Good lord, was this game always this hard?

[ArykGrev 3]

EDIT for clarity / brevity:  

• it's super fun revisiting this game, but some issues are really apparently now, especially the difficulty spikes.
• There are bosses and questlines that require a group to finish. 
• There aren't enough players to form groups, at least on the starting Plateau map. 
• (For example there was almost no one in Old Kingman when I had to run the prison, and I tried for hours at Watchtower to get a group to fight Corman (Master level boss).)
• I'd recommend this seriously needs addressed in any improved future release. 

 

One should not just 'skip' those quests; they're tied to the story, and to the events taking place in those particular towns, or even to your own character's story, the overall arching narrative story, etc.

Edited November 22, 2021 by ArykGrev

[ArykGrev 3]

EDITED for clarity / brevity ^^^

Edited November 22, 2021 by ArykGrev

[Cadia 3]

Have no idea what you are trying to say after reading

Loved the game back then, still loving it now, nothing changed in game, everyone started from fresh so everyone is same

 

As for the bosses, most of those you can either kill them and ignore the adds, or just hit and run around LOS heal yourself, I never do them as waste of time

 

"Bosses (or even mobs) that can barely be completed alone.  Yet beating these NPCs are required to complete quests, gain XP and progress."

You are just ranting now are you?

There are probably less than 0.1% of the quests in the game that requires you to kill a boss, if you can't do it solo or find a group, just ignore it. I am 1000% sure this game DOES NOT REQUIRE you to kill these few bosses to gain xp and progress

[ArykGrev 3]

3 hours ago, Cadia said:

Have no idea what you are trying to say after reading

Was it unclear?

3 hours ago, Cadia said:

Loved the game back then, still loving it now, nothing changed in game, everyone started from fresh so everyone is same

Irrelevant to my point.  Playing as an alt, one can therefore craft the best gear as it becomes available, since you already have the mats in storage from previous playthrus.  Otherwise the higher level gear will often require mats that you will not have access to yet.  That in itself is not necessarily a problem, and adds to the desire to progress (so as to find areas that have requires mats for crafting). 

 

However it is in issue if one needs to be min/maxed in order to complete certain content.

 

3 hours ago, Cadia said:

 

As for the bosses, most of those you can either kill them and ignore the adds, or just hit and run around LOS heal yourself, I never do them as waste of time

 

"Bosses (or even mobs) that can barely be completed alone.  Yet beating these NPCs are required to complete quests, gain XP and progress."

You are just ranting now are you?

No, that's called "stating facts."  Many of those bosses / NPCs award XP and complete stories/questlines.  Therefore some people might want to complete them. 

 

3 hours ago, Cadia said:

There are probably less than 0.1% of the quests in the game that requires you to kill a boss, if you can't do it solo or find a group, just ignore it. I am 1000% sure this game DOES NOT REQUIRE you to kill these few bosses to gain xp and progress

 

Don't know, or care, about what "percentage" of quests are actual boss quests.  Many of them are the culmination of the entire town's stories and questlines.  For example the Old Kingman I mentioned above, many of the stories are meant to ultimately resolve in the prison.  Hell the entire state of affairs of what is happening in the town is because of events in the prison.  (Ironically, I was able to solo Casta, only thru sheer cheese.  Ranged peek-a-boo.  Never would have worked as melee.)

 

What if other people might play the game differently than you?  What if they care about the story, or want to complete all the content in a town?  Especially if the quests are all interlinked to a story?

 

Now if that end content is meant to be group content, but it's an area that pretty much never has enough people to form a group, or if that particular player isn't geared optimally for that particular boss/end quest content, then I guess they're screwed?  They don't get to experience the story/content?

 

Also you realize that if a game doesn't make money, it's not going to be around for long, right?  Now guess which game will do better financially:  one where it's realistic to finish content, vs nearly impossible under many circumstances that actually happen in-game?

[Cadia 3]

Roses are red sky is blue grass is green and you are ranting

 

And the last part cracked me up good

 

Are you some kind of troll that never played the game or did someone asked you to do this lmao

[ArykGrev 3]

2 hours ago, Cadia said:

Roses are red sky is blue grass is green and you are ranting

 

And the last part cracked me up good

 

Are you some kind of troll that never played the game or did someone asked you to do this lmao

So you can't actually address and refute anything I've said?  Low emotional IQ.  If people like you had your way, this game would fail again... just so you could "be right."

 

 

[Ardenn 41]

Maybe I can field a bit of pondering thought.

It depends on when you started playing the game.

