Darkfall "Released"

[Amaron]

Are they going to wipe servers?  Or have the new game use new servers?

Not sure what the point of a relaunch in any game is without a fresh server to start on.

[Xuri]

[snip]... 2) they are Greek

They are "Greek". Lead design/producer is Norwegian. Art Director is Norwegian. Lead 3D/Client coder? Norwegian. Lead server coder? Yep. Norwegian. Basically Aventurine was originally a Norwegian company called Razorwax which moved to Greece for economical reasons, and presumably merged with some Greek company there or created a new one from scratch with some Greek input. That's not to say there aren't any Greek people working there, though. =P

[LC]

They seemed pretty clear when they stated that it is a new game and not an expansion.

[Sheepherder]

I don't have the words to express how retarded this sounds.

It sounds like they figured a NGE would be insufficient, so they decided to split their playerbase simultaneously as well...  Unless they shut down Darkfall 1 completely.  I imagine that would also go over well.

[Speedy Cerviche]

[snip]... 2) they are Greek

They are "Greek". Lead design/producer is Norwegian. Art Director is Norwegian. Lead 3D/Client coder? Norwegian. Lead server coder? Yep. Norwegian. Basically Aventurine was originally a Norwegian company called Razorwax which moved to Greece for economical reasons, and presumably merged with some Greek company there or created a new one from scratch with some Greek input. That's not to say there aren't any Greek people working there, though. =P

Probably like 3/4 of them are greek now, and the norwegians have most definitely adapted to the med "culture".

We really don't know if them saying "re-launch/new game" is a wipe or not, it could be just the metaphor for the 1.5 years of content development they have stacked up. this is a company that takes 2 months to release what anyone else would call a hotfix, and they call it a patch so you have to take everythign they say with a grain of salt. Between english not being their first language and their half baked marketing strategies nobody can really say for sure. They have previously said there are no plans to wipe, but really who knows. Their stupid ambiguity is not helpful, it's still just wait and see 'till August-October and see what they do.

Now a wipe wouldn't really be the end of the world, but it would piss off a lot of a smallish but dedicated playerbase, something maybe not wise. IMO all they really need to do is keep coming up with stuff that closes the power gap between plateaud vets and newbies, something they have been steadily doing for the past 2.5 years. It should only take a month or two for a newb to be decently competitive with a high powered vet, currently it's still 4-6.

[Der Helm]

It should only take a month or two for a newb to be decently competitive with a high powered vet, currently it's still 4-6.

 
 

[Speedy Cerviche]

straight up 1v1...

Even right now a newb can be fairly useful in larger scale clan battles in about a week or two (playing casually) if he knows which spells to go for.

[Nija]

Why don't they apply whatever updates they are talking about to the existing server and open another server if people want a fresh start? Best of both worlds.

[K9]

Even right now a newb can be fairly useful in larger scale clan battles in about a week or two (playing casually) if he knows which spells to go for.

How many months of hardcore play and following the forums will it take for them to know which ones those spells are though?

[Malakili]

Even right now a newb can be fairly useful in larger scale clan battles in about a week or two (playing casually) if he knows which spells to go for.

How many months of hardcore play and following the forums will it take for them to know which ones those spells are though?

Well, assuming you have the potential to be in clan battles, I'm pretty sure you'll have people helping you figure out your character progression.

[sinij]

The game oozes potential

I can't agree more. Game has so much potential and all of it is botched.

Examples:

Game has mounted combat, but you can bunnyhop (think rocket jump) away easily to escape anyone on a war rhino making it trivial.
Game has naval combat, but you are better off boarding ships than shooting cannons at it.
Game has open skill system, but you can't specialize and have to master nearly all of it.
Game has full loot system, but top-notch gear is so expensive that only veterans could afford it. As a result gear gap is ever-present.

If, and it is HUGE IF, devs can balance the game it has potential to be Holy Grail of open PvP.

[sinij]

It should only take a month or two for a newb to be decently competitive with a high powered vet, currently it's still 4-6.

Yep 4 month @ 4+ hours a day, this is assuming you are doing everything right and don't get too unlucky with getting rolled, otherwise it will take much, much longer. Your average player is looking at 6-8 months. This is not to "equal", but to "has a chance to run away". Meanwhile you are walking lootbag for any veteran out there, to the point that escape is not physically possible and no amount of skill could bridge gear/power gap. Most new players when simply approached by a vet will open trade and give you all their gold and regs. I have seen A LOT of this behavior when I was leveling my crafting and was giving away lootbags to any newbies that I could find.

