It's been more than a year since I played a MMOFPS and I'd love to get back into one...unfortunately, I've already played Firefall, Planetside2 and Defiance enough to get put off by their shortcomings and there doesn't seem to be much else offering
Me too. Planetside 2 has a lot of fun to be had, but can get tiresome extremely quickly for some reason. Just the idea of infinitely conquering stuff so the map can lock and reset so you can conquer it again ad infinitum just feels weird and empty. Still, joining a platoon can make the game, but other than that, it's just not for me.
Defiance was surprisingly fun, but I had a lot of connectivity issues and the game felt somewhat dated or poorly designed. It was VERY 'MMORPGly' and, a lot of times, I saw that Gear and Level was would completely ignore Skill.
That's what I liked in Firefall PVP before it became an MMORPG (2-3 years ago? Before they removed PVP for like two years).
I had a mid-level Assault and I'd kill anything and anyone, only a end-game Recon would manage to almost insta-kill me, because I'd just keep moving and flanking and all my skills where on mobility. When I unlocked the Tigerclaw, PVP wasn't even funny. People would come at me with their Firecats and get steamrolled - I play Firecat PVE because it's a class for lazy people who like to miss and still murder everything.
Everything just felt good..I never had a good feeling (intuition) about the dev team, though.
It just makes me sad, because I loved the Chosen hunting so much. How they seemed to be intelligent, as they would flank and do some weird stuff that simply couldn't be a derpy "Attack Player" script. And when Juggernauts would nuke the hell out of noobs on starting areas and then higher level squads would have to drop in and make the clean up, making the noobs go "*-* dis gam so gud" on the chat.
I'd group up with people and try to break the game or find openings on the purple cloud thing (forgot the name) to see areas being developed. I once found a bug in which you could do something stupid with the motorcycle and take less damage behind the cloud for some reason, so we'd do that and explore a city that was going to be featured later on (I think it's the southeastern area of the main map nowadays).
To go around doing all sort of silly stuff, that shows how I liked it. It was the promise of an open-world FPS with no bullshit. An Explosive Aranha would be an Explosive Aranha everywhere. There was no "Level 10 Explosive Aranha" BS.
Same goes to crafting. You could fine tune your weapon with an insane amount of detail and care, and having a purple gun meant something. The grind wasn't that bad because it wasn't forced..you were free to go fight off incursions with your Level 1 Recon if you wanted. Now you can only do that if a Level 1 Chosen pops up.
It might sound like I care way too much, but in this case I actually do. Jet Packs, Exoskeletons, Battleframes, Power Armors, Customizing your battleframe piece by piece, Dynamic events with smart enemies, and freedom to craft legendary gear or just go stock and save the day non-stop? I was all in. I simply loved everything, especially the movement. It just felt right.
Then they progressively dumbed down (and MMORPGfied) everything: the resources, the crafting, the economy, the progression, the Battleframe equipment system. Initially you could change the jetpacks, the reactor, the servos, etc. You'd design the perfect gear for YOU. Now you can change..your guns and your "core".
I might play it again and try to get my Firecat back to end-game and see if there's any fun to be had.
But I highly doubt it.TLDR2: God damn I'm salty.