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Darkfall not learning from shadowbane
Ok, I know this has been discussed in other threads of the same kind but I think people have missed a major logistical point of a BIG problem of shadowbane. Ok sure, I buy the fact that exploits, hacking, lag, major crashes and lack of pve or (beyond city building)lack of overall content killed shadowbane BUT what was a major contributing factor was the amount of loss attributed to losing a bane and/or war. (AKA they lost everything)
I mean lets face it, the mere concept of a Player vs Player game is to destroy your opponent but in the world of mmorpg, the consumer demands of something on a grander scale. For those of you that followed the game, after the first year a wide majority of the major guilds fell apart after A SINGLE LOSS. Sure you can chaulk this up to being poor sports but in reality, it took them months and 24/7 farming, lots of diplomacy and hordes of 60s to build up a city that was worth a damn. And, in one fell swoop, they lost it all in a bane. Where do you start out after that? From the beginning?
And, while Darkfall introduces a different kind of citybuilding, ship controling, etc etc.. it still doesn't answer the question of major losses. I mean come on, you guys know how it works, they'll be major guilds that create huge alliances that will dictate who does what.
Is there anything from stopping you from losing all your trade goods if you're playing a merchant? What if you lose your whole ship and resources as a pirate clan? How long does it take to build a city around a clanstone? Is it easy to capture mines?
Now i'm not claiming to know everything, because I don't. But isn't it curious that clanstone sounds like bind stone? Or that resources in the form of mines supply the city sound like sb? Or how "Strategically placed clanstone claming an area of land," sounds like shadowbane's realm ownership system?
What happens when a 20member strong clan gets destroyed after months of work on their home city? They'll quit that's what. And don't think they won't because whole clans left the game after realizing they'd have to start from square one after a big loss.
What does Darkfall give as an answer to this problem? None.
In the meanwhile, keep looking at those 9 new screen shots which to me looks like more of the same.
-Syloc of Brotherhood of Shadows, Mourning Server.
Visit My fantasy Blog! http://fantasyglobe.blogspot.com/
Comments
Pretty much all of SB revolved around the clanstone towns only. If you lost them,then yes you probably either had to bunk in someone else's town or join the NPC clans for a while,while waiting for the next clan to recruit you. You had no 'other' option.
However,Darkfall has clans that won't be EVEN USING said clanstone towns from the start necessarily. Nope. They'll be 'pirate' and 'wandering' clans,who are more mobile and perhaps even work for other clans. Darkfall has the option that just because you may not own a clanstone town,doesn't mean you can't 'own' something like a pirate ship or each other.
If anything,said clans could have an advantage. They have no real town to attack. They come,go and disappear; you have no visible way of damaging their 'structure'. Even the pirate clans could always knock up another ship in a NPC/friendly town and be back on the open seas once more in no time at all. You could hire them as covert mercs; the enemy never needs know who sent them,and thus if the mercs lose you never get counter-attacked for your troubles,and the mercs you hired just ask payment and leave.....
Darkfall's answer to your worry is that Darkfall doesn't place 100% emphasis on clanstone towns; if you lose your only town,become a 'wandering' clan and await the chance to strike a claim for your own town again.
Of course there will be big alliances/clans though,that's the nature of PvP gaming.
That is a good point Syloc and reminded me of a topic I participated in back in 2004. Here is the responce from Claus to a similar question as yours from that thread on the offical forums.
We are aware of the problems and pains involved with city siege and capture. We are testing out several setups, trying to make it worthwhile for the attacker, without hurting the defenders so much that they can never get back up on their feet again after loosing a city.
We will not limit capture, but we may limit destruction of structures to some degree. Meaning we may allow the attacker to burn down a few structures if they so desire, but not everything.
If the city is still standing reasonably intact, the clan that lost their city can eventually try to get it back again, which in turn leads to more siege and pvp action (something we all want).
Changing the design of Darkfall is pretty much just a matter of changing values in XML documents, so we can easily adjust and change during the testing stages.
With your help testing this stuff, we will get it right before release.
Lead Designer/Producer
Darkfall
Hate to keep playing the devil's advocate but these issues were directly faced in shadowbane, insofar as the hype that preceeded the game.
