Extra reward weekend in Firefall

This weekend is a double Crystite weekend in Firefall, starting today Friday.

More details can be found on the campaign page here. Contrary to many MMOs, Firefall does not do double XP and instead double Crystite, the in-game currency. That does make sense, since there is not really any XP gating in terms of content – one can play most things right from the start.  Players are not flooded with crystite though, so that makes more sense from general reward perspective.

It is also interesting to see that they have done some adjustments to make the initial experience a bit smoother also – all abilities for a battleframe are now unlocked from the start. One will still need to use XP to unlock these slots for equipment change though.

Also the amount of resources needed to craft the arcporter modulators has been cut down to 10% of the previous value (400 resources of specific types instead of the previous 4000) – and that times three, since there are once for each additional zone.  I have already unlocked all of those, but I am happy to see this change.  I enjoy the resource gathering and did not mind to search for and thump some of the less common resources needed.  But for those that were not so much into resource gathering and crafting it must have been a bit of an obnoxious grind to get it (or cost a fair amount of crystite).

The also adjusted some of the starter-level events to actually be more likely to be soloable

A few small changes, but which may help enhance the initial experience in the game.

Travelling in Firefall – Glider

There are a few different ways to travel around in Firefall – running, jumping with jumpjets, going by dropship, LGV (motorbike) – and the glider. The glider is pretty neat travel option, you simply jump from a high spot and just glide through the air.

The video clip below is one jump I made from the big rock on the island outside of Copacabana – just exploring and finding spots with nice view and jumping off with a glider is pretty fun, I think. I jumped off the same spot with an LGV motorbike also – a slightly different experience (no, did not die actually…)

Firefall music

I thought I would make a post with some of the music scores from Firefall. I like the sound effects and music scores in general and some are really nice to listen to.

Below are a couple of samples collected through YouTube postings that people have made. Thanks to Mulgorify, Arzaker and Emabulator for their posts. Most of these come from Arzaker, who seems to have recorded a bunch of these. And also of course thanks to composer Michael Bross and sound designer Boon Sim for making the scores!

To start this post, let’s go to the login screen. This piece below may be one of the better login screen scores I have listened to, I think it is amazing.

The music that is played at login varies and a few different tunes may be played, here is another of those scores:

When you first enter the game you will get into the tutorial in the Accord Battle Lab, which has a pretty good score also. Enjoy it while it lasts, wih only one character per account there will not be many visits here 😉

Different music scores are played depending on where in the game you are. First the battleframe garage view, which is the place to switch & upgrade battleframes, gear and abilities. Also some battleframe cosmetics (warpaints) are accessible here. Then after this there will be a few music score from different locations in the game.

Taking it nice and easy in New Eden

Taking it nice and easy, Boss?

This is a comment I get from time to time my operator Aero in Firefall when I login, after she first has commented that I haven’t been around for a while. Everyone seems to have an opinion about her. She will get repetitive after  while, but so far I am ok with her.

I have been playing Firefall for a bit over two weeks now and things are still looking good I think. I like the foundation and while there are progression mechanics with XP, gear upgrades etc that simply are stuff that I don’t think so much about. Pretty much everything that is in the game today is available to you and as long you do stuff togheter with others you can participate in everything.

The sort of exception here are the melding pocket zones – Diamondhead, Antartica and Sargasso Sea. One needs to craft certain devices to get to these areas, which require a fair amount of resources, of certain types. So far I have unlocked access to Diamondhead and are not far away from unlocking the other two.

These areas, at least Diamondhead, are smaller than the main zone New Eden and a substantial part is blocked by the Melding. It is possible to make more space accessible temporarily for certain events. I have not done any of these yet, only explored Diamondhead a bit. J3w3l at Healing the masses has played more there, worth a read to see what it is all about.

Jumping into Firefall

Firefall is a game I did not expect to like, but I have ended up playing it more than I planned or should spend on it this past week. And I do enjoy it. It is not without its flaws, but there seems to be a solid foundation.

Currently the game is in an “open beta” stage, which is sort of true – regardless of whether one consider it a real beta test or a soft launch. An iterative development/release cycle is used, which means that there is a functional game in place now, but there are improvements and addityional features and content that will be added in reasonably frequent releases. Essentially there is no fixed “launch date” – the game will be worked on and updated regularly until the company, Red 5, decides that it is good enough to remove the beta tag.

This post contains some information and notes from playing the game during the past week.