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Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf



What is Firefall?

Firefall is a dynamic, open-world, free to play MMO shooter set in a future Earth that has been nearly destroyed after the failed test of the first faster than light spacecraft. Failing to fold space properly, the Arclight crashes down into Brazil, bringing with it the Melding, a fog of death that mutates any living thing it touches.

In Firefall, players customize their battleframes and take part in the fight against the mutated remnants of Earth, attempting to rid the world of the Melding that covers it. With team-based and on-demand quests, Firefall features dynamic events that appear throughout the game world, offering players a very wide variety of tasks to accomplish.

Firefall's combat is somewhat of a mixture between Global Agenda and Tribes. Every battleframe has jumpjets, and the game features a helping of verticality not found in many games nowadays.


How do I sign up?

Head on over to http://www.firefall.com/ and sign up! Check the end of this post for information on joining the goon army.


I'm sure I played this 3 years ago. What's happened recently? Why should I care about this game again?

Firefall has existed in various states of beta for many years now. The game was constantly being built up, torn down, changed, and built again. There have now been four major changes to the way the game has played, and the game has languished in a state monotony for a long time now. This all changed on December 19th, 2013, when the old CEO, Mark Kern, was ousted from his position in the company. Many insiders posted scathing remarks about his management of the company, and the glacial pace of development was directly attributed to his ever changing whimsy.

The game launched with its 4th and final iteration of the game systems, returning to the original vertical progression system the game originally had. Battleframes have 40 levels and players can find the standard MMO common, uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary loot. Resources were simplified, the whole UI has been changed, and everything is different now. In addition, item breakage has been removed from the game! :siren: Durability still exists, but it is like a standard MMO; items can be repaired indefinitely.

There are now three zones: Coral Forest (Copa), Sertao (Dredge), and Devil's Tusk (fully developed Diamond Head). Additionally, there is Broken Peninsula, the OWPvP zone.

There are also many more things that have changed. Feel free to post in the thread and ask questions if you are curious how the current experience differs from when you originally played.


What battleframes are there in the game?

The five main battleframe categories are Assault, Dreadnaught, Engineer, Biotech, and Recon. Each category has a base "Accord" frame that you start with, and two alternative frames (3 for Dreads) that are locked until you buy them with the Pilot Tokens you get for maxing a frame (or with Red Beans if you hate waiting and have a few bucks to support the game).

Assault
(Accord Assault, Omnidyne-M Tigerclaw, Astrek Firecat)

Mobile offensive/defense battleframes. They have good health, do good damage, and move and jet quickly. They shoot somewhat slow moving AoE plasma rounds, so they are built around getting close and personal with their targets.

Accord Assault: The standard frame the other two branch from. It has a big plasma cannon with some decent splash damage. It is very good at getting into and out of trouble.

Omnidyne-M Tigerclaw: The Tigerclaw's Fusion Cannon sacrifices AoE capability for high direct damage. When you hit, you hit hard. If you miss, it's a waste. As such, it requires more skill to play than the other assault variants. It has some pretty nice AOE abilities to fill the roles the gun doesn't.

Astrek Firecat: The Thermal Cannon sacrifices damage for a very large AoE. All of it's abilities are about burning things down with fire so there are a lot of powerful AoE fire DoTs to wreak havoc on clusters of enemies. If you can't aim for poo poo, this is the frame for you.

Dreadnaught
(Accord Dreadnaught, Omnidyne-M Mammoth, Astrek Rhino, Omnidyne-M Arsenal)

Who needs jump jets when you have a ton of armor and a big gently caress-off mini-gun? You know that game with that guy with a mini-gun that's hard to kill? Oh, that's right. They're in all the games. Well, it's in this one too, but you get jump jets and some really fun skills that allow you to mow people down and punish things that get close to you. You won't win any foot races, but if you like not dealing with that pesky "dieing" thing, you're in luck.

Accord Dreadnaught: The standard frame the others branch from. Contains a good sampling of offensive and defensive abilities.

Omnidyne-M Mammoth: This battleframe boasts the thickest armor and best defensive abilities in the game. The Heavy Plasma Machine Gun may not have the same range as the other guns, and feels like it takes forever to spin up, but once it starts firing things die in droves. Being a plasma weapon, it does have a little bit of splash damage so swarms of creatures are no problem. The downside is the bullet drop, so make sure you aim it like a water hose at enemies in the distance. I can't remember a time when the Mammoth wasn't overpowered and completely unfair. I love the Mammoth.

Astrek Rhino: The Rhino sheds some of the armor for a more powerful weapon. The tri-barrel rotary Heavy Laser Machine Gun does some of the best sustained DPS in the game and it will do it at longer range too. It can absolutely melt things face to face, but it does much better at range and has abilities that allow you to fight on YOUR terms.

Omnidyne-M Arsenal: The ASSenal is fat. I'm not even going to polish that. If you like playing as hot women in video games, prepare to have your personal wank dreams crushed. If you play a male character, you're going to have to get used to being Fat Albert. Still, the Arsenal has more guns than any other frame in the game. You've got the Light Machine Gun primary weapon that does great accurate damage (even at long range) and can pierce shields with the secondary fire. The abilities temporarily swap out the primary weapon for others like a combat shotgun or a laser AoE cannon of doom. All that adds up to a fat looking frame that moves fast (for a dread), has decent armor (above Rhino but below Accord Dread), and feels quite responsive since the guns don't have to spin up before they start firing.

