Waiting for darkfall, I am not. Horrible community, not so interesting graphics are what bother me the most other that the fact this game has 0 credibility.
But seeing the changes that this game brings to the mmos of tomorrow is one of the most exciting things to happen in the mmo market since eve became stable/ playable.
I'm not a no life that sits in front of his computer all day long, I'm an intern that sits in front of his computer all day long.
First, we haven't really seen a good WOW clone yet, becausef the things that people like the most about WOW are lacking in the WOW clones, namely a polished game with excellent performance. Even WOW if it was not polished and ran at 10 fps with three people on screen would fail. Even WOW would fail if you lost a level every time you died, or there was permadeath, or the client crashed every couple hours or slowed to a crawl because of memory leaks.
Some people like to blame WOW for the crappy mmo's we have seen released. No. The reason is not WOW. It's companies with bad management teams and poor resource management releasing laggy, sluggishly performing, system hog games with unstable, buggy, unoptimized programming.
Another major difference between WOW and alleged WOW clones is hardware requirements. WoW makes a game that people with old computers can play. Other companies make games that supposedly can't be played well on today's hardware. One decision is strategic and smart, and the other decision is stupid and narrow.
Now, whether or not Darkfall fails will do nothing to the genre. There are a lot of players out there willing to spin the roulette wheel and play the mmo cash cow game. Every game that is released, it's fanboys pin all hopes of salvation for the genre. Darkfall isn't even released yet and it is being hailed as the second coming of MMO's. This is an unrealistic expectation. When the game releases, and if it does well, and 5 years downt the road we see mmo's in development with a similar game design and the developers are saying Darkfall made a difference in how they made their game...then yeah...we could say Darkfall was very important to the mmo genre's future. But right now it is merely a game that an extremely small group of people have played and that's about it.
Now, for a prediction. If Darkfall tries to punish the players with oldschool game mechanics, it will have a small but devoted following and that's it. The game will not compete toe to toe with WOW and therefore will not be the Holy Grail of mmo's. And if they release a system hog with craptastic peformance, laggy gameplay full of bugs and class imbalances galore we will see yet another epic fail.
But I wish them the best. I would like to play their game and see what they've come up with. I hope it's good, for their sake and for the sake of anyone who loves mmo's and just want's an alternative experience.
If Darkfall tries to punish the players with oldschool game mechanics
You present it like thats a bad thing ...
We got punished with WoW game mechanics enough ...personaly a game is taken away from me with such a "WoW punishment" ...
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE-------------------------------------------------- $OE - eternal enemy of online gaming -We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
I have just published a new article here and on MMOCrunch about the importance Darkfall has at this point in the genre. I am very interested in hearing the feedback of the community on this. I feel that the whether you are a fan of a skeptic of the game, we all have a vested interest in the game. A successful Darkfall will sned a message to developers that sandbox games can be profitable and hopefully we can end the cycle of copy-cat games. You can find the article HERE. Thanks.
I think your article would be a good argument for FFA PvP games, but not so much sandbox games. You can make a sandbox game without any PvP at all, so DF's failure or success isn't indicative of the future of sandbox games.
If DF were to fail, I could see a developer easily blaming the FFA PvP feature, and not the sandbox features of the game.
Most people recognize SWG as a sandbox game, that was modestly successful. It did not have FFA PvP, it had RvR style PvP.
Darkfall may indicate teh future success of FFA PvP MMOrPGs. If what you are really rooting for is FFA PvP, not necessarily a "sandbox" style game, then yes, DF is very important.
FFA PvP means "to sandbox" PvP ...sandboxy style is downright "freedom whenever i want with whatever i like to whatever my goal is"..
Considerating that SWG PvP wasn't sandboxy..except the Bountyhunter missions on Jedi ...
The point remains yuo can have a sandbox game with absolutley NO PvP whatsoever. FFA PvP is simply not a required feature of a "sandbox" style game. It may be a feature you dearly love, but that still doesn't make it a requirement of a sandbox game, and the fact that SWG did not have it doesn't mean SWG was not a sandbox game.
Ryzom is also considered a sandbox. I don't know if it has FFA PvP or not.
Non-static spawns. Kinda pisses me off that people don't realise what a big change this actually is.
SWG had this with most of it's world-based creatures.
They had a general region they were confined to, but not a specific x-y coordinate.
LoTRo has also went to dynamic spawns for their world-based "Boss" mobs. The ones that drop shards for crafting the best possible for each tier. They used to be static spawns, but back awhile ago they changed them to dynamic spawns. It is a pretty large region that they can spawn into and it's almost completely cut down on farming the high-end mobs for that game.
I too am excited to see if indeed ALL mobs will have this dynamic spawning. As that will be a step in the right direction. (Although you almost have to keep quest-givers, trainers, etc. in one place... otherwise it's just frustrating for those that are looking for them).
So, there are other games that have/had dynamic mob spawns. I'm sure there are other examples from other games as well. If DarkFall can pull it then yes, it will be great. Innovative... I guess that's open to opinion.
That's like a light version of Darkfall's spawns. If you kill every furry beast, they're gone from that region and (in time) something else appears instead. Furthermore, if you leave a group of furries alone for a long time, they will multiply and once they reach "a critical mass", they'll start to attack nearby villages/fortresses/whatevers.
I guess SWG really was ahead of its time, really didn't know it had all that. Damn you SOE!
ASSUMING that DarkFall does indeed pull off dynamic spawning as you have out-lined in your paragraph above... then yes I would agree that everything else that we have seen will pale in comparison to it.
I will reserve my excitement about how well it works in DarkFall until I get a chance to play it myself.
And yes... there were many, many things that SWG did get right with the original game. Unfortunately they chased after the notion of getting even more subscribers with a very un-tested total re-vamp of the game.
There were a number of things that SWG had issues with right from the very beggining but it's uniqueness was not one of them. I'm hoping that DarkFall does not fall prey to the same chain of events that led SWG to it's demise.