Icarus had a pretty fair idea of what they wanted the game to be, but through testing they had to remove and rebalance some of their initial ideas. There were people who felt this was the golden age of the game but it had plenty of loopholes, exploits and problems of its own. As an example, There used to be Capstone skills, every faction having a cool and wild skill they got when they reached level cap. Those had already been completely removed by the time I started to play here, and a lot of older players lamented their loss, but they were also hugely overpowered and made the game's complexity minimal at best. Some veterans told me one of the capstones was a literal Fireball and they ultimately decided it felt like it was too "Magical" and removed it for weaker skills.

If you joined during the Gamers First ownership of the game, they didn't really do any positive favors for the game. The Defense Towns, The District PVP zone, the Football Duo Arena and GORE came out under their ownership. All of it busy work, none of it added to story (As far as I know of, Alpha zone was incomplete/had no story). They screwed the placement of nodes and all the custom, hand crafted loving care that Icarus had added tot he game int he name of atmosphere and fired anyone int he staff that was considered "Too friendly" to the playerbase (mostly the GMs who were most willing to give players free items at RP events and such). GORE came out under their ownership and it completely split the community and combat had to be rebalanced multiple times. Telepathy was also completely removed outright and replaced with Illumination.

Overall at launch the game had enough skills to rival Final Fantasy, but G1 thought it was too complex and killed all the mutation lines, reducing them to 3 skills each. Most these skills arent even very powerful compared to their previous state.

The game was ultimately sold to Little Orbit in a really shabby condition, and Matt had seen the older content a bit and wanted to try and bring the magic back. Other projects they had to prioritize before Fallen Earth are taking longer than expected, and they put the Classic server online to try and give us a go-between while they try and root out all the code int he base game that was being exploited and re-write it.

Fallen Earth 2.0 is probably many years off yet, but I wouldnt blame Little Orbit for all of the problems. Gamers First buggered the code in the name of cash shop greed. When G1 couldnt fix their mistakes, they just remapped and sold vanity jackets and helmets until they could sell our game to someone else.

Its pretty cool someone was willing to buy our game and try to maintain it. It might be a shadow of its former self, but theres a few hundred of us glad to have it back online.

Edit; fixed errors

Edited November 21, 2021 by Ardenn
spelling/errors

[ArykGrev 3]

49 minutes ago, Ardenn said:

Maybe I can field a bit of pondering thought.

I actually had one of the Lightbearer capstones... but it was glitched and didn't even work right. 

 

I'm certainly not disparaging Little Orbit -- they're obviously putting the game up as a courtesy.  My comments I suppose are a suggestion that if they ever do fix up and release an improved version the game, one of the things that have arguably changed in the MMO world since FE first released, is difficulty scaling and the ability to have bosses that scale w/ the number attacking them.

 

Put differently, if there is a quest/boss that is needed to fulfill a storyline, get XP, and the almighty AP points... that thing needs to be soloable.  OR it needs to be in an area sure to have lots of players and where one is sure to form a group.

 

There are of course a lot of other QOL changes I see as I revisit this game, but the inability to finish major questlines is a real turnoff that I'd suggest must be addressed in any future release.

[Swestor 0]

I believe the spike in difficulty was a result of Patch 1.7.4.

 

I can't find the notes for it sadly but I do believe that the notes said that max mitigation on the player's part was set from 60% to 50% which was changed to 55? after 2.3? I don't know tbh.

Plus the AI getting their mitigation based on Veteran, Boss and Master with the standard for normal mobs being 25-33% or so alongside having power and precision being added them.

Normal mobs who did 5-10 damage on average did 12-25 after the patch from what I remember which is very little.

 

I just know that Commander Bergeron in Deadfall would die 1v1 versus my Telepath/Empathetic Melee CHOTA character back before the patch of course after 8? minutes and after the patch, he'd rip me a new one with how powerful he was made. Same with Corman, used to be able to 1v1 reasonable with First Aid with Staunch Wound 3/Patch 3 and use of disrupt/any other stuns at the time at level 15-18, but it was totally different once the patch hit.

 

I don't even think people realized how much this changed the game for the worse imho.

Edited November 22, 2021 by Swestor

[ArykGrev 3]

12 hours ago, Swestor said:

I believe the spike in difficulty was a result of Patch 1.7.4.

 

I can't find the notes for it sadly but I do believe that the notes said that max mitigation on the player's part was set from 60% to 50% which was changed to 55? after 2.3? I don't know tbh.

