Dated from 1 month ago? I doubt that much has changed or the population just magically blew up. I like the game, played it at EU launch and I understand the people that still play wanting to defend their game but c'mon...
Its just not your game, your complaining about getting ganked and such.. In Darkfall anyone is a potential enemy. Getting into fights or hiding and avoiding them is the funny part.
On the other hand if you live out of a Chaos City, if it gets attacked the people might stick together and help each other.
Same goes for newbie Spawns. Unlike levelbased games a group of new characters can defend themselves very quick in Darkfall with proper teamplay. The new skillgains and the offline skilling are great imo.
People who nerd rage and insta-quit when they get pked will not be able to emotionally tolerate Darkfall, which is sad because in the end it actually has more stable and friendly player environment than any other game with activated PVP.
People who nerd rage and insta-quit when they get pked will not be able to emotionally tolerate Darkfall, which is sad because in the end it actually has more stable and friendly player environment than any other game with activated PVP.
Emotionally tolerate Darkfall? If you have to tolerate a game to play it, you're not having fun. If you're under emotional duress while playing a game, there's an issue.
While my experience on Darkfall was admittedly limited, I have to say that less than 10% of the players I came across were friendly. I'm not talking they didn't attack on sight friendly, but rather they actually had a personality that didn't revolve around being a dick. That being said, Eve Online has a much large population, a very friendly community, better (albeit different) pvp, and is actually balanced.
People who nerd rage and insta-quit when they get pked will not be able to emotionally tolerate Darkfall, which is sad because in the end it actually has more stable and friendly player environment than any other game with activated PVP.
Emotionally tolerate Darkfall? If you have to tolerate a game to play it, you're not having fun. If you're under emotional duress while playing a game, there's an issue.
While my experience on Darkfall was admittedly limited, I have to say that less than 10% of the players I came across were friendly. I'm not talking they didn't attack on sight friendly, but rather they actually had a personality that didn't revolve around being a dick. That being said, Eve Online has a much large population, a very friendly community, better (albeit different) pvp, and is actually balanced.
I actually am in agreement on this comment even though I am a huge darkfall fan. That said, the game overall is SOO much better than anything else on the market today that if you can find it in yourself to 'play the long road' and not worry about pvp losses (which there will be a TON) then it makes for a great game.
That said, I do understand and agree with the Darkfall community concern and I wouldnt be at all surprised if they completely change the game for this upcoming super patch and basically give the existing community the finger. I know I would, its not a community that helps the game.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
People who nerd rage and insta-quit when they get pked will not be able to emotionally tolerate Darkfall, which is sad because in the end it actually has more stable and friendly player environment than any other game with activated PVP.
I couldn't agree more.
I've seen this time and time again since launch. A few months back I watched someone from this very forum rage quit over being PKed a single time on the way to my clan's city. I remembered thinking that obviously he was not cut out for the game because if that single encounter angered him so much how would he ever last for the long haul?
It was only a 45 minute trip for him to get to our city, and he had nothing of value on him, it was simply the loss of 45 minutes for no reason other than the fact that another player spotted him along the way and decided to kill him just because he could, that was the sole determining factor in his decision to quit.
I didn't even have time to mention a few things that would have made his journey easier on him, as he quit rather abruptly following the avove incident. That death could have been avoided, but he made some simple mistakes along the way and as a result ended up in a hostile area near the Alfar starting zones, when he could have skirted those areas completely by remaining on a northeastern course instead of taking the southeastern route he took.
If he had tabbed out for a few seconds and looked at a labled map so that he could determine a safer pass through the area, and get his bearings, he would have been fine. Instead he chose just to wing it, got rolled along the way, and quit.
When I first started playing the alliance I was in at the time owned multiple holdings down on Ruby, and in order to get to our city so I could bind there I obviously had to run all that way. I was a dwarf at the time, so that meant running (literally) from one end of the world to the other, a task that can take upwards of two or three hours due to getting ganked, picked off by the fire dragon or other mobs, etc... along the way.
I was ganked countless times during that first journey, while bouncing from chaos stone to chaos stone binding as I went, each time costing me roughly 45 minutes spent that I would have to run again all over again. I ended up spending about five hours just to get to one of our alliance holdings. It was an experience that made me want to stick with the game, not leave, because in the end when I did accomplish my goal it was one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had in over a decade of online gaming.
I've been with the game ever since.
The point is that some people just can't take the heat, and nine out of ten times they are very quick to just up and run out of the kitchen at a dead sprint, instead of adapting to the hostile environment presented before them and accepting that death is a common part of the game in DF.
As a result rage-quitters never truly experience what the game has to offer, which is quite a shame imho.
I actually am in agreement on this comment even though I am a huge darkfall fan. That said, the game overall is SOO much better than anything else on the market today that if you can find it in yourself to 'play the long road' and not worry about pvp losses (which there will be a TON) then it makes for a great game.
That said, I do understand and agree with the Darkfall community concern and I wouldnt be at all surprised if they completely change the game for this upcoming super patch and basically give the existing community the finger. I know I would, its not a community that helps the game.
I have to agree with you on everything you said here.
Todays Patch reduced Skill gain by 50% and they made a way to level while offline if you pay golds for it and they plan on making it even better.
so paying "golds" as you said to lvl while your off-line is great and fun? i really dont get fans of darkfall...thats like haveing someone chew your food for you the rest of your life as long as you paid em
I have followed Darkfall for a long time. I truly believe it's biggest downfall is the utter lack of meaning in it's PvP. The only reason to PvP is for it's own sake, so it ends up being like Modern Warfare on an absolutely gigantic map. No one really cares about losing their gear. No one really cares about the holdings since they don't really do anything anyway. No, the real problem is that I can just murder someone any time I feel like it, and there is no consequence for it. This in turn makes it meaningless. The game doesn't penalize me, the victim doesn't care because he has a bank full of 100 copies of the shit I just took from him, and likewise no one else gives a shit either. It just doesn't matter, and so it becomes boring. You can't even be a low-down, evil, murdering bastard, because no one really gives a fuck. It's no fun, because it's utterly impossible to even ruin anyone's day.
I believe AV stated that the game servers could only withstand 10k concurrent peeps. If there is only 2 servers, that's not many peeps. For Darkfall to be any kind of success, it needs more subscriptions. I don't see that happening.
Darkfall failed with it's "limited" release that was easily hacked, full of bugs, and had few of the once exalted features. MMO's have a hard time recovering from that. Just ask Vanguard players...
I believe AV stated that the game servers could only withstand 10k concurrent peeps. If there is only 2 servers, that's not many peeps. For Darkfall to be any kind of success, it needs more subscriptions. I don't see that happening.
Darkfall failed with it's "limited" release that was easily hacked, full of bugs, and had few of the once exalted features. MMO's have a hard time recovering from that. Just ask Vanguard players...
AV was very happy with their economic progress on Darkfall few months ago as stated in a interview they already got half of investment back within a years and a half period since launch. The playerbase was even worried that them being happy resulting in less developemnts effort and changes in game.
