Darkfall "Released"

[waffel]

Wouldn't immunity after being hit be Massively exploitable in an MMO?

All I need to do is equip a fast 1.0 dps dagger and autoattack your mob and you'll suddenly take a huge dps hit just because I feel like being a douche.

If MMO designers had decided to advance NPC combat instead of de-advance it in the past 20 years, then I'm sure they would have thought of a counter against this.

[Mrbloodworth]

lol @ the live chat at the Greek thing for Darkfall, lol!

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

Has there ever been a game 2 weeks before release that has not even announced the system requirements?

[K9]

lol @ the live chat at the Greek thing for Darkfall, lol!

Is this the major game convention in Athens that no-one has ever heard of?

[DLRiley]

Has there ever been a game 2 weeks before release that has not even announced the system requirements?

The system requirements are as follows;

A. Not being a carebear
B. Waiting for this game for 7 years.
C. Hatred of WoW.
D. HARDCORE PVP'ER
E. Believing that this game, is robot rapture riding Jesus.  

[WindupAtheist]

Wouldn't immunity after being hit be Massively exploitable in an MMO?

All I need to do is equip a fast 1.0 dps dagger and autoattack your mob and you'll suddenly take a huge dps hit just because I feel like being a douche.

Anyone making a big-budget game where this terminology is even relevant has my condolences. We've watched an entire diku MMO generation sputter and flop over the last few years. Vanguard, LOTRO, DDO, Conan, Warhammer, not a single success even on the order of EQ1 among them. Blizzard has killed the big-budget diku by competing everyone else out of the market, and now we're just waiting for everyone else to lose enough money to realize it.

That aside, why would you apply this mechanic to rote diku PVE combat? That sort of combat has already been refined to the point of having reached an evolutionary dead-end. I'm talking about taking that sort of text MUD combat and throwing it away entirely to make way for something more fun. In regards to this immunity mechanic, I'm talking specifically about thwarting focused fire in PVP.

[Nija]

Is there a preorder link yet? Digital download? Anything? I gotta be there first hand.

[ashrik]

I believe we have an open beta date set for the 15th*, friend, 1 week before launch. According to what was said at the coffee hoopla, apparently.




*year unspecified

[UnSub]

I believe we have an open beta date set for the 15th*, friend, 1 week before launch. According to what was said at the coffee hoopla, apparently.




*year unspecified

Darkfall is to launch "inside 2008". So it has to be Jan 15, 2008.

[Azaroth]

You guys are real jerks!

[ashrik]

Yeah, a bunch of sassy sallies on this forum

It's weird, as the date has gone closer, I've actually found myself looking forward to playing. I'll try and type up some semblance of a readable review.

[DLRiley]

Yeah, a bunch of sassy sallies on this forum

It's weird, as the date has gone closer, I've actually found myself looking forward to playing. I'll try and type up some semblance of a readable review.

I want to play DarkFall too. I want to be there to witness DF fanboys UO memories raped with a condom made out of tire rubber.

[ashrik]

Yeah, a bunch of sassy sallies on this forum

It's weird, as the date has gone closer, I've actually found myself looking forward to playing. I'll try and type up some semblance of a readable review.

I want to play DarkFall too. I want to be there to witness DF fanboys UO memories raped with a condom made out of tire rubber.

More than worth the price of admission. Every person I will PK will receive a personal message about how my experiences playing WoW shaped me into the l33t d00d that pwned them this very day.

[Triforcer]

I would buy this for the lulz if I thought I could get a copy in the mysterious Far East.  I'm not even going to ask if digital download is possible, because I'm not stupid enough to give these people my CC number directly. 

[UnSub]

I would buy this for the lulz if I thought I could get a copy in the mysterious Far East.  I'm not even going to ask if digital download is possible, because I'm not stupid enough to give these people my CC number directly. 

This.

To horribly insult all those with Greek heritage on these boards, I'm yet to find a Greek man who wouldn't screw you to the wall if he thought he could get away with it.

[FatuousTwat]

I believe we have an open beta date set for the 15th*, friend, 1 week before launch. According to what was said at the coffee hoopla, apparently.




*year unspecified

Darkfall is to launch "inside 2008". So it has to be Jan 15, 2008.

Not December 15th?

[Signe]

No, January 15 is a COMPLETELY different day than December 15.  I'm pretty sure. 

Anyway, where are the bets?  I bet lots of stuff it doesn't happen!

