Oh come on, get real. How can you extrapolate gameplay in a game that NO ONE has played yet?
I am really tired of challenged people who are so enamored with a game they make stupid statements that they cannot in anyway support.
If you want to post on this forum, lets get the facts straight. While Darkfall might be a great a game when released, at this point in time, no one besides the devs know anything about gameplay, features or content. Until such time as there is an open beta when we can talk about actual gameplay I will pointing fingers, with intense ridicule I might add, at those posters posting nonsense.
This thread is full of nonsensical posters. Get real, since no one has any experience with the game yet, lets keep the discussion to what we hope is included, not try to mix fact and fiction.
Some deluded poster on here tried to tell us the game is feature complete. If you want to troll with such absurd information fine, but be prepared to be labeled as such.
Oh come on, get real. How can you extrapolate gameplay in a game that NO ONE has played yet? I am really tired of challenged people who are so enamored with a game they make stupid statements that they cannot in anyway support. If you want to post on this forum, lets get the facts straight. While Darkfall might be a great a game when released, at this point in time, no one besides the devs know anything about gameplay, features or content. Until such time as there is an open beta when we can talk about actual gameplay I will pointing fingers, with intense ridicule I might add, at those posters posting nonsense. This thread is full of nonsensical posters. Get real, since no one has any experience with the game yet, lets keep the discussion to what we hope is included, not try to mix fact and fiction. Some deluded poster on here tried to tell us the game is feature complete. If you want to troll with such absurd information fine, but be prepared to be labeled as such.
Can we know for sure that it's feature complete?
No.
But the features shown in the video line up exactly with a good deal of the features they have talked about, and there are 17 minutes of gameplay video to extrapolate from.
Have the devs said (months and months ago) that it was feature complete and that testing/publishing was all that's left?
Yes.
Why would they say that? WAR doesn't claim to be feature complete; it's nixed 4 of the 6 starting cities. Yes, aventurine could be lying, but quoting them as stating that in response to people claiming that it won't start with all its features simply means that person believes the devs (which may be foolish). It isn't wild extrapolation JUST from the video.
Come on Jack, you are exactly what I am talking about here.
You know exactly zip about the game except one video. It is extremely easy to fake a video. I could make a video with existing technology to make the game seem awesome yet never even play a second on the actual engine.
I am talking facts here, and not one of you have offered even one iota of such, because they can't.
I am first of the list of people who want this game to succeed because it has a feature set I actually like, but I am not going to make ludicrous assumptions based on only a video supplied by the devs.
Come on Jack, you are exactly what I am talking about here. You know exactly zip about the game except one video. It is extremely easy to fake a video. I could make a video with existing technology to make the game seem awesome yet never even play a second on the actual engine. I am talking facts here, and not one of you have offered even one iota of such, because they can't. I am first of the list of people who want this game to succeed because it has a feature set I actually like, but I am not going to make ludicrous assumptions based on only a video supplied by the devs. So all I can say to you Jack is troll much?
Please read the last portion of my post. I admit that i do not KNOW and I actually agree with you to some extent. However, when someone says that it won't start with all its features and my response is "the devs have stated x" that signifies that I believe that the devs are stating facts. Between that and 17 minutes of gameplay footage I have faith and when someone says "no way" I say "yes way."
My own personal belief that they are stating facts, btw, is due to the fact that I know their former warcry contact (not overly well, but well enough). I knew through him when to expect tasos' post of the vid and etc. (I do not claim to know much, but I verified this personally). They've messed up on when they thought they might have beta at times (though you could say that they had beta when they said, it just wasn't open) - but aside from that they've not gone around making outrageous claims.
Meanwhile, no, I don't troll. I'm in a darkfall post defending darkfall and defending the people who defend darkfall by quoting the devs, the quoting of which I think is at least weak indirect evidence (better than no evidence).
Why are people falling for this hype again? AOC, D&L, VG and many others all fell short of expectations and the hype built around them. I'm not falling for this again. Even though I'm one of them, I kinda blame the SWG vets for this since they seem to be so desperate to play a game like Pre-cu as soon as they hear the words sand and box they build up false hope of a glorious game filled with adventure and anything you can think of crafting systems that allow you to build an army of stick figures to fight the forces of evil. Player cities that can buff you to uberness, food items that make you invincible to everything in the game. It's just annoying. The dream is over for all of us, lets let it die, nothing will ever compare.
And DF isnt following the same pattern that hasn't worked over and over. It looks to me like they are trying something brand new with hiring pro testers. And the stress test and flood of beta testers to get bugs they may have missed will be done with this public beta comming up.
DF is following many of the same patterns we've seen over and over.
We've seen secretive development that has shown nothing but videos and lack any solid examples of the press (or public) being allowed to play demos of the game and report on it. We've seen heavy reliance on internal beta testing and conducting short non-internal beta tests . We've seen this before.
