Darkfall "Released"

[kildorn]

It looks like the backpack has some sort of autoarrange to it though.

That said, I don't even know why this thread is still active. Fuck this game looks terrible and has been in development way too long by too many amateurs to even be a little good. We're approaching a decade here. Full franchises have come and gone since this game was announced.

Fuck, see and now I've bumped it. Goddamnit.

That's not autoarrange, it's an extremely OCD player! <3

Darkfall: hardcore enough to make you angle down to hit short players, but carebear enough that you don't need to dig around through your pack for shit!

[mutantmagnet]

Yeah and depending on your tastes you may not like UO's sound effects being implemented in Darkfall either.

Gianna's warning.

Just to conclude on a negative note in true beta tester tradition, I don’t like most spell sound effects. The first time I heard a spell’s “fizzz” while visiting the Alfar capital I thought that my speakers had broken, or that some tit was broadcasting static in vent. I almost sent a bug report, “there’s a really horrible, shrill sound like a thousand banshees tuning their TV sets at once, at location x y z” before I realised what it was. But then again, badass sounds are not at the top of my wish list right now.

(For comparison purposes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXzDE5Hhv9k&feature=related

[Draegan]

This is the only time I'll allow myself to rubberneck disaster.  This is going to be one hell of an accident.

[Baldrake]

That said, I don't even know why this thread is still active.

Yeah, I think a combination of "everyone loves a trainwreck" and nostalgia for how much we enjoyed UO at the time.

[schild]

This is the only time I'll allow myself to rubberneck disaster.  This is going to be one hell of an accident.

See, I don't think it will be. It went from accident to pitiful about 3 years ago.

Yeah, I think a combination of "everyone loves a trainwreck" and nostalgia for how much we enjoyed UO at the time.

Again, not a trainwreck. Trainwrecks need to be unplanned and unpredicted. It's part of what makes trainwrecks so exciting. Everyone in their right mind has been calling this shit for years. And some of us didn't like UO and thought it was a sloppy, badly-designed mess.

[Venkman]

I agree with you DQ that they had no intention of making a WoW killer. But I don't buy that hardcore pvp is too small to be a niche market. There must be a few tens of thousands who would participate in such a game. (Assuming of course that it were well done, which this one probably isn't.)

I don't think the hardcore PvP market is too small. But that's mostly because I don't think it has yet been defined well enough to know. PvE diku we know and knew well before even CoH. What does "hardcore PvP" mean though? Every game that's attempted to cater to that market has been very different. Meanwhile, the best examples we have show market success are in a completely different genre (FPS).

If the PvP market is niche, it's because MMO developers keep trying to get players to fight for gear progressions or keep designing games in which a handful of players can get and hold onto a win condition until a server reset. WoW Arenas do the first one well enough to keep people interested. And of all that have tried, only Eve is something we would point to as a success. And that I think is because they're the only (afaik) uniserver game out there.

And I think that's a critical component. Let's say for argument's sake that "hardcore PvP" is people who want to fight for their standing in a server. Welp, anything beyond a Leaderboard means something of relatively permanent in-world usefulness. Problem with sharded games is that a relative few players can eventually dominate a server, requiring a reset and therefore the loss of that permanence and the therefore the desire to attain it. If at this point a developer wonders if that's even worth it, well, they're up against the entire FPS genre, and maybe wondering if fantasy theming would work there.

A uniserver can get around this by spreading players out but giving them reasons to come together in diplomacy or war, in a "world" so large players can avoid direct assocation if they want to but still be economically or socially impacted by it. Retain the permanence but lower the alienation.

Only one game has done that though, and it took them a few years to even get that right.

[Baldrake]

By "hard core pvp" I meant the roughly pre-Trammel UO gameplay that DF seems to be going for. That is, open pvp, very limited safe areas, low consequences for pk'ing. I think there's room for a game in the few tens of thousands as long as it's designed and implemented well.

I agree with the problem of servers stabilizing into a win situation where others can't compete any more (aka SB). But I don't personally see the big problem of declaring a winner and resetting every few months, like they do in WW2OL. That works fine in games where there isn't an insane levelling grind.

[Nebu]

By "hard core pvp" I meant the roughly pre-Trammel UO gameplay that DF seems to be going for. That is, open pvp, very limited safe areas, low consequences for pk'ing.

The "hardcore" crowd wants to not only kill players, but to azzrape them in the process by having full loot.  Without that, it's nothing like pre-Trammel UO and is more like DAoC.

[Baldrake]

Sorry, I meant low consequences to the person doing the pk'ing. I.e., no murder counts, red flags, Concorde to bust your ass, etc.

Anyway, full loot is continuously misrepresented in UO. UO's death penalty (at least once stat loss was taken out) was pretty light, because UO wasn't an item-centric game. If you got killed and looted, all you ever lost was stuff that could be replaced in minutes. The xp-loss death penalty in EQ was actually considerably harsher.

[Venkman]

Ok, so we're in the realm of different definitions then, which makes sense, but also complicates assessing the actual market.

