I wouldn't count this game out just yet. I played a bit of their huge new update on the PTS server and really liked it.
It has better cutscenes, re-worked loot system, more defined class changes (a tank thats actually a tank) new and improved story, pvp modes making a comeback, you can finally gear out your characters with armor pieces instead of just getting a new gun like before, get a vehicle way sooner, and more.
And with it coming to consoles I still think firefalls future is bright. I heard from a dev himself saying they are aiming to push all these updates sometime next year because of how large and complex the move is. Its the reason im not playing it now. I'm just waiting for them to launch this update, then I'm all over it again I had a lot of fun.
UPDATE 11/23: We've heard directly from one of the affected employees as of this morning. Apparently, the China launch actually happened in the wee hours last Wednesday morning. What came shortly after was unexpected. We'll let the employee (who asked to remain anonymous) put it in their own words:
"It was almost like launch never happened, because we never received any updates besides a vague feeling that the game wasn’t doing very well. At 3:15on Friday (11/20), about forty of us were called into a meeting where, after some hemming and hawing about how hard a decision this was to make, we were let go with no severance, health insurance expires at the end of the month, thanks for all your overtime. The rest of the office was sent home early, I assume because they didn’t want people talking to each other, but it’s 2015 and Facebook exists, so...
The cuts were from basically every department and didn’t follow any kind of rhyme or reason, and they definitely weren’t performance based. Aside from myself, we lost several leads, seniors, and people who’d been with the company a really long time. In total, I’d say between 20 and 25% of the studio lost their job in the cuts.
Honestly, they asked us to remake the game in a year, including doing full development on 22 instanced missions and an overhaul of every major system, using art assets from 2008. I don’t know what they expected to happen. Everything that’s going wrong with Firefall isn’t from a lack of talent or passion on behalf of the dev team - it’s corporate mismanagement."
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Money is the root of all evil,developers with tight budgets will rush and screw things up and NEVER be the game it could be.
This of course must be stressful,shocking to the people losing their jobs especially if some are like me and have huge medical bills to pay. Oh well hope the best for those laid off but stuff like this never ends in a positive,devs don't learn from failures either.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
UPDATE 11/23: We've heard directly from one of the affected employees as of this morning. Apparently, the China launch actually happened in the wee hours last Wednesday morning. What came shortly after was unexpected. We'll let the employee (who asked to remain anonymous) put it in their own words:
"It was almost like launch never happened, because we never received any updates besides a vague feeling that the game wasn’t doing very well. At 3:15on Friday (11/20), about forty of us were called into a meeting where, after some hemming and hawing about how hard a decision this was to make, we were let go with no severance, health insurance expires at the end of the month, thanks for all your overtime. The rest of the office was sent home early, I assume because they didn’t want people talking to each other, but it’s 2015 and Facebook exists, so...
The cuts were from basically every department and didn’t follow any kind of rhyme or reason, and they definitely weren’t performance based. Aside from myself, we lost several leads, seniors, and people who’d been with the company a really long time. In total, I’d say between 20 and 25% of the studio lost their job in the cuts.
Honestly, they asked us to remake the game in a year, including doing full development on 22 instanced missions and an overhaul of every major system, using art assets from 2008. I don’t know what they expected to happen. Everything that’s going wrong with Firefall isn’t from a lack of talent or passion on behalf of the dev team - it’s corporate mismanagement."
So I guess this means this person is saying The9 fucked it all up?
Meh....... I think the worst decision made was taking the game to Asia in the first place. It's really no different than bringing an Eastern game to the West. Success is, generally, limited. I'm really not sure why they thought that this is a game that the Chinese market would swoon over. It sounds more like a desperate stab at a large market. It's like one of those pitches where they say "All we have to do is capture 1% of the market..." Honestly, if they concentrated more on marketing to the North American market, I think they would have done better.
I could be talking out of my ass, though, maybe they have really good analytics that told them that China was the market to tackle.
Very polished game made by very talented team, ruined by completely incompetent game designers...