To everyone who thinks that interntal beta testers are the equal of a well-run beta test using non-employees you need to ask why developers bother with beta-tests at all?. I mean real beta-tests, not idiotic marketing gimmicks like the Tabula Rasa beta test. A well-run beta test allows people from OUTSIDE the company to hammer a product. That's why REAL software (non-gaming) companies often make their betas available to the public and collect feedback, rather than just relying on internal testing and just throwing out the product out based on that.
Internal testers are always influenced by the company where they work. The only way to get a completely new perspective needed for real testing is to go outside the company. Perhaps Aventurine has found some mercanary beta-testers and kept them seperate enough to accomplish this. Like so many of the features they claim in DF, this would certainly be innovative. I'll certainly be watching to see if they pull it off.
But people need to remember, innovations are full of RISK. And with DF trying so many things that are innovative, people really need to take a realistic look at the risks Aventurine has stacked against themselves.
But this kind of talk clearly isn't something people want to hear, so I'll leave you to wallow in the hype. Either way we'll see who was right in a couple of months.
I think everyone, even the hardcore fanbois, are skeptical of the game. It promsies a lot and certainly has a lot to prove.
But the main problem is people are immeadiatly writing it off and saying not possible or it will never come out. We deserve nothing from DF at this point, and as a result we have reasons to be skeptical. But we cant lose all faith or we will just be an unhappy community.
We will have a chance to play the game before we spend a dime. I think everyone needs to relax and wait for beta to come out and get some fan reactions and eventually everyone will get to play to make the call themselves.
So there really is not a chance to see another AoC where it gets hyped up beyond belief, they give you pretty benefits for preordering and ordering CE boxes, but then you find out that they lied to you about features. DF has even stated that it wont be offering preorders.
"The monsters are tough. I was looking for a challenge, but these things are just too damn smart." -DF Beta Tester
"If people were dismissing it, then they wouldn't be talking about it. The well-meaning gamers root for efforts that try to raise the bar. So who's left? It's so easy being a skeptic." -Tasos
You do realize that the videos quality wasn't that great so that they could show you a ton of gameplay without having the video load stall every few seconds.
LOL what the hell are you talking about?
I am talking about the video quality of the video. The quality of the video itself is low.
You know why it's low quality? Because it's an old outdated engine. That is as good as you are ever going to see this game look. unfortunately.
now compare what mmorpg;s coming out in 2009 look like.
I'm going to try to explain it to you one last time...
When you make a video you have an option to compress the video down to a smaller size (both in picture size and in byte size) This video looks like it has a lot of video compression. It is a 17 minute long video if they were to show it to you in all it's glory MMORPG.com would probably refuse to post a monsterous file like that.
Did you ever wonder why youtube videos are not the same quality as when you see them on TV? Same reason.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
you haven't changed my original point: AoC is based on a 8 year-old engine, and that it's possible to continually update a graphics engine -- it's age makes little difference if the code is well-written.
Your fanboy tail is sticking out of your pants. Hurry shove it back in!!!!
What the hell exactly is your POINT? That an engine CAN be upgraded? Ya sure it can. so what? Darkfall engine ISN"T and won't be anytime soon , if ever. It's an old outdated engine. Will it be updated sometime in the god knows when future? Who knows?? Who cares. This isn't the future. They have what they have right now and will be judged on that...
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Elite Member
Joined: 4/19/06
Posts: 463
Originally posted by Wickersham
I'm going to try to explain it to you one last time...
When you make a video you have an option to compress the video down to a smaller size (both in picture size and in byte size) This video looks like it has a lot of video compression. It is a 17 minute long video if they were to show it to you in all it's glory MMORPG.com would probably refuse to post a monsterous file like that. Did you ever wonder why youtube videos are not the same quality as when you see them on TV? Same reason.
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That video has almost no loss in video quality due to compression so your argument is completely void.
That video represents 98%+ of the true visual quality of the game. There's no loss to even speak of there. You would never even notice a difference between the real in-game visual quality and that video.
Let's see, he's talking to someone who thinks that once graphics are one way they're that way forever. Just look at EvE online and you'll know that he's RIGHT. That's his POINT. Isn't this more powerful when I use CAPITALIZATION?
"That video has almost no loss in compression..."
Wow thank you Jebus for letting us know that. You can walk on water and detect loss of video compression, John forgot to put that in the Bible.
It IS heavily compressed, you can tell when you fullscreen it. That doesn't mean the running animations aren't kinda lame and many other things don't need work, but this thread basically started off with us fanbois giving you those points and raising you that graphics aren't a big deal (again, video done on medium... the devs do not want a bunch of graphics whores coming and playing on their Dells from last year and thinking "man these graphics suck compared to the uber vids" and then leaving, after putting in an extra server to accomodate the graphics whores)... backgrounds? Great looking. Character models? Armor shows glints and shadows, enabling detection from afar or the ability to hide better, just depending.