[Nija]

Yeah, a bunch of sassy sallies on this forum

It's weird, as the date has gone closer, I've actually found myself looking forward to playing. I'll try and type up some semblance of a readable review.

Where are you buying it?

[ashrik]

A download or bittorrent link are likely the only places it will be available on this continent or the next.

Gamestop, Walmart, or any other sensible retailer are obviously making no plans to carry it.

Allegedly and hopefully, there will be an open beta in a week so I can grab the client.

[Sophismata]

Wouldn't immunity after being hit be Massively exploitable in an MMO?

All I need to do is equip a fast 1.0 dps dagger and autoattack your mob and you'll suddenly take a huge dps hit just because I feel like being a douche.

...because every game is a DIKU MMO with whack-a-mole combat, wherein weapons determine damage and attack speed and encounters are never locked to the original combatant.

[DraconianOne]

You guys are real jerks!

You've been hanging around here for 4 years and it's taken you this long to come to this conclusion...? 

[stray]

I would buy this for the lulz if I thought I could get a copy in the mysterious Far East.  I'm not even going to ask if digital download is possible, because I'm not stupid enough to give these people my CC number directly. 

I give the Greeks enough credit that they, at the very least, will use a Porn based processor ala Horizons. Your money is safe.

[Mrbloodworth]

http://www.darkfallonline.com/ <--- Showing hosting parking page. 

[IainC]

http://www.darkfallonline.com/ <--- Showing hosting parking page. 

Works for me although their site appears to have been designed for an 800x600 resolution as about a third of my screen is black space on the right hand side.

[Signe]

Geez.  No update since December 1 with only a couple weeks to go?  No wonder no one took me up on my wager!

[K9]

mmh Darkfall wagers...

So many possible.

[Mrbloodworth]

http://www.darkfallonline.com/ <--- Showing hosting parking page. 

Works for me although their site appears to have been designed for an 800x600 resolution as about a third of my screen is black space on the right hand side.

Seems to be back.  Heh, spoke to soon, click the beta sign up, or the forums.

[kildorn]

Wouldn't immunity after being hit be Massively exploitable in an MMO?

All I need to do is equip a fast 1.0 dps dagger and autoattack your mob and you'll suddenly take a huge dps hit just because I feel like being a douche.

...because every game is a DIKU MMO with whack-a-mole combat, wherein weapons determine damage and attack speed and encounters are never locked to the original combatant.

If you want to lock combat to the initial opponent, why not just instance the whole damned thing?

The issue is that immunity nerfs focus fire in pvp, which is a good thing. At the same time, it murders anything but instanced combat (sure, you could have multiple people doing this on an open map, but you've removed all ability for the players to interact with each other, so why waste resources doing so)

Heck, in pvp that's GREAT for an arena/battleground/whatnot system. It's shit for an open world based pvp system. An RVR zone where nobody else can join a fight once you've engaged? Man what? Is this a shitty ninja movie where the 800 ninjas attack the hero single fucking file?

Sins of a Solar Empire had a far better system to essentially nerf focus fire: your mitigation went up as more targets attacked you. It was still a viable tactic to focus a target, but your fleet DPS went down as you increased the number of ships doing so.

Unless you're making MMO Streetfighter, I can't see N number of players scaling at all with an immunity after being hit system. It's not a Diku thing, it works with any random setup. Let's try it with Halo! Me with a high rate of fire weapon plinking away at someone giving them chain immunities while they wander around laying waste to the guys with low rate of fire high damage weapons that can't hurt him because he's immune.

It doesn't work beyond an arcade style game, preferably one where all the other players are within slapping range so they have a lower capability of dicking things up.

Heck, EVE isn't very diku, and this sort of system would be Hilariously bad there, too. Nerfing focus fire makes sense, but at the same time, so does dynamically scaling defense so that it's not the weakest part of the system (in any system with 20 v 20, you have 20 people's offense being measured against a single target's defense. Offense is additive, defense is not. That is why focus fire works, and why offense and healers tends to be a pvp setup)

[sidereal]

The best way to mitigate focus fire is to implement friendly fire.  Ideally with actual collision detection (so if someone runs in front of your fireball, you hit them instead) but at the very least by randomly assigning attack to one of the participants in melee.

