Punching Babies: Why Darkfall Can, Should, And Must Succeed

At least we know, based on Darkfall and Shadowbane, that this subset of MMO players to whom you refer is extremely well organized. They follow game development news and pay attention to what is on the horizon. Reaching them has never been the problem, because they more or less move as a block (especially on a guild or alliance basis).

Even if you could afford WoW-type ads with 80′s TV icons and former heavy metal stars on the verge of becoming hopelessly bourgeois after squandering what little remained of their credibility on a reality show, you wouldn’t need them. Aventurine didn’t advertise its upcoming release — not even on its own website — yet the sole server is reportedly overflowing.

Nor do you need to coax those players away from World of Warcraft. It’s a safe bet that they hate that game and all it represents. That’s why I still can’t explain the great mystery that is Warhammer Online. Supposedly PvP (and RvR) is all that matters, yet they also tried to make it like WoW (or at least, it’s a complaint I remember hearing during the little time I played WAR). Aventurine made another smart decision here in going for the grittier look of Shadowbane (I loved the world design of SB) instead of trying some semi-cartoony compromise as WAR did (I played a Dwarf, and it was painfully obvious).

So the problem with Darkfall is not so much to rally the “community”, but rather, to keep it. Not only from self-destructing — I like to compare it to a gangster convention in 1920′s Chicago (“it has been unanimously approved that we do not like the FBI; now can we go back to killing each other?”) — but from deserting it for the next shiny new game on the horizon.

That’s where I tend to disagree with the above. Can a good FFA PvP game survive? That would depend on whether the map can remain dynamic. It seems to be doing OK for EVE (despite my own misgivings), but it didn’t for Shadowbane, for all sorts of reasons already amply discussed on this blog. However, the technical issues — SB.exe, duping, exploits — always sounded to me as an excuse by the “hardcore” for abandoning the game. Sure, they’re annoying, but I’m sure there’s more to it than that.

There remained a small core of players on SB after its heyday, but what really killed many of the servers was the Chinese steamroller. Is it to be included in the technical issues? I’m not sure. Yet it’s the most likely scenario to occur in a well-done FFA PvP game. One large alliance versus a slightly less large alliance (the point where EVE is at). Then one falls and the other steps in. Map is dead. Reset?

Shadowbane tried resets a year ago, but that was an exceptional measure and I didn’t follow the game after that. Ironically, the biggest concern at the time was whether all that prevented a complete Chinese takeover on the one remaining original server was the massive duping that had been done years before. Get rid of the duping, you get a Chinese takeover. Some dilemma.

Then you have games with automatic map resets at certain points (Pirates of the Burning Sea). Yet we also had that discussion recently, and I wasn’t too sure it really changed anything if the same side always won round after round — especially if you have to make rewards for winning meaningless to avoid giving the victorious side an advantage in the next round.

So even if Aventurine had tens of millions of dollars and a collection of economists, political scientists and sociologists to help design it, if it can’t find a way to give the guys and small guilds starting out a chance while maintaining a permanent world not marred by map or server resets, it’s pretty much dead before it’s even started.

@Scott Jennings
I don’t know about SOE. They appear to have left a bitter taste in the mouths of many gamers, who go as far as swearing they won’t pick another SOE product again. Not to mention the Station Pass “graveyard”.

Is it really “going after the margins” or “scraping the bottom of the barrel”?

@isildur
Yes, I understand why the idea of map resets was brought in, and the other problems it creates. (And to be honest, I would have loved to see one of those gigantic maps you mention, where you can just see a sail over the horizon and wonder whether that ship is hostile.)

Recently I was wondering what would happen if, instead of a static reset to status quo ante bellum, you started juggling ports so that 1) ports you captured had a chance of remaining yours (including those you lost after capturing during the round) and 2) ports you prevented the enemy from taking were guaranteed to remain on your side — the only rule being that each side start the next round with the same number of ports (and possibly at least one deep water harbour on each side). Like a card game, if you want.

I know it’s probably just so much theorycraft, and not really applicable to PotBS because of zone levels and certain specific quests. Still, it would add an element of uncertainty if the map is competitive with two factions in a tight race to win the round. It would also encourage sides to plan ahead, should they lose access to ironwood for the duration of the next round.

I am also wondering whether port governance will make the RvR more interesting for those who like that aspect of the game, though I’m expecting that to lead to a lot of friction within each nation.

@dartwick
To blame hardcore PvP would be completely unnecessary in the case of Darkfall.

The few days of launch just speak for themselves. It’s not hardcore PvP or RvR that is to blame (if we exclude long-term consequences such as a lopsided map and the lack of player rejuvenation if they get ganked from the moment they log in). It’s all that goes around it. Exploits, for instance — this game seems to be a sieve when it comes to those.

Or the rude mentality that goes with hardcore PvP, like those quotes from the Ten Ton Hammer article cited in a previous entry. If you gave me a FFA WWI air combat game, I could go Red Baron all over — ruthless, no pity given for I expect none — but I wouldn’t say after an engagement “go back to WoW carebear noob”.

Maybe that’s what my own futility is demanding — some roleplaying in PvP (not that awful PvE trend featuring cardboard characters culled from the film of the moment). And that’s what I find lacking in this so-called “Darkfall community”. They gank and grief as they have done in every game, regardless of setting or game lore. They are contrary to what the spirit of an MMO should be.

Just an example: In Pirates of the Burning Sea, I played a Frenchman. I was a trader, seeking to contribute to the war effort of King Louis XV in the Caribbean — not to mention my own enrichment. As a trader, I sank enemy ships if I had to, because my purpose was trade. For a while, I even pushed the idea further by putting together a newspaper promoting the French position on everything (which, because we were perennial losers, involved a fair number of factual liberties). That was what I did, and I enjoyed it tremendously.

But I also saw in that game those who couldn’t have cared less whether they were a ship of the line or a spaceship or an elf rogue — in other words, the setting was nothing else than a means to an end. They didn’t care if what they did contributed to the war effort of their nation, because all they were after were their own jollies. There was a red circle, it didn’t matter if they or you were one of the belligerents in that particular case, they just ganked you anyway. Apart from their initial attachment to one faction based on real-life factors (which made a mockery of faction balance because everybody would go British or Pirate instead of “losers” like France or Spain), those players didn’t care about the faction itself (game design did not help, for example the absence of port governance). But in many cases for such players, the choice of a faction meant little more than Britain=Easy Road, France=Challenge and Pirate=Free Ships.

There are exceptions — players who really care about the RvR and act honourably if with ruthless efficiency. Some of those guys are still in PotBS. But the griefers? Where are they now? Those guys have to account for much of what happened in the early months of PotBS — and they’re about to do it for Darkfall, by the looks of it.

Just a long aside to say that the Darkfall community is a bit like that, only far worse because there are no restrictions. They aren’t what MMO’s should be about in my rose-tinted-glasses perspective. Playing an MMO means you actually care about the setting of the game. No matter how much lore Aventurine would write (but it’s not like there is any), those guys wouldn’t care. They’d blabber on about DPS and range and how to get the other guys tagged first. (That’s also why I never could quite get into WoW because of all those pop-culture references Blizzard put in.)