Fallen Earth

[Askari]

Hullo all! After a nice long break from gaming, I'm thinking of hopping into something again. I've been playing the Fallen Earth open beta for the last week and am thoroughly enjoying the post-apocalyptic scene. Lots of scavenging and crafting to keep me busy.

The free open beta ends 9/1, so there's still a couple days to try Fallen Earth for free, if anyone is interested in downloading it from fileplanet. The early access for pre-orders starts 9/9 and the game goes retail 9/15.

It sounds like they may have a roleplay-designated server at launch, so that's probably where you'll find me come 9/9.

[Askari]

Hmm... obviously some enticement is required:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj6tHgLWMMc

[Jezerai]

heh.  Looks fun.  Is it PvP or PvE?

[Wayena]

Developer(s) Icarus Studios LLC, Fallen Earth LLC
Publisher(s) Fallen Earth LLC
Engine Icarus Platform
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows
Release date(s) September 9, 2009
Genre(s) Post-apocalyptic, MMORPG/ MMOFPS hybrid.
Mode(s) Multiplayer, Online, First-Person Shooter
Rating(s) ESRB M [1]
System requirements Software
Windows XP SP3 or Windows Vista SP1
DirectX 9.0c
DivX Codec
Minumum Hardware
Pentium 4 2.8 GHz or AMD equivalent
1 GB RAM for XP, 2 GB for Vista
NVIDIA Geforce 6600/ATI Radeon X1300
256 MB Video Ram
10 GB Hard-Drive Space
DVD-Drive
Recommended Hardware
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz or equivalent
2 GB for XP, 3 GB for Vista
nVidia GeForce 8800GTS/ ATI Radeon 3870
512 MB Video Ram [2]

[Askari]

A virus called "the shiva virus" wiped out most of humanity and civilization collapsed about 100 years before the game starts in 2156.

The game is set in and around the Grand Canyon, because Hoover Dam was one of the few major sources of electricity that kept working after the fall. I think Hoover Dam was destroyed about 40 years ago by competing factions.

Now there are dozens of settlements and six major factions. The factions form a wheel were every faction has two allies, two enemies and one archrival with diametrically opposed values.

Enforcers (descendents of the military that used to hold the Dam: Order)
CHOTA (Children of the Apocalypse, raiders and anarchists: Chaos)

Techs (descendants of the technicians that used to keep the dam running: Science)
Vistas (naturalists and tree-huggers: Nature)

Travelers (entertainers, merchants, gypsy thieves, assassins, spies: Self)
Lightbearers (mystics, monks, healers: Society)

There is good and bad about all the factions. For instance, the Lightbearers sound pretty nice...but there is also a core subfaction that believes that only mutants are on the path of enlightenment, so non-mutated humans should probably be "sent to the light" early.

The game is very tradeskill-oriented, which has me excited. NPC drops are very meager, but everything can be crafted from harvested materials. And every player can learn all tradeskills (with top-level limited by stats and training access).

As for PvP versus PvE, it has both. And the end game seems to be more PvP than Raid-based. The first 15 levels you learn about the world and start making your way. Then you start working with a particular NPC faction, making enemies of some others. As you help one faction, the NPCs in other towns stop talking/selling to you and the guards start shooting.

Group PvE areas tend to involve lots of opponents, rather than bosses that take forever to kill. For instance, a raider boss and his men have taken over a prison and are using it for a base to raid locals.  The mobs in there aren't any harder than anywhwere else, but there are LOTS of them at once.

PvP is completely consensual in designated PvP areas only. Sometimes these areas are hotspots for resource nodes. Sometimes these areas are interesting terrain (like a huge lot of cargo containers all stacked willy-nilly).

But mainly the PvP revolves around Conflict Towns in the higher levels. These towns start as Neutral, but players can do quests to woo them over to their faction. When a Conflict Town reaches a certain turning point, the NPCs despawn and respawn as allies to the winning faction. The questgivers for other factions now start giving quests to "destabilize" the control, while the controllers get quests to reinforce the town.