You need to work on your high and mighty know-everything condescending attitude. Or better yet when DF comes out roll a character on my server.
considering how long they've been working on this , this video is pathetic. 95% of everything that is in this video has already been shown in shorter clips years ago. It's just a longer more drawn out version. It took them 7 years to develop a combat system?? and a generic outdated looking one at that... The only reason I (and many other people) even began following this game 5++ years ago is because of all the amazing features it promised which don't even look to be there.
This video looks like nothing more than Shadowbane version 2.0 complete with crappy graphics and all. This will fail. fail...... fail.
Silly argument, graphics don't make the game. Gameplay and content make a game. The biggest mistake AoC was their client, it was too graphic oriented. You get great vistas with it, yet even a good gaming system is stressed by it.
Darkfall will be fine with the engine that is shown in the videos. If graphics are what gets you to play a game, you are in a small minority. Don't play DF, if it ever comes out. Simple solution.
As to claims that this game can handle large battles, I have big doubts about that, since that is usually more a server limitation than client. Anyone claiming that 200+ battles will have no lag is pretty ignorant of the state of server architecture. Take Eve for an example, the server technology they are using is state of the art and way beyond Darkfall means and they have problems with large battles. There is not a MMO out there that can handle large battles right now and I doubt we will see one in the near future.
Originally posted by OzmodanAs to claims that this game can handle large battles, I have big doubts about that, since that is usually more a server limitation than client. Anyone claiming that 200+ battles will have no lag is pretty ignorant of the state of server architecture. Take Eve for an example, the server technology they are using is state of the art and way beyond Darkfall means and they have problems with large battles. There is not a MMO out there that can handle large battles right now and I doubt we will see one in the near future.
Didn't DAOC have biggish battles (I remember seeing a number of 200v200v200 somewhere). A game can be designed to work fairly well with big battles, though it might mean that you have to make some compromises, if done so from the start.
As to claims that this game can handle large battles, I have big doubts about that, since that is usually more a server limitation than client. Anyone claiming that 200+ battles will have no lag is pretty ignorant of the state of server architecture. Take Eve for an example, the server technology they are using is state of the art and way beyond Darkfall means and they have problems with large battles. There is not a MMO out there that can handle large battles right now and I doubt we will see one in the near future.
Can you link to how the EvE servers are state of the art? And I'm not challenging your claim, but you don't necessarily know that the DF guys haven't been able to execute on a better server system. I worry about it, the same as you, but they claim to have been working on making server technology be able to handle it for the past years (we've heard, for instance, that they have a different server for certain processes enabling a few servers at once to join together and provide a supposed lag-free experience).
you haven't changed my original point: AoC is based on a 8 year-old engine, and that it's possible to continually update a graphics engine -- it's age makes little difference if the code is well-written.
Your fanboy tail is sticking out of your pants. Hurry shove it back in!!!! What the hell exactly is your POINT? That an engine CAN be upgraded? Ya sure it can. so what? Darkfall engine ISN"T and won't be anytime soon , if ever. It's an old outdated engine. Will it be updated sometime in the god knows when future? Who knows?? Who cares. This isn't the future. They have what they have right now and will be judged on that...
In other words, you acknowledge i'm right that AoC's engine is older than DF's. thanks for that.
you haven't changed my original point: AoC is based on a 8 year-old engine, and that it's possible to continually update a graphics engine -- it's age makes little difference if the code is well-written.
Your fanboy tail is sticking out of your pants. Hurry shove it back in!!!!
What the hell exactly is your POINT? That an engine CAN be upgraded? Ya sure it can. so what? Darkfall engine ISN"T and won't be anytime soon , if ever. It's an old outdated engine. Will it be updated sometime in the god knows when future? Who knows?? Who cares. This isn't the future. They have what they have right now and will be judged on that...
In other words, you acknowledge i'm right that AoC's engine is older than DF's. thanks for that.
Irregardless, AoC you can play, DF, you can what, play on the forums?
As to claims that this game can handle large battles, I have big doubts about that, since that is usually more a server limitation than client. Anyone claiming that 200+ battles will have no lag is pretty ignorant of the state of server architecture. Take Eve for an example, the server technology they are using is state of the art and way beyond Darkfall means and they have problems with large battles. There is not a MMO out there that can handle large battles right now and I doubt we will see one in the near future.
Eve uses a largish server cluster, over which the Eve universe is distributed, but their tech is not state of the art, because Eve's zones are only ever handled by a single PC in the cluster. Eve doesn't do dynamic re-distribution of zones. Put another way, Eve zones can be crashed by jumping a whole bunch of ships into a single zone.
