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I Bashed, I Debated, I BOUGHT DF!
That's right, I've gone right ahead and bought the game. I'm taking the approach of a down right noobie to all things PC and seeing how it goes.
Part 2 of my time can be found here
Part 3 of my time can be found here
First day was yesterday, I ill admit it did not go so well.. I bought the game (after fighting the shop for about half an hour) and was all 'yeah, yeah! YEAH!!' only to find that my download which had already taken a while jumped up to 9 1/2 GB. I really like to have CD/DVD when the game is that big. Big pitfall and ofc, you cant activate the game seperatly from buying it, your game time is ticking down from the moment you press buy. BIG NO NO.
Every other game I've played has let me either pay for time seperatly from my purchase, or let me get the game then start the timer. AV does this diferently some how and I cringe when I think about people on a naff connection, I got it in about 4 hours which isnt too bad I suppose, but it still irked me. Yes I could have researched and torrented but I'm doing this as an avergae gamer, and that my friends, is not someone who has been on a forum to find out every thing possible, just some one who wants to play! After the download the patching was quite fast, it pretty much stayed at my max speed so they must have a lot of bandwidth going around.
So I get in game, and start making a character, I'm noticing quite a lot of interface lag, I'll click something and it animates about a second later. Cant help but wonder why they made it in Java. Maybe they want to port it to other OS's but they cant, because it uses DX instead of OGL or other cross platform graphics APIs.
I had to turn the graphics down a fair bit, which is a bit stupid as I'm running a C2D 2.8, with a nvidia 9800GT 2GB DDR3, by all accounts it shouldnt really lag or need to be turned down as much as it seemed I had to. I can live with it tho, and can probably turn it all back up a bit if I were to disable shadows. Having them even on low causes a fair amount of lag, probably just because everything casts them which while nice isnt all that necessary for me. Character shadows should do fine.
The character customization wasnt too shabby but there isnt a lot of options plus as I said there is so much interface lag that it takes far longer than needed to scroll through 5 whole options for piercings, etc. Eventually satisfied I make my Alfar dude, I figure that it wont matter much as its all PVP so being hated by everyone should be fun.
That character lasted about half an hour before I couldnt stand the graphics of the zone, I had to quit and make a new one so I wouldnt be sick. Too dark and they have the ameteur concept that dark purple = evil so they slapped it everywhere that wasnt black. Couldnt see shit.
Went and made myself a happy dwarf dude so I could actually see what was in front of me. Much much better. And again seeing as it's all PVP it doesnt really matter who I am because it will come down to clans and alliances. Seems other people have the same idea as me because there are actually other newbs here too, with the same reaction that its nice to see someone!
It does feel quite empty. Have seen about 5 newbs and 3 mounted people running past. Gave me that 'ooh I want that' feeling which is a great positive, games need that! The mounts look pretty badass and I cant wait to get one for mounted combat, something missing from my current game.
I suck at combat. I died really quickly, which was annoying, not because I dont like dieing but because it felt like I had to run quite a while before I actually found a mob to engage. I return eagerly and realize I didnt really run that far, must have gone the long way round or something!
This time I take on the advice from the newbie panel and use V to parry whenerver my swing is down. Goblin goes down! One for the warty 
. Excellent, excellent. To my surprise 3 more come running round a building, 2 start smashing me in the face and another climbs a crate and starts to shoot bows at me in the chest. That is quite smart, and it looks good to see mobs doing things diferently. I'm sure it was programmed to do something like that but either way the effect is gratifying.
Somehow I manage to take down the 2 in my face and jump up to start slapping the 3rd guy. He goes down and I feel really rather pleased with myself. The loot was nice, a tasty shield, some legs so I no longer have to look at my ugly bum and a chest which makes me look much more menacing, hooray!
I kill a few more and gather the remaining quest items before my oven beeps at me. I've logged off feeling satisfied with my inital forray into the world of Darkfall. I've got plans for this evening so that will probably be it for today unless I get on before I go to bed. Depends what time I get in.
I can tell you however, I am looking forwards to it. I'll try to cover more of everything next time, but it has been a good couple of hours play, even if the Alfar zone did look a lot like puke.
