Long time follower's review of Darkfall after 2 days

Xemous

I have been waiting eagerly since 04 for Darkfall,  going through many cycles of repeated doubt and affirmation.  Once I finally managed to get in the store and snatch my copy, i anxiously waited till i got home to play (school ). The patching and loading process is really cool, patching didn't take long at all either.   Once i jumped in i was a bit dazed by the GUI and the lag of the game.  My mouse had a delay when i would move it which gave me a real bad first impression.  So im walking around looking for stuff to do in this daze, and manage to find some goblins with AI's designed by monkeys on crack.  After dying (dying animation was pretty cool, reminded me of face of mankind) I started to jack with the video settings (was too eager to do this before) and turned all shadows to low.. No anvil.  Then i disabled shadows completely and.. Volah! The game was running x1000 better.  60fps solid, it was a godsend.  I was thouroughly enjoying myself now.  Getting started is a bit rough cause your skills are low and you have nothing but a starter weapon.  Once you get on your feet the game is REALLY fun.  Crafting reminded me of UO in a way, and every object in the game (trees, rocks, herbs) are mine-able.  

The first thing you will experience in DF is the vastness of the world.  I have played for well over 24 hours (yes in the last 2 days) and have explored less than 1/20th of this world.  It is truly amazing.  It look me 15 minutes to walk half an inch on a 1240x1080 map.  This was annoying at first, but looking at it now it is really a blast.  There are hamlets, dungeons, underworlds, caves, everything you can imagine hidden throughout the world.  The map tells you pretty much nothing except continent names, leaving everything else to exploration. Exploring all DF is a challenge itself, and would take a casual player weeks. Another thing i thought was cool is the number if islands surrounding the contenients, theres a ton of them!  And theres even some not listed on the map.  Alot of clans inhabit them and there can be wars between islands.  Theres rescources, and i believe (not sure) you can build hamlets and castles on them.

Combat is a blast too.  It does take a degree of skill, and information about a fight to win.  You need to predict where your target will be, time the swing correctly, know wich type of swing and wich type of weapon is best for whatever situation.  You need to get in close for axes, knives, and swords, and you can be further back with 2 handers.  The one hander doesnt go well against poles i found, your range is to close and theirs is to far.  Blocking reduces around 90% damage and is pretty useful.  It isnt too responsive so youve got to time your swings and blocks just right.  Blood animations deffintally add fun to the fighting aswell   With a few tweaks combat would be perfect.

In the end it all boils down to what you look for in a game.  I love the risk-reward system with player freedom and a vast unexplored world.  Anything can happen and any situation imaginable is possible in DF.  But if you like the casual EQ/WOW/ style gameplay, you will probably think this game sucks.  DF can either be the worst or the best MMORPG depending how you look at it and what you want in a game.  If you like oldschool UO you WILL like DF.  If youve only ever played WoW you wont find what your looking for.

But if your like me, the major downside of darkfall is the downside of every MMO "addiction".  Decreased social life, lowered chances of girlfriend, weight gain, ect.  Unless you play darkfall/exercise like me you wont get the weight gain part :P

 Darkfall server is down for 2 hours, thats the only thing that caused me to write this review

neKrow

Good write up. second one I have read today. First impressions like this help out the new players that come here to see if they want to try out DF.

 

rheinpfalzer, what about his review dont you like? It clearly states that its a 2 day review. Its not like he is misleading anyone. Perhaps he will write week and month reviews. If you hate DF then a more effective approach is to say how you felt when you first tried it and what changed over the weeks and months. As it is now people will just disregard you.

Krommer

It's an interesting review and I have to say that I had the same feelings the first time I played Darkfall. As you say we must remember the OP has been playing only for 2 days. In every game I played the first days/weeks are usually great. You discover the world, etc.

I have been playing Darkfall for a few months. I was in beta and then I was lucky to get a preorder. Been playing for a time but then I quit. It's not a bad game and I enjoyed it for some time. As the developers said it's a sandbox game. There are no contents in it except for the basic mobs, some missions and a few dungeons. The true fun in this game is to decide what you want to be in that world an try to get it. Full loot and free for all pvp helps a lot into the inmersive experience. I enjoyed the game for some time trying to build an empire, with the diplomacy, exploring the map in the search for hamlets, cities, protecting the crafters when they gathering resources, etc. The graphical environment is good, and the only thing that don't fit well is the sound, that's very bad. I have to say too that the fps are good enough with more than 200 player fighting on a city if you have a decent machine. I can't say the same about other titles that promised big battles

But IMO not everything is perfect in Darkfall. There are some problems that made me leave the game cause at the end I was not having fun. The big amount of players with a broken alignment system was one of them. I think a lot of people was waiting Darkfall only for the full loot aspect. It is ok and for me it helps a lot in the immersive experience. But if 9 of every 10 players are trying to kill you to get your loot then the RPG face of the game is lost and the game become a shooter with some skills. In Darkfall you can only trust your guildmates or enter in one of the hyperzergs. Othercase you will not be able to acces to the major part of the game.