UO wasn't terribly affected by Trammel iirc. I think it enjoyed a minor bump, but some of that could be the growing success of EQ1 bringing more people into the genre, but not being a good enough game to retain them to the exclusion of all competition. As such, someone could say the market size for azzraping hardcore PvP was around 200k because Renaissance did not drive those players way. And yet at the same time, someone could say the success of Renaissance was predicated on players fleeing azzraping hardcore PvP for a safer proto-SWG.

But even that is besides the point. UO was never marketed to the screw-society-and-everyone-in-it counterculture. It was an escapist virtual world that fostered emergent behavior in a wide variety of activities, one archetype of which was the "hardcore PvP" wolves in a land of unwitting sheep. Meanwhile, it was just a relatively few people taking advantage of tools that were common to everyone but also easily abusable that drove the perception that UO was replete with roving deathsquads of PKers.

Now take that in context of SB (which did it's one thing well enough once you got past the crappy code) and Eve (which does it's one thing well altogether) and you've got three different methods of promoting "hardcore PvP".

Still hard to determine what the actual size of that market is  Until that happens, people will probably think all the PvP anyone wants is the eSports matches of WoW and now WAR

[kildorn]

As far as I can see, UO post trammel from SIRBRUCE's charts show a slow trend upwards pre release, and a sharp trend upwards post release, until about a year later, which starts the game's slow decline into nothing.

The issue I have with the whole "hardcore pvp market" is that it's a fragmented market. It's not the ford midsized compact market, it's the Cars with Engines market. Some of them want open world full corpse loot player deleted on death insanity, some want esports balanced matches, some want empire creation, some just want to be able to solo kill shit, etc. It's not a solid monolithic block of What PVP Players Want.

Eve is probably the only one that provides a little of everything (hardcore corpse looting, consequences of death to an extent, empire building or not, etc) and it's edged out it's existence decently. About the only thing it's missing is a minigame type for People Who Don't Like Excel.

[Signe]

I thought SirBruce was only a myth! 

[K9]

Be careful not to say his name three times.

[Baldrake]

The irony is, at least in my experience, UO wasn't really that hardcore in practice. I "lived" on felucca for about a year, and I could count on one hand all the times I was ganked during that time. I've been ganked that many times within an hour playing on a pvp server in WoW.

Having said that, I think there has to be a reasonable market for a niche-budget persistent world game based on open pvp with full looting, self-organizing factions, quick character progression, low gear reliance, meaningful world pvp goals, rep system with consequences, and maybe periodic server resets. Looking at that list, SB came awfully close.

[Mrbloodworth]

Low gear reliance, i don't think will work. AOC tried that, look what it got them. I could also list off a few more if needed.

People (massmarket) want huge Wow numbers and giant gaps in power. Its makes them feel special.

[Baldrake]

So first off, we are talking about niche games. I'm just arguing that there ought to be a market for hardcore pvp that would draw in a few tens of thousands of players. Not tens of millions.

Agreed that people want progression. There are lots of ways of offering that without grindy levelling or gear gathering. Taking over parts of the world and holding them. Winning prestige items that don't really do anything - fancy looking armour, or unlocking a new kind of mount. In UO people went crazy over stuff like black dye tubs.

[Venkman]

UO had gear reliance just as Eve does, which is to say that it relies on gear that is good enough to get you through in general rather than specifically tuned to get you through very specific events as good as possible. The former (the general gear segment) is in both games relatively easily replaced with crafted stuff). The latter (event-based tuning) is what the entire other side of this genre is based on.

This is why I say the world itself needs to support the type of PvP that worked in both games, because the two best examples of PvP "working" were based on entire worlds supporting them. You fought, you lose, you replace with stuff intrinsically tied to everything else in the economy. Compare that to losing anything but grey gear in WoW. Heck, even the good crafted stuff requires raid-type behavior just to get some of the components.

Failures in "hardcore" PvP seem to generally be attributed to trying to collect a fee for only inconsequential arena matches or positioning a game that screws sheep so much they never show up to be hunted in the first place.

I'm just arguing that there ought to be a market for hardcore pvp that would draw in a few tens of thousands of players. Not tens of millions.

I agree. However, I think it's because this type of game is not just about "hardcore PvP". Because of the model examples. They're more about worlds in which hardcore PvP can be had because players want it. That in turns snowballs into activities around that including attack and defense, coalitions, a real economy and all the other things that make PvP relevant to the experience.

[Mrbloodworth]

So first off, we are talking about niche games. I'm just arguing that there ought to be a market for hardcore pvp that would draw in a few tens of thousands of players. Not tens of millions.

Agreed that people want progression. There are lots of ways of offering that without grindy levelling or gear gathering. Taking over parts of the world and holding them. Winning prestige items that don't really do anything - fancy looking armour, or unlocking a new kind of mount. In UO people went crazy over stuff like black dye tubs.

Oh, yeah i agree. I think what i was trying to say is, even those that say they are "Hardcore" or, played the more "Hardcore" games in the past.... Are not as hardcore as they think they are. Rose colored glasses and all that.

Mass market was perhaps a bad word to use for that.

