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On the fence? Then read a review from someone with no vested interest.....
mahierl2005
Member UncommonPosts: 94
OK, I don't get a chance to post on here all too often, but there has been so much garbage , lies, fanboi, haterism out there that I just thought I would drop my 2 cents in. A few people have claimed to be looking for reviews from people with "no vested interest". Well, that's me. Quite frankly I dont give a dang if the game is good, bad, or otherwise. I work for a major videocard developer, and I test new games and how compatible they are with our current line of products. I try a game. We work out the bugs, I move on to another game. I played WoW more than any other MMO, and quit a few months ago due to work taking so much of my time. Being a hardware tester, I test ALL games and their compatibility. Not just ones I like or dislike. In this particular case, for the sole sake of being unbiased, I will divulge that I have absolutely no intent to buy this game whatsoever. That being said, as stated above, it is because of my busy schedule these days, not for any other reason. Also please note that EVERYONES EXPERIENCE IS DIFFERENT. I do not use perfect grammar, I am a tester not an English teacher.
Upon loading the game and making it to character select, I did notice that things were slightly slugish. To put this in perspective you can imagine what kind of rig I have. Think of the best gaming machine you can imagine, then double it. I have more than 2 gigs of dedicated video, 8 gigs of ddr3 1066 ram, and an octa-core processor. My rig cost my company more than 10,000.00. I'm guessing it was sluggish because textures and shaders hadnt been optimized yet, but thats for another time. Comparing this games character creation seemed to me to be a lot like WoW, with a few additional bells ans whistles, and yet nowhere near that of say.. Age of Conan. From a review standpoint, I guess you could say its sort of what I expected.
Going into the game world I noticed a lot of good and an equally number of bad points. As you all know Free for all loot is in effect. There seems to be quite a pause when looting other players. I once looted someone with many items and because there is no auto loot or loot al functionality, it took me more than 15 seconds to decide on loot etc. In that time, I was ganked, killed, and had to start over. That is the nature of the game. I have no quim with it in general. Had I known what the symbols were, etc, or not cared what I looted and left, I could have probably done it in 3 seconds or less. So this portion that many people will list as bad, is more on the user side. It can be as quick and painless (pun intended) or slow and painful (hehe) as you want it to be. The human side of us likes to see the object and mouse over them, look at them, etc. Just keep this in mind when playing.
I will be upfront an honest in the fact that I did not have the opportunity to try out bow/arrow type gameplay yet. I was mor concerned with framerates in melee, and lag and leak errors with magic bursts and such being cast. On the magic side, things were pretty nice actually. My spells almost (95%+) of the time landed within a fraction of a centimeter of where I told them to. Aiming was fairly uncomplex, and didnt take much to get used to. Unfortunately, countering this, is the fact that it takes so long to level up magic that it can get insane. Some will love this. Some wont. Its all playstyle. Dont let anyone tell you its a good or bad thing. If I were playing it full time, I would say it seemed very tedious to me. But I do believe it is acting as intended. On the melee side.. I could never in a million years do it. Now keep in mind.. I'm just a tester. With the exception of a few MMO's I have played personally, I dont get too attached , and thus too experienced, with many playstyles. But melee for me was.. pun intended again.. a drag. It was slow. EXTREMELY slow. If I picked up a two handed sword I guarantee my 3 year old daughter could swing it faster than my character did. It was totally unacceptable in my opinion. The only consolation I will give it is that movement is equally as slow, so I dont think it necessarily changes the outcome of battles in general. They do seem very long and drawn out however. Although I did not get a chance to personally play archery style, some of my co workers have, and said that they found the aiming to be quite tha same as magic, but much faster. Arrows , although they dont fly in a straight line, did hit theirs targets at the appropriate location most of the time, and were very quick. It seems this is a faster type of gameplay and would likely suite a larger audience.
