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There’s a lot more depth to this game than any other MMO in history. So I want to start by saying that we did not thoroughly test every aspect of the game. There may be additional things about some of these subjects that we never experienced. We focused on the things OPP members enjoy: fighting against the odds vs. every bandwagon zerg we could find.
Let’s get right into it with the question everyone keeps asking me...
Is Darkfall ready to launch?
Yes. For one simple reason: the game runs without crashing constantly (unlike nearly every other MMO in history, even recent highly publicized launches like warhammer that still has three major crash bugs). The game is revolutionary and runs. That's a recipe for some basic success.
Basic success does not mean this game has been truly stress tested. In beta, the server would come down every 5ish hours due to sync issues. The DF staff was running the server in debug mode to monitor issues so we don't really know what it will be like once that is turned off. They know this may be an issue so they are doing a structured launch which means they will be allowing a few pre-orders in at a time to make sure the patcher/world doesn't explode.
Gameplay:
Basic gameplay is pretty much awesome. The game plays quite a bit like combat in Mount and Blade with some lag and no holding melee swings. Just running around and fighting stuff is way different than any other MMO. Your basic knowledge of MMOs isn't going to help you much at first. If you haven't played the beta you should scan over the tutorial when you get into the game.
Environment:
The environment in the game is kickass. Anything could happen at any time. It's like UO x 10. The best way to find other people is to use the high ground and listen to your sounds. You can hear people running up on you and can hear people fighting from long distances. You can crouch in high grass, climb trees, and use stealth to sneak up on people (you don't disappear you just don't make sound). The first person view in combat makes it hard to watch your back. You have to be alert at all times if you want to be successful. The environment will play a huge role in combat for the first time in a MMO.
Combat:
Combat is super fun from range. The ranged attack systems with archery and magery take skill and run well. On the flip side, close combat is broken and near pointless due to the mechanics of the game. You can't hold your swing to time your attacks so a 5+v5+ close combat fight usually looks like a bunch of down syndrome kids trying to play twister with plastic lightsabres. The only cool part of close combat is the way they implemented parry (it reduces damage a ton but has a slight delay so timing is key).
Another problem with combat in general is the implementation of stamina. Every attack you do (sword/bow/mage) takes stamina. So does running and sprinting. So anytime you have two good players going 1v1 the person with the most stamina potions wins or at least escapes. Furthermore, zerg guilds can pretty much gank anyone as long as they have more potions than the person they are zerging. You saw a lot of this in beta with the usual suspects playing gimps with 50 stam pots in their bag. Stamina was constantly tweaked in beta (last patch as well) but simply doesn't work without some form of recall/summon.
The Newbie Experience:
The newbie experience completely blows. The newbie areas are complete cluster fucks and since there's no real safe areas, grief based zergs just roll newbie areas over and over to stroke their e-p33n. There needs to be a "safer" newbie area or instanced tutorial where people can learn a little bit about the game because some dipshit that hasn't been laid in 14 years and lives in his brother's basement will sit outside the newbie town 20 hours a day. Another superduper tactic through beta was naked newbies with their newbie weapon ganking people in town.
When you're average newbie logs in they will struggle with the controls and try to leave town to go kill a goblin. Then that newb will get ganked by some idiot in two hits and taunted...Then get shanked new res in town by naked people...Then finally escape only to realize that they have to rest for a mind numbingly long time (to the point of pure stupidity) before they get to try again. Bottom line, this game is a lot different than other MMOs and commercial success should be a concern at this point.
Full Loot System:
This is what has been missing from MMOs since early UO. The system works great, you have to go out of combat, stand over a grave, and then click and drag loot. The only negative about the system isn't really even about the system, but that there may be too many item slots on the paperdoll.
Skill System:
Any skill system is FAR superior to any level based system. The skill system in DF gives you the ability to truly create a unique character. I like the way a lot of the skills work and gain...but there is a good 50 unnecessary skills in the game and they continue to add more. They need to stop and go back through to remove the redundant skills. Things like swimming/diving, running/sprinting, survivalist/resting, etc should just be removed. This goes back to what every dev should be asking themselves when they add a "feature": is this fun...and no, gaining resting skill so it doesn't take 10 minutes to regen is not fun.
Faction System:
This system is totally dumb and very easily abused. It should be totally revamped or removed.
Flagging System
The grey/criminal flagging system was broken all the way through beta and was just fixed pre launch. I haven’t tested it but the fix looks really good to me.
Ranged flagging of enemies/allies was also patched in a good direction but I would like to test it a bit before I comment further on it. The way it worked before this patch was generally annoying and pointless because “everyone” was “blue” including guild wars and enemy races. A lot of people in beta are saying that everyone should be blue so you have to look at them close up see what race/guild they are. These people are all extremely stupid and need to shut their faces.
