Falling out with Fallen Earth
It took me a couple of months, but after the golly-gee-whiz fascination with Fallen Earth’s clever features wore off, I realized there just wasn’t enough fun factor to keep me happy.
It hasn’t helped that my guildmates have stopped logging in. It was a hard sell in the first place with the bleak landscape and hefty system requirements. On a daily basis it’s just been myself and Nelg for nearly the past month.
Scavenging was oddly addictive and compelling, but that’s not the same as fun. Roleplay-wise I actually felt I was doing what I could to survive in a post-apocalyptic world, but immersion alone isn’t enough for me. The shooting combat actually lets you aim (an absolutely must for guns IMHO), but it’s slower paced than even the most tactical FPS games. The AI on mobs is mostly about bobbing and weaving, which fits their combat, but feels like a sort of shooting gallery. There’s a bit too much MMO-me-too skill mashing that feels tacked on.
I’ll re-emphasize aiming: It’s a big plus to be able to pick targets by point and shoot. Headshots are satisfying. That’s the biggest thrill for me in Fallen Earth.
Apparently my theme today is this-but-that. For every cool thing about Fallen Earth I can think of a few negatives: Group combat lacks purpose and synergy. Melee is bringing a knife to a gunfight. The economy is messy, the auction house a detriment. Crafting lacks cooperative motivation. It’s sandboxy, but you have to quest to progress. Oh I could go on with the negatives, just as I could with the positives.
Fallen Earth is basically EVE Online in the Arizona desert, but it’s missing some key motivational parts of EVE. It needs something akin to capital ship construction to glue it all together. If it finds that motivation it can probably get by, but for myself I’d also need a significant change in the base gameplay and combat. For a shooter, it needs more visceral enjoyment.
There’s lots both good and bad to say about this game. I’ll expand if anyone wants me too, but meanwhile I’m just going to go play something else.
What I’m up to in Online Gaming
I’m currently playing Fallen Earth, plus I’m poking in and out of Champions Online and Left 4 Dead.
Champions Online
For Champions, I’m basically waiting for Cryptic to settle down with their balancing. The initial release balancing is still going on and now that they’ve thrown the Celestial powerset into the mix, they’re bound to be fiddling with all the powers for awhile. I don’t want to relearn my character every week, so I’ll wait and then return. Having the lifetime subscription makes that an easy and casual thing to do.
My biggest concerns are related to that. I hope Mr. Roper is not into perpetual balancing, that would keep me away a lot. I also hope that Cryptic adds more content for initial subscribers. I totally accept and would even appreciate a paid expansion down the road, but there needs to be more base content first and foremost, especially considering us lifetime subbers.
Fallen Earth
Fallen Earth really surprised me with how compelling it is. I’ll probably be playing it for awhile, even though I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be a permanent home. Nelg is loving it too, although I don’t think it has grabbed onto Sakkara as strongly.
I’m a little torn on Fallen Earth’s combat, it’s good to have an FPS-lite MMO that actually lets you aim (auto-aim IMHO in any shooter = huge fail), but there’s a fun-to-tedious ratio that gets upset whenever I have to click on additional abilities on my bar.
Ultimately it’s the crafting and the related scavenging (for crafting supplies of course) that I enjoy in Fallen Earth. I’m still relatively low level (18 currently) and I’ve done most of that leveling via crafting (barely any questing). It’s a big “we’ll see” if the crafting scales all the way up throughout the game and that’s going to be what makes me stay or leave in the long run.
Coop Games
I got into MMOs in the first place to explore and even find a home online within huge virtual worlds, but as it’s been lately the worlds are shrinking smaller and smaller. Even Fallen Earth, which has huge open spaces, does so by reducing the variety in those space (it’s more / less one big desert).
I often wonder what I’m paying subscription fees for. It’s all just coop now, isn’t it? I’m definitely feeling the coop urge. I miss the great pulls and related team efforts required for WoW’s original release (before every encounter became scripted) but more and more I doubt I’ll find that level of coop PvE fun within another MMORPG.
Left 4 Dead and Borderlands both deliver a much better team combat experience for me, I just wish they had more content too. I’ll definitely be picking up Left 4 Dead 2 soonish. I still boggled that coop is so often ignored in games when it’s clearly so freaking popular.
