So, a more serious look at Darkfall’s incipient release.
Most of the traffic on the boards and blogs recently seems to be doomcasting Darkfall pretty harshly. It’s not a AAA MMO, its ruleset is ridiculously hardcore, and it is doing its level best to minimize the number of people that actually *can* log in (no NA release, limited number of boxes sold, etc).
I actually disagree. I think it will have a groundswell of excitement, some people will be pumped about “a hardcore game not for carebears!!1!”, and we’ll see some ridiculous eBay auctions of Darkfall boxes.
For three months. Then… it will collapse upon itself.
Why this curve? Because every PvP-centric MMO released to date has seen this. Even PvP-specific servers, released to great fanfare with their users, see this curve. And the reason is pretty simple – because people enjoy hardcore PvP in the abstract. Or, to put another way, many more people believe they are ‘hardc0re’ than actually are. And they dislike being proved wrong pretty powerfully.
The best example of this in my experience were the free-for-all PvP servers in Dark Age of Camelot. They were eagerly anticipated. When the first one, “Mordred”, came out, it was the most popular server in the game. A second PvP server, “Andred”, was quickly pressed into service, which also was popular.
Then… they weren’t. Andred in particular became a ghost town and after a decent interval was merged back into Mordred. Mordred still exists, but only has a vestigal population at best.
Of course, if you talk to the players themselves, there were other issues. PvP in DAOC was an afterthought, levelling was too difficult, there were too many exploits, there were bugs, etc. etc. Much as in Shadowbane, one of the most highly anticipated MMOs ever judging from message board buzz – bugs, bad design, exploits, etc. etc.
All of which is true. But they are not unique to PvP servers, or PvP games. What *is* unique is the PvP ruleset – the sense of the hardcore. The Mordred problem is simply that a great majority of the people who believe they are hardcore are not, and after being violently disabused of the notion, will leave.
Thus, the curve. Servers that will be massively overpopulated one month, ghost towns the next.
Perhaps Darkfall’s developers are well aware of the Mordred problem, and are enforcing a rigid scarcity of availability to try to counter this. Personally I’m dubious of this, based on the PR coming from some of their spokespersons that would have made Todd Coleman in a GOD stripper booth blush. But in the end, it will definitely work in their favor. If they can ride that curve, they may find the true level of their niche.
And those people outside the niche will complain about bugs. And poor design. And poor polish. And a community of rabid weasels. And and and. All of which will probably be true. But very few will admit to a Mordred problem. And addressing that problem will be a key dilemma for any PvP-centric game.
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“A 10% durability loss, is nothing, until all your gear even your pet polar bear, is wiped from your corpse and they are killed over and over, until absolutely NOTHING drops.”
That’s weaksauce. My personal vision for a hardcore PVP game is one that has no subscription fee, but charges the player’s credit card $5 for every respawn after death. You want consequences? How about not being able to pay your rent?
Interesting… so how do you explain World War II Online?
MMORPG/FPS, the one shot kills make it much closer to an FPS.
I’ve never played, never had an interest in it. I still recall Lum’s insanely funny transcript of trying to fire a gun in it.
No levels, no investment in time, no attachment to the character. Low subscription numbers (around 10,000 from what i can tell), its a niche game.
In some ways it is closer to an FPS…. but that depends on your definition really doesn’t it?
I could argue that Tabula Rasa is a FPS too.
Not to mention the number of recent ‘MMORPGs’ which I class as “Graphical Lobby Games”*
There IS an investment in time and character advancement in WWIIoL – just not the norm of ‘levels’.
Oh, and please define ‘niche’?
Every MMO that is released now-a-days seems to be niche?
PotBS, AoC, WAR, EvE and now Darkfall Fanbois are claiming niche status?
* A GLG (Graphical Lobby Game) is one in which the players only meet in a Graphical Lobby which allows minimal interaction – like chat for example.
All other interactions. Dueling, PvP and actual game play are conducted in instances. PotBS and The Agency would be examples of this style of game.
