DarkFall - Guild Member Visit - write up

[Signe]

Riding the horsey looked fun.

[BigBlack]

So let me get this straight:

After 7 years of development, they showed him 1) fighting a mob, 2) riding a horsey, 3) sailing in a boat 4) getting killed and looted.

that's not exactly a lot of progress.  It does sound real though.  Lots of promises and some basic features.

Listen, I agree that the odds of this thing getting released are under 50%, but this is just silly.  You reduced a working combat system, working ship combat (where you can apparently choose to go down with the ship if you want, or if you're stuck in the hold?), working mounts and mounted archery, and working PvP combat down between the three main classes (mage, melee, archer) down to an "oh, well isn't that cute" list.

Aside from all the polish they don't have yet, it sounds like they have a bunch of core game systems in.  This is not insubstantial.  As I've noted before, PvP games tend to be much less about crafted content and much more about systems, so the state of those systems is important.

Also, 7 years' dev time is if you count from the time it was just a twinkle in some PvPer's eye, and ignore the fact that (as best I remember) they've done major reboots of development within that time, starting essentially from scratch.  The '7 years' figure obscures the fact that it hasn't been a linear progression of development during those 7 years.

Groundless optimism isn't credible, I agree, but neither is groundless pessimism.

Also, it's not like this guy just came in out of the blue, as one poster alleged.  If I read the write-up correctly, he arranged for this meeting with them in advance, and being cynical figured they'd be pussing out at the last minute but was pleasantly surprised.

[schild]

Hyu. Seven years is seven years.

You gonna give TR slack too? Go get a fucking console.

[Venkman]

Apparently the passion has not been sufficiently beaten out of the experienced.

You guys are arguing about something that may not freakin' exist!

Schild/Trippy, Plane, Athens, Phonecall, Visit. Heck, just pick up the phone, pretend you're in the area and see how far you get. I'd be happy if there was a verifiable number that was actually answered :)

Otherwise it's a waste of time.

[UnSub]

Schild can offer to review Darkfall for $1000 and provide feedback.

BigBlack - I look forward to your empassioned defense of Duke Nukem Forever.

[Drogo]

They just need to do some fixes to their negative ping code and add in the fetuspults and then this game will be ready to launch.

[ShenMolo]

One of f13's European readers needs to hop on a cheap flight to Athens and do some 'vestigatin.

[Roac]

I just want to hear more from Darkfall devs about how SB took too long to develop.

[Monika T'Sarn]

I'm pretty sure this is real - my guild leader had a similar experience visiting them 4 years ago ( when on holidays there anyway, nothing as crazy as collecting money and going just for that ). There was no beta client to play with yet, but they seemed very nice, cooperative and professional.
I'd be very surprised myself if they ever finished a game better then dark&light, but there's definitely something real being worked on.

[Falconeer]

Enough vapor. We should start talking about Shadowbane again soon. I am serious.

[Arthur_Parker]

Enough vapor. We should start talking about Shadowbane again soon. I am serious.

linky

I worked at Wolfpack for 6 years as an artist (one of only five). Did roughly half the armors and half the creatures. Any time someone who has played SB finds out I worked on it they ask me if I did the Irekei leather. Yes, I did. I was lead artist on Throne of Oblivion and yes I know the art sucked. If you knew the limitations of the engine you'd understand. But, we were the first MMO to have normal mapping. Woo

linky

1) Nobody's copied Shadowbane's gameplay because it's too much of a double-edged blade. If you're winning it's fucking amazing. If your town just got wiped out you quit the game. Nobody wants to pay money to lose a month of their life. I hear it's better now because there's less grinding. Otherwise, I totally agree, but fully understand that after WoW's success there's no reason for anyone to try to innovate in the MMO market.

2) About Shadowbane 2- HAAHHHAHAHAHAHhahhaah. Oh God, that's funny. Seriously, that will never happen in a million years, sorry. The original SB never made any money, but somehow broke even its entire run and barely funded the company, who was perpetually trying really hard just to keep their head above water. I never saw a single bonus check from that game. Once it no longer broke even it became a free game and Wolfpack became Stray Bullet. Stray Bullet has personal funding and has been trying to get other projects picked up for a long time now. I don't work for them. By this time, 90% of the original developers had either quit or been fired. I think there's only four of the original guys left including Meridian, Ashen and two guys who never had handles.

