Darkfall "Released"

[Lantyssa]

Glad to see I'm not the only person annoyed by 10 minute buffs.  It's one of the things I like about EQ2, in that other than death, and maybe mobs which can remove them that I have yet to encounter, self-buffs stay on you indefinately.

[Goreschach]

You would bitch about being slightly weaker if you didn't eat and drink something once every 4 hours of game play? 

I bitch about having to recast "always on" buffs every 10 minutes in WoW, so yes I would.  I think the difference is in how easy it is to get the resource.  If getting food is just a matter of pushing a button or going to the store, then it's just irritating busywork.  There's no challenge, there's no interesting decisions.  It's just a cockblock.  On the other hand, if getting food is a challenge or at least some form of crafting, then at least it has a gameplay element and I could live with it.

Although technically I agree, this seems like a pointless thing to bitch about. If you took all the mindless button-smashing cockblocks out of an MMO you wouldn't have anything left.

[Arthur_Parker]

I don't think there's any point having food and drink if there isn't a gameplay element to it.  If food isn't available and interesting then you don't need to eat your horse when trapped in a mountain pass by snow and you can't invite friends to your house for a feast.  More options are good, cooking as a craft skill never really appealed to me but it does interest some people. 

I'd hope that in the future we get back to adding more tools and mechanisms to games that allow players to create their own content instead of just adding interesting dev scripted content that gets burnt through too fast or bland dev scripted content that feels like a grind.  At the minute a lot of games feel a bit like playing Dragon's Lair, there's a set path you have to follow for the "fun".

[Mrbloodworth]

Wow, if this is real.... wow. What a waste of dev time.

Beta Leaker's paranoia (they can track you using your screenshots!  ):

Just make sure you do everything you can to prevent your identity from coming through. I'd recommend using some photoshop filters, do a small gausian blur to the entire image (I've heard some companies will encrypt something like your ip address into a part of the overview, they do it by slightly altering the colors in a certain area which acts as a bit pattern). Also, block out anything that could possibly be linked to you, like a message saying you got to skill level 25 by creating a barbed arrow (just an example, who knows what they can search for in logs). Finally, make sure you upload the files anonymously to an image site, don't put them in your personal folder.

Let's say they have 1000 closed beta testers. That can be uniquely represented by 10 bits. An easy way to do that is to use an overlay that actually has a bit pattern in it. If they used one where each bit was represented by 5x5 pixels enough information would survive through compression to make distinguishing it fairly easy.

Example:
Let's say you're beta account #372, your bit pattern is:
0101110100.

For sake of the example let's say thenoobcomic is beta leaking and we want to catch her.
First picture gets hit with the overlay:
Screenshot with overlay

Do you see it?
How about if we zoom in:
Zoom view

Still nothing? That's kind of the whole point, people don't even realize they are sending their identifier.
We take the area that the identifier is in and apply a level adjustment to it to bring out the marked area (In this case the identifier was put in the red channel only):
Level shift

Now, some of the information was lost due to compression artifacts in it being a jpeg image. No problem, that is why we made the original adjustment areas so large (5x5 pixel squares). We now apply a 5x5 averaging to the area:
Averaged

And since we are looking for information stored in the red channel, we remove the other channels:
Red Channel Only

Reading it left to right, top to bottom: 0101110100 = #372
And that was taking an image that had already been jpeg'd once (from thenoobcomic site) and then applying the almost invisible identifier afterwards. If the identifier had been in the original image before it was compressed it would be even more pronounced.

That is just one example of how a company could "tag" the game to you specifically.

That was done with just one picture with one identifier in one specific area. If you don't know what you're looking for, you'll never find it, but the company knows exactly where they put it, and what they have to do to the image to bring it back out.

I'm not trying to scare people into not leaking, I'm just saying that there are some really innovative security measures out there, so if you do leak, be smart about it, companies can find you by more than just your in game name.

Just saying they can hide things in the UI so they can find them

I'm no expert at image recovery, but I'm pretty sure once an image is as destroyed as her text box is, it's beyond recoverable. It just looks similar because the way she chose to block out her chatbox is by using an averaging filter (Which is availible in photoshop, and probably other programs).

I used the averaging filter to recover the bit pattern because averaging works well for doing exactly that, finding the average. So all I was doing was looking for which blocks are on average more red then the other blocks. This may help, this is what the "hidden" bit pattern looked like that I put into the image:

It was put into the screenshot at 1% opacity, which makes it pretty much invisible until you adjust the levels to look for it.

Here's what it would have looked like at 100% opacity:
Visible

Just want to reiterate, I'm not trying to discourage anyone from leaking more photos, and I highly doubt that Aventurine is using a scheme like this to track users. All I'm saying is that if you want to leak screenshots (And not get pulled from beta because they identified you) you should do more than just block out your name and chatbox. And on that note, if anyone is interested in leaking screenshots but worried about getting ID'd for one reason or another, feel free to PM me and I can help you with some tricks to keeping yourself anonymous. Some people might consider it being paranoid, but I've leaked a fair number of screenshots from AoC and WAR closed betas and was in the beta right up until the end.

