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tolakram
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Reply #385 on: December 03, 2008, 09:41:51 AM

Because being self referential is the new cool here's some stuff I wrote on that a while back.


That was good, thanks.  Some of thew early comments are most telling.  It's sad that people will still answer with how players should play ... 

Quote
Why help them, the newbie part of being a pvper is a very large learning curve.

Priceless.
Ghambit
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Reply #386 on: December 03, 2008, 10:15:06 AM

Why do most people at f13 think a game needs to cater to the masses?  Wtf ever happened to creative license?  Honestly, the MMO genre's BIGGEST problem is trying to make their games too big for too many people, and they fall just as hard.  These designs need to shrink in their scope, minimize their expenses, and maximize the fun for the subset of consumers they're attracting.  Really, that's how PC gaming got started... they werent writing code to please everyone - they were writing code to entertain themselves and the other dorks in their Lisp class.  A few got lucky and scored pub deals and distro at "Software, etc." for the mallrats.

Now, Darkfall may be making a mistake by making their game probably too big (expensive) for a small group of hardcore pvp people.  But most of that can be attributed to poor planning and a game that took entirely too long to make.  Their hearts are in the right place and I like the design for what it's designed to do for WHO it's designed for, but I'm on the bandwagon here for if they'll be able to stay in the black, which is a resounding "no."  Then again, it seems no one here really knows how much they've spent on the game.

As much as we harp on the design of this game, I think deep down everyone here secretly fawns over it.  It's an old-school thought process.  Once it's released, logically it'll start small and if it's deserving will grow from there.  Which is the way it should be.  Their biggest problem IMO is resisting the urge to "Puff Daddy" their game, i.e. water it down to popularize it.  They're trying real hard to fight it, but we'll see what happens.  Personally, I prefer they paint themselves into a corner and let the players come to them, not the other way around.

"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom."  -Samwise
tolakram
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Reply #387 on: December 03, 2008, 10:28:08 AM

Ghambit,

Do you know how much a game costs to develop and how many hardcore pvp players there are to make money off of?  Do you know what the minimum level of development or polish or whatever is required to attract that crowd?

I'm not a game developer so I can only trust that what most tell us is true; the audience is too small so support any development and the retention rate is too low continue to support any game that gets to market.

If you look at the comments from so called hardcore pvp'ers you'll see they are all over the map with suggestions.  Make the world big enough that griefing isn't an issue (big world, more money) is just one of them.

If you've been lurking here for any amount of time you'll know this is yet another rehash of why hard core pvp isn't sustainable.
Ghambit
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Reply #388 on: December 03, 2008, 10:55:05 AM

Ghambit,

Do you know how much a game costs to develop and how many hardcore pvp players there are to make money off of?  Do you know what the minimum level of development or polish or whatever is required to attract that crowd?

I'm not a game developer so I can only trust that what most tell us is true; the audience is too small so support any development and the retention rate is too low continue to support any game that gets to market.

If you look at the comments from so called hardcore pvp'ers you'll see they are all over the map with suggestions.  Make the world big enough that griefing isn't an issue (big world, more money) is just one of them.

If you've been lurking here for any amount of time you'll know this is yet another rehash of why hard core pvp isn't sustainable.

Just because a world is big doesnt necessarily means it costs a lot of money to develop.  Anyone in this forum with any kind of PC intelligence can fairly easily design a world just as large as Darkfall's.  Really, it's not that hard... and takes literally a few button clicks.  And really, good games dont always take a helluva lot of money/time to develop... they attract "pvpers" by the shear virtue of the quality of their designs.  There are webgames out there that have more players then most MMOs, devved by ONE person.

As for griefing, if there's player organization it's a moot point.  If you're a lone wolf then you run the risk of griefing or being griefed, that's your prerogative.  My contention long ago with DF was if they didnt provide the tools for the players to organize than yes, there would be issues like you discussed.  There needs to be a command and robust guild structure or too many people will become incensed as they initially log in.  And above all else, it needs to be easy to find (on/offline).

And we need to re-think our views on why/how hardcore pvp isnt sustainable.  Fact is, it's just not sustainable at the numbers games like WoW demand.  But so the fuck what!  Sustain it at the numbers necessary to make the game work, keep the servers online, and the staff paid.  You dont just nix the design because Dave Chappell probably wouldn't roll a bear shaman in it.

I guess I'm just a more objective free-form thinker.  But the fact is there isnt room in this market for a lot of cookie-cutter popular titles.  That's been proven already.  So why keep falling into that trap?

