Have to post the full thing, it's that short of an announcement.
[QUOTE]
With heavy hearts, we regret to inform you that after much review and analysis, Red 5 Studios have decided to suspend the Firefall efforts on 7th, July 2017. Thank you for being an important part of the Firefall experience and for your loyalty and dedication to the online community.
Your efforts and loyalty will not go without recognition, however. Firefall is currently developing a mobile version of the game and all of Firefall’s founders and players will be rewarded greatly in the new game. We will be sure to provide everyone with more updates as we have them.
Thank you for your support and enthusiasm throughout the years; we will see you at the next battle.
[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.red5studios.com/2017/07/firefall-closure-announcement/[/url]
Not a big surprise, really. The game's been on literal life support since the last major update happened in February last year. Shortly afterward the dev team got laid off, the publisher stopped paying for texture streaming servers so the game looks like ass, the mission system stopped working and new players couldn't even beat the tutorial. It's sad to see it fall so far after the promise it had back in Closed Beta.
I remember when I thought this game was fun, back in closed beta. But then it just turned into a repetitive grind instead of what they promised. It's like it lost momentum along the way.
The gliders were fun, and the vertical scale on some of the maps meant you could get surprisingly high up off the terrain, and this made gliding home really fun.
I used to look forward to this back in 2013, ended up never trying it
I never played this but from what I heard the game changed drastically after they fired Mark Kern, founder/ex-ceo of Red5. Last year he wanted to buy back the IP of it, but I guess the studio thinks they could make more from a fps open world mobile game.
RIP 100 eur. It was fun when I bought Commander but boy did I waste my money in hindsight
[editline]6th July 2017[/editline]
All I have left is a cool poster and a beer stein
One of their biggest mistakes was pushing so hard to make Firefall the next big esports game. I don't think a popular esports game is something you can just manufacture like that. It's a shame they only started realizing their mistakes after it was too late.
And with that, the last remaining bits of Project Offset are now dead.
Rest in peace you beautiful bastard.
I forgot Firefall was a thing.
I was just thinking about this game the other day, and how it just seemed to drop off of the face of the earth. It's a shame we can't even have offline mode, which is typical these days, but no less unacceptable
[QUOTE=Asgard;52439375]RIP 100 eur. It was fun when I bought Commander but boy did I waste my money in hindsight
[editline]6th July 2017[/editline]
All I have left is a cool poster and a beer stein[/QUOTE]
You lost your hat?
[editline]6th July 2017[/editline]
I still haven't taken out my poster from the tube.
The hat (I want to call it a mitten but mittens go in hands not on head) at least kept me warm few winters.
How so extremely short-lived for an MMO
[QUOTE=Sanjuaro;52439380]One of their biggest mistakes was pushing so hard to make Firefall the next big esports game. I don't think a popular esports game is something you can just manufacture like that. It's a shame they only started realizing their mistakes after it was too late.[/QUOTE]The sooner devs and publishers stop doing this shit, the better. Even Blizzard is making this mistake for some reason.
I still have all of my founders stuff. In fact my poster is still above my monitors. Every now and then I glance up and remember "oh yeah its that game that completely did a 180 on how everything works like 5 times."
[t]https://puu.sh/wDgHd/ff92106ddb.jpg[/t]
The original creator is trying a do over to make the game again from scratch as he originally envisioned it. They calling it Em-8ER. They just finished an indigogo to make a demo video for a kickstarter they will do in september/october. Even if the later kickstarter gets funded and they release it i'm not sure I have much hope for it.
[URL]https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/em-8er-mech-vs-kaiju-wargame-m3-milestone/x/16947553#/[/URL]
[QUOTE=alexojm;52439618]Em-8ER[/QUOTE]awful name
[QUOTE=AtomicSans;52439632]awful name[/QUOTE]
Yep I don't know what the fuck he was thinking with that name its awful. Like I did enjoy FireFall and I do really want this to succeed if it does get made how he originally wanted it but I find it hard to hold out any hope.
---------------
One of the things that sold me originally about FireFall was the thumpers. I just loved the look of them. I modeled my own take on them about half a year ago and tried to get it printed to put on my desk as a fun reminder but it broke and I haven't bothered to try again since.
[t]https://puu.sh/sCeCK/df3133a5cf.png[/t] [t]https://puu.sh/soIEA/ea194cfa77.png[/t]
I just thought about it and the last time I logged into FireFall was a few weeks after they released the 4x4 car.