That's rather stupid.

Just like this is

[Draegan]

That video is awesome.

[SnakeCharmer]

Tribes 2 mod.

[Salamok]

Did I miss something, why are so many of you treating this game as if it will ever see the light of day.  What happened to the general consensus of this mythical game just being an investor scam?

[K9]

I think most of us want to see it released; who doesn't like watching another outing of the SS Failboat?

[Azaroth]

I don't want to be a huge jerk, but I'm an oldschool UO guy and I ran an oldschool UO server. Most of the online people I know won't stop talking about Darkfall being their personal Jesus.

I just want it to release and fail so I can stop listening to the stupid shit. If they push the development back x years, I have to continue listening to it because people refuse to get a clue.

[Signe]

Strangely, besides our mockery here, the only game site I know where there are people who actually take Darkfall seriously is MMORPG.com.  Most of the online people I know from places other than here have never said a word about it (I assume that, like most gamers in the entire world, they've never even heard about it) or they dismissed it as vapourware/crappyware years ago.  Even on MMORPG.com the people who post like they're gaga over it are the same people over and over or, I'm pretty sure, gimmick accounts of those people.

[mnm]

Keep telling yourself that. Darkfall is actively discussed at Somethingawful and scrapheap-challenge as well.

[Mrbloodworth]

Keep telling yourself that. Darkfall is actively discussed at Somethingawful and scrapheap-challenge as well.

Oh yeah? What are they saying? 

[schild]

Keep telling yourself that. Darkfall is actively discussed at Somethingawful and scrapheap-challenge as well.

Everything is discussed at SA. I don't see how that validates something. I don't know what scrapheap-challenge is. As such, I'll just assume it's incredibly unimportant and a terrible example. I'm most likely right.

Oh wow, I just noticed this was a ban evader. Whoops. Bu-bye.

[Cadaverine]

It's an Eve Online forum.

I wouldn't take discussion on either forum as a ringing endorsement of a game.

[Nonentity]

Aw, he was keeping it interesting.

 

[Vehementi]

I set up a Google Alert for "darkfall" a few months back.  Over the last 90 days there have been about 200-250 hits from that.  Each hit would be something like a news article somewhre, some guy's blog post, etc.  Some of them are about the book Darkfall by some guy.  Many are duplicates in the sense that they're mirroring official news e.g. beta announcement, but these still "count" for the purposes of people taking it seriously and such.

edit: and yeah, it's pretty hotly discussed on somethingawful, though the thread is admittedly mostly bumped by people who desperately want to convince others that the game won't come out.

[Signe]

Ah.  I didn't realise.  I haven't read SA in ages.  It's not actively discussed in a serious manner in any of the gaming forums I peruse.  Sorry about that!

[Vehementi]

They're gearing up goon squad

I am curious to see how well a zerg backed by the EVE leaders and full of people who play UO shards all day will fare.

They say they have people in beta too

[Azaroth]

I can't possibly believe there haven't been leaks on SA if there are goons in beta.

[schild]

I am curious to see how well a zerg backed by the EVE leaders and full of people who play UO shards all day will fare.

I can't believe anyone from Goonswarm is high or stupid enough to play Darkfall.

They're gearing up goon squad

Once again, not a validation.

[Vehementi]

They're gearing up goon squad

Once again, not a validation.

Don't worry about it, I was just making conversation.

There have been leaks on there by the way.  And on wtfman!  Nothing major or worth talking about, though.

[Phildo]

The people behind Goonswarm would be looking for any opportunity to grief people.  If there's a way to ruin the game for other people, they'll be there.  That certainly justifies 1-2 months of subscriptions for a lot of them.

[Venkman]

That's the problem with DF. It has exactly one audience. We've discussed the need of sheep for the wolves,and while the former is prevalent in Eve, that's because of a diversity of players in a diverse game clumped onto one server. DR has none of these things, so is likely to be boring even just to the "hardcore".

[UnSub]

Darkfall is the Next Big MMO release. It promises reach back years and can not - even assuming a perfect, bug-free launch - meet the expectations of a sizeable proportion of the Darkfanbois. It won't be "UO, but better", because these people either 1) never played UO, or 2) have forgotten all the problems of UO.

A big issue is that a lot of players expect to go into Darkfall and be wolves, only to find out they are really sheep. The only place people are forced to stick in this kind of environment is prison (where being a sheep is better than the alternative) or BDSM (where it turns out the wolf really wanted to be a sheep anyway, mistress).

