PAX East 2013: FireFall completely adapts (again) to community feedback

If you’ve been following the two-year story that is FireFall, you know the game has made some major changes over its extensive beta run. Change isn’t bad, though; actually, it’s exactly what the community wants. When it comes to listening to user feedback, one can’t help but to give Red 5 Studios some major credit — they listen to the voice of their players. With that said, FireFall just went through their largest patch yet and dropped the whole tier system to battleframes. There are literally pages of patch notes. This is the third major overhaul of the entire game.

Tackling the MMO/FPS genre is no small task, and FireFall has always boasted how it is a shooter first and a MMO second. With PvP going down a path the developers are happy with, their focus is now on PvE and bringing in newer players. Since they lacked a tutorial in the past, Red 5 has created a far more detailed learning system to help teach new players the complex mechanics of FireFall. Some controlled spoon feeding is all some players need to have the game truly ‘click’ for them.

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This new PvE includes more developed Chosen. Besides getting a new face lift (and masks), this foe-race has more defined classes. These baddies will even assault your outposts with siege cannons. Siege cannons will fire upon your shield generators from far range and continue to do so until you destroy it or lose the shield generator; the latter ends with them taking the outpost and you losing the location and bonuses to the melding. On top of all this, the Chosen have a smarter AI overall — so enjoy that.

In conclusion, there's a lot going on with FireFall. Even if you are a veteran within the beta, these new changes will blow your mind. If you’re a new player, there is a brand new tutorial for you to learn everything you’ve ever wanted to know. Lastly, look forward to some new tech trees for armies and even world PvP on the horizon.

Oh, one last thing to mention — Red 5 Studios extensively talked about their YouTube channel "Stage 5." Stage 5 delivers custom, high-quality television programming that focuses on gamer and geek culture. Some of their programming includes "Project Cosplay," which focuses on how high-quality cosplay is done and the effort that goes into the costumes, and "Game Changers," a Mythbusters-type show that sees if things done in video games can be accomplished in the real world. For example, there are jet packs in a lot of video games, and you can even shoot from those jet packs. So the hosts of Game Changers strap on jet packs and try to hit a target with paint ball guns. There's a ton of programming on the way, including a documentary show about different indie studios.