The primary mantra that, "You don't have to join a guild" was a fallacy in shadowbane. Sure, you didn't have to join a guild. Sure you could depend on open trading towns (Open Trees/Merchant trees) BUT it was easier to join a guild, so much so you didn't really have a choice. It's like when your parents would say when you were a teenage, "You don't have to study, it's your life." On Darkfall's websight it says, "You don't have to join a guild but you'll find it's really hard to play without one." (or something like that)
The selfdefeating mantra of, "This ia pvp game, if you don't like it don't play," was a saying that was selfdefeating. You need the carebears, no matter what people say. Shadowbane didn't realize this fast enough and when they did, it was too late
I mean sure the, "In development" answer is a valid one but seriously how much can you change about sieging? I mean sure, you can limit damage to the city but that doesn't change the fact that control of the city changed hands so you already lost it all. Or maybe you don't lose control of the city... which makes no sense because then what would be the point in the first place?
And what about the fesibility of the so-called wandering guilds? I mean they still have to have deadicated crafters to get them their gear, which gives them a reliance on at least trading cities. They tried that in Shadowbane too. Guess what? We decided that the trading city was gaining too much control/gold so we baned them too! Guilds in DAOC went so far as to have dedicated crafters in their guild so they didn't have to rely on freelancers. Shadowbane created Sea Dog's rest to solve the wandering guild problem but even that just made guilds just use Sea Dog's Rest to hit and run large guilds without accountability.
Without details, it's hard to point out flaws... but i wonder what sort of risk/reward system is setup to make seiging worthwhile.
-Syloc
Visit My fantasy Blog! http://fantasyglobe.blogspot.com/
Actually most of my friends in SB never whined about losing our cities. I was in a guild that was one of the major powers and we lost our city. It just became that much more fun to plot an attack and return the favor. It becomes a Braveheart scenario.
Well honestly, if you're still playing or ever reactivated your account, this doesn't apply to you. Hell I know i've lost my trees more times than I can count, it is fun if you know how to get back up on you're feet. But then again i reactivated my Shadowbane account 4 times. LOLS
If you kept up on server news there's almost a couple cases on each server where defeats caused people to quit.
Remember Lex Talionas on Mourning server? I was in a guild that allied with UDL that destroyed their ZERG and made their whole upper council quit the game. Remember Skyfang (I forget the server) yet another ZERG that got so annoying an alliance of guilds took them out and caused the two brothers that ran the guild to quit the game. Remember Sancutary on the undead isle on Mourning? THe "Peace and Love" guild? They quit because the upkeep of their cities costs so much that losing even 1 building meant weeks of farming. The list goes on and on. And these were guilds with 20-40 members. (aka medium to zergs) And their WHOLE guild moved to other games.
Well ok, I digress, Mines did aliveate this pressure somewhat. But then again, resources are so precious it's often well guarded so I doubt those players still would have stayed after losing so much. :P
lol now you're making me hate myself for become so negative. Damn you! hehe
-Syloc
Visit My fantasy Blog! http://fantasyglobe.blogspot.com/
I cannot express to you how much I agree... I played SB from release and have played it off and on again recently on Mourning and on the Loreplay server (till it went asian).
I made a tragic prediction on the SB forums, "You can't PvP yourself"... that was my answer to all the "if you don't lik it leave" posts people made in responce to people complaining about griefing and ganking that went on with lower levels and newbs...
And the paranoia of a PvP game where you could loose a city kept good guild from doing any real recruiting.
Though good job about being proud of being an ally of UDL, a bunch of cookie cutter min-max templates run by sploiters, yeah, be real proud of that... And no, i wasn't in LT
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
Let's not escape the fact that DarkFall's PvP has been copied off Shadowbane. And, although I'm a SB fan, the developers treated the community like crap so long i've long since lost love for those guys. (Even if they quit Wolfpack after the game started to go down the drain) The current guys are alright tho.
But I digress. the beauty of Darkfall is that they admit their mistakes. They thought they could do the whole game in FPS view, they've since admitted that might not work and they're testing it.
Shadowbane PvP was, hands down, great because it was political. No other game has done it in quite that fashion. At least to me.
-Syloc
Visit My fantasy Blog! http://fantasyglobe.blogspot.com/
discussing anything to do with darkfall is pointless because its 100% vaporware and will never happen to begin with..
Havent you figured that out yet???
actually some things they havent learned from Shadowbane is to not develop something for 10 years because it gets outdated and worthless eventually.. oh and not to use a bunch of amateurs who have no idea what they are doing.. what can you do..