I wouldn't say incompetent. I mean as much as every is touting the closed beta, I feel like it suffered from similar issues. I mean it was definitely fun, but it was still mostly devoid of any sort of story or purpose. It basically boiled down to run from station to station shooting stuff. There were plenty of redeeming values in the betas, but nothing that I'd say would have saved the game from it's current fate. It probably does have more mass appeal now.
I wouldn't say incompetent. I mean as much as every is touting the closed beta, I feel like it suffered from similar issues. I mean it was definitely fun, but it was still mostly devoid of any sort of story or purpose. It basically boiled down to run from station to station shooting stuff. There were plenty of redeeming values in the betas, but nothing that I'd say would have saved the game from it's current fate. It probably does have more mass appeal now.
I am not touting closed beta.
The game was continuously being reworked through it's entire development cycle - closed beta or not. In closed beta tho, there was at least some distinct vision for the game.
Making radical changes to game design in late development is anything but smart.
EVE nor PS2 got no story or "purpose" and they do fine.... Shooting is fun and that was the original concept of the game - to shoot stuff, and it worked.
Man, this game has seemingly been nothing but a disaster since I got into closed beta years ago.
Such a strong potential ruined by lack of proper direction.. It's been redesigned 3 times now since I first saw footage of it, maybe more after I quit and stopped paying attention to it.
Guess I should experience what's left of the game before it gets shutdown. *sigh*
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I wouldn't say incompetent. I mean as much as every is touting the closed beta, I feel like it suffered from similar issues. I mean it was definitely fun, but it was still mostly devoid of any sort of story or purpose. It basically boiled down to run from station to station shooting stuff. There were plenty of redeeming values in the betas, but nothing that I'd say would have saved the game from it's current fate. It probably does have more mass appeal now.
I am not touting closed beta.
The game was continuously being reworked through it's entire development cycle - closed beta or not. In closed beta tho, there was at least some distinct vision for the game.
Making radical changes to game design in late development is anything but smart.
EVE nor PS2 got no story or "purpose" and they do fine.... Shooting is fun and that was the original concept of the game - to shoot stuff, and it worked.
Whaaaaaaaaat??? So you're saying re-work is a bad thing...... damn, I've got to re-think my whole development methodology
I don't necessarily disagree. Actually, re-reading I think I was agreeing in a round-about way. I mean I think there were always problems with it, so it ended up being a matter of designers not knowing what they should be doing, not having a clarity of what the purpose or direction of the game was, etc, that led to its demise. So, yeah, I guess that would be on the designer.
Well crap. I was enjoying puttering around with Firefall a few months back and I was almost about to break my rule (don't pay for free to play) but the something like 40$ dune buggy sent me scurrying to protect my wallet and dignity.
Sad though, Firefall is a fun game and I could easily see with some more development love and some more polish it could be great.
UPDATE 11/23: We've heard directly from one of the affected employees as of this morning. Apparently, the China launch actually happened in the wee hours last Wednesday morning. What came shortly after was unexpected. We'll let the employee (who asked to remain anonymous) put it in their own words:
"It was almost like launch never happened, because we never received any updates besides a vague feeling that the game wasn’t doing very well. At 3:15 on Friday (11/20), about forty of us were called into a meeting where, after some hemming and hawing about how hard a decision this was to make, we were let go with no severance, health insurance expires at the end of the month, thanks for all your overtime. The rest of the office was sent home early, I assume because they didn’t want people talking to each other, but it’s 2015 and Facebook exists, so...
The cuts were from basically every department and didn’t follow any kind of rhyme or reason, and they definitely weren’t performance based. Aside from myself, we lost several leads, seniors, and people who’d been with the company a really long time. In total, I’d say between 20 and 25% of the studio lost their job in the cuts.
Honestly, they asked us to remake the game in a year, including doing full development on 22 instanced missions and an overhaul of every major system, using art assets from 2008. I don’t know what they expected to happen. Everything that’s going wrong with Firefall isn’t from a lack of talent or passion on behalf of the dev team - it’s corporate mismanagement."