"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom."  -Samwise
K9
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Reply #389 on: December 03, 2008, 11:00:37 AM

While I agree with you that niche games have the most potential to turn an effective profit, the point with Darkfall is that it has promised the sun and the moon and everything to everyone over the last few years. Had they been a bit more modest or honest in their self-promotion they probably wouldn't draw half the scorn they are currently recieivng.

As far as a pure PvP game goes, I could see one working if designed for such from the bottom up. The notion that there are 100K "hardcore pvpers" out there I find ridiculous though, if nothing because self-titled "hardcore pvpers" cannot come to a single consensus on how they want their game to be. The flawed notion here is that there is a single set of rules that is under-represented in the current market, that would cater for all these people. However I feel that any game aiming to cater for these people will struggle and be forced to comprimise and ultimately fail. This is what happened with the PvP in AoC, by and large.

A game designed for 15-20K subsrcibers could probably do well, and you'd have two or three side by side for varying degrees of "hardcore".

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tolakram
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Reply #390 on: December 03, 2008, 11:07:19 AM

Quote
Just because a world is big doesnt necessarily means it costs a lot of money to develop.  Anyone in this forum with any kind of PC intelligence can fairly easily design a world just as large as Darkfall's.  Really, it's not that hard... and takes literally a few button clicks.

I tried to get passed this, but failed.
Ghambit
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Reply #391 on: December 03, 2008, 11:17:45 AM

While I agree with you that niche games have the most potential to turn an effective profit, the point with Darkfall is that it has promised the sun and the moon and everything to everyone over the last few years. Had they been a bit more modest or honest in their self-promotion they probably wouldn't draw half the scorn they are currently recieivng.

As far as a pure PvP game goes, I could see one working if designed for such from the bottom up. The notion that there are 100K "hardcore pvpers" out there I find ridiculous though, if nothing because self-titled "hardcore pvpers" cannot come to a single consensus on how they want their game to be. The flawed notion here is that there is a single set of rules that is under-represented in the current market, that would cater for all these people. However I feel that any game aiming to cater for these people will struggle and be forced to comprimise and ultimately fail. This is what happened with the PvP in AoC, by and large.

A game designed for 15-20K subsrcibers could probably do well, and you'd have two or three side by side for varying degrees of "hardcore".

Agreed.  Actually I believe WW2O at its core has about 15k subscribers and it's doing pretty well right now.  Hardcore pvpers are finicky folk; as for AoC, personally I was pretty let down by the "hardcore" folk in my guild.  They just have way too much ADD and require way too much instant gratification.  Hence, they're difficult to please.  In reality, they're not really hardcore at all... but a bunch of pussies.  They have no patience for long term planning and commitment.  They just want to kill things the moment they log in.  Now, if DF has room in their game for both types of folks I think they might be able to sustain a decent population.  Regardless, the ADD-hardcore are not a reliable playerbase in any game, but they DO (somewhat) stick with games they like - they might take breaks every now and then, but they'll still be around.

"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom."  -Samwise
Ghambit
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Reply #392 on: December 03, 2008, 11:20:41 AM

Quote
Just because a world is big doesnt necessarily means it costs a lot of money to develop.  Anyone in this forum with any kind of PC intelligence can fairly easily design a world just as large as Darkfall's.  Really, it's not that hard... and takes literally a few button clicks.

I tried to get passed this, but failed.

It's called fractal terrain generation.  i.e. Terragen, Mojoworld, etc.  The time consuming part is in populating those spaces with interactable assets like houses, etc.  If you leave that to the player to do then you've eliminated a lot of that though.

"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom."  -Samwise
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Reply #393 on: December 03, 2008, 11:30:57 AM

Why do I have the feeling that long threads tend to reset themselves every 2 or 3 pages as if no one wrote anything but the poster above you?

I am out. I abused of this thread anyway (my falt), so let's get back to Darkfall will succed because there's plenty of hardcore pvp players and it's easy to make a virtual world, especially a big one, and you don't have to be WoW anyway so yeah it's coming it's coming!

tolakram
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Reply #394 on: December 03, 2008, 11:31:51 AM

Quote
Just because a world is big doesnt necessarily means it costs a lot of money to develop.  Anyone in this forum with any kind of PC intelligence can fairly easily design a world just as large as Darkfall's.  Really, it's not that hard... and takes literally a few button clicks.

I tried to get passed this, but failed.

It's called fractal terrain generation.  i.e. Terragen, Mojoworld, etc.  The time consuming part is in populating those spaces with interactable assets like houses, etc.  If you leave that to the player to do then you've eliminated a lot of that though.