Seriously though... whats the attraction to vaporware??? I remember when WISH and Dark and light were both hyped up to high heaven too.
darkfall is a pipe dream.. get it thorugh your thick skulls already.
hey look everybody, its our old friend, the ultimate ToC fanboi with a new alias!
How you been? Is ToC still alive? Last time i checked it had an impressive 3.9 in Hypemeter, going strong
Futilez - Mature MMORPG Community
Correcting people since birth.
No comment on this topic:P
Oh well lets do some hehe.
You sounds carebear and fanboi of other game you are just affraid darkfall has it all ,you have not check all about content DFO and look up official forums.
We still dunno much about how this will work nobody those so judge on something nobody knows its dumb.
But one thing we know DFO have so much more and is so much more open pvp game with freedom and a large world ,if so much more possibillitys compare to SB that DFO will be more succesfull then SB ever dreamed of now bug off go troll somewhere else:P
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
discussing anything to do with darkfall is pointless because its 100% vaporware and will never happen to begin with..
Havent you figured that out yet???
actually some things they havent learned from Shadowbane is to not develop something for 10 years because it gets outdated and worthless eventually.. oh and not to use a bunch of amateurs who have no idea what they are doing.. what can you do..
Seriously though... whats the attraction to vaporware??? I remember when WISH and Dark and light were both hyped up to high heaven too.
darkfall is a pipe dream.. get it thorugh your thick skulls already.
Again some silly troll try to be smart i know plenty big MMO,S who where in devolopment for 5 years over .
WOW anybody:p with BIG BUGS BEHIND THEM.
So a little company like adventurine devolope a game like DFO will take a while BUT AS THE GAME IS NOW DEVOLOPMENT IS ONLY4 YEARS.
Years before that it was a totally different game they start from SCRATCH IN 2003 SO ITS NOT VAPORWARE BY LONGSHOT CAPICE.
And now go play your silly wow or whatever
NOBODY force you to wait for darkfall or to come to forums to whine and cry about DFO is vaporware stupid troll.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
Example:
Dont buy tradegoods and travel around the world with your ship with all your money, maybe just 10% of it. Calculated risk, if you lose it, you lost 10% nothing special... if you win(make the trade deal perfect) you win enough money.
Dont build a city, if you cant afford to lose it, just build one, if you have enough extra cash for another one, or to fight back, or whatever.
But the main difference from Darkfall vs. Shadowbane is, city building, and city warefare is not the only possible playstyle in Darkfall. You dont need a city, you can make more than enough other stuff.
(and just to ask a question, which may come up after this post. But how can a store some money save? Well.. the bank in the capital cities are safe, and i think there will be some other options for safe, or almost safe storage of money.
Or another method the spread the risk, invest in different locations and or investments. Example:
- 1 trading ship
- trading shop in a friendly city(not your own city
- your own city
- resource spots(mine, and so on in different locations
)
Darkfall is more the son of UO than from Shadowbane, of course, the possibility for empire building and city warfare is from Shadowbane, but a lot of other stuff is from UO, and a lot of other stuff is even completely new to mmorpgs.
Shadowbane was and is one dimensional, it was just about cities, and about the fight over cities, if you lose it, if you was zerged, it was almost impossible to do anything other.. Darkfall is a complete other beast, you can do a lot of other stuff without a city, there is really no need to have a city, but of course it is fun to have one, and to fight the city and empire warefare.
And.. the city raiding process is also completely different, and the darkfall devs try at least to make it not as easy as it was in Shadowbane, but this can just be judged if we actually play the game.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
Shadowbane has been kept on life support by its few diehard fans. I salute you. Here are a few of my thoughts on Shadowbane:
1. When we were killed over and over and over again by the griefers and campers, I began to dislike the game.
2. When, after months of play time, I realized that the character I had been developing was some how gimped because I didn't read endless webpages on just how to creature a new character, I disliked the game.
3. When, after months of laying out a city, putting up vendors, buying guards, some jack-bag rolls in while we asleep or at work and destroys our labor of love, I hated the game.
4. When, after the first city was destroyed, and the second hidden city was up and running as a safefall, the same jack-bag finds our secret and destroys it while we are off contributing to society, I get physically ill and despise the game.
5. When our friend, who was co-owner of the city, finds our where this jack-bag lives and plans a excursion to face him and settle matters in a more "civilized" manner, only to find out that the griefer is 14 years old, we cancel all of our accounts, take our heart medicine, pray for forgivness, and move on to something a big more fun and a little less stressful.