I'm willing to take questions, tho as I said I havnt seen a lot, and am going out pretty soon so I probably wont be able to answer any tonight I'm afraid!
Overall initial reaction - moderate - nothing has particularly pissed me off and Ive seen a number of things to make me go 'oooh!'
Playing polished, lag free, feature complete games is carebear. Whining about a game you hate but still play is hardcore man!
Comments
i give you credit it takes ballz to do what you did.
I'd like to see a weekly update perhaps of your impressions. The game's 'oooo' factor had me the first day too and by the end of my free month I couldn't stand it anymore and I actually had deleted it off my computer. Anyways, good for you if your enjoying the game (that's why we play them afterall), I fear that you haven't seen anything yet though.
lol you're funny
You bought the NA version right? If you are EU I might be able to help you in game.
Thanks for the post. Looking forward to follow-up comments from you on this thread after you've played a bit more.
I bought EU. Maybe silly but US had a good 250+ more ping, which takes down any benefit from starting on even footing.
Maybe the game will last a week, maybe a month. We will see. I've slapped it quite a lot, but only really because the fervent attitude of some of the fan-trolls. But it *is* still around so we shall see!
Plus I got 480 squids back after MJ died so 50 isnt a big deal lmao!
Playing polished, lag free, feature complete games is carebear. Whining about a game you hate but still play is hardcore man!
I like your reviewing style. It has been very difficult to get an impression of this game from other threads. Please keep us updated. Thanks!
I felt the same way, except I didn't complain nearly as much. But after a few days, you start to talk to people, learn more about the game, and so on. You realize there's hardly quests to do after the beginning, plenty of monsters are bugged, and the exploits people are doing in the game are far beyond any F2P game even. Then you realize you have to be in a guild to do anything outside the goblin fights (I sure liked them though, was great fun) and you have to macro a lot of your skills to compete with those people that you haven't interacted with yet and those mounted people still killing you relentlessly.
Good luck, it has a great honeymoon phase, but when it wears off, this game is realized for what it is, a lackluster hunk of garbage with no depth, tons of hacks and exploits, and is still a $50 + sub beta test, though I do agree is seems to be coming around enough to almost acceptable for them to release (aka put a BUY button on their site and acknowledge the game is released to the general public). If money/time means almost nothing to you, then hey, the game has some fun and you might as well. If you are looking to play a game long term and money is important to you in the slightest, DF will seem like a waste of money in a week or two if you play regularly.
Anyone that says they have never seen hacks or exploits or there are no bugs or the game isn't shallow is straight up lying to themselves and to you but I'll let you find out for yourself, good luck. Hopefully you can keep the honeymoon longer than I could.
You should not be getting that kind of noticable lag.
I am running a lesser system than you and I Was getting FPS of 60, with every graphic option maxed.
I bought it out of boredom.
I had it set to 1280x1024 (monitor limit on this box) and the only thing I had off was I think there was an option for shadows. I never run shadows in any game (personal thing).
I didn't notice lag in the interface during character creation really. It just seemed to load really slow to get to that point. I logged in for a bit probably not as long as the OP.
So I'm not really going to go into the game one way or the other. aka I'm not going to praise or bash something that I haven't spent much time in.
Only negative so far is some of the transition loading (after you press "login" or when you log your character into the world as examples) seem relatively slow in comparison to other games I play or have played. Its not like you could go watch a movie .. its just something I noticed.
Oh and I think I mainly bought it because the store was actually open for sales. I was going to give it a shot for the EU version but when I was interested the store was never open.
I also didn't have long term expectations for the game as I am just looking to kill about 2 months. Anyway.. see how it goes.
I definitely got my moneys worth out of Darkfall and that was at the EU launch. I think you can too. Just focus on the good and hopefully the bad doesn't affect you too much. I ended up quitting because the game wasn't what I expected on the crafting and merchant front which is one of the main draws of sandboxes to me. I really enjoyed the world, but they need to add more to it. The chests are one small step in the right direction. I still wish them luck, but I don't ever see them improving the crafting/merchant side of things to a level where I would be happy so I probably won't play again.