What does that have to do with big world.  A world is a place people are compelled to visit, not a randomly generated fractal landscape.  Time consuming = cost.
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Reply #395 on: December 03, 2008, 04:15:26 PM

As much as we harp on the design of this game, I think deep down everyone here secretly fawns over it.

No.

Quote
Once it's released, logically it'll start small and if it's deserving will grow from there.  Which is the way it should be.  Their biggest problem IMO is resisting the urge to "Puff Daddy" their game, i.e. water it down to popularize it.  They're trying real hard to fight it, but we'll see what happens.  Personally, I prefer they paint themselves into a corner and let the players come to them, not the other way around.

It isn't 'watering down' that is the problem. It's the polish on the existing systems. Darkfall won't - can't - have the polish needed to keep the majority of PvP players who cream themselves on forums about it. The second that the network code starts to lag them out, or a memory leak starts seeing slow-downs or CTDs... bye bye hardcore players. And that's assuming the game design is perfect. Which it won't be.

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Reply #396 on: December 03, 2008, 04:22:20 PM

Just because a world is big doesnt necessarily means it costs a lot of money to develop.  Anyone in this forum with any kind of PC intelligence can fairly easily design a world just as large as Darkfall's.  Really, it's not that hard... and takes literally a few button clicks.  And really, good games dont always take a helluva lot of money/time to develop... they attract "pvpers" by the shear virtue of the quality of their designs.  There are webgames out there that have more players then most MMOs, devved by ONE person.

PvP MMOs: cheap to build.

A good PvP MMO that will actually attract players: expensive. Even Runescape - which charges a monthly sub to those who want the extras - upgrades its graphics from time to time.

Quote
I guess I'm just a more objective free-form thinker someone on a forum who hasn't put any thought into why, if it is so easy, hasn't it worked out yet for the several PvP MMOs that have launched and flopped.  But the fact is there isnt room in this market for a lot of cookie-cutter popular titles.  That's been proven already.  So why keep falling into that trap?

I'm all for new MMO titles and MMOs going in new directions. But a PvP MMO isn't an easy thing to do. It isn't just building a world and throwing the players into it - you do that and new players get confused and / or ganked by those who are quicker on the draw. Even EvE, hardcore MMO of choice, has safe space for PvE and the non-hardcore.

You throw everyone in together with nothing else to do and you get Fury.

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Reply #397 on: December 03, 2008, 05:37:36 PM

I've already said they've got to have initial organizational structure (to lubricate insertion) to the game or it'll fail.  Of this we agree.  But I still fail to see how that somehow makes things complex.  It doesnt.  Matter of fact if you look at many games, it's entirely handled on the web post-facto (many times not even by the studio).  It's more something you just DO rather than just build.  Even moreso, it's largely easier to accomplish this in a totally pvp game... since there's no crappy PvE treadmill to run before you even get to the good stuff.  So there isnt an army of devs sitting around designing the first 20 levels as PvE "learning mode" just to scratch the surface of being capable of doing anything. 

As for "safe space" for newbs.  Didnt they say there are safe areas in DF?

"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom."  -Samwise
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Reply #398 on: December 03, 2008, 07:36:49 PM

Iniquity, you are a disaster. The Noob is awesome. Period.

That seems to be the consensus, so I started from the beginning.  I'm just not seeing it.  It seems to be... loosely based off of a combo of EQ, AC, and UO?  Or something?  Can you link me to a few of the better strips so I can see what I'm not getting?

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Back to hardcore PvP.
Then you didn't play UO and all your experience is based on Asheron's Call Darktide. Fine.
But we weren't looking for cool games here, or just following personal tastes. I for example was perfectly fine with pre-Trammel UO and I still think it's the best PvP ever, and I'd be playing Siege Perilous right now if it wasn't for the skill gain artificial cockblock and the item-tastic new deal which stormed Sosaria. We were looking for a possible solution for a succesful if not popular hardcore PvP game.

What was the most player Darktide ever had? 5k? 10k?

Then It DIDN'T work! The fact that it worked for you and your 4999 friends, 7 or so years ago, doesn't mean it's a viable way to craft a hardcore PvP game in 2008. Unless, of course, you are aiming to 5k players.

It was at around 3k peak population for a while, and given the way people bounced around it's possible (high-end but not unrealistic estimate) it had somewhere around 30,000 players at peak.

