For those of you still muttering to this day about something called Trammel, your ship has arrived.
Probably one of my favorite aspects of PvP combat that makes Darkfall unique is the incapacitation of a player when they reach zero life (excluding the rare and freakish decapitation). This starts a 60 second or so window where you get to decide the fate of the fallen player, or have some choice words with them. There are no revive spells in Darkfall, but when someone is in this state, anyone can help them back up without need of any spell or item. If the person lays there for too long, they will bleed to death and expire. The option is also your to deliver the final blow to send the fallen player back to their bind point naked, and ironically this is called the “Gank” skill by the game. Incapacitated players will yell out “HELP ME!” when reaching zero life, which can be heard from quite a distance away.
Insult to injury? Why yes, they *do* understand their target market! (All eight of them.)
There is no kill stealing or tagging system for monsters either. This means anyone can loot anything regardless of who hit it first, last, or did the most damage. While this can sometimes be problematic depending on who is near you, most of the time people seemed to have some degree of respect for who did the dirty work.
I’m sure that will last. No one in Darkfall would EVER grief you. And if you do, I guess you could kill them, then emote over their helpless bleeding corpse for 60 seconds. That seems fair.
#1 by Centuri on February 19th, 2009
You all seem to be downplanying the ability to carebear in EVE. It certainly does have open PVP, but you can also spend your time in relative safety if you so choose.
#2 by Pimotan on February 19th, 2009
I guess this is where what they call “unique” becomes false. I used to ‘bleed’ people in Everquest 1 all the time. If you get lucky enough to get them unconscious you just had to punch them every time the natural regen let them revive. The difference being they did not have the option of talking while they lay there.
There is no such thing as open loot handling itself through the respect of the anonymous on the internet, EQ1 had that great feature for a while too.
#3 by EpicSquirt on February 19th, 2009
The biggest carebears are the PvP’ers thinking 100 vs 1 is PvP too. As long as there is a way to have equal sized fights in Darkfall I don’t care if I get looted or not.
#4 by William Purvis on February 19th, 2009
Personally, I want to know what it is “really” like before I say anything, but that seems a bit of old UO to me. Could be fun, but probably not for very long.
#5 by Mist on February 19th, 2009
Darkfall has the worst UI ever. Period. It is painful to play the game even if you never interact, let alone die to, another player, just due to how infuriating the UI is.
#6 by VPellen on February 19th, 2009
Could be good. Could be bad. It’s hard to tell if the game will stand or die unless you have a solid understanding of the entire design, not just a section of it.
#7 by Bodak on February 20th, 2009
@Shannon B Exactly. The folks that will enjoy that type of play are the folks I’d rather not have around in the game I’m currently playing. Amen.
#8 by Chadarius on February 21st, 2009
I’m really shocked that people don’t think there is a market for a game like this. I’m also saddened at the disdain being shown to people that want to play in a game with REAL risk instead of just pretending to be l33t while fighting lame in game AI monsters in an amusement park in WOW.
There are thousands of free UO shard players out there right now that are playing with the old Ultima Online ruleset (more or less) from 8-10 years ago. UO was fascinating and fun to play back in the “Dreadlord” days. Especially for people who were interested in building real communities in game. PK’s gave everyone an actual reason to make friends and develop trust in game.
The only game that comes close these days is Eve.
I will definitely check out this game. Even it the graphics are horrid they can’t be worse than the 10 year old 2d UO engine that I’ve still used periodically to play on a freeshard. Its fun to relive the dangerous old days of UO, before the industry realized that people will pay more to pretend that they are heroes or villains instead of actually being one.
I agree with whoever said that there 25k hard core players and that may be enough for a smaller operation to keep things running for them. At least for a while!
#9 by J. on February 22nd, 2009
Then you need to read the most recent Scott Jennings thoughts on the subject, “The Mordred Problem.” Darkfall has a three-month expiration date.
They’re playing for free, therefore this is fairly useless as a metric regarding a “market” for these sorts of games.
#10 by JuJutsu on February 22nd, 2009
“Its fun to relive the dangerous old days of UO, before the industry realized that people will pay more to pretend that they are heroes or villains instead of actually being one.”
I’m shocked that anyone is deluded enough to think PvP offers the opportunity for actual heroics and PvE does not. If you want to be a real hero turn off the computer and go help someone in the real world. It’s tough out there now, you’ll have lots of opportunity.
