Darkfall "Released"

[Speedy Cerviche]

Malakili is underestimating what a newbie can do in combat.

Archery raises really fast vs mobs (a few days to 75 if you focus on it), and in clan PvP with a clan supplied rank 40 bow (very cheap, only cost like 300 gold, clans will give them away like candy) you can do nice damage to vets. Get "mage killer" specialization (extra damage to casters), hang back and sniper mages in soft armour and you will be hitting them for 40+ damage, very respectable. Anyone with decent FPS aim can do this very quickly.

[ashrik]

Honestly, as long as you join a clan, you are contributing right away.  Sure, it might not be contributing by killing people, but clan cities need resources, boats require resources, siege weapons, you get the point.  You can be doing a lot of stuff that is adding to the player driven aspects of the game.  That to me is part of the PvP.  I mean, sure, the combat is fun and exciting, but I've never been of the opinion that actual combat is the most important part of a PvP game, otherwise you might as well just play a shooter.

So if I'm a new player I can look forward to grinding my ass off  in order for my guild to do all the fun stuff (that I won't do and still be to lowbie to participate). So basically you've made a proposition that sounds less lame than "come get buttfucked by larger ships join the suicide squad" of EVE . Didn't believe that was possible...

There is nothing in the game that you wouldn't be able to join in on or be too low to participate in. You'd just be less effective than those you were with. That's the whole 'join a clan' thing

[Cheddar]

Hmmm.  I think I may give this a whirl.   

[LC]

I guess darkfail is nearing the end of it's life. The devs are about to start reactivating canceled accounts. The official forums are flooded with threads like this one. As the current leader of the largest clan on the NA server, I can say things can't be going well for Aventurine.

[Threash]

I'm sure they've more than recouped their investment.

[Nebu]

As the current leader of the largest clan on the NA server, I can say things can't be going well for Aventurine.

Do you really need to mention this for your latter statement to be true? 

[LC]

Probably not, but I should have added that 85% of my clan consists of cancelled accounts.

[Nebu]

As someone that likes pvp mmo's this is kind of a shame.  I'd really like to see an indie bring a playable and fun pvp title to the table.  When Aion and WAR are the best new options, that's a pretty low bar to get over. 

[LC]

I've been messing around with Mortal Online for the last few days. It might not be as terrible as I once thought. Especially when you compare it to darkfail.

[Malakili]

I've been messing around with Mortal Online for the last few days. It might not be as terrible as I once thought. Especially when you compare it to darkfail.

I actually think Darkfall was pretty close to being a solid game, but it was doomed from the start more by the PR than anything in my opinion.   Years of being labeled vaporware and forumfall basically meant that it was not going anywhere.  I did play for a month, and think it was worth the money just to have tried it.   There were a lot of things I'd like to see in a more polished game.

Also, I didn't realize it was doing so badly lately, I follow Syncaine's blog, and he sings the praises of the game non stop. (syncaine.wordpress.com).   Oh well.

[LC]

I'm pretty sure the server peaks at about 500 users during prime time.

[Grimwell]

PVP MMO's have all been doomed from inception to date.

They are either made in the West by a small studio that is doing it for the first time (and doomed to make many game killing mistakes) or they are made in the East and don't offer true free for all PVP (and have that nasty cash shop where you can pay to win).

I'm absolutely certain that there are a solid 100K people in the West who would gladly pick up a sub to a PVP MMO if it actually launched as well as the average PVE MMO does these days. The problem is that the big studios consider 100K to be unattractive (despite being very real even for many PVE games), and the small studios tend to fuck it up royally before they can launch and recoup their investment.

[jakonovski]

I'd go for one where the controls aren't like a drunk Luke Skywalker with a blind helmet. 

[Stabs]

PVP MMO's have all been doomed from inception to date.

Is Eve not a pvp mmo?

I realise that there's more to Eve than just shooting other players but it seems to me that everything in the game leads up to pvp. Mining, day trading, manufacturing, mission grinding it's all ultimately so you can one day jump in your big ship of doom and own everyone. Also all of those except station trading are designed to allow wolves occasional access to the sheep. Someone who runs high sec missions for years in a super-expensive ship will one day lose it to chortling suicide gankers.

[Mrbloodworth]

PVP MMO's have all been doomed from inception to date.

Is Eve not a pvp mmo?

I realise that there's more to Eve than just shooting other players but it seems to me that everything in the game leads up to pvp. Mining, day trading, manufacturing, mission grinding it's all ultimately so you can one day jump in your big ship of doom and own everyone. Also all of those except station trading are designed to allow wolves occasional access to the sheep. Someone who runs high sec missions for years in a super-expensive ship will one day lose it to chortling suicide gankers.