Plus the AI getting their mitigation based on Veteran, Boss and Master with the standard for normal mobs being 25-33% or so alongside having power and precision being added them.

Normal mobs who did 5-10 damage on average did 12-25 after the patch from what I remember which is very little.

 

I just know that Commander Bergeron in Deadfall would die 1v1 versus my Telepath/Empathetic Melee CHOTA character back before the patch of course after 8? minutes and after the patch, he'd rip me a new one with how powerful he was made. Same with Corman, used to be able to 1v1 reasonable with First Aid with Staunch Wound 3/Patch 3 and use of disrupt/any other stuns at the time at level 15-18, but it was totally different once the patch hit.

 

I don't even think people realized how much this changed the game for the worse imho.

Holy moly, that explains everything!

 

Why the hell did they do that?  What was supposedly wrong w/ the difficulty scaling before that it needed changed?

[Ardenn 41]

14 hours ago, Swestor said:

I believe the spike in difficulty was a result of Patch 1.7.4.

Thanks for stepping in with better info, I'm always looking to expand my own history of the game as well.

[Swestor 0]

3 hours ago, ArykGrev said:

Holy moly, that explains everything!

 

Why the hell did they do that?  What was supposedly wrong w/ the difficulty scaling before that it needed changed?

I have no clue as to why it was done, the Patch was only tested over the period of 2 weeks.

https://www.mmorpg.com/news/patch-174-hits-pts-2000073165

https://www.mmorpg.com/news/new-patch-to-deploy-wednesday-2000073267

I really wish we had the notes but they're probably lost to the wind. I only recently found 1.4.0's (1.4.0 was amazing imho) on a site that I do not know if is sketchy or not so I'll be abstaining from linking it.

2 hours ago, Ardenn said:

Thanks for stepping in with better info, I'm always looking to expand my own history of the game as well.

I do wish I remembered more, it's just that it's been 11 years nearly and as you can guess, things get very foggy with memory.

[cowhorseman 441]

if your having issues with s1 bosses (even more so for south s1) you need to learn the art of cheesing this games awful AI. argus is a good example of this. he might be the end of the line master boss for s1, but super easy to solo by cheesing

[Erei 0]

FE always had odd difficulty spikes. Still do sometimes. Places where mobs respawn super fast, or with ridiculous aggro range (s2 devil's own I'm looking at you). Or better, both. Sometimes looting was just too risky, the area had to be rushed before the respawn+large aggro radius killed you.

I had a boss doing 100+crit in early S3 (dieseltown) yesterday. Almost killed me. With armor use maxxed, and pretty much best armor of the level. Some things never changes

 

The random master boss are a stupid design decision. I played S3 yesterday, and there is one master in Quarantine, and another in the pre-fall museum. For quests (there is a 3rd but it is not needed for the quest, and you can CC->loot the item). They are super small places where people don't stay, and the game population is not enough to support group content at random places. Especially considering how low the reward is.

The pre fall museum also have a quest to kill a quest object, and if you stay at range, it's 100% safe, but it's a master object, with lots of HP. I assume it's meant to be done in group. That's 3 quests with a master in it, in an unmarked place on the map, for little rewards. How many people did those in a group ? Did anyone ever did ?

That kind of things are common in "old school" MMOs. Having random group quests was normal. And bad. Especially on low pop games. Which is why we don't see much of that anymore.

 

 

Release FE had odd decisions and design. Factions had a greater impact on build, and you used to chose the faction for what they offered and not for RP. Unique skills, mutations, items.... For example, Enforcers had a rifle skill, and so did Vista. When I played, the majority of the server was LB, I assume for the heals, but it could have been another reason, I was too far off "endgame" to know the meta and stuff.

They also wanted mutations to be "support" only and not used as main "weapon". So they were trash for the most part, with a few "op" exception. They really, really, didn't want a "caster/mage" type of character. I think they really had a thing against fantasy MMO that dominated the market at the time. Most of their marketing was about how much FE was not fantasy. Stuff like "we don't have paladins" on their ads. Lots of people asked for "mage" type of character, through offensive mutations, and the devs were very vocal about how they didn't want to. If I remember correctly, OP skills where nerfed, and nobody played mutations except for healing. So they had to revamp them to make them less trash. Ironically, Willpower is still a useless stats/noob trap to this day.

The game was meant to be slow. Everything took a long time, from leveling to travelling and crafting. No instas, no xp boost.

AP quests were pretty much mandatory (no free random AP/dome/race). Which included the player's favourite : faction wheel flipping. Lots of factions mobs where grinded, their ghosts forever haunting the wasteland.