Just so that last paragraph of mine is clear, I will explain a bit more.
I fully expect DarkFall to have issues when it does launch. I also fully expect there to be a lot of stuff missing or not fully implemented when it launches. I harp on those issues now because we've been promised it's Feature Complete and Ready... I don't believe them... but when it releases what's done is done. Those issues will not be what causes me to stop playing DarkFall after release.
Just as I had a blast playing SWG from day one even though it had it's fair share of problems, I could easily be doing the same with DarkFall. No, what will stop me from playing DarkFall is how the developers respond to those problems that come up, and those issues that were left un-done.
If they respond as SWG's devs did... dumbing down the game, and making it into a totally different game... then I will stop playing DarkFall as I did with SWG.
If they work to fix the problems, fully implement the features, and capitalize on the positive aspects of the game... then we may actually have a good game to enjoy for quite some time.
Old school game mechanics don't work in a casual's market, and if someone is wanting this game to change the direction of the genre than it has to compete economically with WOW and not be niche. That's all I'm saying. If Darkfall is to be important to the genre and a pivotal point it must compete successfully in a way that influences future development.
Will old school game mechanics appeal to some. Hell yeah. But will it attract enough of a market share to make the business suits who fund game development change their formulaic approach. No.
I have just published a new article here and on MMOCrunch about the importance Darkfall has at this point in the genre. I am very interested in hearing the feedback of the community on this. I feel that the whether you are a fan of a skeptic of the game, we all have a vested interest in the game. A successful Darkfall will sned a message to developers that sandbox games can be profitable and hopefully we can end the cycle of copy-cat games. You can find the article HERE. Thanks.
I think your article would be a good argument for FFA PvP games, but not so much sandbox games. You can make a sandbox game without any PvP at all, so DF's failure or success isn't indicative of the future of sandbox games.
If DF were to fail, I could see a developer easily blaming the FFA PvP feature, and not the sandbox features of the game.
Most people recognize SWG as a sandbox game, that was modestly successful. It did not have FFA PvP, it had RvR style PvP.
Darkfall may indicate teh future success of FFA PvP MMOrPGs. If what you are really rooting for is FFA PvP, not necessarily a "sandbox" style game, then yes, DF is very important.
FFA PvP means "to sandbox" PvP ...sandboxy style is downright "freedom whenever i want with whatever i like to whatever my goal is"..
Considerating that SWG PvP wasn't sandboxy..except the Bountyhunter missions on Jedi ...
The point remains yuo can have a sandbox game with absolutley NO PvP whatsoever. FFA PvP is simply not a required feature of a "sandbox" style game. It may be a feature you dearly love, but that still doesn't make it a requirement of a sandbox game, and the fact that SWG did not have it doesn't mean SWG was not a sandbox game.
Ryzom is also considered a sandbox. I don't know if it has FFA PvP or not.
ASSUMING that DarkFall does indeed pull off dynamic spawning as you have out-lined in your paragraph above... then yes I would agree that everything else that we have seen will pale in comparison to it.
Why is dynamic spawning so appealing.
So the mobs don't always appear in the same place, but in different places. How does that change the game significantly?
I can see that you will have to run around more. Is that what makes this such a good feature?
I have just published a new article here and on MMOCrunch about the importance Darkfall has at this point in the genre. I am very interested in hearing the feedback of the community on this. I feel that the whether you are a fan of a skeptic of the game, we all have a vested interest in the game. A successful Darkfall will sned a message to developers that sandbox games can be profitable and hopefully we can end the cycle of copy-cat games. You can find the article HERE. Thanks.
I think your article would be a good argument for FFA PvP games, but not so much sandbox games. You can make a sandbox game without any PvP at all, so DF's failure or success isn't indicative of the future of sandbox games.
If DF were to fail, I could see a developer easily blaming the FFA PvP feature, and not the sandbox features of the game.
Most people recognize SWG as a sandbox game, that was modestly successful. It did not have FFA PvP, it had RvR style PvP.
Darkfall may indicate teh future success of FFA PvP MMOrPGs. If what you are really rooting for is FFA PvP, not necessarily a "sandbox" style game, then yes, DF is very important.
FFA PvP means "to sandbox" PvP ...sandboxy style is downright "freedom whenever i want with whatever i like to whatever my goal is"..
Considerating that SWG PvP wasn't sandboxy..except the Bountyhunter missions on Jedi ...
The point remains yuo can have a sandbox game with absolutley NO PvP whatsoever. FFA PvP is simply not a required feature of a "sandbox" style game. It may be a feature you dearly love, but that still doesn't make it a requirement of a sandbox game, and the fact that SWG did not have it doesn't mean SWG was not a sandbox game.
Ryzom is also considered a sandbox. I don't know if it has FFA PvP or not.
I think a good way to look at it is thus:
You can have a Sandbox MMO without FFA PvP
but...
You cannot have FFA PvP without a Sandbox MMO.
That's my opinion on it anyway.
EQ2, DAoC, change the setting to FFA PvP, change nothing else. Is that a sandbox game? I don't think so.
Really, no need to mention trolls at all, makes it hard to take the article seriously right off the bat. Unless your intention is only preaching to the choir.
I dont think the sky is falling, even if DF fails. Indie sandboxes have been coming out, and are in dev for the future. Problem is, they have all had serious failings. The last one I played launched in 2006, and fell prey to those serious failings on the technical front.
DF has a good set of features, none of them new. Dont need new features - we need execution.
the game is still a big mystery to everyone, we had 1 vid and 1 preview from 2 unknown italians, it looks like aoc, but it wont have to turn out that way. like many of the healthy skeptics here said: we will see at the release how the game is, the first month will be crucial (but thats the case in any p2p mmo really..)
