How Firefall Changed My Mind About MMO Shooters

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

How Firefall Changed My Mind About MMO Shooters

Firefall from Red 5 Studios does some good things as an MMO shooter. And the best part? It's fun.

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[youji itami]

"They construct echo chambers composed of the daily posts on blogs and Twitters that do nothing but support their views, sharing only the most extreme, crackpot writings of the opposing sides in order to assure themselves further of their own righteousness."


Have you been visiting Moviebob's blog's? never a good idea that.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

I think MMOs can get away, by and large, by not having much of a plot. The buttershovels example is good, and something that would be nice to see, but "two armies fighting" is classic for a reason; the game is focused on giving engaging gameplay and views plot as an additional element. If it's thousands of times more fun than adding numbers in Excel -if you are a distinct character in a beautiful realised world interacting with other characters, making decisions and having enjoyment on a personal level- you can leave aside some additional plot.

Funnily enough, it's like connection issues: So long as you can do big, fun things there's not a lot of value in worrying about the small, fiddly bits. It's only when people fail to find enjoyment in the grand schema that they complain about the generic nature of the plot.

 

[hickwarrior]

Funnily enough, it's like connection issues: So long as you can do big, fun things there's not a lot of value in worrying about the small, fiddly bits. It's only when people fail to find enjoyment in the grand schema that they complain about the generic nature of the plot.

And I'll be the first to say that that's me. It just seems lazy to me whenver they tell you you're the only one when all there are so many other players experiencing the same thing. *sighs* Then again, I just don't find much enjoyment in any MMO these days.

 

[Thanatos2k]

TOR is the MMO that has the best story. Of course it does it by sacrificing the multiplayer aspect of an MMO and has you doing things all by yourself (but other people can come along if they want, though it's them helping you doing YOUR quests, not doing quests together in some kind of shared storyline).

And this is to its detriment, as once you run out of story you run out of interesting game to play. Which makes you wonder why they made an MMO at all instead of KOTOR 3. Oh, right, EA forced them to. Better luck next time, Bioware.

 

[Atmos Duality]

And I'll be the first to say that that's me. It just seems lazy to me whenver they tell you you're the only one when all there are so many other players experiencing the same thing. *sighs* Then again, I just don't find much enjoyment in any MMO these days.

Neither do I, for many of the same reasons and then some.
Rather than Firefall though, it was Warframe.

I genuinely enjoyed the varied weapons, powers/frames, parkour system, and PvE co-op...but unfortunately that's all it had.
Everything else is grind (by necessity for an MMO); force a player to repeat something arbitrarily too many times, and the best gameplay ever will depreciate into tedium.

It becomes tedious because there's no end, and without an end, there's no closure. Providing closure is one of those things that I am finding an increasing rarity in games, to the point where I don't know if there's much of a demand left for it.

 

[Evonisia]

That method of storytelling could work for an MMO, but then again very little else would work for that type of game. Dark Souls is meant to be this personal experience (well, exploring the world, but it wouldn't work if you had twenty people running about) so I don't see that approach working, at least not with a similar type of world.

 

[yamy]

Australia? Best possible location in the event of global catastrophe?

Not one involving giant spiders it ain't.

Spoiler: arachnophobics beware

 

[hickwarrior]

*snip*

To be fair, I rarely if ever finish games nowadays. But I call it an explorer type trait, where I want to experience what certain games have to offer.

I do agree with you a lot. Closure can help make a game something to be fond of, a memory you now have.

 

[Atmos Duality]

To be fair, I rarely if ever finish games nowadays. But I call it an explorer type trait, where I want to experience what certain games have to offer.

I do agree with you a lot. Closure can help make a game something to be fond of, a memory you now have.

I'm also stricken with a bit of wanderlust; which is part of why I find Terraria so appealing (despite it having no hard closure; I can at least enjoy it when a project is completed).

 

[Kenjitsuka]

"Alternatively you could do a story that allows for the fact that you are but a small member of a large army, a la Firefall, but then you just end up lacking investment, and with a sense that nothing you're doing is having any effect. "

Actually, if you play more you find out you do make an impact. You make friends and enemies, and mission after mission (if you so desire!!!) you interact more with the same cast. I.e. the world is doing much of conveying the story.
Also, it does have plot related misssions that are cool, and much different from the open world do whatever you want gameplay.

Really loving this game still

 

[MoltenSilver]

I tried the game after the Zero Punctuation video about it, and admittedly it is much funner than I would've thought (and that's as someone who both dislikes shooters and MMOs).

That said, for me the elephant in the room is this game still feels immensely like it should be a beta rather than release-worthy; the amount of bugs I've plowed into is just absurd for something calling itself release-worthy.

 

[Rawbeard]

it's been in beta for years, it was getting ridiculous.

Anyway, I think the game is fun, but only in the Copacabana region. In Sortao you can't glide much anymore and everything looks the same. That killed the game for me.

 

[Darth_Payn]

According to Cracked.com, the nice beaches are a compensation for all the nightmarish bugs and other venomous animals that call Australia home. And the super-slow Internet speeds because most people live on either the East or West coasts, with the Outback almost uninhabited.

TOR is the MMO that has the best story. Of course it does it by sacrificing the multiplayer aspect of an MMO and has you doing things all by yourself (but other people can come along if they want, though it's them helping you doing YOUR quests, not doing quests together in some kind of shared storyline).

And this is to its detriment, as once you run out of story you run out of interesting game to play. Which makes you wonder why they made an MMO at all instead of KOTOR 3. Oh, right, EA forced them to. Better luck next time, Bioware.

Just about to mention Old Republic. Each Player Class has their own story to play, but the Force users sound like they have the best ones.
OT: Speaking of story-driven MMO shooters, who here plays Defiance? I was told the events in the game and on the show would affect each other.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

This just reminds me how much I'd love for him to do a Team Fortress 2: revisited episode sometime during the lull. Aside from this game, it's the only online shooter he's ever claimed to like, and even then he mostly glossed over it at the time. Seeing him tear it a new one over all the things they've done wrong since and elaborate more on why it was good to begin with would be interesting.

I mean, they actually have Australian servers now, at the very least.

 

[Alcom1]

This just reminds me how much I'd love for him to do a Team Fortress 2: revisited episode sometime during the lull

Yahtzee mentions Team Fortress 2 in his Portal 2 review, yelling at its hats.

 

[shirkbot]

TOR is the MMO that has the best story. Of course it does it by sacrificing the multiplayer aspect of an MMO and has you doing things all by yourself (but other people can come along if they want, though it's them helping you doing YOUR quests, not doing quests together in some kind of shared storyline).

And this is to its detriment, as once you run out of story you run out of interesting game to play. Which makes you wonder why they made an MMO at all instead of KOTOR 3. Oh, right, EA forced them to. Better luck next time, Bioware.

I'll offer as a counterpoint Phantasy Star Online Ep. 1 & 2. It cheats a little in that your maximum party size is always limited to 4, so outside of the lobbies the other players are just the existential "Other Hunters doing other things". At the very least it prevents swarms of people from surrounding quest givers and utterly destroying the illusion that it's your group's specific task while still accounting for the people outside your group in terms of the story and universe.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

This just reminds me how much I'd love for him to do a Team Fortress 2: revisited episode sometime during the lull

Yahtzee mentions Team Fortress 2 in his Portal 2 review, yelling at its hats.

Yeah, but that's not all that's changed by a long shot, even though people joke that it is. And more importantly it's not even the worst change that's been made since 2008 or so.