Darkfall server tech is more advanced than Eve in this respect, because DF can do dynamic resizing of zone sizes, as well as being distributed over a multi-PC server cluster . In DF, if there are 500 players in a single area and this load is pushing the limit of the current server node, then DF's tech will split that zone into 2 or more smaller zones and re-distribute the players playing in those zones to other PCs in the cluster.
That is DF zones are not fixed size -- the server resizes zones on demand according to number of players in the world and server load. It's not completely revolutionary - approaches like this have been used for many years in scientific research for example, google uses for their search, etc. It is pretty revolutionary however, to apply this tech to an MMO. It's pretty damn impressive actually, and i'm pretty intereted to see how it plays out in the game, both as a gamer and as a 10 year vet of the software industry.
you haven't changed my original point: AoC is based on a 8 year-old engine, and that it's possible to continually update a graphics engine -- it's age makes little difference if the code is well-written.
Your fanboy tail is sticking out of your pants. Hurry shove it back in!!!!
What the hell exactly is your POINT? That an engine CAN be upgraded? Ya sure it can. so what? Darkfall engine ISN"T and won't be anytime soon , if ever. It's an old outdated engine. Will it be updated sometime in the god knows when future? Who knows?? Who cares. This isn't the future. They have what they have right now and will be judged on that...
In other words, you acknowledge i'm right that AoC's engine is older than DF's. thanks for that.
Irregardless, AoC you can play, DF, you can what, play on the forums?
it's totally irrelevant to the point...
...and i've played AoC, and no, i don't think it's playable, lol
you haven't changed my original point: AoC is based on a 8 year-old engine, and that it's possible to continually update a graphics engine -- it's age makes little difference if the code is well-written.
Your fanboy tail is sticking out of your pants. Hurry shove it back in!!!!
What the hell exactly is your POINT? That an engine CAN be upgraded? Ya sure it can. so what? Darkfall engine ISN"T and won't be anytime soon , if ever. It's an old outdated engine. Will it be updated sometime in the god knows when future? Who knows?? Who cares. This isn't the future. They have what they have right now and will be judged on that...
In other words, you acknowledge i'm right that AoC's engine is older than DF's. thanks for that.
Irregardless, AoC you can play, DF, you can what, play on the forums?
it's totally irrelevant to the point...
...and i've played AoC, and no, i don't think it's playable, lol
While I do agree with you about AoC, my point is that you simply cant say Darkfall is this or that, because we dont really know. What we do know is that they have repeatedly postponed launch in lieu of what, a video every 3 years?
Personally if they could stand and deliver, Id throw down 50 bucks in a heartbeat. As to whether or not they can, well thats the question isnt it.
People arent questioning what it will be, theyre questioning what it is.
I agree with you 100%, but we were really talking just about the graphics, and we don't need to play DF to discuss that.
personally i think DF are more than good enough given the breadth of gameplay possible, in some respects DF graphics are outstanding, eg: dynamic shadows, world and environments are great, wind blowing branches of trees is great, sky, clouds, and underwater visuals are all great too.
-------- That video has almost no loss in video quality due to compression so your argument is completely void.
That video represents 98%+ of the true visual quality of the game. There's no loss to even speak of there. You would never even notice a difference between the real in-game visual quality and that video.
Are you honestly saying that the video is not heavily compressed?
It's a gameplay trailer meant to show "GAMEPLAY" Do you know what gameplay means?
Look at how aweful EVEs graphics are i'm surprised any on plays that game:
This thread is a great example of why game companies shouldn't communicate with gamers when the game is being made. Bioware, keep silent about what you are doing until it's in the box.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
"Darkfall server tech is more advanced than Eve in this respect, because DF can do dynamic resizing of zone sizes, as well as being distributed over a multi-PC server cluster"
Sorry, but Eve server technology is so far advanced over anything Adventurine can afford it is not even close and no one even knows what Adventurine is going to use yet. It is just obvious that they won't have the funds to invest in top end server technology like Eve uses.
As to storage, Eve uses Ramsam storage for all databases, I don't know of another MMO that has invested anything close to what CCP has invested in their server farm.
you haven't changed my original point: AoC is based on a 8 year-old engine, and that it's possible to continually update a graphics engine -- it's age makes little difference if the code is well-written.
Your fanboy tail is sticking out of your pants. Hurry shove it back in!!!!
What the hell exactly is your POINT? That an engine CAN be upgraded? Ya sure it can. so what? Darkfall engine ISN"T and won't be anytime soon , if ever. It's an old outdated engine. Will it be updated sometime in the god knows when future? Who knows?? Who cares. This isn't the future. They have what they have right now and will be judged on that...
In other words, you acknowledge i'm right that AoC's engine is older than DF's. thanks for that.
Uhhhhhhh no? You're not right. AoC engine is NOT older than Darkfalls. It's a brand new state of the art engine. Just because it may have been build on the base of an older engine doesn't mean anything, It has to do with what version of DX it supports , what features it supports etc and the Dream World Engine is DX 10 and supports all the latest features.
