Darkfall "Released"

[sinij]

 

[WindupAtheist]

Where have I heard this before?

"Man remember how great early UO EQ was and how everyone played it? People getting ganked whenever they left town camping mobs for three days at a time and shit like that? Sure it seems punitive, but that sort of stuff made the world more meaningful! Man I bet lots of people would still be into that now! Shadowbane Darkfall Vanguard could have been it, but the game was a poorly-executed shitpile! If it weren't, people would have flocked to it! After all, everyone knows people like challenging PVP PVE!"

 

[sinij]

Open world PvP is not newbie ganking, that just a dumb design decision.
Open world PvP is not camping guard line, that just a dumb design decision.
Open world PvP is not being stuck unable to fight back until you grind it all out, that just a dumb design decision.
Open world PvP is not being unable to rebuilt after you lost your city, that just a dumb design decision.

The only difference between open world PvP and instanced away arenas is the side of the box, it can be 8x10 prison cell or entire world.

[Kageru]

No. The difference is one has some element of control, as in you can expect to face equal numbers and gear in a balanced environment where both sides are ready to fight, and the other encourages asymmetrical warfare (ie. ganking).

The closest to open world PvP in which this is not the case is Eve. But as noticed the cash that keeps it running is primarily the NPC guarded empire. Of course as you noticed the guardlines are always camped with people in experienced ships looking to gank newbies.

[UnSub]

"People getting ganked whenever they left town camping mobs for three days at a time and shit like that? Sure it seems punitive, but that sort of stuff made the world more meaningful! Man I bet lots of people would still be into that now!

The exact line used in these arguments is that all that enforced down-time / waiting "helped bulild player community" because they had nothing to do but chat with each other. Nostalgia is a terrible thing.

[Malakili]

"People getting ganked whenever they left town camping mobs for three days at a time and shit like that? Sure it seems punitive, but that sort of stuff made the world more meaningful! Man I bet lots of people would still be into that now!

The exact line used in these arguments is that all that enforced down-time / waiting "helped bulild player community" because they had nothing to do but chat with each other. Nostalgia is a terrible thing.

The thing is it probably does help build community.  The problem is most people would rather be out killing shit than being forced to build a community.

[Paelos]

The only difference between open world PvP and instanced away arenas is the side of the box, it can be 8x10 prison cell or entire world.

"A handful of men, inured to war, proceed to certain victory, while on the contrary, numerous armies of raw and undisciplined troops are but multitudes of men dragged to the slaughter." - Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus

“No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace or insure it victory in time of war” - Coolidge

"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives." - Abba Eban

[Sheepherder]

If the objective is to create some sort of war metagame then the ideal game would be highly instanced scenario maps with protections against gate camping connected by a strategic map with the scenario rules/conditions/objectives based on the real-time shape of the strategic map.

[sinij]

That would be very unideal, because you completely remove politics as a consideration. I know all of you would rather vilify open PvP games, but layers of complexity that exist in such environment cannot be replicated by forcing players into rigid "ride". While your exposure to SB/EVE/DF might have been limited to getting ganked as a newbie, everyone else was building nations, forging open and secret alliances, spying, paying and securing tributes, cornering markets and using military might to dictate flow of the money.

People ask for open PvP because they want to be engaged in all of the above on top of group PvP, and realizing what they gain in exchange for willingness to tolerate couple fucktards ganking them as a newbies/while farming. You want developers to hold your hand while you go for a ride, we want developers to get out of our way so we can build nations.

[Malakili]

You want developers to hold your hand while you go for a ride, we want developers to get out of our way so we can build nations.

The problem is that "we" (and I'm a part of the we), are not in numbers enough to build nations.  Lets face it, the kind of game we like isn't popular, and the reason is because its brutally unforgiving and incredibly time intensive in nature.  Thats why it isn't a popular rule set.  I can't even play these games anymore because I just don't have the time.   But Darkfall and SWTOR on paper next to each other and I'll tell you I'm excited about Darkfall.  Reality dictates if I want to play one of them, its going to be TOR.

[Amaron]

I have to agree somewhat that many of the flaws with Open World PVP are by simply by design.    There's no reason you can't have the player get an instant heal/cooldown refresh when someone tries to gank you for instance.   Or give you a massive buff that lets you one shot people if a high level tries to gank you.   Designers could even do things like use phasing to hide small groups from zergs.   