A game should be played for fun, but take the fun out of it and give the game over to PKers, griefers, hackers, and dirtbags and you get what we all call Shadowbane. May God have mercy on the souls of the developers.
Darkfall, I eagerly anticipate your arrival. For all of Shadowbanes failings it had a truely VIABLE player-based economy, excellent city development second to none, and playable races that was different from the standard gnome, elf, dwarf genre. Cudos. Please learn from the grave failings of Shadowbane and make a game that works from launch.
Yes, that pretty much nails it. I started out at launch, and played for 3 months. I was having so much fun that I really thought I was going to cancel my three DAOC accounts and buy 2 more Shadowbane ones. (for family members)
Then one night, at about 3:30 am EST...a West coast alliance (DDO?, can't recall anymore) rolled up and attacked us (unprovoked, we had never done any of them harm) and razed the city down to the final 7 structures that were "protected" We found ourselves facing a challenge for a final fight in 2 days..and had no more city to defend.
So many people quit, including myself. Never was a final siege...we actually destroyed the rest on our own and let it all go. I'm all for fair combat in a PvP game...but being able to attack while the bulk of the guild was no where to be found was a crap idea...
and they lost my money.... I went back to DAOC for another 1.5 years.... and in fact, have recent returned to DAOC for more fun... but never would I return to SB..even though its free...
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While this has some merit, it can only get us so far before we're assuming or guessing what it will be like in DF. I certainly hope they've taken much of the errors of SB into account, and have good gameplay counters to them, but all we can do is wait and see.
Hell, "wait and see" has been the mantra for DF for me since around 2003.
The biggest factor that will fix the issue is if in beta, we are actually able to test city sieges, see how they work, and tell the dev's how they are broken. Then it is in their court to decide how to fix them (or if they ignore the comments). I don't think this dev team will ignore the words of their beta testers, but then again, we won't know until it happens. :P
All hail the mighty "wait and see".
Niccoli
Yep, that's the important thing too, learning from all the mistakes of other games...
...so they don't make the same mistakes themselves.
That wasn't the only thing wrong with it. The griefer problem is REALLY BAD, mainly because there is no consequences for random killing. I have tried to understand the mindset that thinks that is a fun thing to do, but I can't, any more than out and out cheating. If it was hard, if it made the NPCs angry, if a wanted poster with your name showed up and NPCs and PCs alike would try to hunt you down for it, then it would be dynamic and challenging to be a serial killer. Unfortunately, with Shadowbane, it was almost universally the "thing to do when you're bored"
As far as the guild-war implementation, they really blew it. While the guild system itself is second to none in my opinion, you could not advance past a certain level unless you were part of a guild that owned a city, you could not effectively run a guild without a city (and there is actually a bias in the player base against guilds that don't own cities) You directly owned resource spots. There was no trading except in the most rudimentary sense (and no help from the game engine) NPC's were not useful enough that you could go offline with any feeling of security for your city (you had to rely on the bane windows) NPCs could not be used on offense (honestly NPC's should make up the bulk of your offensive and defensive forces) and last but not least, too small a world for the number of cities you could build. The game is geared towards players who are in guilds who own cities and are able to play several hours a day. Everyone else is a second-class citizen, if that. It's a great game IF that is exactly what you want to do. If you want anything else, you got problems.
So there was absolutely no risk for killing another player? That sounds like very poor balance.
As far as the NPCs, it sounds like they were not used effectively - to fill the voids when players can not be logged in. So what was the main problem closer to, NPCs not effective to "hold down the fort" while players are away and inhibit killing and destruction or that players and items could be killed or destroyed too easily, in which case AI NPCs would not have helped much?
Maybe I'll have to try Shadowbane anyway, would be a good MMOG experience to learn from.
There wont be any greifers and campers in DF.
There wont be any "noobs", A new character can beat up a veteran. And if you kill a character in a spawn city, you will be forced to run for your life. And outside are all other runners waiting to kill...
And with full loot you wont just throw yourself into every fight you can.
And about to join a clan or not, if you want to be part of the race/clan wars of the game you need to. You cant fight a war alone...
It will be fun to see the first weeks when DF is released and all greafers and campers, just standing and beginning to realize this is not SHADOWBANE or WoW.
That alone is worth all this waiting.