Are people still flogging the “PvP=sociopath irl” stuff? The SWG 2001 pre-beta boards called, they would like their rage-fueled, poorly reasoned meme back.
I might as well say that PvEers play MMOs because they have to retreat into fantasy because they can’t handle real people in real life because they are all autistic, or that if you read manga you secretly lust for “women” of an illegal age.
Can we just stop assuming every playstyle we don’t like has sekret crippling psychological issues? Maybe, just maybe, like any other hobby on the earth, people like doing different stuff. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to accuse my neighbor of fantasizing about stabbing people since he likes to mow his lawn, and lawnmowers have blades.
I love these topics that really bring the experts out.
Spot on Lum.
I’ve observed the delusions of PvP grandeur shattered by wolves not getting off on killing wolves cycle since before Mordred.
I don’t think we should be surprised that there are devs willing to dive head-first when you look at the number of players who despite having repeated the cycle themselves before insist it won’t be that way ‘this time’.
At the same time, I’m quite glad in a way that there are still developers out there who don’t have the “let’s make the next WoW” motto written on a Post-It note glued to their monitor.
I can’t say I agree, Scott. I think there are legions of people out there who could enjoy a PvP oriented MMO, as soon as someone releases one that isn’t terrible.
It’s to justify your blanket statements regarding PvP when you can look at the RTS and FPS genres, which are almost entirely PvP when it comes to online play. Different genre, yes, but I think it just goes further to prove my point that MMOs simply haven’t done it right yet.
I’d say most MMOs simply do not work well with PvP mechanics. They have been designed from the ground up for a fun PvE experience with PvP as an afterthought, and it is obvious. Neither are the development team prepared to support them like a PvP game needs to be supported, with constant balance updates, tournaments, prizes… etc.
I played Guild Wars for nearly four years, and 90% of my time was spent participating in PvP. I was no anomaly either, there was a huge chunk of the player base who spent most of their time PvPing. I’ve bounced around other MMOs for a similar experience, but have yet to find any that are up to par.
Guild Wars certainly wasn’t amazing, but the development team had made the right decisions on some very tough choices to make the PvP work. In how many other MMOs can you roll a max level character of any class, with maxed out gear and any skills, from day one? How many other MMOs have set up their own Automated Tournament system, and held championships with $500,000 cash prizes? How many others have done an emergency patch on a sunday at 4:00 am for a single imbalanced skill?
Sure, it’s not the classic UO/Darkfall definition of hardcore PvP, though I believe it is in fact a more accurate reflection of what hardcore PvP should be. It doesn’t have ganking, looting, or much griefing, but it’s the only version of PvP that I have seen work as a major asset of an MMO.
It’s something of a shame that, for many MMO PVPers, good old-fashioned “losing” is no longer a consequence severe enough to be considered worthy of their attention. Losers must not only lose, but also suffer in some tangible, “meaningful” way. Thank you, persistent world!
“Losers must not only lose, but also suffer in some tangible, “meaningful” way.”
Gee, if there were only a term to describe a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others. Something that captures lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
Darkfall is awful and it’ll lose subscriptions. Not only because of what the blog post said is atleast somewhat true, but because the best analogy for the game would be a gold nugget under hundreds of meters of mud.
It is possible the gold nugget will be uncovered some day, but it is more likely that people will get bored digging or won’t find it at all.
Oh, yes, by the way, I got banned from the beta and game forums after giving constructive criticism on public boards (after the NDA dropped) so I am probably quite biased now.
I think the whole ‘death penalty’ is misunderstood.
The trick is – in any game – to make the penalty meaningful yet not completely debilitating and demoralizing.
As an example – consider Chess.
When you capture a piece you get that piece and that piece only. You do NOT get all the pieces on adjacent squares as well. If chess had been designed that way it would have died a quick death.
On the other hand, when a piece is captured it is removed from the board for the rest of the game – it is not returned to its initial placement square. Again, had the game been designed that way it would also have failed.