Also before some ass does the typical "blah blah that wouldn't work because"  STFU they are examples not attempts at detailed unexploitable systems.   The point is that there are probably ways to make World PVP less about over the top zerging/ganking but nobody even tries.

[Sheepherder]

While your exposure to ...EVE... might have been limited to getting ganked as a newbie, everyone else was building nations, forging open and secret alliances, spying, paying and securing tributes, cornering markets and using military might to dictate flow of the money.

...You want developers to hold your hand while you go for a ride, we want developers to get out of our way so we can build nations.

the ideal game would be highly instanced scenario maps with protections against gate camping connected by a strategic map with the scenario rules/conditions/objectives based on the real-time shape of the strategic map.

 

But hey, that's absolutely nothing like shooting POS's.

[Speedy Cerviche]

The problem is that "we" (and I'm a part of the we), are not in numbers enough to build nations.  Lets face it, the kind of game we like isn't popular, and the reason is because its brutally unforgiving and incredibly time intensive in nature.  Thats why it isn't a popular rule set.  I can't even play these games anymore because I just don't have the time.   But Darkfall and SWTOR on paper next to each other and I'll tell you I'm excited about Darkfall.  Reality dictates if I want to play one of them, its going to be TOR.

If Eve has 350,000 subscribers, and only 20% play 0.0 space, Darkfall would be happy as fuck with 50,000-80,000 subs. Darkfall has been cruising with some decent if low pop "nation building" the past 2 tears (probably on average 10-12 competitive alliances).

Just about any current player will will tell you the #1 biggest flaw in DF is the heavy grind, which heavily enhances and prolongs a large "power gap" already created by the game's steep learning curve. Couple this with the fact that newbies have no "high security" areas to shelter in while they learn the game and improve their character's to close this "power gap".

The prospect of a built in 6-12 month serious disadvantage, no matter how skilled, competitive or mentally tough a player is has chased away many players who are DF's target audience, people who can handle being PKd and want to be part of an open sandbox world, the same people who might be playing EVE 0.0 right now.

This is a huge design flaw which has created a low retention rate amongst even hardcore genre fans, and has prevented the post-launch spike sub #s from getting above 10-15k. AV has a shot now to fix this with "DF2.0" relaunch. If it's successful in closing this grind/powergap then we'll see how viable DF can be. Sadly at this point, even as someone who is a fan of the game, I have little faith in AV to execute well.

[Malakili]

The problem is that "we" (and I'm a part of the we), are not in numbers enough to build nations.  Lets face it, the kind of game we like isn't popular, and the reason is because its brutally unforgiving and incredibly time intensive in nature.  Thats why it isn't a popular rule set.  I can't even play these games anymore because I just don't have the time.   But Darkfall and SWTOR on paper next to each other and I'll tell you I'm excited about Darkfall.  Reality dictates if I want to play one of them, its going to be TOR.

If Eve has 350,000 subscribers, and only 20% play 0.0 space, Darkfall would be happy as fuck with 50,000-80,000 subs. Darkfall has been cruising with some decent if low pop "nation building" the past 2 tears (probably on average 10-12 competitive alliances).

Just about any current player will will tell you the #1 biggest flaw in DF is the heavy grind, which heavily enhances and prolongs a large "power gap" already created by the game's steep learning curve. Couple this with the fact that newbies have no "high security" areas to shelter in while they learn the game and improve their character's to close this "power gap".

The prospect of a built in 6-12 month serious disadvantage, no matter how skilled, competitive or mentally tough a player is has chased away many players who are DF's target audience, people who can handle being PKd and want to be part of an open sandbox world, the same people who might be playing EVE 0.0 right now.

This is a huge design flaw which has created a low retention rate amongst even hardcore genre fans, and has prevented the post-launch spike sub #s from getting above 10-15k. AV has a shot now to fix this with "DF2.0" relaunch. If it's successful in closing this grind/powergap then we'll see how viable DF can be. Sadly at this point, even as someone who is a fan of the game, I have little faith in AV to execute well.

Its not just the grind.  The problem is the number of people who can devote enough time to run an online empire is incredibly small.  Sure, not everyone is "running" things that is participating, but its literally a 24/7 committment when you take it seriously.  Thats simultaneously the appeal AND the downside.  Its very hard to enjoy this kind of game, regardless of grind before you get to the "fun" part, playing an hour a day.  At least that has been my experience with them.  For me it ends up being an all or nothing thing, and even though I love the hell out of my video game hobby, given that I have way too much else going on its going to end up nothing: and its going to be that way for a lot of people, even people that love the ruleset.  Thats really my point.  When one of these games ends up allowing for people to play on a realistic schedule while still being awesome, then it has a shot on being more popular.

