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Best Upcoming PvP Games are Perfect Complements - Darkfall compared to Dark & Light
Oakstead
Member Posts: 455
Darkfall combined with Dark and Light and the best two PvP games in development and they are perfect complements to each other in terms of PvP play. They share these common features:
1. Dyanamic load leveling within a server cluster - each computer in a cluster seeks to balance out its CPU load. One computer will offload tasks to another computer if it gets too busy. This is a complex network technology but it reduces lag greatly and allows for 10,000+ online players per server.
2. Resistance to Zerg attacks when enemy is offline - In both games one can hire NPC for guards but both add an additional element. Dark and Light adds defense in depth from mana fountains that severely nerfs tresspassing enemy alignment characters. Darkfall adds the gloomer system in which the gloomer is an object that protects each city and will take many hours to destroy under optimum conditions.
3. Player based economy to give a purpose to PvP
4. Automation of boring tasks using hired NPCs. This includes mining and guarding (and this is where these games really outshine EVE-Online)
5. Both have systems that hope to prevent random player killing.
Their differences come down to player preference.
1. Darkfall aims to be multilateral with lots of contending clans and kindoms. Inherent race animosities is one factor helping to keep the game from turning into the more stable bilateral case (one large alliance vs another large alliance). In contrast Dark and Light embraces the bilateral case (one side is Dark and the other Light) and controls it so one side will never completely dominate the server.
2. Darkfall is skill based meaning skills are purchased and then leveled up with use. The intent is to allow a specialized character to get into a PvP fight almost right away. In constrast Dark and Light takes more of a leveling approach in which the character after gaining a certain number of fighting or social experience points levels up where those points can be spent on skills that open up as the charcter advances. To get players right into PvP the game is divided up into 10 kingdoms if increasing difficulty.
3. With the gloomer system Darkfall will tend to have lots of concentrated long term PvP battles around cities while Dark and Light will have more open field battles.
4. Being multilateral Darkfall will be more political while Dark and Light being bilateral will be more conducive to role play in addition to having some politics.
Anyway these two games are the great hope of online gaming by their promotion of immersive competition (unlike the anti-competitive WoW and Everquest II).
Comments
Any idea when Darkfall will be ocming out?
I know dark and light will be coming out sometime early '05, maybe even late '04, but I know Lineage 2 won't last me that long. :P
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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, chairman of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977
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You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didnt exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"If a mother can kill her own child, what is left before I kill you and you kill me?" -Mother Teresa when talking about abortion after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979
First post here, yup. But I am rather active in the Dark and Light community, or try to be at least.
Anyways, my take on PvP games. PvP has been dying since Trammel was added to UO. UO was a perfectly good game, fun, even, without Trammel and PvP encouraged so many things, namely teamwork (traveling together, hunting together, etc.)
I'm glad to see games such as DF and DnL encouraging PvP once again. Lineage and L2 did encourage it but there wasn't enough risk vs reward, it was/is mainly just risk with little reward, which was a problem.
UO did it perfectly, you kill someone you get all the stuff they were carrying. This made people think "hey maybe I should bring some heal pots with me..." which in turn gave Alchemy a major use.
PvP is a wonderful thing. Helps the games economy and gives, in my opinion, the most fun a game could ever offer: Battling a creature that thinks and reacts to any given situation, not just smash smash smash til it dies.
I agree with your post that PvP is a wonderful thing. But I disagree there wasn't enough risk vs reward in L2.
You don't do PvP for reward. PvP is reward.
In L2 reward doesn't equal settlement, War is the reward.
Cause: Provocation
Effect: PvP
yah I betaed L2 (who didn't? couldn't walk anywhere towards the end without seeing 100 people, 80 of which were female dark elves :P) and I agree with the provocation thing, had to thwack a couple people myself but I hated that whenever I did that, 20 people would jump all over me because *I* would be the one to drop equipment, not the person I killed.
That right there discourages PvP in general.
But IMO PvP should always have reward, not just being able to kill that annoying kill stealer (because you can always move)
I agree with your post that PvP is a wonderful thing. But I disagree there wasn't enough risk vs reward in L2.
You don't do PvP for reward. PvP is reward.
In L2 reward doesn't equal settlement, War is the reward.
Cause: Provocation
Effect: PvP
I'd Have to agree with the fact that there wasn't enough rewrd for your risk. The simple fact that PvP was so discouraged because of the harsh alignment system made things not worth it many times. PvP does reward itself, but the risk just wasn't worth it most of the time in L2.
Ehhh.... *Caught* ....
There is a thing called Arena .... sir....
If you let me to remind sir....
..... *Caught* .....
what do you mean *caught*? are you doubting that I betaed L2?
And yes, I assume L2 had an arena (I really don't know, never used it, for one whoever had the better equipment was basically the winner, the skills were all teh same for the most part)
That kinda defeats the purpose of PvP though, again IMO.
