f13.net

Flamebait here (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1083586002&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&).

I had more fun reading your questions than any of the answers.  A tad aggressive in the question asking department aren't we?

This dev kinda sounds like he knows a lot of the answers people here on f13 want to hear. Hell, I am more interested in Darkfall now than I was before...probably mostly due to the Ultima Online comment. God I miss old school UO (but that is another, wore out thread). I'll give his game a shot and hope to get into beta.

I have been avoiding prerelease hype like a disease, but it was a very good interview.  I hate softball questions and didn't see any here.

Has darkfall already had their beta signup apps?

Since I know how much Schild loves Star Wars...



"Help us, Darkfall.  You're our only hope!"

--- Princess PvP



I'm going to try and keep my expectations low but I get the feeling that if Darkfall doesn't make a dent that open PvP is a dinosaur in today's MMORPG market.  I wish these guys all the luck in the world.

Despite Shadowbane's short leveling curving, it required more time investment that most games.  The risk of losing months of work in a very short period of time requires the players to keep a constant vigil on their cities.  The amount of damage that could be done to a city during non-siege times could devastate a guild.

The converse of the issue, a city that either can't be damaged at all, or can only be superficially damaged during non-siege periods means that guilds run little or no risk, which could take some of the excitment out of the game.  I'm very very curious to see how Darkfall plans on balancing the issue, requiring non-superhuman amounts of time invested, yet having exciting and meaningful gameplay.



Do you have a plan on how to avoid the "template of the week (or maybe I should say weak)" syndrom that usually comes along with skill based systems?  Will you be allowed to unlearn old skills and acquire new ones?  I love the idea of a skill based (or at least non-class based system) but it seems like every implimentation I've seen yet ends up with a situtation where all players play a slight variation of the same character.

Do you see this as a bad thing and do you plan to address it?



This could easily have been avoided in Shadowbane if they had had a worthwhile resource system and required cities to exploit that system.  The problem with Shadowbane was, once you had a city you didn't really another, in fact additional cities just cost you more resources (rather than gaining you extra resources like they do in the real world) so you are actually rewarded by destroying rather than capturing your opponents city.  

If you created a system of geographically isolated resources that are extremely important in the game, then required fully built cities to acquire, protect and trade/distribute those resources, you'd see a lot more of people taking over cities and a lot less razing cities.  If a game were designed around certain resources, much like the real world is designed, then invasions would be based on capturing goods for use or trade and the city infrastructure would need to be preserved as you invaded.  The world should be created so that there are dozens of varying and important resources and that it would be near impossible to maintain control over those resources by just one guild.  Not only would siege warfare become an important aspect of daily life, but diplomacy and trade would also become central to the game if one cannot acquire all of the goods necessary for survival via conquest alone.

In addition to resources, you'd have to insure that retreating or defeated forces cannot instantly destroy their cities like they can in Shadowbane.  Cities should be as hard to destroy as they are to build, having a "nuke this building" button on each building in the city would defeat the purpose of a resource system.  I only mention this because it had become a standard practice to destroy your city and quit the game "FOREVAR!!!" the night before a siege when you knew you couldn't win in Shadowbane right at the time I decided to quit.



Well, this is what their FAQ says:



So according to that, beta signups have not started.

He is right about shadowbane it was very close to being right with the fun diverse classes and the quick leveling times. The big downfall aside from technical issues was the super long city building times. They took a month or more real time to build and rank up and if you got crushed they would be gone in a single evening. You also needed a work shop of a certain level to make seige tents so if a big guild destroyed your city there was almost no chance to recover.

If they could destroy your capitol they could blow up any outpost you tried in vain to grow high enough to get the equipment to even try to avenge yourself. Basically you only were let back into the game if the opponents chose to let you back into the game.

The side effect is I have never been in a mmrpg where people were more polite to me than shadowbane.


I think there is a niche for games like COH. They are not big obsessing plotting and planning games as some other mmrpg but  it does give you fun right from square one. I think there is room for games like this to play during burn out phases from the bigger games. I likely will keep coh on the side for when I just want to fly/hop/jump around smiting evil while keeping a game like eq2 or swg as my more main game.


Kaid

Shadowbane suffered greatly from the fact that cities were more of a burden than a boon. Once you got your character levelled up and well-equipped (along with your spare equipment banked), the city was an albatross around your neck. It made you a big, fat, juicy target, but really gave you nothing in return. You had to farm boring mobs just to maintain the city, you had to farm boring mobs to repair the city after it was attacked, and you had to constantly monitor the city to make sure you weren't under attack. Guilds and cities were more necessary to a fun game for developing characters than they were for maxxed characters.

The resource system was really needed to make Shadowbane's siege game work, and it never materialized. Shadowbane would have actually been more fun long-term if it HAD been just a medieval Quake, because the PVP fights were fun. The sieges could have been; they were certainly an amazing spectacle to look at (when you could get frame rates in double digits). But without a reason to siege, without a tangible reward for maintaining a city, it just wears on the guild's officers and players.

Yeah Shadowbane missed an important aspect of the Real World.  We don't build cities because we can, we build them for the advantages they gain us.  Shadowbane counted on cities being built and destroyed because players could do it, and they expected players to maintain the cities even if they cost more than they were worth.

Cities exist in reality because they turn a profit, maybe not in cash out of the system, but in the productivity, resources, and convience that they afford humanity.  If a city was more hassle than payback, humanity would be more spread out and less inclined to build cities.  Cities don't exist simply because they can exist, they exist because there are advantages to their existance.  Shadowbane never really groked this concept, or at least not deeply enough.

Hi there, I"m a Darkfall fan and just popping in to answer a few questions.  



Yes, the latest information we have is that the skill system is fully adjustable.  You can raise and lower skills according to what you want to raise or lower. It won't be automatic and it will take time to raise and lower, but every character won't be "locked" into skills they don't want forever.  

One of the other ways Darkfall avoids "skill templates" is that each race does have skills unique to that race.  We don't know how many or what they are yet.  On top of that, there are prestige classes.  Basically, this means that once you take a prestige class you are limited in the skills you can use, but also gain other skills.  (There are reportedly over 50 prestige classes.)  Say for example, you complete the skill requirements for Necromancy and the quest and are awarded the prestige class.  This prestige class may open up other skills that would not be open to others without it.  You now can probably do things like raise a special undead summoning skill to summon skeletons and other undead creatures as your skill improves.  But because you chose this class you cannot now raise your healing skill.  The opposite would be true, say with the Paladin class.  Prestige classes can lock out other skills.  You also are never required to choose a prestige class and if you change your mind, over time you can disavow your class and move on to something else.  Darkfall is all about Freedom and not making the mistake of "gimping" your character.  



This is pretty much how Darkfall is designed.  There are resources to control in each "province" that a clan controls.  

There's an example in this article:



http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/455/455562p1.html

It's good they have the resource/territory system. As others have mentioned that was a key thing missing from SB. In SB guilds were forced to go for each others throats (destroy cities) because there was nothing else to fight over.

I don't mind if cities not being instantly razable somehow makes the sieging more superficial, but siegeing should still be a major investment that guilds would shy away from unless they felt the odds were in their favour, and success would be to their benefit.

Lower level territory/resource combat that is meaningful but not fatal to a guild is important and should add a lot of fun combat that SB lacked (hopefully thought, there will be some checks to prevent lameness like a guild taking over 3/4 of another's land at 4am).

I don't think this will work entirely. For reasons already stated about SB. The problem with city destruction isn't that you can destroy buildings, but rather because there is no point in not destroying buildings.

If this is to prevent a grief type attack, it won't work. People will just hold the buildings untill they can burn em all. And there should be no real problem if cities have a purpose. If cities are profitable than people will take them not burn them.

Bottom line. Game Developers need to look at RL as to a clue about how city mechanics should be implimented. In real life as stated cities aren't there just beacause a bunch of people could build one there, they are there because there has always been an advantage to their creation. And in RL thorugh out history there have been relativly few advantages to burning a city to the ground (as far as bottom line profit is concerned). You don't have 2000+ year old cities still here on this planet because there was some devine intervention keeping people from destroying them.

 One of  the solution is to be able to "capture" the cities  -and make it pay obligatory  fees/contribution to captor  .  With such capture pacts previosu owners will still be able to have their buildings/vendors ,but say 25% of their income and resources traded is automatically transferred to their captor .

 Captor could also have  control over military and fortification structures  -to make rebellion more difficult.

any solution that takes away the intrest in destroying a city vs a solution of taking away the ability to destroy cities would be good IMHO. That one or others. But If that city has to pay your guild 25% (I assume you mean the guild that owns that city), and that gold is comming from a crapload of farming, than yeah it's good for the attacker but it will suck a lot for the deffence.

There should be no farming whatsoever done by PC - as its boring.  Farming should be done by NPC on nearby resources, PC job will be to direct and protect them.

When I played Shadowbane, the reason why cities were leveled was primarily because people were really pissed off and wanted to hurt the enemy as much as possible.  If you lost the bane, the city was destroyed in a few hours.  

There were also some real incentives to destroy an enemy city.  If the enemy lost the city they lost all their investment both in gold and time to build.  This was a painful loss.  Also, capturing an enemy city didn't do much for the attacker because it would take a huge amount of resources to repair and build everything back up.  Plus, it takes men to man it.  Another thing Shadowbane started to lack after the first month, players.  

So, Darkfall is putting limits on the time it takes to destroy a city.  1) There's no incentive to destroy what you acquired.  (From what I can gather your city clanstone is kind of like a capital of a small province:  http://img10.imageshack.us/my.php?loc=img10&image=darkfall2.jpg that gives you some control over local resources.)  So, you don't really want to destroy this city you just captured if you want to control those resources.  2) You also don't want to destroy a city if you want to keep expanding your territory.  3) If attackers are hell bent on destroying your city and it takes them time, you may very well have enough time to fight and take it back before too much is lost.  This last point is what Claus emphasizes.  The fighting is what is most important and destruction can seriously hurt player morale so much that players just don't want to fight or even play anymore.

I think Darkfall clearly identifies and addresses the concerns you illustrated.    


 

In Darkfall, you can hire NPC's to collect resources for you, like mining, chopping wood, or even fishing.  You can even hire NPC's to help fight/heal you in battle.

It's fun to hurt other people. It's fun to gank that no.0b with your level 50 Barbarian. It's fun to kill steal. It's fun to torch another clan's city. It's fun knowing that you are making another person curse at the top of their lungs as they mash their fist down on their keyboard.

The only way you'll be able to prevent players from finding ways to hurt other players is to make sure that hurting other players isn't fun. Making siege warfare take time or require 733+ farm skillz isn't enough. There has to be some consequence for the players' actions that actively discourages antisocial behavior or else antisocial behavior will be prominent.

It's a giant leap of faith to accept "we don't want to go into details just yet" as a definite solution to a game ruining problem. The problem with DarkFall isn't the devs, the fans, the ideals, or the promises, it's the lack of tangible information that most people associate with MMOLG development and have come to expect. When a MMOLG developer says, "Ya, we have the answer! We can't tell you yet but just wait and see!" 9 out of 10 times they are full of shit and talking about something that never did and never will exist.

The answer to the question of how does DarkFall hold its players accountable and will it work has always been, "Wait and see." Well... I'm waiting to get excited, too.

Other than that one minor flaw; DarkFall kicks ass and will conquer all pussy MMOLGs by mercilessly skull fucking their dead bodies... if the implementation is as good as the concept and the developers are able to deliver on their promises.

Still waiting.

I disagree.  I think it is much more fun to kill people who think they are badass and take all their phat lewt.  



Agreed.  Darkfall addresses this.  Siege warfare and farm skillz are only two aspects of Darkfall.  Really, there is much more.  

Darkfall has a system that I think is genius.  Ironically, it has never been done before.  Amost in so many games, but not quite.  Here's a quick rundown:

The world of Darkfall has 6 different player races.  Three of those races are loosely allied.  The Dwarves, Mirdain (good elves), and Humans are allied.  The Orks and Mahirim are loosely allied.  The Alfar (bad elves) hate everyone and everyone hate the Alfar.  

You may freely attack any race you are not allied with.  So, if you are an Alfar you can attack any other race.  If you are Human, you could attack the Mahirim, Orks and Alfar with no penalty.  

You may attack anyone of any race at any time with some special caveats:  1) If you attack someone of your own race or alliance, then you will suffer an alignment penalty.  2) If someone in your clan attacks someone of an opposing race or alignment, your clan suffers an alignment hit.  3) Taking too much of an alignment hit will mean your fellow race and allied races can freely attack you without penalty.  4) Taking too much of an alignment hit will mean you will be attacked by NPC guards which patrol racial capitals and surrounding territories.  5) Too much of an alignment hit will mean you may not be able to use NPC shops, etc.. in racial capitals.

There are no safe zones, per se.  You only really can count on your friends and some strong guards near the racial capitals to help you out.  

This is really a very brief overview Darkfall's anti-social system.  All subject to change of course.  

It really reminds me of the old school UO system mixed in with a lot of common sense.  If anyone played L2 Closed Beta, you'll recall towards the end when people weren't too worried about their alignment, thousands of players were "raiding" opposing races for the fun of it.  It truly amazes me a MMORPG hasn't done this sooner.  DAoC to a very limited extent, but it was never fully implemented there because races could never truly raid the home turf of the other races.  It is almost a "natural" thing for players to do.  




