Mark Kern removed from position of CEO and from the board of Red5, effective immediately
gamefront.com/breaking-red-5-board-votes-out-...
gamefront.comPosted Dec 20, 2013, 8:40 AM UTC
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gamefront.comDoes this mean PvP is coming back?
In all seriousness, I think most of us kinda expected this at some point, shame things are heading in this direction though.
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For those of us who don't know..... why was this seen coming?
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Ok, I should clarify by "most of us" I mean people who have been keeping track of FF from the start, and largely been more involved in community stuff and events surrounding FF. Anyway, the reasoning from the perspective of someone who has been following since forever and been playing since super early open world beta (it's important to note not all of this is Mark Kern's fault, but since he's the CEO, he takes the fall):
A preliminary strike against R5 is that it has failed once before, before The9 came along to provide the cash injection needed to give development another go. This is also specifically a strike against Mark Kern because he was the CEO at the time.
Anyway, all of that is the past though, so it's only really fair to evaluate FF on what's been happening since try 2, and a number of events over the past two years have made it clear development has been a rocky road.
First off, there's the multiple ground-up redesigns of FF's entire progression system. This also applies more generally to how different game features have been constantly changing. Basically, if you look closely over time, it's clear that FF lacks a consistent vision, and the final game is more of a moving target. Complete redesigns not only show a lack of direction, they also significantly slow down the development process and cost buckets of money.
A second strong indicator is the (to be completely frank) absolute cluster-fuck that was FF's foray into the world of PvP gameplay. There's too many things here to list, but to name a few: the MGU, the pretty messed up and inconsistent early map designs, the terrible matchmaker, those $1 million esports dollars. And then of course, PvP is removed from the game entirely, because even R5 admitted that Jetball was an incomplete disaster.
Add to this the other broken plans/promises made by R5, like Stage5 TV, the whole cosplay thing, all the other PR stuff, the episodic campaigns.
Now to some of this stuff, especially the last list, you might say "wait sam, those aren't broken promises, some of these things happened, and some are still upcoming". But that's exactly the point, it isn't about whether the promises were kept, the general state of the game together with the fact that most things didn't happen points to a small company that was simply trying to do too much at once. Who tries to start a major youtube channel, make music videos, and create internet TV shows, all while also developing a game?
Basically, all these things together, over time, paint a pain a picture of a company being torn in many different directions, doing whatever seems cool at the moment, and that's exactly what a CEO is supposed to prevent, and that's why I think it was pretty inevitable that Mark Kern got replaced.
EDIT: The layoffs were also a pretty good indicator. Should also mention I've probably also missed some of the issues on the PvE side. I've personally kept a much closer eye on the PvP and eSports side of things.
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- Mod hat off *
TL;DR - Company focused too much effort on the wrong parts of development. It still has a ton of promise and I hope both R5 staff and the game continues to make this an amazing world to play in.
Honestly I can't disagree with you on any of those points. The company took a gamble that the game could become a big PvP hit and provide a monetary income from that alone. As a primary PvE player, they really missed the point of PvP in such an arcadish game. There isn't enough structure or balance to make a full professional game off PvP with the mechanics present. They tried to 'balance' by restricting frames to set gear, which ruined any customization options on what abilities/weapons to take into battle, in order to make sure the base classes didn't get out-classed. During this huge foray into Pro PvP, they wern't focusing on the core game and PvE in order to just get things working smoothly.
PvE wise, there was so many re-builds of systems and none of them were really completed before the next one came along. They then scrambled for further monitization of the game by including Gambling for items. Which effectively could turn into using Real Money to buy In-Game money through sales of said items from the Gambling machines. I don't mind giving R5 my money to continue the game (in fact, dumped $200 to support them so far) but this was a cheap move to make money that infringed on the 'We arn't pay to win' promise.
I played for a year and a half before getting tired out of the current version at that time. Since then I have seen a lot of stability fixes and adjustments in balance to make the game more fun. Unfortunately content that had been waiting for for a long time had been held back further. There was no Chosen War to give the PvE game any plot or cause to battle the chosen. Armies were limited to 20 players and was impossible to manage due to this cap (along with beta players dropping in/out of the game waiting for more content).
