The State of the Game (Updated 06/15/2018)

[d47 2]

Hello,

Clammier send me here.

I used to play around 2012-2013 before I become proper hard working member of the society and I have 2.25 k hours of in-game time, and some gc1 purchase under my belt.

What used to be here was something I keep in a warm corner of my heart, every couple months thinking to myself, why why why is it dead and why no one has done anything quite like it again, The Fallout MMO.

 

The first 50 hours were atrocious with large empty fields of nothing, non-existent crafting que and dumb fetch this gimme that quests, I have absolutely no idea how I lasted aside for immersion and crafting being my thing. Years later I stumbled on this youtube WoW vanilla nostalrius private server review that explains it properly (no, didn't play wow, but it does explain it quite succinctly).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxR3zK-unFU

Anyway I found friends and had a blast hunting enfos  and fighting lbs and chota in s3, taking care not to lvl up to enter the broken Vanu spandex areas of further "expansions."

 

As far as I am concerned, anything after lvl 45 and kaibab forest/deadfall was not fun and waste of time due to:

immersion loss (blood sports were quick and easy grind that killed world pvp),

boss rare resource grind (again people not pvping over resources),

pay2win vehicles and armor that killed crafting economy (no point to pvp over resources to make anything)

large unbalanced maps taking forever to get things done (no, blood sports were not the solution)

looking like alien mesopreno/hexweave turd until you got that halo suit (just as bad imho) or wardrobe unlocks

utility items having less variety/situational use, just brandy, paste, adren shot (again little point in making anything else, killing crafting and economy and tactics)

thankfully you couldn't use most of those due to lvl restriction in s3, we used to have had separate sets of utilities for each sector

 

S3 was mid game and was spared all that, preparation mattered, and you actually had to fight over resources (aside for dye event, that was a bucket race and cutting people off with p2w vehicles and speed booster with occasional ganking when you forgot to turn pvp off) to get those wardrobe unlocks and pimp out in that fedora hat .

As far as I am concerned we fought to dress up better than our opponents, and it worked for me. I still laugh at the big bulky hairy male chota running in wedding dress around the citadel.

I'll skip all the drama queens/kings and camping for 30 minutes shouting trash in region after 5 minutes of combat, that's just how people are/were.

 

With all this though, it was FUN, until more pointless broken end game content was added without fixing the newbie tutorial/drop off rates (meeting people (griefers are not people) to quest with 10-20 hours in, no crafting que until you pay 5$ really? gj) or the core loop game play. I'd just compress s1 to 1/3 the size since you couldn't afford the vehicles and buggy quest took forever.

 

With all that reminiscing and venting, I can tell you what I will pay for (since it boils down to it really):

economy involving crafting (I found other venues for my OCD (proud owner of budding cacti collection), could use that one again)

item decay/repair

staying true to the genre aesthetics (no alien turds, no halo suits)

p2vanity only

pvp over rare resources (could have vanity use only) forcing synergy between crafting/fighting toons and between sectors to allow newb/veteran pve/pvp interaction,

instead of instancing/alienation/separation (gore boss grind and bloodsports grind communities and empty world for the newbies quitting due to having no one to play with),

no single player mmo thing

interesting terrain to take advantage of during claiming territory instead of hiding behind big block of pixels waiting for people to get into close range (fondly remember that city fight against condemned in haietta with running and jumping through the houses)

 

*Takes off rose-tinted glasses. Might have mixed quite a lot of things along the way, it's been a couple years.

 

Anyway I know you have way more pressing stuff on your hands than some rant and rave about immersion, aesthetics and economy with part of the game code missing, and similarly I can't devote my time to wrap my head around the whole game, so just my 3 cents about what made the game unique and made me bother to write after 6 years with tens of different games I already forgot in-between.

 

 

[Greta Singer 0]

hopefully i can actually play again after a few years xD

[Vekthaur 0]

Thanks for the update. It will be long and painful but I'm glad there is a chance to see FE back on the road again 

[Anneliesse 27]

It's great to see a no glitz no glamour straight to the point state of the game. Don't ever feel obliged to sugar coat anything for whatever reasons there may be. And thank you very much for clearing up the capacity to fix and work on Fallen Earth.