Claus did not go into details on the question regarding how they are going to deal with the 3 a.m. Ninja  and Zerg raids.  



That little bit had absolutely nothing to do with the general problem of player accountability.  I certainly don't think "zerging" or "Ninja raids" are a game ruining problem.  A thorn yes, but not game ruining.  It is one aspect of advantages used in sieging which, personally, I think is very small.  Heck, I'm a big fan of 3 a.m. Ninja raids.  I did it all the time.  On the other hand, I realize the importance for others who don't like to camp their town all night long and want this issue addressed.  Claus and the DF dev team are addressing this issue, however.  One of the reasons I suspect they don't go into it in detail is because other MMORPG's out right now (i.e. Shadowbane) can copy it before they get their game in open beta.  Another reason is that it might change before it gets to beta.  This issue is one that I'm sure will get worked over good in beta no matter what.  



There is quite a bit of information that has been slowly drained out of the Darkfall Devs.  It really requires months and months of research to gather it all together, read it, digest it, and even piece some of it together.  We have a general idea of how it will work.  I think it is a very innovative design system that looks great in theory because it deviates and yet enhances the design from an old game I used to play that was very similar.  Pre-Trammel UO.  




I agree.  I am waiting too.  The true test will be playing it.  Unfortunately, the PvPers of the MMORPG community have been burned so many times in the past that many of us are turning into callous, jaded, scab-infested, wound-licking cynicsts that feel it is very difficult to believe in a great PvP MMORPG again.  

I don't think I have faith so much in the game of Darkfall as I do in Claus and the rest of the Razorwax dev team.  Not because of what they promise, but because of their vision, their belief in their convictions, and their perseverance.  I admire the strength it has taken to get this far with their ideas and I'm willing to believe again and wait again.

Hi guys, thanks for the comments.

I deliberately tried to talk as little as possible about Darkfall in this interview, as the F13.net staff told me they wanted to do a more general MMOG industry interview as opposed to a specific Darkfall interview. I am happy to discuss Darkfall here though.

As several of you point out in this thread, structures should have a meaning and a clear value for conquerors other than something to burn down to hurt other players.

They do have a value, and it will be worthwhile conquering them in Darkfall. Other than the obvious bragging rights, cities and structures are needed in crafting, they offer protection, they generate income and they count as points in various ingame clan ranking lists generated by the game. We have several other interesting beneficial features related to controlling clanstones (the Planetside equivalent to bases, Tree of Life in SB, Lifestones in Asheron's Call, etc), but I can't really talk about them yet.

We are constantly adding new elements to the strategical and tactical importance of cities and structures, and I appreciate the comments in this thread.

That's from the darkfall FAQ under economy. Ok so if money basicly isn't a problem (NPCs will go gather everything you need). What's left to do? build things and kill people. Now so far there hasn't been much of a crafting system in any MMOG, If DF comes up with a good crafting system that makes crafters usefull, than great. But as for the other option, PVP and GVG will be where most players are.

Now if they do impliment an NPC system that takes away all tedious activity, than cities basicly don't have much cost. So there is a major issue of SB cities taken care of right there.

But you still have the problem of use. If cities are not usefull than capture will be relativly pointless. I mean unless you just want bragging rights. Otherwise it's easyer to deffend less territory.

You need cities to do something else. Gathering resources is a good option. But heck why stop there. If DF is gona have all thesethings promised why not just create a simulated economy run by NPCs and by economy I mean something like a real world economy. Than cities have a place.

but if cities have a place, why destroy them?

In pvp, if you kill someone and they drop some Uber weapon, are you gona just go drop it in a lake? or are you going to use it?

Now if taking a city is a major endevour, why would someone trash it?

And if someone wouldn't destroy a city, why impose limits on destroying buildings? Ok I can understand some limits. It isn't all that realistic, even in a game for buildings to just *poof* vanish. Maybe it should take some time to tear em down. But the way Claus made it sound was as though it was an artificial imposition, not centered in a sence of realism but rather to prevent people from burning towns down in raids. So why do you need such a system unless there is a reason to burn a city down? Or more specificly, a reason not to keep a city?

For those who want to follow a thread in progress at the official boards:

Here's a link (http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=9027&highlight=f13.net).

EDIT: Being nice is hard.

I don't differentiate between harming a player while they are online and harming them while they are offline. As we've seen in ShadowBane, losing something of value while you're offline can be extremely frustrating and leave you feeling helpless. Since zergs and ninja raids tend to leave players feeling frustrated and helpless and territory control is suppose to play a major role in DarkFall I'd have to assume that any solution Claus has will either make or break his game.

It's not Claus' fault that I'm skeptical. There have been way too many MMOLGs that have promised the moon and delivered butt crack. "Wait and see" turns into "We'll add content as we go" and then "Look for features that were suppose to make it into the original game in our first paid expansion" and finally "Our next paid expansion will fix some of the bugs that have plagued our game since its release." I'm not really looking for an explanation as to why the DarkFall developers can't devulge information. I'm looking for proof of concept. There's not much RazorWax can do to appease me other than release a fully functional game that is also fun to play. It's nothing personal.

I really don't have anything negative to say about DarkFall except that it has not proven itself. If DarkFall is more than empty promises then it will be an amazing game. That's more than I can say about a lot of other upcoming games.

I think "never been done before" is more than a little streatch.  That's just factions again.  Unlike DAoC, DF has unrestrained PvP - unlike SB, there are some alignment penalties, which translate to penalties around racial capitals, for PK.  Or not so unlike, if you consider every SB alliance to be a racial faction, pissing off that alliance gets you / your guild KOS to all their cities, which seems to be the same thing here, except that DF is automatic while SB is player driven.  Of course, neither DAoC or SB were "genius" with these ideas either (brave, probably) - UO had a faction system and open PvP.  It didn't invent the ideas either, since UO was derrived from MUDs, which have had hundreds of implementations of PvP (faction, open, partial, etc) going back 20 years.



People seem to have brief memories.  Yes, these can most definately be serious problems.



When has any dev team ever come out and said "We are not addressing this issue"?  It's a content-free statement.  It should be taken for granted that for any problem, those in charge are going to say they are addressing it.  In no way does that help reduce from the entire field of possibility which solution they are going to pick (to include status quo).  



Any dev would more than likely be flattering himself if he thought keeping a design secret was to prevent copies.  Lack of design suggestions has never, ever, been a limitation.  There are piles upon piles of ideas out there, many of which are broken down, categorized, and analyzed by various fans and amateur devs.  I can attest to this first hand as a MUD dev - there was always a mountain of really good ideas.  Most of them never got put in, and i knew at the time they wouldn't.  The shortage isn't ideas, it's manpower (for MMOGs, that means money).  

Pick any problem, large or small, in any MMOG.  All a dev has to do is make a post asking for feedback on what to do, and he will be near-instantly inundated with hundreds (literally) of suggestions, including point-counterpoint rebuttals.  Some of them will actually be quite good.  Some, though, will simply cost too much to be worthwhile (or so the devs perceive).  Sometimes the problem itself is not viewed to be problematic enough to warrant dev-time.  Very, very few ideas are truly revolutionary, in the sense that you'll want to keep them quiet for fear of someone getting the jump on you.  It's the type of thing you might get once in your life if you're lucky.  Maybe DF has such an idea, but I'd bet against.  It's also noteworthy that such ideas are rarely along the lines of "lets add factions!" and usually more like "lets invent the MMOG genre", or "lets add easy-to-use network play to our RTS!".

It's a safer bet that it's #2 - the idea isn't finalized, probably because the alotment of personnel hasn't quite been worked out yet.  DF is already sitting on 4y in development, without word of when beta is (besides "soon"), so time is getting to be quite precious.  I'm sure the DF guys know exactly what they want to do.  That's the easy part, and the part that entraps so many devs.  The other likely reason is that there are contractual obligations to their pub which is keeping the lid on things (so that marketing can take advantage of timing).



History shows that this isn't what gets products out the door, however.  Unless we admit that figures of past did not have these qualities, in which case we are poor judges of character, which means we might be making mistakes with the Razorwax team.  Either way, we've been down this road before.  Many times.  It isn't that people here are "callous, jaded, scab-infested, wound-licking cynicsts" (well, some are) - it's that people like you keep showing up saying the same damn shit, and expect people to jump up with glee.  Nothing new is being brought to the table.  It isn't about belief - MMOGs aren't my religion.  I, and most people here, expect to see a solid design, real backing, deadlines, and so forth, because we know steaming piles of marketing turds when we see it.  Behind that Dogbert Enterprise, there might well be a fantastic game, but don't expect anyone here to have faith in MMOG medicine men.

That depends on a lot of factors.  Do I already have one of these uber weapons?  If I do, does having more than one make me more effective? What risks am I running by keeping the uber weapon vs. throwing it away?  Do I already have something better than the uber weapon?

You see, cities are only useful to keep around if they can afford you something that you don't already have.  Cities had an intrinsic value in Shadowbane, but they had a diminishing rate of return so great that your second city was actually a burden instead of a boon.  The problem was, you have to have one city, but additional cities can only duplicate the effort of the first city.  

To use your uber weapon example, if everyone has to have this uber weapon to be effective in PvP, then everyone will have the uber weapon already.  If you can only use one weapon at a time, then the only available option for you is to destroy the weapon so you can be assured it will never fall back into the hands of your enemy.  Cities are like that in Shadowbane, they have value, you can't play without them, but you only need one, and in fact each additional city hurts you more than it helps you, so the only solution is to destroy rather than capture the cities of your foes.

That's why I pointed out that there needs to be geographically isolated resources.  If my city is a great place for Iron, but has no available Stone, then I must either conquer a land with Stone or setup a trade alliance to acquire stone.  If everyone needs all or most of the available resources to be effective, but if each guild can only acquire some of the resources on their own, it will lead to conflict and trade and it will give value to additional land and cities.  

There also needs to be a diminishing rate of return for your cities.  The first city can harvest 100% of the Iron available, the next can harvest only 50% Stone, the Next 25% of whatever resource, and so on until you are only getting 1% or so of the available resource.  That way each additional city still has value, but one nation will have difficulty conquering the entire world (or they would be better off allowing others to run part of the world)..

Not to be a scrabrous, jaded, cynical fucker or anything, but Darkfall hasn't addressed anything. They are in design. Until they have a working, released product that people are paying to play, they haven't addressed anything other than concepts.

Belief in developers who have not produced anything in the past, or anything like what they are proposing is FOLLY. It is a path that leads to cynicism, resentment and despair. It is the path of the fanbois. Tread not this path.

Hell, if I was banking my beliefs on MMOG's based purely on pre-beta hype, FAQ's and some mystical belief in the dev's capabilities, I'd have thought Shadowbane was the second coming, City of Heroes the most unimaginative doomed to fail shite, and Lineage 2 the way of shining light.

Mmm... I think cities need a couple things.  One, a geographically isolated resource means that you can restrain (or direct) where cities are placed.  Sticking one in the middle of a desert suddenly doesn't have a lot of meaning, unless it can serve as a trading post (but that requires some meaning to be given to distance-based trading).  If cities can be used to help control a region, then it may have military value - but it needs to extend beyond the walls of the city (which, historically, real cities did).  

Also, players need to have a reason to need and use a city.  If I own the city, that's great - I'm a king, and a monopoly.  Sucks for the 400 other people who live there, and there isn't a lot of reason for them to go make their own city - you're just duplicating effort, and doubling the total cost.  Also sucks that they don't get to participate in any of the l33t city-owning things I get to do.

Ok, so that needs to end.  Limit what authority city rulers can have, both politically and economically.  Don't void it - "It's good to be king", afterall, but don't make the ruler the end-all, be-all of the city.  Other people are playing the game, too.

That reminds me of another thing that was both boon and curse about Shadowbane. The city-building interface and strategy involved was quite fun and interesting. The biggest problem was that maybe 1-2% of the players would ever see any part of it, ever. The rest of the people were just grunts, and being a grunt is generally not fun, or only fun in little spurts.

Not everyone can lead, will want to lead, or have the ability to lead. But when one of the most interesting parts of the game that required a lot of dev time is isolated from most of the players, it seems a lot of effort gets put into the game for very little return.

I think, like the Real World, you can handle it all with resources.  You make sure resources are required to play the game, i.e. you have to have iron to make weapons, you have to have stone to build buildings, you have to have wood to create energy, etc. and to acquire any of the resources in a quantity large enough to be effective, you have to have a city.  

Everything else follows naturally.  A rutheless dictator who controls the Iron supply of the server will find that if he's not good to his friends, his enemies will "liberate" his country in a search for Weapons of Mass Destruction.  A capitalist who freely trades with even the most vile of n00b ganking pvpers will soon find that his kingdom is no more when his people get sick of being ganked.

If the players are less "citizens" of the city, like they are in Shadowbane, and instead play the role of the standing army of the city, the king will basically have no power without the players.  If your king treats you poorly you can show him what has happened historically when a king has upset the majority of his standing army.  Your army, as well as the other Armies around the globe, require the resources of your city.  Your king, as well as your kingdom, profit off of those resources.  Your king and your kingdom require you to defend those resources, if your king proves himself unworthy your army can claim those resources for themselves and the whole cycle begins again.

Another thing that could make cities a requirement for play is to think of them as waypoints on a long journey. I'm sure I'm about to get blasted for this concept, but what the hell.