All that being said, the game just has so much promise to be amazing. The world is a beauty to explore with the jetpack system making just flitting around so much fun. Gliding adding even more to the tactics of just moving around the map. I really love this game and I hope this change of management turns out for the best for everyone. Patience will continue being key to this game, it went into beta far too early with all the delays. But with the wait, I just wish everything gets pulled together in the right way.
- puts mod had back on *
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All that being said, the game just has so much promise to be amazing. The world is a beauty to explore with the jetpack system making just flitting around so much fun. Gliding adding even more to the tactics of just moving around the map.
That's the thing that bothers me the most. Normally in a situation like this it's the core systems that don't work as intended, or features that just take more time to develope. But the most important things already work, and they are fun.
The engine and the world they created in it is running smoothly and looks stunning. It's quite impressive what they managed to achieve in an engine originally developed for Battle for Newerth back in 2004. It's also one of the few games that successfully merges third person and first person gameplay, where the shooting doesn't feel lackluster.
Really all they had to do was implement a progression system that kept people coming for more and add quests. Shouldn't this be the simple part? I really hope they get back on track and I believe they can still deliver a good game. It certainly wouldn't be the first game that had a long rough developement, but came out on top in the end. But they really have to pull things together now.
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Also keep in mind that the idea that was presented to us - that they wanted to deliver a more clean product with each patch and content update - was not a sane idea. I've always been really put off by that idea simply because it means that we get only a little bit of content per year, but it's of a medium quality. Let us test and let us grow, we're OK with some bugs.
The first problem from this concept is that players lose interest because there is nothing to do since the content moves so slowly, which is why the playerbase comes back and then tails off after every patch (including myself, a founder). This means that it's hard to actually get feedback over time as those who might test the game are off doing other things instead. This also, of course, loses revenue which isn't exactly cool either.
The second problem is that the game ends up not knowing where it is going because there is no direction it has even been let to go. Sure the content might seem to be good, but in the case of BWA we haven't gotten any other storyline content to compare it to, so who is to say it is truly good? Good compared to what? How can we say something is good when there isn't much of anything by them to weigh it against. If we had 4 missions of story content we could say "alright instance Y REALLY needs some love".
The third problem is that there is less innovation in the game. Some innovation comes from ideas that are spawned, but some come from parts of the game actually being broken. If part of it is broken, maybe it needs a unique fix. Perhaps what broke actually broke in a way that is actually good, such as the skiing idea from Tribes. Outside of problems created by the game being simply developed, there isn't real room for innovation because new ideas just don't get to make it to the game since content moves so slowly. If you look at D3 (please don't flame me ;-; ) you'll see that a lot of really really cool ideas didn't make it because there wasn't enough time. This is happening but at an even deeper level for Firefall, which makes me sad. I know the staff is really creative as I'm friends with a few of them, but that means little if they don't get to really express it as much as they want to.
All of that said Mark was actually a pretty cool guy. Unfortunately it would seem that some of the community here as well as the board decided that he is not fit for his purpose. As Glengarry Glen Ross taught me, though, it actually doesn't matter if he was a cool guy or not. I hope he isn't out of a job, for his sake.
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It also isn't surprising if you glanced at their GlassDoor page.
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Wow, that is really damning. Hope you can get your shit together, Red5.
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I'm... Speechless. As someone not in the IT industry, I always thought optimistic about Red5, even if they had flaws here and there. I mean, just look at Firefall live. Was it really all acted according to the script, then? I don't remember any employee having doubts about Red5 at that point (though, I wonder what would have happened, if they did shouted out)
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Welp that pretty much explains why Kern is getting fired I guess.
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Yes! I meant to include that as well, but forgot.
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As an ex-employee I can honestly say that it was the best job I've ever had.
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esports
When they did this, I was annoyed.
The story mattered to me, esports would eat time I'd rather see spend in extending the lore.
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This. Esports always seemed to be a massive resource drain to please a minority from the PvE/main portion of the game.
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Yup. You can't plan Esports. League of Legends didn't start out "planning" for Esports. You need to make a solid ass standalone game, before you can worry about that.
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I love Jetball :(
Loved* I should say.
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Because Firefall has been getting constantly worse since early alpha
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I'm with you, brother. The early PVP only alpha was my favorite iteration of the game.