[MICFILLER 22]

14 hours ago, d47 said:

*Takes off rose-tinted glasses. Might have mixed quite a lot of things along the way, it's been a couple years.

 

Open world pvp was about as fast as bloodsports if you could get it. The issue with group dt gain was addressed and that was the real killer for dt gain. BS was just a way to pass the time or reliably get less dt.

Boss grind was basically gore until they decided to add dome. Before that you would scavenge mainly in pve zones. PvP wasn't huge for resources but had the potential for some rarer mats.

p2win armor? Ohh shit brass goggles broke the game like it was said they would! The only 'p2win' was gore, and that's barely on the spectrum of p2win. Also what p2win vehicles? Most were crafted and the store ones they added down the line were same stat redesigns.

Utility items? You do realize the only thing you listed that was mandatory was brandy as its best in slot with zero competition due to being dual stat regen. The other 2 are both optional depending on build needs. If you made nothing else or requested nothing else you had little knowledge of your build or were a generic gt/dual offense 129 emp glassboy. Earlier sectors had a similar consume setup depending on your need, but in these you would use a lower tier brandy.

Edited June 8, 2018 by MICFILLER
trimming

[Capet 3]

So, hi. I was involved in the original dev of fallen earth as a tester (yes, it was tested, that doesn’t mean anyone listens to the bug reports), and my spouse was the designer of the original crafting system. I really hope you can get any of the original art assets, but frankly, I’d be shocked if that were the case. As for the engine... ouch, sorry, it was outdated when we were working on it. Though ultimately, working on the game was a wonderful experience, and I wish y’all the best of luck with it. I’d love to see it revived, and I’m delighted that you see the potential in it. Thank you.

[Rovol 7]

Thank you for the open and transparent SoTG Matt.  If you keep up this level of comms we're in good hands.

 

Astounding how much G1 seemed to be missing.  Good luck sorting it all out.

[llamatron66 4]

Many thanks for the SoTG, it was much needed, looks like it will be a long path ahead until the game is back on its feet, good luck in achieving this, I've been with FE since the start and not about to quit now!

 

Almost all of the points d47 said above I totally agree with, and the crafting economy was key to this game - taking away crafting slots and making it pay2win really killed the playerbase as there was no real goal for many people any more.

 

Small extra detail, I had to change browser to write this reply, this reply box doesn't work with Palemoon, nor do the cursor keys work with the browser I'm using now, making editing replies awkward. Please make sure your forum software works with most browsers.

[Demetus 0]

o/ Filthy game hopper here.

 

Played the game a bit years ago and did enjoy the concept and such, but unfortunately saw the game being left to the same fate as many other MMOs. Hopefully the renewed interest in Fallen Earth is true - it's honestly the main reason for me coming back and starting over.

[MattScott 15242]

Hi all,

 

This week was E3, so I didn't get a lot of time on Fallen Earth.

 

We have been able to extract the compiled game issues from the main data file.

 

We have been able to get about 40% through re-organizing all the C++ code. The main problem was that several core libraries were copied and included several times. It's impossible to know which version is the most up-to-date, but it's clear they aren't all the same. So we've started moving everything into a new repository with each library referenced and only included once. We still have to do this for all the server code and some of the front end code, but we were able to get some of the tools recompiling this way.

 

(This has been added to the original post for easy tracking)

 

Thanks,
Matt

[Aroa Croft 84]

recently an anti-traps has been implemented in the apb game, is there a possibility of being able to protect ourselves with this in fallen earth? This measure would be welcome given the large number of trigerbots and more rare things that could be eliminated and that make the experience in the game is short or very short or this type of riffraff

[Riverwind 27]

Thanks for the update on June 15th. Appreciated

 

[wieditleestisgek 0]

Installing the game again. been thinking of it for awhile. its a wierd feeling.
this is my favorite mmorpg i hope things will go well
good luck.