MMOs currently playing: - About to play: Lord of the Rings Online Played: Anarchy Online (alltime favorite) and lots of f2p titles (honorable mentions: 9Dragons, Martial Heroes, Dekaron, Atlantica Online)
Really, no need to mention trolls at all, makes it hard to take the article seriously right off the bat. Unless your intention is only preaching to the choir. I dont think the sky is falling, even if DF fails. Indie sandboxes have been coming out, and are in dev for the future. Problem is, they have all had serious failings. The last one I played launched in 2006, and fell prey to those serious failings on the technical front. DF has a good set of features, none of them new. Dont need new features - we need execution.
I felt it was necessary because one of the things I wanted to touch on was the bashing of the game we have seen, especially on this forum, when in the end it is in everyone's best interest to wish them well.
ASSUMING that DarkFall does indeed pull off dynamic spawning as you have out-lined in your paragraph above... then yes I would agree that everything else that we have seen will pale in comparison to it.
Why is dynamic spawning so appealing.
So the mobs don't always appear in the same place, but in different places. How does that change the game significantly?
I can see that you will have to run around more. Is that what makes this such a good feature?
This is the quote by busdriver:
"That's like a light version of Darkfall's spawns. If you kill every furry beast, they're gone from that region and (in time) something else appears instead. Furthermore, if you leave a group of furries alone for a long time, they will multiply and once they reach "a critical mass", they'll start to attack nearby villages/fortresses/whatevers."
That implies quite a bit more than just the standard version of dynamic spawning. If they achieve that level of dynamic spawning then that really will be a great feature... not just good.
Even with the standard implementation of dynamic spawning to me it seems to foster a much more immersive world. I can't really explain it except to recall a few examples from games that I've played where it has been utilized.
SWG had dynamic spawning with it's world-mobs. Meaning mobs outside of the cities and not part of an instance or dungeon.
When you were exploring out in the wilderness on one of the planets you would come across all kinds of varieties of wild-life. Some would be solitary herbivores. Some would be herd herbivores. Some would be Carnivores. There were all sorts of sizes from the smallest babies to the largest adults in each of these groupings as well.
The "babies" part of this was done because you could tame any baby you could find initially as a Creature Handler. Over time (quite a few days) the babies would eventually grow up or die and you'd have to wait for new ones to be "born" or look someplace else that had babies.
The part about the Herbivore and Carnivores and herds was a very interesting dynamic as well. If you were careful you could make the dynamics work in your favor as the Carnivores would attack the Herbivores and then the Herbivores would attack the Carnivores.
So if you were in the right spot you could get "help" in hunting whichever animals you were wanting depending on the specs for the meat and hides for that resource shift.
Another thing that many who didn't play SWG didn't realize. The resource specs for EVERY resource changed on a bi-weekly-monthly basis. One time a certain avian meat would be very good, another time it was horrible. One time the minerals from one area would be great, another time they were junk.
It really acted like a living, breathing world.
Contrast that with the same mob spawning in the exact same place every single time. Or the same resource spawning back in the same exact place every single time. Get's very predictable and make replayability very hard to accomplish. Ultimately it leads to boredom because everything is exactly the same. Everything reacts and happens the same each time.
That is why I think dynamic spawning is the way to go... IF it can be pulled off. I will be happy with the level that SWG had. IF DarkFall can pull off the level they claim to have... THAT will be awesome. Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised when I get a chance to try it for myself.
Really, no need to mention trolls at all, makes it hard to take the article seriously right off the bat. Unless your intention is only preaching to the choir. I dont think the sky is falling, even if DF fails. Indie sandboxes have been coming out, and are in dev for the future. Problem is, they have all had serious failings. The last one I played launched in 2006, and fell prey to those serious failings on the technical front. DF has a good set of features, none of them new. Dont need new features - we need execution.
I felt it was necessary because one of the things I wanted to touch on was the bashing of the game we have seen, especially on this forum, when in the end it is in everyone's best interest to wish them well.
Why can't the same be said of EVERY new MMO that comes out?
Just because you or I think they are a re-hash, or a clone... there are still players out there who like those games too. Their opinion and what they value in a game is just as valid. Your opinion on what is to be valued as "everyone's best interest" does not make it so.
If you want to use the "everyone" standard... then it has to apply to EVERY MMO as well. Otherwise it's really just your opinion on why YOU think that some MMOs should be valued by "everyone" over others.
That's your right of course... it just doesn't make it any more or less valid than anyone else's opinion on the matter.
Xyxak you are right that we should root for any new mmo. However I think with the current trend, we should be especially rooting for Darkfall to succeed as an indie with an idea that breaks the mold because like you said there are a lot of gamers with diverse gaming desires, and if studios dont think it is cost effective to develop ideas that dont follow the WoW model then the industry will continue to be more and more stale.
"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
"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
Good read. This is exactly how I feel about the current state of the genre, and I have lost hope for nearly all the new games coming down the road. Especially games that openly admit they are going after WoW's subscription numbers (SWTOR). Games that are going after WoW's numbers will inherently be dumbed down, because the wider your audience is, the simpler your product must be to use. This is sales and marketing 101.
Another game trying to break out of the mold is Earthrise. Being a sci-fi fan, this is the game I am really looking foward too, although I will probably pick up Darkfall when it releases because we likely won't see Earthrise until Christmas 2009 or beyond. I am a huge fan of skill based, sandbox design. While I can understand that some people do not care for sandbox games, there are plenty of us who enjoy that freedom to live in a digital world and forge your own path. Archtype classes are old news, and it's time MMO's allow more freedom.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
ASSUMING that DarkFall does indeed pull off dynamic spawning as you have out-lined in your paragraph above... then yes I would agree that everything else that we have seen will pale in comparison to it.
Why is dynamic spawning so appealing.
So the mobs don't always appear in the same place, but in different places. How does that change the game significantly?
I can see that you will have to run around more. Is that what makes this such a good feature?
