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Is it .... viable?
Only recently i started reading about this game and what it is planning.
As an old-time player, swg-vet and sandbox loving mmorpg addict, this game makes me feel warm inside .........
But .... i really wonder if they can pull it off ... If i look at all the issues SWG had for years ... and these guys want even more 
..... balancing the combat system they want is a nightmare !!
Don't get me wrong, i really hope they will succeed ...
Comments
You forget that the combat will never be entirely balanced. It will depend on what skills you have picked up, how well said skills work together, the number of people fighting, the location of the fight, the tactics employed by each side, who sees who first, and on how skilled you are. Balancing issues are only raised about truly OP skills. The freedom of this game allows for it to be relatively easy to balance.
I am a skeptical supporter of DF. I am not a fanboi nor a troll. I seek the truth in every discussion, and I am truly sorry if I mistakenly state a fallacy.
it wont be class balanced like WoW or Guild Wars, thats for sure.
Some templates will be more effective than others for solo pvp, and some will be better for small group pvp, and some will be best for big battles/sieges.
Khael[SUN]
SUN - peekayin since pong
Webdeveloper on:
http://www.guildofsun.com
http://www.bloodmonarchy.com
From what I understood about this game is that it will be "classless". Meaning that it is skill based, there will be no way to balance. And no need to either. Kinda like life ..... some people are better at some things then others.
So depending on what combination you choose, it will create your own custom class. Sounds great!
I understand what you mean .. I was imagining the melee-stackers or combatmedic/rifleman
.... the cookie-cutter OP builds 
Can i conclude then that there is no maximum to the number of skills you learn (Unlike swg where you spend 250 points) ?
But also the other aspects ... the crafting ... housing .... politics ..... large seemless maps ... it just seems so bloody much they want to take on
.... it would require a Huge team to get that all working and polished ...
Hey MarlonB,
we share some of MMO experiences from the past.
Me selected this one to wait for although it doesn't have the science or space theme as background.
As for to compare it to SWG there are some big differences.
The skill system has no limitation i the means of having just 250 skillpoints to spend. Also there are no "professions" to combine some of the skills/skill lines.
Was worried about the FPS combat style (understandable after the NGE) but then it happens to me i got my hands on a copy of a game called Mount & Blade. This got me, that is exactly the FPS combat style that could be amazing for a fantasy MMO and was just excited about reading a dev quote DF combat shares similarities with this one.
What i don't expect from this is for it to be that complex and challenging on the crafting part. But the dev's ensure that all items will be craftable and there i feel like home again.
Also i expect there to be no entertainers like in SWG and also not the rich possibilities of SWG player housing but i let me surprise here.
On the other hand i expect DF to have a very strong part on something SWG lacks. To name it SWG's GCW was a joke whereas DF fighting over Kingdoms , resources and territories will be the main point.
Put in the different type of forces and combat like Naval Warfare and mounted military units and i got very curiously and excited about.
Then there is the company, yes it is small but Tasos mentioned in one of his updates Aventurine "philosophy" about "cut out the middleman" and there he got me.
Cut out the $OE's of these world is what i want and thats why i support this small developer and his ideas over the fat, rich and ignorant salesman at $OE who ignores me the gamer, give the games again to the hands of the developers who like to implement their ideas and the players who enjoy them.
Not only i hope but i want this developer to succeed.
-----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)
There's no set limit. As a member of the DF boards put it:
In DarkFall there is a skill cap of 100. At 100 you get a better version spell/ability for what ever that skill may be. If you use it you drop back down to 99.
Also there is skill decay. If you don't use it you lose it. There is also the matter of the more skills you skill up the harder it gets to skill up other skills.
Eventhough that does sound like an interesting approach, I feel that it will stimulate cookie-cutter builds. I would actually feel more for a whatever you learn you never forget system
That's a shame .... it adds a lot the "lively-ness" of the world ... a bit of forced rp and the ability to relax and hang around without fighting is a big plus to a sandbox ...
I'm wondering how the fps combat will be like ...
