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My Opinion of Darkfall
sacredcow4
Member UncommonPosts: 249
in Darkfall
Let's be honest. Darkfall is no sandbox. It doesn't have tools, and it sure as hell doesn't have sand. What is it? A giant game of domination with a few npcs thrown around. We don't even have tools to write our name in the sand for other players to see.
The problem? This is what this generation of gamers will associate with a sandbox style game.
I logged on DF with so many great ideas in mind. Only to find out how restricted you truely are. And with AV releasing FUN HULKS and FLAGS and calling them sandbox tools... this only proves how little they understand about a sandbox game.
[Mod Edit]
I've been here a while...
Comments
Sadly I have to agree, my Darkfall's adventure ended for me when I realized that it is nothing else then Quake with a lot of skills to grind.
The game is too shallow, it could be fixed by a set of proper expansions, but the devs show no will or abilities to actually envolve the game in the sandbox direction. Calling slot machines, fun hulks, chaos chests a sandbox content is just laughable.
I'm forced to agree. There are so many easy and amazing suggestions to improve DarkFall on ForumFall, like real fluff and sandbox tools, AV disaregard them and implement something so dumb called "Fun Hulks" and dare describe it as a Sandbox tool that players have been asking for so long.
It's just a real joke.....AV knows nothing about Sandboxes....
Did you resubscribe? just curious as two months ago your wrote this (and no idea what time period you even played DFO for the 30-days you base your experience upon)....
"I played the game for 30 days. It was awesome. I tried some sieges, some pve, some pvp, and generally thought, "Hey! This is cool stuff!" The problem was I was DOING the cool stuff, I was watching. In order to participate in the fun you need to grind for months. Not progress your character, grind. I would have LOVED to play this game. Unfortunately I refused to spend half a year working to make that happen.
This is how I feel about the game. Darkfall is DisneyLand. Not just one, but all the Disney Amusement parks put together. WoW and most other mmorpgs are carnivals. To get into a carnival you buy a few tickets and get to ride all the rides. To get into DisneyLand you need to buy a ticket, spend 6 months working a concession stand in the park while you watch other people have fun, and only afterwards can you get on the rides with other people.
To all you vets... Grats on spending so much time. Bravo, Kudos, Gold Star to you. Are you scared of having more people to compete with? All I hear is crying from vets when people talk about making the progression rate viable for new players. I can only relate this to fear. Are people so scared to fight other players with equal stats?
For those of you Vets not complaining and welcoming increased progression, you are the players I want to compete with, because I probably won't be able to beat you without some serious game knowledge and skill even with equal stats."
The only "grind" really there is to Darkfall is stats and the only stat that really matters are those that raise health ie: Hitpoints. A very recent patch addressed that and increased hitpoints for those on the lower curve and increased the gain in it on a curve to make the game more viable for new or casual players. The 6x increase in skills went in a long time ago and raising ones Archery, melee or magery is only a grind if you don't enjoy the PvE; most of us playing think DFO has some of the best PvE in any game and in the next week or so another huge patch is coming to make it even better and more robust.
I don't know what happened between the time you made the post above a few months ago and now to create the post you made to start the thread, but usually one needs to be playing a game to get what there is in it to enjoy or not. Like any MMO, particularly one with a game world of this size and politics of this degree, one really needs to be actively involved in the game to make informed opinions, otherwise it sounds more like a regurgitation of the same old.
-CC
"Lately it occurs to me,
what a long, strange trip it's been". -Hunter
Don`t get me started.
The HP patch was good, but it did nothing to the other grinds. I`ve just started grinding some of the rays, and the grind is still as huge as it use to be. And that`s just the level grind. Tell a new player how much time he`ll have to mine to get a low level scale armor set., and tell him how fast he will lose that it when he meet a hardcore grinder.
I`m glad my vacation is close. No Darkfall and no grind for 3 weeks should be a blessing.
Every MMO has grind. it is the nature of an MMO.
In WoW you grind instances. In MO you grind mats 100x what you see in DFO. In DAoC you grind rep. In WoW you grind instaces. it is all the same.
AV is slowly improving the game but as it stands now you can power level your guy in a few nights to a decent level.
However, there still exists some grindy elements to the game (just as all games). The resource grind is one of them. Hopefully this will be addressed in the next expansion.
All MMO's that are currently released suck terribly, end of story.
The problem is devs have not found that magic combination yet of FPS respawning action and rewards/penalties for fighting. If I could respawn near the action with easier access to gear I wouldn't mind getting owned constantly at sieges. But lets face it, grinding five bags of gear over two to five days of casual to lose it all in ten minutes or less of a siege is not fun...and we play to have fun right? I have a job in RL that pays me real money. I don't need a fantasy job that pays me in grief.
I must agree that it is a bit too difficult to get items (I havent played since last patch). Still the devs clearly realize this since they are adding thigns like rare ores, etc.
Honeslty, If they changed the system to rely less on random drops across the board it would increase the fun factor significantly. But I also understand that resources are limited and the random drops are a quick way to introduce somehting into the game.
