It’s not really a good sign when your game has a major feature removed, but that’s exactly what Red 5 Studios are doing with their currently-in-open-beta shooter-MMO Firefall. Before too long, the game’s PvP will be removed until it can be reworked.
The news comes from a blog post written by Red 5 CEO Mark Ken (spotted by PC Gamer) and titled, tellingly, “An important letter about PvP.” Kern discusses how the game went down an e-sports route but didn’t do particularly well, with its recent Jetball mode attracting a startlingly low number of players.
“Our last big attempt was a pure PvP eSports mode, Jetball,” wrote Kern. “While very fun, its a high skill game and doesn’t attract many of our players (less than 3% PvP in Firefall).”
Red 5 have apparently recently had to focus on PvE to create new content, polish, and remove bugs, which has meant less time spent on PvP. As such, PvP will be temporarily removed until the team can “rethink and relaunch it.” “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,” typed Kern.
Firefall is still in open beta, but removing an entire game system is still a bit of an extreme move. I suppose this indicates how serious they are about PvP, though – if it’s not living up to their expectations, then they’d presumably rather people not get used to it, or try it and decide they don’t like it, before it’s in a state they’re happy with. Still, let’s hope it doesn’t take too long before PvP makes a reappearance.
You can sign up for Firefall‘s open beta on the official website.
