Firefall -
Red 5 Studios
Firefall was a unique opportunity to work with an amazingly talented team on an incredibly unique game that was well ahead of its time, a free to play MMOFPS. I started out on Firefall initially developing PvE encounters to help add content to the dynamic open world. I also helped to rework the new player experience from a solo mechanical tutorial to a narrative driven multiplayer experience.
Later on when it was decided Firefall should take a stab at e-sports which were just starting to become popular, I worked on creating a competitive team based game mode which would run for an introductory ESL season. Jetball, loosely based on Bombing Run from Unreal Tournament, was internally well received, and players were interested in the idea of competitive tournaments. We flew out some of the top teams to play on LAN and offer their feedback on ways to improve the game for the competitive scene and achieved a strong consensus on our direction and priorities.
Unfortunately, Firefall didn’t have a large enough user base to bring in the viewers to sustain an e-sport, so although we learned a lot in our initial season and had plans to make improvements, priorities shifted from competitive arena PvP to open world PvP more in line with the open world PvE experience of the game. My experience overall working on Firefall however was extremely rewarding, learning Lua based scripting and a custom level editor, balancing Battleframe weapons and abilities and tuning movement mechanics explicitly for a competitive setting, and working with an extremely talented team of developers.
The design for the open world of Firefall called for the creation of dynamic content. This was unique in a world of MMOs that tended to rely on static content that was placed in a fixed location and respawned on a regular interval. Instead the intent for Firefall was to make the world feel more alive, by creating content that could be instantiated dynamically throughout regions or even anywhere in the game. This content would change the world around it, as well as allowing the outside world to influence it, creating emergent gameplay opportunities for players.
One of the dynamic content events I created for Firefall was Signal Scanning. To start this event, players picked up a wearable antenna from a depot in one of the game’s content hubs. This antenna then marked the active location where players could receive a signal from researchers out in The Melding, a toxic cloud covering most of the world in Firefall.
The signal location marked on the player’s map was randomly placed within a reasonable distance in the surrounding region. Creatures from the local biome spawn list appeared at the location of the signal, and any nearby creatures spawned into the world, either ambiently or from other dynamic content, could also be attracted to the signal area. A timer counted down until the signal would be received by any players in the area, which spawned additional creatures based on the number of players in the area. Players earned reward for each signal they received, then had to travel through the open world to the next signal location, using their engaging movement mechanics and bringing them into content with more dynamic content.
This event got players running around to random locations in the world, bringing them into contact with other pieces of content, and bringing those pieces of content into contact with each other, creating interesting situations for players. Gameplay of an early version of this encounter can be seen here.