Maybe the Firefall team wasn't very far from truth when they sent their China backers and players this exclusive video clip of "What's it like to work in Red5 studio" earlier this year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c18IlpiMjCM
"A game is fun if it is learnable but not trivial" -- Togelius & Schmidhuber
Everybody that took part in Firefall way back when saw this cluster f#%k from back then. We were toxic and negative nancy types though.
I only hope the rotund neck beard community manager who became a "producer" hits the pink slip line before anybody else because the actual talent at Red 5 wasn't bad and deserved better leadership.
Somewhere Mark Kern has to be snickering to himself because they tried to put all the blame on him.
"As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*"
I was a Red5 employee until Friday's layoffs of about 40-50 people.
The reason for the layoffs was that the china launch had issues. If it had gone well, we would still be working there.
So, the blame goes to the launch fail.m
The servers couldnt hanndle the numbers, and kept crashing. they changed the game from released to "early access" .
I would like to know who is irresponsible for me losing my job. I'd REALLY like to know. Not to unleash wrath or anything, but someone fucked up and now i am panhandling in the streets.
2016 is the year of VR and I intend to participate So, the timing wasn't bad. Firefall just hit a snag. Try PTS if you haven't already..
I was a Red5 employee until Friday's layoffs of about 40-50 people.
The reason for the layoffs was that the china launch SUCKED. If it had gone well, we would still be working there.
So, the blame goes to the launch fail. What failed?
The servers couldnt hanndle the numbers, and kept crashing. they changed the game from released to "early access" .
I would like to know who is irresponsible for me losing my job. I'd REALLY like to know. Not to unleash wrath or anything, but someone fucked up and now i am panhandling in the streets.
2016 is the year of VR and I intend to participate So, the timing wasn't bad.
How many months do you give for the game to fully shutdown worldwide ?
A shame. The PTS version is a lot of fun. Problem is, the game has been re-worked so many times now that people are just tired of dealing with it. You simply can't trust a company which doesn't seem to be capable of picking a direction in which to take the game.
Dropping people with no severance or continuation of benefits is scummy as hell though. I hope they find new jobs quickly, preferably at companies which will appreciate their talents and manage them properly.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
The game was mismanaged all the way through. They could never get their ideas in line with what was actually possible. Mark Kern was a complete failure as a manager as many former employees have said in the past. By the time they booted him it was already too late. The game was already a flop and turned out to be nothing like what was promised. They tried to play word games with the players and make all kinds of excuses but it wasn't fooling anyone. If The9 hadn't stepped in and bought Red5 it would have gone under before the game was even released but they can see now that it was a bad investment and they have to cut their losses. I doubt the game can linger on for too much longer before they just shut it down. RIP.
I have to agree with everyone that noticed that the actual work on the game was good, just the direction the game was going sucked all the fun out of it. Seems like a case of good staff, bad leadership... but at Red5 we have heard this story before.
Really wish they could have made the game the way they originally planned, with a focus on random events and crafting rather than boring exp grind. This was the first game that I ever enjoyed crafting in, the complexity of it was rewarding rather than just being confusing.
It is a real shame someone took that vision and thought it would look better dumbed down with an exp bar to grind.
The sad part is I actually called this as far back as earlier betas because of how much money they were wasting purely on advertising when the game was nowhere close to release. It was a huge, gross mishandling of cash in my opinion.
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Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
It has better cutscenes, re-worked loot system, more defined class changes (a tank thats actually a tank) new and improved story, pvp modes making a comeback, you can finally gear out your characters with armor pieces instead of just getting a new gun like before, get a vehicle way sooner, and more.
And with it coming to consoles I still think firefalls future is bright. I heard from a dev himself saying they are aiming to push all these updates sometime next year because of how large and complex the move is. Its the reason im not playing it now. I'm just waiting for them to launch this update, then I'm all over it again I had a lot of fun.
UPDATE 11/23: We've heard directly from one of the affected employees as of this morning. Apparently, the China launch actually happened in the wee hours last Wednesday morning. What came shortly after was unexpected. We'll let the employee (who asked to remain anonymous) put it in their own words:
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
My bet is within 6 months the game will fold and shutdown.