However, that's in a game that wasn't designed or marketed with PvP in mind *at all*, at a time when the MMO audience was much smaller.  AC in general suffered from incredibly poor marketing and support from Microsoft.

It's better judged not "as a game in its own right", but as a proportion of AC -- and it attracted a disproportionate proportion of the AC audience, despite the fact that the AC audience wasn't a particularly PvP-heavy audience.  A lot of it came via word of mouth.

I'm not saying something much like it would certainly hit 100k today, but it's not improbable either.  The DIKU formula is a lot more stale for a lot more people than it was back then; people who came into the genre with WoW, but are getting bored with that and looking for something different.

Also, I have a hard time imagining 50k isn't sustainable, either.  My anecdote about the Darktide approach to patch day, now that I think about it, suggests you wouldn't need the same sort of content-creation live team presence that a lot of PvE games do.

Another data point pops to mind here - Planetside.  Very different, I know, but hear me out -- the Core Combat expansion bled 'em dry, by adding new content in a way that messed with their winning (or at least not-losing) formula.  Or DAoC with the ToA expansion, where the PvE content messed up everyone's PvP experience.

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By contrast, a huge divide regarding the monthly content patches opened up in the AC1 community.  The PvE servers eagerly anticipated the monthly patches, because it meant new content, quests, items, additions to the story.  Darktide *hated* the patches -- not just the occasional instability and bugginess, but the very idea of progressing the game monthly -- because in their view it meant the devs were needlessly messing with a good thing.  They didn't want new quest content, they didn't want new items or this or that, they wanted to keep on playing the same game they've been playing.

See? In an already tiny demographic an even tinier one was in disagreement. That's not the kind of numbers you build a game on. [/quote]

Uh, no.  First off, AC1 was at something like 120k subscribers at the time, which considering the size of the MMO market at the time wasn't exactly awful.

Secondly, the divide split along pretty even lines -- Darktiders against the patches, everyone else for -- because AC1 was essentially two very different games, Darktide and not-Darktide, that happened to share a common game-world.  In a game developed roughly off of the 'Darktide Model', you wouldn't see those divisions, because the not-Darktiders of the world probably wouldn't be playing it.

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Closest thing to what we want? Eve online.
First one who can make a believable and stylish medieval EVE wins.

Eve doesn't have twitch skill involved, which to my mind is a far from negligible difference.  Also, you're massively dependent on the economy in EvE to get things done, which is a huge difference between EvE and most MMOs.  If I wanted medieval full-world PvP that'll stay supported and didn't involve twitch combat, I'd play EQ2's FFA PvP server.  If I want a spreadsheet, I'd do something productive with Excel.  It's not just the setting that kills it.
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Reply #399 on: December 03, 2008, 08:19:33 PM

Just because a world is big doesnt necessarily means it costs a lot of money to develop.  Anyone in this forum with any kind of PC intelligence can fairly easily design a world just as large as Darkfall's.  Really, it's not that hard... and takes literally a few button clicks. 
Eh, it's easy to design a game in a vacuum. It's much harder to do so when you have anything like an actual budget, staff, and equipment.

To get all that you need a solid plan to convince whoever's got the money. Nobody is going into those meetings touting the wild success of AC:DT or pre-Trammel UO. If their audience even knows Asheron's Call, it's most likely because they got it from SirBruce's chart in PC Gamer a few years back before the WoW portion of the pie gobbled up the rest of it like that tesserac 4D cube.

Hardcore PvP isn't sustainable because the few games that tried either had it by accident of emergent behavior (pre-Trammel UO) or feature it as part of a huge sim in which the cost of every fight can be calculated down to the last bit of Tritanium (Eve).

And importantly: Note that neither of these most prominent examples of successful PvP games in the Western countries actually had PvP has it's foundation experience whereas those games or servers that do (SB, AC:DT, EQ PvP servers, etc) all had much narrower appeal in the West.

I've long questioned the desire for hardcore PvP en masse. If it's a necessary part of having a holding in a virtual world (plum housing in UO, good systems in Eve), then yea, PvP makes that ownership a deeper experience.

But PvP by itself? Sometimes the near universal belief that something doesn't work in certain markets actually turns out to be the truth.
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Reply #400 on: December 03, 2008, 08:49:22 PM

Just because a world is big doesnt necessarily means it costs a lot of money to develop.  Anyone in this forum with any kind of PC intelligence can fairly easily design a world just as large as Darkfall's.  Really, it's not that hard... and takes literally a few button clicks. 