Even right now a newb can be fairly useful in larger scale clan battles in about a week or two (playing casually) if he knows which spells to go for.

This is 100% GRADE-A BULLSHIT and you know it too. You could be useful in about a month of heavy play if you know game in and out and (this is big AND) have unlimited budget to macro 24/7 AND have a safe place to macro overnight AND have couple people helping you macro by being targets/healing your target. It also takes millions of gold to get "useful", while new player generally can expect to make 500-1000 gold per hour before "getting PKed" tax kicks in. If you have all of this available to you, YOU ARE NOT NEW PLAYER. Even with this you are still "free kill" in small scale fights, and that is clear majority of all fights in this game. This also means that you can't defend yourself while farming.

How many months of hardcore play and following the forums will it take for them to know which ones those spells are though?

Too many, nearly 9/10 of new players quit during first month and in two month it is nearly 100%. One statistic posted by a guild that briefly existed to help new players is that out of 50 they recruited only 2 stayed (rumor has it, both purchased accounts), that is with guild actively helping and mentoring all these players. I can imagine that "in the wild" numbers are much worse. This is well-known in the community, so nobody invests in new players - they simply don't stick around.


For people who don't play DF - veteran would have access to CC, mobility and good self-healing on top of having more health and dealing 50-100% more damage than your typical mid character. It isn't damage, health or self-healing that makes group of new vs one vet such one sided fight, it is CC and mobility. Someone who has begone, explosion and wof (3 magic schools to grind to high level, then spells to macro to 75+, around 4 month of work just to get it) simply can chose to leave combat at any moment and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Someone who has blind, eye rot and pungent mist can (again different schools of magic) can easily shut down 2-3 people at a time for long enough to kill someone. Someone who maxed fire magic and has 2-3 raysl becomes immune to melee (no way to close in) due to knock-up and ray cycle macros.

As it stands right now fully developed character can kill UNLIMITED number of newer players at the same time, regardless of how good they are. There are videos kicking around vets taking on 5+ competent mid-level people at the same time and effortlessly winning fights.

TL;DR Bunnyhopping, bubble, knock-ups and feathered/keened R60 are the main reasons new player retention is not happening.

[Der Helm]

So we are finally going to find out what happens when there are no sheeps left for the wolves ?

[DLRiley]

We kinda already know no, its either cannibalism until player community collapses and whats left is a handful of rp oriented folks who give two shits about "owning the server", but more than happy to gib newbs because there is nothing better to do. Or stalemate into spiraling decline, where factions trade minor loses and players leave gradually due to boredom.

[sinij]

I am retarded

Still stuck in UO days?

[sinij]

We kinda already know no, its either cannibalism until player community collapses and whats left is a handful of rp oriented folks who give two shits about "owning the server", but more than happy to gib newbs because there is nothing better to do. Or stalemate into spiraling decline, where factions trade minor loses and players leave gradually due to boredom.

How is that functionally different from traditional mmorpg? Yes, its a bit trickier to hit "stalemate into spiraling decline" compared to your typical DIKU, but all games get eventually old unless you keep updating them and PvP titles are not unique in this regard. If anything, once you hit "stalemate into spiraling decline" in a PvP title it takes longer to decline than your typical DIKU. DF have not released any new content for 1.5 YEARS and is still around, do you think DIKU would survive for as long?

Plus you are trying to make "cannibalism" sound as a bad thing, when entire player base signed up just for that kind of ride. Your moral righteousness showing.

[DLRiley]

Thats more due to the players who invested years into the game and have political power, influence, and a kickass character that can smite noobs in the legions, than due to the inherent advantage of being a pvp title. The vets are too invested to actually leave (at least before they reach rock bottom) and the devs are still promising the miracle patch that will fill the streets with the blood of noobs once again. Diku's tend to not be made entirely of that type of players and need to release content to remind the playerbase why they should play their game as oppose to the half a trillion other diku's out on the market.

[sinij]

The vets are too invested to actually leave (at least before they reach rock bottom) and the devs are still promising the miracle patch that will fill the streets with the blood of noobs once again

Again, you could be describing any mmorpg out there if not for your misguided "blood of noobs" snide remark. Get over yourself, kind of people who play DF would rather compete with each other than hunt accidental misinformed victim that somehow managed to overlook warning signs on the door.

I actually somewhat agree with pixb from this thread when he states that griefing ("blood of noobs") is in large part result of boredom. Yes, you know boredom that comes with 1.5 years of NO FUCKING CONTENT and NO BUG/BALANCE FIXES. Even with this in mind, its not getting PKed but UN-FUCKING-ENDING GRIND that makes new people quit. Ask anyone to grind the same couple spawns for 6 months before they can get into end game and you will have retention issues regardless of type of PvP rules your game uses.