2 servers are good enough, 10k concurrent players would mean around 50k active subs per server and a pop of 100k would be bombastic for DF.
If you people think about economic success you look to much after those inefficent AAA companies, they put alot of money and ressources and investors money in development and of course they need big numbers for success. Darkfall didn't put a lot of money but put in a lot of time. We all know the long development cycle pre beta and i am sure they did work on parallel projects to found themselves. thats why they don#t need the big numbers for beiing a success. Of course now, after DF success they need to grow and change this habbit of low cost - long development time to put in features faster, since theyhire and are open for new employees i also don't worry about it either.
-----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)
If you people think about economic success you look to much after those inefficent AAA companies, they put alot of money and ressources and investors money in development and of course they need big numbers for success. Darkfall didn't put a lot of money but put in a lot of time. We all know the long development cycle pre beta and i am sure they did work on parallel projects to found themselves. thats why they don#t need the big numbers for beiing a success. Of course now, after DF success they need to grow and change this habbit of low cost - long development time to put in features faster, since theyhire and are open for new employees i also don't worry about it either.
Uhm, Avi gotg 20 million Euro from EU so that isn't fair. Not that I protest that EU uses my taxmoney to make MMOs, they usually uses them for dumber stuff like paying farmers to grow stuff no one wants or wineyards to make wine that you can't drink.
But without that money Avi would be in a lot more trouble, you really can't do this a second time sinceEU got a lot cheaper after the crisis in Greece and Ireland.
Nothing against DFO, but the reason they don't need so many players is because they got a huge percentage of the development money from the state and that isn't really something anyone can repeast.
Todays Patch reduced Skill gain by 50% and they made a way to level while offline if you pay golds for it and they plan on making it even better.
so paying "golds" as you said to lvl while your off-line is great and fun? i really dont get fans of darkfall...thats like haveing someone chew your food for you the rest of your life as long as you paid em
Was wondering the same thing. How can anyone say thats fun? It's right next to cheating, the only difference being that it's legal.
If you people think about economic success you look to much after those inefficent AAA companies, they put alot of money and ressources and investors money in development and of course they need big numbers for success. Darkfall didn't put a lot of money but put in a lot of time. We all know the long development cycle pre beta and i am sure they did work on parallel projects to found themselves. thats why they don#t need the big numbers for beiing a success. Of course now, after DF success they need to grow and change this habbit of low cost - long development time to put in features faster, since theyhire and are open for new employees i also don't worry about it either.
Uhm, Avi gotg 20 million Euro from EU so that isn't fair. Not that I protest that EU uses my taxmoney to make MMOs, they usually uses them for dumber stuff like paying farmers to grow stuff no one wants or wineyards to make wine that you can't drink.
But without that money Avi would be in a lot more trouble, you really can't do this a second time sinceEU got a lot cheaper after the crisis in Greece and Ireland.
Nothing against DFO, but the reason they don't need so many players is because they got a huge percentage of the development money from the state and that isn't really something anyone can repeast.
AV got no 20 million from EU. You haters can't differ reality anymore seems and know no border anymore what lies and truth is. They signed a deal with the publisher AWE (Audio Visual Enterptises), a public stock company !, who publishes DF in Europe which included a common bond amounting 25 millions. The deal with the publisher issued summer 2008 that was just 6 months before launch and doensn't cover much of the long development time since 2003.
AV has done jobs for Defense Department and of course received money for it but it wasn't 20 millions and nowhere was EU any of the contractual partners.
-----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 followed Darkfall for a long time. I truly believe it's biggest downfall is the utter lack of meaning in it's PvP. The only reason to PvP is for it's own sake, so it ends up being like Modern Warfare on an absolutely gigantic map. No one really cares about losing their gear. No one really cares about the holdings since they don't really do anything anyway. No, the real problem is that I can just murder someone any time I feel like it, and there is no consequence for it. This in turn makes it meaningless. The game doesn't penalize me, the victim doesn't care because he has a bank full of 100 copies of the shit I just took from him, and likewise no one else gives a shit either. It just doesn't matter, and so it becomes boring. You can't even be a low-down, evil, murdering bastard, because no one really gives a fuck. It's no fun, because it's utterly impossible to even ruin anyone's day.
PVP does have meaning and holding do matter..
Sun are only as strong as they are because of the numbers they ahve an the amount of holdings with mines so they get tons of rare ore to build high rank weapons and armor.. Without it they would find it very hard to equip everyone in decent gear, make enough money to build the massive ships they have and so on..
It also matters if you enjoy the game and are part of an alliance, holding and defending teritory is important to yuor alliance/clan as it gives a safeer place to craft and lvl your skills in mob spawns around the cities..
This is a sandbox type game so basically the players help create content..
Now Darkfall is not for everyone some people like everything laid out for them and atificical restrictions put on them.. thats find but Darkfall is not the game for you..
I come back to Darkfall in December and i must say im having a blast and now with the skill increase i cn spend less time in game.. im only a casual player anyway maybe 1-2 hours a night but within a month and a character that could make a difference in group pvp and get a few kills in with my bow or spells..
Population is fine if you jon a guild and get into their cities.. the alliance im in see action every night we either get raided or we raid an enemy city.. Also sea towers twice a week and there is tons of action there
Sure the game is not perfect but no MMO is all i can say this is the most fun i have had in an MMO for a very very long time..
There is a trial for anyone who is thinknig about taking a look.
I have followed Darkfall for a long time. I truly believe it's biggest downfall is the utter lack of meaning in it's PvP. The only reason to PvP is for it's own sake, so it ends up being like Modern Warfare on an absolutely gigantic map. No one really cares about losing their gear. No one really cares about the holdings since they don't really do anything anyway. No, the real problem is that I can just murder someone any time I feel like it, and there is no consequence for it. This in turn makes it meaningless. The game doesn't penalize me, the victim doesn't care because he has a bank full of 100 copies of the shit I just took from him, and likewise no one else gives a shit either. It just doesn't matter, and so it becomes boring. You can't even be a low-down, evil, murdering bastard, because no one really gives a fuck. It's no fun, because it's utterly impossible to even ruin anyone's day.
I dont know if its the largest downfall I still say its the community itself that has been a downfall and AV's assumption that people will play a game in the spirit it was designed for.
Having said that, if it was my game I would not allow pvp at all execpt between clans and clans could not exist unless you had 10 players. I would give people the option to join an 'outlaw' alliance allowing them to pvp anyone but it would not be race specific and a fairly high commitment.
The focus of the game should be more warfare and in all fairness I think many from the community feel the same way, but the loudest QQers of the community typically just want a 1 vs 1 gank fest
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I dont know if its the largest downfall I still say its the community itself that has been a downfall and AV's assumption that people will play a game in the spirit it was designed for.
Having said that, if it was my game I would not allow pvp at all execpt between clans and clans could not exist unless you had 10 players. I would give people the option to join an 'outlaw' alliance allowing them to pvp anyone but it would not be race specific and a fairly high commitment.
The focus of the game should be more warfare and in all fairness I think many from the community feel the same way, but the loudest QQers of the community typically just want a 1 vs 1 gank fest
I have played for two years and I still don`t know what the spirit of Darkfall is.