Eve had to climb out of the pit to become what it is today, its an exception, not a rule. Eve very much in its youth was proving his statement. I would go so far as to say its larva stage was longer than most, if not the longest.

[Shatter]

I'm sure they've more than recouped their investment.

Dunno, it took them what 8 years to even launch the game?   Granted they were smaller but I dont think their "sales" were all that great...ever.  I think its pretty safe to say that Darkfall hasnt turned into a Goldmine

[Grimwell]

I'm going to have to grant that EVE has evolved into the exception, but as bloodworth notes, it had to fight to get there. Plus it has 0.5 space where you can (in theory) hide from the pirates and enjoy NPC protections.

I've yet to see free for all PVP done well, on purpose, and in a profitable manner out the gates by any company. EVE is mostly a PVP mmo and the best case to reference. A damn good one really.

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm going to have to grant that EVE has evolved into the exception, but as bloodworth notes, it had to fight to get there. Plus it has 0.5 space where you can (in theory) hide from the pirates and enjoy NPC protections.

I've yet to see free for all PVP done well, on purpose, and in a profitable manner out the gates by any company. EVE is mostly a PVP mmo and the best case to reference. A damn good one really.

Having said that, hows planetside two coming :)

[eldaec]

If you count EVE then you have to count UO since EVE might as well be UO2.

Also Guild Wars called to ask why you never join the weekly poker game with countless Korean mmogs; and I ran into DAOC last week, she sends her regards and was asking if you are still in touch with PS.

[Mrbloodworth]

What? No.

[Grimwell]

I can't comment on the next Planetside. I have no inside information and know as much as you.

Guild Wars (which I'm playing with my kids right now) has that entire PVE campaign that you can play eldaec, it has a PVP component, but is not a PVP game in it's entirety. It's a damn good game though. Dark Ages of Camelot? Also, since when when was Korea not in the East?

I see you trying to find examples that fit my unfilled requirements, but missing by a long shot. Let me be more specific about the keystones required for the game to fit my personal definition. (Yes, your definition(s) may differ, I don't care. )

Free For All PVP: There are no safe zones. There are no enforced zones. Every digital inch of your game's landscape is accessible by all other players, and they can kill you without a systemic penalty or the cyber-enforcement-drones attacking. No safety nets. No level restrictions on who you can fight and kill. Nada. Yes, this is hardcore. Yes, this is what the 100K people I feel are out there waiting for a true PVP game are looking for.

Nobody has been able to simultaneously attempt to deliver the hardcore PVP MMO and actual quality at launch. Either the quality is shit and the game is hardcore, or the quality is high and the game is blended PVP with something softer and more gentle in order to try for the "millions" of people out there who are not playing WoW and are ready for something else. (Yes, I can't find them either).

Asian MMO's, to my experience, make PVP formalized. Arenas, or declared guild/nation/town battles that happen on a timer. They are not free for all. I have tried dozens of them. Eve, Guild Wars, UO, and DAOC all offer some form of safe zone where you either can't kill at all, or you are punished by the system (guards, enforcers, etc.) severely.

Bloodworth's Wurm Online might have the definition fit, on the normal servers, but it didn't run on my PC so I can't tell you yet. I'll try on the next one (soon!). It's not going to pull in the 100K folks though. Too late.

I'm not trying to be an Internet jerk, but these examples don't fit the definition that the hardcore folks are looking for. They fit other definitions - all valid ones - but not the hardcore.


Wow, I just did it in one point.

[KallDrexx]

Free For All PVP: There are no safe zones. There are no enforced zones. Every digital inch of your game's landscape is accessible by all other players, and they can kill you without a systemic penalty or the cyber-enforcement-drones attacking. No safety nets. No level restrictions on who you can fight and kill. Nada. Yes, this is hardcore. Yes, this is what the 100K people I feel are out there waiting for a true PVP game are looking for.

That counts out games like Shadowbane as well though.  Having zero safe zones is bad.  You need a minimal number of safe zones to at least help tackle newbie griefing issue readily apparent in these type of games. 

[RhyssaFireheart]

Free For All PVP: There are no safe zones. There are no enforced zones. Every digital inch of your game's landscape is accessible by all other players, and they can kill you without a systemic penalty or the cyber-enforcement-drones attacking. No safety nets. No level restrictions on who you can fight and kill. Nada. Yes, this is hardcore. Yes, this is what the 100K people I feel are out there waiting for a true PVP game are looking for.

That counts out games like Shadowbane as well though.  Having zero safe zones is bad.  You need a minimal number of safe zones to at least help tackle newbie griefing issue readily apparent in these type of games. 