Engineer
(Accord Engineer, Omnidyne-M Bastion, Astrek Electron)

The Engineer doesn't have a ton of armor so it lets the machines do all the dirty work. They are great support classes but can be quite effective front line fighters once you figure out how to play as a team with your own equipment. When I say deployables, I mean things like a Heavy Turret with its own AI that targets enemies and mows them down. You know, standard stuff like that.

Accord Engineer: The standard frame the others branch from. It comes with a basic turret, a supply station, and a shield.

Omnidyne-M Bastion: I heard you like turrets with your turrets. The Bastion can use the same Heavy Turrets that the Accord Engineer does, but what makes it unique is the ability to also place three or more smaller Multi-Turrets for even more hands-off combat. If you like making the game play itself for you while you go take a piss, this is the frame for you. The Bastion is also one of the best frames for Thumping in the game as their turrets are great for pulling aggro away from your thumper.

Astrek Electron: The Electron takes a more active approach. It has a shock rail that will be familiar to anyone who's played Unreal Tournament and specializes in putting shields on itself and nearby allies. The more damage you do, the better your shields. The more you shield your allies, the more damage you do. This frame is very love or hate. If you have great aim, it's very fun.

Biotech
(Accord Biotech, Astrek Recluse, Omnidyne-M Dragonfly)

The Biotech is one of the most versatile frames in the game. The abilities are a mix of healing and poison and an emphasis on AoE for each. If you like being the guy who zooms in with guns blazing to revive a fallen teammate and then AoE everything to death as you get out, then you'll enjoy this class.

Accord Biotech: The standard frame the others branch from. It is armed with a Bio Needler that fires accurate streams of toxic flechettes.

Astrek Recluse: Screw healing. Poison AoE erry day. The Bio Crossbow may not look like a crossbow but it does fire poison bolts that can really screw up someone's day. If firing arrows at heads doesn't do it for you, the alt fire launches toxic grenades to AoE everything to death. The abilities are all poison based AoE as well and may be tied with the Firecat as being the king of AoE. It is a very fun frame to play.

Omnidyne-M Dragonfly: OK, healing is pretty cool, I guess. This is as close to a true healer that you will find in a game of post-apocalyptic power armor dudes with rocket boots that shoot each other. The Bio Rifle is basically an assault rifle that can send out a short ranged healing wave to heal allies and damage enemies while knocking them back. This is hilarious because with enough ammo you can sweep enemies into a corner or off ledges and there's nothing they can do about it.

Recon
(Accord Recon, Astrek Raptor, Omnidyne-M Nighthawk)

Recons have the least amount of armor but that's seldom a problem. They have a faster base speed than any of the other frame types. They use buffs, de-buffs, and misdirection to confuse and punish the enemy. How you play the Recon will determine which of the advanced frames you'll enjoy most.

Accord Recon: The standard frame the others branch from. Armed with the venerable R36 assault rifle, you can look down the scope and put accurate bursts into heads at long range or just fire from the hip for great burst damage. You even get a perk that heals you each time you get a kill. You will get a lot of kills.

Astrek Raptor: The Raptor gets a Charge Rifle that has amazing range and a variable zoom scope so you can really reach out and remove heads. The rifle is semi-auto so it will fire as fast as you want it to, but since it takes up to a second to reach full charge, it does less damage if you fire early. The Raptor has great abilities that make it very potent in a group, but it can also be set up to play like a coked-up speed freak with an assault rifle and a never ending stream of bullets.

Omnidyne-M Nighthawk: If you are reading this and saying 'I want to be a ninja! With power armor! And a sniper rifle! And a jet pack!' then this is the frame for you. The Sniper Rifle is a bolt action so it takes a second for each reload but doesn't have to charge up meaning you can hip fire it if you're desperate. The abilities for this frame really favor a stealthy sniper play style in that you can throw smoke bombs and do extra damage when shooting at enemies that don't see you. If you combine the stealthy play style with the improved melee, you can pull off some amazing backstabs.


What is this Power Rating thing?

Power Rating is basically a simplification of common RPG stats like strength, constitution, etc. The higher your Power Rating, the more powerful you are. It affects how much damage you do, how much healing abilities heal, how much HP your turrets have, etc.

You start at level 1 with a Power Rating of 100. Every time you level up you get 5 more Power Rating. By level 40, you will have a base Power Rating of 295, which means you do almost triple your base weapon damage. Every weapon, ability, and module you equip has a Power Rating on it that adds to your total.

Each point of Power Rating is equal to 1% weapon/ability strength. If you have a total Power Rating of 600, damage and healing you do is 600% of the base damage of your item. As you can see, Power Rating is the main way you become more, well, powerful.

Higher quality weapons and abilities have more slots to add modules. Modules allow you to upgrade your gear and alter its various stats. A common white piece of gear will only have one module slot while a green has two and blues and up have three. The more slots you have to fill with modules, the higher you can raise your Power Rating. This can make a lower level blue weapon more valuable than a higher level green item as you have an extra module slot.