[d47 2]

On 6/8/2018 at 12:54 PM, MICFILLER said:

Open world pvp was about as fast as bloodsports if you could get it. The issue with group dt gain was addressed and that was the real killer for dt gain. BS was just a way to pass the time or reliably get less dt.

Boss grind was basically gore until they decided to add dome. Before that you would scavenge mainly in pve zones. PvP wasn't huge for resources but had the potential for some rarer mats.

p2win armor? Ohh shit brass goggles broke the game like it was said they would! The only 'p2win' was gore, and that's barely on the spectrum of p2win. Also what p2win vehicles? Most were crafted and the store ones they added down the line were same stat redesigns.

Utility items? You do realize the only thing you listed that was mandatory was brandy as its best in slot with zero competition due to being dual stat regen. The other 2 are both optional depending on build needs. If you made nothing else or requested nothing else you had little knowledge of your build or were a generic gt/dual offense 129 emp glassboy. Earlier sectors had a similar consume setup depending on your need, but in these you would use a lower tier brandy.

Reinstalled and run around some. Thank you Scott for the update.

 

You are right about open world pvp being as fast as bloodsports, IF you could get it. We were throwing large harvester parties to get that open world pvp reliably, and it SOMETIMES worked. 5 minute fight and 30 minutes trashtalk (and, of course, waiting for the tent buffs to go up taking another couple minutes).

I remember finally quitting the game BECAUSE I couldn't reliably predict if I even get a single open world pvp fight in 2 hours between working and sleeping (also timezones ^_^).

I hated bloodsports with a passion due to lack of immersion. There are plenty of games that do this better, for me it was just a cheap shot and grabbing some attention deficit kiddies and alienating patient immersive players.

 

I joined around gore so for me it was always there. Holding cities with max social chars camping vendors gave you nice chips on the marketplace, was my main source of income (since I hate bloodsports and otherwise dt not that reliable) until I discovered dye event. Harvesters were also pvp oriented, aside for occasional pvers trying to sneak one in inside the district/terminal woods. For me it was fun since we had solid lineup and could expect decent pvp before the lbs got the zerg ball rolling (sometimes waiting for the zerg before starting pvp, but hey, you gain some you lose some).

 

You got me with that p2win armor, there really wasn't any. Partly because gore weapons made armor less of a priority and reduced average fight time, heavily favoring burst damage over sustained dps. At similar level of skill you couldn't really win without them, I call that p2win. Sure, you could win against gore scrubs as a vet yourself, but you could hardly ever win with a gore vet without being one yourself before the nerf.

I also have MAJOR PSYCHOTIC HATRED of RNG  like gore in f2p games, introducing gambling habits in people, detrimental to society as whole.

 

I call the store bought vehicles p2win simply because their maintenance and repair was cheaper, they had higher health and speed, and made the difference between winning and losing a claim. There was no point in using the crafted ones (and fuel and repair kits), killing the economy, as you got the initial investment back pretty soon and never looked back. Not mentioning being always a couple seconds late to the fight when the rest of the team couldn't wait for you to get that claim, throwing the teamwork out of sync, making pvp less organized and enjoyable for me (until I saved up and watched other poor souls arriving late to get killed or run away and wait for everyone to regroup).

To sum up, people with store bought vehicles had more pvp, made more chips, and could win more fights with a comeback, until everyone had them and people stopped crafting vehicles altogether aside immersion/achievement kind of thing.

 

By utility items, aside food (if you didn't use adrenaline in pvp then meh, maybe corporal ped's, also really large choice between moist green paste and fried cola), I mean grenades and poisons. There was larger variety of them, less and less usable the closer you got to the end game. Again punishing the economy and crafting FE was centered around, not cash store. Don't get me started on whales, dolphins and minnows synergy/lack of since heavily favoring p2win and the store. Gamerslast simply milked the game for what it was worth then.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 18, 2018 by d47
Grammar

[MICFILLER 22]

On 6/18/2018 at 11:16 AM, d47 said:

Reinstalled and run around some. Thank you Scott for the update.