Make it necessary for players to "rest" at cities after having traveled long distances. It would be much like SWG's cantinas, except not full of AFK dancers. Every 8 hours or so of game time, start degrading a player's abilities due to lack of food or whatever. I'm not in favor of making food a requirement that sits in inventory because it just becomes an irritating nuisance. This would be similar to WoW's rest state thing, except meant more to make cities not only a gathering point, but also a way station for travel. Make the player come to a city and pay a toll every 8 hours or so to refresh their stats. After all, often cities were built merely to make long-distance travel possible. Just a thought.

I gotta say I'm havin'  trouble avoiding fanboism with this MMO. Claus's comments here and in the online world's roundtable is exactly what I want to hear. I want to say it's music to my ears but since it's written instead of spoken what is the equivelant of music to my ears? Boobies to my eyes?
He talks the talk, I wonder if Darkfall will walk the walk.

That is an interesting idea. Perhaps scatter some inns or 'rest areas' around the map randomly as well. Sometimes cities will spring up around them, and others will remain remote outposts. Alternatively- allow players to place inns or similar structures, and to earn profits from running said structure.

Have a map setup so that cities can be natural crossroads.  For example - if you have a NPC caravan system (discussed in another thread) of some sort, have the cost of travel go up with distance at greater than linear rate.  Why?  They have to carry lots of supplies for long voyages, and tend to dislike being alone.  Often cheaper to hop from city to city, and resupply along the way, than to load up at the start (and pay for the extra mounts or whatever) to go the whole way alone.

That would be a bit frustrating to also impose on players, although normal needs should drive them toward cities (equipment, housing, social events, questing, etc).  However, cities could serve as choke points on some travel routes.  Allow speed while on roads to be high; even as much as 3x when offroad.  Cities will naturally sit on roads (regardless of which comes first), and players will normally want to then use them to cut travel time.  Going through a city would also be quicker than going around it (almost 5x quicker for a more or less round city).  If city owners are allowed to extend walls or such to try and cut back people going around them, that could funnel people as well (it's a loooong way around).

I like the caravan system, and hell, having them instanced content would be fine.  If you wanna go from city X to city Y, you have several options.  One involves just hoofing it, second involves hiring out as a guard on a caravan, which has a small chance of making the journey safely and much greater chance of having a fight or several fights on the way, third option would be to pay to take a coach, which would have a small chance of encountering any trouble.

I like the idea of requiring some sort of tithe at a city gates and even the introduction of having some sort of rest required, but I would not make it directed at sitting in an inn, but just being in the environs of a city/town/village/inn where one's character can also shop/chat up over an ale/train, ect...

I do not like WOW's limitations on where you must rest, but the rest of the system looks good to me.

Seems to me that some of the questions are old hat around here. If a dev has read the sites or forums surrounding this community for any length of time, these subjects get addressed regularly. My take was that it was like doing a snapshot of all the issues most of us find relevant.....kind of like trying to encapsulate 6 months worth of posting/discussions into a quick breakdown of dev philosophy.

But that's a good thing....better to get actual opinions than just generic hype. Though, unfortunately with a frontpage update, it kind of restricts the dev in their answers....because their answers are inavriably tied to the product being promoted.

In contrast, a redname speaking their mind on the forums can speak in generalities. In the past, I didn't even know which game some rednames were associated with....and IMO that is also a good thing. It removes any preconceived notion of spinning or arguing for a certain type of ruleset because it happens to be the one used in their upcoming MMOG.

I liked the interview, but I'm more partial to seeing devs on the forums of their own accord, as opposed to just front page pieces. At least it wasn't a puff piece on Darkfall specifically....but I guess I got spoiled seeing guys like Raph so regularly on the old forums.

The real question might be...is Claus going to stick around the forums? Or is this strictly a promotional Q&A visit?

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

Than it wouldn't be uber :-p

ok change that to uber rare item. Or Uber Unique item.

Edit: hit post to fast

I see your point.  I guess I trivialized it too much for you.  My thinking on this matter though is that we were still in control of what happened even if we were offline.  You had the real ability to organize overnight defense by setting up "night watches" of guildmates who would start the phone bank ringing at the first sign of trouble.  Or using diplomacy skills to garner enough allies to be able to meet a response at 3a.m.  The Ninja raiding to me is an issue, but will never take away my enjoyment of the game completely.  I just don't consider it a game breaker.  Kind of like an annoying fly.  Regardless, 3a.m. destruction of a city won't be effective in Darkfall because sieging is a very long and ardous process that comes in stages.  




Again, just about the entire PvP MMOG community is skeptical.  I think we got screwed with UO and we haven't had a really decent PvP game since AC-Darktide.  The PvP community is bitter, but when game developers start talking about everything we want maybe we should support them?   I mean, if we really want it, let's back the ideas that we really want and slam the ones we don't.  I think it is the only way we can help forge our own destiny for the games we want.  I'm not going to let Shadowbane or any other game dictate my attitude of what can or cannot be done.  I know it can be done.  I mean, this stuff isn't freaking rocket science.  Well, ok maybe some of it is.  :P

Sidenote:  Darkfall has stated they will be releasing expansion-size updates for free:  http://www.darkfallonline.com/features/be_heard.html

Well, Roac, you really described the "genius" in Darkfall.  It takes the best and leaves the rest. The genius is in the fact that it is a system that I think will work really well and it is has been in front of MMORPG developers for so long, but never used like this to its full potential.  The genius I see in Darkfall's design is that I can see this WORKING so well in other games.  It pulls the best stuff together in one package.  I mean, I play Lineage II and I think, "damn, this would work great if the PvP had racial factions, alignment hits were reworked and guard power adjusted like Darkfall."  I wanted to see something like this work in DAoC even before I saw it.  I always thought, "why in the world can't we invade and raid the other racial territories?"  Yes, factions and alignments have been in other games, especially Ulitima Online, but I have yet to see it implemented and designed the way Darkfall is.  Give me one example where it is exactly the same and I'll play it in a heartbeat.  I want to play it right now, I think it is that good.


Regarding Ninja raiding:

Except when you're on the delivery end of it!  This point is moot, I don't see Ninja raids being effective with Darkfall's siege system.  While not set in stone, there's bound to be adjustments in beta, here's an article with a good breakdown:  http://www.mmorpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=715



Well, "addressing the issue" was my language, so it shouldn't be attributed to Razorwax.  As I see the current mechanics of Darkfall's siege system (see link above) the Ninja raids are already ineffective.  Claus seems to indicate there may be more counter measures DF is working on.  I don't know what those are but if it is above and beyond the siege mechanics already stated - well, it can only get better.



Very possible.  My answers on these points are pure conjecture.  



History shows us that people with great ideas create, invent, and pave the way for future progress.  Where would we be if so many inventors in the past just decided to keep their ideas to themselves?  Where would we be without the ideas of electricity, automobiles, and phones?  Well, we certainly wouldn't be playing any online games.  This is why I also really respect Shadowbane.  Sure, they fell down in a lot of areas.  But those initial developers (and I'm pretty sure that team got changed in mid-stride) had great ideas and for better or worse, it is paving the way for future generations of MMOG's.  We learn from the mistakes of Shadowbane and move on having learned not to repeat them.  This is what Darkfall does.  They learn, they don't keep repeating the same stupid stuff we don't want like all those other cookie cutter MMORPG's.  

Your faith is in tangible goods.  You'll see it when you believe it.  That's fine.  That's nice because it makes you feel safe that way.   You don't project your expectations and get let down if a game doesn't produce the desired results.  That's okay.  There's nothing wrong with that.  My faith is in the ideas.  I have no problem in believing in ideas, even if they are doomed to failure.  I feel that the striving for those ideas is what drives innovation, creativity, and ultimately, the game I want to play.  I refuse to settle for second best and play a game just because idiots think killing the same mob 5,000 times is fun.

I agree compeltely.  Building a city in your province in Darkfall allows you to control the NPC guards for that province.  (As I understand it, NPC guards can patrol not only the city, but also the land in your province.)The more provinces you have, of course, the more resources you can control and the more military strength you gather as you have the ability to direct who your NPC's attack.



Again, I agree completely.  In Shadowbane, as the leader of our guild, I was faced with a tough decision.  Have the Inner Council control all buildings and shops within the city or let some people I knew a couple of weeks start building and investing in the cities' future.  I chose the former for security purposes and the fact that we were really limited to 10 protected buildings.  It was a disaster.  I lost hundreds of citizens.  When they earned enough funds they went out and planted their own ToL and erected their own buildings.  Their primary complaint?  They just wanted to own their own buildings and shops.  From what I can recall, Darkfall's protection area is not limited to the number of biuldings.  I think it is based on area around the clanstone.  This is probably in development and will be worked on in beta.  Add this factor into a very lengthy and difficult siege process and it will be much easier for the average Joe to own and operate buildings.  Which, in my opinon, is essential for a thriving province, economy, and even soldiers to draw from.  Who wouldn't want to help protect their own investment?



Our viewpoints differ on this issue a little bit.  I can see your point, but what about the rulers who want to rule with an iron fist?  I think player freedom on this point is what will make the game really interesting.  In Darkfall, the clan/city options are varied so much that you can pretty much have any political system you want.  I think I remember reading somewhere that it may even be possible to have a democratic province where leaders are elected at specific intervals.  (Don't quote me on that - I'll do some research tonight/tomorrow.)

-Edit- This is probably a more accurate statement to rely on:


http://www.darkfallonline.com/faq/society.html

There's also mention of "player defined legal systems."  I'll keep looking...

There's been a lot of good discussion on trading and caravans in this thread.  Requiring resting is an interesting concept.  A couple of things to keep in mind.  We know that Darkfall will have caravans in the game.  There will also be ships (and ship-to-ship combat) to move goods around.  

I think there should be two necessary things required for a good trading community.  (I think a good trading community/routes is essential to good PvP encounters and an interesting world.)  

1) The trade goods need to be really heavy so that they can only be moved in decent numbers by wagons or ships.  (I've seen some racial capital descriptions that bring navigable rivers right up to the capital city and flow out to the sea.)  (I also don't want to see people running back and forth delivering trade goods on foot, turning the game into a marathon cash cow.)  2) I think moving these goods needs to be highly profitable.  I mean, enough to make it worthwhile if pirates attack your ship and sink it.  This needs to be balanced of course, if ships are hard to sink and caravans hard to rob/destroy, then you won't need the trade to be as profitable.  But if I'm losing a ship one out of every two or three trade excursions, either my ship-to-ship combat needs to improve, I need to hire more guards or players to help me, or I need to buy upgrades to make my ship/caravan go faster, etc... Anyway, it seems all but one of those options are additional money sinks.  

Having said all that, I still think the resting idea is cool.  Slows down the trade.  But, it may be that it won't need to be slowed down if the pirates/robbers are just catching up to me and pwning me all the time.  But that's definitely a worthwhile idea for balancing purposes if needed.

Are you beta testing the game, Preston?

There isn't really any info on the darkfall siege system. What you posted is it. And what you posted didn't say anything about ninja raids.

Well, if you read that article on the siege system, http://www.mmorpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=715 you will notice that buildings are invulnerable until a Gloomer is built.  A Gloomer cannot be built until a siege fort is constructed first.  That takes time and is attackable at any time during construction.  IF the attackers can manage to build a siege fort and IF they can manage to build a Gloomer, then the Gloomer will only make the clanstone and city buildings vulnerable to attacks in small sequences.  During this entire time the siege fort and Gloomer are attackable.  

3 a.m. Ninja raids became popular in Shadowbane because you could run up to a city and destroy any buildings not protected in the city.  The defenders could also time a siege to begin at 3 a.m. and if there were minimal attackers/defenders who showed up, it could be over in minutes.  

From all I've read, the city "area" is protected in Darkfall, not individual buildings limited to 10 like in Shadowbane.  So, the damage inflicted in Ninja raids for all I can tell would be Zero on those expensive buildings.  On a 3 a.m. timed siege, the description indicates sieging takes a really long process (build a fort, then a gloomer, then wait for small sequences) and the attackers are very vulnerable throughout the entire stage.  So, I'm thinking I could probably wake up at 10 a.m., find the attackers working on their siege fort or gloomer and mount a successful defense.   The attackers are in a bad spot no matter what in Darkfall and that's intended.   Destroying a city, in my opinion, should not be a light undertaking.  The heavy investment of resources, time and energy by players should be something highly valued, not something destroyable in a few hours.



No, I wish I was.  ;)  DF is still in internal testing.  

Keep in mind that I am NOT in beta.  I just read a lot of the dev chats and Darkfall interviews.  This stuff could and probably will change, especially in beta, but I think it gives us a good idea of what the Darkfall devs are currently testing.  If anyone thinks I'm mistaken on a Darkfall fact, let me know and I'll do my best to dig up a dev quote or interview.

No. Just no.

Developers can talk a good game all they want. What matters is the fucking result. I'm afraid I've been lathered up a few too many times by devs who promise the moon but in the end can't even give me a stable goddamn login server.

If you want my support, make the game fucking work. It matters what you do, not what you say as a developer. Go sell promises somewhere else, IMO... we're full up here. When I see tangible non-fuckup work from a developer, I'll evangelize the game, such as I've done with City of Heroes. Until then, it's all hype.

Just had to chime in on this-



Fuck the hell out of that. When work calls me in the middle of the goddamned night, I get paid for it. The day my leisure activities require this kind of vigilance is the day I cease to participate in said activity. I play these games for fun and relaxation, not to be on call in case some fucking unemployed catass is trying to fuck me over when I AM OFFLINE.