Good first impression, you seems to be impartial about it.
I am not surprised you had to lower the graphix however, 9800 cards are a few years old and basicly 8800 cards with a few extra effects, the DDR3 memory are fast but 3 gig at least are needed in some of the newer games today, particulary if you run Vista.
Give us updates on it
Fascinating story .. Why don't you make your own thread for highly biased opinions, then we can keep this clean for the benefit of those with an open and rational mind.
Good write, Warty! I like your style and your story is well written and entertaining! Keep posting.
On a side note, 9800 is a bit low end card IMO. I recommend you to upgrade it to 200 series.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I have a 8800GT and I do not get any graphics lag unless there are hundreds of players on my screen, and I play with shadows turned on. Do you have mouse smoothing turned on? It is on by default. It does seem to create the impression of lag, I recommend turning it off immediately.
As for too dark........ it's night, it's supposed to be dark ;-)
The alfar area is very barren and desolate, so I know what you mean, but I always thought the barrenness was deliberate. Some will disagree but I like how in Darkfall some areas /are/ just plain barren and ugly, not every area has been touched up with props and purple trees /just/ to be visually appealling like most other games. A world is supposed to have barren ugliness as well as beauty. If you want beautiful scenery, go to elf or mahirrim lands.
Good luck with it. It's a good game. Don't get too attached to your possessions. Sooner or later you will lose them.
I suggest you do 3 things.
1. Turn off shadows altogether.
2. Go into options and move your block skill from "C" to the right mouse button, and gui toggle from right mouse button to middle mouse button.
3. Go to the capital city for dwarves, find the fighter trainer, and get "the brawny" quest. You then will have enough quest content.
This game is a rough diamond.
Playing: Darkfall New Dawn (and planning to play Fallout 76)
Favourite games have included: UO, Lineage2, Darkfall, Lotro, Baldur's Gate, SSX, FF7 and yes the original Wizardry on an Apple IIe
Fascinating story .. Why don't you make your own thread for highly biased opinions, then we can keep this clean for the benefit of those with an open and rational mind.
I did. Look through my post history. I created my adventures through my DF playing. Do you realize opinions are biased, don't you? And the word you used "highly" is a subjective word in and of itself, so if I am to follow your suit, stop bring highly subjective opinions to the table as well. See how easy that is not to actually say anything? Glad you're up to 6 posts on this site now, which old banned fanboy account are you again?
I obviously had an open mind, as I bought the game, and played it. Something you obviously didn't probably do. Ugh, mods... can you track people like this, there is a 99% chance that this is someone that was banned here and is having a second go at it. For instance he claims his name is "Adolf Hitler". That alone should get people banned like this.
The interface lag is probably caused by your client not being fully updated. People have complained about the same thing on the offical forums for the past couple days but then reply "it randomly fixed itself" after about 5hrs.
Oh and there are over 250 quest. Yes they are kind generic, but the reason people complain about the game not having lore or quest is because they don't do the quest lol It funny too since the quest rewards get profitable after you complete your first quest chain and start getting scale pieces, battles spikes, and rank 40 weapons.
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
Turning off shadows totally helps performance an absolute ton for me. I go from about 25 to 50-60 just from turning them off. I turn shadows off on every game though so it was a standard procedure for me - never see the point in having them when I dont notice them gone and turning them off can provide an easy fps boost.
I too have just started playing. I'm playing on the NA client but I'm from the UK. Pings are reasonable at 180-200, obviously havn't played the EU client so I cant compare how if it plays any different with the "lag" but I havnt had any major issues yet. Just been creating different characters to test the starter zones etc then I'll find one to stick with and get into the game. Havn't had chance to delve into it yet. So far I feel the same as you, nothing majorly offputting but some interesting features. Definitely looking forward to playing more.
Only thing that annoyed me was I picked the wolf-like race to test out. 2 guys kept following me when killing goblins. Figured they were just helping - PvE MMO experience failed me. They suddenly started attacking me after about 5 minutes of following me, so I ran away but one persisted and killed me. This really pissed me off, I realise its ffa pvp but whats the point in attacking someone who's been in the game for about 10 minutes with barely any loot, and is visually pretty much naked with a basic sword apart from to be a dick. Is there any penalty for attacking people of your own race just out of the blue?