[Ratadm]

Low gear reliance, i don't think will work. AOC tried that, look what it got them. I could also list off a few more if needed.

What?  You must have been playing a different aoc than I was.

[Mrbloodworth]

Low gear reliance, i don't think will work. AOC tried that, look what it got them. I could also list off a few more if needed.

What?  You must have been playing a different aoc than I was.

Yes, i was playing AOC .002%. 

[Ratadm]

Low gear reliance, i don't think will work. AOC tried that, look what it got them. I could also list off a few more if needed.

What?  You must have been playing a different aoc than I was.

Yes, i was playing AOC .002%. 

AOC at least early on stuck me as having a pretty significant gear grind whether it was raiding or crafting gear.

[Mrbloodworth]

Who was talking about gear grinding? We were talking about gear reliance. As in the contribution of a piece of gears stats to that of your base character...or whatever.

No worries.

[Zzulo]

The gear in AoC didn't work for months.

It didn't work, as in the stats didn't actually do anything. So it was pretty bereft of any sort of reliance on gear 

[Nija]

The irony is, at least in my experience, UO wasn't really that hardcore in practice. I "lived" on felucca for about a year, and I could count on one hand all the times I was ganked during that time. I've been ganked that many times within an hour playing on a pvp server in WoW.

All the bad guys quit when Tram/Fel came into existence. Of course you were safe in Felucca during that time. The wolves left.

[kildorn]

The gear in AoC didn't work for months.

It didn't work, as in the stats didn't actually do anything. So it was pretty bereft of any sort of reliance on gear 

I missed that. That is even more amazing than the female attack animations stupidity.

edit: all I'm seeing on search is a few stats didn't work, like magic attack. The rest was just 'pve is so easy gear doesn't matter'

[Mrbloodworth]

The gear in AoC didn't work for months.

It didn't work, as in the stats didn't actually do anything. So it was pretty bereft of any sort of reliance on gear 

Unless you can provide a (official) link, that's still just players being confused by percents and decimals and low numbers.

[Venkman]

No, seriously, the stats on gear did not work until the first major patch. The numbers were a lie. Funcom actually told us this stuff in beta. Part of the reason it's hard to unearth a link for it. And you can forgive them for not announcing that to the regular consumers 

[Mrbloodworth]

Thats odd, because that's not what i was experiencing right after launch.

[Jack9]

I never touched AoC and I remember reading about the stats not working. Here's a link to a forum thread about it after a quick Google sojourn. I feel dirty having seen it.

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=55733

[Mrbloodworth]

I never touched AoC and I remember reading about the stats not working. Here's a link to a forum thread about it after a quick Google sojourn. I feel dirty having seen it.

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=55733

Oh, i recall reading it too. But all i ever had seen is what you just posted. And it was nothing like what i had seen in game myself.

• Some one asks what a stat does.
• Some other guy says he thinks they don't work (or some other guess).
• Thread devolves into to everyone treating that post as some sort of fact.
• Flame each other.

Problem is, using % and decimals, and tiny increments... If you came from games like Wow, yeah...it would feel like stats didn't work. Hence why they are changing the system to whole numbers, and increasing it from something like 20% of your total, to 50%. (or whatever, one of the more recent dev letters).

There have been other games that used very minimal stats on items and equipment, it was meet by basically the same thing.

Doesn't really mater now though, but that's why i brought it up. If an item doesn't instantly make a (large) difference, people don't seem to like it, or they think its broken or "itemization sucks".

[kildorn]

Just for laughs, from that thread: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=1792826&postcount=1309

[Lantyssa]

Problem is, using % and decimals, and tiny increments... If you came from games like Wow, yeah...it would feel like stats didn't work. Hence why they are changing the system to whole numbers, and increasing it from something like 20% of your total, to 50%. (or whatever, one of the more recent dev letters).

Came from WoW.  Heh.  I remember thinking the bonuses were infinitesimally small in WoW.  "One bloody percent!?  What's the point?"

I always loved dozen page discussions over three percent boost in ability.  Damn kids.  In my day min/maxing was about gaining an order of magnitutde of capability.

[Arthur_Parker]

 And some of us didn't like UO and thought it was a sloppy, badly-designed mess.

There's a time for very man to stand up for what he believes in.  There's a a time for everyone to draw a line in the sand and say "you know what, I admire what you have done with site and yeah maybe I'm being slightly influenced by the half bottle of whiskey I just drunk but you what? You don't fuck with my personal Jesus."

The point everyone misses is that most of the time the guy who a$$rapes you outside Minoc likes to store his shit in gold plated furniture.  At the extreme risk of WUA posting an image macro, trammel was like the SWG NGE, a new experience was forced on players.  The fact it was popular doesn't in any way justify what happened.

It's all to do with player interaction, UO was just decades ahead of it's time.  The future is about different server rulesets and informed choices.

[tmp]

Have we already started the Darkfall = Daikatana meme-thingy yet? If not, I claim I started it here 

Afraid yes. Although it's likely mentioned some earlier in the thread too, just can't be arsed to dig earlier.

[Xerapis]

Afraid yes

NEMESIS! I must defeat you!