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DF plz learn from Vanguard
Vanguard started strong in pop and went downhill fast....and while the pve server is doing much better than the pvp server....here are some points i believe are gonna impact the success of this "pvp" orientated game.
1. Bugs- get them solved fast. i have never seen such a huge population from launch dwindle so quickly. all i heardwas how wonderful the game was and how much potential Vanguard had....but because of poor managment (and perhaps a bad coke habit) the bugs weren't fixed in time to save the server pops and down down down the game went.
2. Exploits and Hacking- it kills pvp servers plain and simple. if these types of players are ruling your servers you lose the "legit" players plain and simple. call them carebears or whatever but finding a balance here is going to be the key. swinging the ban stick fast and furious at the beginning may in fact be a saving grace in the end
3. Grieving and code of conduct- now this one is more carebearish....and while i fully believe it is a must to have defenses against hackers and sploiters...this one is a bit more of a grey area. i don't beleive it has nearly the effect that #2 has....but from a community standpoint if you let it get out of control it may end up taking a chunck out of your population. personally i find it entertaining to watch (gets out popcorn and milk)
i know there are others but for me...these are the main ones. I watched three pvp servers dwindle down to one. i watched while guilds of exploiters and hackers killed everything in sight, while not being killable themselves (or even targetable lol). it didn't take long for "legit" players to just leave. once gone the hackers moved on to the next game....butshow up every once in awhile to make sure the server pop stays low. the average on the pvp server is around 70 players on at one time now.
good luck!
Comments
You read my mind. I see people already saying things like "darkfall is buggy so far but has so much potential!"
they said that about VG for a year, then people gae up. What I;m hoping is someone with a real dev team buys darkfall.
hehe i still played the crap outa VG. Number 1 PVP guild baby.
I beta tested Vanguard and led the second largest guild worldwide across all servers at the game's peak.
Yes, there are many deja vus.
This billing issue thing is just terrible. We have well over half of our group that got confirmation emails only to have the rug pulled out from under them, and we are starting to think resolutions are going to take on the order of a week.
If by Monday the billing issues aren't truly sorted then I will walk away, and its likely many will too.
I rarely say this, because losing a job can be devestating - but whoever in Aventurine agitated to keep the rollout billing an in-house/small shop hybrid should be fired. Brass tacks.
That one decision has wasted so many people's time. Right, I'm all for spending a lot of time to get in etc. But we have crossed a threshold.
At this point to keep me as a customer that drives users to the game they will have to get the billing sorted quickly. To restore faith I'd need to see a staff change.
Just as this is posted Im downloading vanguards NEWBIE island just for fun lol.
Played: Shadowbane, UO, PlanetSide, SWG, EQ 2, City of Heros, AO, AoC, Daoc, WOW, lotro, Eve, GW, Tabula, Pirates of the burning sea (yup), Vanguard, Warhammer, Lineage 2
Out of all those I loved Shadow Bane, SWG (it had its issues but those first few months were great) and AO after about 5 months I was in love) RIP..not since then have I loved a MMO...
ya it's an unbelievable game....but would be so much more with a population on the pvp server. i'm very excited to try this "sandbox pvp" game and will probably wait till i can get it in stores. i loved SWG when it was sandbox type and although vanguard is pve orientated it's been my crutch since the nge. i'm pulling for Darkfalls success.....i hope they get through the rough patches and get things under control. managing a pvp game is gonna be tough...but i do believe if you can make and manage a good "sandbox" game...you can have a large loyal population for a very very long time!!
Vanguard is a good game. Now.
It wasn't, for a good while.
By the time it became a good game it had lost its playerbase.
Once that happens it is irreversable.
Aventurine is going to have to earn its way out of this mess.
They won't have even the six months that Vanguard did - not after so many failed MMOs in the last years and promising competitors on the horizon.
It is make or break time in every sense of that phrase.
I'm actually thinking of resubbing to VG today hehe. Something to do until more copies of DF come available.
The worst thing that can happend is that AV make the same misstakes that they did. I E blame the sub numbers that the game wasent enough WoW'ish and start nerfing everything from death penalty to go there quest dots on the map. Those were on the other hand only in the beginning. Not sure if that was intentional.
One thing I will give them credit for during beta, they did address issues in a rather timely fashion with relatively regular patches. Not always agreed with by some, but at least they would get a change in before things got completely out of control.
Funny you should compare Darkfall to Vanguard, because Vanguard had a lot more to offer in terms of content when it had released along with a much larger budget it had to compensate for...
This is much more indie than Vanguard.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
Yes...i thnk it's a touch off topic but on the other hand i agree it's indie. some bad points to that are..well what's happening now. but the nice thing about it is one would think the game can be more of a niche game rather than if it were run by some big company who just wants to maximize profits. instead of a board thinking up patches to dumb down the game and make it more WOWish...maybe this company will feed what seems to be a cool vision for those of us that likethe sandbox type game.
on the flip side...it's a small company and so we are going to have to be patient. One of the problems with Vanguard was that the patches that started flowing after soe took over started to dumb the game down. experience mmoers simply left..having seen this kind of thing before. it's actually a great pve game...but the pvp server on the other hand they never relly cared much about and as a result the bad element came in and drove players off with exploiting and hacking etc..... i think the pve server has around 800ish last i heard...butthe pvp server is pretty much dead with around 70 players.
personally i wouldn't even THINK of starting to develop an mmo that is pvp orientated....without first having a good plan to deal with hacking and exploitting.