It is not a PVP mmo, that`s for sure. There is so little pvp in Darkfall I have several times considered to re-activate my WOW account to get some action. The playes that chose Darkfall for the pvp part quit before their char is 5% pvp viable due to the huge level grind. And all the fun end game in Darkfall is out of reach for most of the players. There is simply not enough players in this game to have any fun and it has been like this since the server split. What kind of develpers makes a full-loot pvp mmo and make the level grind so huge that normal people can play it?
The UI in another chapter. The UI in Darkfall is so bad you can`t play the game without a 3.party program. It has been like this for fucking two years and they haven`t fixed it yet. If you would like to play Darkfall buy a G15 keyboard, a mouse with 14 buttons and download AutoHK or autoit. You need these to handle the worst UI you have ever seen.
The alignment is the worst ever. You can kill anyone anywhere without a penalty. If you chose to craft in your capitol, they can kill you and take you stuff. If a bad player want to get back his good alignment, he just kill his alt char a few times and he is free to kill you again. As a new player there is a 10 times higher chance you will be killed by a same race char than any of you enemies. If you chose to join a clan it is even worse to be in a startertown.
Combine a huge level of griefing and a huge level grind, and you get new players unable to defend themselves. There you got the sucess of Darkfall. The moment any decent pvp mmo arrive Darkfall is dead and buried. It doesnt matter if it lack full-loot as Darkfall lack players and pvp.
Ohh and Darkfall pvp is 99.9999% 1 vs 1, so start macroing
I have followed Darkfall for a long time. I truly believe it's biggest downfall is the utter lack of meaning in it's PvP. The only reason to PvP is for it's own sake, so it ends up being like Modern Warfare on an absolutely gigantic map. No one really cares about losing their gear. No one really cares about the holdings since they don't really do anything anyway. No, the real problem is that I can just murder someone any time I feel like it, and there is no consequence for it. This in turn makes it meaningless. The game doesn't penalize me, the victim doesn't care because he has a bank full of 100 copies of the shit I just took from him, and likewise no one else gives a shit either. It just doesn't matter, and so it becomes boring. You can't even be a low-down, evil, murdering bastard, because no one really gives a fuck. It's no fun, because it's utterly impossible to even ruin anyone's day.
The focus of the game should be more warfare and in all fairness I think many from the community feel the same way, but the loudest QQers of the community typically just want a 1 vs 1 gank fest
I know you are counting me in when you say that, but no. 1 vs 1 against vet is not what i seek. from a newb, under 3 month, you should have the chance to get the minimum stuff you need to be pvp viable. Since the grind had been reduced, the only problem left are the stats.
How DF is currently, newbs can only focus on raising their numbers the fastest way possible. This mean, they also need to sink a lot of gold to progress further. So why would they spend gold on pvp gears?
Once they fix the stats grind, you will finally see average players wearing full plates or infernal mixed with bone, student.
At last, it should not be possible for any vet to kill 4, 2 months old players when they are all packed up.
I have followed Darkfall for a long time. I truly believe it's biggest downfall is the utter lack of meaning in it's PvP. The only reason to PvP is for it's own sake, so it ends up being like Modern Warfare on an absolutely gigantic map. No one really cares about losing their gear. No one really cares about the holdings since they don't really do anything anyway. No, the real problem is that I can just murder someone any time I feel like it, and there is no consequence for it. This in turn makes it meaningless. The game doesn't penalize me, the victim doesn't care because he has a bank full of 100 copies of the shit I just took from him, and likewise no one else gives a shit either. It just doesn't matter, and so it becomes boring. You can't even be a low-down, evil, murdering bastard, because no one really gives a fuck. It's no fun, because it's utterly impossible to even ruin anyone's day.
The focus of the game should be more warfare and in all fairness I think many from the community feel the same way, but the loudest QQers of the community typically just want a 1 vs 1 gank fest
I know you are counting me in when you say that, but no. 1 vs 1 against vet is not what i seek. from a newb, under 3 month, you should have the chance to get the minimum stuff you need to be pvp viable. Since the grind had been reduced, the only problem left are the stats.
How DF is currently, newbs can only focus on raising their numbers the fastest way possible. This mean, they also need to sink a lot of gold to progress further. So why would they spend gold on pvp gears?
Once they fix the stats grind, you will finally see average players wearing full plates or infernal mixed with bone, student.
At last, it should not be possible for any vet to kill 4, 2 months old players when they are all packed up.
I noticed that not a single word in your reply refered to clan warfare, ships, cannons, seige mechanics or city holds and by doing that you are basically re-enforcing my main point.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Having said that, if it was my game I would not allow pvp at all execpt between clans and clans could not exist unless you had 10 players. I would give people the option to join an 'outlaw' alliance allowing them to pvp anyone but it would not be race specific and a fairly high commitment.
The focus of the game should be more warfare and in all fairness I think many from the community feel the same way, but the loudest QQers of the community typically just want a 1 vs 1 gank fest
If we had some kind of alignment in this game, new players would be somewhat safe in their race area. At the start of Darkfall we gave each others warning when raiding partys came to our area, but that soon disapeared when the guy next to you in the startertowns was the dangerous one.
The cost of high end stuff like ships, warhulks and cannons are also to expensive. I have two private ships, and they will never leave my bank. The cost of replacing them are just to high. If we had huge clans and alliances it would be ok, but with the current population normal players will never see them in action. I meet players that have played this game for months and still havent seen a shipbattle, a siege or a fight with more than 10 players.
I`m lucky, I`ve seen and participated in all Darkfall have to offer. My alliance is also big enough to participate in the few sieges we have and sea fortress. The problem is the fun stuff is to rare in this game. When I log in and have to wait 10 hours for the sea fortress and nothing else happen, I get bored. I don`t count the one or two players that enters one of our citys pvp.A year ago I could atleast get a 10 vs 10 fight on a regular basis, but that is not happening any longer.
When AV focus on texture, optimizing the terrain, world building, new NPC spawn, fishing boats, NPC animation, ambient and dynamic lighting and sound I get sad. What they need to focus on is gameplay and not fluff. I will turn off anything that affect my fps anyway. What are we players suppose to do in an empty good looking world?
Warfare is what this game does better than the rest. They need to focus on getting players pvp viable, make the stuff we need to go to war easier to get and give us reason to fight over stuff. Then they can start implementing the fluff.
I have followed Darkfall for a long time. I truly believe it's biggest downfall is the utter lack of meaning in it's PvP. The only reason to PvP is for it's own sake, so it ends up being like Modern Warfare on an absolutely gigantic map. No one really cares about losing their gear. No one really cares about the holdings since they don't really do anything anyway. No, the real problem is that I can just murder someone any time I feel like it, and there is no consequence for it. This in turn makes it meaningless. The game doesn't penalize me, the victim doesn't care because he has a bank full of 100 copies of the shit I just took from him, and likewise no one else gives a shit either. It just doesn't matter, and so it becomes boring. You can't even be a low-down, evil, murdering bastard, because no one really gives a fuck. It's no fun, because it's utterly impossible to even ruin anyone's day.