This is the quote by busdriver:
"That's like a light version of Darkfall's spawns. If you kill every furry beast, they're gone from that region and (in time) something else appears instead. Furthermore, if you leave a group of furries alone for a long time, they will multiply and once they reach "a critical mass", they'll start to attack nearby villages/fortresses/whatevers."
That implies quite a bit more than just the standard version of dynamic spawning. If they achieve that level of dynamic spawning then that really will be a great feature... not just good.
Even with the standard implementation of dynamic spawning to me it seems to foster a much more immersive world. I can't really explain it except to recall a few examples from games that I've played where it has been utilized.
SWG had dynamic spawning with it's world-mobs. Meaning mobs outside of the cities and not part of an instance or dungeon.
When you were exploring out in the wilderness on one of the planets you would come across all kinds of varieties of wild-life. Some would be solitary herbivores. Some would be herd herbivores. Some would be Carnivores. There were all sorts of sizes from the smallest babies to the largest adults in each of these groupings as well.
The "babies" part of this was done because you could tame any baby you could find initially as a Creature Handler. Over time (quite a few days) the babies would eventually grow up or die and you'd have to wait for new ones to be "born" or look someplace else that had babies.
The part about the Herbivore and Carnivores and herds was a very interesting dynamic as well. If you were careful you could make the dynamics work in your favor as the Carnivores would attack the Herbivores and then the Herbivores would attack the Carnivores.
So if you were in the right spot you could get "help" in hunting whichever animals you were wanting depending on the specs for the meat and hides for that resource shift.
Another thing that many who didn't play SWG didn't realize. The resource specs for EVERY resource changed on a bi-weekly-monthly basis. One time a certain avian meat would be very good, another time it was horrible. One time the minerals from one area would be great, another time they were junk.
It really acted like a living, breathing world.
Contrast that with the same mob spawning in the exact same place every single time. Or the same resource spawning back in the same exact place every single time. Get's very predictable and make replayability very hard to accomplish. Ultimately it leads to boredom because everything is exactly the same. Everything reacts and happens the same each time.
That is why I think dynamic spawning is the way to go... IF it can be pulled off. I will be happy with the level that SWG had. IF DarkFall can pull off the level they claim to have... THAT will be awesome. Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised when I get a chance to try it for myself.
Seems interesting. EQ2 didn't go taht far, but there were Boss Mobs you could spawn, by killing everything else around. Those were located in lots of places. Kill all the normal mobs in some areas, and that would spawn a Boss Mob. It was kinda cool.
Xyxak you are right that we should root for any new mmo. However I think with the current trend, we should be especially rooting for Darkfall to succeed as an indie with an idea that breaks the mold because like you said there are a lot of gamers with diverse gaming desires, and if studios dont think it is cost effective to develop ideas that dont follow the WoW model then the industry will continue to be more and more stale.
I do like ideas that "break the mold" and yes, diversity is good in my opinion.
Although, I will not go so far to say that I think those opinions have any more merit than those that are perfectly content with what we currently have or what we have gotten over the last few years.
We are all gamers. We all like different ideas and each of us has a different opinion on what we find fun. So yeah, although I may indeed find a game like DarkFall fun if it achieves what it is trying to do.
I don't begrudge those that are perfectly happy playing WoW or any other current MMO.
Why would I?
How does their enjoyment of their game hurt me?
And yes, you should expect the same of them for you and DarkFall.
In short I agree with you. Darkfall is very important because if it works and does very well then large organisations will start to focus on sandbox games. Even if they don't and the population migrates towards sandbox games as they mature past the usual grind setup then big companies will need to take notice as it will hit their pockets.
Old school game mechanics don't work in a casual's market, and if someone is wanting this game to change the direction of the genre than it has to compete economically with WOW and not be niche. That's all I'm saying. If Darkfall is to be important to the genre and a pivotal point it must compete successfully in a way that influences future development.
Will old school game mechanics appeal to some. Hell yeah. But will it attract enough of a market share to make the business suits who fund game development change their formulaic approach. No.
First, market share does not control development. Profit does. A game can be profitable without a large market share, and that profit can actually lead to even more profit, and eventually into increased market share. People forget that World of Warcraft was not an overnight goliath, it actually did take some time to achieve its current state - and I would say that its current state has far more to do with marketing and interplayer associations than game mechanics.
Second, everyone in this thread is acting like we're all one big happy game genre. Far from it. There are instanced action shooter games that get marketed as MMOs (Fury, Hellgate London, DDO, probably even Guild Wars). There are seamless world MMOs without realtime combat focus at all. There are 2D overhead, 2.5D overhead, and 3D graphic engines. There is PvE, PvP, FFA PvP, and certain popular mixes and alterations. As you mentioned previously, there are high resolution graphics that require expensive machines to process, while other games can be played on yesterday's hardware. The "MMO genre" is not really a single genre, and the entire gaming industry would do well to start acknowledging that fact.
As for Darkfall, it could create it's own new genre entirely - it doesn't really matter. Darkfall will be what Darkfall has become, and will be profitable if it makes more money than it spent and will spend. Will it be profitable? I think it will, quite easily. It apparently doesn't license a whole lot of outside software, it doesn't seem to have spent a whole lot on advertising, and it boasts of features that are extremely appealing to myself and several other forum posters that I have personally read. Their official forum numbers seem to be quite good, their hype meter score on mmorpg.com is high, their gameplay videos seem to be popular.
The ducks are all lined up. Saying they aren't, or that we don't know if they are, just comes across as silly skepticism without any real root. The only question that remains lies with the actual coding and function of the game, and the only indicators of such lie with testers who aren't allowed to divulge and a development timeframe that actually seems quite reasonable for a polished launch - if not a bit excessive.
My bet is on success, whether its mechanics are labelled "old school" or not.
I do not think it is in ANYONES interest to 'Wish them well'. We should all be wishing them thier just rewards. (i.e. rewards based on thier merits)
sigh...just have to nudge don't ya
btw their "merits" would be good so we should be wishing them well by your warped theory
I guess you wished SOE well with their changes to star wars....
lol bitter gamers are always so easy to spot.