I would like to dig deeply into the skill based system but unfortunately ... theres not much to say. If you have played final fantasy online you will notice that much like you earn skill points by using a certain school of magic or weapon, the same applies here. Only in DF, its each individual spell, not school, of magic. This can make casters extremely difficult to level up. While wandering around it was almost impossible to find a caster who didnt appear to have a macro setup to do the work for him/her. to me, that sort of takes the fun out of the game. Every 25 points, up to 100, your spells get stronger, and more schools unlock to you. Unlike Final fantasy, where if your enfeebling magic is 10, thats still much better than 1, in DF it is the same. Only at point 25 will you notice any change. And so forth and so on. Other than that.. theres nothing else to say about the skill system. They say its not level based, but I dont really see how thats possible. you have 1/25/50/75/100 levels of skillups. Isnt this the same as level 1/2/3/4/5 in any other modern type mmorpg? I could be missing something here, thats entirely possible. But to me, it just seemed like a level based system in a shell. Final Fantasys system, comparatively, was truely skill based. If I used my enfeebling magic more than you, it would be more effective. Here, I can be 24 and you can be a newb, and it wont matter. Keep that in mind. thats 24% of the total available skill of that weapon or magic better than you, and yet we are the same. To compare this to a car, its like saying a stock 6cyl camaro is the same as a Z06 Corvette... 24% is a lot. In wow thats the difference between what, a lvl 1 and and a lvl 20? Thats unheard of. Its ridiculous. However, it is their system, and who am I to judge for that.
The gameplay was actually very good. Although it was slow for melee, medium for magic, and apparently quick for archers, everything worked. If I wanted to swing, it swung where I told it to. My magic hit where I told it to. The spell I selected is the spell that cast. The implementation of the system I feel was actually done very well. It is at teh conceptual level for me where it doesnt work. Its just too slow. But since I am unbiased I will say that what they were trying to go for, they most definately hit it on the mark. Within their concept, the system works amazingly well. In fact with that in mind, as a tester, I have no problem with it. They put out rules before me that state "when this happens, this happens. When you do this, this happens" That all worked. Whatever I told the game to do, it did, within the context of what its designed for.
The gameworld is massive. When I say massive, I really mean massive. I was reading something about somewhere that people were over exaggerating it. No. They arent. Its huge. I ran for 15 minutes in 1 direction looking for graphics problems. I went about 20-25% of the way across the map. It is ver possible that depending on where you are, where your going, and howyou intend to get there, that it take you hours to do so. For me personally as a player this would be a problem. As stated at the beginning, I just dont have that kind of time. If you do, man, I wish I had your job. That being said there was always something for me to do. Somewhere to go, or a place to explore.
I have to be honest here and I know this is gonna tick a lot of ppl off, I shoulda put this earlier so I didnt waste time, so I am sorry in advance. Unfortunately, I did not have the chance to test questing beyond the first few starter ones. As I said, I wasnt testing it to review it, I was testing for graphics purposes, and questing doesnt help me in my endeavor there whatsoever. What I did do, once again, was correct and appeared to work as it was designed to do. You will see no huge golden question marks or exclamation points as you may be used to in various other games. With the exception of actually talking to an NPC, you will have no idea you are at the correct person to complete a quest.
Which brings me to a living breathing world. MMO's, which I test more than any others, and play more than any others personally, are supposed to feel alive. Running water. crackling branches over a fire, laughter, pain. Monsters around every corner. I didnt personally feel any of this. Granted, a lot of that is because a large portion of the player base was missing. But I could travel for sometimes dozens of minutes at a time and not find a monster. WTF Truthfully, mayb I just didnt know where to go /shrug. But the world didnt seem living and breathing to me. It seemed dead. True, the branches on the trees swayed from side to side. water flowed freely. But there was no real feel to it. It was there, but it wasnt "alive" I wish I knew how to explain this. Its sorta like when you love your wife but you realize the time has come to call it quits lol. The love is still there, but you realize its all for naught. Thats how it felt to me. The world was breathing, but it certainly wasnt alive. Hopefully, the playerbase will help with that. As avid as someof you are about the game, I'm sure it wil lin fact.
OK.. I promised I wouldnt use the context of carebear of hardcore here, because quite frankly I view all people as
"players". So I will use a different approach. Like most MMO;s, DFO is a huge timesink. Thats the bottom line, and there is no way around it. If you play under an hour or 2 per day however, I dont see you as being at a huge disadvantage. Since there is no traditional XP grinding, it doesnt put you at a large delay. I do believe that deeper into the game it could be a problem if you are someone who wants to classify yourself as casual. You will have to be careful, and choosy as to where to spend your time and how wisely to spend it. Plan ahead. To me though that doesnt make u casual, it makes u smart. Bravo to you. If you consider yourself "hardcore" (hey not me, you guys decided this stuff lol) then I think you'll be equally well off until the later "levles". Unfortunately for this crowd, from my perspective, there doesnt appear to be anything out there to spend 12 hours a day DOING. Maybe there is and I havent seen it yet, maybe there isnt and the point is to just kill kill kill. If thats the case, grats to the developers they seemed to do a good job.