I dont know if its the largest downfall I still say its the community itself that has been a downfall and AV's assumption that people will play a game in the spirit it was designed for.
Having said that, if it was my game I would not allow pvp at all execpt between clans and clans could not exist unless you had 10 players. I would give people the option to join an 'outlaw' alliance allowing them to pvp anyone but it would not be race specific and a fairly high commitment.
The focus of the game should be more warfare and in all fairness I think many from the community feel the same way, but the loudest QQers of the community typically just want a 1 vs 1 gank fest
I'm glad its not your game.
THe biggest failining of DFO is the fact that scarcity does not exist. AV is making scarcity exist with the next expac.
@Hotjazz. The cost is perfect, the mechanics for protecting those weapons aren't. I don't want losing a ship to be like losing gear. I also disagree with you on the "fluff" complaint. More people who have quit the game have quit because of the lack of things to do outside PvP than have quit for any other reason. DFO needs more fluff. DFO also doesn't need artifical PvP hot spots, it just needs scarcity so you have to farm or kill farmers to keep your bank up. I would also say that "waiting around 10hrs doing nothing" is because you clan SUCKs and doesn't like doing anything other than "simi fair' fights. If your clan realyl wanted to have fun then you guys would go raid LoD, DHW, or some of the other harder clans. But they don't want to get zerged so they sit around all day into something artifical pops up.
Having said that, if it was my game I would not allow pvp at all execpt between clans and clans could not exist unless you had 10 players. I would give people the option to join an 'outlaw' alliance allowing them to pvp anyone but it would not be race specific and a fairly high commitment.
The focus of the game should be more warfare and in all fairness I think many from the community feel the same way, but the loudest QQers of the community typically just want a 1 vs 1 gank fest
If we had some kind of alignment in this game, new players would be somewhat safe in their race area. At the start of Darkfall we gave each others warning when raiding partys came to our area, but that soon disapeared when the guy next to you in the startertowns was the dangerous one.
The cost of high end stuff like ships, warhulks and cannons are also to expensive. I have two private ships, and they will never leave my bank. The cost of replacing them are just to high. If we had huge clans and alliances it would be ok, but with the current population normal players will never see them in action. I meet players that have played this game for months and still havent seen a shipbattle, a siege or a fight with more than 10 players.
I`m lucky, I`ve seen and participated in all Darkfall have to offer. My alliance is also big enough to participate in the few sieges we have and sea fortress. The problem is the fun stuff is to rare in this game. When I log in and have to wait 10 hours for the sea fortress and nothing else happen, I get bored. I don`t count the one or two players that enters one of our citys pvp.A year ago I could atleast get a 10 vs 10 fight on a regular basis, but that is not happening any longer.
When AV focus on texture, optimizing the terrain, world building, new NPC spawn, fishing boats, NPC animation, ambient and dynamic lighting and sound I get sad. What they need to focus on is gameplay and not fluff. I will turn off anything that affect my fps anyway. What are we players suppose to do in an empty good looking world?
Warfare is what this game does better than the rest. They need to focus on getting players pvp viable, make the stuff we need to go to war easier to get and give us reason to fight over stuff. Then they can start implementing the fluff.
What makes epic event epic and not just quake online it is the investment made to build up to the event. Now granted chopping wood for weeks isnt exactly the perfect tension builder but overall what you are supposed to be doing in between seatower events is perparing for the next one.
When I got excited about this game it was 100000% about the warfar. Casually running around looking for non-warfare based pvp I thought would be a very small minority of the player base and that surely they would see that this is not that game.
opps!
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
From my perspective as a newish player (played 5-6 months), I quit because of the pointless ganking. DF was fun enough for me that I could actually stand it for as long as I did, but when my friend and I got farmed in under 10 seconds after working on our characters for so long, that actually did it for me.
I talked to a lot of other "new" players who quit, and they said they did it for similar reasons = how long it takes to defend yourself against long-time players who farm you. I don't know about "the majority" of players because I haven't done any polls. I'm just saying what I have heard personally.
From my point of view IF AV wants to retain new players they need to do the following (besides UI and all that, which they said they are working on):
Make race matter
Fix the alignment system
That's just the way it is. Nothing pisses off new players more than getting ganked by your own race fresh out of the box and seeing them running around blue later. The first player I got killed by was another of my own race who invited me to a group. I had been in game less than 5 minutes and didn't even know how to equip my weapon. I was not pleased by that at the time. But now I can laugh about it. And I stuck with the game for nearly 6 months.
In all fairness, the majority of players I interacted with were pretty decent and helpful. But there is a significant number of idiots that love to gank those much weaker than they are (and fully loot them), so there you have it.
So like it or not, fix race and alignment issues and significantly more new players will stay. I know most of the long-time players seem to like ARAC and say that it's more sandboxy that way, but say what you will, I think it turns away a lot of new players. The sandbox/freedom issue is also debateable, but that is another topic.
EDIT: And I know the fix all answer is join a clan, but that may not be possible for all players if they are casual and can't make the time commitments or don't like to have their playstyle dictated to them in a race to "character progression" which doesn't leave time to explore the very cool world of Agon. It is often not easy to be accepted by a "good" clan, and joining a new or small clan can cause more problems than it solves with regard to getting ganked (war dec'ed) by noob hit squads.
From my perspective as a newish player (played 5-6 months), I quit because of the pointless ganking. DF was fun enough for me that I could actually stand it for as long as I did, but when my friend and I got farmed in under 10 seconds after working on our characters for so long, that actually did it for me.
I talked to a lot of other "new" players who quit, and they said they did it for similar reasons = how long it takes to defend yourself against long-time players who farm you. I don't know about "the majority" of players because I haven't done any polls. I'm just saying what I have heard personally.
From my point of view IF AV wants to retain new players they need to do the following (besides UI and all that, which they said they are working on):
Make race matter
Fix the alignment system
That's just the way it is. Nothing pisses off new players more than getting ganked by your own race fresh out of the box and seeing them running around blue later. The first player I got killed by was another of my own race who invited me to a group. I had been in game less than 5 minutes and didn't even know how to equip my weapon. I was not pleased by that at the time. But now I can laugh about it. And I stuck with the game for nearly 6 months.
In all fairness, the majority of players I interacted with were pretty decent and helpful. But there is a significant number of idiots that love to gank those much weaker than they are (and fully loot them), so there you have it.
So like it or not, fix race and alignment issues and significantly more new players will stay. I know most of the long-time players seem to like ARAC and say that it's more sandboxy that way, but say what you will, I think it turns away a lot of new players. The sandbox/freedom issue is also debateable, but that is another topic.
EDIT: And I know the fix all answer is join a clan, but that may not be possible for all players if they are casual and can't make the time commitments or don't like to have their playstyle dictated to them in a race to "character progression" which doesn't leave time to explore the very cool world of Agon. It is often not easy to be accepted by a "good" clan, and joining a new or small clan can cause more problems than it solves with regard to getting ganked (war dec'ed) by noob hit squads.
even av said it darkfall is NOT for casual players
I believe AV stated that the game servers could only withstand 10k concurrent peeps. If there is only 2 servers, that's not many peeps. For Darkfall to be any kind of success, it needs more subscriptions. I don't see that happening.
