The studio’s plans to take advantage of eSports has collapsed following the decision to ‘disable’ PvP as it was ”not working very well” with small numbers interested.
Less than 3 percent of the Firefall player base interacts in a player versus player capacity, according to Red 5’s own data. PvP also ‘suffered’ at increased focused on PvE.
”As Firefall matures, we must transition our priorities and our development strategy to focus on streamlined operations and live product support,” announced studio boss Mark Kern. He wrote an open letter to the Firefall community explaining why they’re suddenly shelving PvP plans.
”As many of you know, it’s not working very well,” he said. Our last big attempt was a pure PvP eSports mode, Jetball. While very fun, it’s a high skill game and doesn’t attract many of our players (less than 3 per cent PvP in Firefall).
”Also, PvP has suffered as our focus has had to focus on the popular PvE part of our game. People want more content, fewer bugs, and more polish on these world systems. For these reasons, we have made the tough decision to suspend PvP and take the system offline so that we can rethink it and relaunch it. PvP is an important part of our game, and we want to get it right.”
”So we’re going to regroup, rethink, and deliver the best PvP system we can that can be enjoyed by everyone. We don’t have a timetable for this, but at some near future point we will shut off the PvP aspect of the game, which we feel does not represent Firefall at its best, and relaunch that part of the game when its ready.”
The latest Firefall Live video instalment (available below) explains the situation more.