[Sophismata]

Spells can be casted while wearing armor, but with a variety of penalties

This looks foolproof.  Casters wearing armor... what could possibly go wrong?

That's rather ignorant. Hell, the only reason this whole "casters can't wear armour" conception even exists is because of Gygax's crazy notions of magic.

Some of them are about the book Darkfall by some guy.

Isobelle Carmody, as I recall. She's better known for a children's series, Obernewtyn Chronicles. Highly acclaimed, etc.

[Venkman]

Darkfall is the Next Big MMO release. It promises reach back years and can not - even assuming a perfect, bug-free launch - meet the expectations of a sizeable proportion of the Darkfanbois. It won't be "UO, but better", because these people either 1) never played UO, or 2) have forgotten all the problems of UO.

Whoa whu? This is neither a big MMO launch by any stretch nor for anyone BUT UO expats. Outside of here and apparently that pocket at SA, nobody could name Darkfall from a lineup. It's big only if Vanguard was considered big too.

The next *actually* big MMO launch will probably be ChampO maybe (though that too has no equity beyond core veterans) or something with an actual IP attached it.

[UnSub]

It's big in Japan PvP MMO circles.

EVE isn't that well known outside of certain groups, either. I'm saying that Darkfall is the "Next Big Thing" because it is out in 22 days and is the only MMO of note doing so. It isn't on the scale of AoC / WAR NBT-ness, but a good number of MMO watchers are keeping their eyes on it.

ChampO will be a NBT launch if it appears simultaneously on the PC and Xbox 360. Also scheduled for 2009 (at this point) are APB, Aion, Earthrise, Fallen Earth, Huxley (?maybe?), Jumpgate Evolution, Runes of Magic, The Agency, DCUO and Stargate Worlds (plus others I probably don't know about). Some of these will no doubt drop back to 2010, but 2009's MMO titles are a lot smaller in hype potential (except for maybe DCUO) than 2008's.

[Jack9]

That's rather ignorant. Hell, the only reason this whole "casters can't wear armour" conception even exists is because of Gygax's crazy notions of magic.

The idea of archetypes is not crazy. To make a game using them, you want to have some kind of balance.

//I prefer dual classing nerd and pigfarmer.

[Sophismata]

That's rather ignorant. Hell, the only reason this whole "casters can't wear armour" conception even exists is because of Gygax's crazy notions of magic.

The idea of archetypes is not crazy. To make a game using them, you want to have some kind of balance.

The idea of archetypes is distinct from what those archetypes must entail, however.

[IainC]

Spells can be casted while wearing armor, but with a variety of penalties

This looks foolproof.  Casters wearing armor... what could possibly go wrong?

That's rather ignorant. Hell, the only reason this whole "casters can't wear armour" conception even exists is because of Gygax's crazy notions of magic.

*Bzzzzt* Nope it's because the easiest way to balance the huge DPS and/or high utility of casters is via massively lowered survivability. Glass cannons and all that.

I can't believe no-one has picked up on Tasos' statement that the game will be automatically balanced because anyone can have any skill yet.

[Draegan]

It's big in Japan PvP MMO circles.

EVE isn't that well known outside of certain groups, either. I'm saying that Darkfall is the "Next Big Thing" because it is out in 22 days and is the only MMO of note doing so. It isn't on the scale of AoC / WAR NBT-ness, but a good number of MMO watchers are keeping their eyes on it.

It's still not the Next Big Thing no matter how many times you say it.

[K9]

*Bzzzzt* Nope it's because the easiest way to balance the huge DPS and/or high utility of casters is via massively lowered survivability. Glass cannons and all that.

Doesn't this rely on the assumption that DPS casters have to be glass cannons and/or have high utility. Your balance is based on general assumptions of how magic behaves in a fantasy setting; there's really no reason why you couldn't have a high armour caster class (hi paladins).

[IainC]

*Bzzzzt* Nope it's because the easiest way to balance the huge DPS and/or high utility of casters is via massively lowered survivability. Glass cannons and all that.

Doesn't this rely on the assumption that DPS casters have to be glass cannons and/or have high utility. Your balance is based on general assumptions of how magic behaves in a fantasy setting; there's really no reason why you couldn't have a high armour caster class (hi paladins).

And that's why we usually do have high armour, low damage classes such as paladins. DPS casters however normally have two major advantages; Range and DPS. To offset those there's needs to be a fairly significant downside which commonly defaults to 'squishy'.

[Arthur_Parker]

I can't believe no-one has picked up on Tasos' statement that the game will be automatically balanced because anyone can have any skill yet.

That works for RL.

[Koyochi]

It's still not the Next Big Thing no matter how many times you say it.

It's the Next Thing, wich is still better then nothing. I had a little bit of confidence in this game, and it was all crushed here, but I'm still looking out for post-launch reviews and screenshots. Because .... well, you never know.