From one gamer to another, I'll tell you this much. Don't let popular culture or someone else tell you whats right for you. You're the on paying the money, and its your time that your spending on the game. Whether it is 5 minutes a day, or hours, just enjoy it. If you dont, then dont bring others down with you and start telling them what they should or shouldnt enjoy. From a feature perspective, and from a technical perspective, this game ran wonderfully for me. It did what it was suppposed to do, when it was supposed to do it, and in teh manner expected. Whether that is something I like as a player, or dont like, is of no consequence. As consumers, it is our job to know what the company is saying it will provide. As developers, it is their job to deliver. In the overall aspect of what DFO is CURRENTLY (I am not a long time follower and I really dont give a crap what they said would be in the game 3 years ago, I care about today) I think they deliver. I also think they deliver within the realm of quality as to what they said they would. If you are well versed on DFO and have followed it, and you know what they are and arent offering, I think that this should be enough for you to make an informed decision. In the end, I do believe in my heart of hearts that they did the best they could given the circumstances, and portrayed, at least at THIS time, an honest attempt to deliver as expected. If you think its going to be something other than what they said it would, your wrong. If you like pve and think it will be a nice change to play this, it wont be enjoyable. It is what it is. A hack and slash, fireball throwing, arrow flinging PvP game that the entire object is to kill you opponent or pay a hefty price. It is not gear based. It is not level based. It is not what I would classify as hardcore or casual.. it is what it is. Its a differnt type of playstyle that you may or may not enjoy. It's honestly not the playstyle for me. BUT.. if I were into that playstyle, I can honestly say that I think I would owe it to myself, and to them, to give them a chance to deliver in the future. At release although everything may not be perfect, I do think they gave me what they said they would. As a consumer I definately wasnt "wowed" and I wasnt disappointed either. It was like buying a bag of Fritos out of the vending machine down the hall. I knew what was in the bag, and low and behold, its what was in the bag. speaking of which.. I better go get one before Ron here next to me gets a sweet tooth for the last bag.
Comments
-Darkstar
LOL, now we know why video cards/drivers never work right, no one is testing them on a rig based on any sort of reality.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Sounds like you are running a GL card (FireGL by any chance) and not a DX card. Do you think that may have had an impact on the sluggish feeling?
Oh and which octa-core you running?
needs.
more.
paragraphs.
eyes.
hurting.
*Wall of text crits you for over 9000. You die.*
well it's Darkfall, so it's more like:
"you wrecked <reader> for 200. <reader> dies."
Nah it does nt . I had no problem with it . Thanks for the review op . I m a little on the fence on this game . I ve heard so many negative things about it . Having had my fingers burnt with Age of Conan ,Vanguard and Warhammer it ll be a cold day in Hell that i ll but a new mmo at release . I ll need either a free trial or significant possative buzz about the game before i spend money on it .
Sounds like you are running a GL card (FireGL by any chance) and not a DX card. Do you think that may have had an impact on the sluggish feeling?
Oh and which octa-core you running?
This is what i thought when i saw 10.000$ computer part ,probably FireGL/Quadro workstation and iirc ati has FireGL v8650 with 2 GB ram .
"What!? Nine thousand? There's no way that can be right!"
Oh, and nice review, OP
Two complaints here..
1. To the people replying.. The post was fine.. the attempts to be clever and witty about the format, are a waste of time. The format was fine.
2. To the OP, you over paid for that computer..
Currently playing Real Life..
http://i36.tinypic.com/2uyod3k.gif
For all your stalking needs..
http://www.plurk.com/Random_
edit
"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know." William Saroyan
Have to admit just started reading on this game recently and it sounded kinda kool but thanks for the INfo cuz its the little things that count for me like haveing to run hours to get to one place or waiting 30 sec on every kill to loot. Those kind of things just bug the shit out of me. Thanks again
edit
"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know." William Saroyan
LOL, now we know why video cards/drivers never work right, no one is testing them on a rig based on any sort of reality.
I thought the exact same thing when I read it.
Sorry, I have been extremely busy at work and haven't had a lot of time to reply. To the guys about the fireGL.. all I can say is that your very close, your definately in teh ballpark
. To whoever said I overpaid.. I paid nothing, my company did :P. I think I got a sweet deal hehe. Sorry about the formating, didnt think it was that hard to read left to right!!! lol. j/k.
