My thoughts on Firefall

Game: Firefall
Genre: MMO (shooter)
Platform: PC (Steam / game-launcher)
Playtime: 40 hours
Level Attained: 37/40
Cost: Free to play
Personal Microtransactions: £0

Firefall is an interesting beast that has had a long development time; particularly for myself first experiencing it back in late 2011 as a closed beta state. Since then it has changed its mechanics, economics and progressions but for the sake of this discussion we’ll be focusing on the recent release of 29th July 2014 and the brief early access I experienced as a former beta tester.

Firefall is a mmo-shooter brought from Red 5 studios which allows the player to experience a quasi post-apoc south America in a redeveloping world. The player is introduced to a small scale player customisation and tutorial before taking charge of a powered battleframe. These frames fit into similar rpg archetypes that you may of seen before (tanks, damage dealers, healers, etc), but due to shooting mechanics these ‘classes’ have some enjoyable traits to them. During my playtime, I experienced each archetype but it was the assault battleframe that I enjoyed most of my time with.

The assault battleframe is a mid-range damaging class that has an affiliation with movement based skills and minor support. Although all frames are given decent jump heights and jet boosters for traversing the environment, it was the assault frame made me feel the most free. Scaling a cliff-face with my jets and at the last second of energy kick in the afterburners onwards to my next objective granted me a big smile. On top of these skills, the frame’s main weapon (a plasma canon) felt like a combination of the unreal tournament rocket launcher and flak canon requiring me to lead the target and create some fun air-raid style attacks. Against the more traditional hit-scan weapons like the dreadnought minigun and biotech biorifle, the plasma canon gave me more enjoyment and reinforced my desire to play the assault class.

Alongside each frame’s signature primary weapon, each player gets a secondary weapon that provides a supportive boost in times of limited ammo. The secondary weapons feature a more typical shooter arsenal of assault rifles, sub-machine guns, shotguns, burst rifles and grenade launchers which aren’t locked to specific frames. In my experience, I used each of these types, but it was the AR that gave me the most satisfaction when out of primary ammunition or not willing to waste shots on minor enemies. Regardless of my earlier comment on hit-scan weapons, I felt it was a suitable additional to my playstyle.

Over the past couple years, one of the most used phrases in mmo’s has been ‘dynamic content’ and Firefall is one to follow this mentality. Around the playable environment, I experienced a number of missions that took on-the-spot objectives to receive a selection of rewards from xp, currency and minor items of interest. The tasks varied from defend point x, collect x of an item, wave-based attacks and named minion assassinates to name a few. These have been enjoyable, although I have felt that their density has greatly reduced outside of the first area of engagement. In the early levels, I found myself going from event a b c naturally whereas later on it has become a lot more traditional and linear. That being said, the higher levelled environments have featured much larger scaled events that brought my attention back into focus, with particular noting of the OCT event in Sertao. This event sees the defense of a control point against one of the game’s largest enemy factions (the Chosen) featuring a multi-stage co-operative task of the players in the area. Destroying the large enemy ships (or Darkslips) with an orbital canon targeted via the effort of the players gave me a similar feeling to games like Guild War 2 and its world bosses. On a slightly small scale, there are also melding tornadoes which feature a 2-phase group event. The Players are tasked with destroying the tornado’s shields to create a portal to its dimension, which turns into a ‘goldrush’ style lootgrab where you judge how long you can stay until the portal implodes on itself and you meet an untidy end.

Much like my GW2 reference earlier, this game does also feature traditional quests in two ways. Firstly, there is a story to follow regarding you (the pilot Ares 3-5) and the large conflict with the chosen which unlocks as you level. Although these missions feature a collection of the tasks mentioned in the dynamic event section above, they do go to some lengths to make them feel in context with the story mission. For me however, these missions didn’t really grab me until #6-8 where the missions became much bigger and things like the verticality of levels were considered to a greater aspect. This may be due to my own interests in the movement mechanics but this is the feeling that I got.