3) I've interviewed a shit-ton of people, so I can give you a little advice. Find a few companies you want to work for (not Blizzard, you're wasting your time) and harrass them. Make sure they're local- a company won't fly someone in for an interview if they have no experience. If they're not local, I recommend you move. Austin, for example, has a ton of companies. Get on the forums, try to get somebody to recognize your name. If you don't hear back from them, send more emails and always be extremely polite. If they're offering a starting position, put together a very complete portfolio to send them even if you may not have all the pre-requisites. Don't put everything in your portfolio, only your good stuff. Make sure you have at least 5 good examples of whatever you're applying for, characters, animation, environments, etc. Don't make fly-by videos (unless it's animation), just pictures of your work. Don't include robots, logos or guns- those make it loud and clear that you're a shitty artist. Also, don't pad a resume or pretend that you're experienced. If you manage to get an interview it's because they know they can hire you for cheap and give you low-end work like making interface buttons or props like tables and chairs. If you think you're going straight to making knights on horses, look for another profession- that'll probably take a few years. Also be prepared to work 12 hour days for weeks on end. And if you do manage to get an interview don't be nervous and please look like you're really excited about working there. I can't count the number of times people come in and act completely uninterested in the job. Guess what, you're not getting hired. Just for the record, starting salary in Austin ranges from $27k-$30k.

4) Oh, and about Ubisoft, we didn't have much contact. Other than the usual publisher tricks like trying to get away with not giving out raises by permanently saying that they're coming "in just a few weeks" (this happened for more than a year), they were pretty hands-off. However, when some developers visited their offices in Montreal we were all very happy to not be working for them directly. It's seriously a concentration camp of grunt labor. Imagine rows of desks in a literal warehouse lit by flourescent lights. There's punch-in clocks. Locked doors with keycards keep unrestricted employees from wandering into "management" areas, which is what you generally see when you see a "behind the scenes" video. From what I understand, overtime is unpaid and mandatory. They wouldn't let us take pictures inside the building, which is scary. But it's all worth it for whatever the next monochrome, iterative slow-paced action game, right?

linky

5) Well, for one it was my first industry job, so I felt some loyalty and ownership. Secondly, I stuck it out because I was able to advance to a lead role after a very short period of time and get that on my resume with a shipped product, which is virtually unheard of. Also, I only worked on SB for four years. After that I made 99% of the art for a Marvel Online pitch to Vivendi, which is a completely seperate story. Then the company dicked around for an entire year and failed to produce a goddamn thing. Shortly after I left they changed their name to Stray Bullet.

6) The numbers I heard was that at its peak, SB had a little over 100k unique subs. That QUICKLY dropped after the free month was up because SB had such overwhelming launch and stability issues. To put it into perspective, 100k is about the bare minimum for a "success", with games like LotRO or SWG (at their prime) hovering around 200-250k. Of course, WoW has a rediculous 15+ million worldwide, only a fraction of which is north american subs. At around 50k subs the first xpack came out and did almost nothing. The second one helped a little more but the ship was already sinking at that point. At only 3-5k subs, SB stopped producing any real income and Ubi agreed to make it a free game in the hopes of dramatically increasing numbers, which it did but, again, only for a brief period. Right now the paying customer base is maybe 1k.

Shadowbane derail engaged.

[Falconeer]

Interesting infos.

Still, I won't buy the idea that Shadowbane PvP mechanics wouldn't sell. In their first incarnation I agree. And that was even helped by the terrible implementation of.. everything.
Now, despite the horrible graphics, the game is still lethal brutal and nasty but the massive changes made it definitely manageable and engaging (you only get a sb.exe per day).
Took them 4 years of failures to actually get a system that should be copied RIGHT NOW.
Took them 4 years to convince me to play it.

In fact... wouldn't a Bat Country 2007 Nation be sweet? Server Wrath is pretty new, dupe-free and you can level to cap (75) in 3 days. It's all just PVP.