Most MMOs devolve into Raiding, PvP, or both during the endgame. I'm not big on raiding or PvP, but Conflict Towns sounds interesting to me. Faction-grinding and crafting will be my main focus in the latter levels of the game. It sounds like non-PvPers like me will still be able to contribute through NPC quests.

And of course there are a few neutral non-PvP towns too, for people to mix with other factions.

I'm thinking of throwing in with the Travelers (allied with Techs and CHOTA), and playing a shady merchant/crafter/mafia type. Faction quests for the Travelers will give some positive faction with Techs/CHOTA, some negative faction with Enforcers/Vistas, and a lot of negative faction with Lightbearers.

This will unlock certain mutation lines and special skills taught by the Travelers (and eventually the Techs/CHOTA), but will close off NPC trainers and questgivers in hostile NPC towns of the Enforcers/Vistas/Lightbearers.

A lot more info can be found at: www.globaltechatlas.info

[Anaris]

Hmmm I've never been much of post-apocalyptic scenarios, but this game sounds interesting.  I like the factions.    Might take a look at it, thanks!

[Anaris]

OMG..... I just saw the video.   Now I'm going to have to play this so I can do the Tom Jones dance!  And the MJ Thriller dance.... And the MJ Billie Jean dance...  And the Grease Lightning dance....and the Sir Mixalot booty dance.....hilarious!  I can't believe they left off JT and Prince moves though!  And no Elvis pelvic thrust?

[Askari]

Yeah, they did a great job with the dance emotes!   

I'm really hoping this game catches on with a large enough subscriber base to sustain itself and sustain expansions, because I think the faction system sets up a neat role-playing opportunity.

And...I admit it...after years of fantasy games, I am sooooo ready for something different.

I've always loved the post-apocalyptic setting. I was recently looking for more fiction/movies and came across a huge list on wiki. Perusing this list showed dozens of movies, books and games that I've enjoyed over the years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction

[Jezerai]

I tried to check it out but open beta is over.  Now I have to decide if I want to fork over the lettuce to see it.

[Askari]

They pushed the retail launch from 9/15 to 9/22, but are leaving the early access launch for pre-order customers on 9/9. It is rumored that the main reason they are doing this is to give early access people time to start filtering out of the newbie areas, so they only have to open one world at launch.

Anyway, if anyone is thinking about trying Fallen Earth and wants to get a nice jump on others, you can download the pre-order from Direct2Drive (free horse) or from the Fallen Earth directly (free ATV).

[Askari]

I may not always be the best IC roleplayer in game, but I always have a very vivid picture of my character in my subconscious when I play. I simply can't play any character for any length of time that I don't "know", like I would know a well-loved fictional character of a book, TV, or movie.

So I've been rattling around ideas about Fallen Earth roleplaying.

The backstory of character creation is a little odd/unclear, in that it doesn't really allow you to have much of a past.

In the 2050's a virus dubbed the Shiva virus started wiping out large populations. Worse... some people lived but were mutated into subhuman types. The chaos started by the virus also led to nuclear war, and the whole planet went down the toilet.

A U.S. soldier by the name of Colonel Masters took his troops and some techs to Hoover Dam to set up an outpost with access to electricity.

EDIT: ***Tutorial SPOILERS ahead***

Don't read if you want the first 15=20 mins of the game to be a surprise!


It's now the 2150's and the game is set in the Grand Canyon area around Hoover Dam. The grandson of the orginal colonel, Alec Masters, has turned into something of a tyrant and many of the soldiers and techs of the dam are getting restless.

The game starts with you emerging "newborn" from a cloning chamber in Hoover Dam. The dam is under attack, and a guilt-wracked technician is trying to give you a chance at life and freedom by setting you loose.

She explains that Alec Masters, has been growing clones from captured "volunteers" and using the clones for experiments and organ donation. She didn't want any part of it, but any soldiers or techs that protested were banished from the dam. These banished soldiers and techs form two of the factions in the game, the Enforcers and the Techs.

Alec Masters is holding the dam mostly with the White Crow battalion of mercs that he brought in when existing Enforcers started questioning his leadership.

