Did Firefall open beta weekend grab your attention?
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Published on 06-11-2013 12:00 PM
No, it's not a WoW killer, nor does it have the intention to be one. RED 5 Studios' prodigy child, Firefall, offers it's players a completely different and somewhat unique experience when it comes to MMORPGs. They completely decided to ditch the traditional stuff like leveling and grinding, enabling you to somewhat jump into the action right away. Exteel players know what I'm talking about.
Here's the thing that will poke you in the eye right after you fire up the game - there's only one characters slot. Right, a free game, so you probably have to pay for additional. Wrong. You see, Firefall classes, all 5 of them, are in fact battleframes, which means you can literally equip a new class and keep playing. That's right, no more banging your head against a wall to come up with a cool alt name or spending hours thinking which character do you really feel like playing. In Firefall, it's as simple as talking to an NPC and switching your class. They are still treated as characters, meaning each class (battleframe) is independent and has to be "leveled up" again. Notice the quotation marks. One of the biggest features of Firefall is there are no levels. You, as a character, don't really level. Your battleframe, as a class, doesn't really level, but it has a certain progression. Playing one battleframe for some time will enable you to unlock extra features, skills, weapons and mods. Literally, same experience you have when you check Path of Exiles talent tree. Your mind is slightly blown, but you get used to it rather quickly.
Other then unconventional leveling experience you get from RED 5, you don't really have your usual "Kill X of Y" or "Loot 10 pelts" type of quests. There's a couple of roads you can take to crank up your battleframe, and that's thumping or playing random events. Unlike some other titles that are about to go free to play soon, and I'm not going to name RIFT here, Firefall really nailed the dynamic event system. It's not boring. While there's maybe 5 or 10 types of events, they are different depending on the region you are in or how many players you have in your squad. Besides regular events, a tornado appears once in a while, as a group event which yields massive awards upon completion.
Thumping, on the other hand, is basically gathering resources. You take this hammer out, one that would make Thor shy, and smash the ground, using vibrations it creates to detect resources that are hiding beneath the surface. In reality, you press 1 button, watch a nice animation, and look for marks on the ground. You then place a machine, thumper, above those resources and defend it until it's at 100% capacity. Depending on the thumper, and number of players in your squad, difficulty of "thumping" experience will vary. This is rather fun, as mobs can and will destroy your thumper, and those advanced ones don't really come cheap. The materials you gather can be used for crafting various helpful items, but nothing game breaking, so those who spend an eternity thumping will not have a huge advantage over those who don't.
Other then all that PVE mechanics, they did implement the real stuff, which is PVP. RED 5 Studios, a smaller company then some unnamed wowmakers out there, paid some attention to the PVP players and really put some effort into making this a unique feature. Think Unreal Tournament, without the vehicles. The maps are really vast and you can clearly see they are doing their best to balance it out. Except your standard shooting skills, you will be required to maneuver a lot during combat, as some of the weapons make a small AOE blast on the ground.
As a player, you may choose to become a founder and unlock certain features, as well as some SWAG, both within the game and in real life. Founder packs vary, from $20 to $100, and all them will grant you instant beta access, ability to reserve a nickname forever, personal experience boost, squad experience boost and all the the good stuff. Note how I said experience boost. Instead of gaining gold from mobs, you get experience, which you spend to progress your battleframe and unlock new weapons, skills and mods. No leveling. Ever.
Now that they opened their realm doors to everyone this weekend, and considering they are planing to go open beta mode starting 9th of July, do you consider actually playing the game? We've seen games that have been in beta for too long simply fail upon release (Hi APB), and Firefall is in beta phase way too long. Beta might simply be there in case something fails miserably and data gets wiped, but it also might be there so they don't have to do all the releasing stuff such as press events, but rather they'd test the market with beta first and take it from there. Judging by the number of people that paid for founder packs, I'd say the market is wide open to Firefall. One way or another, no bots will be written for this, as there is really no point, so will you shove away your exploiting picks and dig in the world of New Eden? Let us know in the comments below!
PS If you do plan on playing the game, invest in a glider pad, as they are really cheap and will get you anywhere in a jiffy. Don't forget to place it on top of a hill!
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