I quit SWG a little before NGE was brought up...but am well aware of the disaster that it was.
Your little statement makes 0 sense by the way. Of course people rooted for the NGE to be a success...it was the company attempting to enhance their game. Unfortunatly they did a horrendous job of it and was a complete fail...doesnt mean that people didnt hope it would be a success. Hell that is probably a prime example of what we are trying to say so thanks for bringing it up!!! When such a drastic change is introduced and is going to happen no matter what...i would assume that people would wish that it is good and goes well because if not it will ruin the game...like SOE and NGE did.
So in short...you make no sense and are wrong...but oddly enough you brought up a good point to support the OP. YAY!
"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
First, market share does not control development. Profit does. A game can be profitable without a large market share, and that profit can actually lead to even more profit, and eventually into increased market share. People forget that World of Warcraft was not an overnight goliath, it actually did take some time to achieve its current state - and I would say that its current state has far more to do with marketing and interplayer associations than game mechanics.
This is a good point, and I wanted to touch on this but I felt like the article was already getting a bit too long for my liking. I have heard that the cost of making Darkfall so far is somewhere in neighborhood of 10-15 million Euros. When you compare that cost to what it took to make 40+ million dollar games like AoC, Vanguard, and the like, it seems like they will have to do a lot less to make the money back. I just find it ironic they are able to offer so much more then those super expensive to produce games, yet do it for far less. Hopefully you don't need a big budget to make a big profit.
Comments
Waiting for darkfall, I am not. Horrible community, not so interesting graphics are what bother me the most other that the fact this game has 0 credibility.
But seeing the changes that this game brings to the mmos of tomorrow is one of the most exciting things to happen in the mmo market since eve became stable/ playable.
I'm not a no life that sits in front of his computer all day long, I'm an intern that sits in front of his computer all day long.
Good article. But I disagree with some points.
First, we haven't really seen a good WOW clone yet, becausef the things that people like the most about WOW are lacking in the WOW clones, namely a polished game with excellent performance. Even WOW if it was not polished and ran at 10 fps with three people on screen would fail. Even WOW would fail if you lost a level every time you died, or there was permadeath, or the client crashed every couple hours or slowed to a crawl because of memory leaks.
Some people like to blame WOW for the crappy mmo's we have seen released. No. The reason is not WOW. It's companies with bad management teams and poor resource management releasing laggy, sluggishly performing, system hog games with unstable, buggy, unoptimized programming.
Another major difference between WOW and alleged WOW clones is hardware requirements. WoW makes a game that people with old computers can play. Other companies make games that supposedly can't be played well on today's hardware. One decision is strategic and smart, and the other decision is stupid and narrow.
Now, whether or not Darkfall fails will do nothing to the genre. There are a lot of players out there willing to spin the roulette wheel and play the mmo cash cow game. Every game that is released, it's fanboys pin all hopes of salvation for the genre. Darkfall isn't even released yet and it is being hailed as the second coming of MMO's. This is an unrealistic expectation. When the game releases, and if it does well, and 5 years downt the road we see mmo's in development with a similar game design and the developers are saying Darkfall made a difference in how they made their game...then yeah...we could say Darkfall was very important to the mmo genre's future. But right now it is merely a game that an extremely small group of people have played and that's about it.
Now, for a prediction. If Darkfall tries to punish the players with oldschool game mechanics, it will have a small but devoted following and that's it. The game will not compete toe to toe with WOW and therefore will not be the Holy Grail of mmo's. And if they release a system hog with craptastic peformance, laggy gameplay full of bugs and class imbalances galore we will see yet another epic fail.
But I wish them the best. I would like to play their game and see what they've come up with. I hope it's good, for their sake and for the sake of anyone who loves mmo's and just want's an alternative experience.
You present it like thats a bad thing ...
We got punished with WoW game mechanics enough ...personaly a game is taken away from me with such a "WoW punishment" ...
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I think your article would be a good argument for FFA PvP games, but not so much sandbox games. You can make a sandbox game without any PvP at all, so DF's failure or success isn't indicative of the future of sandbox games.
If DF were to fail, I could see a developer easily blaming the FFA PvP feature, and not the sandbox features of the game.
Most people recognize SWG as a sandbox game, that was modestly successful. It did not have FFA PvP, it had RvR style PvP.
Darkfall may indicate teh future success of FFA PvP MMOrPGs. If what you are really rooting for is FFA PvP, not necessarily a "sandbox" style game, then yes, DF is very important.
FFA PvP means "to sandbox" PvP ...sandboxy style is downright "freedom whenever i want with whatever i like to whatever my goal is"..
Considerating that SWG PvP wasn't sandboxy..except the Bountyhunter missions on Jedi ...
The point remains yuo can have a sandbox game with absolutley NO PvP whatsoever. FFA PvP is simply not a required feature of a "sandbox" style game. It may be a feature you dearly love, but that still doesn't make it a requirement of a sandbox game, and the fact that SWG did not have it doesn't mean SWG was not a sandbox game.
Ryzom is also considered a sandbox. I don't know if it has FFA PvP or not.
Non-static spawns. Kinda pisses me off that people don't realise what a big change this actually is.
SWG had this with most of it's world-based creatures.
They had a general region they were confined to, but not a specific x-y coordinate.
LoTRo has also went to dynamic spawns for their world-based "Boss" mobs. The ones that drop shards for crafting the best possible for each tier. They used to be static spawns, but back awhile ago they changed them to dynamic spawns. It is a pretty large region that they can spawn into and it's almost completely cut down on farming the high-end mobs for that game.
I too am excited to see if indeed ALL mobs will have this dynamic spawning. As that will be a step in the right direction. (Although you almost have to keep quest-givers, trainers, etc. in one place... otherwise it's just frustrating for those that are looking for them).