Bought the EU client back in February. Didn't really like it. Not much else is on the horizon so I decided to give DFO another try. I bought the NA client. Fixed my ping issues altogether. That alone is worth the $50.
For some reason the game feels "different". I'm having fun -- something that eluded me the first go around with Darkfall. It also seems to run more smoothly than I remember. I've been pretty critical of DFO in the past and I still am unsure about its future, but for now its a good diversion.
I'm still waiting for Fallen Earth and that is probably the only game that will draw me away. The more I hear about MO, the less I think I'll like it. The rest of the games coming out do not interest me at all.
I'm starting to lean more towards MMOFPS and MMOTPS games. As I've said before in other threads here: MMORPGs are the "dumb blondes" of the MMO genre today. They are pretty on the surface, but underneath there is nothing going on...
Today I woke up late, because I went to bed late, because I wanted to play DF when I got in (quite late). Good signs!
I'm starting to get used to the interface, it is a little clunky but by no means unfunctional. I took the advice of some forumites and rebound my buttons, now I can attack parry, sheathe, use and toggle UI from my mouse. Game is flowing a bit better now I know where things are.
The first port of call was my bank (you quickly learn to bank stuff often, its a little bit like the weakest link, but no Ann Robinson, atleast as of yet. Im sure that is to come) to get out a bow and some of the arrows I had been saving. Much like sword play at first I sucked, I'm not really a massive FPS person but having to actually aim, anticipate and take into account distance is pretty interesting, and makes it much more rewarding when you do hit a shot.
It's really nice when you realize that the arrows really do fly through the air and act pretty naturally. Maybe I could scavenge some off of dead bodies or out of trees hehe. Obviously there'd have to be a fairly high chance of them breaking to stop flooding. Importantly tho you begin to understand that it will require skill to be good at archery and not just click and shoot. A good archer no doubt is a feared opponent.
After a while some others come along and are training melee skills so I found myself a perch on a building and helped them out, taking a few shots here and there at various goblins. Got my archery up to nearly 6 before my arrows ran out, so I decided to get stuck in again with the melee. At first I sucked nearly as much as my initial forray but a few minutes later it gets better again.
After a while of looting I think I should bank but alas I get caught right in the respawns only this time I'm all alone. I try hard to peg it off with my bounty (luckily I wasnt at full and could still sprint) but my health is getting low. I duck behind a tree to try and buy me a couple of seconds time. I valianmtly fight off one guy but the others take me down.
Noooooooo! All that loot sitting on the floor ready for someone to take!
Resting up and sprinting back ASAP there is still one cheeky bugger lollygagging around my grave, but I easily despatch him even in my leafblade. Glorious, furious looting ensues while I grab all my gear back and run like the wind to the town. Heehee, I miss that sort of danger. Banking was a relief and I made about 40G selling off spare weapons, as I had loads of bows, axes and swords.
Looting can be a bit of a pain and you certainly find it difficult to loot in combat, too much down time. Its a fair trade off tho, you can auto loot during a war or there'd be way too many scavengers and not enough fighters, I can live with it. I think everything should stack tho, its just an illusion and I put the same weps etc over each other, so I have a rough idea of what I've got but need to drag them all off one by one if I want to be sure. Just seems like a pointless time sink!
Walking about town I saw the blacksmith and went to see what he had to say for himself. Basic gather-return quest to show you how gathering works. To me it feels about as fun as any other mmo, a necessary time sink evil, not unfun but hardly anything to write home about either. I like that its node based as you can (dangerously) surf the web. Wouldnt want to do that in the open tho, would feel rather paranoid over it. Again thats a fair trade off tho and I cant really argue with it. Atleast its autoloot there.
One of the mobs I had killed dropped a fishing pole, which I equipped figuring now would be a good time to see how that works. It would appear to be the same as mining or lumberjacking, tho I didnt catch a single fish..bummer! Perhaps I need to find a small lake or something. I saw a few fish right out to sea but the range of my casts are tiny at the moment. I had a little swim at this point too, water doesnt look too bad, and unlike a number of other games your character actually looks a but different underwater, like he's actually in it.