I guess I should start using the word "nonconsentual" with PvP because whenever people hear PvP they think of it being consentual, I guess.
I however do not.
Or maybe I should be using the term PKing but PK has a negative connotation for it, the kind that makes carebears (those that do not wish to PK) cringe at the sight of the word and instantly disregard it as an option, which thus produces today's genre of games, where PKing/PvPing is being frowned upon and those that do PK/PvP are generally referred to as "lamers" and "12-year olds' because people don't think you can have a mature battle with another human being without such phrases as "I pwned you!", 1337 speak, and other general stupidity. Stop me if I'm stereotyping too much, though.
Back to the arena thing.
An arena kills the PvP aspect of the game IMO because then you have to travel back to a village to get tehre, or whever "there" may be.
One of the things I liked about SWG is that you could be Covert (which I really didn't see the point of, just lead to griefing), Overt (PvP with other Overts of the other faction, all the time), or neutral (self explanatory). Also there would be PvP in the streets so that the carebears could see how much fun it is (or isn't, SWG's PvP did suck at times [has visions of the 3 incap rule, waiting 5 minutes to finally die, KD spamming, KDizzy, 1 hit incaps from rifles, 1 hit incaps from flamethrowers, RTEFing (revenge temporary enemy flags, basically where you got the first hit in on the person who killed you, always)]
Glad I quit that game. I now view SWG as more of a gateway to which people could be "introduced" to the sport and enjoyment of PvP/PKing more than an actual game (it was released with only 1/3 of the planned content, after all. Finally it came out of the P2P beta like...hmm 6-7 months later when vehicles and cities were finally released, though when I quit the battle grounds had been disabled and for all I know still don't work, the "monthly" stories were more like bi-annual stories, -I quit before Act III was initiated-)
Anyways sorry for getting off on that little tangent.
From now on PvP is referring to nonconsentual PvP when it's in my posts unless the text around it is talking of arenas or something.
So in that matter, L2s PvP did for the most part suck and the Risk vs Reward was not justified.
P.S. btw what's with the little crying animation? I don't see how that fits into the post, unless you're implying that Iwas whining or something, I dunno you tell me.
Unless they start passing out names and addresses of peopl, there are no consequences for being a dick in an MMO. And while DF, and DnL might not suffer from Shadowbanes technological failings, the failings of the playerbase will still be there, and the playerbase will cannabalize itself all over again resulting in a bunch of empty servers, just like every other pvp experiment to date. Until the mature half of the pvp crowd can somehow convince the other half to stop acting like speds with a Ritalin deficiency, there's no hope for the pvp mmo.
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They panic, so... just hold them down
I could live like this
I'm closing in; hate all around
I could be like this
Hearing them; them in my head
How can they be so sweet... sweet?
As DAoC has demonstrated, it is possible to have a large scale pvp system that is both fun and with a purpose. Games like Dark & Light and Darkfall are going to try and do one better than DAoC with larger scales of pvp. Im all for it, and personally I cant wait till these games hit the market.
The biggest challenge will be for the devs to design the games such that griefing is kept to a minimum and that pvp is accessible to everyone and can be fought in an organized way. These are areas that DAoC lacked greately for years until the latest expansion pack.
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Played: AC1, DAoC, E&B, SWG
Tested: AC1, AC2, DAoC, Eve, Planetside, Rubies, Lineage 2
True, but on all but one server DAoC is a closed system, pvpwise. You have to go to a special area to pvp, and everyone in that area will be close to you in level. Opposing realms cannot invade each other outside of the frontier area. Not that has entirely prevented some people from doing their best to circumvent the system, like the 50 Minstrel that charmed a troll out in the frontier, and brought it back to Prydwen keep. He would then let it loose, it would kill someone, then he would recharm it before the guards killed it. That's a pretty rare thing though, because it's a closed off system. However, if you go check out the Mordred server, and you'll see the exact same crap as you would in any other open pvp system, level 50's ganking low level people, etc.
There is no system that can be implemented in a nonconcentual pvp system that those who play to be assholes will be detered by. Either they'll wear their punishment as a badge of (dis)honor, or they'll play character B while the statloss, or whatever wears off on character A. Failing that, they'll just find other ways to kill them, be it training mobs on them, of finding bugs in the game like the charm bug in EQ. The only way to put a stop to those types of people would be 24/7 GM intervention, and posting their name and address in an MOTD at the main login. I think a couple curbstompings would go a long way towards putting a stop to that crap.
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They panic, so... just hold them down
I could live like this
I'm closing in; hate all around
I could be like this
Hearing them; them in my head
How can they be so sweet... sweet?
It looks like Darkfall willl be an improved version of Shadowbane, and D&L will be an improved version of DAOC
I think Shadowbane is the best best PVP game out there right now. It certainly has the most freedom. And it gives you more to fight for than in other games.