THAT'S what makes it a brand new engine.
Unreal 3 Engine is also built on the foundation of Unreal 2 etc.. It's still a brand new cutting edge Engine.
"Darkfall server tech is more advanced than Eve in this respect, because DF can do dynamic resizing of zone sizes, as well as being distributed over a multi-PC server cluster" Sorry, but Eve server technology is so far advanced over anything Adventurine can afford it is not even close and no one even knows what Adventurine is going to use yet. It is just obvious that they won't have the funds to invest in top end server technology like Eve uses. As to storage, Eve uses Ramsam storage for all databases, I don't know of another MMO that has invested anything close to what CCP has invested in their server farm. Here is a blurg on Ramsam: http://www.superssd.com/products/ramsan-400/
I'm talking about server tech not server hardware. Darkfall server tech is more advanced than EVE's - i know because i'm a veteran programmer who codes large-scale scientific applications designed for distributed server farms so yeah, i know this stuff inside out because i could code it myself.
DF haven't made any statements about what hardware they'll run, so it's pointless to chest-beat about it. suffice to say SANs are hardly anything to get worked up over. It's worth mentioning that EVE needs to spend more on server hardware because the game is almost entirely implemented in Python, a non-compiled (scripting) language that is slow and requires tons of memory.
So, to recap: Darkfall server tech can resize zones dynamically and redistribute these split zones to other, less-loaded nodes in their cluster. EVE uses fixed-size zones, and zones cannot be split/resized, nor redistributed. This is why EVE zones often crash when too many ships jump into a single zone -- their server tech can't redistribute the load so the node crashes. DF should not suffer from this limitation, making 1000v1000 battles possible on the server side, though it's highly unlikely that clients will be able to draw 2000+ characters at acceptable FPS though (this underscores why DF has gone for simple character model graphics over bling).
Uhhhhhhh no? You're not right. AoC engine is NOT older than Darkfalls. It's a brand new state of the art engine. Just because it may have been build on the base of an older engine doesn't mean anything, It has to do with what version of DX it supports , what features it supports etc and the Dream World Engine is DX 10 and supports all the latest features.
Nope, AoC's engine dates back to 2000. sure, it's had parts of it rewritten, but it's still an old engine. same with Darkfall. it's a common but naive & uninformed mistake to assume old engine equals bad graphics -- it's not that simple.
Also, AoC's support of DX10 is still in development and months away from being live.
Comments
Oh come on, get real. How can you extrapolate gameplay in a game that NO ONE has played yet?
I am really tired of challenged people who are so enamored with a game they make stupid statements that they cannot in anyway support.
If you want to post on this forum, lets get the facts straight. While Darkfall might be a great a game when released, at this point in time, no one besides the devs know anything about gameplay, features or content. Until such time as there is an open beta when we can talk about actual gameplay I will pointing fingers, with intense ridicule I might add, at those posters posting nonsense.
This thread is full of nonsensical posters. Get real, since no one has any experience with the game yet, lets keep the discussion to what we hope is included, not try to mix fact and fiction.
Some deluded poster on here tried to tell us the game is feature complete. If you want to troll with such absurd information fine, but be prepared to be labeled as such.
Can we know for sure that it's feature complete?
No.
But the features shown in the video line up exactly with a good deal of the features they have talked about, and there are 17 minutes of gameplay video to extrapolate from.
Have the devs said (months and months ago) that it was feature complete and that testing/publishing was all that's left?
Yes.
Why would they say that? WAR doesn't claim to be feature complete; it's nixed 4 of the 6 starting cities. Yes, aventurine could be lying, but quoting them as stating that in response to people claiming that it won't start with all its features simply means that person believes the devs (which may be foolish). It isn't wild extrapolation JUST from the video.
However, as you've said, we'll soon see.
Come on Jack, you are exactly what I am talking about here.
You know exactly zip about the game except one video. It is extremely easy to fake a video. I could make a video with existing technology to make the game seem awesome yet never even play a second on the actual engine.
I am talking facts here, and not one of you have offered even one iota of such, because they can't.
I am first of the list of people who want this game to succeed because it has a feature set I actually like, but I am not going to make ludicrous assumptions based on only a video supplied by the devs.
So all I can say to you Jack is troll much?
Please read the last portion of my post. I admit that i do not KNOW and I actually agree with you to some extent. However, when someone says that it won't start with all its features and my response is "the devs have stated x" that signifies that I believe that the devs are stating facts. Between that and 17 minutes of gameplay footage I have faith and when someone says "no way" I say "yes way."
