Firefall is still in beta… I’ll wait for your shock to wear off.
I’ve been in Firefall alpha/beta for over 2 years now and I’m not sure when this beta testing will end. At this point I really don’t care. The game has evolved greatly under the beta tag. Over the past couple years we’ve seen more and more MMOs come out unfinished and lacking features that are what we label nessessary for our enjoyment. A lot of these games are free to play or feel like a cash-grab to get our money as fast as possible before we realize what we just bought. Firefall on the otherhand, refuses to buckle under the pressure of releasing an unfinished product.
Yes, anybody can play the game and spend their money doing so, but the customer clearly knows what they are getting into with the beta tag still on the game. Firefall is an unfinished game and the developers are constantly letting their community know that by being fully engaged in all forms of feedback. Just this year alone Firefall has had 35 updates and hotfixes to the game. That is amazing for such a small company putting out a fix almost once a week. It might not be a big deal for a company like ArenaNet or Blizzard to pump out updates like that, but for Red 5 Studios that is pretty impressive.
So what is the latest and greatest patch from Firefall?
In the last couple months Firefall has gone through a slew of changes. Red 5 Studios dipped their feet in the water at Sunken Harbor with open world PvP and got their toes bit off. Soon after that grand experiment (something the players shouted from the heavens they wanted so badly), they removed it due to lack of interest and getting in the way of the PvE. They also disabled PvP all together. Coming from a game that started out as a PvP eSport-oriented MMO, I was surprised they totally shut it down. In my opinion, it was a good thing to do because the game was suffering being split in two directions. With PvP disabled, the team has a chance to focus on the PvE aspect of the game for now. Something that it needs badly.
I took a break from the game about the time open world PvP was implememted. Not because it sucked (it did) but because I needed time away before I got too frustrated with the game. I recently came back and I’m surprised how much the game has changed. Things like:
- A new tutorial.
- A world! Not just a map
)
- The starting city of Copacabana relocated and redesigned.
)
- Thumping monsters increased and better spawn pacing.
)
- Easier interface for the Marketplace (Auction House)
)
- A new Daily mission menu when you hit the Y key to open your Atlas Records.
)
- A glider guider…thingy.
)
- New instanced dungeons for 2-5 players (Cliff’s Edge and Tanken Cove).
- Better Jetpack burn rate so I could reach the top of the world.
)
I’ve just scratched the surface with what has changed in a month. There were bug fixes and lots of tweaks here and there that have helped the game tremendously. The Red 5 team is fully invested in trying to make a great experience. I feel good to be back in and I can’t wait to see what they have in store for the rest of 2013.
Have you checked in on Firefall lately? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