Okay, WTF is this module poo poo?

Modules allow you to customize the performance of your weapons and abilities as well as raising your all-important Power Rating stat. There are Weapon Modules for your guns and Ability Modules for your (gasp) abilities.

Gear has three different types of slots to put the modules in. These are the elemental colors of red, yellow, and blue. Modules for each of those colors modify one stat and do it well. An example of one would be a yellow weapon module that increases the magazine size by 40% or more.

Modules also come in the three hybrid colors of orange, purple, and green. They split their bonus between two (or more) stats. They can also be slotted into either of the colors that make it up. Green can go into either yellow or blue, etc.

How much the modules alter the stat depends on the rarity of the module. A common LongMag module will increase your weapon's magazine capacity by 20%, an uncommon by 40%, rare by 60%, and epic by 80%. The level of the module has no affect on the stats altered by the module. A level 8 LongMag module will give the same bonus as a level 40 LongMag module.

So, why bother with the more expensive higher level versions? Because modules increase your Power Rating stat, and they are the main source of your Power Rating. Two blue weapons and 4 blue abilities gives you 18 potential module slots. If all 18 are filled with modules that give 20 Power Rating apiece, you will have an extra 360 power rating. It starts to add up quick, and is the main way for you to gain more power. DON'T NEGLECT THIS!


What's this about Perks?

Perks allow you to customize your frame even more than just what equipment you're using. These can alter the behavior of your frames drastically. Things like dealing more damage with your weapons, taking less damage from enemies, doing various things faster/better, killing yourself less with your own splash damage, and even adding new abilities. Passive abilities from the frames like Repairing Nanites, Siphoning Plating, and the rest were removed from the game as separate modules and turned into perks instead. In many cases, that means you can double up. Want to be a Bastion with Overseer AND Repairing Nanites? You can do it!

The cost of the perks range from 1, 2, 5, and 8 points depending on whether they're good, great, awesome, or Strongbad. You get your first point at level 10, gaining more as you go on until you hit max at level 40 with 21 perk points. You can use a maximum of 10 perks so you will not be able to load up on 21 one-point perks. You probably wouldn't want 21 one-point perks anyway since some of the more expensive perks are well worth having.

To edit your perks, you must visit a Battleframe Garage. Click the Perks tab on your character sheet, then click the Edit Perks button. You can now drag perks into the perks window. Once you have a setup you think is ideal, lock the perks into place.


Hot drat Open World PvP!

Heck yeah! Open World PvP is end-game content that takes place on the Broken Peninsula zone. It is an end-game zone, so don't enter it at level 10 and expect to survive more than a single shot.

When you first enter the zone, you get placed on a team. Check out the Broken Teams addon I made so you can know which team you are on. Your goal is to work together with your team to capture territory and earn resources.

The zone looks a lot like Coral Forest and is filled with bases and watchtowers. Taking a base or a watchtower is usually a multi-stage affair where you destroy equipment on the outside to lower shields so you can destroy or capture equipment on the inside. Controlling and upgrading a base gives you access to vehicles equipped with guns and rockets, as well as the special thumpers that you have to use inside the zone.

The minimum level required for earning XP in this zone is level 33, and boy do you earn the XP. All the events in Broken Peninsula give massive amount of XP, especially bandit camps. If you want to level from 33-40 quickly, just hop in an LGV and grind the open world events. Sure you will occasionally get horrifically murdered by roaming player death squads, but you don't lose any durability for that, just time. And the XP you can get will probably make up for it.

Here is a post I made on the Firefall forums explaining how OWPvP works:
http://forums.firefall.com/community/threads/pvp-how-does-it-work.5650421/#post-82030821


What happened to the instanced PvP?

It was removed right before Mark Kern was fired. Three days before he removed it, he gave an interview about Firefall's bright PvP future. Presumably, he then looked at the PvP forums, saw people whining about bugs and hackers, and went :fuckoff: and nuked everything. The rest of Red5 discovered what he did the same way all the players did: his stickied post on the forums.

Currently, Red5 is thinking of how to best re-introduce it into the game.


I want to buy things on the marketplace. What are these credits and how do I make them?

Credits are the third currency in Firefall, added with the launch patch. You can earn credits in two ways: converting crystite into credits, or selling your red beans in the Red Bean Exchange.

Converting crystite will be your main method. You are able to convert 25 crystite into 1 credit, with a daily limit of 1000 credits. So that means you have to earn 25,000 crystite per day to hit your daily conversion limit. To convert crystite, open the marketplace by pressing "T" and click the blue "Currency Exchange" button at the top of the category listing.

The Red Bean Exchange is the other method (you can find it in the Currency Exchange section). You can buy red beans with credit, or sell red beans for credit. However, since there is not much you can purchase exclusively with red beans, there isn't much value to them. Anything you can buy with red beans you can also buy for credits from other players, usually for much cheaper prices.


How do I level quickly?