I had so much fun with it that I don't regret buying the 100 dollar pack, but holy fuck they ruined the shit out of the game after kicking Kern.
Shoutout to my brothers in -Tex-
[video=youtube;Xu2PRI_Gv1o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu2PRI_Gv1o[/video]
[editline]6th July 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=alexojm;52439641]Yep I don't know what the fuck he was thinking with that name its awful. Like I did enjoy FireFall and I do really want this to succeed if it does get made how he originally wanted it but I find it hard to hold out any hope.
---------------
One of the things that sold me originally about FireFall was the thumpers. I just loved the look of them. I modeled my own take on them about half a year ago and tried to get it printed to put on my desk as a fun reminder but it broke and I haven't bothered to try again since.
[t]https://puu.sh/sCeCK/df3133a5cf.png[/t] [t]https://puu.sh/soIEA/ea194cfa77.png[/t]
I just thought about it and the last time I logged into FireFall was a few weeks after they released the 4x4 car.[/QUOTE]
The sound when the largest thumper slams down was so cool, and the hordes were intense as fuck. I really loved it, always loved the mining aspect of games and they did it really well IMO.
[QUOTE=AtomicSans;52439632]awful name[/QUOTE]
It was originally called Ember but that was apparently taken, so they renamed it after the planet the game is set on... called Em-8ER. Since Ember's been brought up now I may as well mention they're offering full credit for Firefall founders, so long as you confirm you were a founder before the FF forums go offline (which have been spammed to hell and back with Ember stuff by backers)
I'm not sure I trust Kern. It's been known about for a while now that the post on r/gaming around the time he got fired was made by a shill for The9, and while most of the stuff people blame him for (like the bus) wasn't his fault he's still got a reputation. Hopefully Ember does become what FF was supposed to be, the Closed Beta for FF was the shit for me.
[QUOTE=Asgard;52439375]RIP 100 eur. It was fun when I bought Commander but boy did I waste my money in hindsight
[editline]6th July 2017[/editline]
All I have left is a cool poster and a beer stein[/QUOTE]
You can claim your commander status in Mark Kern's new game, EM8ER which will give you the full store credit if they release it. I also had the top tier commander pack and did it:
[url]https://forums.em8er.com/threads/firefall-credit-program-em-8er-to-offer-full-credit-for-founder-packs.666/[/url]
On the status of EM8ER, I have no idea why they are using this weird ass system for funding it...They have done 3 Indiegogo campaigns to fund what basically amounts to a prototype and made a few hundred thousand dollars? If I have it right they have funded these 3 smaller milestones to get a prototype working while offering in-game rewards for backing them, then they are going to be doing a 'big' crowdfunding campaign to fund the entire game? I don't really know what their plan is if the main campaign fails...
Either way I'm not holding my breath, but it seems like he just wants to remake Firefall in a different setting and I won't turn down a chance for the $100 I paid to actually get used.
that tends to happen when the dude running the show leaves after you rebuild the entire fucking game 3 times
Firefall was the shit back in the original closed beta, but it was obvious they had absolutely no idea what they wanted to do with the game. I remember they outright disabled PvP because it was such a mess, but then they started pushing it as the next big eSport. What a shame.
I remember playing this with my European buddies all the damn time. Such a fun game.
RIP to another excellent MMO ruined by p2w.
This game came out? That's news to me. I remember this being teased for like, forever, and then vanishing.
Also a founder, was suggested the game by a friend a long time ago. It was way before it was on Steam, it was still quite playable back then and it was quite fun but got old quite quickly.
Of course my friend didn't tell me about the legendary Firefall bus or the general stupidity of the studio management, but at least I'll always have a poster and the memory of my then girlfriend asking me why the tube the poster came in was addressed to a "Commander".
Still it used to be quite nice driving along the coast on those nice futuristic bikes, pity it turned out the way it did.
The bus:
[IMG]https://cdn.techinasia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/mgu-body-image.jpg[/IMG]
[QUOTE=Wii60;52439815]that tends to happen when the dude running the show leaves after you rebuild the entire fucking game 3 times[/QUOTE]
Mark Kern was blamed for the downfall of the game, but his story was that the board were pressuring them to spend ludicrous amounts of money on marketing and basically copy other MMOs (WoW) that were successful.