New players can get a welcome package and old/returning players can also get a welcome back package and 7 days free subscription time! Just click here to use my referral invitation
This of course must be stressful,shocking to the people losing their jobs especially if some are like me and have huge medical bills to pay.
Oh well hope the best for those laid off but stuff like this never ends in a positive,devs don't learn from failures either.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Meh....... I think the worst decision made was taking the game to Asia in the first place. It's really no different than bringing an Eastern game to the West. Success is, generally, limited. I'm really not sure why they thought that this is a game that the Chinese market would swoon over. It sounds more like a desperate stab at a large market. It's like one of those pitches where they say "All we have to do is capture 1% of the market..." Honestly, if they concentrated more on marketing to the North American market, I think they would have done better.
I could be talking out of my ass, though, maybe they have really good analytics that told them that China was the market to tackle.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
I wouldn't say incompetent. I mean as much as every is touting the closed beta, I feel like it suffered from similar issues. I mean it was definitely fun, but it was still mostly devoid of any sort of story or purpose. It basically boiled down to run from station to station shooting stuff. There were plenty of redeeming values in the betas, but nothing that I'd say would have saved the game from it's current fate. It probably does have more mass appeal now.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
The game was continuously being reworked through it's entire development cycle - closed beta or not. In closed beta tho, there was at least some distinct vision for the game.
Making radical changes to game design in late development is anything but smart.
EVE nor PS2 got no story or "purpose" and they do fine.... Shooting is fun and that was the original concept of the game - to shoot stuff, and it worked.
Such a strong potential ruined by lack of proper direction.. It's been redesigned 3 times now since I first saw footage of it, maybe more after I quit and stopped paying attention to it.
Guess I should experience what's left of the game before it gets shutdown. *sigh*
How not to look stupid: Psychologists reveal the three types of foolish behavior
The first and worst type of stupidity is confident arrogance,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3327684/How-not-look-stupid-Psychologists-reveal-three-types-foolish-behaviour.html#ixzz3sLanS833
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Whaaaaaaaaat??? So you're saying re-work is a bad thing...... damn, I've got to re-think my whole development methodology
I don't necessarily disagree. Actually, re-reading I think I was agreeing in a round-about way. I mean I think there were always problems with it, so it ended up being a matter of designers not knowing what they should be doing, not having a clarity of what the purpose or direction of the game was, etc, that led to its demise. So, yeah, I guess that would be on the designer.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
Sad but true
Sad though, Firefall is a fun game and I could easily see with some more development love and some more polish it could be great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c18IlpiMjCM
"A game is fun if it is learnable but not trivial" -- Togelius & Schmidhuber
I only hope the rotund neck beard community manager who became a "producer" hits the pink slip line before anybody else because the actual talent at Red 5 wasn't bad and deserved better leadership.
Somewhere Mark Kern has to be snickering to himself because they tried to put all the blame on him.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I so wanted to play that game.
The constant changes just gutted every ounce of charm the game had.
The reason for the layoffs was that the china launch had issues. If it had gone well, we would still be working there.
So, the blame goes to the launch fail.m
The servers couldnt hanndle the numbers, and kept crashing. they changed the game from released to "early access" .
I would like to know who is irresponsible for me losing my job. I'd REALLY like to know. Not to unleash wrath or anything, but someone fucked up and now i am panhandling in the streets.
2016 is the year of VR and I intend to participate
New players can get a welcome package and old/returning players can also get a welcome back package and 7 days free subscription time! Just click here to use my referral invitation
Dropping people with no severance or continuation of benefits is scummy as hell though. I hope they find new jobs quickly, preferably at companies which will appreciate their talents and manage them properly.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
Really wish they could have made the game the way they originally planned, with a focus on random events and crafting rather than boring exp grind. This was the first game that I ever enjoyed crafting in, the complexity of it was rewarding rather than just being confusing.
It is a real shame someone took that vision and thought it would look better dumbed down with an exp bar to grind.
Smile