Leveling quickly is mainly accomplished by repeating quick to complete ARES Job Board missions. The game rotates out ARES Jobs as you complete them, so in order to repeat a mission you will need an addon. One such addon, JobMem, can be found in the next section.

Level 1+:
Follow the beginning tutorials so you can learn how to play the game. Just do missions from the ARES Job Board and anything you find out in the world. You will want to make sure you visit Thump Dump for a Scan Hammer and information on "thumping". One you reach level 10-15, head to Nutretic Processing and complete the golden "Graduation" mission for your first LGV. By then you should have enough materials to craft it in the printer.

Level 13+:
Grind the Holmgang V mission in Sunken Harbor until level 27. It can take anywhere between 30 seconds and 3 minutes depending on spawns. You could theoretically grind this mission until 40 because of the level cap in Coral Forest, but there are other missions you can run which give you better XP at this point. Don't bother doing any missions in Shanty Town, as they will just frustrate you. You can technically head to Sertao once you are level 21 and do random missions until 27 if shooting El Terremoto is killing your soul.

Level ~25:
Do "In the Wheelhouse" in Dredge for an upgraded LGV.

Level 27+:
Grind "A Lost Daughter" in FOB Sagan in Sertao. You run to a spot, kill 18 bandits, then run back. Very easy XP.

Level 25-36:
Do the Brontodon King encounter whenever it pops in Sertao. It will spawn every hour and you will usually see people link the coordinates in zone chat. It will give you a bunch of XP.

Level 33+:
There are two things you can do at this point.
1) Head down to the beach in Devil's Tusk near Camp Jasper. You can hang there killing the events that spawn.
2) Teleport to Broken Peninsula, get on an LGV, and start doing the dozens of ARES response jobs that appear on the map. If you see a bandit camp pop on the map, rush to it ASAP as it will give you a boatload of XP. Your goal is to prevent your LGV from being destroyed or despawning, as it is both your mobility and DPS. If you are in an Engineer, the Tesla Rifle can be used to repair the LGV.

Be warned, quickly going through the level scheme means you will out level areas faster than intended so by the end of it, you will be lv40 but have poo poo gear. However, if you've been converting crystite to 1000 credits daily, you could probably buy enough blue gear to outfit your frame at this point.


I hear the game supports mods.

Firefall uses a Lua based GUI system and fully supports user-created modifications and addons. Addons go inside your %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Firefall\Addons folder. If that directory doesn't exist, create it.

Check out the official addons subforum for a bunch of addons.

Here are a few you are definitely going to want to check out.

Meldii
Helps install and manage your addons. Definitely use this.

Broken Teams
Live team viewer for Broken Peninsula, the PvP zone, written by me!

Goon Transit
Another addon that I wrote, only available here to you lovely goons. It adds an entry to your navwheel that lets you open the arcporter terminal from anywhere in the game and jump between zones at-will. You no longer need a Copacabana Personal Arcporter, nor do you need to run around finding a dropship or arcporter in the open world. It is highly recommended that you get this.

JobMem
Originally written by Reicere and modified by me, this addon will let you easily repeat ARES Job Board missions. A "Repeat Job" button will appear on Job Boards that, when clicked, will cause any finished job to repeat itself. You can also use the following slash commands: /stopjob, /restartjob, /repeatjob.

Cartographer
This allows you to create and customize your own persistent waypoints in the game, as well as share them with each other. Many goons use this to keep track of good thumping spots or locations of loot chests in instances. You can share map notes with other users of Cartographer, so ask us and we'll share our notes. This addon should not be confused with our own friend cartographer in-game.

Loot Tracker
This is pretty much required. You will get a 3D in-game popup of where that rare weapon you never saw is laying, making sure you'll never forget to pick up a piece of equipment again.

Nightvision
The nights in Firefall get very dark. Some people don't like how dark it gets. Nightvision dynamically adjusts your gamma and exposure levels to brighten up the night. It also lets you boost your gamma when you turn on your flashlight.

Boing! LFG
A cross-server LFG tool. The best way to find pubbie groups doing things.

Hit Harder
Damage tracking tool for raids. If you are doing end-game raids, this is a nice tool to see how much damage you are doing to the boss.

Unlocks
An addon I made to visibly keep track of which of the weekly raids you have finished that week.


How do I get together with goons?

:siren: The main goon army in the game is GOONS. :siren:

Apply to the army in-game and mention who you are so we can approve you.

Back when armies were first introduced, they were limited to 20 players, so many goon armies were created. Out of this era, AllianceBot was created to enable cross-army chat between the goon armies. Since then, the army size has been raised to 100, so there is more than enough room for everybody to join the main GOONS army. Here are all the active armies (you can see who to contact online if the join button isn't working):

[GOONS] Goon Squad
[GOON2] Goon Squad Two

If GOONS has closed recruitment (if we hit 100 players), apply to GOON2. Otherwise, feel free to submit an application to GOONS in-game and let us know it is you in the thread. There are no other restrictions to joining us in GOONS.

To access the army interface to submit an army join request, you must first set up the army keybind. For some reason it isn't bound by default anymore. Press Escape, click the Options button, then click the Key Bindings category. Click the Interface sub-category and find the empty Army entry. Click it and bind it to the U key (or whatever you want, really). Open up the army interface. In the search box, type the army tag and press Enter. It should find the army you want. As long as the army has open recruitment, there will be a button you can click to submit your request.