And yet starting in AC1-Darktide server was possible and the server had a healthy population for a long while.  No safe zones, but you did have a short period of immunity immediately after death from all attacks.  It worked.  One huge seamless world where you could explore and hide out if you found that secret lifestone on some distant beach that took you multiple deaths to run to.

Maybe it's just nostalgia on my part, but nothing has really come close to the experience of playing AC1-DT back when I started.  Sure other games have had PvP and some aspects of it were really good, but for overall experience I've not had anything that gave the same sense of exploration, danger and fights that game did.

[Mrbloodworth]

I can't comment on the next Planetside. I have no inside information and know as much as you.

I was just taking the opportunity.  

As far as Wurm, yes. The wild server fits your definition, however its hard to compare to other games, as our combat system is more of a slow graphical MUD where occasionally the avatar moves and ofcourse we use a damage system much more something from Whitewolf than traditional RPGs. I can add to that though, our PvE server is much more popular and our greatest strength is the terraforming and crafting, our combat is barely a draw for a number of reasons, mostly visuals and feedback.

[KallDrexx]

And yet starting in AC1-Darktide server was possible and the server had a healthy population for a long while.  No safe zones, but you did have a short period of immunity immediately after death from all attacks.  It worked.  One huge seamless world where you could explore and hide out if you found that secret lifestone on some distant beach that took you multiple deaths to run to.

Maybe it's just nostalgia on my part, but nothing has really come close to the experience of playing AC1-DT back when I started.  Sure other games have had PvP and some aspects of it were really good, but for overall experience I've not had anything that gave the same sense of exploration, danger and fights that game did.

I'd argue though that what works then doesn't work now.  You did not have nearly as many PvP games then, so if you wanted any PvP your options were pretty limited.  I would also argue that people are much more finicky about game experiences now and people were much more hardcore then. 

Obviously you have to be hardcore to play a pure PvP FFA game, however I think that you have to be able to show enough of the game to players to make them want to leave their current game and become hardcore in your game.

[AmericanMcGeesBambi]

One thing to remember is that AC1 didn't launch with a general chat channel.  Smack talk was primarily on the forums rather than in-game.  In modern MMOs, if you're anywhere other than at the top of the 'haves', it's hammered home to you that you're in essence a 'have not'.

For open PvP, the world has to be big enough to accommodate many smaller groups at least feeling like a 'have' in their little corner of the world.  From what I understand, Darkfall has gone in the opposite direction since release; the mechanics have enabled more and more of the server controlled by fewer and fewer people, and the world's gotten smaller such that everyone and their mother shows up within 5 minutes whenever there's a battle.  (One other lesson from early AC1 PvP was that all control was 'soft', i.e. the only territorial control was simply you killing the other guy if he wanted to use the resources of 'your' town.  Such a system is much more porous than Darkfall's 'hard control', and makes defeat feel far less final and crushing.)

[Mrbloodworth]

I don't want to go about speaking crazy talk.

But the games current population issues were predicted..... in 1995. They player base they cater to, will leave if you finally: balance the game, fix exploits and smooth out wonky features. Not to mention, if there are no sheep.......They are off to the next promised land of the most hard core, core of hardcoreness game. (AKA, the next big buggy exploitable game). That's not to say they won't have a part of the population left that isn't like that, but its going to be TINY in comparison, some people do want a polished hardcore game, nothing wrong with that, its just not marketable.

[AmericanMcGeesBambi]

Blood, that debate is essentially the longest back-and-forth ever.

"Wolves just want sheep and they'll leave if there aren't any sheep."

"....No?"

"Yes, you do!"

and so on, and so forth.

From what I can see, there are specific reasons -- related to game mechanics and polish -- that have driven people away from Darkfall.  Not simply a 'lack of sheep'.  Hell, there's a whole new player guild in-game, but from what I'm reading they don't get griefed very much.

[Grimwell]

If games didn't allow wolves to exist, the wolves vs. sheep problem wouldn't be there.

The Darktide server for Asheron's Call was perfect from the Free For All perspective, but it was a beautiful accident. Turbine built a PVE game (that was damn good in it's day and still under respected) and opened up a PVP server with a hands off approach. It worked well, but had two core problems (that are not PVE problems IMO).

1. Levels = Power
2. Time = Levels

In PVE, no matter what the jealous types say, power imbalance through levels is meaningless. Some dude being 90 levels above you and 90X more powerful is irrelevant in most cases.

In PVP, it's the death of a game. You either get in early, get in with a power group, or you feed corpses to those who did. That's a problem.

It's easy to solve. Move advancement off the character and onto something the player can impact. From what little I read about Love, it's got an idea that could apply, but I need to play it a little later this week and see if that holds true.