#11 by EpicSquirt on February 22nd, 2009
@J.
“The Mordred Problem” is a problem of levels and not a problem of free for all PvP. I have quit two PBAoE groups which were leveling on the European DAoC PvP server, one between level 40-45 and the other between 20-30. Reason? One level 50 Shaman ganking the shit out of us.
So Scott promotes levels, but levels just fail ultra hard in some cases. I recently resubscribed Age of Conan, to have a first-hand look of what changed: my level 21 Guardian didn’t scratch a level 22 Bearshaman, my level 46 Conqueror didn’t scratch a level 50 Barbarian. I stopped playing again.
You have to realize that some people are tired of all this. Darkfall isn’t for everyone, the developers’ expectations have been already surpassed. And even if some several hundreds of thousands of players subscribe to Darkfall because it got hyped beyond recognition like all the other recently released games, and even if the bubble collapses after 3 months, I am quite sure, that at the end of the day they’re will be enough players left to keep the developer’s expectations still surpassed.
Aventurine seems much more less naive than Mythic was with when it comes to determination of what to develop and for what audience.
#12 by IainC on February 22nd, 2009
@EpicSquirt
That’s not a problem of levels. That’s a problem of combat balance. The same thing can (and does) happen in systems without levels.
#13 by Vetarnias on February 22nd, 2009
@EpicSquirt
I can’t wait to see how Aventurine will tackle the macroing and tricking-the-other-guy-into-striking-first issues, which are gearing up to be very problematic if the forum chitchat is accurate.
I mean, beta players are almost unanimous in saying that it’s being done openly.
#14 by Wufiavelli on February 22nd, 2009
The devs have even said they are not to happy with the hype around their game. They want a small core and that is what it needs. All these people thinking it is the next war or aoc really need to know what they are getting into. As for audience with this i will leave that to time.(have debated this before and we both failed to convince the other).
Also though this game is extremely rough around the edges, stable as hell. But things are just not balanced correctly, skill gaining speeds, crafting costs, and other thing need to be flushed out.
PLus if you want to watch a cluster F. this games launch is going to be comical sadly. Hopefullyn this will drive the people away who do not know what they are getting into.
As for eve comparison. Yeh eve does really have the best setup for hardcoreness vs safety. You get all the basics and fun in the secure areas. But the great stuff, best npcs, highest paying missions, ability to mass produce and make items is all done in the 0.0 areas
#15 by EpicSquirt on February 22nd, 2009
@IainC
Yes, but level-based systems treat this crap as features! Many games with levels have stuff like to hit and to miss modifiers, e.g. lower level characters can’t hit high levels and high level characters get to hit bonuses. Why?! Usually it just forces everyone to level as fast as possible to the maximum level, even in DAoC’s battlegrounds it was almost impossible for a level 20 to kill a level 24 character.
The developers who developed games without levels but games with skill-systems in place which put in effect all the weaknesses of a level-based system, they totally missed the point of a skill-based system (which should not offer exorbitant advantages to trained up skills btw.).
Anyway, the recently released MMOs I’ve played (TR, AoC, Warhammer) and DAoC all suffer from the level difference problems.
If one guy in Darkfall or Guild Wars (which has just level 20 for PvP characters) has always a 100% chance to gank 8 newbies we shall talk again.
#16 by EpicSquirt on February 22nd, 2009
@Vetarnias
Yeah, the melee combat looks broken. The complete skill system might as well be broken, I don’t know. Raising through training (using) might be the wrong approach due to macroing. Giving experience or some kind of karma instead (for something) which would allow to raise skills to certain levels in exchange would be my preferred solution.
#17 by J. on February 22nd, 2009
Actually, it’s more of a problem where people who want to PvP are either haves or have-nots when it comes to “ability,” and “ability” is purely defined by the mechanics of the MMO at the time, and that further, the “have-nots” will eventually give up and find some other game that’s fun unless there’s something else for them to do, leaving the “haves” as kings of the dustheap until they, too, bail.
#18 by chimp on February 27th, 2009
The guy who writes this blog should play the game before writing snarky posts.
#19 by IainC on February 27th, 2009
He did. Ten years ago. He even wrote the same things about the same problems back then.
Welcome to the land where everything old is new again.