I've long questioned the desire for hardcore PvP en masse. If it's a necessary part of having a holding in a virtual world (plum housing in UO, good systems in Eve), then yea, PvP makes that ownership a deeper experience.

But PvP by itself? Sometimes the near universal belief that something doesn't work in certain markets actually turns out to be the truth.

You just cited the key: "Having something to fight for."  It's agreed that pvp by itself doesnt work, or rather... doesnt work well, unless it's simply a bloated version of a normal high-twitch, heavy graphical, multiplayer FPS.  e.g. it doesnt pretend to be anything else but.  Even still, having a definitive element to fight for long-term is key regardless.  If you're gonna charge a monthly fee those elements better be pretty robust and dynamic.  With DF right now there are too many "?" with regards to economy, resources, and real estate yes?  So we cant really judge how effective it may be at "hardcore pvp" anyways.

"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom."  -Samwise
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Reply #401 on: December 04, 2008, 02:16:35 AM

Just because a world is big doesnt necessarily means it costs a lot of money to develop.  Anyone in this forum with any kind of PC intelligence can fairly easily design a world just as large as Darkfall's.  Really, it's not that hard... and takes literally a few button clicks.

This.

Most of AC1's world was built procedurally at first, with the devs then going in with handcrafted tools to add personalized touches later.  It worked out pretty well.  Darkfall seems to be going a similar route; you don't need to develop these painstakingly handcrafted 'zones', a-la WoW.  AC environments were more interesting than WoW in a lot of ways, because what they lacked in immense detail, they made up for with heavy use of the Z axis and a real sense of exploration in a seamless world; you didn't just see mountains off in the distance, you could actually *climb* them, and doing so was interesting and fun in its own right.  And sometimes, you'd find a hidden lifestone nestled up in those hills, with a portal to some major town next to it -- voila, you had an isolated raiding base for use against whoever lived in that town, for guerrilla warfare.  A lot of the portals were semi-randomly generated, moving around at different intervals, be it hours (some of them) or weeks/months (others), further making life interesting.

Quote
As for griefing, if there's player organization it's a moot point.  If you're a lone wolf then you run the risk of griefing or being griefed, that's your prerogative.  My contention long ago with DF was if they didnt provide the tools for the players to organize than yes, there would be issues like you discussed.  There needs to be a command and robust guild structure or too many people will become incensed as they initially log in.  And above all else, it needs to be easy to find (on/offline).

Another area where AC had it right, where guilds formed organically and quickly, and there were easily hundreds of tiny 1-20 person guilds.  Rather than a guild of equals, you had patrons and vassals, with one player swearing fealty to the other.  The higher level, the patron, offered expertise, protection, and loot as he wished; the lower level, the vassal, his XP gains gave a fair bit of 'bonus XP' (the XP wasn't taken from the lower level -- it was generated out of thin air as an incentive) to the patron.  One person's vassal could have his own vassals, and so on in turn, forming a pyramid-like monarchy.  You gave higher levels a natural incentive to work with lower levels and integrate them into the game's system, and there were absolutely *zero* start-up costs for forming what amounts to a guild.  A level 10 could ambush a couple of level 3's, talk them into joining him as vassals, and bam!  There's a 3-person monarchy already.  Patron-vassal relationships in AC were really unlike your standard 'guildmates' relationship in other MMOs, and gave you a personal 'hook' into the world.  It actively encouraged total strangers to meet and get to know each other ingame.  It was probably the single best social mechanism I've ever seen in an MMO.

(I am not a natural guild-leader type by any means.  In fact, I usually don't even *join* guilds in most MMOs I play.  I nonetheless ended up a monarch multiple times on DT, never on my main, but on newbie characters I developed in various regions of the game world to have fun logging in occasionally and experiencing that local 'scene', a world away from the major battles and clans my main was involved in -- such as newb PK/politics in the area around Yaraq.  Pretty soon, I'd be the biggest of the little kids on the block, leading a gang of newbs and trying to team up to take on the higher levels if they rolled through town.  It happened organically, and it was fun.)

It's a shame no other game has tried anything like it since.
« Last Edit: December 04, 2008, 02:30:38 AM by Iniquity »
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Reply #402 on: December 04, 2008, 02:21:59 AM

Side note:  Downloaded Shadowbane tonight and gave it a shot.