Any game system that requires this is either broken or caters completely to the hardcore player. Neither situation makes me too eager to whip out my credit card and subscribe.

LOL City of Heroes?  Do they even have PvP?  I'll be really surprised if you're still playing CoH in 4 months.  If you are, have fun with that PvE bullshit.  

Anyway, I'm not going to hijack this thread arguing with you about Ideas vs. Results.

I am a hardcore gamer, you are not.  Case closed.  Don't worry, you won't have to use clan phone banks in Darkfall to succeed.  (But, if you want, DF does support instant messaging and mobile phone SMS messaging.)  http://www.darkfallonline.com/features/interact.html

Why oh why does anyone think that I give a flying fuck if I'm going to be playing CoH in 4 months? I think that's the point... I don't know and frankly, don't fucking care if I'll be playing it in 4 months or 4 minutes. I AM HAVING FUN NOW. NO OTHER MMOG GIVES ME THAT OPTION.

I don't want to be married to a fucking MMOG, I want to play it when I want to play it and have fun when I do. Being awakened at 4 am by a phone call with the words "They are sieging our castle!" is going to get only one response from me.

CLICK.

Followed by my return to sleep. Followed by my cancellation the next morning.

I don't want a lifestyle anymore, I want a game. If Darkfall can provide that AND give me decent PVP, ok, I'll look into it. If it requires me to be so vigilant that setting up call lists is necessary, it won't even get a second look.

I think I could have fun playing CoH too.  I'd probably have fun for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month or two.  PvE games are momentary fun for me though.  At the end of it all, I won't be saying to myself, "holy shit, that was an amazing 200 hours I just spent, it felt like I had intense nail-biting adrenaline rushes the entire time."  Why?  At the end of the day PvE doesn't mean squat to me.  It may be interesting and fun sometimes, but it just never beats the excitement of fighting against other human beings.  So, if a game mixes PvE AND PvP and does it right, well, I don't think I'd ever leave.  There would be no reason to.

Your fanboism, while impressive, is making my eyes bleed. Let Claus speak.

Let me know when I can play that game.

I have not given up on PVE or PVP as playstyles in mmog games.  I have completely given up on mixing the two in one game.  They just don't mix.  People will either like one or the other, or like both and have preferences on a given day which they want.  There will always be times when somone might want to do one but feel pressured for whatever reason to do the other.

I think shadowbane adn darkfall would both be better games with 100% pvp.

[edit]
I would love to be proven wrong, but don't see that happening anytime soon.  Maybe if CoV has instanced pvp matchmaking missions.

Another empty statement.  The only thing we "know" about DF sieges is that you have to build a tent, to build a gloomer, to make a clanstone vulnerable, to capture the city.  Ok, how long does this process take, assuming there are no city defenders?  It must be fairly short - no more than a few hours.  Why?  Because the tent is vulnerable during the whole period, and if the tent is burned down you have to start over.  If it's longer than a few hours, you're talking about a siege that will take forever.  You'll bore the participants to sleep, and it will be so heavily tilted toward the city defenders that it'll be difficult to ever mount a successful siege.  Maybe that's the point, but then why bother with a siege system?

If it is on the order of a few hours or less, then 3am raids are an immediate possibility.  Setup the tent at 3am, and let it run until 6am.  The attackers can organize and have a group of 20ish who have the next day off, and the defenders won't have but a couple around, unless they want to start ringing up their guild mates.



More fluff.  Nothing is free - you pay for it one way or another, whether it's in the new box or the monthly.  The only difference is which method the customers prefer.



I know, it's ok.  All fanbois think that, in the beginning.



Yeah, see, that's just it - talk.  Talk, talk, talk.  The proof of the pudding is in the eating.  Meaning, once Razorwax can actually deliver a game, then we'll see what sort of genius they have or don't.  Right now, all they have are a few screenshots and a lot of marketing hype.  They want hype, of course, for the same reason that politicians do - they don't want to go on record with detailed systems that people who know better can rip to shreads, because that's just bad PR.  So they say a lot of vague bullcrap that sounds good, and people like you eat it up and beg for more.  Works great for them, because all these tools-in-training will spam wherever they like to go about how godly they are.

And what everyone here is saying, is bullshit.  We take it for granted that the devs think their product is the hottest thing on the market.  No one in their right mind is going to look to sell something with the slogan "we aim to be average".  Unless they sit down and detail what they intend for the product to do, steps involved, duration, etc - you don't know anything.  Even if they do, you only know that's what they intend to do right now - stuff changes, and features get shelved, but at least a design is something.  If they really want to convince people that the game is so fantastic, open up beta.

Pure speculation.  Times can always be adjusted, but Darkfall's siege design is "supposed" to take a long, long time.  It isn't going to be easy and it isn't going to be fast.  It's not going to be something clans do everyday.  Darkfall emphasizes combat over sieges. And fun most of all.  Because it isn't "fun" to lose your city in a couple of hours, you won't.  



You are sounding more and more like my grandmother.  She also has a real negative attitude about everything and is always claiming nothing is ever "free."  She also has dementia and Alzheimer's.  Anyway, I give stuff away for free all the time, so there are people out there totally scoring.



I'm proud of my fanboism.  When it comes to Darkfall, it is a badge of honor.  :)



Razorwax folks have actually been more specific about game design stuff and communicate more than any other developer company I've ever come across.  And I've been around the block a few times.  Started playing video games around 1982.  I guess you just have to get into the dev chats and get to know them to really get a feel for what they are doing.

I'm not here to hype up Darkfall.  I came here to respond to Darkfall design questions that the developers have already answered, but may be hard for people to find.  I'm also here to discuss design ideas or even MMORPG designs in general.  This thread shouldn't be about The Orgasmic Fanboi.  I guess I do get carried away once in a while in my excitement.  No other game concept did this for me though, Shadowbane a little bit, but not to this extent.  

Your comments seem to be mostly a lobby for "show me the game" or "show me the beta."  If you don't want to participate in discussing game ideas, that's fine, don't.  If you want to play Darkfall beta or the game itself, screaming for it isn't going to bring it along faster, just play it when it is comes out.  

I am happy to discuss game design concepts on Darkfall or any other game.  I am happy to participate in a mature discussion of ideas and game concepts just for the sake of discussing.  If the discussion has a positive impact on Darkfall or any other game, then that's great too!  



Thanks for the compliment.... I think.  :)

I really didn't intend to post this much in this thread.  Just wanted to come over and help point a few things out and then disappear into the night.  Unfortunately, I have these rabid F13 pitbulls jumping all over me.  But that's ok, I had a fun time.  

I apologize for semi-hijacking the thread.  I always like to hear from Claus too.  On the other hand, I'd prefer it if he spent his time working on the game!

  yes  you right we know almost nothing about DF sieges ,yet you are quick to make the system look like SB rip off:

 

 Thats all wrong assumptions - based on your SB experience . here is a quick draft of siege system which would prevent 3 am raids and phone calls ,yet  meaningfull and time consuming  , but without requiring players have more than 2 hours  game sessions:


 Siege consists of a few fixed stages - such as building gloomer ,defending gloomer , breaching wall defence , breaching gates , brreaching inner courtyard , capturing clanstone .

 Each stage has a predetermined time  - yes we sacrifice surprise element ,but allow people actually have some real life. -after all Bane scheduling proved to be working perfectly in SB  .

 Each such siege stage will be a fast paced battle with clear objective  and time limit - breaking gate  , capturing flag ,etc. etc.  Accoridng to result of battle of  siege will advance to next stage - for example  :

 stage1 : Gloomer building
  atackers objective : defend gloomer and NPC building it
  defenders objective : destroy gloomer

 stage 2: Bulwarks withstand
 
 atackers objective : Defend bulwarks and siege engines which are built
 defenders objective : Destroy bulwarks and siege engines which are built

 stage 3: Walls onslaught

 atackers objective : with aid of siege engines /ladders/rams build in stage 2 break the gate , capture  standpoints on the walls ,etc

 defenders objective :  Do not allow gate breach or occupation of walls be the enemies


stage 4: Courtyard slaughter

   atackers objective : Get control of checkpoints and fortifications strtuctures inside the city

 defenders objective :  Prevent atackers from reaching the objective

stage 5:  Clanstone  capture

  atackers objective : Capture the clanstone  ( by bashing it to 0 hp maybe)

defenders objective : Prevent atackers from reaching the objective

 

 Each stage is separate and without completing objective atackers can't advance to next stage.  Defenders winning in stage 3 for example push atackers back to stage 3 ,  then to stage 2 and if they win stage 1 siege is broken.
 
 You can limit amount of individual battles ( so the siege wont last forever) , tweak bonuses for attacker/defenders in each stage ,stage time limits . Adjust scheduling ,   even make it instanced if you want (though I despise instancing in MMORPG) . Each stage fight would be heated battle with clear objective and fast paced action without 3 hour prepartion and 6 hours Daoc/SB zerg fests .

You could write almost an identical outline to the sieges in Shadowbane, that's how they work in theory, yet in practice it fucking never works out like that.

All anyone is trying to say around here is, yes the theory that you guys (note:  not the developers, but a couple of people who have read about the game on fansites) are presenting sounds reasonable on paper; however, we'd like to see it actually work before we get excited.

We've all been through the design and launch of nearly a dozen mmogs, each one presented us an outline of the game on paper that sounded fucking ideal, each time it turned out to work like shit in the real world.  Why should we believe this one is going to be different?

You think it will take 7 hours to build a siege fort/gloomer?

Bottom line, if a siege system is set up so the deffenders can't deffend in off hours than sieging will happen in off hours.

If the system is set up so deffenders have a chance in off hours, attackers will have no choice but to attack in the off hours because they will have abslolutly no chance in peak hours.

The time delay doesn't matter unless it's 24hours or more. When it's that long a siege will span both off hours and peak hours so it won't matter much when you start it. But than who wants to have to stay up for 24 hours?

Dark_Madmax just gave us his theory on how a siege could work without 3 a.m. Ninja raids.  He wasn't referring specifically to exactly what Darkfall does.  (If that's what you (Cevik) meant in your post, can't tell.)

I have been giving you information on what we know about Darkfall (and provided a link), I can do nothing more except propose new theories or offer suggestions.  And, yes, we'd all like to see how it works to get excited.  I'm already really excited just based on the fact that the Darkfall developers know what the hell us gamers are talking about.  The fact that DF devs are on the same page is refreshing and exciting to me.



For some people the glass is always half empty or half full.  Why should this game *not* be any different?  Look, it seems to me that a lot of posters here at F13 are just saying, "Fuck this"  or "Fuck that" or "I want to see the Fucking game."  Well, we're not going to see the "Fucking" game until it is released or in beta.  

In the meantime, why don't we talk about game design and theory and ways to beat the 3 a.m. Ninja raiding?  My vote is to be productive with our writing and thoughts instead of simply saying, "Fuck that" all the time.

I would like it to take 6 or 7 hours just to build the siege fort.  (If not more.)  Then I think it should take another 6 or 7 hours to build a gloomer.  So basically, if you wanted a 3 a.m. Ninja Strike, you'd have to start at 3 p.m., a time when you'll more than likely find some people in the city.  If you manage to build your fort and gloomer and it finishes at 3 a.m., the building protections go down for a short duration and in stages.  So, even if I log-in a day after the siege starts, the battle will still be going on.  Also, spreading out the time should result in some constant and furious battles instead sitting and waiting around forever.  

Sieging should be very difficult and very special events.  Not something done everyday.  I think that if the time is stretched out, it is going to take a lot of time commitment, energy, and co-ordination by the attacking Clan(s).  And from my Shadowbane experience, the more difficult it is for the attacker will translate into more stable cities and a lot less heartache from loss on everyone's part.

SB never "sounded fucking ideal" even on paper.  I foresaw farming/seige problem even before  game got into beta -nobody ever listened.  

 Actual design and fanboys hype is two different things. -Good design takes care of all major problmes exactly at desgin stage - describing every little  detail necessary for design to function.

 One part I agree though -  DF devs so far didnt do nothign to prove their design decisions are right and sound -they so far didnt even published details of their system .Thats usually means its not even developed yet , let alone play tested. Though  devs never really ever publsihed their design details so far -  afraid t realise that they are building castle on a sand?

Maybe a lot of us here at f13 are just remembering how we had to rally the House Daenyr troops at 3 AM to save your cities in Shadowbane and we don't want to do it again (WayAbvPar, whom you insulted above, as well as Haemish and I were all there to fight for your city many times in Shadowbane and I personally don't remember you guys being all that "hardcore" at the time).

We're not saying fuck because we're trying to be hip and trendy, we're saying fuck because we've played every mmog since we quit our MUDs to play UO, and every single one has told us they would be the next coming of Christ.  There are some vague ideas written on paper here that may sound good if they had some real data behind them, but all they are are just some suggestions on how problems are going to be fixed with no hard facts that proves to us the problems are going to be fixed.

Every single game we get you "glass half full, you're a bunch of cynics" fanbois around here, and every game we see you guys whining on the message board about how the game sucks two months after release.  We aren't being cynical, we aren't being trendy, we aren't saying fuck because it's cool, we're just saying that there is no fucking data that backs up the claims you guys are making.

How about "NO stupid waiting for 6-7 hours"? And instead scheduled staged siege as in my post above? - Good intense good hearted 2 hours sessions on siege at times most convenient for majority of  player on both participating sides.  