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Not really worse, just unfocused really. Had a blast with the game for a year and a half before I had to take a break.
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I think it went from a pile of shit to a slightly shinier pile of shit; more polished but still shit.
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I disagree. It has gotten better, but it has done so at such a slow pace that those parts of the game (and for many the game itself) feel more and more irrelevant day by day.
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[deleted]
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PvP should eventually come back, but hopefully not with the 'Pro' idea. It should be something fun more akin to TF2 than something targeted at such a small audience of players.
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I've been making AAA action games for almost 10 years. If there's one thing you do, it's build the game for the "pro" level play. It has to withstand so many edge cases of play...not because every player plays like a "pro," but because there's a little bit of "pro" in every player who is going to discover a nuance or tendency and then use that to its fullest.
I get their desire to appeal to that group of players who will inevitably want to create a "professional" community of players and hold tournaments, etc. But shouting it from the mountaintops in the middle of pay-to-closed-beta access is folly, because it directs so much attention towards features that are nowhere near polished (or even tested) enough to withstand that kind of critical eye.
It's 20/20 hindsight, but what they should have done is kept PvP under wraps until they could confidently release a single, rewarding game mode, and then let the players who choose to "immerse" themselves in that community influence the final objectives and rulesets of the mode through thousands of hours of playtesting and feedback. It's kind of GameDev 101 though.
I really hope this doesn't mean the "end" of Red5, though. Firefall is too good to burn down.
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I agree that there shouldn't be a lack of 'pro' quality implementations within the game allowing match play and other forms of competition. Just as you said, it really was just they focused on it way too early in the development which made other aspects of the game suffer for it. So was meaning more situational as to just Firefall's history and not games in general.
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Did they focus on it that hard though? I haven't played the game since they removed PvP, but my guess is that almost nothing changed in PvE land. They're just extremely slow at making new content. PvP didn't really have any content either. Constantly rebuilding the game does take a shit ton of development time away from both PvP and PvE.
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I've played Firefall almost the whole closed beta era, and I can say I'm disappointed that it has come to this. At that time the game was fun, new, innovating, but now it is a game nobody cares for as it has changed so much and been in development for too long. I never understood why Red5 development strived away from the quests and the storyline. They spent so much effort in rebuilding the crafting system, the character progressing (which, although different, was never unbalanced), PvP...
Firefall always looked like a demo version of a game where you have a tiny portion of the map and a few quests to do. The first content upgrade we had in a while was the ARES missions, already in open beta.
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From more of an outside perspective, it doesn't look like it changed much at all tbh. It was never fun to play for the masses for the masses and would never succeed with the path they began with. I think it really comes down to the core mechanics of the PvE being completely lackluster, making it not fun to kill stuff.
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Can't say this is surprising. Kern's mismanagement is the reason the game has been rebuilt from the ground up a few times and the whole esports fiasco didn't help things.
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You have no idea what your talking about
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Merry Christmas!
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I haven't been playing FF due to the complete lack of focus and the ever-changing mechanics. I'm hoping with this things may get more set in stone.
It's annoying coming back every few months and having everything be completely different.
I'm also hoping for PvP, again, but it's going to have to be severely sped up, or have the TTK lowered. Being super slow in PvP WITH jet packs just doesn't make sense to me.
The jet packs in here feel like Mechwarrior's jetpacks.
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roadmap for the next 6-12 months:
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add a ton of PvE. doesnt matter if it has bugs, as long as they arent game critical people can deal with patches and fixes. all in all its a beta.
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add another area the size of New Eden with different themed missions, even if they are mechanically the same. just so people can see variation.
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bring back PvP in its former shape. iterate from there, dont start from scratch.
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owPvP zone based on armies, with territory control and base (fortress) sieges.
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release on steam. whatever it takes, make the business model work. steam = playerbase tenfolds in a week.
if the above is followed religiously, FF will become the sleeper hit of 2014.
if not...eh....potential blah blah blah.....
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Red5 (Mark Kern) have always said that it isn't unfocused direction, it's just that they aren't afraid to change something if it isn't working, rather than forcing to a broken design just because it is "the design". That has always seemed like somewhat BS to me - all it does is make the game come across as completely unfocused and not fun. I really would like this game to succeed, but I'm worried. I hope Red5 lands on its feet and not too many other people lose their jobs.