The game is absolute ass.  Whoever thought anyone would play a game that's click-to-move and had zero how-to-play intro should be flogged.  It also had the least responsive combat I've ever seen, less responsive than Rubies of Eventide or Horizons or even that one open-source MMO.
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Reply #403 on: December 04, 2008, 03:33:32 AM

Coming from "twitchy" AC1 it's not a surprise you don't like Shadowbane. It's not ass. It's old and user un-friendly, but it has the best large scale meaningful PvP mechanics ever for a medieval MMORPG (EVE being the absolute best, and the mechanics are pretty similar if not identical). Shadowbane suffered technical issues which were basically unrecoverable given the budget and the incompetence of some coders. Still, it managed to give most people some of their best memories PVP-wise, even in its original and broken shape. Took them ages to make it playable and stable, and with a minimum budget it now is. It's laggy, it's ugly, but it's a great PVP game. You can't see it? Your loss.

I tried to stay out of this thread as it's not progressing beyond the point of "it worked for me and my small circle of friends 7 years ago, so it's obviously the perfect formula, it just has to be replicated and it'll be a blast! Oh, and Darkfall has potential <rolleyes>".

But lemme give you a piece of advice:
Seems to me is that your experience with hardcore PVP games is too limited to be of any value. You didn't play Ultima Online, you didn't play Shadowbane, you don't like EVE so I guess you didn't really delved into PvP there other than for a few exploded ships, and as a final touch you quoted Planetside wich isn't hardcore pvp a bit. Your vision is Darktide-centric and anything that doesn't suit your tastes failed for good reasons while your game was quite a success and missed hit status just because it wasn't advertised enough or the box art didn't have boobs.

It's ok to like a game. Hell, I like Darktide too.
It's wrong though to build theories of fun with such a shortsight.

And no wonders you don't like Shadowbane. There are levels of brilliancy when it comes to PVP there you won't ever notice because it doesn't suit your liking (not twitchy, control scheme...) and are buried under a coat of horrible visuals and a nasty past. Do you know it has infeudations and subinfeudations among guilds, and there are nation rulers, emperors and taxes? So long for your monarchy. Do you know it still has and always had 10 times the players of Darktide? Nah, who cares? "The game is absolute ass". Sure. But what do you think would anyone from around here say by rolling a char on Darktide now? "Oh, woot! Iniquity was right dammit it's the best PvP I've ever had" ?

P.S: Are you Telemediocrity's friend by any chance?

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Reply #404 on: December 04, 2008, 04:02:05 AM

Ass is too kind, Shadowbane was a bag of shit, click to move was retarded.
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Reply #405 on: December 04, 2008, 04:21:50 AM

Which means Asians are retarded?

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Reply #406 on: December 04, 2008, 04:30:39 AM

Feel free to knock up a long post on how good click to move is for a fantasy game.  EvE I can understand, fantasy, no.  Because you are defending click to move in SB, aren't you?  That's what you are doing, right?  You wanna take a deep breath and consider that?
Von Douchemore
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Reply #407 on: December 04, 2008, 04:45:15 AM

It's all about getting used to, but having played SB and L2 for a long time, when you switch to a MMO with human interface, it's so much better, I've had hand cramps and fear of carpal tunnel syndrome playing my scout in SB after so many hours.


Sidenote: Does AION feature mouse movement like L1/L2?
Arthur_Parker
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Reply #408 on: December 04, 2008, 04:50:05 AM

L2 is click to move as well?  I played that, I must have forgotten.  Allow me to retract my previous statement.

Shadowbane was a bag of poorly implemented shit, there, that's better, because clearly click to move didn't annoy me that much in L2.
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Reply #409 on: December 04, 2008, 04:51:40 AM

No Arthur, I prefer WASD by a LONG SHOT.

Plus everyone who followed Shadowbane at the time knows they chose click to move because they were expecting large scale battles and felt (with good reason, given the average bandwidth available when development started) it would have been unplayable with WASD movement.
Ironically, it was unplayable with point 'n click too, and that's why it crashed so hard. We all know the story.

But a oneliner saying the game is ass and retarded because of click to move, is retarded.



EDIT:
Quote
Shadowbane was a bag of poorly implemented shit, there, that's better, because clearly click to move didn't annoy me that much in L2.

Much better.
« Last Edit: December 04, 2008, 04:54:16 AM by Falconeer »

Arthur_Parker
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Reply #410 on: December 04, 2008, 04:55:02 AM

But a oneliner saying the game is ass and retarded because of click to move, is retarded.

Quote
Ass is too kind, Shadowbane was a bag of shit, click to move was retarded.

Three different comments, taken as a sum of it's parts SB was shit, I mean really, come on.
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Reply #411 on: December 04, 2008, 04:59:30 AM

Played Aion at PAX. It was WASD, but I'm sure they'll have optional click to move for Asia.