It sounds like the majority of these volunteer subjects come from the tribal bands of wastelanders collectively known as CHOTA (Children of the Apocalypse). The CHOTA have gotten sick of it and have united under one chief named Redhand for the express purpose of attacking the dam to oust Alec Masters.

The CHOTA have the help of the Travelers (mafia, gypsies, merchants and thieves), who chafed under the laws and order imposed by Masters. And the Vistas (naturalists or eco-terrorists, depending on who you talk to) who view the technology and experimentation to be leading down the same failed path that caused the apocalypse in the first place.

The last faction is the Lightbearers, who believe in healing, order, and peaceful society. At least their version of it...

You die in your attempt to save the dam, and Masters blows up the main cloning banks. Four years later the technician who got you free has finally hacked in and gotten partial system recovery. Enough to spit you out of a remote LifeNet terminal out in the Grand Canyon province in a semi-functional state.

Where roleplay gets a little weird is that it seems you have no history before the dam incident. While in the dam, you have the skills of a 40th level and can obviously use computers, speak English, drive an ATV...even though you are fresh out of a vat. When you appear from the hacked terminal four years later, you are 2nd level and have much more limited skills.

My best guess is that your "dam body" had the best skill software loaded into it that the tech could manage with the state of the art core system, to give you a fighting chance. But your new body is limited by the hacked field-system now being used.

It's not at all clear if you are an exact clone of a real person, or if you are an amalgam of genetic samples (although I think it's clear you at least "become" the latter). It's also not clear if you have any memories from previous clone lives before the dam, or from your original genetic donor that had a life outside the dam. I guess for the purposes of the game, it could be any of the above that makes the character happy.

I believe my main character will play it like this:
His main genetic donor material was a captured CHOTA from the Quiet Ones sect (a more non-violent sect of CHOTA). He was an armosmith and weaponsmith. His memories have been written and rewritten during various cloning tests, so any semblance of "past history" is mostly disjointed half-memories and dreams.

There's enough subconscious material to give him a pretty strong and individual personality, but no real concrete knowledge of places and events. He also has dim memories of capture and experimentation, like patterns burned into an old monitor. This is reinforcing his distrust of Enforcer military types and Tech science types.

But he isn't really a CHOTA any more. He's not really an "anything" any more. He has no practical knowledge of the Grand Canyon Province and doesn't really fit in anywhere at the start of the game. With the genetic changes and benefits he's been given, he's a bit more than human and isn't really sure what to "do" with himself.

But he's pissed, and he wants to survive. That's his initial motivation.

So as he levels and learns more about all the factions, he'll be looking for "his place in the world". He'll be looking for people to trust and a place to call home. Will he end up joining CHOTA? Not sure. He's literally a "new man", with no ties and no direction.

But one thing is for sure, he's been a lab rat once, and he'll kill or die to avoid it happening again. To himself, or to anyone he names friend.

I'm having problems deciding on a name. The starting towns in FE are based on playstyle: combat, trade, support. And it really doesn't mater, which one you take. I sorta like Depot 66 best, which is a pistol/melee starting town run by the Travelers. As soon as you have a horse, you can run around to all the starter towns and cherry-pick missions (or try to do them all).

I'm thinking of having my main start in Boneclaw, which is a CHOTA settlement. Maybe someone there will "recognize" him from his previous incarnation as a CHOTA and supply him with his past name. He may accept that name for lack of any better idea what to call himself.

When I was considering being a Traveler, I was planning on having more memories of my past and a real name, either Italian or Romani. In that case, maybe the tech who freed me found an old copy of my initial clone scan from when I was captured and gave me back old memories of my original life. Maybe that life has only been on hold for 4 years and I could start wokring my way back into it.

Anyway, lots of possibility! I can't wait for the early access to start tomorrow.

I may even get into PvP a small bit when I reach end-game. As one of the developers said in a YouTube interview I saw: PvP requires a certain critical mass to be entertaining, so they tried to make a PvP system that would draw in more players. It's very goal-oriented (control of neutral towns) and not very punitive (completely consensual, limited to PvP zones, and with no gear loss).

It sounds more fun than raiding, which I can't commit the time and energy to.

