Good topic.
I have no pzazz left for this game.
I still read the forums, but as you said, the forum isn’t directly encouraging new posts. Most new posts just gets locked down and movved to year old topics with TONS AND TONS of older and irrelevant posts in them.
Not the easy read if you actually are interested in the current state of the topic.
The game itself has been left in a state between mMORPG (minimal multiplayer online rpg) and an FPS.
As for the RPG elements, they do not speak to me what so ever. When I first found a weapon on a machine, I was surprised, but I also felt it did not belong. I could buy finding ammo, batteries and vision modules, but the other stuff did not belong. I could accept it, but it was not in the line of what I wanted from the game. It spun off from there, and now we have crafting, and clothing with stats and hallabalou, exp weapon drops and a shitload of boring grinding to do if you want you character to have the top RPG stats in the game. So boring.
Further, he new defend the base is just a really bad 3D version of tower defense.
As for the FPS elements, there has been NONE, nope, nothing, zip, whatsoever of improvements to these. This game had so much potential in actually adding more realistic game play, but it all has gone in the wrong way. Cars and explosives blow up very easily from other explosions converting them from tools for you to use vs the machines, to things to watch out for when fighting the machines.
Machine behavior is worse from the early versions. In the early version the movement of runners and hunters where more realistic, and hence slower and less agile. Current version defies physics and hunters and runners just looks ridiculous when changing direction and being hard to hit. Not to mention teleporting machines, or getting hit by jumping wall clipping teleporting hunters.
The FNIX Rising main end mission is not even fun. No tactics needed, just a big machine spam and its more like a shootem up than a tactical realistic FPS.
I loved this game when it came out, I still think it has so much potential to be a good realistic FPS with ABIT RPG elements in it. Now its the other way around. To much grinding, crafting, mission grinding, RNG grinding to be fun. Rival mechanics make absolutely no sense. Why avoid the rivals to make FNIX spawn the reaper? Shouldn’t the REAPER spawn when the Rivals prove themselves to be useless?
This game can still be so much, I’m still hoping, but seeing as they cant progress the FPS experience of this game, and all focus is just on new content, I think this game is lost.
This game lost its vision somewhere, maybe with the old product owner.
Needles to say I’m not playing any more.