[Speedy Cerviche]

Well you don't NEED to be the guy running an empire... I'd say only 1% of the players have the ability, the will, and the time to do it, but you don't need too many people like that anyways since they keep organizations of 100s together.

I don't think this is specific to PvP games, I'm sure it takes quite a lot of dedication to keep a raiding WoW guild together and humming, or a league in a RTS game. Hell step outside of video games even, organizing people is HARD, I captain an ice hockey team in a private league and it's a fucking scramble every week to make sure I have 10 decent skaters + goalie, always some issues especially during the summer with people taking vacations. From someone who runs a bird watching club to a factory foreman, always some pain in the ass throwing a wrench at you I'm sure.

[Malakili]

Well you don't NEED to be the guy running an empire... I'd say only 1% of the players have the ability, the will, and the time to do it, but you don't need too many people like that anyways since they keep organizations of 100s together.

I don't think this is specific to PvP games, I'm sure it takes quite a lot of dedication to keep a raiding WoW guild together and humming, or a league in a RTS game. Hell step outside of video games even, organizing people is HARD, I captain an ice hockey team in a private league and it's a fucking scramble every week to make sure I have 10 decent skaters + goalie, always some issues especially during the summer with people taking vacations. From someone who runs a bird watching club to a factory foreman, always some pain in the ass throwing a wrench at you I'm sure.

You're missing the point.  Even for the people not running things its an enormous time commitment in this kind of game.  If a hockey league you're still only probably obligated to show up for a game a week or something like that.  When I was playing EVE it was practically like being a doctor on call - hey, shits going down, log in!  And I was not in the leadership of that corp at all.  Thats the problem.  No one would play hockey either if their coach/captain whatever would call up at any time of day and say I need you to drive to the rink RIGHT NOW.

[Ashamanchill]

Pffft. Someones not Canadian.

[Speedy Cerviche]

You're missing the point.  Even for the people not running things its an enormous time commitment in this kind of game.  If a hockey league you're still only probably obligated to show up for a game a week or something like that.  When I was playing EVE it was practically like being a doctor on call - hey, shits going down, log in!  And I was not in the leadership of that corp at all.  Thats the problem.  No one would play hockey either if their coach/captain whatever would call up at any time of day and say I need you to drive to the rink RIGHT NOW.

Darkfall isn't that bad with middle of night texts unless you are with a very hardcore clan that demands that for some reason. The only real all hands on deck situation is a siege and you have 24 hours notice. My alliance is somewhere between 3rd to 5th most powerful on NA server and operate a pretty tight ship, but we don't do anything like that. Senior guys in my alliance routinely can't make sieges due to IRL priorities and nobody cares. I don't really think even the top dogs do. Maybe we just have a good organization so others can step in. I guess if our capital was sieged it would be a bigger deal but nobody is going to re-arrange their life around a periphery holding or support siege. Sounds like EvE is much more serious internet business than Darkfall. I wonder why DF is always mocked for being so hardcore?

And yes I am often calling people up at last minute to come play hockey because someone else dropped out.

[Kageru]

You're missing the point.  Even for the people not running things its an enormous time commitment in this kind of game.  If a hockey league you're still only probably obligated to show up for a game a week or something like that.  When I was playing EVE it was practically like being a doctor on call - hey, shits going down, log in!  And I was not in the leadership of that corp at all.  Thats the problem.  No one would play hockey either if their coach/captain whatever would call up at any time of day and say I need you to drive to the rink RIGHT NOW.

It's not just the time commitment it's also that other people determine your game-time. If you log in when nothing is happening the game can be extremely boring (especially if it has no PvE content at all). If you don't log in when others are attacking then you can't afford to get involved in the conquest part of the game. And you can see this dynamic even with very small and simple instances like the castles and armies web games. Whereas an instanced game like TF2 or Tanks you can play at your convenience and reliably find people to shoot.

I also think the grind is almost required. Your long term player-base are those willing to invest massive energy to gain advantage. And that needs a long progression whether it be 2 years to a super-capital in Eve or many months of tedious grinding in something else. Of course that means that it is inherently newbie unfriendly and destined to be niche.

If someone can find a way to make the game-play reliably engaging and at the players convenience, while solving the problem of over-powered veterans and zergs, it will be a very impressive feat.