Also, everybody in the "Contacts" section of the army page has the ability to invite people and approve applications. Feel free to whisper and of those dorks and tell them to accept your application.


Yo, got a Mumble?

Lots of people are using the CTS Mumble. There is a Firefall channel there that we use. Not many people use it anymore.


Show me some media.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw29meB8G50

If you want your screenshots/battleframes featured, just send them to me and I'll add them.


Previous thread

Nalin fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Mar 13, 2015

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Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

dromer posted:

So how is melee damage calculated? I want to make a tanky melee brawler dread but I remember it being super anemic when perks first came out.
Melee damage scales with your Power Level now. As you increase your Power Level stat, your damage goes up. As a level 40 Tigerclaw in Devil's Tusk, I do about 3000-6000 damage per shot of my Fusion cannon. Once my perks start kicking in, my damage goes higher. I can melee for 2000 and backstab for 4000. I have no melee perks. It is a very viable playstyle now, and I will often melee certain enemies (or enemies that have a little bit of health left) so I don't waste ammo. Melee is also bound to your mouse button, so get into a habit of mashing it!

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf
I added a section to the OP about Power Rating. It is a very important stat, as each point of power rating you get is +1% of your base damage from your weapon and abilities. So if you have 100 power rating, you will do +100% damage. So make sure you use those weapon modules.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Inimicul posted:

To expand on this a bit; you start off with a power rating of 100 at level 1. You get 5 more every level and every piece of equipment you put on has more power too. Starting at level 1 you do 100% of base damage which is... base damage.
Thanks for this extended write-up. I've updated the Power Rating section of the OP to make it more clear.

Lemon King posted:

I heard teasing a TikiMGV may happen for founders.
I hope it is a red bean purchase. I have 960 red beans and I don't care about spending them for the lottery.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Sphrin posted:

LK would you know why my Crystalwing glider pad isn't showing up in inventory? I can use it on the calldown menu but not being able to drag it to numbers 6-9 makes it a bit of a bitch to use.
You should have a reusables tab in your inventory (press i instead of p)

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

poptart_fairy posted:

Wait, how does the new leveling stuff work exactly? Are we still farming ores with thumpers or is it more focused around killing dudes and getting stronger that way?
Instead of spending XP/crystite/resources to level up your constraints, you just gain a new level once your XP bar fills. Each time you gain a level you get more HP, you do an extra 5% damage, and other things. The max level is 40.

The resource system was simplifed greatly. There are three types of resources (metals, electronics, and biomaterials), each with the standard common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary qualities. No more 1-1000 quality system.

Metals are gained from thumping. Electronics are gained from salvaging bandit and chosen drops. Biomaterials are gained by killing creatures in the open world.

There are standard item drops now, so you don't have to thump if you don't want to. You can just find equipment by killing dudes, or buying from the market.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

CLAM DOWN posted:

Oh my loving god this is so much better now, the interface, holy poo poo, why the gently caress couldn't they have planned and designed this better from the start. Was Kern that bad?
I linked to a reddit post about Kern in the OP. It is an interesting read. But yeah, the new interface is pretty amazing. I just wish the marketplace UI was a little more approachable and intuitive (but it is still a huge step up from the old UI). That and I wish you could still change frames from the Battleframe Garage.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Gammon posted:

So I'm looking at spending money on one of those Starter packs because I'm an impatient person - are either of them a good deal? From what I found, each advanced frame costs 100 beans to unlock, but do you use beans for anything else in game? Having every advanced frame unlocked from the start sounds useful, but $100 is a helluva lot of money too.
You use beans to buy VIP boosts, cosmetics, items like vehicles, slot machine tokens, speeding up research, etc.

For unlocking frames, you can use red beans (about $12.50 worth), get unlocks from playing the slot machine lottery, buying unlocks with credits that players put on the marketplace, or getting a frame to level 40 (you get 10 pilot tokens for doing that and those tokens unlock frames).

I posted about this in the other thread, but after subtracting the actual cost of the VIP/beans you get in the packs, it works out to:
Starter: $5 for the pet, warpaint, in-game title, soundtrack/art.
Deluxe: $32.50 for the MGV, all frames unlocked, and in-game title.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf
Is there something going on with the game right now? I can't zone into Coral Forest, the game doesn't remember any SIN Towers I've synced with in Sertao, and I fail to connect to army chat.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Ville Valo posted:

Just started getting reports of this; it's being investigated.
Oh, good. I was afraid I had gotten myself banned from the XMPP server. That would have been embarrassing. That does explain all the issues I was having last night...

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

AirborneNinja posted:

Yeah I just hit 31 and am sitting at 14k hp, just looking at the printer a level 40 blue heavy will have 1860 hp, hell my bike is still at the default 3000 hp. I'm pretty sure once I hit 40 unless the things gain some magical damage resistance they will be one shots. I hate the powercreep going on in this version.
It is possible that Power Rating will affect turret HP. Have you tried testing it with your current turrets? Start a duel with somebody you know so they can see how much damage it takes to destroy your turret.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

xxEightxx posted:

Crafted chamber recipes are gone, fyi, might want to hang on to them and use sparingly. I couldn't find it last night and just saw a redpost about it. Major bummer, thankfully I have hundreds stockpiled.
Are they gone for good? I saw a ton of locked recipes in the printer for all sorts of new chamber types. Do you have a link to the post?