 

You are right about open world pvp being as fast as bloodsports, IF you could get it. We were throwing large harvester parties to get that open world pvp reliably, and it SOMETIMES worked. 5 minute fight and 30 minutes trashtalk (and, of course, waiting for the tent buffs to go up taking another couple minutes).

I remember finally quitting the game BECAUSE I couldn't reliably predict if I even get a single open world pvp fight in 2 hours between working and sleeping (also timezones ^_^).

I hated bloodsports with a passion due to lack of immersion. There are plenty of games that do this better, for me it was just a cheap shot and grabbing some attention deficit kiddies and alienating patient immersive players.

 

I joined around gore so for me it was always there. Holding cities with max social chars camping vendors gave you nice chips on the marketplace, was my main source of income (since I hate bloodsports and otherwise dt not that reliable) until I discovered dye event. Harvesters were also pvp oriented, aside for occasional pvers trying to sneak one in inside the district/terminal woods. For me it was fun since we had solid lineup and could expect decent pvp before the lbs got the zerg ball rolling (sometimes waiting for the zerg before starting pvp, but hey, you gain some you lose some).

 

You got me with that p2win armor, there really wasn't any. Partly because gore weapons made armor less of a priority and reduced average fight time, heavily favoring burst damage over sustained dps. At similar level of skill you couldn't really win without them, I call that p2win. Sure, you could win against gore scrubs as a vet yourself, but you could hardly ever win with a gore vet without being one yourself before the nerf.

I also have MAJOR PSYCHOTIC HATRED of RNG  like gore in f2p games, introducing gambling habits in people, detrimental to society as whole.

 

I call the store bought vehicles p2win simply because their maintenance and repair was cheaper, they had higher health and speed, and made the difference between winning and losing a claim. There was no point in using the crafted ones (and fuel and repair kits), killing the economy, as you got the initial investment back pretty soon and never looked back. Not mentioning being always a couple seconds late to the fight when the rest of the team couldn't wait for you to get that claim, throwing the teamwork out of sync, making pvp less organized and enjoyable for me (until I saved up and watched other poor souls arriving late to get killed or run away and wait for everyone to regroup).

To sum up, people with store bought vehicles had more pvp, made more chips, and could win more fights with a comeback, until everyone had them and people stopped crafting vehicles altogether aside immersion/achievement kind of thing.

 

By utility items, aside food (if you didn't use adrenaline in pvp then meh, maybe corporal ped's, also really large choice between moist green paste and fried cola), I mean grenades and poisons. There was larger variety of them, less and less usable the closer you got to the end game. Again punishing the economy and crafting FE was centered around, not cash store. Don't get me started on whales, dolphins and minnows synergy/lack of since heavily favoring p2win and the store. Gamerslast simply milked the game for what it was worth then.

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah in low times it was always when you were on and a lot of IFs. I figured you were pre-gore when TC was properly active, but yeah post that stage it was a shot in the dark. Agreed I avoided bloodsports like the plague myself.

 

I'd agree on gore weapons as their entire purpose was to garner themselves money as they couldn't pay people. That'd be why they came with such borked initial stats and ignored people. Nah I didn't play during round 1 of gore...that was during 1 of my complete break periods, but I stopped in on when they were showing them off and saw the numbers...not something I'd want to play against. Was rough even past the initial nerf.

 

I never saw vehicles off the store as a big deal and fastbacks were put ingame as craftable. Other than that it was all the same statwise to my knowledge just with different designs/dye patterns. Can't say I've seen too many fights decided on dismount though...well at least until it was figured about hiding in cars then people wouldn't dare engage on cars to avoid that headache.

 

Well injector slot was the big one in choice. Drink was moot from like level 15-55. Food varied slightly like you pointed out(forgot porcupine was ignored when power/precision was mapped out more by nysek). Well poisons/nades have always been pretty iffy and had a lot of mediocre overlap due to scaling and scaling hp.