The idea that, in a fantasy game, 8 or 10 people could coordinate to focus fire on specific targets is absurdly ahistorical (or at least acinematic).  In a battle, most people focus on the closest guy out of a sense of self-preservation (and many tabletop wargames reflect this by only allowing units to attack the closest unit).  Another way to deal with it would be to give you a big damage bonus if you're attacking someone who isn't targeting you, which would force combatants to focus on the closest-slash-most dangerous people.  Or alternately give a big damage penalty to someone who isn't targeting the closest opponent (call it a distraction penalty).  Then a legitimate strategy is to throw a bunch of chaff noobs at your enemy to screw up their targeting, which is. . hey. . how combat often really works.

[K9]

Another way to deal with it would be to give you a big damage bonus if you're attacking someone who isn't targeting you, which would force combatants to focus on the closest-slash-most dangerous people.  Or alternately give a big damage penalty to someone who isn't targeting the closest opponent (call it a distraction penalty).

This would actually negatively impact someone being assist-trained, as all but one of their attacks would be un-targeted by the victim, and hence would receive the bonus.

Also, having seen the calibre of tard likely to play this sort of game, I can hardly think that friendly fire will be a good idea in practice.

[Azaroth]

Is this a shitty ninja movie where the 800 ninjas attack the hero single fucking file?

That movie would have been shittier if they didn't.

I haven't been following this discussion carefully, but I gather we're talking about focus fire in PvP here.

I can add one thing to this conversertion:

When I played UO, there were very often large PvP battles. However, early on, nobody was organized enough to pick out single targets. Nobody was on ventrilo, because everyone was on 28.8k modems in 1997.

Fast forward to IPY during 2004. Everyone is not only on ventrilo, but before long, you've got people running EasyUO scripts and coordinating dumps automatically.

Ten guys dumping Explosion and Energy Bolt on you at the same time means game over. At first, it was only one or two groups doing this. After IPY went down, as each lookalike shard came up, the problem got worse and worse until that's basically all anyone did. Autodumps coordinated in Ventrilo.

Here's the thing:

This is not fun. For the people doing it, maybe. Because you get to win every time without skill. But that only lasts until everyone catches on and starts doing it themselves.

You know what was fun? Those large, unorganized battles where everyone engaged a target and frenzied chaos ensued until the group with the superior overall skill (or numbers...) likely came out on top.

I don't think I would ever put up another game, and especially not a UO shard, without some serious focus fire mitigation. Not because of the exploiting, necessarily. But because it's not fun.

[Arthur_Parker]

They could randomly force assign you a target and prevent you switching targets till he was dead or out of range.

[Simond]

Why PvP boils down to focus fire: Because it's what naturally happens if people have half a brain.
Sure, you can crowbar in some sort of annoying mechanism to prevent it but then it turns into fighting against the game rather than the opponents.

[WindupAtheist]

Sins of a Solar Empire had a far better system to essentially nerf focus fire: your mitigation went up as more targets attacked you. It was still a viable tactic to focus a target, but your fleet DPS went down as you increased the number of ships doing so.

Cue bitching as newbs hit a guy once and kick his mitigation up a notch without sticking around to adequately contribute to the fight, guys intentionally running through AOE damage for the same reason, and other general bullshit. I'm talking about two groups of ten or fifteen players running around trying to kill each other with axes and shit, not spreadsheets-in-space RTS combat.

Unless you're making MMO Streetfighter, I can't see N number of players scaling at all with an immunity after being hit system. It's not a Diku thing, it works with any random setup. Let's try it with Halo! Me with a high rate of fire weapon plinking away at someone giving them chain immunities while they wander around laying waste to the guys with low rate of fire high damage weapons that can't hurt him because he's immune.

Sure, as long you're a moron who implements super-fast weapons that do almost no damage, have absolutely no secondary negative effects (knockback, disorient) result from being shot, and then makes no attempt at all to balance any of this, so that "catching a steady stream of bullets with your fucking face for the entire battle" suddenly becomes a viable victory strategy. Quit being a condescending cunt.

Heck, EVE isn't very diku, and this sort of system would be Hilariously bad there, too.

Mechanics for a few dozen guys engaging in melee are going to be different than mechanics for two blobs of 300 ships engaging each other from a hundred miles apart. Who cares, and since when is a given mechanic being compatible with EVE's spreadsheet-in-space combat system a measure of anything?

[KallDrexx]

I think GW had some decent skills to combat focus fire, such as Protective shield (I think that's what it was called) where you could only take 10% damage max at a time, which means at a minimum it will take 10 hits to kill someone (for GW that was a lot), thus making it much easier to keep that one person alive even when focus fired.