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

kidRiot posted:

Stupid question: how do I equip/buy a perk?
You start earning perk points at level 10. The OP describes perks briefly. Once you get points, go to a battleframe garage and click the Perks tab. Then click the Edit Perks button.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf
Looks like Red5 just pushed a new hotfix. And it breaks your ability to log into the game. If you log out, don't expect to get back in.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

CLAM DOWN posted:

I plan on researching Arsenal stuff because this frame owns.
I really love the Arsenal too, but man, I really hate that Combat Shotgun ability. So useless.

For the record, I have everything in the General tree researched, I have uncommon weapon modules for level 27+, and the Tigerclaw Fusion cannon (level 40 epic).

I'm working on uncommon ability modules for level 27+ right now.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

CLAM DOWN posted:

Yeah, it's subpar. I'm only like level 8 now so not sure if I'll replace it with something else? The AoE long-range laser gun ability is the loving best, it's so badass and fun and good.
I decided to test to see if the Dreadnaught Explosive Rounds worked with the LMG now, and it does! So I replaced my Combat Shotgun with Explosive Rounds and it is the best decision I ever made.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

xxEightxx posted:

Do we have a firefall google spreadsheet or anything that we can track manufacturing with?
Nope. Go ahead and make one if you want. You should list all the items possible to research and let people put their name under each one they have access to. Eventually, in a few weeks, I can migrate it to a visual web-app where you can explore the research tree and see who has access to what.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

CLAM DOWN posted:

gently caress yes! If I remember right, can't advanced frames generally use abilities from the Accord from they're based off of? Was the LMG not working with that a specific issue?
Yes, the "advanced" frames can use the weapons and abilities of the base frames. Explosion Rounds used to only work with the standard Dread Heavy Machine Gun.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf
Chat problems are most definitely related to the Steam client. See, when logging into the chat server, your username is your character's name and the password is a value that is generated using your e-mail address and your account password. When you link your account to Steam and start the game, it gets a special login token from Steam and uses that to authenticate your account. If it is working correctly, you will skip the login screen entirely and you should start at the character select screen. Naturally, the game won't know your e-mail and password to generate the password to send to the chat server, so it must be generating your password with the token it got from Steam. Chat server authentication issues seem to be happening when the server expects your password to be based off your e-mail/password, but gets a password based off your Steam token.

When you start the game, try clicking the "Log Out" button, then logging in with your e-mail/password. See if that fixes it.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Feindfeuer posted:

You can rightclick on everything in your inventory and select 'send per mail' or something. So I assumed that would work. But it turns out it's disabled at the moment:
Yeah, it was enabled originally, but then they kept finding issues that could result in the item becoming missing in transit. They keep almost fixing it, so they should have it working by launch on the 29th. Hopefully.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Xavier434 posted:

Downloading now and I am totally pumped to try this again with the changes. The only thing left for me to figure out is if I want to play a Recon or Dreadnaught. Help me decide goons!
I was going to say Dreadnaught, but I changed my mind. Play Recon. Then you won't be sick of the Dreadnaught class once you unlock the Mammoth.


Cheston posted:

Try not to buy stuff directly from the store. At least for now, you can get everything for half the price or less if you exchange beans for credits and buy stuff from the market.

I think the price for red beans will drop a lot after launch when a ton of new players try selling them to buy stuff, buuuuut I might be wrong, haven't spent a ton of time with the market.
Seriously. I looked at how much a 7-day VIP pass was going on the market. 2500 credits. The current red bean to credit ratio is 1:180. That means it is only 14 red beans ($1.75) on the market, compared to Red 5's standard of 40 ($5). The people in this game just loooove to sell their poo poo for next to nothing.

EDIT: Seems the price dropped since this morning. It is 1:150 now, which puts prices at 17 beans ($2.125). I wonder where it will bottom out at. If you want to sell red beans, now is the time before it gets even lower.

EDIT: Looks like the price of a 7-day VIP on the market also fell to 2100. It's back to 14! The race to the bottom continues.

Nalin fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Jul 20, 2014

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Inimicul posted:

It is intended. In my experience, it's closer to 50%. I base that on all the S3 thumpers I dropped on Copa the other night. I was leaning towards 75% Chosen wave but then it started to get normal again. I've dropped or been part of about a dozen squad thumpers recently and really like the change. The changes to difficulty and payout for squad thumpers makes way more sense now.
What are the rewards for a squad thumper now? I haven't had the opportunity to do any thumpers since the patch. I did get to try the new melding tornado pocket in Devil's Tusk, and I got about 1100 green and 1100 blue ore from running around inside of it. I thought that was a pretty good haul.