So, there are other games that have/had dynamic mob spawns. I'm sure there are other examples from other games as well. If DarkFall can pull it then yes, it will be great. Innovative... I guess that's open to opinion.
That's like a light version of Darkfall's spawns. If you kill every furry beast, they're gone from that region and (in time) something else appears instead. Furthermore, if you leave a group of furries alone for a long time, they will multiply and once they reach "a critical mass", they'll start to attack nearby villages/fortresses/whatevers.
I guess SWG really was ahead of its time, really didn't know it had all that. Damn you SOE!
ASSUMING that DarkFall does indeed pull off dynamic spawning as you have out-lined in your paragraph above... then yes I would agree that everything else that we have seen will pale in comparison to it.
I will reserve my excitement about how well it works in DarkFall until I get a chance to play it myself.
And yes... there were many, many things that SWG did get right with the original game. Unfortunately they chased after the notion of getting even more subscribers with a very un-tested total re-vamp of the game.
There were a number of things that SWG had issues with right from the very beggining but it's uniqueness was not one of them. I'm hoping that DarkFall does not fall prey to the same chain of events that led SWG to it's demise.
Just so that last paragraph of mine is clear, I will explain a bit more.
I fully expect DarkFall to have issues when it does launch. I also fully expect there to be a lot of stuff missing or not fully implemented when it launches. I harp on those issues now because we've been promised it's Feature Complete and Ready... I don't believe them... but when it releases what's done is done. Those issues will not be what causes me to stop playing DarkFall after release.
Just as I had a blast playing SWG from day one even though it had it's fair share of problems, I could easily be doing the same with DarkFall. No, what will stop me from playing DarkFall is how the developers respond to those problems that come up, and those issues that were left un-done.
If they respond as SWG's devs did... dumbing down the game, and making it into a totally different game... then I will stop playing DarkFall as I did with SWG.
If they work to fix the problems, fully implement the features, and capitalize on the positive aspects of the game... then we may actually have a good game to enjoy for quite some time.
Old school game mechanics don't work in a casual's market, and if someone is wanting this game to change the direction of the genre than it has to compete economically with WOW and not be niche. That's all I'm saying. If Darkfall is to be important to the genre and a pivotal point it must compete successfully in a way that influences future development.
Will old school game mechanics appeal to some. Hell yeah. But will it attract enough of a market share to make the business suits who fund game development change their formulaic approach. No.
I think your article would be a good argument for FFA PvP games, but not so much sandbox games. You can make a sandbox game without any PvP at all, so DF's failure or success isn't indicative of the future of sandbox games.
If DF were to fail, I could see a developer easily blaming the FFA PvP feature, and not the sandbox features of the game.
Most people recognize SWG as a sandbox game, that was modestly successful. It did not have FFA PvP, it had RvR style PvP.
Darkfall may indicate teh future success of FFA PvP MMOrPGs. If what you are really rooting for is FFA PvP, not necessarily a "sandbox" style game, then yes, DF is very important.
FFA PvP means "to sandbox" PvP ...sandboxy style is downright "freedom whenever i want with whatever i like to whatever my goal is"..
Considerating that SWG PvP wasn't sandboxy..except the Bountyhunter missions on Jedi ...
The point remains yuo can have a sandbox game with absolutley NO PvP whatsoever. FFA PvP is simply not a required feature of a "sandbox" style game. It may be a feature you dearly love, but that still doesn't make it a requirement of a sandbox game, and the fact that SWG did not have it doesn't mean SWG was not a sandbox game.
Ryzom is also considered a sandbox. I don't know if it has FFA PvP or not.
I think a good way to look at it is thus:
You can have a Sandbox MMO without FFA PvP
but...
You cannot have FFA PvP without a Sandbox MMO.
That's my opinion on it anyway.
Why is dynamic spawning so appealing.
So the mobs don't always appear in the same place, but in different places. How does that change the game significantly?
I can see that you will have to run around more. Is that what makes this such a good feature?
I think your article would be a good argument for FFA PvP games, but not so much sandbox games. You can make a sandbox game without any PvP at all, so DF's failure or success isn't indicative of the future of sandbox games.
If DF were to fail, I could see a developer easily blaming the FFA PvP feature, and not the sandbox features of the game.
Most people recognize SWG as a sandbox game, that was modestly successful. It did not have FFA PvP, it had RvR style PvP.
Darkfall may indicate teh future success of FFA PvP MMOrPGs. If what you are really rooting for is FFA PvP, not necessarily a "sandbox" style game, then yes, DF is very important.
FFA PvP means "to sandbox" PvP ...sandboxy style is downright "freedom whenever i want with whatever i like to whatever my goal is"..
Considerating that SWG PvP wasn't sandboxy..except the Bountyhunter missions on Jedi ...
The point remains yuo can have a sandbox game with absolutley NO PvP whatsoever. FFA PvP is simply not a required feature of a "sandbox" style game. It may be a feature you dearly love, but that still doesn't make it a requirement of a sandbox game, and the fact that SWG did not have it doesn't mean SWG was not a sandbox game.
Ryzom is also considered a sandbox. I don't know if it has FFA PvP or not.
I think a good way to look at it is thus:
You can have a Sandbox MMO without FFA PvP
but...
You cannot have FFA PvP without a Sandbox MMO.
That's my opinion on it anyway.
EQ2, DAoC, change the setting to FFA PvP, change nothing else. Is that a sandbox game? I don't think so.
Really, no need to mention trolls at all, makes it hard to take the article seriously right off the bat. Unless your intention is only preaching to the choir.
I dont think the sky is falling, even if DF fails. Indie sandboxes have been coming out, and are in dev for the future. Problem is, they have all had serious failings. The last one I played launched in 2006, and fell prey to those serious failings on the technical front.