My own personal belief that they are stating facts, btw, is due to the fact that I know their former warcry contact (not overly well, but well enough). I knew through him when to expect tasos' post of the vid and etc. (I do not claim to know much, but I verified this personally). They've messed up on when they thought they might have beta at times (though you could say that they had beta when they said, it just wasn't open) - but aside from that they've not gone around making outrageous claims.
Meanwhile, no, I don't troll. I'm in a darkfall post defending darkfall and defending the people who defend darkfall by quoting the devs, the quoting of which I think is at least weak indirect evidence (better than no evidence).
Why are people falling for this hype again? AOC, D&L, VG and many others all fell short of expectations and the hype built around them. I'm not falling for this again. Even though I'm one of them, I kinda blame the SWG vets for this since they seem to be so desperate to play a game like Pre-cu as soon as they hear the words sand and box they build up false hope of a glorious game filled with adventure and anything you can think of crafting systems that allow you to build an army of stick figures to fight the forces of evil. Player cities that can buff you to uberness, food items that make you invincible to everything in the game. It's just annoying. The dream is over for all of us, lets let it die, nothing will ever compare.
DF is following many of the same patterns we've seen over and over.
We've seen secretive development that has shown nothing but videos and lack any solid examples of the press (or public) being allowed to play demos of the game and report on it. We've seen heavy reliance on internal beta testing and conducting short non-internal beta tests . We've seen this before.
To everyone who thinks that interntal beta testers are the equal of a well-run beta test using non-employees you need to ask why developers bother with beta-tests at all?. I mean real beta-tests, not idiotic marketing gimmicks like the Tabula Rasa beta test. A well-run beta test allows people from OUTSIDE the company to hammer a product. That's why REAL software (non-gaming) companies often make their betas available to the public and collect feedback, rather than just relying on internal testing and just throwing out the product out based on that.
Internal testers are always influenced by the company where they work. The only way to get a completely new perspective needed for real testing is to go outside the company. Perhaps Aventurine has found some mercanary beta-testers and kept them seperate enough to accomplish this. Like so many of the features they claim in DF, this would certainly be innovative. I'll certainly be watching to see if they pull it off.
But people need to remember, innovations are full of RISK. And with DF trying so many things that are innovative, people really need to take a realistic look at the risks Aventurine has stacked against themselves.
But this kind of talk clearly isn't something people want to hear, so I'll leave you to wallow in the hype. Either way we'll see who was right in a couple of months.
Alienovrlord,
I think everyone, even the hardcore fanbois, are skeptical of the game. It promsies a lot and certainly has a lot to prove.
But the main problem is people are immeadiatly writing it off and saying not possible or it will never come out. We deserve nothing from DF at this point, and as a result we have reasons to be skeptical. But we cant lose all faith or we will just be an unhappy community.
We will have a chance to play the game before we spend a dime. I think everyone needs to relax and wait for beta to come out and get some fan reactions and eventually everyone will get to play to make the call themselves.
So there really is not a chance to see another AoC where it gets hyped up beyond belief, they give you pretty benefits for preordering and ordering CE boxes, but then you find out that they lied to you about features. DF has even stated that it wont be offering preorders.
~~
Darkfall Releases on: February 25th, 2009
Darkfall Recap of everything that has happened the last 3 months: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/213296
"The monsters are tough. I was looking for a challenge, but these things are just too damn smart." -DF Beta Tester
"If people were dismissing it, then they wouldn't be talking about it. The well-meaning gamers root for efforts that try to raise the bar. So who's left? It's so easy being a skeptic." -Tasos
LOL what the hell are you talking about?
I am talking about the video quality of the video. The quality of the video itself is low.
You know why it's low quality? Because it's an old outdated engine. That is as good as you are ever going to see this game look. unfortunately.
http://www.bigdownload.com/games/aion-the-tower-of-eternity/pc/aion-classes-trailer
now compare what mmorpg;s coming out in 2009 look like.
I'm going to try to explain it to you one last time...
When you make a video you have an option to compress the video down to a smaller size (both in picture size and in byte size) This video looks like it has a lot of video compression. It is a 17 minute long video if they were to show it to you in all it's glory MMORPG.com would probably refuse to post a monsterous file like that.
Did you ever wonder why youtube videos are not the same quality as when you see them on TV? Same reason.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
Your fanboy tail is sticking out of your pants. Hurry shove it back in!!!!
What the hell exactly is your POINT? That an engine CAN be upgraded? Ya sure it can. so what? Darkfall engine ISN"T and won't be anytime soon , if ever. It's an old outdated engine. Will it be updated sometime in the god knows when future? Who knows?? Who cares. This isn't the future. They have what they have right now and will be judged on that...
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Elite Member
Joined: 4/19/06
Posts: 463
Originally posted by Wickersham
I'm going to try to explain it to you one last time...