 Time delay is from 24 to 64 hours in SB. -works perfectly ( as in preventing unconvenient siege time for defenders ,not that SB siege design overall works any good) .

Heh. How quickly we forget. While it's true, HD were there for us in SB, at any time, day or night.. The reverse was true also. We were there any time HD called.

During the last major stages of KoE in SB with a city of it's own, on the two 'major' offensives made against Gaeryn Hope, KoE was prepared if nessacery to sacrifice our own city in the defence of yours. We were willing to do what was best for the NA as a whole, whatever the cost.

On the first time, we were able to repel attacks from both HD's capt. and ours. But KoE still took some considerable damage while we instead aided you guys, and the 2nd time, it was lost.

It's true, we didn't have the same sort of numbers that you guys did. But we sure as hell pulled our weight. Your comment was an unnessacerially low blow, imo.



Meh, this bit however.. I do get. I have to admit, that in a way, I'm just as excited and just as convinced that DF is going to be 'The One' as Preston is.. But on the other side of that same coin.. If it isn't? I don't think it's really going to bother me that much.

Sure, it'll be a disapointment. And while I've invested time and some hope into DF after having sort of cautiously followed it for a while.. It's just not the same as before.

Yer right, there's nothing solid. No 'data' that can be taken as absolute proof. The only thing we really have at present, is a feel for the goals and personalities.. sort of.. of the devs.. Yanno, like whether they bend to carebears, what their priorities etc are. Not at all claiming to know anything of them on a personal level, but at least where the game is concerned.. They certainly seem to have the right stuff.

But good intentions alone don't make the game. It /could/ still come out a horrible flop. I don't believe that it will, but the possibility is still there.

If the idea of the game is interesting to you though.. If the design goals are something you'd like to see in a game. I'd suggest keeping a watch on it, even if ya invest nothing. If you got time, and feel like taking part on the forums.. Fine, that's cool. But passing it up entirely when it has the potential to be somethin great due to mistakes of past devs (no matter how frequent, heh) seems to be a bit of a mistake.

*shrug* Just my opinion anywho. I'd love to hear more from the devs, see more shots, see a video, play the beta.. But I'm content to take things as the come. The driving 'need' to play is where the most disapointment comes from when it finally rolls around and it blows.

Anyhow, sorta ramblin. Mostly signed up in responce to the first comment regarding KoE <--> HD in SB, but there ya have it. DF is worth keeping in mind anywho, even if don't want to put any time towards it now, just keep it in mind for when it's a little further on when open beta rolls around.

Of course it's speculation, which is why I varied the potential.  If you're talking on a scale of 6h+, you're going to have a system that bores the hell out of players, and that's not speculation.  Other games have had similar features (wait, wait, wait), and it bored THEIR players, and nothing presented so far suggests that anything about DF sieges will be different, IF they take that long.  



Companies give things away only as calculations that it will net profit - it's a promotive item.  Bottom line is the company has to pull in more than they spend, to stay afloat.  Meaning, they aren't going to magically whip up new content requiring thousands of manhours of work for nothing.  Those people have to be paid, and the only source of income are subs.  btw, sorry for your grandmother, and you.  It's heriditary, ya'know.



Partly on SB experience, but I'm familiar with more designs than just that.  Your suggested system fixes nothing however.  Regardless of the set of objectives, it has been stated that the siege tent is vulnerable during the entire duration of the siege, requiring the attackers to defend it for the totality of the fight.  If the totality of the fight is short (0-4h), 3AM sieges have not been voided.  If the totality is longer (4+), you make the siege so long that most attackers won't be able to sustain enough personnel.  The attackers have to win, and win, and win, and win to finally Win.  The defenders only have to win once.  There's no assumtion here - this is what's been given by the DF devs.

Course, they could change that, but that means the whole premise that the DF fanbois are jizzing over is in error.  It would be to their advantage to change it, and I really doubt the fanbois will notice, because that's the nature of a fanboi; something about the game just "clicks", and triggers the "omg, possibility" in their head.  They invent the game according to their ideals, and soon as they see the real thing, reality crashes down.  That's true even if the game is fairly good - that it doesn't conform to their ideal is what's the deal killer.



DF has taken four years to get to this point, and still no word on beta.  Could be a lot of things, not all of them bad - agreements might be keeping the lid on details, just because that's how their pubs are.  Could be they don't have a solid design, which at this stage would be very troubling.  Could be they have a marketing thing on the horizon, which might turn out well.

Ouch.  Well, when I was leading Eleador for the first month I distinctly remember fighting for your HD's city just as much.  After that first month I left to study for the CA bar exam for two months.  I popped in once in a while on the boards to see how things were going.  It wasn't pretty.  Because of House Daenyr, the fight with Kill Cult was renewed.  KoE stood by House Daenyr and her allies no matter the cost to themselves or the position it put them in. Allies came first.  

In fact, during my two month study period I continued to have access to the leader AoO alliance boards which I checked every once in a while.  In one of those brief checks, Owain from TAO made a secret proposal on the Inner Council AoO boards that the AoO alliance should join with Kill Cult and wipe out House Daenyr.  I was the FIRST person to post AGAINST TAO and their secret proposal to assist Kill Cult and burn HD to the ground.  I strongly advocated that KoE would never betray her allies House Daenyr.  Owyn and Arkat of DoO soon followed suit and TAO decided to leave the AoO as a result.  (Later on, TAO offered immunity to KoE if KoE backed out of the fight.  KoE refused and stood by you guys.)

I came back to Shadowbane around the first of August and found that in my absence KoE had subbed to the Defenders of Order and had fought on for a while on behalf of HD and DoO.  I roll another character called Tarok (because Preston was hella gimped) and also play on Naithin's account with his character.  Don't know if you remember those character names, but I attacked and defended with House Daeynr a bunch of bloody times at 3 a.m.  I finally quit in late Oct, early Nov.  2003.



 
I don't see what the problem is with good ideas, even if they are just on paper.  There's never any harm in discussing possible solutions.

Roac, look at it this way, during the entire time of the siege the gloomer and fort is not invulnerable.  So, the defenders will want to be mounting continual attacks on the siege fort and gloomer.  And unless the attackers are right there to defend it the siege is over.  If the attackers are sitting around waiting most of the time it should still be exciting because they never know when a likely is attack is coming.  Ok, that last one is weak, but you get my point.



Then let's hope lots and lots of people play so we don't have to pay for expansions, k?



I think I'm going to start getting Alzheimer's now and forget you're posting.  :P



What's wrong with a super long siege?  I think you should have enough personnel to go 12-14 hours on a siege to be successful.  It should be that rare of an occasion and something that takes a multiple clan effort IMO.  Of course that raises the ugly spectre of zerging.  But like I said before, I really think the attackers need some big time disadvantages.



Anything that changes for the good of the game doesn't bother me at all.

There, now that both sides have gotten the macho "I am a hardcore gamer, you are not. Case closed" shit out of the way can we actually get back on topic?  The point wasn't HD saving KoE or KoE saving HD, the point was you are busy insulting people without stoping to realize that they just might have something insightful to say about video games.

None of us have a problem with discussing wether or not the game ideas behind the game have merit, hell I'm personally looking forward to the game, but until they actually make the shit work it's certainly not worth getting this worked up over.  That's what the people in this thread have been busy trying to tell you, and that's what you've been ignoring.

Ummmm, Way was the one who implied I was a hardcore gamer for liking the game mechanics we were discussing.  And Way was the one who implied he "wasn't" a hardcore gamer.  There was no insulting there.  A hardcore gamer is just a playstyle, nothing more, nothing less.



Then why aren't you discussing the merits?  



This is the most disappointing thing of all.  I came here to clarify some questions people had about Darkfall.  I came here to try and be as helpful as I can and discuss game design concepts whether they were in Darkfall or not.  Instead, I'm labeled as a fanboi and my opinions are dismissed mostly on that basis.  Finally, Darkfall is dismissed without even discussing the game design ideas the developers have.  

I'm going to stop it here on my end because I think the basis for this thread has been horribly twisted into something it was not intended for.  I will no longer respond to anything other than game design comments.

Yeah, the proposal is great for the defender.  It sucks ass for the attacker - I get the point.  Holy fuck, that's seriously lame.  C'mon guys, hurry up and wait - for (you hope) 6 hours or more.  Customers want entertainment, not a job.  It isn't so much that people don't want to work at success, but they don't want it to be "work".



Take an economics class.  Really.



Doesn't sound like a lot of fun.  For the attacker, it's sit around and wait.  The defender can show up at any point in time to mount an offensive.  The attackers have to maintain high alert and mobility status for a "super long" time.  Most people are going to show up, realize not much is going on, and head off to do something else.  You're facing a difficulty of attaining the victory condition out of sheer boredom.



And yeah, that's another difficulty.  If there is no game mechanic to try and break down uber empires, there is a real chance that uber empires will form.  The only characteristic preventing uberguilds is the individualistic streak of most gamers.  The force typically pushing guilds to coalesce is economy of scale.  If you can get a Mafia like group to come together, you have multiple advantages; being able to bring more people onto the field (and while it may not increase the percent who remain despite boredom, it increases the total number who do), and being able to intimidate your opponent through sheer force.  If a group feels a conflict is a total lost cause, some on the side of the loosers simply won't show up - even if there is no game penalty for being on the field.  People don't like to lose.  



Ok, so we're back to where you're sitting on nothing but hype.  If their current design is genius, it doesn't need improvement.  If there is real cause to think improvement is needed, it isn't genius.  You may want to take a logic class as well.

Because most of us here don't see any rational merit to the few ideas put on the table, and absolutely no merit to fluff.



You're labeled a fanboi because you haven't discussed a lot about game design.  Read Dark_MadMax's post - he has a suggestion of a design.  It's not complete, and isn't (far as we know) what DF is using.  It has problems, but man, at least there's something to sink your teeth into if you wanted.  You've mentioned a lot of what you want - but what you want isn't part of the DF game design concepts.  We can talk about those of course, but in no way does what you or I think about game design translate to DF genius.  Here (http://irunrap.com/~zuzu/) is something closer to smart game design.  Maybe not good design - I'd take issue with a few of that author's points (not least the requirement to read thirty links to know what he's talking about), but you have something to talk about.

The only design you have brought to the table, as a messenger for DF:
You must build a siege tent to initiate a city siege.  The tent builds a gloomer.  The gloomer makes, in increments of indeterminite length, the city vulnerable.  The tent (the key for offense) is vulnerable for the entire duration of the siege.  The siege is intended to take "a long time".  Cost for the siege (either for offense or defense) is unknown.  Total set of tools available to either side is unknown.  This is the design you call genius, and practically salivate over.

It doesn't solve the zerg problem.  Possibly doesn't solve the 3am siege problem.  Introduces a new problem of siege boredom for the aggressor, with the degree of the problem being inversely related to the 3am siege problem.  Doesn't address the problem of cost vs reward for the aggressor and defender.  It does nothing to address the problem of griefing on a guild level.

DF may turn out to be an outstanding game.  As a gamer, nothing would make me happier.  If people want to be fans of the game, that's peachy too.  Everyone needs a hobby, and if following DF floats your boat, more power to you.  However, if you're serious in wanting to discuss the design, you've got to offer up a design first.  I'm hoping you'll figure out the difference between a design and marketing - it's the confusion of the two in addition to being a normal fan that earns you the label of fanboi - a fanboi is someone who really believes his own bullshit.

Well it seemed to me that your opinions were not dismissed because of people's perspective of you being a fanboi but rather because of a lack of information. And I don't mean that as an insult by any means, there simply is no real information released from developers concerning certain aspects of game play. As a result people are very sceptical, and with good reason. To date there havn't exactly been a lot of good pvp freindly MMORPGs and next to nothing in the way of city vs city. This game's siege system does bear a striking resemblence to SB's siege system..

Mostly what I read at first was people saying "I'll wait to see what happens" only they used the word fuck in there somewhere..  It isn't like that's a bad responce to a game who's developers give next to no info on a rather vital aspect of gameplay.

I don't think there will be much of a hurry up and wait thing like we saw in Shadowbane just because the gloomer and siege fort are "always" vulnerable.  That fact alone should make combat fairly constant.  The delay, I think, will only take the length of time the defenders need to rally a decent fighting force.  

The timing thing is really tough to get specific on because this is an absolute must to see how it really works.  Specific timing is something I think needs to get worked out in beta.  I still think a super long siege is a good way to go though and I don't think attackers will be doing much waiting because it is in the best interest of the defenders to kill that siege fort or gloomer as soon as possible.



So what is your solution?  The thing I like about Darkfall is that any kind of huge alliance build-up has to contend with the persistent racial enemy.

For example, you build up an uber alliance among the Human race(pissing people off in the process of course) and you've pretty much consolidated the provinces in your own racial territory and then you start going after the Ork territory.  Well, shit, they are getting pissed, so instead of just raiding the human territory, out of the threat of self-preservation, they unify and start attacking this uber Human alliance.   Maybe they bring the Mahirim along and maybe the Orks can convince the Alfar to attack too because the Humans are getting too strong.  At any rate, all those Human clans that had to get stepped on are still playing the game because they've either managed to hold onto a dungeon clanstone that doesn't require operating a city, or they've been making do just operating out of the Human capital.  The stepped-on human clans see the uber alliance weakening in this huge racial war and make their move.  