I prefer click to move personally, particularly in L2. Click to move provided a very nice aesthetic and strategic element in PvP. People dont run around in circles facing 60 degrees off from the person they're swinging at. In click to move games, combat looks like combat and the hits look very solid and real. You stand toe to toe and duke it out. None of that strafing and swinging while your torso is 45 degrees from your legs. WASD MMO combat just looks unrealistic, regardless of how much more fun it is, and since MMOs are a lot about just watching this simulation of combat while pressing a few hotkeys, how realistic it looks really matters for my immersion.

With that said, WASD is far more natural for movement, I just like the advantages that click gives if you dont find it too annoying to use.

Edit: Oh, but Shadowbane was still a bag of dicks regardless. Asian click to move games really arent that bad though! You just need to know what you're doing.
« Last Edit: December 04, 2008, 05:01:22 AM by damijin »
Mrbloodworth
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Reply #412 on: December 04, 2008, 06:47:16 AM

Quote
Just because a world is big doesnt necessarily means it costs a lot of money to develop.  Anyone in this forum with any kind of PC intelligence can fairly easily design a world just as large as Darkfall's.  Really, it's not that hard... and takes literally a few button clicks.

I tried to get passed this, but failed.

It's called fractal terrain generation.  i.e. Terragen, Mojoworld, etc.  The time consuming part is in populating those spaces with interactable assets like houses, etc.  If you leave that to the player to do then you've eliminated a lot of that though.

Your not one of those people that think Photoshop makes instant art are you?

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Reply #413 on: December 04, 2008, 08:24:41 AM

Tasos has done an interview for MMORPG.com
If the amount of trolls that existed elsewhere weren't so noticeable I would think he was calling some people out in f13  tongue

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/4/feature/2494/from/%2Ffeatures%2Ecfm%2Fview%2Flatest

MMORPG.com:
   

Can you tell us, as of the answering of this Q&A exactly where Darkfall stands in terms of nearness to being a launch-ready title?
Tasos Flambouras:
   

Darkfall could launch today. It's more ready for launch than most, if not all of the MMORPG titles at the same stage that I've personally sampled and it has been for quite some time. Everything has been tested internally and since November 10th we've been using an ever-growing number of external testers.

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MMORPG.com:
   

Darkfall has been in development for a very long time, can you please tell us why this game's development process has been so long?
Tasos Flambouras:
   

So long compared to what? We've been in development since 2003. Look at all that makes Darkfall stand out compared to other MMOs. In order to deliver all that we've had to develop proprietary technology from scratch. We also had to develop a company from scratch and everything associated with running a long game development cycle. We've done this independently.

Even games that license all their technology are taking 5+ years, while still using teams several times the size of our own. All this usually with the backing of major publishers, and most of their everyday problems solved.

So I would say that our development time is consistent with the making a breakthrough game, all the reusable technology to run it, and limited resources to do so. It's a long time, sure...but not for what we've achieved.
MMORPG.com:
   

The length of time that this game has been in development have led some to speculate that this game is vapourware, can you speak to that point?
Tasos Flambouras:
   

We don't pay much attention to speculation but it's not the length of development that has led some to speculate...this has been going on since day one. I'd question the motives of those speculating all these years. We're almost talking about obsessive "trolling" either looking for a reaction, more information, or trying to hurt our efforts.

Darkfall is a game that stands out, it's not a clone. Some people doubt it's possible, others worry that it is. Either way it generates a lot of interest. If people were dismissing it, then they wouldn't be talking about it. The well-meaning gamers root for efforts that try to raise the bar. So who's left? It's so easy being a skeptic.

Another red flag is Darkfall's large, active and very passionate community. A lot of communities would like to be like Darkfall's. Slandering our game is a way to get a reaction.

We have a thick skin; this kind of thing doesn't touch us. It actually makes us feel like we're on the right track. It has also served to fire up our community and has created diehard fans. It got a lot of people to take a closer look at our game and realize that this is what they've been waiting for. All the "trolls" have achieved is to inadvertently help perpetuate the buzz for Darkfall.

We know exactly what we've got on our hands. Our best answer is that our game is coming out and then the voices will have to find something else to talk about.
MMORPG.com:
   

Darkfall is a game that has many within the MMO community buzzing. Can you tell us why we haven't seen a marketing campaign similar to those conducted pre-launch by many other MMO studios?
Tasos Flambouras:
   

The MMO community is buzzing, and then you ask why we don't have marketing. It's somewhat of an oxymoron. We've done what we could with the resources we've had available.'

