Fear the MMO reaper

May 14, 2009

Fear of death is a tough emotion to create in an MMO. If you die while working on a “kill ten mobs” quest, is it so devastating that you completely rethink your approach to the quest? Hell, did you go into the quest even caring about the fact that you might die a few times? When raiding, do you ever REALLY care if you die, especially if the raid boss goes down? As a tank, do you ever just turn and run towards the instance portal to save yourself rather than continuing to hold agro? Even in WAR’s RvR, does anyone actual fear a single death at any point?

Fear of death exists in EVE, because losing your ship and pod is a bitch, both in ISK cost and time to reload. You don’t carelessly jump into 0.0 space and poke around in your battleship, and if you die you certainly don’t jump into your next battleship and head right back into 0.0 to continue wandering around. You might get into an empty clone and a frigate to explore, but you take those actions to limit the penalty of death, which is just an extension of that fear.

Fear of death also exists in DarkFall, as dying means losing all your gear and getting tossed back to your bindstone, which depending on the location could be 30 minutes or more from the spot of your death. Much like EVE, the better equipped you are, the higher your fear of death is. When people are looking just to cross from one spot to another, they usually run naked or close to it. If you just head out to mess around, usually you don’t wear your top stuff. That stuff you save for special occasions, mainly organized PvP, which is also usually the event that leads to your death.

Which brings me to my point; being able to control your fear of death is a make-or-break characteristic in a game like DarkFall. Everyone is always searching for that ‘balanced’ fight, as it’s not much fun beating someone ten vs one, or being that one person jumped by ten. We are always looking for that great 8v8 contest, where numbers are not a factor and each player’s actions are vital. The funny thing is, you stand a good chance to die in that 8v8, and since we are talking organized PvP, you are likely wearing some nice gear, so it’s only natural that some players are going to break early and try to escape, especially if their part of the 8v8 is not going well. This usually leads to a chain reaction, and more often than not the fight result is a few deaths with the rest running away.

One common characteristic among top PvP clans is their ability to judge combat situations quickly, and their resolve to stick with a fight rather than break and run. They have a lot of confidence in their clan mates, and they believe that even if they lose their individual battle, their team usually comes out the winner. Fighting to the bitter end keeps your opponent(s) occupied, allowing the rest of your team to hopefully win their battle and either assist you, or at least finish off your weakened foe. Often enough, simply having that resolve to continue the fight is enough to break weaker teams, and even if the numbers or in-game skills don’t favor them, they end up the winner by being the last to keep fighting.

There is a fine line between being brave and foolish however, and only a fool sticks around in a hopeless situation. It’s knowing that line, trusting your team, and having the resolve to go down fighting when necessary is what separates the elite few from the pack.

13 Comments | Darkfall Online, EVE Online, MMO design, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Giving credit when it’s due.

May 13, 2009

It’s very easy to point out flaws in a game or it’s developer. When a server crashes, it’s impossible not to notice. When you are in a login queue, you know it. If your current class/race is underpowered, it affects your gaming. Even little things like hair poking through a helm or a single skill not functioning correctly get noticed by gamers, and any games message board usually contains plenty of minor errors people want fixed. But outside of ‘back of the box bullet points’, how often do you stop and take notice that something is working correctly?

How many reviews/post/threads have you read about how balanced mounted combat is in DarkFall? Hell, those of you that have actually played the game, how many of you gloss over the fact that DarkFall HAS working mounted combat? It seems such a simple thing: get on mount, pull out a weapon, and swing at people. No big deal right? Look around, how many AAA titles have mounted combat? WoW in 5 years has never added it, instead adding vehicles in controlled spaces to play around with the idea, but never added it fully. WAR, a PvP game that contains mounts, forces you off them before you can fight anyone. LotRO, EQ2 (does, see comments), etc, mounts but no combat. (AoC has it, but given the stories DF players tell about AoC PvP, it’s hard to give it too much credit, but having never actually played it I can’t comment beyond that)

But beyond the simple fact that DF has mounted combat, let’s look at how it balances out. On a mount, a player is faster than a player on foot, and loses less stamina riding over the same distance as a player who sprints. A swing from a mount does more damage than the same swing on foot, and a mount also has a forward and backward special attack that does even more damage. Hits from a mount punt an enemy player a decent distance as well. Given all that, mounts sound rather overpowered don’t they? So why is it that a player will dismount to fight on foot when facing a balanced encounter?