Darkfall failed with it's "limited" release that was easily hacked, full of bugs, and had few of the once exalted features. MMO's have a hard time recovering from that. Just ask Vanguard players...
As someone who has played both games through their failed early releases I must say that there was quite a big difference in my experiences with them.
Vanguard:
- Couldn't walk into some of the cities because of the lag. Some cities were so bad that just getting through the front door could take a few minutes since you really couldn't tell where your character was in relation to the door. The game would catch up and you would be far from the door so basically the game was not playable in many areas (that would be required for a several quest-chains) like some of the capital cities but they fixed that in about half a year mostly.
- GMs did not respond to problems in a timely manner. I remember on multiple occasions getting stuck in the world or something because of a broken quest and having to wait for hours before being able to play again. Also, since it was a themepark game you relied on quests working and the quests had riddles and stuff so you never really knew for sure if you were stuck because of a bug or because you needed to figure something out for your quest. Experiencing figuring out to complete a broken quest several times makes you not want to spend time trying to figure out the next one since you wont know if it will work right or not. Companies can get sued for such incomplete code. Remeber Daggerfall?
- Hacks stayed in the game for as long as I played it (until the FFA PVP server died pretty much was when I left). Whenever someone was hacking, I would report it and it was always the same auto-generated message I would get, sometimes several hours later, saying always the same thing along the lines of, "Thank you for reporting the bug and we are looking into it" . ... which would have been fine if they were able to clean it up at some point but the PVP was so broken that you could get one-shotted by someone who happened to choose the OP class and use the broken spell that could kill you with one hit despite the level difference and didn't need to explot or hack to do this. It took them years to fix things like this and they were only small bandaid patches. The most annoying bugs with PVP were never fixed but patched with bandaids.
- It was obvious after the few months of watching problems get fixed very slowly that the game had been abandoned. This killed the game more than anything else. They were pressured into releasing the game too early and did not have much support from SOE it totally felt like. If they just simply had a blog or any kind of communication with the community about what they are working on to improve the game or anything like that a lot of people would not have left.
Basically it felt like it came down to SOE deciding to put an end to Vanguard before it was even released. Maybe this was because it would most likely steal population from EQ/EQ2 instead of WoW?
I was able to create a risk vs reward experience in this game a little which made me have fun with it for a few years. I farmed infamy (which can be taken by other players on the FFA PVP server) a couple hours a day for years and eventually got to the point where if I died one time to anyone around my level it would set me back a couple months. This included if someone killed me while I was crafting which happened a lot. I had some great times in that game though but I treated it like it was a sandbox and did not play it like most people did. I was able to do many fun things since there were no instances in a huge open world that are not possible in other themepark games. Much easier to do memorable things in that kind of environment.
Darkfall:
- Darkfall's noob experience is terrible compared to most every other MMORPG out there. No matter how stupid an MMORPG is a person is more likely to have more fun in a game where they can figure out how to move around and do stuff right away. DFO currently has the funnest controls/UI that I have ever come across but its not because of them as much as it is because the defaults were so fail that I had to change it around every couple months and it took 8+ months until they felt right for me but now that I am so used to it I find it a lot funner than any other game because I have so many more buttons to press and more things race through my head during combat. I almost quit many times during the first month but I am glad that I did not because it turned out being my best MMORPG experience by far. I must admit that I had more fun during the first month of playing games that are a lot worse than this one . ... and to be honest the first month in almost every other game can be funner but the thing is that they hit a wall while Darkfall seems to go on and on and on . ... 2 years and I have only seen 70% of the map and I still have not experienced much of the content.
- The game had a lot less content in it when compared to Vanguard during its launch but the PVP worked and had things to offer that does not exist combined like this in any other game. All of the quests worked. You could go anywhere you wanted to. Only major lag I experienced were when hundreds of people were in the same area (Vanguard has much worse lag even if no one else was on your screen). You couldn't get stuck because it is not a themepark game where you depend on the rails to work in order to take you somewhere. That was the most frustrating thing about Vanguard was having things break and not being able to play until a GM fixes it for you.
- Most people couldn't even get an account for the game or get it running after they did. Some tried everyday for a month before finally getting in. Some still cannot get this game to work. Most people that I know who play the game have some sort of IT experience. Refiguring your UI is the most important thing with enjoying the game.
- Feeling that there is serious lack of content was extreme when the game first launched and still can feel that way until you get a mount because the world is so huge. Finding cool looking spots that have nothing of real value in it is quite common in this game still but every spot is a potential battleground for PVP. Unlike Vanguard though, this game has many things to offer that others do not and it has totally non-linear character developement so nobody gets stuck on quest-chains or anything like that. There are enough quests in Darkfall to keep someone busy for over a year easily and it wouldn't matter at all if one was broken like it would in other games.
- Insane grind! Believe it or not this was a really good move for AV. It gave them time to test things and work on adding content while bringing in more money to put into the game. This game was not ready to be called complete and still is not. The grind that used to exist made it so that people had much more fun during the first few months though. If they had no grind or much less of one than I may not have stuck around for as long as I did. You see during my first siege I saw some totally epic sights like archers lining the walls as hundreds of mounts come come charging over the hills, etc. that would have not existed without a grind because there was no balancing implemented in the game at that point like there is now. There was epic warfare all over the place and experiences like the one that I had was totally worth spending the money on playing a paid-beta game that it was.
Basically it comes down to Darkfall being AV's baby. Not only have they been able to keep the game afloat but they have also hired a larger development team and continue to add content before I am finished with what is already there.Unlike Vanguard, they obviously have not abandoned the game andhave easily doubled the amount of content since I started playing. Everything about the game keeps getting better and funner for the most part and I can keep up with things in the works here: http://www.darkfallonline.com/blog/activity-report-january-28th/ I used to have my doubts about whether Darkfall had been abandoned or not so this blog is surely going to help!
Vanguard vs Darkfall?
Comparing the 2 games is like comparing an unloved starving baby about to die (VG) to an ugly baby with plastic surgery doctors for parents (DF) lol
F@#% you SOE!! : (
Ditching babies is lame!
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I believe AV stated that the game servers could only withstand 10k concurrent peeps. If there is only 2 servers, that's not many peeps. For Darkfall to be any kind of success, it needs more subscriptions. I don't see that happening.
Darkfall failed with it's "limited" release that was easily hacked, full of bugs, and had few of the once exalted features. MMO's have a hard time recovering from that. Just ask Vanguard players...
As someone who has played both games through their failed early releases I must say that there was quite a big difference in my experiences with them.
Vanguard vs Darkfall?
Comparing the 2 games is like comparing an unloved starving baby about to die (VG) to an ugly baby with plastic surgery doctors for parents (DF) lol
F@#% you SOE!! : (
Ditching babies is lame!
