Firefall Development Update - Part 3

Character Progression



So far, we have covered our goals for skill-based gameplay, matchmaking, and overall making the game better. Perhaps the biggest change coming to Firefall is the complete revitalization of the character progression model.

Firefall literally has thousands of weapons and pieces of equipment you can find, unlock, purchase or manufacture. We found that people either didn’t know they had the opportunity to access these items, or they felt they only needed to use a subset based on what made the “perfect” build. That was never the intention for what we wanted out of the game.

A standard leveling curve, in some ways, dictates how you should play and forces us to give certain carrots for spending time leveling up. Instead we would rather give you player choice on what equipment you unlock first and how you use that equipment. You should be able to go down to the Omnidyne battleframe dealership and pick out your favorite model battleframe and then trick it out however you see fit.

Our desire is to give you more choices and meaningful choices. We want to avoid there being a “perfect” spec and to really give you the tools and the depth of decisions to make to really truly allow you to customize your gear to match your play style.

We also want to flatten progression and to move farther in the horizontal progression direction than the current vertical progression you see in the beta. We have always talked about our power curve being relatively flat and that as you level you mainly gain access to more options and more utility. However, we have allowed ourselves to design more towards a leveling-centric items system by granting more life and more damage at higher levels.

So, we are working on a pretty big change for Firefall. This may startle you and maybe even give you some heartburn but please… trust us and walk with us for a while.

We have decided to remove the concept of levels from Firefall. You will no longer grind XP to gain access to higher levels which gate your ability to use equipment. You will no longer be able to reach “max level” and question what the “end game content” is going to be.

Instead, we want to flatten progression down into discrete equipment tiers or weight classes. You can think of this very similarly to a racing game where you can unlock a new car, customize it however you see fit and race within its respective license or weight class.

You will have access to the full breadth and depth of weapons, abilities and battleframe upgrades the moment you unlock a new chassis. It will be totally up to you how you allocate your earned XP to unlock different upgrades. We will no longer dictate your progression roadmap and when you will have access to different abilities or weapons. It is totally up to you. You are now in control of exactly how and when you upgrade your equipment.

In addition, to give you even more options for customizing your equipment, we are introducing an equipment constraint system. If you look at your battleframe as your base chassis (think race car) and your backpack as your power generator (think engine) imagine if the battleframe offers only so much structural support for how much weight it can carry. Imagine the power generator actually generates power that supports all installed equipment. No longer will simply having a piece of equipment be all you must consider for installing it. Now you’ll be making conscious trade-offs when picking gear to equip based on their weight and power consumption characteristics.

One player might choose to be all about his sniper rifle, upgrading it to the max and using all his available energy installing additional weapon modules. Another player might choose to go totally balanced and pick the mid-level sniper rifle but leave himself room to also have multiple abilities. And both load outs could be totally viable based on their player style.




Figure 1: Your base battleframe chassis provides you with stock gear and a maximum weight limit. Upgrading your backpack will provide more available energy to power weapons, abilities and modules.

The most critical element for this system to work is for us to make sure that cost in weight and energy for any given item or attribute is perfectly balanced and fair. If we can achieve this goal, players should have a near endless set of choices to make for how they customize their equipment.




Figure 2: By creating constraints where choices matter, you get a system that rewards creativity.

Equipment tiers will play a critical part in how we do matchmaking. You will select which tier of equipment you wish to use in battle and you will be matched against other players with like tiered equipment. Only those battleframes at the same tier or lower will be available for play in the match. Thus if you want to play with your friend who only has Tier 2 equipment, you will need to have Tier 2 equipment of your own to play as your Tier 3 equipment will not be selectable.

If you have a desire to advance a different class, you will no longer have the case where as a level 1 you’re playing against level 15s. Instead, you will simply be matched against people in the same gear range. Matchmaking will take into account equivalent gear and equivalent skill.


The Battleframe Garage



To support the mental model shift from a level-based game to an equipment-based system, we want to place a much greater emphasis on your battleframe. We have always talked about your battleframe being akin to a race car that you can trick out however you see fit. However, in our current implementation, you can carry 50 battleframes in your inventory and swap out your battleframes all day long at your local Loadout Modification Terminal. We are no longer going to allow you to carry battleframes in your inventory. Instead, you will store them in your garage.




Figure 3: A visualization mockup of what the battleframe garage could look like. All numbers, names, and items are for appearance only.



We want to build more affinity with your equipment and really make your battleframes feel special and significant. We are now working on building this “Battleframe Garage” where you’ll be able to view and customize each of your battleframes. This is where you’ll go to ask Oilspill to upgrade your jumpjets. This is where you’ll go to select different abilities or to give your battleframe a custom paint job. Note that all these screens you’re seeing are concepts to get the feel across. The numbers, names, and items are all fake.



Figure 4: Creating more exciting ways to interact with your battleframe adds to the emotional attachment of the equipment.



Figure 5: Choosing the abilities and style of your equipment helps separate you from all the other assaults in the world.

Resources & Crafting



In addition to offering more depth to player progression, we want to offer more depth to our resource collecting and manufacturing mechanics. We want to offer more interesting things for player to chase after and spend time trying to collect or build.

This starts with having more meaningful resources. Resources can become meaningful when they play a bigger role in the equipment you can craft.

Instead of scanning for larger percentages of a certain type of resource, we will be adding a true rarity to resources. Higher rarity resources will contribute more to the attributes of item you have crafted with the resource.



Figure 6: Picking and choosing just the right resource for your equipment drives the desire to find rare resources and trade with other players.



The goal of this crafting system is to add a lot more depth overall. Players should be able to use unlocked technology to build items with specific attributes, based on resource type and the technology they have unlocked. The different types and rarity of resources can offer bonuses to certain characteristics on the equipment being manufactured. The resource types themselves actually influence the attributes giving you control over what you are crafting. Overall resource allocations are meant to be more rare, offering great moments for players who stumble upon the mother lode.



Figure 7: Providing ways to manufacture the equipment you want through your choice of resource and recipe is one of our goals.



So there you have it, a brief look at some pretty big changes coming down the pipe. As always, we will strive to roll-out these changes to you as soon as possible. In some cases, such as some of the weapon balances and core combat changes, this might be as early as next week’s beta build. For some of the larger changes such as replacing levels with tiers, we are going to need some time to get things implemented and feeling right. Expect these bigger changes to enter beta sometime in July.

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http://www.firefallthegame.com/blog/2012/05/25/firefall-development-update-_-part-3