That's a long drawn-out example of how I think things could work to counter-balance the zerg and keep things interesting.  In Shadowbane once a guild got their city taken away they were crushed with no where to go.  They couldn't even operate out of an NPC city and got taxed to death in some foreign guild they were forced to sub to.  



Argh, I said genius, not perfect.  I don't care what game designs are in place real live humans are tricky sonofabitches and will always find some loophole to exploit.  There isn't a game designer (or player) alive who can predict all the different strategies and tactics players will use in a game until they are actually playing.  I am a strong believer that every MMORPG needs to be continually tweaked and adjusted in game design to keep up with players.

well I'm guessing the more cities you have the more resources you will get and thus the more powerful you will be.  You dont necessarily need geographically isolated resources, I think it would be a bit unfair if your city had absolutely NO access to a valuable mineral or to wood etc but certainly some cities should have better access to certain resources than others, both to encourage conquest and trade.  So near your city you may have a great forest but a really poor copper mine.  So you attack city B next to a mountain which has great access to minerals.

On the other hand it may be the case that even though you managed to conquer city B, you know that in the long run, you cant defend both it and your own city, so in that case you destroy it so your enemies cant reclaim it and then leave.  But you will still need to defend it for a while until you have time to destroy it all, thus your enemies have the chance to retake it or even to strike at your main town.

First of all, I've been following DF since about 2001 I think, pretty much just after it was announced.

Preston I think the point people are making here is that:

1) a lot of important things about DF design are still in the dark and no matter how much you argue about it, we just dont know if they have answered many of the objections people are raising

and

2) many games fall down at the implementation stage not at the design stage.  This was largely the case with Shadowbane and the fact is no matter how good a design you have, if you fuck up the implementation you can end up with a really shit game.

In light of these 2 facts, no good comes out of religiously declaring how uber a game is going to be which isnt even in open beta.  The most you can say about DF is that atm it is looking like its going to be good and they have a really good but incomplete design.  You cant really make any statements at all about how good the game is going to be.

It's not in my job description to promote Darkfall.

I was a Waterthread.org reader for a long time, and now I am an F13.net reader. I enjoy the updates and the forums.

I have a question for Claus or another DF dev, if it's possible to answer this at this time. How does the Darkfall gameplay scale for the casual gamer, like myself? In other words, can I log in for just 30 minutes and have a full gameplay experience, or is anything less than 2 hours going to be useless? Will I be able to participate in seiges effectively if I can only devote an hour of time to one? Also, what is the combat model like? For instance, is it auto-attack with styles, auto-attack with no styles, etc. How are spells and skills handled? Are they on recycle timers or do they all have different speeds (or rather delays) at which they function? If they are delay based, can that delay be affected by equipment to make spells and skills faster? If so, is there a cap to how fast those can be used? What is that cap? How is crowd control being addressed in the game? If it is in the game, is there a preventative measure for spamming crowd control? For example, if I am stunned for 30 seconds, can I be stunned again immediately after the first wears off? (Note: This was a huge problem for DAoC until they implemented an immunity timer, but CC is still a huge issue in RvR to this day). Do players drop loot and money when you kill them in PvP? How is travel handled in the world? Is there a dependence on one or a few classes for long distance travel? Will it take me more than 10 minutes at any one time to find combat in the world? How are character hit points scaled? Do characters get enough hit points to allow combat to last for a good amount of time, or will two shotting be commonplace?

Just some questions that I was wondering about. Thanks!

 SB was fucked up from design stage - horrid technical implementation just overshadowed complete lack of consistent vision by WP.



 There is no such things such as "good incomplete design". -Either design is complete either its bullshit .  Design should adress all major  issues from the very beginning and define  all crucial game aspects ,fun factors , balancing mechanisms  ,even UI.  When you have WP like approach - this we will add later, this issue we consider to player to cope with , this one will take too much time to code ,etc.etc. In the end you end  with a complete wreck.

The defenders will not be consistant with their defense - history shows this.  If there is less immediate need, then there will be even less consistancy.  They will, instead, most often wait until they feel they have enough force to throw back the attackers, or at least give it a valient effort.  If they feel victory is not an even chance away, they won't sally forth.  And no, this isn't a "SB thing" - you see the same type of behavior in games like Starcraft.  The delay can be as long as several hours, as people agree to eat dinner or whatever, and return at an agreed upon time.



Sounds like the defenders are the uber-alliance, not the aggressors.  What if the primary Alfar guild, and the primary Human guild decide to ally, OOC-ly?  They organize and control the majority of their racial territory, ally up, and decide to divide the world between them (think Axis).  We'll assume for this argument that Human and Alfar are by far the most populous races, and it isn't an off-base assumtion since uberguild leaders tend to pick reasonably popular races (if you run an understaffed faction, you're not an uberfaction...).  The NPCs in each kingdom don't like the opposing side... but who gives a rip?  They get to split up the game territory.  It's happened before.  It's not guaranteed to occur, but it can occur with reasonable probability, and there's nothing in the design (that we know of) to try to prevent it.

I disagree.  Shadowbane met its design requirements for the most part (sieges were laggy, there were bugs, but really the game was pretty much what they said the design was).  This is why my first set of posts on the SB boards 3 years ago were of the flavor "if you don't handle x, you're going to have problems."  Two of my main sticking points were uberguilds and griefing errants.  At that stage in beta (beta 2, when there were only ~100 people testing), the design did not address them.  By release, both of them were problems.  Another sticking point was player-level accountability.  That turned out to be a problem, too (but less of one, since most of the playerbase had a pseudo-hardcore mentality).  Talk to Ash if you want - one of the current DF mods.  Was in a SB guild with him at the time, and had access to where I regularly posted my "I told you so-s" on our private board.

Course, the problems SB had wasn't enough to drive me away.  I enjoy the game despite the problems (of which, the above have been mostly beaten back), although I'd have enjoyed it more had the problems not existed.  But that's the difference between buying into the marketing, and analyzing the design.  I saw a lot of people "wash out" from the game because they bought the marketing line, and when they realized that what they imagined wasn't what the game really was, they were let down.  So much so they left in an angry puff.

Most people here walked away because the game fucking didn't work.  It would crash like a junkie anytime there was a siege.  My wife was in two sieges and crashed out or lost connection about 20 times between the two.

Then they had their login issues that never fucking went away for her.  She spent two whole months trying every day to get in and got in TWICE durning TWO MONTHS.  Both those times she was on for less than a few hours before crashing and not being able to log back in.  This was after OS and game reinstall and all that shit.  Gave the game to a friend, and they have not had much better luck.  Even for free (my wife initially signed up for a year) our friend would not play it because they said "It is just too buggy".

Stories surfacing on this board are not that different.  Unplayable lag and constant crashes.

My days of second chances in mmogs are so fucking over.  Get it right or go bankrupt you pig fuckers.

Honestly never had near the degree of problems with the client that some people have reported.  EXE errors happened early on, but were rare.  Siege lag was bad, but expected (from a tech pov, increasing players in a confined area increases lag exponentially).  The only serious problem I have had was when all my powers were reset due to some wierd bug, early on (about 2-3 months in), but a CCR fixed me about a week later (which is too long, imo, but they were getting hammered early on).

For those who were having those problems, can't really blame them for bailing.  Not talking about them though - that group of customers weren't stupid.  It's the ones who didn't stop to think for a few about hype that I'm mocking.

Sidenote: it isn't that I'm saying advertising is evil.  I'm saying the people who buy way, way too much into ads are stupid.  Most people look at an ad and decide to check the product out (or not).  It's the few that see and ad and really think that if they drink beer product X they'll attract supermodels, and then go around and tell their friends they've found the secret to dating.  It's when people take a MMOG to be their new religion, and the marketing bylines as their new Bible, that we've got a problem.  Fanbois are just the Mormons of gaming.

Mormons are nicer, although fanbois won't try and convert you after you're dead.

And any online game that can't get its login server to work needs to be taken out back and shot.  It's like any other piece of software being shipped with a broken installer.

Darkfall hasn't been dismissed. It's just been said that nothing talked about right now is material because:

a) What little the developers have said about the siege system is not enough to really make any conclusions about whether the gameplay will suck, not suck, be fun, not fun, or solve any of the previous generation of siege MMOG's problems
b) What little design has been mentioned is not actually in a working stage right now. We can't see it or play it, and only a select few have even seen if the game's engine can handle 3 people onscreen at once, much less the hundreds needed for good sieging. CART BEFORE THE HORSE.

You are considered a fanbois because you have taken tiny crumbs of design, mixed with a liberal bit of "we are addressing those problems, but I don't want to get into specifics" marketing speak, and made a perfect game out of it in your head.

Look, I like Claus. He's the only Razorwax dev I've met, but I like him. I wish his game well, not the least of which because it's a PVP warfare MMOG. But, Claus hasn't proven anything to me other than that he's a nice guy. He hasn't proven he can craft a workable design for an MMOG, because the design he does have isn't in a working MMOG. To say Razorwax WILL make a great game is putting the cart before the horse.

EDIT: Yes, Advertising IS EVIL. I work in advertising, I should know.

The whole siege fort/gloomer thing taking six hours sounds like something that might attract the hardcore, but won't solve the problem of zergs or of 3 a.m. raids. Again, if it is more advantageous for a guild to have most of its membership take the day off to attack when the defender cannot get people online without also taking the day off, they will do so. Your design will not have solved anything.

Personally, I'm leaning more and more towards the only fair solution for sieging is to make the damn thing a scheduled event, like the SB bane scheduling, except where both sides have to agree. Either that, or the siege is an instanced affair that can only occur when both sides have an equal number.

Life is not fair, and neither is war. Good strategy in war requires that you attempt to strike your opponent when he is weakest.

However, games aren't life; they should imitate some aspects of life, while removing the aspects of life that suck. Entertainment is supposed to be fun, not a job.

Preston, I believe the forum you meant to post on is here (http://vnboards.ign.com/Darkfall_General/b22460/).  Goddamn fanbois.

I think this is the way it should be too.  I've heard mention that the closer the province is to the racial capital, the more "built up" it will be.  For instance, the mine will already be built.  Further out and you'll have to build your own mine, etc... These factors may definitely add to the "friction" especially at the outset.

There are other aspects of territory importance too.  And, I guess I talk about territory and city importance in the same breath because if you don't keep a city in the province I don't think you should be able to control the resources there.  I guess you could keep just the clanstone active, but then it would also be very vulnerable to attack.  

Other points to keep in mind is that there will be strategic advantages and disadvantages to territory control.  I can see where you could slowly slide into a position of capturing provinces between your enemy and the racial capital.  (If your enemy is the same race, otherwise would be pretty difficult, but still doable.)  Once those territories are captured, your enemy would have to travel through your territory to reach the racial capital for trade, supplies, etc...

Another reason would be for mountain regions.  There should be (and I think the devs mentioned that there are) some provinces that will have mountain passes in them.  Control those areas and you control travel and trade probably for a pretty wide swath.

Other resources include access to water for fishing and ships for trade or war.  Farmland is another resource.

Overall, I agree there should be one or more resources that are strong in one area and weak in others to promote conquest.

Well, certainly the defenders in my scenario turned into an uber alliance to counter-balance the Human alliance that gathered.  Any Inter-racial alliance that doesn't follow the game design factions would be extremely short lived.  Comparable to situations where enemies in the past rally together to defeat a common enemy and once the threat is gone revert back to enemies again.  

You mentioned the NPC's don't like each other and yes, that's a minor annoyance when considering the world division of territory.  However, there's also the issue of racial factions.  Will it be easy to control thousands of players on both sides who receive no penalties for killing each other?  In your example, the Alfar and Humans hate each other and receive no penalty for killing each other.  I think there *could* be an alliance, but how long would that really last?  

There's another comment I'd like to make here and it seems an appropriate place.  I think it would be a really good if the game were coded so that the Darkfall GM's could flip a racial faction switch.  In other words, if the Dwarves, Mirdain, and Humans allied together and got so powerful that they just started rolling over all the other races and their territory, the Darkfall GM's could create through lore and whatnot a war between say the Mirdain and Dwarves to help balance the alliances.  The GM's release some storyline bringing those two races to war, flip a switch and "presto!" you've got two races that were once allies and now their races are at war and able to kill each other with no penalty.  I think this would throw an interesting twist into things and help keep huge race wars balanced.

No penalties for killing?  So what?  You have games like UO where you have REWARDS for killing people (full loot), but that doesn't cause people to turn on their allies.  'No penalty' isn't a cause to end an alliance - it will last for as long as the leadership wants it to last.  The resource model gives a strong incentive for players to build up and cooperate, because that grants higher monopolization of resources.  I /could/ kill you - but why, if you're willing to work with me?  Less effort.

Guilds generally go kill whoever the leader says go kill.  If your Alfar GM says go kill Alfar, you kill them.  If he says don't kill Humans, you don't kill them.  When following orders leads to social rewards (resource control), people are going to tend to do it.

Well, then I guess our disagreement comes down to human nature.  (There's also full loot in Darkfall.)  I think people follow leaders when it is in their best interest.  In Shadowbane you had to follow leaders and guilds alliances for survival, but when you don't need a city to survive, as in Darkfall, it is going to be really hard to control the clans who don't own cities and are playing to just fight.  