[Malakili]

You're missing the point.  Even for the people not running things its an enormous time commitment in this kind of game.  If a hockey league you're still only probably obligated to show up for a game a week or something like that.  When I was playing EVE it was practically like being a doctor on call - hey, shits going down, log in!  And I was not in the leadership of that corp at all.  Thats the problem.  No one would play hockey either if their coach/captain whatever would call up at any time of day and say I need you to drive to the rink RIGHT NOW.

It's not just the time commitment it's also that other people determine your game-time. If you log in when nothing is happening the game can be extremely boring (especially if it has no PvE content at all). If you don't log in when others are attacking then you can't afford to get involved in the conquest part of the game. And you can see this dynamic even with very small and simple instances like the castles and armies web games. Whereas an instanced game like TF2 or Tanks you can play at your convenience and reliably find people to shoot.

I also think the grind is almost required. Your long term player-base are those willing to invest massive energy to gain advantage. And that needs a long progression whether it be 2 years to a super-capital in Eve or many months of tedious grinding in something else. Of course that means that it is inherently newbie unfriendly and destined to be niche.

If someone can find a way to make the game-play reliably engaging and at the players convenience, while solving the problem of over-powered veterans and zergs, it will be a very impressive feat.

I think the answer is just stripping a PvP MMO of RPG mechanics, or having an extremely extremely low power curve mechanically speaking.  On the other hand, give the mechanics an high skill ceiling to allow veterans to improve their skill personally.  In terms of normal shooters for example, I can be a total newb, but there isn't a grind in front of me, and a week or so of playing every day and I can at least compete reasonable (of course bringing to the table person skill I've already acquired in other shooters, and learning to apply it to the new game). 

I'm hoping Planetside 2 manages to hit a least a reasonable middle ground.  There are going to be tons of skills from the sound of it, with long progressions, but if its done right, newbies will still be able to have fun and be useful, while vets will have their 1% increased efficiency when doing barrel rolls as a pilot to shoot for.

[sinij]

I think key to "nation building" is to have low personal power curve, that is you can become competent grunt in no time, and have great deal of power come from your gear.... BUT!!... have game designed around full loot, and have your "nation" provide you with loot. This way you can get into PvP easily, you do only as well as your nation, but everyone can bring out "big deal" armor for important occasions.

DF has loot system figured out, they don't have crafting/gathering working well. Making Infernal should be about controlling mines (instead of pointless village control points) and owning cities capable of producing it, then everyone belonging to such should be able to roll in infernal.

[Kageru]

That sounds a bit like super-caps in Eve, which isn't working out so well.

Frankly I think the answer is to consider PvP at best a side-show in MMO's. The core mechanic of an MMO is the persistent growth of a character over time. Yet PvP is at its best when both sides a relatively equal (numbers, gear, environment) and skill determines the winner (with ranking systems to allow noobies and bads to still get appropriate competition).

Too much MMO PvP ends up in a situation where the outcome of the conflict was decided long before engagement and the loser probably had zero chance of competing. Add in personal loss where they go backwards in power and a lot of people will move on to something that more reliably provides the fun. Of course the biggest defenders are precisely those who adore this imbalance providing they are on the winning side.

[Malakili]

That sounds a bit like super-caps in Eve, which isn't working out so well.

Frankly I think the answer is to consider PvP at best a side-show in MMO's. The core mechanic of an MMO is the persistent growth of a character over time. Yet PvP is at its best when both sides a relatively equal (numbers, gear, environment) and skill determines the winner (with ranking systems to allow noobies and bads to still get appropriate competition).

Too much MMO PvP ends up in a situation where the outcome of the conflict was decided long before engagement and the loser probably had zero chance of competing. Add in personal loss where they go backwards in power and a lot of people will move on to something that more reliably provides the fun. Of course the biggest defenders are precisely those who adore this imbalance providing they are on the winning side.

The core mechanic of RPGs is persistent growth of a character over time.  There is no reason an MMO has to be an RPG.  Unfortunately, even things like Planetside 2 and End of Nations (MMOFPS and MMORTS), seem agree with you instead of me and are insisting on putting character progression in their games.  As I said earlier, I hope its incredibly limited in both cases.  MMO should refer to the world not the character.  So, I think PvP is only really a problem in MMORPGs, in principle at least.  But maybe people really do want that carrot to chase badly enough that the character progression is needed in all cases to keep people playing.  Again as I said earlier, personal skill progression is enough to keep me playing a PvP game.