[Modern Angel]

So let me get this straight:

After 7 years of development, they showed him 1) fighting a mob, 2) riding a horsey, 3) sailing in a boat 4) getting killed and looted.

that's not exactly a lot of progress.  It does sound real though.  Lots of promises and some basic features.

Listen, I agree that the odds of this thing getting released are under 50%, but this is just silly.  You reduced a working combat system, working ship combat (where you can apparently choose to go down with the ship if you want, or if you're stuck in the hold?), working mounts and mounted archery, and working PvP combat down between the three main classes (mage, melee, archer) down to an "oh, well isn't that cute" list.

Aside from all the polish they don't have yet, it sounds like they have a bunch of core game systems in.  This is not insubstantial.  As I've noted before, PvP games tend to be much less about crafted content and much more about systems, so the state of those systems is important.

Also, 7 years' dev time is if you count from the time it was just a twinkle in some PvPer's eye, and ignore the fact that (as best I remember) they've done major reboots of development within that time, starting essentially from scratch.  The '7 years' figure obscures the fact that it hasn't been a linear progression of development during those 7 years.

Groundless optimism isn't credible, I agree, but neither is groundless pessimism.

Also, it's not like this guy just came in out of the blue, as one poster alleged.  If I read the write-up correctly, he arranged for this meeting with them in advance, and being cynical figured they'd be pussing out at the last minute but was pleasantly surprised.

k. You really have no idea how this industry works do you? That stuff that you're gushing about, that working ship combat, working mounted combat, whatever? That's an E3 alpha demo. That's it. There's no larger context. That is shit that I guarantee (GUARANTEE) is on some build that is made up of 1 gig of stuff that works. It's just this thing floating around in space with nothing around it.  If it's ready, start a 200 person beta and shut the fuck up.

And *groundless* pessimism what?



What?

and being cynical figured they'd be pussing out at the last minute but was pleasantly surprised.

Yeah, because why would anyone ever write anything that wasn't true? 

[Signe]

I'm pretty sure this is real - my guild leader had a similar experience visiting them 4 years ago ( when on holidays there anyway, nothing as crazy as collecting money and going just for that ). There was no beta client to play with yet, but they seemed very nice, cooperative and professional.
I'd be very surprised myself if they ever finished a game better then dark&light, but there's definitely something real being worked on.

I think it's real, too.  I don't think Asp from LoD just made this up.  And if it ever gets into beta, I think you're right.  It's likely to be terrible.  I just have a hard time believing it'll ever make it out the release door.  I don't question that something exists.

[HaemishM]

Then they set me up on one of the computers to actually play the game. Since the most current release wasn’t stable they set me up with a stable version from last year. Outside of the company employees and some prospective publishers I was the first one to play a Darkfall demo! It was very exciting.

FAIL.

This man is a fucking tool. If the current release isn't stable enough to show you a demo, it doesn't exist. What they fed you was a line of bullshit. A year old demo version is the only thing stable they could show you and you lapped it up like a pr0n star in a gangbang? I bet that sooper-sekrit client even has MOUNTED COMBAT!!! Woot! Bet you can't wait to play it!

Seriously, the saddest part about the whole story is that he not only wasn't paid to do all that, HE PAID FOR AN INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT SO HE COULD BE FLIMFLAMMED.

Why are MMOGers so fucking willing to manipulated?

[Slayerik]

Are you guys really talking about Darkfall?

I'm the biggest mouthbreathing Open PVP representing dipshit in this place and I couldn't be bothered to even read this crap.

Zzzzzzzz

[slog]

INCMING POST IN CLASSIC SIR BRUCE STYLE

Listen, I agree that the odds of this thing getting released are under 50%, but this is just silly.  You reduced a working combat system, working ship combat (where you can apparently choose to go down with the ship if you want, or if you're stuck in the hold?), working mounts and mounted archery, and working PvP combat down between the three main classes (mage, melee, archer) down to an "oh, well isn't that cute" list.

