On top of the new zones with their new content, Williams also touched on the new Campaign story. Chapter 1 has already been added, using a number of instances to tell FireFall’s story. And Chapter 2 is already in development, further emphasizing the game’s evolving nature. “In a lot of MMOs, there’s a problem with telling a story that’s a little more personal. You’re very proud that you killed the big bad guy, but there’s someone standing in line right behind you, waiting for him to respawn so that they can kill him and finish their story. Which is not to say that our story is unique – you and I are going to do the same story – but when you’re doing it, you’re doing it off in an instance by yourself, and it really becomes a much more personalized experience.”
“These missions are a way for us to tell a very directed story without the distractions of things going on in the open world, to tell players about the differences between some of the mercenary groups, how they’re fighting against each other, and how the ARES initiative got started. It introduces the player to Oilspill for the first time, that’s a character that you’re talking to all the time and is constantly in your ear but, before we had these missions, you never really knew anything about him.”
“Eventually, we start to focus on the Human-Chosen war. There are a couple of them where you’re trying to retake an Accord base that the Chosen have taken over. The biggest one is called Blackwater Anomaly, where you’re going in and actually pushing back the Melding. At the end of that mission you get introduced to your very first Melding Titan, which is huge.”
“The other nice thing about these campaign missions is that they’re all repeatable, so if you missed a piece of the story, or just feel like going in again, you can do that. We’ve also made hard versions of all of these that you can run at level cap, with high level rewards, but it’s also a really good squad experience with four of your friends.”
Beyond the small group experience, Red 5 has also gone large by introducing two raids. Both of these are single boss experiences, designed for 20 well-geared and levelcapped players. “One is a titan that people have fought before, although we’ve updated the fight and put it in its own instance. Players have fought Baneclaw in the past, but this is in his own territory and the fight’s completely changed.”
“And then also, a brand new one that’s not been seen before is Kanaloa. This fight happens in Devil’s Tusk, and he is a lava worm. When you arrive there, and the players have opened the area where Kanaloa exists, you go into the research lab, do a short mission series to learn about him, and that flags you so you can go in and join this fight.”
“In his lair, you can see lots of spires and places to jumpjet around. But on the ground is the lava bed that he lives in. Throughout the course of the fight, the lava rises slowly. At the beginning of the fight you can see health packs and suchlike on the ground, lots of playable space to move and jump around, but as the fight continues you lose more of those safe places to land. You have to move because of his attacks – they just fill one side of the room with death and destruction, so you’re constantly moving around.”
“My favorite thing about this fight is that the difficulty increases over time. We don’t have to have an artificial enrage time or anything along those lines, because it’s getting slowly more difficult, and your margin of error gets smaller and smaller.”
Part of FireFall’s original design also had three corporations – Astrek, Omnidyne and Enermax – that offered equipment, each focusing on a particular stat at the expense of others. Those corporations are still in-game to provide leveling gear, but that’s likely to change. “At the moment we have a very simple version of the reputation system that we want in the long run. We’re just using reputation tokens – you pick those up as you’re doing the ARES jobs from the job board. There are vendors in each of those areas that let you spend tokens to get gear. Right now, what’s available is the leveling reputation, and these are at little towns and points of interest. It’s really just leveling gear”
“Really that system kicks in at level 40. Even before that, however, you’re going to see jobs at the job boards that have the Omnidyne or Enermax designation, and you’re going to be doing jobs for those corporations as you’re leveling up, and that means you’re going to be gathering reputation for those corporations.”
“In terms of value to the player, that really kicks in at level cap. Because the players haven’t opened up the last section of Devil’s Tusk, they haven’t actually met those final vendors for those corporations yet. Those guys have really good gear, in some cases exclusive gear, that’s only available through those vendors. Also, when you build it up with one corporation, you’re going to be losing it with the other two. That’s a little bit talking about the future, and we’re trying to do less of that than we have done in the past. Right now, there’s the voucher system.”