The loss of one piece does not have to mean the end of the game. But, at the same time it hurts and has a real tangible effect on the remainder of the game.
I think the problem with many PvP MMOs is that there is no ‘death penalty’. The loser simply re-spawns and returns to the fight. In some games there is a loss of time although the recent trend is to reduce even this to a minimum? This leaves the ‘winner’ without a victory and the ‘loser’ with no penalty.
The trick is to find a balance players are prepared to accept as fair.
Good old-fashioned for many people going into Darkfall is “Losers must not only lose, but also suffer in some tangible, “meaningful” way.”
Welcome to a game that is going to be full of people from Great Lakes, Lake Superior, Atlantic, Origin and Europa servers in UO as well as many from Shadowbane and AC.
“pvp in daoc was an after thought.”
Stopped reading right there
Way to throw your credibility right out the window.
@Dan Gray
Except that I bought Guild Wars when it first came out, and it most certainly did not let you roll a max level character with any skills. Either playing the PVE parts or tons of grinding was required to obtain skills a la carte. You could enter battles with a skill kit designed by some very good PVPers, but the trouble was that those kits were designed to work with specific partners, with the result being that you got randomly matched with people who invariably did not have complementary skill sets, and there was nothing you could do (short of playing from level 1 or the aforementioned massive amount of PVP grinding) to make a more “neutral” build that would work satisfactorily with some unknown teammate.
You do need something more, otherwise you are just playing halflife. In which case why are you paying $15/month?
In DAOC I didn’t enjoy destroying new or bad players unless the odds were ridiculous. 8v50+ was about the minimum before I would enjoy destroying a zerg of bad players, and I would chalk up the challenge to the “look how many people they had” thing. The embarrassment of them having the entire zerg killed by our 2 or 3 DPSers was enough. When it came to good players I could collect more points for them (because they were higher rank and died less).
Honestly, nothing ever replaced a good old fashioned looting like we had in UO. I miss the days of finding a small guild down in a really tough dungeon and helping them out by dragging the worst monsters in the dungeon to them. Actually, looting accomplished two things… it made sure you were fighting a person and not his gear (hello WOW!) and it also made sure there was a risk/reward. Too many games out there have none of this.
I knew the minute this game was about to come out and I haven’t said a word about it even though I have been testing it for 2 years now, is that it would be quite hysterical.
I am not a spokesman for the company, or the game. What I can tell you is that none of the feedback or what people think about the game will EVER matter to the people who designed it. This is how they want it, they don’t want 8 million users. They were a bunch of old time UO scrappers.(man there was a lot of euro-programmers that played uo, the only ones I ever remembered that hated dying so much were the Germans)
This game has been made for the people who enjoyed watching and looking over there shoulders in UO, enjoyed the heart pounding, no rules, lose your stuff, lose your house, start over, get some friends come back and kill, vigilante style, open world, fuck you pvp.
Many of us will play it, many will try it, many will whine about it, many will try and change it. But seriously no one gives a shit what you think. And the funny thing is the game is more stable and has been more stable for a year now than Warhammer has been after almost a year.
Pretty sad considering the budgets of the 2 games.
Its ALOT easier to build and add to a stable engine, then to some daoc2 clone that can barely handle 60 on 60 battles in this day and age when EQ could put a hundred in a zone a decade ago and have the same lag.
@Hawken
Did they use their own money or someone elses money? If it’s someone elses money then what the designers want becomes secondary to what the owners want. Owners are generally interested in making money.
Hit the brakes. Back up. Lets try not to look at Mordred/Andred’s initial popularity as though everyone was sporting rose colored glasses. A lot of people understood that DAoC was in *no way* designed to be an FFA game. On top of this, nearly everyone understood that there were vast class imbalances and even more significant level advantages that would come into play on an FFA ruleset server.
