Last year as convention season began its full swing Red 5 Studios made a radical, unexpected change to its third-person MMO shooter. The company made a drastic call to completely revamp various game systems in FireFall, including general progression. The changes so late in development and so widespread were so unexpected that we featured an interview on the topic.
Apparently, come our appointment at PAX East with Red 5 Studios we’ll have to produce a sequel. The company has announced that its making a major adjustment to progression as part of a milestone patch for March 22, the PAX East 2013 begins. The original change removed the typical experience-based leveling system, cementing the battleframes as the title’s core progression system.
Players and Senior Game Designer Cameron Winston enjoyed the change, but subsequent data, feedback and play information has revealed that the outgoing system is too “hard to understand, and it had arbitrary limitations that prevented players from exploring how they could customize their frames.” Class-based frames will remain in the new system, but each will now have its own unique tech tree.
The latest devblog has more and we’ll be sure to spotlight the issue further during our upcoming interview.
Hmm…. the change has me intrigued!