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Truths of Darkfall from a 'Sceptic' Tester
From here and not mine
http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=132916
I am going to be honest, I had absolutely no expectations for this game, I assumed it was going to fail. A long time ago I was a fan of what they set out to accomplish, but I gave up shortly after the 3 year mark. I checked in occasionally, and signed up for beta when that came about, I didn't really give it much thought because I assumed it would be based on forum activity.
A few weeks ago I received a beta e-mail-- my heart didn't jump, I didn't call in to work to rush home and install. I actually probably let it sit in my e-mail inbox for about 2 days before I decided to actually install. This is where my story begins.
Logging In - I was pleasantly surprised by how the client worked in general. I assumed it was going to be a clunky heap of shit considering the way the developers have been shrouded in secrecy with such a small crew. I've been playing for several weeks now and I haven't so much as had a client hiccup, let alone a crash or memory leak. I absolutely love how you can check out the forums and server status along with picking your character from the splash screen. Who here has ever logged into their MMO of choice, went through the entire loading/opening movie/login process only to find the server is down? Not here.
First Day - I must admit, I wasn't too impressed with the terrain detail and character animations upon first logging in. The UI was somewhat ugly and the entire movement, equipping/unequipping process was VERY unintuitive. After about 20 minutes of bashing goblins and periodically getting ganked for accidentally hitting the idiot trying to get me to flag, I finally said "fuck this stupid game". I was quite disappointed to see a good amount of features I heard about were not implemented.
Instead of logging I decided to just go adventuring around, I'm glad I did because I really gained a lot of appreciation for the absolutely huge amount of work that must have went into planning this world. Fallen towers, hidden caves, NPC kingdoms, it's all there. I decided to suck it up and play more. After a bit, that unintuitive, clunky UI/key programming became second nature, so it isn't bad now in my opinion.
Combat - There's some inherent flaws with the combat system in general, but I ask... what game hasn't had any? I think the core system is there and functional enough that it can be greatly approved upon. It's basically a job of tweaking the damage/defense and calculating weapon speeds until it resembles something that's balanced. EVERY PvP MMO that has been released started out with a crap combat system that didn't work. The difference between then and now is we expect more, which shouldn't be the case. I expect them to take the numbers into full consideration and then tweak accordingly so that PvP on a micro level will be possible and fun.
Flagging - Same as above. It's a system in it's infancy. The devs know that many players aren't happy about it, and they haven't just turned a deaf ear to their cries, it will be modified, I'm sure. I don't currently enjoy the rules of flagging, but I think that eventually it will be balanced and handled accordingly.
OMG TEH GUARDTOWERS - Don't let these hardcore, anything goes players fool you into thinking that guardtowers are every 5 feet out in the woods waiting to blast the first criminal that walks by. They aren't. I was worried of Trammelization at first too when I heard they were there, but I did some exploring and there's still about 99.9% of the world that is guardtower free. There's still plenty of banks in the region that aren't protected, you just need to find them instead of sitting on the forums complaining.
'HARDCOR3' Players - These are the guys who complain about every aspect of DF. Too many guardtowers, too many safezones, not enough freedom to gank and kill everyone in sight, too long to get skills up. Give me a break. These are the types of players that are so full of themselves that they don't realize that for the mostpart, this is an MMO. It's not STRICTLY about PvP and their elitist playstyle. If it were, the world would be 1/4th of the size so that we would all be forced in each other's faces. That's simply not the case, they don't realize that making a completely FFA ruleset DESTROYS games like this, because there's not a big enough niche to tap into.
I knew that the FPS hype would draw all of these numbskulls here, but too bad for them that they have to deal with the "RPG" element of an "MMORPG". Mages will be powerful when their player is dedicated enough to master his arts, not whenever our guild decidez to LOLPWNZ0r.
Summing it up/TL;DR
The core system is there and ready to be added onto! Anything is possible with this system, there's nothing gamebreakingly bad with the map itself, just some numbers need to be crunched and re-evaluatted. I am more into PvP than any aspect in most MMO's, and I think it will be great here eventually.
It's not TERRIBLE now, but it could be much better. The world on the other hand will kill the time while you're waiting on them to work out the kinks, it's vibrant and huge...
I think eventually you'll find the same joy I did during beta when you realize all of the possibilities for intelligent terrain warfare, sneaking around trying to avoid heavily armored PKs trying to end your life, or just finding out what secrets await you.
Comments
Yeah, I read that earlier.
Seems like he sums it up pretty well.
Made a Clicky for those that want to read the original.
DarkFall FAQ - Read then Question with Boldness
I just hope enough people manage to read all of it, cause it's interesting
Great impression, mate. Good to read one from a pretty much neutral point of view.
edit: ah, it was not yours. Anyway; nice impression.
My brand new bloggity blog.
I saw this as well.
I like reviews like this much more than the extremist ones.
I like when testers give it "a second chance" when they discover its not like WoW! As the UI for example. Almost all people hate it the first few minutes.....then you get into it.
Why is it a 'great impression'?
The OP barely talks about anything of interest - game mechanics, combat system, loot, dungeons, guilds..I could go on and on.
The few things he does mention have had the contrary said about them. How about the 'vibrant world'? I read one in-depth post remarking how the OP 'walked for 45mins and didn't see a single npc or player...' or 'the cities/towns are large and empty, with barely an npc living in them...' - how is that 'vibrant'?
One problem with the OP post seems to have no real negatives or details on them if there are, or is he hiding them cleverly. Also no real good things that he elaborated on either. I feel this game is what it will be a medicore sub-standard MMO. If it was what all the fanboys are raving about it being the best and greatest MMO on the market this guy would had posted it in that fashion. I would had I would made sure that everyone who read my post knew Darkfall was the MMO to play over all others. Also I would had made sure people understood it wasnt anything better out either if that was what I truly felt when I played the game. But when you are not trying to sound like a troll or a fanboy then you play it like this person did down the middle. Just whimping out and not giving the true feeling on how he felt about the game. I'm sure once it is released alot of people will feel like Darkfall falls short of all that is promised and what the game will offer in all categorys and after a month or so they will move on to other MMO's or back to the old favs.
Smarter than the average bear? That is assuming bears are smart.