Again, you are putting me into ugly position where I have to defend AV devs engaged in rampaging stupidity and mis-management of the game. Whatever DF faults are, being open PvP is not one of them.

Here is analogy to help you understand flaw of your views - you are preaching that hitting others is abusive to a room full of people clad in leather holding whips and paddles.

[DLRiley]

I think you just jumped down my throat cause i mentioned ganking. The main point of my post and not the 6 words you singled out is that anyone who spent enough time being a "vet" in darkfall isn't quitting anytime soon by virtue of losing importance, admitting they wasted time, having to start from scratch in another mmo (how many mmo's like darkfall again?) where they may not last long enough to be a significant enough faction to stalemate this time around. The devs don't need new content or frequent patches, as long as there is unreleased vaporware funking up the message boards, the players aren't likely to pick up and leave for greener pastures.

[Der Helm]

Still stuck in UO days?

Interesting. Just yesterday or the day before, I noticed that you made some insightfull, coherent and interesting posts in some other threads and I said to myself: "Wow, sinij is not the frothing maniac everybody thinks him to be..."

You go, girl.

[WindupAtheist]

So we are finally going to find out what happens when there are no sheeps left for the wolves ?

Much as I hate to say anything that might possibly be construed as sticking up for Sinij, I have to point out that there aren't really any "sheep" in Darkfall and never were. Not in the classical "It's 1998 and I'm quitting UO because I can't leave town" sense.

[Der Helm]

Ok, I see now that it was a loaded questing.
Let me rephrase.

So we are finally going to find out what happens when there are only wolves and no sheep ?

[Malakili]

Ok, I see now that it was a loaded questing.
Let me rephrase.

So we are finally going to find out what happens when there are only wolves and no sheep ?

This isn't the actual problem with Darkfall, the actual problem is that it has some mechanics with punch you in the nuts so hard that most people quit, even if they are a "wolf."

Remember, CoD sells 15 million copies a year or whatever, and they have "only wolves" too.   My point being that even casual players will play PvP games even when they die a lot.  But most MMORPGs with a PvP focus seem to think the only way to differentiate themselves is to add horrible grinds everywhere.  No one would play CoD either if they had to play 4 hours a day for 4 months so that they could "actually" play.

[UnSub]

I've always wondered why PvP MMOs don't look at sports as an example of how develop a PvP system. It's probably because a lot of MMO devs find it hard to see a sports oval from the safety of their basement, but still...

PvP needs to nurture their new players. It needs to provide them with training grounds, safe havens and bunch of other training wheels so that you can learn to play and start having fun. Instead, most PvP games leap straight to the baby eating, which is fun for a while, but then the top line of PvPers realise that they've eaten all the babies, no new ones are coming and now they are hungry / bored.

If PvP MMO devs developed the game of basketball, for instance, the first time I went out on the court I would have been met by Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and Magic Johnson* who were looking to play street rules.

COD allows for that learning time. You can pick your level (somewhat). You can learn.

*showing the last time I watched the NBA here.

[Malakili]

I've always wondered why PvP MMOs don't look at sports as an example of how develop a PvP system. It's probably because a lot of MMO devs find it hard to see a sports oval from the safety of their basement, but still...

PvP needs to nurture their new players. It needs to provide them with training grounds, safe havens and bunch of other training wheels so that you can learn to play and start having fun. Instead, most PvP games leap straight to the baby eating, which is fun for a while, but then the top line of PvPers realise that they've eaten all the babies, no new ones are coming and now they are hungry / bored.

If PvP MMO devs developed the game of basketball, for instance, the first time I went out on the court I would have been met by Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and Magic Johnson* who were looking to play street rules.

COD allows for that learning time. You can pick your level (somewhat). You can learn.

*showing the last time I watched the NBA here.

No need to even take it outside gaming really.  We've both mentioned CoD.  Learn from that.  Hell, learn from TF2 or Battlefield if you want instead.  The point is I always imagine the design process going something like this these days:  Alright we want to make a PvP MMO, but those PvE MMOs are really popular, so lets add in some of that to attract a larger audience.   But instead of staying in the MMO space, they need to look at popular non-MMO PvP games and try to emulate the things that make THEM popular.