Don’t even get me started on PvP. It’s mind-boggling to me how much better Team Fortress 2 and UT3 are compared to the zerg bullshit that passes for PvP in MMOs.
On the horizon?
I am so Diku burned out, I’m completely meh towards TOR and other upcoming games that appear to be putting zero effort or imagination into their base combat.
That said I’m leaning toward a pre-order for Guild Wars 2, if anything just to support the “you bought it, you own it, just play it” model. Their presentation is really compelling too, visually it looks great.
Secret World looks interesting. I get the feeling it will outdo TOR when it comes to story-driven experience. I suspect tho that it’ll have a limited amount of content, but that may be okay because it doesn’t seem like a game to make a home in, just one to play through the story.
(note: F2P and DLC section removed, I’ll make a separate post).
. . .
Overall, I’m usually an optimistic guy when it comes to the games industry, but lately I cannot help but feel there’s this dark corporate storm that’s been taking over development. I wonder how many game designs are being made based on charts of shareholder interest, or via reiterative design in attempts to capture Blizzard’s success.
I’d much prefer games developed by passionate designers with singular visions.
And that’s pretty much the sum-up point. I’ve been posting less, because the nature of my enthusiasm in games is shifting. I find myself less interested in the latest big AAA titles with nifty new explosions and I’m more intrigued by the independent developers producing games that look “good enough” but don’t have that extra layer of the latest tech. I’ve always been a bit empathic toward the developers, games as art is compelling to me.
I’m going to end this post before I ramble on. There are enough ponderings here to cover a month’s worth of blogging.
Mounts as companions
Taekwandean asked: “You can raise horses in that game? Can you raise faster/otherwise better ones or is it just raising normal ones for sale?”
You craft / raise horses, yes. Interface-wise it’s no different from any other crafting, although I do think of the different lines of horses as breeds. Nazrin (Sakkara’s Fallen Earth character) is currently working on the first line of horses which improve in the chain:
Untrained Horse -> Horse -> Riding Horse -> Improved Riding Horse -> Advanced Riding Horse.
Once any Mount has been used (think soulbound), it can’t be improved further, so there’s a compromise, you have to decide if that’s good enough or if the mats to improve further are worth it.
I haven’t looked in detail at the other lines / breeds, but some seem suited more towards combat. Yes you can shoot from your horse, but so far the angle is quite limiting and makes it a challenge to actually kill any mobs without a lot of manoeuvring.
The horses I’ve seen so far are all the same speed, but they differ on other important attributes. They have different amounts of Stamina and drain it at different rates, which equates to a fuel gauge and fuel economy. Mounts are also used for extra storage, kinda like a mobile bank or a pack mule. My improved horse has 16 slots and can carry a whopping 114kg, so I use it to lug my Copper, Iron and Lead around (Ballistics crafting uses a lot of metals).
As well as horses there are ATVs, Motorcycles, Dune Buggies and Interceptors (like Mad Max’s notorious police car). The vehicles do vary in speed and consume gas, which is expensive to buy or craft. I’ve heard they don’t climb slopes as well as horses do either, plus they need repairs now and then. Still, I really want a Motorcycle. =)
The Companion Aspect
When you use your horse / vehicle item, it becomes yours (again, soulbound) and disappears from your pack. After this point, the horse is in the world for good. The only time it’s put away is when you’re switching mounts at a stable / garage.
If you get off your horse and leave it somewhere, it’s there. It will stand there until you return. Other players will see it, even if you are not in range. It does disappear if you log out, reappearing where you left it when you log back in. Getting back to retrieve your horse is basically the penalty for dying. If your horse is seriously far away, you can have it “towed” to the nearest stable / garage.
No matter what I’m doing, I’m conscious of where I parked. It’s not an item in my bags, or a spell, it’s as persistent as my character in the world.
This persistence with vehicles makes a huge impact on the game for me. When I see a horse at the side of a road, I know someone has stopped for something of interest, either a quest or maybe some scavenging (crafting is also integrated into much of the game, but that’s another subject). I’ve seen guilds ride by on Motorcycles as if they were bike gangs and at every town I can spot the important buildings from the vehicles parked outside.
Feed your Horse
Fallen Earth tip:
There’s an NPC named Giovanni Contadino, in Odenville near the Cooking trainer. He has a repeatable quest where you can turn in 5 pieces of Tainted Meat for 2 pieces of Tainted Grain. It’s the cheapest way to get the main ingredients you need for Horse Feed.
