My adventure in Fallen Earth continues and I am now level six in Embry Crossing. I finished up most of the quests at South Burb (a major crafting town) and decided to go join a few of my friends who have characters in Embry. I’ve really been grappling with my decision of how to specialize points. I think that I have finally decided to go for a Crafter / Rifle user build. I’m going to specialize in the Tech faction and spend most of my time heavily crafting into the Ballistics and Science crafts. I’ll be maxing out my intelligence and perception and pursuing a very lucrative career in cornering some much-needed market… I just need to find it. It’s out there and I will find it.
My combat path will be Rifles. I hear that they’re sorta weak right now, but I don’t really know what to think. They’re rifles… they let you use machine guns, shotguns, sniper rifles, and all sorts of other things. How can that suck? The -60 melee defense is definitely bad, but I don’t really understand what makes it bad since you get such damage from such range — unless you don’t get the damage… then that’s another story. Anyone here a rifle user and have complaints?
I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to craft and figure out what to do. I’m still a big time noob utilizing the Help channel every time I can’t figure something out — which end up being about once every five minutes. I absolutely LOVE being so clueless. It’s so refreshing to really have no clue what is going on. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve played a game that wasn’t intuitive from the start? Years.
The Halloween event is where I spent most of today’s playtime. I had to kill 100 zombies to get a nice Shotgun. I also got my Ballistics and Science crafting skills 30+. I’m moving along slowly, but at the same time every little thing that I do seems to provide me with this immense sense of accomplishment.
There are, however, a few things that I would have done differently with FE. These are just things I’ve come across in the limited time I’ve played.
1. I’d make the Skills screen a lot more polished. Spending points, knowing what you get for spending them, and outlining how your character will develop should be a bit more defined. It’s underwhelming right now and could be a lot more clear. A nice outlined Skill Tree would be good.
2. Levels wouldn’t exist and AP gain/spending would be how you progress. You earn AP and spend the AP into skills. How far into your skills you are determines how good you are — essentially how it is right now, right? Whatever benefit levels provide right now could be dissolved into bolstering AP abilities and their influence and base stats could be altered to accommodate. I just don’t see the need for levels in the game and the way SWG did it would work just fine here.
That’s it for now. I have a few more things but I don’t know enough about them yet to comment intelligently.
I’ve been having trouble playing to going on my 2nd day patching (and it still says 13h to go) But if you want to see how rifle does for DMG this is a PvP video of a guy who uses rifles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe6DeWD4Lfs
~Skryre
Their is a podcast from game X heres some awesome info for you keen i am sure youd love:
well in the lagwar podcast :
http://lagwar.com/fallenearth/
at about 40 min or so the devs state, that construction is the gateway to player housing (meaning we will build the houses) You cant build everywhere but about 40% of the world will be housing space.
And they also state they dont want it to just be houses they want players to build cities/towns. With different building types may give the creaters/clans certain buffs and bonuses and such.
Also housing/cities will be pvp based, They speak of destroying walls and raiding clan cities! yay clan wars!
Wow this is starting awesome, I am very excited now.
putting up walls raises the defense of a town. And putting in a bank or something along those lines raises commerce. And if you have a high commerce and low defense it’ll attract NPC raiders.
one thing i left out ^^
Once you have your rifle skill maxed you should start to see big improvements in the abilities of rifle. I hear a lot from beginning players about rifles being tough but very little complaints once they get to higher levels. I have watched rifle players questing and seen them easily take mobs down before they even get close to them.
The major advantage is in S2 you really begin encountering ranged mobs ALL the time and good ranged offense really begins to shine.
Rifles are much better once you actually get a scoped rifle (at 60 rifles: level 10 minimum). Things that get to you will hurt, but you’ll be able to kill any level-appropriate single target before it gets to you.
Levels are mainly a simplification. For one, they allow certain pieces of gear to not require armor use, but still have a floor for use. Second, without levels, the bonus AP system wouldn’t work very well. Third, if you’re just going to substitute “total experience-derived AP” everywhere that currently uses levels, all you’re doing is punishing players who are pants at math. Smaller numbers are easier to deal with, and MMO veterans are more used to the idea that they can’t often take something five levels above them than that they should be able to take down something fifteen “levels” higher.
While I sympathize with the “no levels, just AP” point, I think they need to have the levels in there for PvP. Level gives a ballpark figure to let you know if the other guy is about even or way out of your league. If there wasn’t PvP, I’d probably agree that levels are redundant. Glad to hear you’re enjoying it.