I REALLY liked the skill-based approach... I've never played a skill-based MMO before. However, in the end, it was tough to play with mediorce graphics after playing a game like Vanguard and although there were many nice people in the community there also was a large number of complete idiots filing up chat channels with racist BS etc.
I think you don't understand about a sandbox game.
Implementing flags is one of the best things i can think of for a sandbox game.
Flags are tools for people to design their own events and mini-games, so this is the real aspect of sandbox games.
Funhulks itself for sure aren't a sandbox tool, but also can help people creating their own content.
I should really refer you all to a guy in my guild.
He's reached mastery stats, several elemental magics over 50. He has a few rays close to 75. This was only a little bit after his trial had ended.
Again, what grind? Things are much easier now and yet people still complain. What we vets don't like is that people will continue to cry and make the grind less and less. There needs to be some reward for time put in.
I put roughly 72 hours in over my trial period and barely had my stats over 30.
I did manage to get herb gathering mastery. My magic, however, was still around 70 lm, 50 gm, 30 something witchcraft, etc.
Your friend is full of shit, or plays significantly more than is healthy for a human being
Did I mention I also AFK swam EVERY SINGLE HOUR I was at work or asleep? Yeah, and still at 30 stats.
The last straw for me was being suited up in full scale mail with some r40 gear on killing kobolds for my vitality title quest, and a PK rode in and killed me in some ridiculous amount of time, even when I chugged a major health pot, had food on me, and cast heal self trying to ride away.
I didn't stand a chance. 72 hours of playing, and all he had to do was see me for me to die.
I grew up on UO pre trammel so I'm used to death, but I'm also used to being able to fight back. I couldn't do SHIT.
Until AV has the balls to drop in some sort of cap on what people can grind, the game will NEVER, EVER attract significantly more players than it has today. It's a game for the hardcore, because people who play moderately or casually can never hope to fight back against them.
You can argue whatever you want. I won't be responding.
If you doubt me, do not take my word for it. Grab the trial, give it a go, and see how desperately infuriating the game can be regardless of how hard you try.
EDIT:
I should also note that we "casuals" don't want the grind to be less. We want people to be forced to specify into something instead of running around as halberd wielding scale wearing fireball casting self healing archery spamming gods.
There is a minimal amount of actual input skill required to play Darkfall. Grind up the right spells, bind them correctly, know when to bow/melee/heal/ray/mount/pot/eat.
"Specify" does not mean we want Darkfall to be a classes based MMO. Give people a stat and skill cap. Allow them to allocate what stats and skills they want to have active for the time being, and give them the ability to change it on the fly with a slight cooldown. Something. ANYTHING would be better than how it is.
And don't even get me started on AV's RETARDED attempt at an alignment system, which basically boils down to "find an alignment alt to grind on and kill whoever you want."
The rest is the rank of your gear and how long you've been grinding. That's the game.
How did you cast while riding?
You are exaggerating or just lying because if you did AFK swim as much as you say you have then you'd have at least 40 in str, vit, and you'd have around 50-60 quickness. Also, AFK swimming is the slowest (time wise) to raise stats. You get much more from leveling melee (any melee).
Also, scale armor and r40s are nearly bottom barrel gear. As a newbie, you shouldn't be wearing that stuff.
Games:
Currently playing:Nothing
Will play: Darkfall: Unholy Wars
Past games:
Guild Wars 2 - Xpiher Duminous
Xpiher's GW2
GW 1 - Xpiher Duminous
Darkfall - Xpiher Duminous (NA) retired
AoC - Xpiher (Tyranny) retired
Warhammer - Xpiher
Only reason he want to AFK swim is simply because he dont feel like doing pve work.
Its suppose to be a sandbox mmorpg. Why dont you want him to wear what ever he want? You see, this is the reason why DF is not popular. Its a sandbox, but choice are too limited. If you want to follow your own freedom, players will say that you are doing it wrong. So you always have to follow a high rated player in order to even play DF. At the end, you end up being like anyone.
C:\Users\FF\Desktop\spin move.gif
Hold on a moment. You played a one week trial, achieved 70 Less Magic, 50 Greater Magic, 30+ WitchCraft, and complaining about a grind? You played for a week. That's great stuff to show for 1 freaking week. /shakes head
"Stats" are not the "be all end all" What makes characters more powerful than other characters are their combat or magery skills and the gear they use. Combat & Magery skills rise very quickly now and every guild has multiple master crafters who will either help you out or craft stuff for you at cost of materials. It's like no one wants to play games any more; they just want to log in and be great. Play some first person shooter. Evolving as a character is what RPG's are.
I'm not remotely saying there isn't room for further improvement, but to read some of these posts it sounds like few even want to play the game and try.
-CC
"Lately it occurs to me,
what a long, strange trip it's been". -Hunter
Rare ore in normal nodes become somehow controversial. Yes, it's horrible, grindy way to fully equip yourself in high-end armor. But I've already heard complains that it lowers incentive to conquer city with mine, and makes game less competitive.
Let's look at risk / reward ratio of various ways of getting high end stuff:
Mining - you risk 20g mining pick, or nothing, when you mine unclanned under towers.
Mobs dropping R50 / full plate - there is low chance that you'll get PK-ed, because spawns are plentiful.