Crafting:
The crafting system a lot like UO: you harvest shit and craft stuff with it. Harvesting can be done in towns. Good system.
Naval Combat: *Corrected 2-22*
We did not test naval combat but it is in and works as far as the boats float and you can ride them with np. I haven't seen a boat canon yet.
Guild/City/Conquest System:
We didn't get to test this much so I may be off on some of my points but from what I saw it’s so badly screwed up that I need to comment. As far as I can tell the guild system is pointless because of the way guild wars, city building, and conquests work.
A guild can declare war on any other guild and kill them in towns. There was no way that I could find to "undeclare". So guilds would declare on everyone and then sit around naked in towns and grief people over and over when they logged in or died and respawned.
City building is way too slow at first because it's not structured. The whole system is designed as a resource sink for the biggest mass recruited zergs. Smaller more competitive guilds won’t have a chance to participate.
The conquest system just perpetuates the craptastic guild/city system. You can declare a siege and 6 hours later destroy a city. Did any of the DF devs play SB? Can we say 2am week day sieges? The newest patch stupidly allows one building to be destroyed a day. So I login and destroy my cheapest building at reset and then rebuild it...Again, the guild/city/conquest system is easily exploited and built only for degenerate zergs, thus badly broken.
These systems reward zerg/grief/hack based guilds for making people quit. Devs need to be aware of the fact that a percentage of their player base wants everyone to quit so they can declare victory over the game. Rewarding mindless zergs and grief based tactics was the failing of UO and SB. Luckily, these things are mostly end game so they won’t impact launch too much.
Conclusion:
My DF beta experience was mixed.
It’s easily the best MMO I’ve ever played when it comes to environment and gameplay. It would be near perfect if they tweaked melee so swings could be held and a relatively fast summon/recall was added (they have said they are addressing this but I’m not sure what’s been done).
The problems I have with the game are the same the problems that I believe always ruin PvP based MMOs. The game isn’t structured enough to protect different play styles. The game is essentially built to facilitate a dozen large guilds that will set their goals on running everyone else out of the game. If you don’t join one of them early on then you don’t stand a chance.
There really aren’t many (any?) guilds left like OPP that will fight the odds/system. Pretty much everyone has given into the hack/zerg/grief to win tactics that these devs continually build into their games.
With all that said, OPP will be playing launch full force as our main game for the first time since Shadowbane. It looks like our goals will be the same as they were in SB: to build server-wide competitive PvP by playing within the rules and curb stomping guilds that want to destroy competition through cheating, mass recruiting, and griefing.
Let’s get right into it with the question everyone keeps asking me...
Is Darkfall ready to launch?
Yes. For one simple reason: the game runs without crashing constantly (unlike nearly every other MMO in history, even recent highly publicized launches like warhammer that still has three major crash bugs). The game is revolutionary and runs. That's a recipe for some basic success.
Basic success does not mean this game has been truly stress tested. In beta, the server would come down every 5ish hours due to sync issues. The DF staff was running the server in debug mode to monitor issues so we don't really know what it will be like once that is turned off. They know this may be an issue so they are doing a structured launch which means they will be allowing a few pre-orders in at a time to make sure the patcher/world doesn't explode.
Gameplay:
Basic gameplay is pretty much awesome. The game plays quite a bit like combat in Mount and Blade with some lag and no holding melee swings. Just running around and fighting stuff is way different than any other MMO. Your basic knowledge of MMOs isn't going to help you much at first. If you haven't played the beta you should scan over the tutorial when you get into the game.
Environment:
The environment in the game is kickass. Anything could happen at any time. It's like UO x 10. The best way to find other people is to use the high ground and listen to your sounds. You can hear people running up on you and can hear people fighting from long distances. You can crouch in high grass, climb trees, and use stealth to sneak up on people (you don't disappear you just don't make sound). The first person view in combat makes it hard to watch your back. You have to be alert at all times if you want to be successful. The environment will play a huge role in combat for the first time in a MMO.
Combat:
Combat is super fun from range. The ranged attack systems with archery and magery take skill and run well. On the flip side, close combat is broken and near pointless due to the mechanics of the game. You can't hold your swing to time your attacks so a 5+v5+ close combat fight usually looks like a bunch of down syndrome kids trying to play twister with plastic lightsabres. The only cool part of close combat is the way they implemented parry (it reduces damage a ton but has a slight delay so timing is key).
Another problem with combat in general is the implementation of stamina. Every attack you do (sword/bow/mage) takes stamina. So does running and sprinting. So anytime you have two good players going 1v1 the person with the most stamina potions wins or at least escapes. Furthermore, zerg guilds can pretty much gank anyone as long as they have more potions than the person they are zerging. You saw a lot of this in beta with the usual suspects playing gimps with 50 stam pots in their bag. Stamina was constantly tweaked in beta (last patch as well) but simply doesn't work without some form of recall/summon.