Eventhough that does sound like an interesting approach, I feel that it will stimulate cookie-cutter builds. I would actually feel more for a whatever you learn you never forget system
My hope is that it simulates reality to some extent. I mean, if you're good at swordsmanship you're going to get worse over time without practice.
Also, you may be able to spar before a battle to get a few skills bumped back up to 100, and then use them in battle. Sortof like real-life preparation.
As far as skill gain making gaining in other skills harder, i've seen references such as my reference here, but I've not been able to find a dev quote that verifies it. There may be one, but I've not found one.
I completely agree with OP.
This game seems to be a bit of an enigma. On paper it sounds immense, but it's this complexity that makes me wonder if they haven't bitten off more than they can chew. Can this small studio really pull off something this grand where other, larger developers with bigger budgets have so often failed? If they can, I really think it will be one of the biggest shocks in the MMORPG industry since its inception.
Don't get me wrong, I want this game to succeed as much as the next man, it just seems the odds are stacked against it.
7+ years of development, I sure hope that the stuff they implament works.....
How do you figure there will be cookie cutter templates with 500+ skills and 500+ spells. I figure people will be quite unique.
There will be template-of-the-month builds, because some guy is doing alot of pwning one month, and people will copy his template, then the next month another guy figures out a better template, and everyone copies him, etc etc.
One thing I think will be true is for small scale pvp hybrid builds will do well, and in large scale pvp pure class builds will do best.
And spare me the "there is no classes" bullshit, its the same fucking thing you dimwits.
AC didnt have any classes either, but classes were defined by certain skillsets. We still fricking called it "melee" or "mage" or "OG mage" for a certain type of mage, or "Battlemage" for another type of mage. Thats what I mean when I say classes.
Khael[SUN]
SUN - peekayin since pong
Webdeveloper on:
http://www.guildofsun.com
http://www.bloodmonarchy.com
How do you figure there will be cookie cutter templates with 500+ skills and 500+ spells. I figure people will be quite unique.
Out of those skills and spells a few will work together best. People (and the number crunchers) will find out which those are and it beeing a PvP heavy game, use it to win. When skills decay, you can only keep up that many and you want them to be good.
That's why i think this will occur. It doesn't need to be bad though .... i've never cared about FOTM's and always played the ones that interest me most .. heck, I was a Creature Handler/Business Man in PreCu
There will be template-of-the-month builds, because some guy is doing alot of pwning one month, and people will copy his template, then the next month another guy figures out a better template, and everyone copies him, etc etc.
I see you just edited your post, didn't see the FOTM part before
... but yes, you are right ( see my previous point)...
One thing I think will be true is for small scale pvp hybrid builds will do well, and in large scale pvp pure class builds will do best.
And spare me the "there is no classes" bullshit, its the same fucking thing you dimwits.
I don't understand the need of this tone. When talking about pre-defined classes, I also assume pre-defined skillset. Like rogues get their backstab and the tank gets the taunt. By saying there are no "classes" he/she means there is no predefined path for you, but there is full freedom in picking skills.
AC didnt have any classes either, but classes were defined by certain skillsets. We still fricking called it "melee" or "mage" or "OG mage" for a certain type of mage, or "Battlemage" for another type of mage. Thats what I mean when I say classes.
Indeed .... but as you state yourself, you can choose your skillset .... unlike a WoW/War/AoC where a skillset is defined by your class and not a class is defined by your skillset.
Question was though ... can they pull it of?
Can they pull it off?
It's a question that no-one can answer until public beta where we see if their claims of 200v200 people fights with 30-60 fps holds true.
This is the claim I am most sceptical about..
They seem to think they can pull it off themselves, but they also seemed to think they would have beta in 2003, 2005 and 2007, so we will just have to wait and see.
To me it is just another claim of beta right around the corner. So the only real question I have is, when the fuck is beta?
Why don't they announce a date already. I've had enough of all these vague dates, that makes me just sit around and wait and be dissapointed time after time.