[Kharn 3]

Thankyou Matt and all of LO, this game holds a special place in my soul and to see life being breathed back into it is the best miracle one can hope for, seems to me like you guys are doing the damn best you can for the game and thats bloody awesome, theres no other game like this anywhere, you have a true gem in your hands if you can fix her up or rebuild it, here for the long run and happy to support you guys all the way- Laneylee

Edited July 5, 2018 by Kharn

[AncientCrone 9]

Thank you so much for the update, Matt.

 

 

I began playing at the very end of Beta in (I think) September of 2008. Love, love, love this game,

 

I do lots of crafting and PVE only. If you tried playing, you may have noticed that Sectors I and II and part of III used lots of humor. Whoever designed the missions had a wonderful sense of humor. There was a huge lay-off a couple of months after the game opened, and the guy with the humor must have been let go. Such a shame!

 

 

If you can't resolve the stacking of materials, we need MUCH bigger bags and the weight of items reduced. Still, part of the fun used to be planning ahead, but that meant being to split stacks.

 

 

Sector IV is just terrible. The missions aren't fun and items to be scavenged are so far apart.

 

 

A lot of the crafting materials are only found in PVP zones, and I can't go in there.

 

 

I was away for awhile, and since coming back, it seems that something has caused major inflation. I sell items on the Auction House, and I can sell things for much higher prices, but it's way expensive to buy mats. The economy definitely needs work.

 

 

When the game first opened, we were told there wouldn't be any items in the game that couldn't be crafted. That's no longer the case. We were told we could level up by only crafting, but that has fallen by the wayside also.

 

 

I kill off a leveled toon now and then so I can go back and re-do Sectors I and II, but my other 5 toons are all level 55. It would be a dream come true if you added another 45 levels and quality PVE to go with them.

 

 

It's going to take a long time before most of my wishes can come true, but I wanted to get my 2 cents in. Thanks again, Matt

[ShadowJack 4]

WOW! Just as i was about to forget this game, delete all and walkaway for good. (not that anyone REALLY ever does that  right?) I stumble across this new and "encouraging" development.  Forgive me if i approach with a fair amount of pessimism.  As Aragon said to Haleth "there is always hope".

 

 

2 things, role back everything G1 ever did and make factions relevant.  

[SmiladaCorsan 0]

By far, this is one of the most professional things we can see in this game. A clear, honest and transparent statement. We are waiting for the next update and development. I'm sure there are still a lot of true hardcore FE players are excited from hearing this. Surely we can offer some helps in any way we can to rebuild and repopulate the game to be a lot better one!

[Adio Spiegel 3]

On 7/10/2018 at 3:55 PM, ShadowJack said:

WOW! Just as i was about to forget this game, delete all and walkaway for good. (not that anyone REALLY ever does that  right?) I stumble across this new and "encouraging" development.  Forgive me if i approach with a fair amount of pessimism.  As Aragon said to Haleth "there is always hope".

 

 

2 things, role back everything G1 ever did and make factions relevant.  

Factions I totally agree with, as to much real money is tied into there cash shop items then I cannot support rolling any of this content back..  Reverting to the old skill, stat and mutation system they had I could get behind and support..

[KatArus 5]

I do have a lot of respect for Marie and the crew, but they took way too many steps in wrong directions along the way forgetting that they are making a game, an experience for their community. Wild creativity is good, but the fact that you can play god in your MMO doesn't mean you should or that you will get away with it.

To be frank, a lot of FE's appeal has 'Fallout Online that never happened' roots. Grimlands, RePopulation etc failed miserably even before proper release, but FE was gutted post-release, mainly in attempts to casualize it for broader appeal. What Icarus and, subsequently, G1, missed, was the fact that casual whales need someone to play with and too much may be too much. Some changes, like removal of shoulder factions and shiny tomatoes were positive for the gameplay. I'll just go with a list of things that turned away all people I used to play with since beta.