He also reckons that he pushed for advertising through Youtube and Twitch content creators before it was 'industry standard' but a lot of management said it was a huge waste of money and accused him of spending marketing budget on unrelated personal projects.
Who knows if its true, there's probably a lot more to the story and both parties were probably in the wrong in their own way.
[editline]July 6th 2017[/editline]
Found the quote:
[quote]There was a lot of misinformation spread here by the new management that they felt was necessary to eject me so they could control the game and change it to WoW with guns.
I'm often cited for spending money on marketing, and having it called personal projects. To be clear, the Board of Directors wanted me to spend about double what I actually did, and were always asking me to do grander and grander things. They wanted to compete with WoW, which I though was a mistake, and draw in big licensing deals.
In hindsight, many of the marketing spends I made are now seen as best practice. I was the first to do "direct to gamer" marketing at PAX, when everyone thought we should be at E3 where booths are 3x more expensive. Now everyone is at Pax.
I was also asked to spend a huge sum on banner ads for months, millions. AAA marketing budgets are often equal to the game's budget, so a 50M dollar game has a 50M marketing budget. Instead of spending 5M on banner ads, which I felt were useless, I created 2 things and spent half as much as they asked...a video platform to draw gamers in general into our Youtube channel to advertise Firefall, and a focus on Twitch and streamers to get the game's name out there. At the time, this was called by the marketing dept "A huge waste of time/money." But I correctly saw the rise of video for marketing and have been vindicated since. We also had stats that showed we were attracting millions of viewers (correction, views, not viewers) to our channel, had 3x the click rate, a 10x the stickiness of our banner ad campaigns (which nobody looks at anymore). So no, doing Youtube marketing and Twitch marketing instead of spending 2x that on banner ads was not "a personal project"[/quote]
This is also a pretty decent write-up on what happened to the game: [url]https://www.reddit.com/r/firefall/comments/4yzvvq/i_just_started_firefall/d6v2t09/[/url]
Towards the end of it's life apparently the publisher stopped paying for texture streaming servers or something and the game looked extra horrible.
[QUOTE=Boopbonbelle;52439901]Also a founder, was suggested the game by a friend a long time ago. It was way before it was on Steam, it was still quite playable back then and it was quite fun but got old quite quickly.
Of course my friend didn't tell me about the legendary Firefall bus or the general stupidity of the studio management, but at least I'll always have a poster and the memory of my then girlfriend asking me why the tube the poster came in was addressed to a "Commander".
Still it used to be quite nice driving along the coast on those nice futuristic bikes, pity it turned out the way it did.
The bus:
[IMG]https://cdn.techinasia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/mgu-body-image.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE]
Bus wasn't Red 5's fault, West Coast Customs royally fucked it up and everyone was pissed. The wiring was shoddy, it was too wide to fit on roads, the wooden boards were rotting, they didn't even finish it after at least three delays costing R5 lots of money cancelling convention bookings. The entire thing was such a shitshow that they gutted it for its computer components and the thing just sits in a warehouse somewhere now.
West Coast Customs used to do stuff on Pimp My Ride right? I heard a lot of those cars just had gaudy stuff attached to them but they never actually did much to fix the cars, so no wonder the bus didn't work very well.
I thought this died ages ago. I remember it being an MMOFPS with the gunplay of an MMO and the progression of an FPS
Bummer, I still have my poster somewhere and despite the constant reworks it still looked like it could have become something special during the beta. Unfortunately on release the game had turned out into a generic theme park mmo.
There's not much more than he-said-she-said about what went wrong with Firefall but Kern had the right ideas so I'm hoping he'll succeed the second time.
Their idea of crowfunding is.. baffling though, from what I understand. They're doing funding by milestone, which basically means if a milestone fails to get funding all you're getting is a tech demo for a game that'll never be made.
I understand WHY they would do that, but I'm not sure I'm okay with the idea.
[QUOTE=Boopbonbelle;52440043]West Coast Customs used to do stuff on Pimp My Ride right? I heard a lot of those cars just had gaudy stuff attached to them but they never actually did much to fix the cars, so no wonder the bus didn't work very well.[/QUOTE]
Most of the stuff on PMR worked just for the cameras. A lot of the stuff they removed after the shoot and most of the stuff wasn't even street legal.
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