Khael[SUN]
SUN - peekayin since pong
Webdeveloper on:
http://www.guildofsun.com
http://www.bloodmonarchy.com
You sound very disgruntled and dissapointed because of this game
and i can't blame you.
I think 200v200 can be possible, if i'm not wrong TcoS has been testing with these kind of numbers too. But reading about their Grid computing makes me itchy though. As you said though .... let's see it in action first
But next to the amount of people they want to have playing on the server, i also question if they can implement all the features they claim ... many many other much bigger companies failed at it, and it seems to be a very annoying trend to remove features before release
I wouldnt worry about the features. I might be disgruntled but I don't think they were lying on purpose to us with those beta dates. They honestly believed they would be able to deliver a betas all those times I am sure, but realized, hey we have to make graphics better, hey we have to make this better, and that better.
When it comes to the featureset I believe them when they say they were feature complete in march/april - meaning all features are in atm.
Of course some grave problems might arise during beta, that will force them to scrap some of these features. You never know.
Khael[SUN]
SUN - peekayin since pong
Webdeveloper on:
http://www.guildofsun.com
http://www.bloodmonarchy.com
You sound very disgruntled and dissapointed because of this game
and i can't blame you.
I think 200v200 can be possible, if i'm not wrong TcoS has been testing with these kind of numbers too. But reading about their Grid computing makes me itchy though. As you said though .... let's see it in action first
But next to the amount of people they want to have playing on the server, i also question if they can implement all the features they claim ... many many other much bigger companies failed at it, and it seems to be a very annoying trend to remove features before release
It's not a grid system they are using their own clusters but the server load will spread itself out dynamically.
Grid implies that the server processing is partial offloaded onto people's pc's running the client.
With respect towards the OP
Balanced pvp? /shudder the forum wars have begun. nerf this nerf that. bah that reminds me of SWG, want balance pvp go play Wow or GW and be one of 10 classes. I hope this game offers more than pvp. I am looking for an rpg mmo not a pvp mmo.
Did you read the rest of the thread? ... you might find out i share your opinion
I spend 2 hours last night in the cantina in Theed :P
Edit: Apoligies ... just noticed i'm logged in with a test account on my laptop
... but the name should give it away ....
The way to look at it is a lot of what Aventurine is trying to with DF has been done with success. Look at UO, it was a large seamless world that had FFA PvP skill based instead of class systems. The difference's are, The size, the graphics, the races, the controls and the combat. There are many other differences but those are the main ones.
The combat system can be done because it's used in other games mainly MMOFPS and MMOTPS. The world can be done because there are other seamless worlds maybe not as large as DarkFall's but they are still out there.
FFA PvP - this one some have a problem with but no sandbox can be without it because without it , it isn't a sandbox.
The Crafting system - You can craft everything in the world of DarkFall. There will be some special things you can create by trial and error I forget the exact dev quote on this and not sure where to find it atm. The crafting system should be as rich as UO's if not 10 times better. I also think they may go the route UO did with crafting meaning you can atempt to make anything at any skill level the problem is the lower your skill level the less likely you are to make it. Meaning at 1 skill you may be able to make something that takes 100 skill. The problem is that the odds will be astronomicaly against you lol . But most of what I said about crafting is speculation.
The Dynamic Server clusters combined with the fact that they made there own engine and built on it should mean a lot less lag allowing for a lot to be done here. This we will have to wait and see about but from the way it sounds I like it so far and am hopeful.
All in all I am very postive about it being a possibility. I remain mildly skeptical because DarkFall has pretty much every thing I have been wanting in an MMO down to the combat system and then some to boot. So if it does WOot great found my next MMO for 10 years if it doesn't I am going to take a break from MMO's because this is the type I have been waiting on since UO lol. UO = 9 years hopefuly DF = another 9-10 years.
We will all see how well Darkfall goes when all this waiting ends. Until then, lets all slander the poor company/studio thats trying to polish their game for being 5 years late and for postponing their beta for years. When the game fails, we will mercilessly bash them for sure.
i hate that company. aventurine seems to represent the antithesis of SOE, i can't wait.