Even so, I think PvPMMO games are going to remain largely inaccessible to a larger audience simply because people don't like losing stuff, and pretty much any definition of an MMO is going to have SOME kind of loss (if its not gear is a clan town, if its not a clan town its a faction town).    I think most people would rather play 8 v 8 one off maps.   But nonetheless, there is still plenty to be learned.

[Speedy Cerviche]

This is 100% GRADE-A BULLSHIT and you know it too. You could be useful in about a month of heavy play if you know game in and out and (this is big AND) have unlimited budget to macro 24/7 AND have a safe place to macro overnight AND have couple people helping you macro by being targets/healing your target. It also takes millions of gold to get "useful", while new player generally can expect to make 500-1000 gold per hour before "getting PKed" tax kicks in. If you have all of this available to you, YOU ARE NOT NEW PLAYER. Even with this you are still "free kill" in small scale fights, and that is clear majority of all fights in this game. This also means that you can't defend yourself while farming.

Not quite... A newbie can get "sacrifice" in a week, it's best heal-other in game, and can play a support healer in high level group PvP. Crosshealing is hugely important in DF PvP and the ability to do it well seperates effective PvP forces from chaff, so that newbie would be welcome in most non-elitist clans. This has actually been made easier by the offline meditation system because now a newbie can use that to level up greater magic, witchcraft and spellchanting schools quickly (and pretty cheaply at low levels), when they were previously a tedious macroing grind since they didn't have any lower level DD spells you could kill mobs with.

I agree though that newbies are "free kills" on smaller scale for way too long. Like I said they need to crunch the time for a newb to be competitive 1v1 from 4-6 (or 8) months down to 1-2... LOTS of newbies I talk to usually LOVE DF for the 1st month (even when getting PKd, cuz these guys are wolves, not sheep, so they can take hard knocks), it's in that 2nd or 3rd month they quit, when they understand the game better and realize how much more grinding they need to do to to compete with vets who are steamrolling them 1v1.

I can't agree more. Game has so much potential and all of it is botched.

Examples:

Game has mounted combat, but you can bunnyhop (think rocket jump) away easily to escape anyone on a war rhino making it trivial.
Game has naval combat, but you are better off boarding ships than shooting cannons at it.
Game has open skill system, but you can't specialize and have to master nearly all of it.
Game has full loot system, but top-notch gear is so expensive that only veterans could afford it. As a result gear gap is ever-present.

If, and it is HUGE IF, devs can balance the game it has potential to be Holy Grail of open PvP.

Most of these problems are being addressed, the question is will they do it properly? Aventurine is small, slow, and of questionable competence. Bunnyhopping is an issue they are supposedly addressing, I don't really mind it, it adds a kind of a tribes type "skiing" trick to the game, and a fast mount will catch a bunnyhopper over long distance, but I can see why people would also dislike it. They need to add mounted archery as a counter to it IMO.

Naval combat is a good example of how bad the Devs are, to adress the swimmer issue (where swimmers chase ships to board them), instead of adding grape shot rounds to cannons which could shred people up or make boarding ladders retractable (probably difficult to add at this point), they add a PBAOE attack to the ship which is just akward and only moderately effective (decent damage but short range), people can still board, just might be coming up at 2/3 hp.

They are adressing the skills issue, adding specializations in this jesus xpac. Long needed.

Top notch gear is actually decently well balanced in DF. You are risking a lot when you take it out. You spend 3-5 times as much and it really is only giving you maybe a 15-30% advantage. So the risk:reward element really functions well here. This is why top end gear is usually referred to as "siege gear", because most people only pull it out for sieges, battles where there are more stakes. That 15-30% advantaged leveraged across 40 people in a force, in a battle that could end up determined by attrition is potentially a bigger difference maker than it would be in a smaller scale fight (5v5 or less) where individual ability and quick coordination is a bigger factor...

Overall it's all going to come down to this jesus xpac/"relaunch". Aventurine talks a lot, and hasn't patched much in the past year and a half. Darkfall is actually a pretty solid, but flawed game. As someone who was perma red in the UO dread days (not a leetd00d, but shadowclan ork), and played Shadowbane, and Planetside, I gotta Darkfall is by far the best PvP MMO to date. It has very solid mechanics, balance, physics, graphics/art and relatively bug free, no fatal ones at least.

The game does have some fairly serious flaws though, a lack of content (sand in the sandbox), and some balance issues such as the power gap between newbies and maxed vets, and the amount of time it takes to close it in a very competitive PvP game where newbies share the same area as these vets is not acceptable, and make the game far more difficult and frustrating than it should or needs to be for newer players. AV has recognized these issues, but haven't addressed them until now because they have saved up all their ongoing development into this one massive "re-launch" dump (it's basically a release patch, and we have been playing a paid beta until now). If it does not delilver, the game will die quickly, if AV pulls it off and AV address the flaws that have chased a lot of people away, the game has potential to really prosper. That's why I dont even really post about DF until this thread got bumped, not much to say unless AV pulls off their jesus relaunch.

