Co-Optimus: How will the classes play off each other for strong co-op support? I assume we'll have roles like medic, heavy gunner, leader, etc.?
James: We want to make sure there’s ample content for lone-wolves who want to have a single player experience, but you brought up a great reason to play with others – the ability to share your battleframe’s strengths.
We’ll be talking in great detail about additional battleframes over the next six months, but your assumption is correct that we want to make sure there are classes that support every gamer’s style of play – those who prefer to hang in the back and support the troops, as well as those who like to get up-close and personal. We are regularly exploring ways for abilities or weapons to have a synergy with other battleframes.
Co-Optimus: Will there be gamepad/controller support? Any plans to bring the MMO world of Firefall to any of the consoles?
James: At this point, we’re focused on one platform in order to make that experience the very best it can be. For launch we’re targeting Windows-Based PCs.
That said, we have talked about what it would take to bring Firefall to different platforms. This would take a great deal of effort and is something we would need to explore more later on. There are clearly some new obstacles we’d have to overcome to get a free-to-play game on the current consoles.
Co-Optimus: It really seems like the freemium model for games is taking off. We've covered quite a few quality titles that are free with microtransactions - it's good to see the US finally adopt these types of games that have typically been so popular in the East. When did the decision come to make Firefall follow this model? Who did you have to "convince" to make that happen?
James: As you pointed out, the free to play model is already proven in the East. When we started developing Firefall, our top priority was to make a solid gaming experience. It wasn’t until this last year that we got more serious about finalizing our monetization model.
When you go free-to-play you are opting to give up a lot of upfront revenue with box sales. But, we really were confident that players would love playing Firefall and would be willing to spend money in our in-game marketplace. So, we opted to reduce the barrier to entry by eliminating box sales and going free-to-play. By going this route we saw the potential of having a much larger gaming community around Firefall which ultimately is what’s going to make the game.
Honestly, once we internalized the plan to go free-to-play, there really wasn’t much convincing of others to be done. Our partners are all very familiar with this business model and were very eager to give us support for this direction.
Thanks for your time James, and thanks to Chris from Promethium Marketing for setting things up - we look forward to Firefall when it hits next year!