Dear games developy people,
I’ve not yet played your new MMOFPSTLA, Firefall. I seldom bother with MMOs you see, for tangential reasons, but am making an effort, and trying yours specifically because it looks pleasantly colourful and explosiony, and because I feel rather bad for playing so much Planetside 2, what with Sony being Sony and all.
So why am I writing this before playing? Well. First impressions count, guys, and one of the first impressions players get will be on the character creation screen that greets them on their first login.
I’m going to give you the benefit of the doube and assume that you are somehow unaware of this, but the following picture is how women engineers are dressed in your game:
I understand you’re in beta, and art assets may not be final yet, but “half arsed” is meant to be a figure of speech. And yes, it’s set in the far future and fashions and social attitudes change, but I rather doubt that future women will be any more keen on either constant chafing of a single labium or literally freezing their arses off.
It is ridiculous. Please sort it out before release, for god’s sake.
Clearly this is setting the stage for the next evolution of microtransactions: $2.99 to purchase some dignity for your character.
Pass.
As it happens, I rather enjoyed the time I spent with it this weekend (they’re doing a series of open betas, although the game seems to be feature complete). It’s pretty and lets you dive right into the action, and the combat is much more “FPS action” than “WoW number crunching”.
Something they don’t, but should, make clear, is that everyone has jetpacks and you can get around faster using a hologrammatical hang glider. I don’t know about you, but that would have got me playing pretty fast.
One to keep an eye on, I think.