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The first problem with that attitude is that everything is broken to someone...especially someone who has been looking at it for so long that they can pick out all the little flaws in it. The second problem is that it leads to throwing out entire bodies of work in the name of "doing something different, but better."
Many of the major reworks that I've seen (and there have been quite a few) in my ~20 months of exposure to the game could have been redesigned through iterating on an existing system instead of throwing it out and starting again.
When something that is "in and working" gets thrown out, it's usually for one of two reasons. Either the higher ups didn't like it/thought it would cause a problem, or its legitimately broken as an extensible system (e.g. it works now, but it won't work if it gets more complex or integral to the other game systems).
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Thanks for sharing this article, I hope you all don't mind that am going to avoid weighing in my comments, thoughts & feelings on this major change until I have the full official story from as many reliable/trusted sources as possible
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This sounds kind of sketchy. Anyone have any idea what's going on over there?
I've felt like this game was developing at a pretty slow pace, but I had no idea there was such madness going on behind the scenes.
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This isn't official, as you can see in the source email it says 'please don't share outside the company'
here is a link of official FF forums
they are going to release an official statement ASAP im sure
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Played for pvp, and its gone. The pve seems to be moving along slowly but it's boring. Really love the gameplay though, I've dropped 200 dollars on the game I liked it so much and hope it keeps growing. I doubt i will spend anymore though until I see pvp return.
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Wow, What a shock it was for me to learn about this by opening up this subreddit for the first time in roughly 2 months.
I've been following Firefall since it was first announced, and we got to see small glimpses of the open world and the trailer that included clips of a Titan attacking Copa.
I was invited to the closed beta back when Firefall was a lobby-based PVP shooter. It would take quite a while before we actually got to run around the open world.
I can't really comment on changes that have been made in the past 4 or 5 months since I haven't been playing, but I always felt like Firefall lacked the 'Carrot on a stick'. There wasn't an overall goal as far as PVE was concerned. You basically just farmed XP and Materials so you could create better gear. A lot of the activities got very repetitive after a short while, and it became very tough to log in.
I still haven't had a chance to log in and check out the PVP zones or any of the changes that have been added. I'll get around to it sometime, but I still have hope that this game ends up being fun. Hopefully whoever is put in charge has a clear solution in mind.
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No matter what. If the investors are going to dictate things now. It's downhill from there.
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It's been going downhill for the past few years. Investors finally stepping in to do something can't possibly make it any worse than how it is right now.
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I appreciate your optimism and your down votes, keep clicking that disagree button!
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Please take the time to read about reddiquette before making more comments.
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This.
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Once again I think we see another example of the old guards of publishers, marketers and other company types stifling and ruining the spark of creativity, which NEEDS NO HELP to be delivered to the masses.
To heck with the developer / publisher model of game making. Let it DIE. Up with crowdfunding and power directly to the development teams.
Fools with business degrees and ego problems can go to wall street, but stay the heck out of the creative sphere. This applies to several industries actually.
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lol
How long have you been following firefall? This was seen coming from a mile away and is very much needed for firefall to have any chance of surviving even just another 6 months.
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I Dunno why this got downvoted.
A guy who co-founded a gaming studio is getting overtaking by guys who are less the type to found a gaming studio and more the type to buy and sell company shares. There is legitimate reason for concern.
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What are the employees at red5 going to eat? Because if the company fails because they can't make enough money it sure as shit won't be good will they will be eating.
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I hope they get another job like most of us.
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So just because he founded the company everyone else should let him drag it into the ground? It's pretty clear he was doing a very shitty job and him being removed from CEO makes complete sense, read some of the current and former employees comments about this guy and how the company is being ran
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Red-5-Studios-Reviews-E266907.htm
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Yet Firefall is one of the best games out there. It's certainly the FPS I enjoy the most.
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good for you
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[deleted]
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My conclusions on this event
Back in October, R5 was bought (majority of shares were acquired) by Chinese megacorp The9. TWO months later the CEO gets fired.
Red 5 has suffered a coup d'état.