Guild Wars has hints of it. More levels equate to more and better choices, but not a huge imbalance of power... so I do think people have touched on the needs... but nobody has addressed them perfectly or in a pure PVP environment. I just checked my lottery ticket, it says I won't either anytime soon. :)

[AmericanMcGeesBambi]

At least from what I remember of Darktide, the nice thing was that time didn't just = levels.... friends (powerful friends, at least) = levels too, thanks to rapid twinking.  So the new players who made friends and didn't scream obscenities at your mother every time you one-shotted them quickly made higher-level friends who in turn helped them level up quickly.

On a related note, I still wish someone less niche than Turbine would steal AC's allegiance system.  It's a fucking beauty.

[Arthur_Parker]

The Darktide server for Asheron's Call was perfect from the Free For All perspective, but it was a beautiful accident. Turbine built a PVE game (that was damn good in it's day and still under respected) and opened up a PVP server with a hands off approach. It worked well, but had two core problems (that are not PVE problems IMO).

1. Levels = Power
2. Time = Levels

I believe that AC1 was originally designed for all servers to be like Darktide, the change to make all the servers but one PVE (PVP opt in) came later, possibly during beta I don't remember.

It's also worth remembering that levels in AC1 were not like normally levels, as with skills it was all done on a bell curve.  So it was very possible to kill well over your level, I remember killing a level 42 & a level 57 during a lucky couple of days while being about level 28.

The total lack of protection for newbies at birth on Darktide was a mistake, it caused a lot of bad feeling in the player base, quite often when other servers were down, people would try Darktide out.  Despite that terrible flaw, I believe the server steadily increased in population for the first few years.

[Arthur_Parker]

On a related note, I still wish someone less niche than Turbine would steal AC's allegiance system.  It's a fucking beauty.

It made a bad situation worse once people figured out how to game it.  Open pvp already encourages large clans, the allegiance system really screwed up the smaller clans.

[IainC]

Blood, that debate is essentially the longest back-and-forth ever.

"Wolves just want sheep and they'll leave if there aren't any sheep."

"....No?"

"Yes, you do!"

and so on, and so forth.

From what I can see, there are specific reasons -- related to game mechanics and polish -- that have driven people away from Darkfall.  Not simply a 'lack of sheep'.  Hell, there's a whole new player guild in-game, but from what I'm reading they don't get griefed very much.

Hardcore PvP games are all about wolves and the harsh reality is that most people who think they're a wolf simply aren't. They're just meaner sheep. So the wolves eat the sheep and the sheep quit because being a sheep in a world full of wolves is no fun. Now the weakest wolves become sheep and they get to find out why the last lot of sheep quit. The bar to being a wolf raises all the time, everyone becomes a sheep eventually it's just a matter of where on the food-chain you are. Finally you're left with an ultra-hardcore of wolves who are bitching that there are no sheep to eat.

Hi2u Camlann.

[AmericanMcGeesBambi]

Hardcore PvP games are all about wolves and the harsh reality is that most people who think they're a wolf simply aren't. They're just meaner sheep. So the wolves eat the sheep and the sheep quit because being a sheep in a world full of wolves is no fun. Now the weakest wolves become sheep and they get to find out why the last lot of sheep quit. The bar to being a wolf raises all the time, everyone becomes a sheep eventually it's just a matter of where on the food-chain you are. Finally you're left with an ultra-hardcore of wolves who are bitching that there are no sheep to eat.

Hi2u Camlann.

To be fair, you're analogizing to DAoC now.  In terms of supporting open-world PvP, DAoC and AC1 couldn't possibly be more different (ironically, this happened pretty much solely by accident).

Tons of crowd control vs no crowd control
Tiny world with few bind points vs Huge world with an insane number of out-of-the-way bind points
Level makes a huge difference vs level makes much less of a difference
WoW level of player skill required vs Something approaching CounterStrike levels of player skill required (In AC1, if you step out of the path of an arrow, it simply doesn't hit you, no dice rolls there.)
Uber-gear is more important vs uber-gear is less important
Retreating runners are almost always caught and killed vs Retreating runners almost always get away
Class-based, rock paper scissors system vs Class-less, amorphous system without nukers or healers


All of these things really matter, and they make a huge difference for the ability of people who aren't top-tier wolves to find a place in your open-PvP world.

You weren't still at Mythic when WAR was in development by any chance, were you?

[Grimwell]

I believe that AC1 was originally designed for all servers to be like Darktide, the change to make all the servers but one PVE (PVP opt in) came later, possibly during beta I don't remember.

I remember the beta being PVE only until one of the very last weeks when they opened Beta Server Red which was the precursor to Darktide.

:)