[Askari]

Fallen Earth is a sandbox advancement system where you get 2 advancement points every 1/10th of a level. There are no classes, so you can put these points into ANY attribute or skill you like.

But there are also no plans to allow for respecs, so you can end up re-rolling if you spend a bunch of points in a way you later decide you can't stand. The community has responded with some great tools, like this character planner:
http://www.sleeping-dragons.co.uk/FallenEarth/

[Askari]

I'm thinking my Fallen Earth main character will be named "Fiddler Crab".   

[Anaris]

OK Bou, let's hear it, what's the verdict.  How was your first day in Fallen Earth?

[Lyrima]

I don't care how pretty it is or how cool the dances are.

A game based largely on trade skilling?

Uh, no way

Have fun folks!

[Jezerai]

Ok, these are first impressions and may change.  My first impressions was that this game is okay, but not likely to take top spot in my nightly play time.  Here's why ...

What I didn't like:  The avatars.  While it looks like a lot of variations, it is really just the same face with very slight differences and the face, in my opinion, is not attractive.  I could not get Jezerai's white-blonde hair or trademark long pony-tail ... to be fair I could not get that in EQ2 either.  I miss my AoC Jezerai avatar!  I do not like the mechanism for switching weapons on the run, it is very cumbersome and I died a couple times fumbling with the weapon change.  It didn't help that there was a graphics bug that makes my avatar look like a kid playing airplane, heh.  The combat style for dual wielding ... hitting the left mouse button for left swing and right button for right swing may never be something I can get used to.  The UI layout is ok and I shrunk my chat window so it was not filling half my screen, but it doesn't stay down.  Battle is also boring because all I do is swing left, swing right.  No combinations, no special skills to deploy, nothing that gives it that extra zest ... though it is certainly possible that those will come in time.

What I did like:  The game atmosphere is very nice and Apocalypse feeling.  One of the things I really liked about the avatars was the tatoos, piercings and paint ... with the variety of colors and symbols you can create a very unique look which somewhat mitigates my distaste for the underlying avatar.  The tutorial did a good job of walking you through the basic maneuvers.  The scavenging for tradeskill items was very nice and reminded me of Vanguard, somewhat, but with more variety and quicker paced.  I decided to use my rifle at max range to pull and switch to melee right away and that made the switch not result in me getting killed.  But I still fumble for the control button ... I need to see if I can remap the keys.  I do like that I can carry two dual wielding melee weapons, a two hander, a pair of pistols, and a long range rifle all on my person and ready to use relatively quickly if need be.  I started using a two handed weapon to reduce the left click right click and that helped with that issue.  Haven't tried crafting yet, but I like the idea that the best items in the game are available only through crafting.  I loved the ATV and the way it moves!  Unfortunately I am almost out of gas and have yet to figure out how to replenish it ... maybe tonight!

[Askari]

I'll add my two cents as well.

Launch:
The pre-order launch went pretty well for me, with the usual exceptions:
1) overcrowding and lag in some areas
2) overcompetition for harvesting nodes and quest NPCs in some areas
3) the "arms outstretched" bug was sorta funny
4) the shadows were all pixilated, but supposedly being fixed in today's two-hout patch

I hear there was serious bind-up on the log-in server and character creation the first couple hours, but I didn't get home from work until about 5 hours into launch.

Avatars:
I agree with Bou that the avatar faces are sorta "plain, at best" and "downright ugly, at worst". The hair and make-up palettes are not great either, at least for natural colorations. But I also enjoy the tattoos, piercings and facepaints.

The bodies are all shaped the same too, which I don't necessarily like. The devs say this is because they use real models for clothing and gear, and having toons with different body shapes would mess up all the gear looks. I can buy that, because you do look pretty cool in your gear, and I like that you can "wear" and display two back items, two belt items, two leg/holster items. Running around with a wooden board and crossbow on your back, a lead pipe and shiv on your belt, and two zip guns in leg holsters...looks very "martial" and I like it.

They have a lot of great emotes and dances, but I haven't figured out if it's possible to hotkey them.