But some people prefer DAOC because you can only PVP in certain areas, so you don't have to worry about being griefed.
Of course WOW will be out before either of these, and the PVP in it that looks like it might be interesting
PvP in Guildwars will probably be the best, certainly better than anything thus far. It could do alot of good for games like Shadowbane, Darkfall, and DnL. If people go into a pvp situation, with a semipersistant world, and have fun, they might be more likely to give a pvp MMO, like DnL or Darkfall a chance.
For that to work tho, they need to be able to walk more than three steps into the newbie area before someone whos been playing for a year comes along and kills them 37 times, takes everything they own, and then sodomizes their corpse. That would probably be the last time they logged in to that game again, and most likely they would never buy a pvp based MMO in the future. If the games can't bring in, and keep, more players than they lose over time, then they will fail, just like SB. If they fail then it gets that much harder for a game to find a publi$her, which means the only pvp you get in MMOs is some crap that's bootstrapped on like EQ.
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They panic, so... just hold them down
I could live like this
I'm closing in; hate all around
I could be like this
Hearing them; them in my head
How can they be so sweet... sweet?
Well Shadowbane hasn't failed yet. And Shadowbane has a good way to stop griefers. Its called track. Most classes have access to track. So you if you keep an eye on track you will be able to recall before an enemy gets to you.
I wouldn't play a character without track. Thats what these games need. A way to counter griefers.
Less restriction as in the whole fact no invisible barriers. If I want to kill that Orc in the pub because hes pissin me off, I shouldnt have an invisible barrier set in front of me not allowing me to kill him. But i'd have to deal with the penalty of having to hide it from the guards, or populace, or whatnot, or fear to lose my head.
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didnt exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"If a mother can kill her own child, what is left before I kill you and you kill me?" -Mother Teresa when talking about abortion after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979
Griefing in DnL will be greatly reduced well at least as we know it today.
The main reason is becuase like DoAC, PVP is usually associated with the alignment borders. players cannot attack players of their own alignment, instead you need to use political means to get a a player from the opposite alignment to attack a player of yopur alignment.
Noobie area's are well back from the Borders and while Players can venture into opposition territory as far as they like and commit PvP the further they move from Mana fountains that belong to their alignment they more the players get debuffed this means that noobie area's and the middle area's should be relativly free from griefing.
Though If your up for a hard ass mision then you and some buds can try and penetrate into these area's of the opposite alignment.
will make for some good fun. DnL is vast so you can feasibly carry out gorrilla warfare in the opposition territory.. but you'll have to pick your battles well since you'll be down on buffs and your regen times will be hampered.. plus there'll be legions out hunting for you.. but heh thats why it's fun.
Lastly if as someone mentioned the pub and the invisible wall.. well I remember reading somewhere that non fatal fistfights are possible in pubs... dont quote me on that though. I have tried doign a few searches and couldnt find anything to back it up... but i'm sure i remember reading it somewhere.
Hrm.....Didnt know that about DnL....Personally I dont like that at all. Its pretty much a whole thing if I stay in homebase. I'm l33t, and impregnable! If I venture out into the enemy territory, i'm gimped, and they're l33t. Dont like the whole attrition damage sounding thing.
I'd like to more think of it like the rogues hiding out in the woods, they need food and supplies to survive, well, they cant go to a town, because they're in enemy territory. So, even though it'll be hell, they'll have to do it themselves out there.
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didnt exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"If a mother can kill her own child, what is left before I kill you and you kill me?" -Mother Teresa when talking about abortion after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979
For anyone looking for a game with great PvP (amongst many other great things) take a look at my thread with the Dome of York Trailer in it, with the download links. Have a look, it never hurts to see, does it?
I share completely congruent view with your own although I'm still looking for something to disagree with your post.
Thus far I can't find any...
I might add that I'm more like discussing about my view on L2 PvP reward issue as some have addressed above.
Dark and Light will be a good game for introducing players to PvP because they can have a full PvE game deep behind the boarder areas. Of course this assumes (a big assumption) that the mana fountains are well supplied with resources so that his alignment's protected area is large. When this player is ready for PvP then he can venture into the non-mana areas for battle or take part in exploration and caravan raids. When he is ready for more intense and continuous PvP he can move over to Darkfall.
Instead of calling these PvP games we should probably call them competitive games since the competition in each is much more than player combat. Player competition also occurs in the areas of economics, diplomacy, and intelligence gathering (exploring). This also distinguishes them from the non-competitive games of WoW and EQII.
I have not given D&L much concideration. I will be the first one to say DF fanbois(raises hand) When I read the pvp part of D&L's FAQ I got hung up on the Two Sided Thing. Df has more sides to it than a to-hit die from D&D. Not only is there a three way racial war but you are free to war within your race as well.
D&L looks good and has somegreat features but I'mnot so sold on it being a pvp centric game. At least not any more than doac was when it released.