The Newbie Experience:
The newbie experience completely blows. The newbie areas are complete cluster fucks and since there's no real safe areas, grief based zergs just roll newbie areas over and over to stroke their e-p33n. There needs to be a "safer" newbie area or instanced tutorial where people can learn a little bit about the game because some dipshit that hasn't been laid in 14 years and lives in his brother's basement will sit outside the newbie town 20 hours a day. Another superduper tactic through beta was naked newbies with their newbie weapon ganking people in town.
When you're average newbie logs in they will struggle with the controls and try to leave town to go kill a goblin. Then that newb will get ganked by some idiot in two hits and taunted...Then get shanked new res in town by naked people...Then finally escape only to realize that they have to rest for a mind numbingly long time (to the point of pure stupidity) before they get to try again. Bottom line, this game is a lot different than other MMOs and commercial success should be a concern at this point.
Full Loot System:
This is what has been missing from MMOs since early UO. The system works great, you have to go out of combat, stand over a grave, and then click and drag loot. The only negative about the system isn't really even about the system, but that there may be too many item slots on the paperdoll.
Skill System:
Any skill system is FAR superior to any level based system. The skill system in DF gives you the ability to truly create a unique character. I like the way a lot of the skills work and gain...but there is a good 50 unnecessary skills in the game and they continue to add more. They need to stop and go back through to remove the redundant skills. Things like swimming/diving, running/sprinting, survivalist/resting, etc should just be removed. This goes back to what every dev should be asking themselves when they add a "feature": is this fun...and no, gaining resting skill so it doesn't take 10 minutes to regen is not fun.
Faction System:
This system is totally dumb and very easily abused. It should be totally revamped or removed.
Flagging System
The grey/criminal flagging system was broken all the way through beta and was just fixed pre launch. I haven’t tested it but the fix looks really good to me.
Ranged flagging of enemies/allies was also patched in a good direction but I would like to test it a bit before I comment further on it. The way it worked before this patch was generally annoying and pointless because “everyone” was “blue” including guild wars and enemy races. A lot of people in beta are saying that everyone should be blue so you have to look at them close up see what race/guild they are. These people are all extremely stupid and need to shut their faces.
Crafting:
The crafting system a lot like UO: you harvest shit and craft stuff with it. Harvesting can be done in towns. Good system.
Naval Combat: *Corrected 2-22*
We did not test naval combat but it is in and works as far as the boats float and you can ride them with np. I haven't seen a boat canon yet.
Guild/City/Conquest System:
We didn't get to test this much so I may be off on some of my points but from what I saw it’s so badly screwed up that I need to comment. As far as I can tell the guild system is pointless because of the way guild wars, city building, and conquests work.
A guild can declare war on any other guild and kill them in towns. There was no way that I could find to "undeclare". So guilds would declare on everyone and then sit around naked in towns and grief people over and over when they logged in or died and respawned.
City building is way too slow at first because it's not structured. The whole system is designed as a resource sink for the biggest mass recruited zergs. Smaller more competitive guilds won’t have a chance to participate.
The conquest system just perpetuates the craptastic guild/city system. You can declare a siege and 6 hours later destroy a city. Did any of the DF devs play SB? Can we say 2am week day sieges? The newest patch stupidly allows one building to be destroyed a day. So I login and destroy my cheapest building at reset and then rebuild it...Again, the guild/city/conquest system is easily exploited and built only for degenerate zergs, thus badly broken.
These systems reward zerg/grief/hack based guilds for making people quit. Devs need to be aware of the fact that a percentage of their player base wants everyone to quit so they can declare victory over the game. Rewarding mindless zergs and grief based tactics was the failing of UO and SB. Luckily, these things are mostly end game so they won’t impact launch too much.
Conclusion:
My DF beta experience was mixed.
It’s easily the best MMO I’ve ever played when it comes to environment and gameplay. It would be near perfect if they tweaked melee so swings could be held and a relatively fast summon/recall was added (they have said they are addressing this but I’m not sure what’s been done).
The problems I have with the game are the same the problems that I believe always ruin PvP based MMOs. The game isn’t structured enough to protect different play styles. The game is essentially built to facilitate a dozen large guilds that will set their goals on running everyone else out of the game. If you don’t join one of them early on then you don’t stand a chance.
There really aren’t many (any?) guilds left like OPP that will fight the odds/system. Pretty much everyone has given into the hack/zerg/grief to win tactics that these devs continually build into their games.
With all that said, OPP will be playing launch full force as our main game for the first time since Shadowbane. It looks like our goals will be the same as they were in SB: to build server-wide competitive PvP by playing within the rules and curb stomping guilds that want to destroy competition through cheating, mass recruiting, and griefing.
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