This has been a time for development. We're not going to sink development resources into traditional marketing before Darkfall is out. We need to be able to support this game and the response is overwhelming as it is.

What would a traditional marketing campaign achieve? To help sell some more game boxes? This is not a single player game. When you sell an MMO you're in it for the long-haul. The best marketing for an MMO is having a great game that retains your players.

Our marketing effort will be in response to our needs. The game speaks for itself...we expect a great deal of word of mouth. Darkfall can compete on merit with any MMO out there, but we can't compete against their huge marketing budgets. A traditional marketing campaign is not where our strength is. Having said that, we'll focus on working with online media that has been supporting Darkfall, and we will have a traditional marketing campaign as well, when we feel that Darkfall is best served by it.

Age of Conan Screenshot
MMORPG.com:
   

Can you tell us, at this time, how many players are in the current incarnation of beta?
Tasos Flambouras:
   

It amazes people that we don't have leaks yet. Our explanation is that people in our beta are serious about our game and they like it. You don't leak information easily unless you don't care, you're disappointed, or feel let down. Our testers seem to care about our game. Most of them have left MMOs they just started playing and are invested in our beta. We find that amazing. We can't talk about our total number of selected testers to date, but several hundred testers are in the game as I write this. We're adding more every day, and their numbers will go up considerably in the days to come.
MMORPG.com:
   

Why is Darkfall's beta being run differently from betas that we have seen other MMO companies run?
Tasos Flambouras:
   

I'll agree that we're different. Even though we're a small team we've invested early in testing the game as much as possible. We know that even large game development studios keep testing as an afterthought, if that. We knew that with the complexity of Darkfall, we'd have to make sure that everything works well together. We're banking on our game being stable. In addition to our overall QA philosophy, we've had a team of professional testers on the game for over a year. An MMO is very complex software..We're not going to depend on playtesters for everything...the game is already tested. We need the playtesters mostly for extra gameplay feedback and to test hardware configurations.

Having said that, there's certainly no prescription on how to run a QA phase of development. Our development certainly has little to do with traditional MMO development. We have a great deal more features, more technologies, and more innovations to test.

We're doing our QA in such a way that we get good feedback on the game, so that we can handle our bug reports. The game is very stable, we're continuously patching, the testers have been impressed at our debugging turnaround. In short, we have to do what's best for Darkfall.


MMORPG.com:

   

There is a great deal of confusion surrounding Darkfall's beta and release schedule. Could you clarify any of this for us?

Tasos Flambouras:
   

We've been trying to get our partners up to speed and there will be an official statement in the next few days announcing a release date for the game. This should clear things up.
Mrbloodworth
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Reply #414 on: December 04, 2008, 09:14:41 AM

"haters" and "trolls" make Tasos angry. Break through "thick skin". Tasos show them! TASOS  SMASH!!

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Nija
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Reply #415 on: December 04, 2008, 09:35:14 AM

Feel free to knock up a long post on how good click to move is for a fantasy game.  EvE I can understand, fantasy, no.  Because you are defending click to move in SB, aren't you?  That's what you are doing, right?  You wanna take a deep breath and consider that?

UO worked okay.
Mrbloodworth
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Reply #416 on: December 04, 2008, 09:40:24 AM

Feel free to knock up a long post on how good click to move is for a fantasy game.  EvE I can understand, fantasy, no.  Because you are defending click to move in SB, aren't you?  That's what you are doing, right?  You wanna take a deep breath and consider that?

UO worked okay.

Lots of them do, it depends on the game.

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Jayce
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Reply #417 on: December 04, 2008, 10:33:34 AM

That interview was surprisingly less than balls.  At the very least he didn't say "This could be bigger than WoW".

Witty banter not included.
Draegan
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Reply #418 on: December 04, 2008, 10:36:43 AM




Sidenote: Does AION feature mouse movement like L1/L2?

Both C2M and WASD.

Edit to add:
Wow I don't even have the energy to point out all the hilarity in that interview.  Maybe I should watch the stick-up-her-ass run animations again for lulz.
« Last Edit: December 04, 2008, 10:43:20 AM by Draegan »
tmp
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Reply #419 on: December 04, 2008, 10:53:35 AM

That seems to be the consensus, so I started from the beginning.  I'm just not seeing it.  It seems to be... loosely based off of a combo of EQ, AC, and UO?  Or something?
I don't think the actual game is the point there; that's just background for satire aimed at MMO players, developers and genre tropes alike.
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