[sinij]

physics

Sorry, no.

You can't take fatal fall damage. You have knock-ups (error in physical engine, where impact is assumed at the center of the body). You have bunny hopping. You have lead arrows (arc they travel at is about 10x shorter than earth gravity). You don't have inertia for ships or players.

[Speedy Cerviche]

physics

Sorry, no.

You can't take fatal fall damage. You have knock-ups (error in physical engine, where impact is assumed at the center of the body). You have bunny hopping. You have lead arrows (arc they travel at is about 10x shorter than earth gravity). You don't have inertia for ships or players.

(you do have inertia for ships, there is no wind or tide modelling (yet) tho if that's what you mean)

Those are all balance issues/bugs that can be tweaked with spreadsheet entries... DF still uses more physics than any other MMORPG, by far. Kind of nitpicky on your part.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8YjJNKbt9o&fmt=22

The fact that you can do crazy stuff like that is pretty neat and an appealing aspect of the game IMO even if it creates some quirky balance issues.

[sinij]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8YjJNKbt9o&fmt=22

This is exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned "horribly broken physics" and "ability to retreat from combat at will creates situation where 1 veteran can take on unlimited number of new players". It takes about 6 month of specific grinding to get it and because how widespread it is, you can't PvP until you can do most of the things shown in this video.

For un-initiated, first 20 seconds of that video shows bunny hopping... about the most broken mechanics in the game. Clear bug in physics engine, but it went unfixed since release.

As you can imagine when you can abuse in-game physics this much city walls might as well not exist, because they are trivial to bypass.

[Speedy Cerviche]

For un-initiated, first 20 seconds of that video shows bunny hopping... about the most broken mechanics in the game. Clear bug in physics engine, but it went unfixed since release.

As you can imagine when you can abuse in-game physics this much city walls might as well not exist, because they are trivial to bypass.

City walls being ineffective is a bit of a seperate balance issue. Some cities just have whacked out designs which doesn't help (little hills beside walls that you can just run up to get into city, no magic required), they are redesigning all the cities for the "re-launch" which I assume will fix some of this stuff. If they raised wall heights, and added effective lips to the top it would make it a lot more difficult to get in. You could still ninja in but it would slow down larger groups.

Shadowbane had this problem also, where flying classes made walls useless, in the end I think they put magic force bubbles around cities to keep people out, something Darkfall might eventually need.

It's a trade off where if you want your game to have neat stuff like flying or high powered anti-gravity spells, players will figure out ways to turn do new, unexpected things with them.

This kind of thing is not really one of Darkfall's more serious problems though...

[WayAbvPar]

If they wipe everything and everyone starts from a level playing field again, I will definitely give it another try. I still won't have the time to grind things out like the poopsocking crew, but at least the first month or two would be fun. Once their power level dwarfs mine I would likely get annoyed and fuck off again. There is actually a lot to like about the game and the improvements they have made since I first started playing (and even more since I quit), so I would like to try it again.

If it is just a new box with all the same 3 year old maxed out characters raping newbs, I will pass.

[WindupAtheist]

So we are finally going to find out what happens when there are only wolves and no sheep ?

They divide up into tribes and frag each other, the population declining or not based upon how bored they are. What else would happen?

[sinij]

I am disappointed in you WUA, of all people here I expected to get more "antisocial and griefer" vitriol out of you... with graphs/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R97TsVDC1BY

[Der Helm]

So we are finally going to find out what happens when there are only wolves and no sheep ?

They divide up into tribes and frag each other, the population declining or not based upon how bored they are. What else would happen?

*shrugs*
That is what interests me, is it possible to create a pvp-centric diku-mmo that is interesting enough for the target audience once all are at the same level.

[DLRiley]

So we are finally going to find out what happens when there are only wolves and no sheep ?

They divide up into tribes and frag each other, the population declining or not based upon how bored they are. What else would happen?

*shrugs*
That is what interests me, is it possible to create a pvp-centric diku-mmo that is interesting enough for the target audience once all are at the same level.

Its not "interest" its more "I put too much into this game to go". It will take the devs changing the meta (sever resets, seige reworks, introduction of the new uber item, major buffs to endgame gear thats being horded, etc) to force anything "interesting" to happen.