Shadowbane had a combat system that worked very well when it came to dueling.  Getting that crap setup is just the beginning.  It's the "persistant" combat that matter.  Where is the Siege warfare?  How do 10 defenders stack up against 30 attackers?  What happens do the defenders, when their city gets burned to the ground and they are all nekkid after being full looted 20 times in a row?  This is the shit that matters.  Usually, it addressed in year 5 or so....

Aside from all the polish they don't have yet, it sounds like they have a bunch of core game systems in.  This is not insubstantial.  As I've noted before, PvP games tend to be much less about crafted content and much more about systems, so the state of those systems is important.

Getting core systems in is simply not a big deal like it was 7 years ago.  It's been done over and over and over, so it's not like they are inventing anything new.

Also, 7 years' dev time is if you count from the time it was just a twinkle in some PvPer's eye, and ignore the fact that (as best I remember) they've done major reboots of development within that time, starting essentially from scratch.  The '7 years' figure obscures the fact that it hasn't been a linear progression of development during those 7 years.

This is not Valve and their bottomless scrapping and redoing TF2.  This is a_bunch_of_newbies_101 making big promises for their hardcore PvP game.  It's like history repeats itself over and over and over.  How many times are we going to see this until peeps realize that these startups are never going to make a decent persistant PvP game? 

Groundless optimism isn't credible, I agree, but neither is groundless pessimism.

Also, it's not like this guy just came in out of the blue, as one poster alleged.  If I read the write-up correctly, he arranged for this meeting with them in advance, and being cynical figured they'd be pussing out at the last minute but was pleasantly surprised.

Instead of pussing out, they tested out their smoke and mirrors presentation for their next round of funding from the investors. 

[Hoax]

What happened to the LoD guy who was pimping Fury awhile back?  I'm sure he has some insight into this thing.

[Modern Angel]

Different LoD right?

[BigBlack]

The guy you're thinking of, Hades, is LotD, Lords of the Dead.  Asp is LOD, Lords of Death.

(Why nobody ever proclaims themselves the "Middle managers of death" is anyone's guess.)

Asp completed a follow-up Q&A over at the LOD site which, yeah, is pretty depressing to read:

Q: When fighting the mage around how many hits did it take to kill the mage?

Four or five. Whatever that’s worth. He didn’t seem to have any armor. I don’t know what mine and his skills were either. The mounts movements were very smooth and when I speared that bitch its death animation fucking rocked.

Q: Please give as many details about anything and everything you may have noticed when riding the mount.

The horse animation was smooth. I would say similar to Vanguard’s. Unlike VG’s horse backing up and rotating the DF horse is much slower. It’s hard to manuever it when there are other players or buildings in the way.

Q: How did you know that you had hurt your opponent?

I saw blood exactly where I hit him.

Q: And about ships you said you can approach an enemy ship. Did you see how?

The ship was in the water. I swam to it and climbed on board through some fishing net hanging on the side.

Q: How does he personally feel about the fact that he played a year old demo and may have something hidden from him?

I had fun. Tasos kept saying that the new version is much much better in every way. He seemed frustrated that they couldn’t show it off.

Q: Were there any chicks working there?

I saw one girl working there and she was cute

Q: How many people might it take to effectively crew a vessel in proportion to its size?

I would say depends on the number of canons. If you are planning to shoot from both sides of the ship at the same time then you would need a person for each canon, guards to defend the ship from boarding and a captain to maneuver the ship around. Archers on deck would be useful too. Depends on what you are doing you may add an assault party to your numbers as well.

Q: Was strafe and backwards speeds the same as moving forward?

They seemed slower.

Q: Did you get any impressions regarding 1 vs 1 balance with one person being on foot vs one person being mounted? What the person on foot a sitting duck unless some sort of cover/obstacle could be found? Or was mount to easily killed from under the rider?

I think mount isn’t too hard to kill. I didn’t feel mounted player to have much advantage when not moving. I think mounts advantage is more in the hit and run type of tactic not just standing in one spot. Unmounted player can go around you a lot faster than you can turn your horse.

Hades, the guy who was big on Fury, isn't too optimistic about Darkfall for precisely the reasons described here.

[Modern Angel]

"Q: How does he personally feel about the fact that he played a year old demo and may have something hidden from him?