When you make a video you have an option to compress the video down to a smaller size (both in picture size and in byte size) This video looks like it has a lot of video compression. It is a 17 minute long video if they were to show it to you in all it's glory MMORPG.com would probably refuse to post a monsterous file like that. Did you ever wonder why youtube videos are not the same quality as when you see them on TV? Same reason.
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That video has almost no loss in video quality due to compression so your argument is completely void.
That video represents 98%+ of the true visual quality of the game. There's no loss to even speak of there. You would never even notice a difference between the real in-game visual quality and that video.
" What the hell is exactly your POINT?"
Let's see, he's talking to someone who thinks that once graphics are one way they're that way forever. Just look at EvE online and you'll know that he's RIGHT. That's his POINT. Isn't this more powerful when I use CAPITALIZATION?
"That video has almost no loss in compression..."
Wow thank you Jebus for letting us know that. You can walk on water and detect loss of video compression, John forgot to put that in the Bible.
It IS heavily compressed, you can tell when you fullscreen it. That doesn't mean the running animations aren't kinda lame and many other things don't need work, but this thread basically started off with us fanbois giving you those points and raising you that graphics aren't a big deal (again, video done on medium... the devs do not want a bunch of graphics whores coming and playing on their Dells from last year and thinking "man these graphics suck compared to the uber vids" and then leaving, after putting in an extra server to accomodate the graphics whores)... backgrounds? Great looking. Character models? Armor shows glints and shadows, enabling detection from afar or the ability to hide better, just depending.
You need to work on your high and mighty know-everything condescending attitude. Or better yet when DF comes out roll a character on my server.
Shadowbane 2.0 .... better this way then wow...
Silly argument, graphics don't make the game. Gameplay and content make a game. The biggest mistake AoC was their client, it was too graphic oriented. You get great vistas with it, yet even a good gaming system is stressed by it.
Darkfall will be fine with the engine that is shown in the videos. If graphics are what gets you to play a game, you are in a small minority. Don't play DF, if it ever comes out. Simple solution.
As to claims that this game can handle large battles, I have big doubts about that, since that is usually more a server limitation than client. Anyone claiming that 200+ battles will have no lag is pretty ignorant of the state of server architecture. Take Eve for an example, the server technology they are using is state of the art and way beyond Darkfall means and they have problems with large battles. There is not a MMO out there that can handle large battles right now and I doubt we will see one in the near future.
Didn't DAOC have biggish battles (I remember seeing a number of 200v200v200 somewhere). A game can be designed to work fairly well with big battles, though it might mean that you have to make some compromises, if done so from the start.
Can you link to how the EvE servers are state of the art? And I'm not challenging your claim, but you don't necessarily know that the DF guys haven't been able to execute on a better server system. I worry about it, the same as you, but they claim to have been working on making server technology be able to handle it for the past years (we've heard, for instance, that they have a different server for certain processes enabling a few servers at once to join together and provide a supposed lag-free experience).
In other words, you acknowledge i'm right that AoC's engine is older than DF's. thanks for that.
What the hell exactly is your POINT? That an engine CAN be upgraded? Ya sure it can. so what? Darkfall engine ISN"T and won't be anytime soon , if ever. It's an old outdated engine. Will it be updated sometime in the god knows when future? Who knows?? Who cares. This isn't the future. They have what they have right now and will be judged on that...
In other words, you acknowledge i'm right that AoC's engine is older than DF's. thanks for that.
Irregardless, AoC you can play, DF, you can what, play on the forums?
Eve uses a largish server cluster, over which the Eve universe is distributed, but their tech is not state of the art, because Eve's zones are only ever handled by a single PC in the cluster. Eve doesn't do dynamic re-distribution of zones. Put another way, Eve zones can be crashed by jumping a whole bunch of ships into a single zone.
Darkfall server tech is more advanced than Eve in this respect, because DF can do dynamic resizing of zone sizes, as well as being distributed over a multi-PC server cluster . In DF, if there are 500 players in a single area and this load is pushing the limit of the current server node, then DF's tech will split that zone into 2 or more smaller zones and re-distribute the players playing in those zones to other PCs in the cluster.
That is DF zones are not fixed size -- the server resizes zones on demand according to number of players in the world and server load. It's not completely revolutionary - approaches like this have been used for many years in scientific research for example, google uses for their search, etc. It is pretty revolutionary however, to apply this tech to an MMO. It's pretty damn impressive actually, and i'm pretty intereted to see how it plays out in the game, both as a gamer and as a 10 year vet of the software industry.
What the hell exactly is your POINT? That an engine CAN be upgraded? Ya sure it can. so what? Darkfall engine ISN"T and won't be anytime soon , if ever. It's an old outdated engine. Will it be updated sometime in the god knows when future? Who knows?? Who cares. This isn't the future. They have what they have right now and will be judged on that...
In other words, you acknowledge i'm right that AoC's engine is older than DF's. thanks for that.