This leads to things like builds having a faction attached to it. IE "rifle-crafter.LB". And people suggesting new players to pick the opposite faction of the one they wanted, so they would flip only once.  "Do your AP quest" was probably the most typed sentence on help chat. And we used to have a spreadsheet for AP quests.

PvP was to be essentials. They did it with the crafting, mostly. Initially, we only had the boxes (the one with a message in chat) and node in pvp, but it was not good enough. Back at release, we didn't really have "rare" materials. Fasteners, plastics, gears, glass... that kind of stuff. So, they made a patch to change that. And the rare/uncommon mats where supposed to be found in PvP area, almost exclusively. So you wouldn't be able to craft the actual useful items without going there. No boss fastener boxes or anything like that either. That was quite a drama back then^^

Icarus was very much against fast travel, and if I remember correctly, wardrobe. The first one because they wanted the world to feel "bigger", and the other so you could see what kind of armor the opponent was wearing. Ironically, ever since we have FT, I feel the world is bigger. I never went back to lower level zone before, because it was so far away and took ages. For all intent and purposes, they stopped to exist for me, making the world smaller as a way of consequences. Now, I can, and I do it at times.

 

G1 did many things wrong, but fast travel and wardrobe certainly isn't.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Erei

[ArykGrev 3]

On 12/1/2021 at 12:40 PM, Erei said:

The random master boss are a stupid design decision. I played S3 yesterday, and there is one master in Quarantine, and another in the pre-fall museum. For quests (there is a 3rd but it is not needed for the quest, and you can CC->loot the item). They are super small places where people don't stay, and the game population is not enough to support group content at random places. Especially considering how low the reward is.

 

You make a lot of good points, but this part here, this is why I recently quit and uninstalled.  I've had enough.

 

The obnoxious fetch-back-to-the-exact-same-location-over-and-over quests, quests that make you run to opposite ends of the map, quests that ask for various materials paired w/ the fact that many towns only having one storage meaning you'll have to travel all the way to a dual-vault town just to get the required mats, removing various crafting components from being lootable in the world, the constant lag stutter in practically every single combat exchange and even driving... all of that, I put up with it.

 

But the Master bosses, especially once I got to S3, the constant experience of going through an entire quest chain, getting to the last quest to finish the storyline and get the AP... just to have to leave it because there was a (or multiple) Master boss bullet-sponges, I'd finally had enough.   I'm done with it.  Quit and uninstalled the other day.

Edited December 12, 2021 by ArykGrev

[cowhorseman 441]

On 12/1/2021 at 1:40 PM, Erei said:

FE always had odd difficulty spikes. Still do sometimes. Places where mobs respawn super fast, or with ridiculous aggro range (s2 devil's own I'm looking at you). Or better, both. Sometimes looting was just too risky, the area had to be rushed before the respawn+large aggro radius killed you.

I had a boss doing 100+crit in early S3 (dieseltown) yesterday. Almost killed me. With armor use maxxed, and pretty much best armor of the level. Some things never changes

 

The random master boss are a stupid design decision. I played S3 yesterday, and there is one master in Quarantine, and another in the pre-fall museum. For quests (there is a 3rd but it is not needed for the quest, and you can CC->loot the item). They are super small places where people don't stay, and the game population is not enough to support group content at random places. Especially considering how low the reward is.

The pre fall museum also have a quest to kill a quest object, and if you stay at range, it's 100% safe, but it's a master object, with lots of HP. I assume it's meant to be done in group. That's 3 quests with a master in it, in an unmarked place on the map, for little rewards. How many people did those in a group ? Did anyone ever did ?

That kind of things are common in "old school" MMOs. Having random group quests was normal. And bad. Especially on low pop games. Which is why we don't see much of that anymore.

 

 

Release FE had odd decisions and design. Factions had a greater impact on build, and you used to chose the faction for what they offered and not for RP. Unique skills, mutations, items.... For example, Enforcers had a rifle skill, and so did Vista. When I played, the majority of the server was LB, I assume for the heals, but it could have been another reason, I was too far off "endgame" to know the meta and stuff.

They also wanted mutations to be "support" only and not used as main "weapon". So they were trash for the most part, with a few "op" exception. They really, really, didn't want a "caster/mage" type of character. I think they really had a thing against fantasy MMO that dominated the market at the time. Most of their marketing was about how much FE was not fantasy. Stuff like "we don't have paladins" on their ads. Lots of people asked for "mage" type of character, through offensive mutations, and the devs were very vocal about how they didn't want to. If I remember correctly, OP skills where nerfed, and nobody played mutations except for healing. So they had to revamp them to make them less trash. Ironically, Willpower is still a useless stats/noob trap to this day.