I think the way the races are divided through distance and environment (i.e. the Alfar live underground) coupled with racial hatred, war, and the inability to interact on a massive scale (i.e. 99% of the time a human encounters an Alfar and vice versa it will be at the end of a sword) any long term alliance is going to be extremely difficult.  In fact, I cannot forsee Alfar and Humans ever even getting to that stage.  Possible, but that level of organization would be unprecedented for any game I've ever played.  (Shadowbane aside, that design never had a system to foster racial hatred and separation.)  In my opinion, it would be akin to the opposing races in DAoC allying together to split up the frontier forts amongst themselves evenly.  People naturally want to conquer the whole world themselves.  It is the only way to "win the game."

Think whatever you like, but history says you're wrong.  Again, UO: guilds would ally, and despite no penalty + rewards for PKing their allies, it was fairly rare.  Going against leadership got you tossed out of the clan, which was against their best interest.  People join guilds to be a part of a society - that usually means not going against guild rules.



Never had an issue controlling guilds in UO, without any city support whatsoever, or in fact any guild support for ANYTHING other than the guild itself.  Beyond that - if you don't need a city, why the hell spend time making one?  That's one of the problems SB ran into with accountability - if I can shop at BigCity and get everything I need without being a member, I don't have to be a member.  Since SB's accountability is restricted to burning down a city, I can dodge accountability; it sounds like DF will have, at a minimum, the same set of issues.

Wait, wait.  Darkfall has open PvP and full loot?

Man, I hope they are happy with 10k subscribers.

Didn't know about the full loot bit, but yeah, one of its selling points is that there are no safezones.  Anywhere.  As in, you log in, are 5 seconds old, you can be ganked.  Your only protection are city guards, and a racial rep system.  I don't think it'll take the DF devs long to figure out what a fuckjob that design is.  That's assuming they haven't figured it out by now and just not released the changes.

But if not, I wonder how many level 2s I can burn through in a day.

Why level 2? Can you not kill in the training zones?

Ohh come on, level 1s are no challenge at all.

Roleplayers alone will throw any anti-lore, inter-racial hate alliance out of whack.  Even non-roleplayers "want" to follow the lore.  Did you play Lineage II in beta?  If you did, do you remember what players would scream over the shout channel if a light elf came into the dark elf territory or city?  My god, it was bloody murder.  I heard this probaby 10-15 times a day.

Over and over again.  As a player myself, I wanted so badly to kill those light elves just because they were in "our" territory.  It was pure instinct.  I absolutely hated the fact light elves could shop freely and hunt in our racial territories.  It was just plain stupid.

Towards the end of closed beta there were regular calls for "raids" on the other race.  I was thinking, "how the hell are they doing that?  Everyone will go red and lose everything they've got."  So I went down to the raiding meeting place and hundreds of dark elves were gathered and then ran to the light elf territory to kill them.  They went red, they died, they lost everything.  Yes, it was towards the end and a wipe was coming, but it also illustrates a natural inclination players have of banding together based on common characteristics to kill another group with different characteristics.  It is the same thing we do in real life in war.  You find the differences to disassociate yourself from the enemy.  

Those dark elves could just as easily have formed RPK parties and gone after members of their own race which probably would've been a lot easier.  But they didn't.

Another solution could be to make sure each race has something the other races want.  Either in the form of territory, NPC slaves, or other type of resources.



When I played UO back in 1999-2000, there were no uber guild alliances and guild warfare was just a simple join a faction, capture the flag (sigil) thing which really didn't mean squat.  Controlling subordinates in such a sterile environment is a bad comparison.



Well, the reason varies with each individual, I'm sure.  Some people build a city to roleplay.  Others build a city to get rich in a virtual world and show of their worldly prowess and possessions.  Others build cities to gain fame.  Others build cities to gain military strength and conquer the world.  Others build cities because they like to create.  Hell, some people build cities just because they can.  



I didn't see this issue of accountability as big of a problem in SB as you did.  I am assuming you're referring to the RPK's who would be cityless and were fine outfitting themselves via open cities.

The RPK accountability issue in Shadowbane was pretty much a non-factor.  I enjoyed the occasional skirmishes with the RPK's and it made things reasonably interesting at least.  

The way this is addressed in Darkfall is that if you want to go that route and not have a city, just buying stuff from other cities, you can.  But if you want to do that and RPK your own race life will be tough.  Not impossible, but tough.  You won't be able to use the NPC's of the other races/cites, and you won't be able to use the NPC's of your home either.

Hopefully, there will be enough RPK's anyway to make things interesting once in a while.  ;)

Sweet fuck. You just don't get it. Go away.

Uber Guilds will be uber guilds, and I will put money on the fact that several servers will be totally choaked down, to the point of no PVP at all.

It happened to several Shadowbane servers, and it could happen here. Oh, there will be Pkers and Gankers, but I bet there will be no big "wars" on some of the servers due to uber guild alliances.

 Its not a "fuckjob" design if done right. In eve you can going haywire in any sector -but depsite that there is no newbie spawn camping .why? - becuase of rep system and automated guards.

 Safe zones are not neccessary to protect newbies.

Full loot at this point is in.  It has been commented on past that that will be tested during beta, and if it can't be balanced in such a way that it isn't a total and utter frustration every time it happens, then it may be reduced to inventory/bag loot only. We've been assured they'll try and make it so that items aren't so key to a character that it is that big a deal, and try to make it that their availibility is such that it isn't that big a deal to reequip with at least 'standard' equip, good enough to head back out there..

But I guess it's gonna fall into the hands of the first major set of beta testers. The DF community for the most part seems pretty set to having full-loot in, so hopefully wont be an issue.. But too many whiners could work their way in.. I guess we'll just have to see. It's a hard one to comment on, since the last update we got on this was a looong time ago.

Perhaps Claus could give us something new on it, if there is anything new on it yet.


But the other thing wanted to note.. Is that DF isn't based on levels at all. There is no level 1, level 2 etc. It's all on your skills, both character and player based.

They said that the balance they're going for is that 3 no0bs, fresh of the character screen, but with a good grasp of how to control their characters, will be able to take down a better equipped and more highly character-skilled character, who isn't so sure of how to do what their char is meant to do.

So basically, IF they get that right, ebayers should be an amusing sight, and good for a good loot-down.

Preston, no offense but I liked the idea of Darkfall a lot more before you started defending it with speculation. Your comments only point out how little factual information is available.

I love the idea of Darkfall but I need to see more than a lot of vague ideas posted on a website before I buy into a game. I know a great deal about the ideas behind Darkfall but I don't know anything about the actual game. Neither do you, Preston, which is why people keep calling you a "fanboi". Please do RazorWax a favor and stop speculating about their game. If they want to speak up and let us know what they are doing then they will.

Like someone said, Claus is a very likable guy who says a lot of likable things. I assume that's why he does the majority of the Darkfall interviews. It's a rare pleasure to catch him speaking out about his game (even on his own boards). It would be hard to find anyone willing to say anything bad about him.

I'm sure that everyone would love for Darkfall to materialize exactly as it has been billled and be the most successful MMOLG ever... the problem is that it'd also be the first MMOLG to ever become anything like what it was suppose to be like.

It'd be fun to know what the plans are so that we can tear them down and poke holes in them but I guess we'll have to wait and see. There are only six months left on my Gregorian calendar. Unless RazorWax uses the standard MMOLG developer calendar of SoTBeNAN then we'll all know how much of Darkfall actually turned out like its hype soon enough.

All the same I wish both Claus and the rest of RazorWax the best of luck and promise to preach the gospel if it all turns out.

Preston, you are counting on ROLEPLAYING IN A PVP GAME to keep uber alliance and racial PKing from happening? And you played Shadowbane? ARE YOU ON CRACK? Seriously, it's an honest question.

There are all of 1% of PVP players that actually want to do role-playing enough to make it work. Weren't you in the SB Beta that was the roleplaying build? Sure, there was plenty of roleplaying, until the uber guild figured out that the faction they chose wasn't viable due to racial class restrictions. And you know what? In a PVP environment, where the winners dictate what the losers do in order to compete, if the ubers find roleplaying is not competitive, it goes out the window.

Uber guilds can, do and WILL toss any sort of lore, including racial animosity out the window if it means winning. Uber guilds, people who play and are organized and play only to win, they will form cross-factional alliances, and make them last as long as they want them to.

You sound like you've never played a PVP MMOG in your life, and I know that's not true. But holy shit, drop the naivete.

Hey!  speculation was MY word.  There's a lot of stuff that is pure speculation and I thought I made that point perfectly clear.  It is in my posts, but I guess I'll have to use a red font or underline.  Here it is again if I wasn't clear earlier:  I am forthwith making it perfectly clear there's a lot of stuff we don't know about Darkfall yet and that any design I think is great also has to be tested because "every" design has flaws and needs to be worked on.  

The only thing this thread has been about so far is "bashing the Darkfall fanboi" who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Lately, I have been trying to ignore the moronic fanboi flame posts, but they just keep coming.  (I mean, come on, if you're going to flame me say something original.)  Alas, I've been trying to stick to talking about design concepts without much luck.  

People here are obviously focused on just wanting to play the game before they make any decisions about playing another MMORPG.  Hey, that's great.  Wait and play the game.  I certainly don't blame you given all the failed games in the past.  I beta tested a bunch of games like Fallen Ages which never make it to release.  I've been through the MMORPG grinder myself.  Are you now saying I can't get excited about some design concepts I think should have been implemented a long time ago?  Screw that, I can be as excited as I want to be.  

Finally, when I do talk about Darkfall and make a factual statement it is only based on what has been stated by the Darkfall devs in the past.  Anything else is my opinion and what I would like to see in the game.  I think I've been using pretty clear language as to what the devs have said about the game and what my opinion is.  If you think it has been ambiguous, point it out and I'll clarify.

Honestly, it is no small wonder Claus and the rest of the Darkfall devs don't speak more about what is in Darkfall.  If I were them I would clam up and not say a word about anything until right before release.  I think it is readily apparent that any information given out gets thrashed around, chewed up and spit out in a manner that doesn't provide an constructive feedback.  Releasing information on games is a full-time job because the gamer community is so critically rabid.  I don't think Claus wants to spend his entire day here answering questions, many of which have been answered before, and are inevitably going to get asked again 1,000 times.  

There were some questions people had originally that have been  answered by the devs.  In fact, a lot of the questions asked by Soukyan have already been answered to a large extent on the Darkfall website and in dev chats.  People here say, "I want info!" and yet, once they get info they say, "I don't believe it until I see it working in-game!"  So, why should Claus or any other Darkfall dev say anything at all?  More than likely a majority of responses will be, "I'll believe it when I see it, "  Thus, the cycle continues.

Eh.. A lot of the problems with SB and uber alliances were as much a problem of the implementation and lack of any thought process surrounding it whatsoever.

ie; If you believed the lore, the elves would be shunning about everyone else, the Irekei would've been killing everyone else in the name of their dragon god, and the humans wouldn't've been so completely gimpy.

But you come in game, create a character, and everyone is tossed together on the same starting island.. o.0

For DF, we do know that there will be penalties for having ARAC cities (Guards will attack races they especially don't like, NPCs will decline services etc), which is fine at that level..

But in terms of multi-guild alliances and the like.. Where the alliance is mostly there on paper, and away from the actual cities.. You're right.. It could be a major problem. I don't really know how it could be worked around without placing too many artificial restrictions into the game.

I do raise the question though, if losing a city wasn't such a big deal. If it didn't immediately gimp anyone that wasn't finished training.

Cos let's face it, in SB, if you didn't own, or at least have access to, a high ranked trainer when you needed it.. You were totally screwed. There was nothing you could do.

In DF, you don't need trainers to that extent. Nor NPC crafters. You can live out of a NPC city without any penalty in these respects.

The need for such 'uber-alliances' to ensure continued existance and inflow of new members is thus muchly reduced.

Granted, it doesn't in any way prevent these alliances from forming.. And yeah, they might still completely dominate.. But I think you'll find that with lesser reliance on their city, and a lesser end result for having lost it.. (Not to mention less time invested in initial creation, and farming to keep it) That people may be far more willing to wage war, consequences be damned.

Haemish, I agree that roleplaying will not be a dominant factor in a PvP MMORPG.  But I think it can be A factor.  We played on Deception in Shadowbane and not one of the roleplaying servers.  Darkfall plans to have servers that can handle 10,000 each.  So, in my opinion, it could very well be possible to encounter enough roleplayers to tip the balance in a PvP environment.  Especially if the game structure supports the lore.  WHICH SHADOWBANE DID NOT DO AT ALL!

And for Haemish and all my other rabid badger-like friends here at F13, I'm leaving on vacation for at least three days tonight.  I know at this very moment some of you are clapping and cheering, maybe even drinking some beer at the good news.  I am sorry to disrupt your wild celebrations, but I shall return!

No, you won't.

it wasnt perfect but still it would have been an excellent game if it was implemented bug free.  And if they didnt have to spend all their time trying to fix the login server/lag/crashing etc etc they may have had time to actually fix those design flaws.

I still played the game hardcore for over a year and enjoyed it even with all its flaws.



Firstly, for all we know the design is complete we just dont know the full picture.  But we can make a judgment on what we do see, which IMO is excellent, we just cant make a judgment about how good the game is going to be yet, even if we did assume perfect implementation.

2ndly, no design is going to be complete before public beta testing even happens, thats one reason you beta test, because things that you think look good on paper, turn out to suck.  In fact you cant even really test things fully until the game releases and there is always the chance to make design changes after release if things dont go as you expect them to.

Making  an open pvp game with full loot and a city building/sieging system is very challenging.  Far more challenging than your average monster bashing MMORPG and a lot of games cant even get that right.