To those that said thanks, your very welcome. Just doing the best I can. Oh, and the processor is Intel’s Nehalem processor, and its still in development.
Just one day left peeps, lets see how it goes!
why would your company give you a rig as a tester which no one will buy or own?
kind of kills the purpose of testing imho.
Thats what we're for.
/sarcasm
Nice read OP, you lucky bastage!
LOL I wasn't testing the "PC" as a whole silly.. just a few individual graphics cards.
Very intresting read!
good job and well writen
I don't mean to stir up trouble but your claims are a little ludicrous.
Octo-core processor? I'm pretty sure they don't actually exist unless you're talking about a board with two CPU slots both filled with Quads. And even then that's not an Octo-core processor.
A graphics card like you're talking about sounds more like either a new offering just around the corner (which is barely plausible for reasons I am to explain) or a high end rendering GPU, which isn't to be used for playing games anyway. If we were 'close' when someone suggested FireGL/Quattro then why would you test a video game on an unreleased rendering card? The performance would be awful considering that newly released cards rarely have good drivers let alone unreleased cards? Come on now that's triple the potential for failure. Rendering Card. Unfinished Drivers. Unfinished Game.
You test each and every game yes? Or would at least have a broad spectrum of which to compare to? Then why would you put AoC's character customisation at the higher end of the scale? Surely with games such as EQ2 on the market AoC isn't even on the scale? (That said, I do own AoC and I do like it in its current state, I am just aware that it's character customisation is fairly weak.)
If you do have to bug test I'm sure that means extensive writing and documentation on performance yes? I don't mean this as a personal insult mind- but your presentation isn't perfect (I'm sure mine isn't either) It presents itself a little unkempt and something of a wall of text, let alone it being devoid of punctuation in many places. You seem to digress alot for no real reason and draw questionable comparisons.
Why would you run for an hour in one direction 'looking for graphics problems'? That doesn't make any sense at all, If you're looking for artifacting then you'll find it without having to run for an hour. Any other problems in the landscape or models or rendering etc wouldn't be your problem as you're looking for compatibility issues, am I right?
If you truly are in the beta, there's no actual reason for us to know what your job is. In the case of providing us of what the game actually is- I think telling us you were there for work purposes actually subtracts from your opinion considering you would be there less for pleasure and more for business. You didn't mention anything at all about what would particularly cause the game to stutter, you mentioned no other rendering issues which others who are not in the field you claim to be in have mentioned.
I'd like to believe you, I really would- but most of it doesn't add up. I'm usually partial to a little blind faith but I'd have to wear an eyepatch and squint for me to believe this.
The only thing I saw about running in his post was for 15 minutes. The only thing I can think of why someone would do that to test hardware is in general most games load areas of a world in segments only what you need at a given time. By doing this your forcing the graphics card to render this new segment of the game world all at once rather than a few mobs spawning every now and then. The only real reason I can think of for doing that.
This post is epic win. GJ.
Do you know what his company ask him to do? Do you think it is possible for him to disclose that here, openly? Don't bait him.
You hate him b/c he tells a lot more about his perspective, his motivation, and give a lot of details you do not want to read? Or that he is on the fence?
You need not believe in him, you should not, this is internet. Read and judge.
I need not believe in you too. Maybe you are from Mars.
Exactly what does he said that makes him worse than the majority of the drama-queens in DF boards. His english? his presentation? his lengthy details (you call digressions)? What do you want from him? Just 3 simple words "DF is godly"?
To the OP: interesting review. Just 1 odd question, do you got any idea how well DF makes use of the hardware and platform? Its a game that is supposed to be built years ago, and I do not know how well the dev keeps upgrading the engine. Does it scales well with the latest technology? I know you only test the display cards, but the performance of a card is not totally insulated from the rest of the hardware, I suppose.
As for your suggestion, yes I got to that conclusion long ago. I will watch this game with full skeptism, and not consider it unless I really run out of games and other things to do with my limited free hours. The immaturity shown by some of the supporters adds to the worry. In many games like WoW I can ignore them and go play my own game. The community for CoX and Lotro is so warm, its nice just getting in touch to kill some odd hours. In DF, with no content and nothing to do, I have to live with the community, and if they sux, the game sux in exact proportion.