Sure, people gave it a shot because it *might* have been cool, but anyone who paused to think about it should have realized that grinding levels in an FFA PvP in a game where levels meant everything was going to be a hellacious experience for anyone who wasn’t rolling deep 24/7. The fact is the hardcore community has been so desperate for a game catered to us that we will take nearly anything offered, and that includes abortions like DAoC Mordred.
The comparison you’re making, while not entirely misguided, has flaws as at a very basic level. There will always be those that can’t handle losing loot or having their e-progress otherwise halted; but with the options that exist in the market today their needs are almost entirely sated by titles like WoW.
On the other side of the fence Eve has very substantial penalties for death and they have continued to grow slowly but surely, year after year. Will there be some initial Darkfall bloat and fall-off? Definitely. But the ability of the devs to address major issues is what long term success will hinge on, just like any other game.
Short Version: Don’t confuse what hardcore players are willing to try for what they’ve been looking for all along.
3 months until DF implodes on itself? Pretty sweeping statement. I bet a lot of people will play the game and realise it isnt to their tastes. But there are a lot of people out there who do enjoy the game.
Speaking from beta experience, the game is awesome sauce. Everything has a sense of achievement and reward due to the ease of which it can be lost – but its not a 24/7 gank fest. The world is huge, and there are lengthy runs to get to various interest zones, which spreads players out.
Gotta agree with Scott….most people think they want the kind of hardcore ruleset Darkfall represents but reality sets in pretty quickly once they’re actually playing it. And the reality is…most people aren’t going to pay $15 a month to be subjected to abuse.
I’ll always have a special fondness for UO but the age of innocence in which it first appeared is long since past. Many who played recall it fondly but they also swear never again.
I think PvP centric games can be made to work but developers are still experimenting with the rulesets and trying to find that elusive combination that has broad appeal and makes for a great game. There have been games with some interesting ideas but none have hit the mark yet the way World of Warcraft hit the PvE mark. Someday a developer will stumble upon that magic combination but I doubt anarchistic free for all pvp games will be it.
@Psycle:
I suppose with PvP in that context Scott did not refer to RvR but exclusively to the DAoC PvP Dred servers, and Camlann in the case of Europe.
I did play on Camlann for nearly a year and my impression was that players left the server mainly because of a combination of issues such as regular camping of teleport spots, regular bashing of low level toons, and probably mostly due to the absence of any remotely meaningful PvP, which on standard DAoC servers would have been the wonderful RvR concept, relic raids included. So yes, (free-for-all) PvP in DAoC was an afterthought and poorly implemented indeed.
Free-for-all PvP is a completely different thing than the consensual PvP you’ve got on DAoC standard servers, or even WoW for that matter.
In NA/Europe there are some MMOs that have a PvP system that do work on a consensual basis, and successful ones it seems. Free-for-all PvP on the other hand so far only seems to work great in Asia and maybe okay in a couple of other countries such as Greece or Russia (which is both, Europe and Asia).
Shadowbane had other issues than the PvP concept, poor movement options (which the absence of WASD or other keyboard movement options is; in NA/Europe) and major stability issues to say the least. Actually the game needed major improvements on almost every level, so in the case of Shadowbane I couldn’t blame the PvP concept.
Mourning/Realms of Krel/Whatever… was a whole different story anyway.
Dedicated PvP servers in most other modern MMOs are just the same as in DAoC, meaningless afterthoughts.
Fury was a different story, more like Guild Wars and with consensual PvP, but unfortunately it was just… boring, so it failed.
I still see plenty of room for a well done PvP centric MMO, but it has to be done right, and with goals to go for (just like in any successful FPS). Some interesting PvE options would definitely come beneficial in an MMO as well. Maybe in such a game even character death could be made fun or satisfying in some way (think high score lists or TF2 death screenies!).
Erm, actually Russia “is part of” to Europe and of Asia and isn’t Europe and Asia. Had to correct this before someone else comments on that…
I guess EVE Online qualifies – it has both PvE and PvP, with the most attractive resources in areas where PvP is completely open. Last published subscriber numbers were around 230k, and based on the somewhat higher server populations I guess it is 250k or more today.
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