Combat:
This is a weird one. Since it's a sandbox game that allows you to spend points where you want, the PvE difficulty is sort of up to you. My main beta character went max weaponskills and defense so she was a soloing machine, with the PvE being way too easy at points. But now that I am trying to raise Intelligence and be a crafter at the same time (instead of maxing offense), there's a noticeable increase in difficulty.

I'm not a first-person-shooter player, so the combat took some getting used to for me. I didn't like it at first, but it grew on me. I do suffer from mouse-hand fatigue if I play too long in combat mode, from all the clicking and mouse-looking. When dual-wielding, leftclick is one weapon and rightclick is the other. But those are re-mappable. I stuck to 2-handed at first, then after playing for a week...dual-wielding was also fine. That's easier to do if you're melee because it's one skill, where Rifle and Pistols are two skills. I still can't use pistols worth a darn!

You do start the game with a few abilities...something which is definitely NOT clear to a new player. One of them is a Melee ability called "Bash" I think. It does a nice extra bit of crushing damage AND has a good chance to stun for 2 seconds. You use it by mapping it to a hotkey (like "1") and then hitting it before you swing. The next swing that lands will perform the ability. As you level your combat skills, you get more of these abilities.

At 10th level, my melee guy would usually lead with a bash to get the 2 sec stun, follow with a bleeding dot, and then the critter would drop a few seconds later. If things got ugly or adds joined in, I had a slow-refresh knockdown that would help a lot. I also had some in-combat healing from mutation or first aid. I also had an Armor Use stance that reduced runspeed, but upped armor resists. I had a couple first aid buffs that were health and stamina regen over time (and stacked with food and drink).

Switching weapons can be a pain too. Specially going "to" a dual-wield setup. I do OK going from 2-handed melee (cntl-1) to 2-handed crossbow (cntrl-2), but sometimes I accidentally hit the "Start" button and lose the game window. I need to re-map it, but I haven't decided where to put that stuff yet.

So things definitely get more interesting! Especially when you're a melee character and you start running into NPCs with guns.

It's really not obvious that you have some abilities when you begin the game, but go into your Actions menu and there should be a handful of things there to move to your hotkey bar. The other abilities you learn from trainers as your skills go up.

Harvesting/Crafting:
I really like the variety and the fact that players can make 90-95% of the items in the game. You can even research your own recipes by tradeskilling your new recipe books when you have enough skill. For instance, if I have the food recipes for Grilling 1...I can make Grilling 2 recipe book using "Pen" and "Paper". And I can make pens and paper with Science tradeskill, if I recall correctly. So you can really go from scavenging/mining/harvesting all the way to full-on products. And you can "salvage" some stuff you find in game (or make for practice)  by rightclicking on it and get resources back out for more practice.

The variety is pretty excellent too. Armorcrafting makes plenty of different armor types and can incorporate various dyes. Weaponry makes all sorts of fun weapons, and even some tools with harvesting/mining buffs. Ballistics can make guns and ammo. Science can make eyewear/scopes (optics) and various components for vehicles. Medicine makes a variety of first aid and cure consumables. Mutagenics makes mutation enhancement injectors and gamma consumables (gamma is your mutation "mana"). Cooking makes a lot of food and drink for health or stamina over time. Nature involves harvesting plants and animals and horse training. Geology is mining and metal refinement.

And I can learn them ALL! With one character!

I like how you can queue things up (max 20 items, I think) and the work continues while you run missions, scavenge more stuff...even while logged off.  For instance, we're nearing the end of a 2-hour patch. Before I logged out for the patch, I queued up 2 handwraps (Armorcrafting), 2 flat beer (Cooking), 2 clubs (Weaponry), 4 bandages (First Aid). Each of the above items takes anywhere from 45 seconds to several minutes to complete, but it will probably all be done when I log in. You can also make things go faster by standing in a tradeskill workshop.

Most of what I love about Fallen Earth is the atmosphere. I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic setting and can happily scavenge/harvest for hours so I can tinker-around with making all my own gear. There are some good/funny quests too, with a nice sense of humor.

[Lyrima]

Ok that seals it.

I don't do guns.

Have fun..again!