I’m rifles too, and it’s served me perfectly well so far in sector 1. I don’t care whether it’s a gimped build, ’cause nothing is quite as satisfying as hearing the “K-thunk!” of a crossbow bolt being lodged in a monster’s flesh. Then if they’re still standing, I can always run up and whack them with my pointy stick!
Come to think of it, why did I go through the trouble of sharpening that stick, if my character just uses it as a club? One of the many mysteries of the apocalypse, I guess.
I’m very tempted by FE but I think I’ll wait until it becomes a bit more polished. To me, it seems like a game like EVE in which I mean it will continue to get better with time.
I’m also rifles/crafting with a teeny bit of melee sprinkled in purely because crafting ammo gets expensive and slow [18 minutes for 80 heavy rifle ammo!].
I did notice with this, that melee does a crapload of damage compared to a rifle. I’m talking one-shotting mobs with a sledgehammer vs. having to shoot twice . This is at about lvl 16 [sector 1 still].
On the other hand, melee “feels” sucky. I have a scoped rifle now, so i can shoot mobs that is not even in proper view and that is quite satisfying.
That said, when i encounter a boss that is in your face, i’ve found myself better off switching to a melee weapon than trying to shoot at close range.
Haha, all you guys playing FE… makes me want to try it out. There’s a free trial for the halloween event, right? Honestly, I’m finding it hard to log in to Aion these days. I’m only two levels from the Abyss but I find the PvE in that game sooo boring. Wish I could actually level off PvP and I’d never hunt another mob again.
I’ve gone melee/craft. Making my own axe-handles and swords means at level 7 I can often kill equal-level mobs before they even get a hit in. I can reliably defeat up to level 9 melee opponents, but ranged mobs tend to run about too much for my meagre skills, so I try to stick to even level on those.
I’ve already had to make a bank mule, who will inevitably end up getting played, so I will probably go ranged with her, assuming I end up subscribing, which is looking more and more likely all the time, providing I can get Mrs Bhagpuss out of the Arathi Basin and over to the Canyon.
@Keen: you need to get the dps spreadsheet. rifles are bad because you don’t get the same TSR as other categories. Just punch in the numbers in the sheet and tweak the MDS columns until it matches the skill levels you’re looking for.
Some people say that rifles are better for sustained, but if you start crunching the numbers, you notice that the tftt and recup is much MUCH closer to the soft cap than you otherwise could be.
This is sorta what I’m talking about. People will come out and say they love being rifles and have no trouble, then people will talk about crunching the numbers and coming up with the hard facts that rifles are inferior. What I’m wondering is… okay, they’re inferior… but does that matter? If it’s not noticeable because everything is easy then it doesn’t matter. If it’s not noticeable because it’s only a slight difference in practice (although a big difference on paper), then it doesn’t matter to me.
“you need to get the dps spreadsheet. rifles are bad because you don’t get the same TSR as other categories. Just punch in the numbers in the sheet and tweak the MDS columns until it matches the skill levels you’re looking for.
Some people say that rifles are better for sustained, but if you start crunching the numbers, you notice that the tftt and recup is much MUCH closer to the soft cap than you otherwise could be.”
Ugh. This made me throw up in my mouth. Spread sheets for frickin video games. Give me a break; I already work 2 jobs.
Good try Fallen Earth; cookie cutter builds inc because of the spread sheet loving asshats. I am sick of this min/max BS.
Get out of here Wickidd, with your well reasoned thinking.
Playing the game just to have fun playing the game? Smells like nub.
@Pelkor: That may be true, but if you divide the MDS columns by the TLK column to get per capita MDS, you’ll realize that rifles actually have the best RSW of the lot. Since the recup is so close to the soft cap, you don’t have to worry about mftbbk deterioration.
“Since the VP is such a VIP, shouldn’t we keep the PC on the QT? Cause if it leaks to the VC, he could end up an MIA, and then we’d all be put on KP.”
@Spreadsheets: Combat related spreadsheets are usually flawed in that they tend to over simply the conditions and go to unlike circumstances. Long term DPS calculations only come into play with really high HP boss fights that take many minutes to complete. In standard hunt groups, more time is wasted in finding the next fight then the few seconds difference in Damage output.
@Economy: I read the listed link and it is very curious. Since the game is not even one third its intended design, the current craft/economic model is not a good representation of the intention of the game. IMO, I think it is a good idea that for the the low levels you can be self sufficient. It goes with the theme of the game. It took a while before the EVE economy really took hold and was stable. So give FE a while to fully flesh out the system.
[…] Keen re: Fallen Earth – “I absolutely LOVE being so clueless. It’s so refreshing to really have no clue what is going on.” […]