So blasting true. From my understanding, SoE actually fired half the staff of VG after buying the company in order to prevent VG from competing with EQ2 while picking up some cash along the way.
Comments
Its just not your game, your complaining about getting ganked and such.. In Darkfall anyone is a potential enemy. Getting into fights or hiding and avoiding them is the funny part.
On the other hand if you live out of a Chaos City, if it gets attacked the people might stick together and help each other.
Same goes for newbie Spawns. Unlike levelbased games a group of new characters can defend themselves very quick in Darkfall with proper teamplay. The new skillgains and the offline skilling are great imo.
People who nerd rage and insta-quit when they get pked will not be able to emotionally tolerate Darkfall, which is sad because in the end it actually has more stable and friendly player environment than any other game with activated PVP.
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Emotionally tolerate Darkfall? If you have to tolerate a game to play it, you're not having fun. If you're under emotional duress while playing a game, there's an issue.
While my experience on Darkfall was admittedly limited, I have to say that less than 10% of the players I came across were friendly. I'm not talking they didn't attack on sight friendly, but rather they actually had a personality that didn't revolve around being a dick. That being said, Eve Online has a much large population, a very friendly community, better (albeit different) pvp, and is actually balanced.
I actually am in agreement on this comment even though I am a huge darkfall fan. That said, the game overall is SOO much better than anything else on the market today that if you can find it in yourself to 'play the long road' and not worry about pvp losses (which there will be a TON) then it makes for a great game.
That said, I do understand and agree with the Darkfall community concern and I wouldnt be at all surprised if they completely change the game for this upcoming super patch and basically give the existing community the finger. I know I would, its not a community that helps the game.
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I couldn't agree more.
I've seen this time and time again since launch. A few months back I watched someone from this very forum rage quit over being PKed a single time on the way to my clan's city. I remembered thinking that obviously he was not cut out for the game because if that single encounter angered him so much how would he ever last for the long haul?
It was only a 45 minute trip for him to get to our city, and he had nothing of value on him, it was simply the loss of 45 minutes for no reason other than the fact that another player spotted him along the way and decided to kill him just because he could, that was the sole determining factor in his decision to quit.
I didn't even have time to mention a few things that would have made his journey easier on him, as he quit rather abruptly following the avove incident. That death could have been avoided, but he made some simple mistakes along the way and as a result ended up in a hostile area near the Alfar starting zones, when he could have skirted those areas completely by remaining on a northeastern course instead of taking the southeastern route he took.
If he had tabbed out for a few seconds and looked at a labled map so that he could determine a safer pass through the area, and get his bearings, he would have been fine. Instead he chose just to wing it, got rolled along the way, and quit.
When I first started playing the alliance I was in at the time owned multiple holdings down on Ruby, and in order to get to our city so I could bind there I obviously had to run all that way. I was a dwarf at the time, so that meant running (literally) from one end of the world to the other, a task that can take upwards of two or three hours due to getting ganked, picked off by the fire dragon or other mobs, etc... along the way.
I was ganked countless times during that first journey, while bouncing from chaos stone to chaos stone binding as I went, each time costing me roughly 45 minutes spent that I would have to run again all over again. I ended up spending about five hours just to get to one of our alliance holdings. It was an experience that made me want to stick with the game, not leave, because in the end when I did accomplish my goal it was one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had in over a decade of online gaming.
I've been with the game ever since.
The point is that some people just can't take the heat, and nine out of ten times they are very quick to just up and run out of the kitchen at a dead sprint, instead of adapting to the hostile environment presented before them and accepting that death is a common part of the game in DF.
As a result rage-quitters never truly experience what the game has to offer, which is quite a shame imho.
I have to agree with you on everything you said here.
I have followed Darkfall for a long time. I truly believe it's biggest downfall is the utter lack of meaning in it's PvP. The only reason to PvP is for it's own sake, so it ends up being like Modern Warfare on an absolutely gigantic map. No one really cares about losing their gear. No one really cares about the holdings since they don't really do anything anyway. No, the real problem is that I can just murder someone any time I feel like it, and there is no consequence for it. This in turn makes it meaningless. The game doesn't penalize me, the victim doesn't care because he has a bank full of 100 copies of the shit I just took from him, and likewise no one else gives a shit either. It just doesn't matter, and so it becomes boring. You can't even be a low-down, evil, murdering bastard, because no one really gives a fuck. It's no fun, because it's utterly impossible to even ruin anyone's day.
I believe AV stated that the game servers could only withstand 10k concurrent peeps. If there is only 2 servers, that's not many peeps. For Darkfall to be any kind of success, it needs more subscriptions. I don't see that happening.
Darkfall failed with it's "limited" release that was easily hacked, full of bugs, and had few of the once exalted features. MMO's have a hard time recovering from that. Just ask Vanguard players...
AV was very happy with their economic progress on Darkfall few months ago as stated in a interview they already got half of investment back within a years and a half period since launch. The playerbase was even worried that them being happy resulting in less developemnts effort and changes in game.
2 servers are good enough, 10k concurrent players would mean around 50k active subs per server and a pop of 100k would be bombastic for DF.
If you people think about economic success you look to much after those inefficent AAA companies, they put alot of money and ressources and investors money in development and of course they need big numbers for success. Darkfall didn't put a lot of money but put in a lot of time. We all know the long development cycle pre beta and i am sure they did work on parallel projects to found themselves. thats why they don#t need the big numbers for beiing a success. Of course now, after DF success they need to grow and change this habbit of low cost - long development time to put in features faster, since theyhire and are open for new employees i also don't worry about it either.
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$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)
Uhm, Avi gotg 20 million Euro from EU so that isn't fair. Not that I protest that EU uses my taxmoney to make MMOs, they usually uses them for dumber stuff like paying farmers to grow stuff no one wants or wineyards to make wine that you can't drink.
But without that money Avi would be in a lot more trouble, you really can't do this a second time sinceEU got a lot cheaper after the crisis in Greece and Ireland.
Nothing against DFO, but the reason they don't need so many players is because they got a huge percentage of the development money from the state and that isn't really something anyone can repeast.
Was wondering the same thing. How can anyone say thats fun? It's right next to cheating, the only difference being that it's legal.
Eat me!
AV got no 20 million from EU. You haters can't differ reality anymore seems and know no border anymore what lies and truth is. They signed a deal with the publisher AWE (Audio Visual Enterptises), a public stock company !, who publishes DF in Europe which included a common bond amounting 25 millions. The deal with the publisher issued summer 2008 that was just 6 months before launch and doensn't cover much of the long development time since 2003.
AV has done jobs for Defense Department and of course received money for it but it wasn't 20 millions and nowhere was EU any of the contractual partners.
-----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)
PVP does have meaning and holding do matter..
Sun are only as strong as they are because of the numbers they ahve an the amount of holdings with mines so they get tons of rare ore to build high rank weapons and armor.. Without it they would find it very hard to equip everyone in decent gear, make enough money to build the massive ships they have and so on..
It also matters if you enjoy the game and are part of an alliance, holding and defending teritory is important to yuor alliance/clan as it gives a safeer place to craft and lvl your skills in mob spawns around the cities..