Irregardless, AoC you can play, DF, you can what, play on the forums?
it's totally irrelevant to the point...
...and i've played AoC, and no, i don't think it's playable, lol
What the hell exactly is your POINT? That an engine CAN be upgraded? Ya sure it can. so what? Darkfall engine ISN"T and won't be anytime soon , if ever. It's an old outdated engine. Will it be updated sometime in the god knows when future? Who knows?? Who cares. This isn't the future. They have what they have right now and will be judged on that...
In other words, you acknowledge i'm right that AoC's engine is older than DF's. thanks for that.
Irregardless, AoC you can play, DF, you can what, play on the forums?
it's totally irrelevant to the point...
...and i've played AoC, and no, i don't think it's playable, lol
While I do agree with you about AoC, my point is that you simply cant say Darkfall is this or that, because we dont really know. What we do know is that they have repeatedly postponed launch in lieu of what, a video every 3 years?
Personally if they could stand and deliver, Id throw down 50 bucks in a heartbeat. As to whether or not they can, well thats the question isnt it.
People arent questioning what it will be, theyre questioning what it is.
I agree with you 100%, but we were really talking just about the graphics, and we don't need to play DF to discuss that.
personally i think DF are more than good enough given the breadth of gameplay possible, in some respects DF graphics are outstanding, eg: dynamic shadows, world and environments are great, wind blowing branches of trees is great, sky, clouds, and underwater visuals are all great too.
Are you honestly saying that the video is not heavily compressed?
It's a gameplay trailer meant to show "GAMEPLAY" Do you know what gameplay means?
Look at how aweful EVEs graphics are i'm surprised any on plays that game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqojDOYixZc
Or AoC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSQBHoabuBY
Just aweful!
This thread is a great example of why game companies shouldn't communicate with gamers when the game is being made. Bioware, keep silent about what you are doing until it's in the box.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
"Darkfall server tech is more advanced than Eve in this respect, because DF can do dynamic resizing of zone sizes, as well as being distributed over a multi-PC server cluster"
Sorry, but Eve server technology is so far advanced over anything Adventurine can afford it is not even close and no one even knows what Adventurine is going to use yet. It is just obvious that they won't have the funds to invest in top end server technology like Eve uses.
As to storage, Eve uses Ramsam storage for all databases, I don't know of another MMO that has invested anything close to what CCP has invested in their server farm.
Here is a blurg on Ramsam: http://www.superssd.com/products/ramsan-400/
So you can question all you want, large battles in DF or any MMO will still continue to be lag fests until the hardware catches up.
As to DAoC sure we had large battles there and they were lag fests just like everyone else experiences.
What the hell exactly is your POINT? That an engine CAN be upgraded? Ya sure it can. so what? Darkfall engine ISN"T and won't be anytime soon , if ever. It's an old outdated engine. Will it be updated sometime in the god knows when future? Who knows?? Who cares. This isn't the future. They have what they have right now and will be judged on that...
In other words, you acknowledge i'm right that AoC's engine is older than DF's. thanks for that.
Uhhhhhhh no? You're not right. AoC engine is NOT older than Darkfalls. It's a brand new state of the art engine. Just because it may have been build on the base of an older engine doesn't mean anything, It has to do with what version of DX it supports , what features it supports etc and the Dream World Engine is DX 10 and supports all the latest features.
THAT'S what makes it a brand new engine.
Unreal 3 Engine is also built on the foundation of Unreal 2 etc.. It's still a brand new cutting edge Engine.
I'm talking about server tech not server hardware. Darkfall server tech is more advanced than EVE's - i know because i'm a veteran programmer who codes large-scale scientific applications designed for distributed server farms so yeah, i know this stuff inside out because i could code it myself.
DF haven't made any statements about what hardware they'll run, so it's pointless to chest-beat about it. suffice to say SANs are hardly anything to get worked up over. It's worth mentioning that EVE needs to spend more on server hardware because the game is almost entirely implemented in Python, a non-compiled (scripting) language that is slow and requires tons of memory.
So, to recap: Darkfall server tech can resize zones dynamically and redistribute these split zones to other, less-loaded nodes in their cluster. EVE uses fixed-size zones, and zones cannot be split/resized, nor redistributed. This is why EVE zones often crash when too many ships jump into a single zone -- their server tech can't redistribute the load so the node crashes. DF should not suffer from this limitation, making 1000v1000 battles possible on the server side, though it's highly unlikely that clients will be able to draw 2000+ characters at acceptable FPS though (this underscores why DF has gone for simple character model graphics over bling).
Nope, AoC's engine dates back to 2000. sure, it's had parts of it rewritten, but it's still an old engine. same with Darkfall. it's a common but naive & uninformed mistake to assume old engine equals bad graphics -- it's not that simple.
Also, AoC's support of DX10 is still in development and months away from being live.
And yes i was right. Re-read what was written.