I had fun. Tasos kept saying that the new version is much much better in every way. He seemed frustrated that they couldn’t show it off."

Oh, sure, we have this... uhm... awesome build. Really rad. But... yeah... can't show it because... text files and... core competencies...

"Q: Were there any chicks working there?

I saw one girl working there and she was cute"

Wealth of sad.

[slog]

What happened to the LoD guy who was pimping Fury awhile back?  I'm sure he has some insight into this thing.

Edit - nm

[Signe]

I think this game is going nowhere very, very slowly.

[shiznitz]

This game has already gone where it is going - the toilet.

[Venkman]

Still, I won't buy the idea that Shadowbane PvP mechanics wouldn't sell

Eve is a good comparison. I actually consider Eve SB done right in many ways. But the size of the playerbase a) does not inspire emulation; and, b) is directly connected to the type of player attracted to such an immersive game. You want an audience that isn't actively banging on your servers 8 hours a day :)

Perfectly functioning SB would still have been niche. All of the growth of the genre (outside of Korea) has come from games more approachable than immersive, with just enough reason for the latter player to stick around.

[Soln]

Eve is prolly gonna be around a long, long time.  It has all the drama of PvP done right, for those who want it.  Someone's gonna have to dig veryyyyyy deep to unseat them for MMO PvP.  Niche but cockstabbingly successful, and stable.

[Falconeer]

EVE rules. And I am personally happy for that.
But let's give Shadowbane a second glance.............

[Signe]

NO!  Shadowbane is OVER.  Done.  Dead.  Baka sunk it and it was good to see it go!

[Falconeer]

Shadowbane turned undead when it went free, and it become a better game too. Trust me on this.
Would I lie to you, Signe? I mean, in this thread?

[Signe]

I believe you believe it because I believe you wouldn't lie to me because you are very sweet.

[BigBlack]

I believe you believe it because I believe you wouldn't lie to me because you are very sweet.

I've stared at it for about 30 seconds now and I'm still not sure what's going on in that smiley.  I agree, EVE is interesting, but there are a lot of people for whom it won't satisfy - people looking for combat on land, who don't want to have to worry about spreadsheets and complex economics, etc.  By all accounts it's a very good game, but I just haven't been compelled to give it a shot.

Shadowbane looked interesting way back in the day, until I heard it was click-to-move.  At that point, any desire to play it instantly evaporated.

[stray]

Now lets see who takes the bait. Or not.

[Rasix]

 

[Phunked]

This game will never, ever, ever launch. Regardless of whether or not it's real.

The reason for this is that I sincerely doubt that any publisher would be willing retarded enough to pony up the cash for something which will sell like 5 copies.

Hardcore full loot PvP is extremely niche. Not to mention that the types of people who'd play it might also be playing some other, less hardcore but still PvP-oriented game at that point (AoC, WAR,etc) since unless they've perfected time travel, their game is not even past alpha and thus will hit stores no sooner than 2009 even if Bill motherfucking Gates shows up and gives them unlimited funding and every programmer Microsoft has available. Not to mention that most MMOs now are trying to replicate WoW's forumla because it was/is/will be for a while highly successful, which means it made money, which is what those people are in the business of doing. Hardcore full loot PvP? Nothing says profit like the chance that one of your hardcore subs will quit after losing 6+ months of getting the right loot only to lag out and lose it all. It's a dead genre. It's widely unpopular (by any reasonable standard), which makes it widely unprofitable. And since people like money...

No wonder all they showed this guy was one zone and some core mechanics. That's all they have. No one else will give them more cash to develop it further because their core mechanic is likely to flop with the hardest core. And if they get rid of that, all they're making is a WoW/Vanguard/WAR/EQ2 clone with naval battles. Can you connect the dots yet? This game does not exist and it will never exist. And if by some act of God or miracle funding it does get made, it will be dead in a year. I'll write up the autopsy report myself. Likely cause of death? Lack of casual subs who bring in the lifeblood dollars.

EDIT: Schild, feel like calling this company? I'd love to hear what they say about this stuff. Or if they even have a phoneline. Or if they even exist.

[schild]

I've had drinks with the company before. Nice guys.

Shame about the game.