This is a sandbox type game so basically the players help create content..
Now Darkfall is not for everyone some people like everything laid out for them and atificical restrictions put on them.. thats find but Darkfall is not the game for you..
I come back to Darkfall in December and i must say im having a blast and now with the skill increase i cn spend less time in game.. im only a casual player anyway maybe 1-2 hours a night but within a month and a character that could make a difference in group pvp and get a few kills in with my bow
or spells..
Population is fine if you jon a guild and get into their cities.. the alliance im in see action every night we either get raided or we raid an enemy city.. Also sea towers twice a week and there is tons of action there
Sure the game is not perfect but no MMO is all i can say this is the most fun i have had in an MMO for a very very long time..
There is a trial for anyone who is thinknig about taking a look.
I dont know if its the largest downfall I still say its the community itself that has been a downfall and AV's assumption that people will play a game in the spirit it was designed for.
Having said that, if it was my game I would not allow pvp at all execpt between clans and clans could not exist unless you had 10 players. I would give people the option to join an 'outlaw' alliance allowing them to pvp anyone but it would not be race specific and a fairly high commitment.
The focus of the game should be more warfare and in all fairness I think many from the community feel the same way, but the loudest QQers of the community typically just want a 1 vs 1 gank fest
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I have played for two years and I still don`t know what the spirit of Darkfall is.
It is not a PVP mmo, that`s for sure. There is so little pvp in Darkfall I have several times considered to re-activate my WOW account to get some action. The playes that chose Darkfall for the pvp part quit before their char is 5% pvp viable due to the huge level grind. And all the fun end game in Darkfall is out of reach for most of the players. There is simply not enough players in this game to have any fun and it has been like this since the server split. What kind of develpers makes a full-loot pvp mmo and make the level grind so huge that normal people can play it?
The UI in another chapter. The UI in Darkfall is so bad you can`t play the game without a 3.party program. It has been like this for fucking two years and they haven`t fixed it yet. If you would like to play Darkfall buy a G15 keyboard, a mouse with 14 buttons and download AutoHK or autoit. You need these to handle the worst UI you have ever seen.
The alignment is the worst ever. You can kill anyone anywhere without a penalty. If you chose to craft in your capitol, they can kill you and take you stuff. If a bad player want to get back his good alignment, he just kill his alt char a few times and he is free to kill you again. As a new player there is a 10 times higher chance you will be killed by a same race char than any of you enemies. If you chose to join a clan it is even worse to be in a startertown.
Combine a huge level of griefing and a huge level grind, and you get new players unable to defend themselves. There you got the sucess of Darkfall. The moment any decent pvp mmo arrive Darkfall is dead and buried. It doesnt matter if it lack full-loot as Darkfall lack players and pvp.
Ohh and Darkfall pvp is 99.9999% 1 vs 1, so start macroing
I know you are counting me in when you say that, but no. 1 vs 1 against vet is not what i seek. from a newb, under 3 month, you should have the chance to get the minimum stuff you need to be pvp viable. Since the grind had been reduced, the only problem left are the stats.
How DF is currently, newbs can only focus on raising their numbers the fastest way possible. This mean, they also need to sink a lot of gold to progress further. So why would they spend gold on pvp gears?
Once they fix the stats grind, you will finally see average players wearing full plates or infernal mixed with bone, student.
At last, it should not be possible for any vet to kill 4, 2 months old players when they are all packed up.
C:\Users\FF\Desktop\spin move.gif
I noticed that not a single word in your reply refered to clan warfare, ships, cannons, seige mechanics or city holds and by doing that you are basically re-enforcing my main point.
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If we had some kind of alignment in this game, new players would be somewhat safe in their race area. At the start of Darkfall we gave each others warning when raiding partys came to our area, but that soon disapeared when the guy next to you in the startertowns was the dangerous one.
The cost of high end stuff like ships, warhulks and cannons are also to expensive. I have two private ships, and they will never leave my bank. The cost of replacing them are just to high. If we had huge clans and alliances it would be ok, but with the current population normal players will never see them in action. I meet players that have played this game for months and still havent seen a shipbattle, a siege or a fight with more than 10 players.
I`m lucky, I`ve seen and participated in all Darkfall have to offer. My alliance is also big enough to participate in the few sieges we have and sea fortress. The problem is the fun stuff is to rare in this game. When I log in and have to wait 10 hours for the sea fortress and nothing else happen, I get bored. I don`t count the one or two players that enters one of our citys pvp.A year ago I could atleast get a 10 vs 10 fight on a regular basis, but that is not happening any longer.
When AV focus on texture, optimizing the terrain, world building, new NPC spawn, fishing boats, NPC animation, ambient and dynamic lighting and sound I get sad. What they need to focus on is gameplay and not fluff. I will turn off anything that affect my fps anyway. What are we players suppose to do in an empty good looking world?
Warfare is what this game does better than the rest. They need to focus on getting players pvp viable, make the stuff we need to go to war easier to get and give us reason to fight over stuff. Then they can start implementing the fluff.
I'm glad its not your game.
THe biggest failining of DFO is the fact that scarcity does not exist. AV is making scarcity exist with the next expac.
@Hotjazz. The cost is perfect, the mechanics for protecting those weapons aren't. I don't want losing a ship to be like losing gear. I also disagree with you on the "fluff" complaint. More people who have quit the game have quit because of the lack of things to do outside PvP than have quit for any other reason. DFO needs more fluff. DFO also doesn't need artifical PvP hot spots, it just needs scarcity so you have to farm or kill farmers to keep your bank up. I would also say that "waiting around 10hrs doing nothing" is because you clan SUCKs and doesn't like doing anything other than "simi fair' fights. If your clan realyl wanted to have fun then you guys would go raid LoD, DHW, or some of the other harder clans. But they don't want to get zerged so they sit around all day into something artifical pops up.
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
What makes epic event epic and not just quake online it is the investment made to build up to the event. Now granted chopping wood for weeks isnt exactly the perfect tension builder but overall what you are supposed to be doing in between seatower events is perparing for the next one.
When I got excited about this game it was 100000% about the warfar. Casually running around looking for non-warfare based pvp I thought would be a very small minority of the player base and that surely they would see that this is not that game.
opps!
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From my perspective as a newish player (played 5-6 months), I quit because of the pointless ganking. DF was fun enough for me that I could actually stand it for as long as I did, but when my friend and I got farmed in under 10 seconds after working on our characters for so long, that actually did it for me.
I talked to a lot of other "new" players who quit, and they said they did it for similar reasons = how long it takes to defend yourself against long-time players who farm you. I don't know about "the majority" of players because I haven't done any polls. I'm just saying what I have heard personally.
From my point of view IF AV wants to retain new players they need to do the following (besides UI and all that, which they said they are working on):
Make race matter
Fix the alignment system
That's just the way it is. Nothing pisses off new players more than getting ganked by your own race fresh out of the box and seeing them running around blue later. The first player I got killed by was another of my own race who invited me to a group. I had been in game less than 5 minutes and didn't even know how to equip my weapon. I was not pleased by that at the time. But now I can laugh about it. And I stuck with the game for nearly 6 months.