The big problem in the game is the cheating/macroing issue. Aventurine needs to do something on it fast. I know they are trying to solve it, but there are a lot of people walking around with high rigor skill or magic skill due to macroing or using exploits like the acid pools. These people have a huge advantage over their rivals in the game, and that don't help the people to feel the risk vs reward system balanced in a game with full loot system.

The game need some changes and a harder policy on cheaters to become the great game it was going to be.

Izure

Originally posted by Krommer


It's an interesting review and I have to say that I had the same feelings the first time I played Darkfall. As you say we must remember the OP has been playing only for 2 days. In every game I played the first days/weeks are usually great. You discover the world, etc.
I have been playing Darkfall for a few months. I was in beta and then I was lucky to get a preorder. Been playing for a time but then I quit. It's not a bad game and I enjoyed it for some time. As the developers said it's a sandbox game. There are no contents in it except for the basic mobs, some missions and a few dungeons. The true fun in this game is to decide what you want to be in that world an try to get it. Full loot and free for all pvp helps a lot into the inmersive experience. I enjoyed the game for some time trying to build an empire, with the diplomacy, exploring the map in the search for hamlets, cities, protecting the crafters when they gathering resources, etc. The graphical environment is good, and the only thing that don't fit well is the sound, that's very bad. I have to say too that the fps are good enough with more than 200 player fighting on a city if you have a decent machine. I can't say the same about other titles that promised big battles
But IMO not everything is perfect in Darkfall. There are some problems that made me leave the game cause at the end I was not having fun. The big amount of players with a broken alignment system was one of them. I think a lot of people was waiting Darkfall only for the full loot aspect. It is ok and for me it helps a lot in the immersive experience. But if 9 of every 10 players are trying to kill you to get your loot then the RPG face of the game is lost and the game become a shooter with some skills. In Darkfall you can only trust your guildmates or enter in one of the hyperzergs. Othercase you will not be able to acces to the major part of the game.
The big problem in the game is the cheating/macroing issue. Aventurine needs to do something on it fast. I know they are trying to solve it, but there are a lot of people walking around with high rigor skill or magic skill due to macroing or using exploits like the acid pools. These people have a huge advantage over their rivals in the game, and that don't help the people to feel the risk vs reward system balanced in a game with full loot system.
The game need some changes and a harder policy on cheaters to become the great game it was going to be.

 

I am not a fan boy of Df til I played infact I bought into these forums say how shitty it was, so i tried it for a few weeks and I am in there for 28 days now. I love it, EVERY issue you disliked in this post are being fix,changed or updated.

The world is getting stuff added to it, quests and mobs and a basic revamp of the PVE(probably finishing it will be in the next patch).

The Options of audio and graphics are being changed and added to.

Cheaters are getting banned, they appear to have auto detection activated but have a small team to issue further actions, this will change as the game grows but they are working on it, I for one have seen 1 cheater yet in my whole experience.

 

They are lowering the entire grind of this game as it develops, and killing the need for macroing, looking at the latest patch notes for auto gather and increasing crafting mastery skill gains, we can only assume that the weapons  and magic and combat (including rigor and defensive skills) will get a increase in skill gains to less the grind and it will kill most of the macroing.

When they add the hard or softcap(if they do) because I dont think its in this will add diversity and less of a grind and less macroin gas well. Hyper zergs are not that much of a problem if you know how to handle them.

Sure it takes skill but as proven Ive seen 75 man take on 100-150 with fairly ease, or 28 man take on 75 man with good tactics.

Its all about tactics and if you have it right you can overcome zerg in this game, it takes time but if you fall to the loser syndrome you will never learn it, some already have learned it.

The naked zergng is coming to the end, with armor durability fix in this latest patch and the nerf of the mana missle(doesnt take reg) and the add reg requirement to launch the naked zerg is coming to a end already.

They added more options in this game thus far which is needed.

The magic is getting tweaked fix every  patch and the changes are right on!

Stability and dc's( to people who still do) are getting addressed as well every patch.

 

 

I have not yet 1 disconnect and I live in florida usa and I got avg 130-160 ping, even in large scale battles,(ive been in one which was like 150vs 150 it was almost perfect.

This game at first when it first launched looked like a lost cause to me, but then I remember UO and EVE and SWG when it first started, and as of now with the patches once aweek adding lots of content and fixes this game is going to evolve into the better of a game by the time another one of its genre come out LIKE MO, I think it will stand a chance if they keep on proceeding with this patches, because if they patch huge amounts of stuff once a week til MO Comes out Q4 2009, then its going to be 2 times the size of every aspect of MO.

and Mo will most likly face the same problems when they first come out as well so its more likly a offical realease for MO in 2010 end of Q1 or Q2.

Krommer

Glad to hear they are adressing the issues I was talking about. Maybe I will get in the game again to take a look to the changes. I have been out from the game for a month or so and I talk from my experience in the last beta months and first release month.

Darkfall has a lot of potential, that's true, and I hope the game will succed cause it has a lot of interesting features that are not present in other MMOs.

The_Korrigan

After 2 days, I had an opinion similar to the OP.

After 1 week, the newness faded and the reality started to appear beneath.

After 2 weeks, I knew this game was a huge grind lacking 90% of the features that made Ultima Online so fun even 12 years ago at release.