Although this is technically true.. well it was technically true in UO too.  But there are going to be guards in the cities and around the cities.  They arent going to be like UO's guards but they certainly are going to be uber enough and numerous enough to kill any racial enemies or people with bad alignment who pk in town or even enter the guard zone.  

So yes while there are no safe areas the chances of being pk'd in town I imagine will be pretty damn close to next to nothing.

Racial pking will happen but its questionable for an uber guild whether racial pking would be wise.  I think people who pk their own race will mainly be solo pks and outlaws etc not uber guilds with towns.

As far as racial alliances go, the only thing really that is keeping different races allying together is this:

npcs in player towns will auto attack enemy races.  This means if you have an ARAC guild then you cant really have a town, unless you want your merchants and guards attacking your members.

It also means its pretty difficult to ally with enemy race guilds too.  Because if your town is under siege then they cant really provide much help, again because of the npc factor.

So ARAC guilds if they exist will be townless guilds who go around pking everyone I am guessing, but if they make towns useful enough then hopefully this wont be too attractive.

It makes sense for a guild to stick to one racial alliance and this means it also makes sense for them to be friendly to their own racial alliance as this is where their recruits and allies will be coming from.  Since there are plenty of people from other races to kill I dont really see why you would really want to go and indiscriminately pk your own race if you were a guild with a town.

So i think the possibility of uber ARAC clans controlling the whole world as happened in SB is far fetched.  

Oh and roleplaying will play absolutely zero part in preventing this, its all up to the game mechanics.

Watch out for an influx of more DF fanbois people.  This forum, and this very thread has been linked on the DF boards by Preston.

Alright. So he got the clue. But first, the way he was flamed was quite polite compared to what I got when I set foot into Wt.o. Oh, and he isn't banned....yet. On that note:

(http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/assets/Newbie2.jpg)
Some clarification. (http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame52.html)

This thread will be kept fanboi-free from this post on. I don't like moderating, I don't normally moderate, but it seems some moderation is needed.

Edit: BBCode is (continually) hard, but not as hard as avoiding repetition.

I'm lazy.  If I'm going to kill newbies, I want at least some level of statistical advantage.

Cities in UO were referred to as safe zones.  It was technically possible to pk someone in the city, but was rare.  So, if guards are so uber that it is not for all realistic purposes an option, then cities are safezones.  Don't mince terms; if I want to go kill people in an NPC city, can I?  If yes, then it's not a safezone, and newbies are vulnerable.  If not, then it is a safezone, and we again have a game that is not making itself as different from SB as some DFers are claiming.

Which, isn't a terrible thing, considering I enjoy SB.  As a customer, I want more PvP+ games.  I don't much care for a design that's a copycat to try and bill itself as original.  If devs want to copy design, fine, but pay at least token respect.  If it is original, fine, but put up some solid ideas that are different from what's out there now.  If they want to claim genius (and I realize that was fanboi's words, not Claus' - I said if) or something similar, I want to see every one of the problems listed above by several of the posted here addressed first.  

Aside all that, I'd just assume details about games get released.  Fanbois don't do anyone any favors.  They only sell a product to people who don't know better, and can embitter people who do know better about the product.

 I played it for long time too (since 3.xx beta actually). SB had its moments - I cant argue with  . Some of the most interesting battles I experienced and PvP encounters were in SB.  

 But flaws in game design and implementation  just became more apparten because of long time I spend with SB . -I did not have ended  major techinical problems on corruption  ( occasional sb.exe but nothing major) , but it still didn't keep me in game - gameplay dynamics are just horrid in SB. Combat itself was fun ,template building -the best up to date , but everything else is just poor desing - bad for pvp ,bad for pve ,and which is worse -  unfun in general. I can write long and elaborate post   about  major design flaws (as well as a few  good design decisions they managed to implement) in SB -just don't feel like it now . WP never had any real vision for their game except  - "lets let players build cities and everything else will be magically solved"!




 Well some things should be play tested and tweaked in beta. But you predict how good desing will turn out even in paper form. - We have enough examples and trends already.




 There is no challenge in making full pvp/full loot rules. -In fact its much more easier then elaborate TEFs in SWG from programmers POV .  Challenge is to make FUN pvp game. Player built strucutres are not necessary for it -  capturing them is enough , full loot is not neccesary either.

PvP game should be designed around providing quality challenging competetive environment  allowing wider variety of playstyles and activiites. Not  around "lets make full loot" ,"let player build structures" - that imho the most important thing 99% of fanboys and ,I bet, many developers do not understand . They all fixated on one feature without seeing full picture - in time of SB hype there was so much noise about how player built cities and full pvp will be panacea to all game problems. In DF rabid "pkers" pray on full loot, no safe zones , no radar .

 So far no game came up with real PvP design (well I know one ,which imho came close , but there is NDA)  . DF devs sounds like they have something like that in mind, but  it could be again all SB syndrom -"lets make full loot/full pvp and we will be all set".

 Thats why I am highly scpetical to games not adressing most important aspects in PvP mmorpg - resources ,sieges , political tools , guild managment tools , travel ,  accountability mechanisms , economy , territory control , casual  play sessions, incentives and goals for different types of players ,etc .etc. -Instead they put something like "full loot/first person perspective/no safe zones/6 races" and dance around that dodging really important questions and leaving the core design  secret all the way to release.

Well, tis true.. We don't know any specifics about a lot of those things. But Darkfall devs have at least acknowledged that they're aware of the problems/issues, and that there will be 'things' in place to aid/prevent/whatever is nessacery for 'em.

Territory control and resources we do know will be a factor. We don't know precisely how so, or what their importance weighting will be.. But we do know that in certain regions there will be limited number, preplaced clanstones that can be taken over.

Only major example we've been given of that so far, is Trinwood, a small village with a stone quarry, which also was attached with the comment that stone is rather important, as it is the major building material for most buildings.  

There are also going to be other preplaced clan stones in certain dungeon type areas which people can fight for control over. What advantages will they give, we don't know though.

Guild management tools they've also been very strong on. Implementing ingame guild msg boards, voice chat, configurable SMS alerts, tax pannels, character and rank management. I'm sure their's more, but they have stated again and again that they want to give us the tools to make guild management a breeze, and much less of a chore than it has been in past.

Same sorts of things with the other issues raised, and more. Even 3am sieges was raised recently in a devnote on the webpage from Claus, stating that they will be working with the siege system to see what they can do about encouraging them not to occur.

While hell yeah, we lack a lot of specifics, in a lot of areas.. They have at least fronted up to knowing these things are issues, and said that they're trying.

That doesn't garauntee everything will turn out just peachy, particually not immediately. But in my opinion, it's still the best shot we got at present, and the best set of devs available to us, in terms of committment to these factors and working with 'em.

The thing that sets the Razorwax team apart from so many teams in past, is both what make's 'em pretty great, and at the same time, pretty annoying.. It is that they don't tend to tell us anything that isn't already working and functional. If anything ever is presented in a less formal chat as a maybe, it is clearly marked as so. They front up to key issues, even if it might not be what everyone is wanting to hear.

So while I definitely do want a hell of a lot more information than what we have at present, it's good to know that what we do have isn't just fluff.

It really is just a matter of wait and see. Follow it, or don't. It doesn't really make any difference. If their stated release date gets followed up on, we'll know by the end of the year at the latest how it's workin out.

Eh, that's not unique to Razorwax.  For that matter, it isn't unique to the MMOG industry.  Companies tend to not disclose a lot about what they're working on before it's nearly done.  Wild speculation leads to fanboi-ism, which leads to dissapointment when the product is released amid grand ideas to a resounding "that's it?  That's what you had us waiting for?".  Think Segway, for an outside the MMOG industry example.  

Nothing against Razorwax, mind you.  I'm personally looking forward to seeing what they have, and comparing what I know about people/design to how well theirs performs - I love the game industry and game design.  Don't care much for the fanbois, because it almost always ends badly with them, and they're so eager to get you to join them in their private hell.

You are correct. SB did not support the lore.

But do you really think that having one server with about 10x more people on it will mean that roleplaying will play an even bigger part? Roleplaying is a small scale thing; throwing more numbers at it does not make it easier to do, it makes it that much harder. Frankly, the more people you have to lead into battle, the less emphasis you can place on roleplaying. Why? Because as you should know, you will constantly have to step "out of character" just to get people to move the right way. Herding cats is the best description of leading people in MMOG's that I've ever heard.

Roleplaying, IMO, requires PVP, but PVP online does not necessarily foster roleplaying. It fosters GAME playing, i.e. trying to find the min/max combos for maximum pwnage.



Actually, on Deception, not being in a city didn't really hurt all that much. There was no shortage of errant PK'ers running around who not only were not totally screwed, they did quite well. Clan Red was one who never owned a city. They just used open cities, or relied on using other guild's cities for what little they needed. Once you reached about 50th level, the benefits of leveling disappeared for all intents and purposes. If you can live without an NPC city (or a PC city) in DF, it's going to be much, much worse. Cities have to mean something for sieging to mean something.

And by mean something, I don't mean that living without a city should be a penalty, per se, though it should. I mean that living with a city should provide such incredible benefits in terms of profits, training, etc. that to do without it would be silly. In SB, you could quickly reach 50, and never really need a city again. Ever. If you don't need a city in DF, you can expect that only the select few will bother with them, or bother with sieging.

EDIT: Don't think of ARAC guilds/clans. That's not the way to picture it. Think ARAC alliances. One guild splits itself into 3 or 4 clans of each race/faction. Each clan of that ARAC alliance wants to make sure they are the be-all end-all of their faction. They use racial PKing as well as sending enemy factions against opposing clans/guilds of their own faction to keep the competing same-faction guilds weak. They fight their own enemy faction allied guilds to practice/train themselves up.

Example: Burning Legion makes an Alfar guild, a Human faction guild, and one other faction (I forget the DF faction names). At first, the BL Alfar guild attacks the BL Human guild to practice how to siege, how to PVP. Then, say CoS's Human faction guild starts to get power in the human faction world. The BL Alfar faction attacks the CoS faction guild, weakening them. Maybe the BL humans help, or maybe the other BL faction guild attacks as well.

Sure, it would take organization. But that's what uber guilds do best.

Sorry if this was mentioned before but running an ARAC city won't be all that hard in Darkfall with the proposed alignment system.

All you do is have your city divided up for the seperate factions involved. Either have them joined in a common wall with gates for each faction, or have some space between them with maybe an outer wall to enclose both. Best way to do it would depend alot on NPC agro range, how siege is done.

The mention of the gloomer siege system makes me cringe...i really wish they would refrain from borrowing that idea from SB. If they would just tweak the effectiveness of walls/gates vs the effectiveness and availability of siege machines, and give the defender the edge in those conflicts then it would work out. Other things need to work well also, like guard AI, giving range/cover to those on walls, require transport of all siege equipment/supplies, etc.

As far as 3am sieges, I'm of the opinion that a siege should take a long time to succeed. It should take a long time to build each siege machine. Building one should require alot of lumber that must be harvested at the siege camp, and only highly skilled people who focused on siegecraft should be able to build the best ones. They should be inaccurate, slow to load and fire, highly vulnerable to attack. They should require numerous NPC's or PC's to man them, like 2-3 for a small bolt thrower up to 8-10 for a trebuchet. Cities take a long time and much effort to build, why should game mechanics allow you to destroy one in 4 hours simply because you can't play any longer or you might get bored (/cry). The balance of the siege part of the game should be geared towards stability, not chaos.

I'm a fan of Darkfall but I'm still somewhat wary of how it will actually pan out.  I think that's probably the best thing SB ever did, it taught thousands of gamers to not get too excited about concepts or promises until you actually see them in action.

Thank you for renewing my faith in humanity.

Well, it really depends on what they really mean by RP.  You're right if they are talking about RP as people playing out some fantasy character with "thee"s and "thou"s and what not.  But if all they want to do is make it natural within the game for people playing Alfars to go over and invade Humans instead of fighting amungst themselves, then I think RP (in that sense) is totally viable and infact is easily fostered within a game like DF (if the implementation is not dome SB-style).

Alright, this has to come to a stop. If I read another freaking post that implies someone has played Darkfall and in fact has not, I will start swinging an axe.

You have NO CLUE if RP can be fostered in Darkfall. It's just that simple, I don't know how you got your ass to type, but this shit has to end - here and now. I know you put the 'if the implementation' part after it, but it still doesn't excuse the assumption.

Any gameplay questions about Darkfall should be directed to Claus himself. We have a gaming discussion forum where you all can go crazy discussing the new shiny and how fucking great it will be.

Uh, troll?  Where did I imply that DF WILL foster RP?  

I said it COULD foster RP.  So unless you're saying that its impossible for DF to foster RP as i defined it, then you only posted to flame me.  And if you do, in fact, think this then it is YOU who are assuming something about DF, not me.

If you had any reading comprehension what so ever, you would have understood this.

Remember...Darkfall isn't a game yet.

It's a FAQ, a collection of quotes from message boards, and some screenshots. Nothing more.

...so just replace "a game like DF" with "a game design philosophy like that of DF's."

...

See, now you're getting defensive. Realize that you did say:



Don't try to make it seem less fanboish by telling us how we should have interpreted it.

This thread has run it's course. It will remain here as a symbol of what happens when fanboi's decide to stalk their developers.

New Thread with new shiny rules: here. (http://www.f13.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=472)