The game was meant to be slow. Everything took a long time, from leveling to travelling and crafting. No instas, no xp boost.

AP quests were pretty much mandatory (no free random AP/dome/race). Which included the player's favourite : faction wheel flipping. Lots of factions mobs where grinded, their ghosts forever haunting the wasteland.

This leads to things like builds having a faction attached to it. IE "rifle-crafter.LB". And people suggesting new players to pick the opposite faction of the one they wanted, so they would flip only once.  "Do your AP quest" was probably the most typed sentence on help chat. And we used to have a spreadsheet for AP quests.

PvP was to be essentials. They did it with the crafting, mostly. Initially, we only had the boxes (the one with a message in chat) and node in pvp, but it was not good enough. Back at release, we didn't really have "rare" materials. Fasteners, plastics, gears, glass... that kind of stuff. So, they made a patch to change that. And the rare/uncommon mats where supposed to be found in PvP area, almost exclusively. So you wouldn't be able to craft the actual useful items without going there. No boss fastener boxes or anything like that either. That was quite a drama back then^^

Icarus was very much against fast travel, and if I remember correctly, wardrobe. The first one because they wanted the world to feel "bigger", and the other so you could see what kind of armor the opponent was wearing. Ironically, ever since we have FT, I feel the world is bigger. I never went back to lower level zone before, because it was so far away and took ages. For all intent and purposes, they stopped to exist for me, making the world smaller as a way of consequences. Now, I can, and I do it at times.

 

G1 did many things wrong, but fast travel and wardrobe certainly isn't.

lets not leave alpha out of this. a place made souly for group missions needing atleast 5 people to do one mission without using 20 million rounds of ammo. all the mobs there have ungodly hp damage and unfair skills like OSOK or the judge with the insta kill fire attack, and then you stack on top of that quest with rewards so little and meaningless your better off just grinding factions via circuits. outpost isnt much better and for the most part is mostly empty. exploring there i found more then one random zone you can enter with zero in it. no nodes npcs anything just flat land i feel from my years of playing this game has a strong amazing start but almost fully dies off in s3 and fully after TW due to the shift of thinking about those who play in groups over those who play solo i guess the devs thought everyone has friends or likes people alot (looking at you marry) and that really does hurt what you can do besides just grinding faction or standing in LA

 

oh and who decided all the crafting at the end needed to be 8 hour plus suits? i dislike you and i hope your child gets dumped by the love of his life

[NysekZePope 33]

Most bosses can infact be cleared solo, the few that can't can usually be handled by having 1-3 more players with you.

There are a few instances where I couldn't warrant event doing as the rewards aren't worth it, usually these missions show a clear group icon. If it involves a master tier NPC it's best to ask for help as some are extremely broken for that level range to solo or duo. Not that it can't be done, but expect some to be unreasonable for that level tier.

[Phrozen 32]

Heavily nitpicking this one thing that I keep seeing people say.

 

Fallen Earth 2.0 will very likely never in a million years exist. That is not how version numbers work.

 

The Icarus release is 1.0. The G1 release is 1.1. Little Orbit's finished release will be 1.2. We are currently at the end of G1's release so for an arbitrary number let's say it's v1.1.3450.

Fallen Earth 2.0 would not have the same story, setting, or assets. It would likely have similar gameplay and stats/skills but that's where the similarities will end. The only game I can think of where they just directly took the assets and made a new game is Ocarina of Time -> Majora's Mask and even so that game had vastly different story and setting.

 

Furthermore, for Little Orbit to buy a game which is dead, buried, exhumed, [redacted], buried, and exhumed again, just to not use any of the scripts, gameplay, assets, etcetera, is literally suicide for the company. Not the figurative "suicide" of buying these games to begin with, but actually a legitimate effort to brick their company.

 

Yeah I'm ranting at some dumb bullshoot that doesn't matter but don't expect 2.0 when you're getting 1.2.

(addendum to avoid merge)
Cowhorseman asks why things take 8 hours to craft. Simple.

Time is a valuable asset, and it guarantees that anything you craft requires an ingredient that nobody can farm faster than anybody else, no matter how much time you have to be at your PC. It ensures that item will be worth money.

 

Edited December 28, 2021 by Phrozen
grammar error, addendum