Over the course of beta, FireFall has experimented with several different forms of PvP, including a few styles of arena combat. The final design at launch, however, is a more open-world experience. “The zone is called Broken Peninsula. It’s down about as far south in South America as you can get, and it’s very much a high level zone. You can go in there at any level, but you will get crushed like a bug. Although, to be fair, if you’re helping build up base defenses it doesn’t matter what level you are. If you want to be a vehicle driver you can do that at any level.”
“Because this is open world PvP, and you can use your gear, and there are lots of options out there, we’re never going to say things will be perfectly balanced. That’s not the goal here, there are going to be flavor of the month frames. We are going to be trying to keep some level of balance, but because it is objective, team-based gameplay, those things tend to even out over time.”
“The goal with Broken Peninsula is to take control of these main bases. It has three factions and, when you log in, if you have friends that are already playing in Broken Peninsula, you’ll be put in the faction with them. If you don’t, we use the matchmaking system to even out the teams and keep it dynamic.”
“Attacking a base is a multi-step process – you have to bring down the outer shields, knock out the power plant generators, and go into the security area to bring down the controls. That gives you final access to the main CPU room of the command center, fight your way in, hack it, and then hold that hack. This is not a 3 minute process; it’s minimum thirty minutes, more like forty-five if there’s any significant defenses.”
“When you take control of a base, you have the opportunity to upgrade the base’s defenses. One of the things you can upgrade is the vehicle bay, and when you do so, it gives you access to bigger, better, cooler, nastier vehicles. First you get access to simple LGVs, then you get access to LGVs with weapons, and it kind of goes crazy from there.”
Thumping for resources still happens in the Broken Peninsula, only this time it’s more dangerous. You don’t get credit directly, and end up carrying them back to base instead. If the resources are delivered safely, they get added to your inventory as normal. Get intercepted, and the opposition can take you down, stealing anything you’ve gathered. If the Thumper is still running, they can choose to reap the rewards themselves.
And what about those other PvP modes? According to Williams, the studio hasn’t forgotten about them. “To a large extent we wanted to streamline the vision a little bit. In our past we had the habit of the game be everything; every cool idea we had, all in one game, and it was a little too big of a chunk to swallow and deliver in a quality fashion. One of the things we did at the beginning of the year was figure out exactly what FireFall is, and make sure we deliver that. From there, we can add on to it over time.”
“One of the things that we’re trying to avoid doing that we used to do in the past was promise the future. I don’t want to promise things to you that I don’t know I can deliver, and that I don’t know when they’re going to happen. Having said that, there are a lot of people in the office that really enjoy the arena PvP that we had in the past. The encounters are still there; the gameplay spaces are still there. In order to bring that back we would have to look at the rewards, level banding, what matchmaking systems we want to build, so there are systems that would have to be built to bring it back.”
“But I will tell you that there are some pretty big fans of that in the office, and it is probably the prevailing opinion that it come back sooner than later. Without having made any promises, because we’re trying not to do that any more, there are very big fans of that arena PvP, particularly Jetball – everyone really digs Jetball - and would love it back sooner than later. There are barriers to that - time constraints and production costs - but there’s a pretty big payoff and most of us like it a lot.”
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While FireFall’s launch has been successful, its arrival on Steam was a welcome surprise. Interestingly though, it’s been in the works for some time. “We’ve actually been talking to Steam for about a year and a half. We always knew that we were going to be releasing on Steam – we actually built the infrastructure for that a while back and then cleaned it up pretty recently before the launch. We as gamers love it, we know how great a platform it is, and it was just natural for us to want to be on there. All the extra players that it provides, all the extra eyeballs to see the game for the first time and try it out for free is perfect for a free to play game like ours. So far they’ve been great partners and we’ve got a lot of new players, so everything’s wonderful in that respect. I’ve got nothing bad to say about it.”
If anything, FireFall is an example of a game that can turn around, from one that many of us had given up on, to a strong entrant in free-to-play online gaming. It might still be a little rough around the edges, but that’s likely to improve over time as the studio adds further new content. In the meantime, I’ve got a thumper to call down.