Heading back to the town with 25 on both mining and lumberjacking I hand in the quests and take a look at the services tab, which was either new now I'd gathered or I just missed before. Either way its going to cost me 500G to buy a crafting profession. That'll take maybe a week, fair enough I can gather enough materials in that time to get me going I'm sure. Matts seemed to sell for not very much, I'll just save them all then!
Impressions of the game so far are largely positive. I turned off a graphics option called 'post processing' which sky rocketed my FPS up to 60 (vsync on) and actually IMO made the game look better. With it on everything looks a bit like its cel-shaded and doesnt really 'sit' in the world if you catch what I mean. This meant I could put texture res up to high and didnt get a noticeable drop in fps, maybe 10-20 in a complex scene so I never really go below 40. Thats fine. I also remembered to set up my nvdia profile and took off pre rendered frames which seems to have knocked the interface lag on the head, it feels much snappier now, I also took off mouse smoothing to boot which made aiming easier for me.
The game is certainly feeling more cerebral than I've become accustomed to and this is really rather enjoyable. Some AI tweaks could be made to ease newbies in, making the initial mobs a little less tied together so you are less likely to pull 5, or all of them and die in seconds would be good. There have been times when I was miles away but one spotted me and a whole camp came. Its funny, I saw him spot me, and it wasnt the usual 'run to player in a straight line' AI, but he ran into a building, came out with buddies and while 2 came at me, and the 3rd ran to get more mobs.
To be fair I could have been better but thats my point, this is a camp you come to when you have 0 skills and little knowledge of how to play, so some relaxation would be appreciated by many people I'm sure!
Still nothing to IRK me once I'm in game. Loading is a little slow but hey if games need 3GB or more these days then thats just the way it is. But I get to look forwards to my gaming laptop coming out of the repair shop soon so I can compare the two. That thing will run AoC on med graphics at 30FPS so with tweaks DF shouldnt be much of a problem, and no doubt there can always be further optimizations to the games code etc to squeeze out a bit more performance.
The game world is looking much better artistically realized today with my newly tweaked graphics. Its got a fairly nice sense of cohesion to it, towns arent too randomly placed and flow fairly well. I dont know when in the development they made towns, but its not a bad job. I'm sure much like the Alfar one, there are better and worse ones depending on when they were made.
Yeah nothing has put me off, so overall props to AV for the starting experiance. I'm generally good with MMOs and bad with FPS so I feel I come at this with an average level of skill more representative of the new generation of MMO players. Its been a good ride so far, it's a shame there arnt more people to talk with, global chat is pretty much what you expect, mostly vulgar, usually silly, with little talk about the game itself.
I keep seeing messages regarding the chaning of alliances and war status, and much PVP/RVR/GVG going on with changing of towns and cities, so that is a pretty good indication that there is activity. I look forwards to joining in on all that.
Later on or tomorrow I might try my hand at magic, I imagine its similar to bows except less worry about arcing, with the trade off that it requires a more expensive reagent that arrows. I look forwards to it!
So thank you all for the positive replies you've been giving I'm glad it's sparked a discussion rather than a war. It's certainly been an interesting and refreshing few days.
Playing polished, lag free, feature complete games is carebear. Whining about a game you hate but still play is hardcore man!
a nice review so far
tell em something:
do you think the game would benifit from non global banking.... as in what you bank is only at the bank you put it in?
do you think it would add danger, make trade routes actually exist ect?
Yay Warty! I find myself cheering you on while reading about your adventures in Darkfall. Good to hear you are having alot of fun.
Great play by play updates Warty! Good reading keep updating please as time allows.
I am so shocked to see a DF thread that is more than a page of replies with nary a troll from either camp flaming away with nonsense at one another...
he is willign to say whats wrong with the game and whats right with the game with little bias
kinda hard to flame someone who will admit the faults and triumphs of a project.
onyl reason i am not playing is the company, not the game.