Horse Feed is of course used for feeding / refueling your horse, and it’s also used in raising / crafting horses too.
Ditto Syp on Fallen Earth
I’ll have lots to say on Fallen Earth sooner or later, but so far most of it would mirror what Syp has been covering over at Bio Break.
Overall, it’s the immersion that’s grabbed me. The sense that I’m actually scavenging for survival. It’s a bit like a Mad Max movie mashed together with a Western theme (lent by the Arizona locale and the prevalence of horses).
Some aspects of the game sound hardcore (IE: no fast travel aside from mounts), but what’s surprised me most is how laidback I feel when playing the game. Once you’re in the game itself (past the tutorial) there are virtually no progress bars. I craft, but the timers run in the background, so I don’t feel obliged to tap my foot waiting. I do a bit of scavenging here and there. It has a sort of (dare I say it) lazy charm to it, as if everyone has just come back from a satisfying siesta and it’s time to get a bit of work done for survival. Important tasks RPG-wise, for sure, but not so much pressure to rush-rush.
I’ll post more soon, but I recommend if you’re interested in this game and you want to read more: Start with Syp. =)
Two MMORPGs, Two Paradigms
I poked around Fallen Earth for about 45 mins this morning. Sort of hemmed and hawed over taking a couple of quests, explored a bit and then saw a notice on the chat window about the server coming down. A few hours maintenance in the middle of the day for a new patch: It’s not surprising, the game is very raw right now. Seriously raw. I hesitate to be critical, because it’s from a small developer and it just oozes charm.
While I waited for that server to come back up, I jumped into Champions for a bit. This is like apples and oranges, but it screams out for comparison when I play two games back to back like this:
Champions Online: I ran around on my Champions character like a kid in a candy shop, or maybe a bull in a china shop. The combat feels so expressive to me and I fully expressed myself for an hour or so, tossing mobs to and fro with my Force character. I threw myself into fights (literally via travel powers) and I just enjoyed myself vs the Mob AI. It feels explosive. Building myself up via the Powersets has been satisfying, although I may be a bit overpowered now. I’m very comfortable with my character at this point and for me the game now revolves around that.
Fallen Earth: In Fallen Earth, I’m just a newb. I’m still wearing the same jumpsuit as every other newb. I’ve got a couple of hidden tattoos, but (regardless of level) the primary distinction between other players appears to be hairstyle and the choice of weapons strapped to your back. My character is new and there’s a great big world to explore. It’s humbling. I killed a rabbit today and skinned it. I feel a bit like a small spec of sand.
There’s something to be said about being one peon in a universe of other peons. It’s an RPG thing for me: I can get deeply into my character’s own responsibility to separate himself from the crowd. Sooner or later I’ll have covered some ground and it will be to my own satisfaction when I’ve made my way in that world.
These are two completely different experiences, the strengths of both (for me at least) firmly planted in RPG. I enjoy my character so much in Champions, probably moreso than any other MMORPG. I also haven’t felt like I was in an actual virtual world in a long time and that’s what Fallen Earth is giving me.
I’m loving both of these games so far.
Installing Fallen Earth
I don’t usually play more than one MMORPG at a time.
I’ve been playing Champions Online a lot more than I thought I would, but my early assumption looks like it’s bearing out to be true: Champions is becoming the easy jump-in, jump-out game for me. As long as Cryptic keeps adding to it, I’ll probably keep playing.
Fallen Earth appears to be a much different beast, so it’s been tempting to play as well.
From Syp’s, Werit’s, Pete’s, etc. observations: Fallen Earth appears to be a sandboxy, FPS-ish, large world of exploration. Character progression is also intertwined with crafting and there are a whopping 6 factions. In other words, it sounds almost like the complete opposite of Champions as far as RPG goes.
Maybe it’s because it’s an independent game, or maybe because they’re chasing a more RPG-ish experience, Fallen Earth has been getting a lot of positive attention via the MMO blogosphere. It’s the opposite of the usual hype, building upwards after release rather than pumping up before. I’d barely so much as glanced at this game before it launched.
I’m going to try it, at least for the free month that comes with the game purchase. If it’s as deep as it looks, it could really work for me. I hope I’m not expecting too much.
Update: Looks like Nelg may be trying it out with me as well.