What to expect from this can be extrapolated by looking at the list of licenses they have acquired, [from wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The9):
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Joyful Journey West
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Guild Wars (Chinese version)
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Soul of the Ultimate Nation
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Granado Espada
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Hellgate: London
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Huxley
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Ragnarok Online 2
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FIFA Online 2
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Atlantica Online
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Free Realms
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Planetside 2
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Firefall
Of those games I only have played Ragnarok and Planetside. Both are good games but also the super exploitative grindfests I try to avoid.
Conclusions: Wipe or not, expect all frame progress to stop soon. XP rewards will drop to single digits and overpowered cash items will appear in the market by January.
The upside of an Asian style MMO is that we are finally going to get good looking cosmetic options now. Maybe even the ability to wear hats and hair at the same time!
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Back in October, R5 was bought (majority of shares were acquired) by Chinese megacorp The9. TWO months later the CEO gets fired.
Uh... The9 bought them -years- ago. The only reason firefall even exists is because The9 saved them at the last minute before disbanding. Red5 has been owned by The9 since early 2010.
The rest of your post is just bs and not even worth reading when it's all based off of very much incorrect information.
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Are you saying Firefall is not owned by the same corporation that Planetside 2? If not then I feel pretty justified in my predictions.
To be honest Planetside 2 is awesome in many ways, but it is a very grindy game where cert point farming means everything and it has great cosmetic options considering the limited framework they work with.
I expect similar things to come.
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The9 only runs the planetside2 servers in china. They do not own Planetside2. SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) owns Planetside2.
"I expect similar things to come" dude. The9 has owned Red5 for as long as Firefall has been announced years ago. If it was going to be a chinese grindfest mmo, it would've happened a long time ago.
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Last time I played all you did was thump over and over. So it was pretty much a grind fest MMO.
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You mean, before CEO the was fired? So your opinion is that firing the CEO is a small change? That dismissing the last remaining creator of the game isn't really a big thing?
I think the Esports in FirefallEsports is making you overly optimistic.
Things WILL change. Maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. I'm just not optimistic considering who owns the franchise right now.
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[deleted]
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The9 has owned Red5 since March 2010, and The9 is the only reason Firefall even exist and everything wasn't disbanded back then.
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I bought into FF for the promise of PvE which looked interesting in those first videos that were shown. This did not happen and hasn't happened yet. Was hoping for a fun co-op first person shooter online loot gathering game, one which I could enjoy with friends. I showed my friends that gameplay video when it first came out but I never mentioned the game to my friends again because that selling point never surfaced.
Holy shit, those first videos were amazing, totally sold me on the whole premise and I couldn't wait to give it a try. It's the only beta I ever signed up for.
More than two years later, after watching all that wasted potential disappear in a shitstorm of stupid decisions... feels bad, man. Feels real bad.
It does feel bad. I bought the Founder alpha pack to support them with that idea.
Everyone's gonna have different ideas of what this means.
Isn't that pretty much what the game is now? My typical mode of play is to jump on with some friends, and run around in a squad together, collecting resources by killing the things, and finding the things and taking them to the things.
My point is that I bought the game under the impression that PvE would be the main focus, not PvP, and I feel like I am not alone there. Kind of feel like it's too late now since they didn't go for that angle right away. Truthfully I haven't logged in for a while now so I am not sure how fleshed out PvE has become but when I last played it basically wasn't.
I've been playing since May or June 2013 when my friend started working there. The only thing I've really seen to do is all the things you describe as a "fun co-op first person shooter online loot gathering game" so I'm wondering what you think it should be. As it is, ARES missions still come and go, with fairly dumb AI, so the only real challenge is how many units you have to kill in what amount of time. Beyond that, it's a matter of collecting experience at a fairly rapid rate, while everything else comes at a much slower rate, leaving you with millions of xp, and no way to spend it because you lack the minerals/crystite. I'm not thrilled with the game myself, but based on the words you used to describe what you want, what's there is pretty much that as far as I can tell.
I expected more I guess, judging from the video. I don't know, it just didn't click well enough with me as the video did. (Which makes me rather scared for No Man's Sky, so in love with the idea that is shown in the video but fully expecting something so much less.)
Try Warframe, it's a free, loot gathering, third person, PvE shooter.
Tried it and played it for a while. It is, sadly, nowhere near what FireFall could have been and might become.