[Speedy Cerviche]

Unfortunately the ever more popular cash stores are only going to accelerate this trend. When a company depends on character upgrade transactions to get revenue, they're going to be awfully tempted to juice design and progression towards encouraging use of cash store upgrades.

A huge downside to this payment model IMO, and why I hope games like PS2 will stick with a subscription so they can focus design on making well balanced gameplay to attract customers, not bending gameplay so that it requires steady visits to game store.

Malakill, unfortunately the gameplay you are looking for is HARD to create. It requires sophisticated resource/economic systems, solid PvE challenges (well designed areas + solid AI), and other dynamic point of interest generation systems. These are all things that Darkfall lacks right now, because AV has been too incompetent to add them (as with many other games). Supposedly a lot of this is coming in DF2.0...but who knows? For MMO devs it's a lot easier to create content by extending the grind to give our inner achiever something to shoot for, then to come up with well engaging dynamic content.

[WayAbvPar]

http://darkfallonline.com/uw/

If they do a full wipe I might consider it.

[Scold]

Two months ago they implemented a 20x increase in skill gain speed and a 4x increase in loot quality until the release of Unholy Wars. That, plus the fact that the skill trees are all different and the game takes place hundreds of years after the current game, screams "wipe" to me.

A lot of people I know are excited for this.

[LC]

How did they manage to make the graphics look even worse than before? I can't wait until their "publisher" says that everyone has to purchase the game again.

[Scold]

How did they manage to make the graphics look even worse than before? I can't wait until their "publisher" says that everyone has to purchase the game again.

It's functionally a new game, and they've been basically giving away the current game, so I'm not sure why anyone wouldn't expect to have to buy a box/CD key for the new game.

[Stormwaltz]

Because we gamers are an entitled, querulous lot?

[LC]

It's functionally a new game, and they've been basically giving away the current game, so I'm not sure why anyone wouldn't expect to have to buy a box/CD key for the new game.

I don't buy that at all. Same old game, just a different day. Holding back most of the the updates for 2-3 years does not make it a new game.

[tmp]

For a game which tries to sell itself as "PvP MMORPG with full loot" these screenshots on the official page have way too much PvE and not enough teabagging.

[Speedy Cerviche]

I dunno what to think really. I played DF for a solid year and a half and quit when I got sick of the lying Greek devs and lack of content updates.

It was still a decent game, great PVP combat but lacking content & population, terrible UI, and not much to do besides fight and grind gear but because of lack of updates and it was very newbie unfriendly (very steep learning curve while facing a long tough grind) the population was in a long term decline.

This "Darkfall 2.0" is really all the content they never patched for the last 2.5 years, that they saved up instead for a re-release (while charging people a subscription), actually it's really even the content that shoulda been put in place by end of beta, cuz it woulda made Darkfall a polished game at release, so I am still not very happy with the devs. There are also other issues with DF2.0 that supposedly for something being released in 2 months there are basically no gameplay videos and no word of any kind of player testing going on which is quite odd. So overall I am pretty skeptical.

That said they've promised a lot of stuff that would make Darkfall overall a much better game. Complete combat rebalance to add more specialization which will also cut down the grind (currently you basically need to know all magic schools). Gear/magic rebalance, also adding momentum so combat will be less spazmatic, and also changes to fall damage so you can no longer "ski" across map at like 100km/h which created tedious hit&run&chase gameplay. New UI, lighting, sound systems, new models, animations & textures, etc. All should make the game more appealling too.

So I dunno, a lot they need to address still, like a complete feature change list, show some real gameplay videos (seriously how hard is it for a dev to run playclaw for a min and then post it?) also pricing, are they gonna try and charge me 50$ for the client again to try this "new" game out?

After 3 years of lies and the somewhat underhanded practice of charging people subscriptions while not updating game content and constantly lying to their players, I'm not exactly enthusiastic to play DF again, BUT I would definitely recommend trying it to anyone who hasn't.

[Scold]

For $50, if I get maybe 20 hours of entertainment out of it I'll consider it money well spent. There aren't enough people trying to make interesting MMOs anymore, I'd happily pay $20-$40 a month for a subscription to someone that did.

[Mrbloodworth]

Is there a demo?

[Speedy Cerviche]

No, there isn't even a decent gameplay trailer which is pretty suspicious but some people on DFO forums are saying they did same kind of nothing before original Darkfall release so knows...