DF has a good set of features, none of them new. Dont need new features - we need execution.
the game is still a big mystery to everyone, we had 1 vid and 1 preview from 2 unknown italians, it looks like aoc, but it wont have to turn out that way. like many of the healthy skeptics here said: we will see at the release how the game is, the first month will be crucial (but thats the case in any p2p mmo really..)
MMOs currently playing: -
About to play: Lord of the Rings Online
Played: Anarchy Online (alltime favorite) and lots of f2p titles (honorable mentions: 9Dragons, Martial Heroes, Dekaron, Atlantica Online)
I felt it was necessary because one of the things I wanted to touch on was the bashing of the game we have seen, especially on this forum, when in the end it is in everyone's best interest to wish them well.
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Why is dynamic spawning so appealing.
So the mobs don't always appear in the same place, but in different places. How does that change the game significantly?
I can see that you will have to run around more. Is that what makes this such a good feature?
This is the quote by busdriver:
"That's like a light version of Darkfall's spawns. If you kill every furry beast, they're gone from that region and (in time) something else appears instead. Furthermore, if you leave a group of furries alone for a long time, they will multiply and once they reach "a critical mass", they'll start to attack nearby villages/fortresses/whatevers."
That implies quite a bit more than just the standard version of dynamic spawning. If they achieve that level of dynamic spawning then that really will be a great feature... not just good.
Even with the standard implementation of dynamic spawning to me it seems to foster a much more immersive world. I can't really explain it except to recall a few examples from games that I've played where it has been utilized.
SWG had dynamic spawning with it's world-mobs. Meaning mobs outside of the cities and not part of an instance or dungeon.
When you were exploring out in the wilderness on one of the planets you would come across all kinds of varieties of wild-life. Some would be solitary herbivores. Some would be herd herbivores. Some would be Carnivores. There were all sorts of sizes from the smallest babies to the largest adults in each of these groupings as well.
The "babies" part of this was done because you could tame any baby you could find initially as a Creature Handler. Over time (quite a few days) the babies would eventually grow up or die and you'd have to wait for new ones to be "born" or look someplace else that had babies.
The part about the Herbivore and Carnivores and herds was a very interesting dynamic as well. If you were careful you could make the dynamics work in your favor as the Carnivores would attack the Herbivores and then the Herbivores would attack the Carnivores.
So if you were in the right spot you could get "help" in hunting whichever animals you were wanting depending on the specs for the meat and hides for that resource shift.
Another thing that many who didn't play SWG didn't realize. The resource specs for EVERY resource changed on a bi-weekly-monthly basis. One time a certain avian meat would be very good, another time it was horrible. One time the minerals from one area would be great, another time they were junk.
It really acted like a living, breathing world.
Contrast that with the same mob spawning in the exact same place every single time. Or the same resource spawning back in the same exact place every single time. Get's very predictable and make replayability very hard to accomplish. Ultimately it leads to boredom because everything is exactly the same. Everything reacts and happens the same each time.
That is why I think dynamic spawning is the way to go... IF it can be pulled off. I will be happy with the level that SWG had. IF DarkFall can pull off the level they claim to have... THAT will be awesome. Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised when I get a chance to try it for myself.
I felt it was necessary because one of the things I wanted to touch on was the bashing of the game we have seen, especially on this forum, when in the end it is in everyone's best interest to wish them well.
Why can't the same be said of EVERY new MMO that comes out?
Just because you or I think they are a re-hash, or a clone... there are still players out there who like those games too. Their opinion and what they value in a game is just as valid. Your opinion on what is to be valued as "everyone's best interest" does not make it so.
If you want to use the "everyone" standard... then it has to apply to EVERY MMO as well. Otherwise it's really just your opinion on why YOU think that some MMOs should be valued by "everyone" over others.
That's your right of course... it just doesn't make it any more or less valid than anyone else's opinion on the matter.
Xyxak you are right that we should root for any new mmo. However I think with the current trend, we should be especially rooting for Darkfall to succeed as an indie with an idea that breaks the mold because like you said there are a lot of gamers with diverse gaming desires, and if studios dont think it is cost effective to develop ideas that dont follow the WoW model then the industry will continue to be more and more stale.
~~
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
I do not think it is in ANYONES interest to 'Wish them well'.
We should all be wishing them thier just rewards.
(i.e. rewards based on thier merits)
sigh...just have to nudge don't ya
btw their "merits" would be good so we should be wishing them well by your warped theory
~~
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
Good read. This is exactly how I feel about the current state of the genre, and I have lost hope for nearly all the new games coming down the road. Especially games that openly admit they are going after WoW's subscription numbers (SWTOR). Games that are going after WoW's numbers will inherently be dumbed down, because the wider your audience is, the simpler your product must be to use. This is sales and marketing 101.
Another game trying to break out of the mold is Earthrise. Being a sci-fi fan, this is the game I am really looking foward too, although I will probably pick up Darkfall when it releases because we likely won't see Earthrise until Christmas 2009 or beyond. I am a huge fan of skill based, sandbox design. While I can understand that some people do not care for sandbox games, there are plenty of us who enjoy that freedom to live in a digital world and forge your own path. Archtype classes are old news, and it's time MMO's allow more freedom.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Why is dynamic spawning so appealing.
So the mobs don't always appear in the same place, but in different places. How does that change the game significantly?
I can see that you will have to run around more. Is that what makes this such a good feature?
This is the quote by busdriver:
"That's like a light version of Darkfall's spawns. If you kill every furry beast, they're gone from that region and (in time) something else appears instead. Furthermore, if you leave a group of furries alone for a long time, they will multiply and once they reach "a critical mass", they'll start to attack nearby villages/fortresses/whatevers."
That implies quite a bit more than just the standard version of dynamic spawning. If they achieve that level of dynamic spawning then that really will be a great feature... not just good.
Even with the standard implementation of dynamic spawning to me it seems to foster a much more immersive world. I can't really explain it except to recall a few examples from games that I've played where it has been utilized.
