Firefall review

So I recently had the opportunity to try out Firefall and I must say that for a free to play game it was very impressive.  I liked the ability to swap out battleframes, which is very similar to the idea I have for switching roles.  There was a definite PvE (player vs environment) push, with PvP(player vs player) being almost an afterthought.  The PvP matches were basically 5v5 team deathmatch style with the possibility of 10 v 10 on different maps, but there is not the persistent open world pvp I was kind of hoping would be there.  There are a kind of simple tower defense type situation where you and your squad defend a thumper (a type of mining device) from wave after wave of overgrown bugs and other mutated wildlife, which provides a challenge of it's own.  Finally there is the Chosen, who are evil incarnate NPC (non player characters) who come to take over watchtowers and generally make life difficult.  Some of them are quite powerful, leaving me roasted a many a time as I tend to walk around alone.  Even so I was able to take out dozens of them single handed, and I'm sure that even with improved AI players will eventually figure out way's to kill them easily.

As for what I would hope to see,  I would say that player controlled chosen would make the game very interesting.  That way large scale open world pvp could be realized, though that also introduces some problems as to how would tech and other items work.  That and if you have the "good" side and the "bad" side developers often will unconsciously favor the good side.

More research on MMO

So in looking around at some new MMOs coming out soon I came across a few that are implementing systems similar to what I would like to set up.  Firefall is looking to be very interesting, especially since it is:
1. Free to Play
2. Players will be able to change roles by equipping "battleframes", which is something similar to what I was hoping to set up.
3. They will have microtransactions, but they are insistent on making sure that cash items will not effect game balance.
4. It's an FPS MMO set up in a persistent world setting.

I'm not able to play it yet as they are still in the early stages of beta, but I'll be sure to analyze it once I get the chance.  There are a few others too, but this one really caught my eye.