Ok managed to play some last night.
This game is nothing like Defiance. The only thing that is the same is, they are both Shooters. Firefall is literally Sandbox and Defiance Themepark. There's no story or bunch of quests. There is a huge open world with random "public quests" appearing on the map. The rest seem to be this resource gathering thing with thumpers. So you search for ore/material to mine (by manually scanning as you wander around or watching on the map) and put down this thumper/automated miner which extracts stuff out of the ground. Of course, this will attract all the local wildlife so you have to defend your thumper.
So other than that, i have no clue what's going on. I don't even know why i'm gathering resources and what to do with them. The game is VERY vague as to what exactly are you suppose to be doing, other than exploring and finding "dynamic events" aka "public quests" and what seems to be "open world dungeons" (which also seems to get "populated" randomly, so a bunker is empty and randomly it will suddenly get mobs in it with objectives).
Also unlike Defiance, the world is very pretty and seems worthwhile exploring. I can already see you WANT a vehicle for this, i don't know how people get from one end of the map to the other without it taking classic WoW-style to run from the top of a continent to the bottom. I assume there's portals or something? I did not see anything, the gliders don't seem to take me very far.
As for the "classes". They seem to function identical to Planetside 2/Battlefield classes, in the sense that you don't actually pick a class during character creation, you pick a "suit" or "armor" aka "battleframe" and can switch at any town/hub between any of them at will . I assume the battleframe level as you wear/use it, again like Planetside (or maybe you gather xp and then upgrade whichever battleframe you want?, no idea).
The engineer definitely got alot of utility, the turret, the shield wall , explosives. The medic, well, heals and revives and so on. Defiance have nothing of this, i know Blackswan listed classes in that earlier post, but those are not classes , it's just a "character background". Defiance has zero classes.
Anyway, i'll wander around some more today and see if i can figure out what i'm suppose to do. Alot of players were asking the same questions. I think the problem is that there's literally nothing happening on the map, or on the starter map where most of the starter players begin. I assume there's signs of invasions if you got the entire map unlocked or something, but in the starter "province" there's absolutely no dynamic events, and no enemies. You see random critters and i did manage to find a dynamic event (a broken ship which needed 5 parts to be carried to it with a silly time limit, which i failed) but after i failed it was gone, i could not repeat it and not sure when it resets.....seems a little problematic if it is going to disappear every time 1 person does it. It also did not show on the map, i just ran into it (so the final tutorial message was something like "look on your map for dynamic events which are marked in PURPLE" but everything on the map is marked in PURPLE! And none of them are "dynamic events").
I suppose it's got a similar feeling as when you enter a game like EVE or Second Life for the first time, although EVE actually got a very detailed tutorial/beginner phase. Firefall only shows you how to shoot and walk and how to set up the thumper , but from there it's open world and there's no real clues whether i should be building something? Should i be building defences in the watch towers? Should i go fight somewhere specifically? Or do i just mindlessly gather ore ? . And it does not help if people answer this with "Yes and Yes, this is a sandbox you can do what you want" , yea, duh, just like EVE, there is actually "paths" like Mining,Business,Pirate Missions etc. How you go about doing those is up to you , but at least they tell you about them and what the input and output is for them, in Firefall i have zero info.
They'll really need to improve the tutorial or something with this. The actual gameplay mechanics is great, the Shooter part is nice , the jetpacking around is nice. I'm not too fond of the time to kill though, maybe it was just having noob gear, but the very first mob had me running back to town because i had to empty entire clips of ammo into it (multiple reloads) with alot of kiting before it went down. Fortunately there don't seem to be alot of mobs...so i guess it's ok, but if i had to fight 20 of those, it will not go well. Defiance's mobs drop very quickly, but usually there's more of them.