Rare ore golems - high chance that you'll get PK-ed, because there are 2-3 spawns for each rare ore golem.
Sea fortresses rewards - high risk of losing 200k+ ship. But if you win - you get 200+ rare ores.
Conquering city with mine - you can easily spend 2 mln buying or conquering such city - but it gives constant source of rare ore.
Mining in NPC city in DF is just like mining in high-sec in EvE - boring, long, grindy alternative to getting equipped in some other way, But it had one really important positive effect - large alliances created to protect mines have disbanded on EU-1, because now and you can get rare ore without kissing anyones butt
It is very important for small, proud clans.
Its my opinion that half a year of practicing in any MMO should be a normal time period to get a viable pvp character.
I want to offer a different angle on the time it takes to get viable. If you make this period less, especcially in games like DF, wich you will see with MO where you can cap in 3 weeks easyly. Is that acting as a complete ass, scamming people backstabbing people will have consequenses in DF where is wont carry any wheigt in MO where the doushbag will just reroll and can repeat his scamming.
Having said that, i do not recognize the trouble people seem to have with getting resources. I solod a long time 6 months, and could always provide for myself and even pass the richess around to starting players.
Now recently i joined a clan and that makes resource problems totally absolete, depending on the clan ofcourse.
And to top it of there is no doubt DF is the best ffa pvp full loot mmo around.
Fair enough.
You think a year grind is ok to start playing the game as intended, I think 2 month would be more than enough. I clame you are wrong for several reasons
-We have a huge grind for gear on top of the level grind. We need new high end weapons, armor, enchants, regs, pots, horses etc. after each death.
-This is a full-loot mmo and most players wont play a game where high level players win every fight for a year. Darkfall endgame is based on pvp, and that`s why most of us play the game.
-The number of players in Darkfall clearly show a huge grind is wrong. We have tried everything to get new players into the game and they all failed. We might get some new players if AV pay them to work in a game they were suppose to have fun.
-If I wanted to clear my name after acting as a complete ass, scamming people and backstabbing people , I would just transfer my char to US1 and get a new name when I transfer back to EU1. It takes 3 days, so that`s not a valid argument.
-I will get my friends to play Darkfall if I told them it was a pvp mmo.
-Everytime AV lessen the grind, we get an influx of new and retired players. Sadly they leave the next month and we have to wait 6 months for the next patch to see them again.
Tell me how we will get more players with a huge grind and level based pvp.
I know plenty of people who would disagree with you.
In my guild we tend to do sparring duels and there you learned a lot about fighting and you pretty fast realised that numbers > player skill. In a single duel you can see if a player is skilled or not. Just watch how he moves, how he reacts if he reacts or simply how he plays.
Ive met a lot of people who would be doomed in any normal FPS game as they lacked player skill extremly way, but they still rocked in DF and why? Because they had higher numbers (stats) and dont start saying that crap "only hp matters". Yeah it matters but not only. High quickness allow you to hit twice or three time as somebody with low quickness. Dex improves your archery dmg which is now important after the last patch (barely anyone doing magic what i hear from my bro ---> a lot of player without aim skill ;-) )
For me personaly the gear grind isnt that bad, now its even less (rare ore in nodes). I had always full bank off plate / full plate / scale crap and it was never a problem, except good weapons were extremly rare (r60+),
Enchant reagent grind is pain yep :-)
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Well i stated half a year.
I still think resources are not a problem, unless you are pvping all day long then ye.
And not going headlong into fights you know you cant win, a good escape is as good as a good kill.
Id say 2 halfyear old chars are > then 1 one year old char. So ye teamwork comes into play here.
Yep you are right about the transfers, but dont they cost money?
And to get more players, marketing should advertise:p But the adverts should really tell the real story of what to expect in DF. So people wont leave for wrong expectations.
The red stuff. It was the point which annoyed me most of all. They advertise the game as PvP only, not a single world on the main page about doing PvE. But reallity is different. I like how some signatures of some users show it : PvE kills XXXXX and PvP kills XX-XXX (put your numbers to X).
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LOL
Whomever commented on my thing is full of shit. He has well over 30 in stats and close to 320 health. He played the game before, came back, so he did have better knowledge of how to power level his character but VR has made plenty of videos. It's possible to do it too. We didn't give him any money, he did it all on his own.
You kiddies complain so much.
And you do too many inapropriate comparings.
You cant compare power player vs casual. Ofcourse power players will always have easyer in this game as long the grind got such impact.
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Hi Xianthos - I'm not saying stats are meaningless. They should have meaning as they are part of character progression in a RPG. I said they were not the "be all end all" and I'll stand by that. DFO is not about sparring. Take a group of 2-3 2-week old players and they should be fine in most of the world against one vet who may be newbie preying "if" they have proper gear and are coordinated. Any way I don't want to debate the semantics of this; more looking at it from a big picture and while I am an advocate for making the game easier for newbies vs vets I just don't find the current situation worthy of the nonsense most short-term players spew. They really don't know this game and most are looking for a pure solo game.
-CC
"Lately it occurs to me,
what a long, strange trip it's been". -Hunter