people on staff for the sole purpose of making terrible youtube videos (see Stage5 TV).


I think it's pretty clear to anyone with a brain that they went through an enormous amount of money with almost criminally reckless internal spending. It's entirely possible that when it's all said and done the final number actually exceeds the 130 million number substantially.

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Look, I get it. But even half that amount is criminally reckless spending, and it really all depends on their staff size. Believe it or not one time expenditures like statues, buses and PAX booths can be expensive, and incredibly wasteful, but they don't add up to a crazy ludicrous number like 130 million. In software development staff and salaries are nearly your entire cost, so the cost is almost entirely dependent on people.

Actually, if you can find some decent staffing level numbers over the course of those 7 years I can get a pretty decent high/low estimate for you. I Googled around but couldn't find anything helpufl. For 130 million to have been spent they would have had to be close to 200 people full time for most of those 7 years, or about half that number but with a per person spending atdoublethe standard industry rate.

As the staffing levels get lower the per person spending goes up and either The9 is run by such utterly incompetent people that they didn't even look at the most basic financial statements, or 130 million is high. Their burn rate would need to be close to Schilling's to get that kind of number, so there is precedent for that kind of waste, but he had to get money from the public in a way that was unethical and criminally suspect.

So, you can see why I am alittleskeptical.