1.  Death of exploration. Before random nodes fiasco game world was littered with proper scavenge node pockets. Some were obvious like a farm that has a visible dirt road leading to it off the main highway with higher than area's average Questionable Grain. others were more obscure like a crashed jet drone with a bunch of high-level rare alloy nodes around it in a middle of nowhere, mushroom ring near a run-down shack etc. There were no quests, no mobs and no serendipity spawns there, just random areas ripe for crafting materials that were either abundant or overleveled. I have personally had over 40 bookmarks. Wanna pick stuff to vendor it? Go here. Need Salvaged Carbon Steel in S2? Go there. All these hand-placed nodes were overwritten one day when someone decided that it's a good idea to just mass-spawn random nodes all over the place using an algorithm. All bookmarks and exploration went poof - those nodes just disappeared. Shitstorm was so intense that, after some time, random nodes were rolled back, but people who implemented those earlier nodes were already gone and making things like they've been turned out harder than it looked, Marie and co placed some of them back by hand, then decided that it's too much trouble and screw that. About two thirds dedicated explorers, that I've regularly played with, more than a dozen of em, left during that time.

2. Skill overhauls. Knockdown was OP, yes, but throwing away half of the skills to streamline gameplay was too much and turned FE into Lineage 2: you have a debuff (-resist or a slow), a high CD strong attack, a low CD weak attack and a DoT. Having 2 rows of active skills was annoying (especially when your chains were interrupted by goddamn lag) but it gave interesting variety and skill curve instead of current meta of jumping around with 2 pistols like a degenerate in hopes of lucky headshots and crits.

3. Quest rewards. FE was supposed to be a player-run economy like EVE so lvl 24 quests in S2 give lvl 16 and, sometimes, even level 5 rewards. You physically can't get proper gear from loot and quest rewards because there is none. Brilliant idea. Don't like crafting? Grind like crazy.

4, Insane AH fees on top of 0.5-5 days listings. It would work with 2k+ population. Maybe. At least you can spam purple chat and CoD.

5. Item progression. Due to different parts of the game being developed by different people, weapon, armor and consumable progression is all over the place, most noticeably after level 30.

6. Design flops. Originally the base gameplay mechanics was about clone regen tank - low HP pools, high HP regen. High respawn rates of low damage mobs that pile up controllably. Then, suddenly (©) gameplay became 'overhauled', mobs started dishing out serious damage... sometimes in some places, but spawns remained the same. The game never actually came to a common denominator ever since. There are a lot of patootie-tearing parts like Spider Hill, abandoned mall area near PT in S2, a lot of areas in later parts of the game with high DPS social mobs packed like sardines making a lot of mission plain incompleteable unless you are overleveled by 10-15 levels.

7. Quest dungeon and instances mechanics. If you have a < shaped dungeon you will have to kill all enemies twice on top of legging it - when you are heading in and when you are heading out. Pray that you won't have to get back - you will have to kill enemies on your way and your way out AGAIN. Feel like ragequitting yet?

8. At some point you will have no option other than grinding faction NPC mobs to get to higher faction ranks. 720k rep per faction. Most missions give 1-1.5k. Yay.

List goes on. Neat features (for a 10 y/o game) like water puddling in real time when it rains etc still work their magic. This game has potential if you hammer it enough, but it needs a lot of work. A lot.

[McHondy 13]

@MattScott Time to give us a update on whats going on with fallen Earth?

Currently the lag is really bad, and its 'chasing' away both old and new players. If it's not managed it will shrink this population fast, me being 1 of em. Even doing Like EvE and have daily scheduled maintenances to clear it yup will be preferred compared to how its now, hours on hours with unplayable lag. Last 2 times the game lagged completely out it was left running like that until the next scheduled maintenance.

 

[MoistMeterBtw 3]

5 Hours later, lag is so bad you can't even log in anymore. I'm out.

[ShadowJack 4]

With the ownership change to LO new hope was given to many of us old timers. Good things were said, we were told what we wanted to hear. Some of us even invested a few bucks in good faith.

Time to start turning those words into actions. 

[MattScott 15242]

Hi all,

I've been working on an update for the Fallen Earth community.
The server code is frustrating. We're currently hunting down an issue that is causing all the lag.
I'll look into daily reboots for the time being.

Thanks,

Matt