The other quest system were the Ares job boards that are dotted around each larger settlement in the environment in set level brackets. This felt very traditional-mmo with the directed path of missions around a central point until the next area’s missions have been accessed via a breadcrumb ‘priority’ mission. Like with the other content, they feature a mixed-bag of kill / defend / grab / escort objectives which the last one has received much dislike from players I’ve experienced in-game. I can understand their viewpoint as the pathing and non-preservation of some targets become frustrating at times, but it is a larger application of these quests that grabbed one of my few negatives of this game.

In many games, particularly those that follow traditional mmo questing, each area is given its own narrative to give context around quests involving that location. For example, in wow a cave maybe home to a gnoll or murlock group and quests involving this cave can be things like “kill x or y to clear the cave” or “recover stolen property cause they’re thieves”. In Firefall when you accept an Ares mission from a board, each objective (beyond the stationary story npcs relevant to the mission) is spawned in a random location whether it is a random camp / cave / roadside area / etc. There has been a number of times when I will be roaming the world and a set of diggers and boxes will spawn right in front of me because someone is doing the relevant mission. This is a jarring experience and it pulls me out of the world whenever I see it knowing that it’s being conjured up by the game’s software not the world itself. Dynamic content allows a varied mixture of stuff to happen in similar locations but for this it makes the world less enticing to explore when very few locations have at least a minor narrative within it.

Even though its world can pull me out of the experience sometimes, something that has got me invested is its crafting system and approach to gearing your character. As I mentioned earlier, you can get weapons and abilities for your frame, but these pieces can be further augmented through the use of mods. Although these pieces can be acquired from all the methods of play mentioned above, to get a tailored build, one will most likely look to craft a loadout. How Firefall’s craft system works is that it’s a progressive system designed to build as you experience the game. As you play, you’ll receive a number of trash items that won’t be of use or undermine current gear. Although items can be sold on an auction house you can also salvage the gear for currency, materials and research points. The research points are used with crystallite to uncover new patterns and the resources are used to craft said patterns. Most patterns use a couple common resources, but to access the higher quality stuff you’re gonna be wanting to hunt the rare types of enemies found in the world. Researching alongside levelling my assault frame, I’ve been able to grab new weapons, skills and mods as I level and it feels like an extension of my character itself. The other thing I like about it is that it gives clear goals to attain, something which the traditional rng-based loot-roll environment was a frustrating experience in my younger days of raiding.

To finish up, one must address the elephant in the room when viewing free to play titles, in its economy and cash shops. I look to discuss this in more detail at a later date, but the general census of free to play discussion is the fairness of these titles given to the free player versus a paying one. The spectrum ranges from ‘pay to win’ items to ‘cosmetic only’ at a rough scale, but Firefall fits slightly leaning towards the item purchase; with unlocking advance frames early with pilot tokens, modes of transportation like vehicles and gliders, and vip access for faster levelling. I haven’t got a proper measure of this market as of yet, but the majority of these items can be acquired from playing the game, whether it be by maxing a basic frame to 40 (the current level cap), crafting, or converting in game currency to the paid currency at a market-control player economy (buy order and sell system similar to GW2). In my experience there has been mixed opinions on the matter, but personally I feel that in my play there hasn’t been a time where I’ve felt like a ‘second class citizen’ due to my ‘non-purchase’ status and I don’t feel a desire to change that.

Overall, Firefall is an interesting concept in the mmo world trying to bring alternative genre’s into the space. I commend its existence but I feel that its kinda a retrospective of the mmo as a genre. Maybe the genre has inherent flaws, but I’d like to see what Red 5 studios can do with this title looking to the future. If you enjoy third / first person shooters and are looking for a game to play with friends (and if your wallet like mine isn’t suitable for many game purchases currently) you may find some enjoyment from this title. Whether you find 5 minutes or 500 hours play out of this game I think it’s worth just having a little go, particularly with big titles not showing up for another couple months.