SWG had dynamic spawning with it's world-mobs. Meaning mobs outside of the cities and not part of an instance or dungeon.
When you were exploring out in the wilderness on one of the planets you would come across all kinds of varieties of wild-life. Some would be solitary herbivores. Some would be herd herbivores. Some would be Carnivores. There were all sorts of sizes from the smallest babies to the largest adults in each of these groupings as well.
The "babies" part of this was done because you could tame any baby you could find initially as a Creature Handler. Over time (quite a few days) the babies would eventually grow up or die and you'd have to wait for new ones to be "born" or look someplace else that had babies.
The part about the Herbivore and Carnivores and herds was a very interesting dynamic as well. If you were careful you could make the dynamics work in your favor as the Carnivores would attack the Herbivores and then the Herbivores would attack the Carnivores.
So if you were in the right spot you could get "help" in hunting whichever animals you were wanting depending on the specs for the meat and hides for that resource shift.
Another thing that many who didn't play SWG didn't realize. The resource specs for EVERY resource changed on a bi-weekly-monthly basis. One time a certain avian meat would be very good, another time it was horrible. One time the minerals from one area would be great, another time they were junk.
It really acted like a living, breathing world.
Contrast that with the same mob spawning in the exact same place every single time. Or the same resource spawning back in the same exact place every single time. Get's very predictable and make replayability very hard to accomplish. Ultimately it leads to boredom because everything is exactly the same. Everything reacts and happens the same each time.
That is why I think dynamic spawning is the way to go... IF it can be pulled off. I will be happy with the level that SWG had. IF DarkFall can pull off the level they claim to have... THAT will be awesome. Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised when I get a chance to try it for myself.
Seems interesting. EQ2 didn't go taht far, but there were Boss Mobs you could spawn, by killing everything else around. Those were located in lots of places. Kill all the normal mobs in some areas, and that would spawn a Boss Mob. It was kinda cool.
I do like ideas that "break the mold" and yes, diversity is good in my opinion.
Although, I will not go so far to say that I think those opinions have any more merit than those that are perfectly content with what we currently have or what we have gotten over the last few years.
We are all gamers. We all like different ideas and each of us has a different opinion on what we find fun. So yeah, although I may indeed find a game like DarkFall fun if it achieves what it is trying to do.
I don't begrudge those that are perfectly happy playing WoW or any other current MMO.
Why would I?
How does their enjoyment of their game hurt me?
And yes, you should expect the same of them for you and DarkFall.
In short I agree with you. Darkfall is very important because if it works and does very well then large organisations will start to focus on sandbox games. Even if they don't and the population migrates towards sandbox games as they mature past the usual grind setup then big companies will need to take notice as it will hit their pockets.
First, market share does not control development. Profit does. A game can be profitable without a large market share, and that profit can actually lead to even more profit, and eventually into increased market share. People forget that World of Warcraft was not an overnight goliath, it actually did take some time to achieve its current state - and I would say that its current state has far more to do with marketing and interplayer associations than game mechanics.
Second, everyone in this thread is acting like we're all one big happy game genre. Far from it. There are instanced action shooter games that get marketed as MMOs (Fury, Hellgate London, DDO, probably even Guild Wars). There are seamless world MMOs without realtime combat focus at all. There are 2D overhead, 2.5D overhead, and 3D graphic engines. There is PvE, PvP, FFA PvP, and certain popular mixes and alterations. As you mentioned previously, there are high resolution graphics that require expensive machines to process, while other games can be played on yesterday's hardware. The "MMO genre" is not really a single genre, and the entire gaming industry would do well to start acknowledging that fact.
As for Darkfall, it could create it's own new genre entirely - it doesn't really matter. Darkfall will be what Darkfall has become, and will be profitable if it makes more money than it spent and will spend. Will it be profitable? I think it will, quite easily. It apparently doesn't license a whole lot of outside software, it doesn't seem to have spent a whole lot on advertising, and it boasts of features that are extremely appealing to myself and several other forum posters that I have personally read. Their official forum numbers seem to be quite good, their hype meter score on mmorpg.com is high, their gameplay videos seem to be popular.
The ducks are all lined up. Saying they aren't, or that we don't know if they are, just comes across as silly skepticism without any real root. The only question that remains lies with the actual coding and function of the game, and the only indicators of such lie with testers who aren't allowed to divulge and a development timeframe that actually seems quite reasonable for a polished launch - if not a bit excessive.
My bet is on success, whether its mechanics are labelled "old school" or not.
sigh...just have to nudge don't ya
btw their "merits" would be good so we should be wishing them well by your warped theory
I guess you wished SOE well with their changes to star wars....
sigh...just have to nudge don't ya
btw their "merits" would be good so we should be wishing them well by your warped theory
I guess you wished SOE well with their changes to star wars....
lol bitter gamers are always so easy to spot.
I quit SWG a little before NGE was brought up...but am well aware of the disaster that it was.
Your little statement makes 0 sense by the way. Of course people rooted for the NGE to be a success...it was the company attempting to enhance their game. Unfortunatly they did a horrendous job of it and was a complete fail...doesnt mean that people didnt hope it would be a success. Hell that is probably a prime example of what we are trying to say so thanks for bringing it up!!! When such a drastic change is introduced and is going to happen no matter what...i would assume that people would wish that it is good and goes well because if not it will ruin the game...like SOE and NGE did.
So in short...you make no sense and are wrong...but oddly enough you brought up a good point to support the OP. YAY!
~~
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
This is a good point, and I wanted to touch on this but I felt like the article was already getting a bit too long for my liking. I have heard that the cost of making Darkfall so far is somewhere in neighborhood of 10-15 million Euros. When you compare that cost to what it took to make 40+ million dollar games like AoC, Vanguard, and the like, it seems like they will have to do a lot less to make the money back. I just find it ironic they are able to offer so much more then those super expensive to produce games, yet do it for far less. Hopefully you don't need a big budget to make a big profit.
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