In all fairness, the majority of players I interacted with were pretty decent and helpful. But there is a significant number of idiots that love to gank those much weaker than they are (and fully loot them), so there you have it.
So like it or not, fix race and alignment issues and significantly more new players will stay. I know most of the long-time players seem to like ARAC and say that it's more sandboxy that way, but say what you will, I think it turns away a lot of new players. The sandbox/freedom issue is also debateable, but that is another topic.
EDIT: And I know the fix all answer is join a clan, but that may not be possible for all players if they are casual and can't make the time commitments or don't like to have their playstyle dictated to them in a race to "character progression" which doesn't leave time to explore the very cool world of Agon. It is often not easy to be accepted by a "good" clan, and joining a new or small clan can cause more problems than it solves with regard to getting ganked (war dec'ed) by noob hit squads.
even av said it darkfall is NOT for casual players
As someone who has played both games through their failed early releases I must say that there was quite a big difference in my experiences with them.
Vanguard:
- Couldn't walk into some of the cities because of the lag. Some cities were so bad that just getting through the front door could take a few minutes since you really couldn't tell where your character was in relation to the door. The game would catch up and you would be far from the door so basically the game was not playable in many areas (that would be required for a several quest-chains) like some of the capital cities but they fixed that in about half a year mostly.
- GMs did not respond to problems in a timely manner. I remember on multiple occasions getting stuck in the world or something because of a broken quest and having to wait for hours before being able to play again. Also, since it was a themepark game you relied on quests working and the quests had riddles and stuff so you never really knew for sure if you were stuck because of a bug or because you needed to figure something out for your quest. Experiencing figuring out to complete a broken quest several times makes you not want to spend time trying to figure out the next one since you wont know if it will work right or not. Companies can get sued for such incomplete code. Remeber Daggerfall?
- Hacks stayed in the game for as long as I played it (until the FFA PVP server died pretty much was when I left). Whenever someone was hacking, I would report it and it was always the same auto-generated message I would get, sometimes several hours later, saying always the same thing along the lines of, "Thank you for reporting the bug and we are looking into it" . ... which would have been fine if they were able to clean it up at some point but the PVP was so broken that you could get one-shotted by someone who happened to choose the OP class and use the broken spell that could kill you with one hit despite the level difference and didn't need to explot or hack to do this. It took them years to fix things like this and they were only small bandaid patches. The most annoying bugs with PVP were never fixed but patched with bandaids.
- It was obvious after the few months of watching problems get fixed very slowly that the game had been abandoned. This killed the game more than anything else. They were pressured into releasing the game too early and did not have much support from SOE it totally felt like. If they just simply had a blog or any kind of communication with the community about what they are working on to improve the game or anything like that a lot of people would not have left.
Basically it felt like it came down to SOE deciding to put an end to Vanguard before it was even released. Maybe this was because it would most likely steal population from EQ/EQ2 instead of WoW?
I was able to create a risk vs reward experience in this game a little which made me have fun with it for a few years. I farmed infamy (which can be taken by other players on the FFA PVP server) a couple hours a day for years and eventually got to the point where if I died one time to anyone around my level it would set me back a couple months. This included if someone killed me while I was crafting which happened a lot. I had some great times in that game though but I treated it like it was a sandbox and did not play it like most people did. I was able to do many fun things since there were no instances in a huge open world that are not possible in other themepark games. Much easier to do memorable things in that kind of environment.
Darkfall:
- Darkfall's noob experience is terrible compared to most every other MMORPG out there. No matter how stupid an MMORPG is a person is more likely to have more fun in a game where they can figure out how to move around and do stuff right away. DFO currently has the funnest controls/UI that I have ever come across but its not because of them as much as it is because the defaults were so fail that I had to change it around every couple months and it took 8+ months until they felt right for me but now that I am so used to it I find it a lot funner than any other game because I have so many more buttons to press and more things race through my head during combat. I almost quit many times during the first month but I am glad that I did not because it turned out being my best MMORPG experience by far. I must admit that I had more fun during the first month of playing games that are a lot worse than this one . ... and to be honest the first month in almost every other game can be funner but the thing is that they hit a wall while Darkfall seems to go on and on and on . ... 2 years and I have only seen 70% of the map and I still have not experienced much of the content.
- The game had a lot less content in it when compared to Vanguard during its launch but the PVP worked and had things to offer that does not exist combined like this in any other game. All of the quests worked. You could go anywhere you wanted to. Only major lag I experienced were when hundreds of people were in the same area (Vanguard has much worse lag even if no one else was on your screen). You couldn't get stuck because it is not a themepark game where you depend on the rails to work in order to take you somewhere. That was the most frustrating thing about Vanguard was having things break and not being able to play until a GM fixes it for you.
- Most people couldn't even get an account for the game or get it running after they did. Some tried everyday for a month before finally getting in. Some still cannot get this game to work. Most people that I know who play the game have some sort of IT experience. Refiguring your UI is the most important thing with enjoying the game.
- Feeling that there is serious lack of content was extreme when the game first launched and still can feel that way until you get a mount because the world is so huge. Finding cool looking spots that have nothing of real value in it is quite common in this game still but every spot is a potential battleground for PVP. Unlike Vanguard though, this game has many things to offer that others do not and it has totally non-linear character developement so nobody gets stuck on quest-chains or anything like that. There are enough quests in Darkfall to keep someone busy for over a year easily and it wouldn't matter at all if one was broken like it would in other games.
- Insane grind! Believe it or not this was a really good move for AV. It gave them time to test things and work on adding content while bringing in more money to put into the game. This game was not ready to be called complete and still is not. The grind that used to exist made it so that people had much more fun during the first few months though. If they had no grind or much less of one than I may not have stuck around for as long as I did. You see during my first siege I saw some totally epic sights like archers lining the walls as hundreds of mounts come come charging over the hills, etc. that would have not existed without a grind because there was no balancing implemented in the game at that point like there is now. There was epic warfare all over the place and experiences like the one that I had was totally worth spending the money on playing a paid-beta game that it was.
Basically it comes down to Darkfall being AV's baby. Not only have they been able to keep the game afloat but they have also hired a larger development team and continue to add content before I am finished with what is already there. Unlike Vanguard, they obviously have not abandoned the game and have easily doubled the amount of content since I started playing. Everything about the game keeps getting better and funner for the most part and I can keep up with things in the works here: http://www.darkfallonline.com/blog/activity-report-january-28th/ I used to have my doubts about whether Darkfall had been abandoned or not so this blog is surely going to help!
Vanguard vs Darkfall?
Comparing the 2 games is like comparing an unloved starving baby about to die (VG) to an ugly baby with plastic surgery doctors for parents (DF) lol
F@#% you SOE!! : (
Ditching babies is lame!
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So blasting true. From my understanding, SoE actually fired half the staff of VG after buying the company in order to prevent VG from competing with EQ2 while picking up some cash along the way.
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