Inimicul posted:

I'm glad the push back has happened. I was getting pretty bored of the small area we've been in. I hope someone's finding uranium now.
Man, it is so boring now. People found a spot where a Chosen Thumper continuously spawns and the entire stupid instance spawn camps it for 15 titanium (blue) ore each time. I've been running around in my level 30 Arsenal soloing all of Devil's Tusk because nobody is doing anything anymore. I even soloed an entire Delirium Engine event at level 30, only dieing once by mistake.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Ralith posted:

Wait, what? A reusable one? What quest?
No clue. Somewhere in Sertao in a level 25 town.

Gammon posted:

How does one determine a good area for thumping? The area around Northern Shores seems to be insanely popular for it right now and I am not sure why. Could be the regular crashed thumper/mgv events that also spawn close to the tower but people just seem to thump nonstop there.
Really, anywhere that has the resource you want. The best spots are places that can be defended and can limit the approach to the thumper. If you place your thumper against a wall, it limits the angles that enemies can attack your thumper from. Placing against a rock can cause groups to path around the rock, which gives you extra time to kill them. It is also possible that the enemies that spawn in the region are easier than enemies in a different region.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Inimicul posted:

Welp. We've just hit the army member cap. Time to start a plan B.

Edit: I'll probably wind up kicking and reinviting everyone again to purge the inactives.
I thought the army cap was supposed to be 200. Ugh. I guess this means I have to start working around the AllianceBot issues.

EDIT: Getting a new working AllianceBot will involve multiple accounts, one for each army. This normally wouldn't be too difficult, however something has changed in the XMPP login logic that can cause accounts to not be able to log in using the normal method. If new accounts exhibit this issue, it may cause delays in getting a working system. So purging inactives will be the only solution to this issue for the time being.

Nalin fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Jul 21, 2014

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Inimicul posted:

Stock Personal: 250 split - Iron
Personal 1: 275 split - Iron and Tungsten
Personal 2: 300 split - Iron, Tungsten, and Titanium
Personal 3: 325 split - Iron, Tungsten, Titanium, and Uranium
Stock Squad: 300 each - Iron
Squad 1: 325 each - Iron, and Tungsten
Squad 2: 350 each - Iron, Tungsten, and Titanium
Squad 3: 375 each - Iron, Tungsten, Titanium, and Uranium
Oh man, that is pretty low. I didn't think it would be that low. If you ever see a tornado in Devil's Tusk, divert whatever you are doing to make sure you get inside the dumb thing. You can easily come out with 2.5k resources if you have a fast frame.

Inimicul posted:

I really hope someone makes an addon that shows who's been offline for months and allows for easy kicks / invites. Perhaps I should butter up Arkii or Hanachi again. I've asked LK for too much already.
I'll add that to the list of things for AllianceBot to track.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Westy543 posted:

Man this game is so much improved now over like a year ago. So I had a Tigerclaw, and it seems they overhauled the item system, got rid of the Star Wars Galaxies-esque quality-based crafting system. Level system now too! They've expanded the world a lot.

My question is, are any of the Tigerclaw abilities must-haves? Right now I have all the assault standards (afterburner for mobility, crater for parachute and AOE, and overcharge because they seem to have buffed it to not drain your ammo while active) except for the HKM which is fantastic for area control. Overcharge + SMG seems to be really strong at clearing hordes of weaklings. I'm mainly playing the game for PVE, for what that's worth.
Missile Shot is like an easier to use Crater. Hit the button and it fires a super fast shot where you are pointing. Great AoE, great damage. Definitely try replacing Crater with it and see how you like it.

Trailblaze isn't as good as it used to be as you can't build a stupidly ridiculous one anymore (you used to be able to build one that recharged before it ended so you could use it indefinitely). You really need some good modules to make it shine, but once you get it there, it is amazing how fast you can move with it. I still rather like it.

Disruption is actually fairly decent now. Easier to hit with, hits more people, snares, and chains across enemies. However, I just don't feel like it is enough, and I might replace mine with Overcharge. Maybe if the cone of fire was larger and the range longer I would like it.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Kalarifik posted:

Applied to Goons as Elynt. Seems a lot better than when that crazy guy was in charge making all those over-complicated durability systems. Only thing I don't get is I seem to be struggling to get enough research points, does thumping help that?
Any sort of salvaging helps that, so really, anything that involves killing creatures and getting drops will do it.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

ModeSix posted:

So the official launch date is the 29th, but if I have created an account does that mean I can play it now? I'm confused the website says play now and the launch date says the 29th.
If you have an account, you should most likely be able to play. All of the beta players can still play. It is only new people coming into the game without accounts that can't play.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Epic High Five posted:

Thanks guys, held off on the pre purchase and I'll just dump some cash into it down the road when I get settled in instead. It's an MMO afterall so even if I'm missing out with the car, another will just get released down the road

Not too troubled about the auto unlocks on advanced frames because, eh, it'll come with time. See you guys in game soon!
If you do want to dump some cash into it, the $30 starter is not that bad. You aren't saving money on anything, but it does come with a nice assortment of things. $25 for the beans and VIP at cost, and $5 for the warpaint (it is a good one), a title (who cares), and the digital soundtrack/artbook.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf
Sorry guys. I created an AllianceBot2 account for the overflow army and I ran into the same authentication issue that prevented the chat bot from working with my main account. Until the cause/workaround can be found, I'm afraid AllianceBot will be dead in the water for the time being. Ugh, it is so weird. My main and AllianceBot2 accounts get authentication errors, yet the original AllianceBot account works fine.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Lemon King posted:

Might be a bug, try contacting Virgil and see whats up.
It isn't a bug. If it was a bug, in-game chat wouldn't work at all (this has no relation to how broken the in-game chat servers are at the moment). No, I think they just changed the method of generating the password for the chat server.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Mr Scumbag posted:

Pretty simple question that unless I'm having specific hardware issues has probably been asked already but is not covered in the OP: How do I make this game not look like utter rear end? It looks like they ripped their textures out of a game from 1998.
Firefall has something crazy like over 60 GB of textures on the cloud. As you play the game, it downloads higher quality versions of the textures and stores it in a texture cache. If you were to stop and stare at an object, you will see the texture resolution start to increase. It is almost like watching textures streaming in while playing an id tech 5 game.

If you go to the Options menu and go to Network > Advanced, you can set your texture streaming options. You can adjust what quality textures to download and how much bandwidth to use to stream the textures.

I think one of Red5's biggest mistakes with launch was not including high quality textures for the starting areas. All the reviewers and new players are seeing the default low quality textures and don't realize that the higher quality textures are streaming in over time. Heck, it is entirely possible that the launch day server issues are affecting the texture streaming servers so people aren't getting the higher quality versions. Has anybody tested this recently to see if staring at an object causes the game to download the high quality textures?

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf
I deleted my streaming texture cache, set my in-game textures to high, and increased my texture streaming bandwidth. I then started to stare at walls. No change in texture quality. So yeah, it looks like texture streaming is broken. No wonder reviewers are complaining about bad texture quality.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

socialsecurity posted:

Is any of the crafting worth it, it all seems expensive and time consuming I would like to know if there's a worthwhile path before investing.

Also DietDrPibb going to try to join one of the Goon squads once I figure out how.
Not really at this time. You will earn more money just selling your crafting materials and buying what you need.


Inimicul posted:

Other than walk around every inch of the game, no. Once it's downloaded it stays there. That 60GB seems to be various qualities too. I've been playing for over a year on High and my cache is still less than 4GB.
Where is your 4GB texture cache directory located? I looked in C:\Users\-----\AppData\Local\red 5 studios\firefall\cache\vt and I don't have anything there. I'm trying to solve this cache issue.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf
I bet he has a Commander pack for every account he multi-boxes with.

Also, Mavoc "liked" my post about texture streaming not working, so hopefully somebody is actually looking into it!

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

RocketSurgeon posted:

Is the army chat broken or do you guys have another way of communicating in this game?
Chat is somewhat broken right now. There is also no way to communicate between GOONS and GOON2 with AllianceBot either. I would use the Mumble if you want to get together with people.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Fina posted:

I only ever bought $5 for 40 Red Beans and the email gave me 10 back. Is it based on how many you've bought or how many you've spent?
I looked at my purchase history and calculated how much money I've spent on Firefall and how many red beans I acquired, and I couldn't come up with anything that correlates to your data. Your guess is as good as mine on how it was calculated.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Post poste posted:

160 Red beans, somehow.
Also, the password reset e-mail goes to spam, just in case anyone has tried it.

I tried the game for a bit earlier this week, and it was kind of roughshod still, I miss the old style. I logged on a bit later, and I was kicked from Goons for some reason?

Oh well.
There were some purges for inactives. I guess you weren't online enough for us to see/remember you were active. AllianceBot is now logging last known login times for the GOONS army so there shouldn't be any accidental purges in the future. It would be nice if R5 exposed this functionality to the army UI so we wouldn't have to work around it.

Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

precedence posted:

So the vendor that sells level 40 modules for pilot tokens is a the kanaloa research station. accidentally stumbled upon him, and now my Raptor power rating is 990 something. :smug: now time to finish up the epics on my firecat.
I've been thinking about buying modules from him, but I know that within a week, purple modules will have flooded the marketplace and will be super cheap. I wonder if it has already happened.

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Nalin
Sep 29, 2007

Hair Elf

Berke Negri posted:

Art direction isn't quite my thing but at some point the textures seemed to actually appear and the game doesn't look so bad now.
If you stare at a low quality object, does it eventually load in a high quality texture? The game downloads high quality textures on-demand and that wasn't working for the past few days. I'm interested in knowing if they managed to fix it.


Berke Negri posted:

I've only fiddled with the currency exchange a little which doesn't seem so bad, but what is to be expected of unlocking the other battleframes? Is it a pretty big resource sink or are they pretty easy to come across and all the beans stuff is for convenience/cosmetics?
You can unlock battleframes using 10 pilot tokens (you get 10 for leveling a frame up to level 40), 100 red beans, or by buying an unlock off the marketplace using credits. You can convert 25 crystite into 1 credit. Last I remember, frame unlocks were going for about 8000 credits, which equals out to about 200,000 crystite.

You can also craft a silver lottery token and get really, really lucky with it.

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