For starters, mounts can be killed, and at 300ish gold a pop, you can’t exactly burn through mounts without it hurting you financially. Next, mounts limit what you can do. You can’t cast magic or shoot arrows while mounted, and turning around on a mount is far slower than a player spinning around. Finally, if you only bring a single mount with you, getting it damaged or even killed during a battle means you have just lost your best means of escape should things go south.

Change up any of the seemingly small design decisions, and how balanced is mount combat now. If players were allowed to shoot arrows while mounted, what would that change? If a mount could turn at the same speed as a player, would you still see people fighting on foot? If the speed advantage was slightly lower for a mount, would players still value mounts as highly as they do now? All of these things are currently well balanced, and so you probably never question them.

Another example of unnoticed features is archery in DarkFall. It’s FPS-ish in that you have to aim to hit someone rather than picking a target and spamming your hotbar skills. But it’s deeper than that, in unnoticed yet critical ways. Ever consider the current rate of travel with arrows? If they flew faster, would escaping on a mount still be possible? If they flew slower, would archery have any value past point-blank chasing? If the arrows flew perfectly straight, rather than curve the way they do now, how would that effect fighting at long distances, or from higher ground? If arrows were unlimited, and only the bows durability effected whether you could shoot or not, what impact would that have not only on combat, but on crafting, the economy, and on the decisions made by players when loading up before heading out on a PvP trip? You see lots of threads about how archery currently does too much damage, but how many do you see complaining about the flight speed of arrows, or how imbalanced it is that archers have to always carry around ammunition?

It’s easy to look at any game and point out broken or incomplete features, let alone design decisions that simply don’t fit YOUR playstyle, but how often do we give credit when things are done right, especially things others have back off of and not even attempted to implement?

39 Comments | Age of Conan, Darkfall Online, EQ2, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, PvP, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Games I actually play (DarkFall) update.

May 11, 2009

Out of all the easy criticism a ForumFaller might make against DarkFall, why are so many people getting so worked up about the game not being on sale 24/7? If you know DarkFall is not the game for you (and lets face it, it’s fairly obvious to ALMOST anyone whether it is or not), why are you so worried about being able to buy it? Just seems a very strange thing to continue to harp on… (Ignoring of course the actual reason behind the shop being down, which many seem to have trouble grasping as well)

In “I’ve actually played DarkFall this week” news, Inquisition sold our hamlet to a friendly alliance, and will be moving to a new ‘location of opportunity’. Personally I’m a bit sad to be leaving the Tribelands, but unfortunately Primal had one too many idiot guilds who thought it was a good idea to siege hammer harass a major alliance, and as retribution said alliance burned Exodus Syndicate’s hamlet, prompting them to pack up and move out. Since Exo was one of the major guilds in the alliance (and the only other guild with property), their departure is a fatal blow to the original idea behind Primal (establishing control of the Tribelands). Oddly enough, once Exo packed up, most of the guilds that originally started the trouble seem to have disappeared, funny how that works.

On a greater scale, the Goons and friends in DarkFall continue their war against the few guilds remaining loyal to Hyperion, taking three cities over the weekend. Hyperion’s last major city, Long March, should be the site of a rather epic battle. (or a few server crashes, depending on how big the zerg gets) Once the ‘rp enemy’ is gone, we will see who the Goons turn their eye on next. While both Goons and the Death alliance are both larger than Hyperion ever was, it’s very unlikely they will go at it after spending so much time on the same side. Death also has all of Yssam to conquer, while the Goons could turn their attention towards Cairn. Either way, SOMETHING has to happen once the Hyperion boogieman is gone, or both alliances will start to bleed members due to boredom.

Inq spent some time over the weekend doing merc work, and I was able to finally see a large portion of human and orc lands. I must say its impressive just how different the terrain is compared to the tribelands, both from a visual and a tactical standpoint. The difference in architecture is also interesting to see between the cities and hamlets of different races. It would have been an easy move for Aventurine to just release with one standard look for all player owned cities and hamlets, so credit to them for going the extra step and actually making everything unique, ensuring that each siege on a hamlet or city requires it due diligence in scouting and prep work.

17 Comments | Darkfall Online, MMO design, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

The straight facts about the Eurogamer slander piece.

May 8, 2009

Bonedead ninja edit: Please replace the word ‘slander’ with ‘libel’ whenever you see it. Thanks!

One would think the basic facts of a story would be simple to comprehend by people, and the discussion would revolve around the implications of the errors made within, but as Tobold and other commentators have made very clear, sometimes this is simply not the case.

I had originally written a post breaking down the now infamous ‘review’ on Eurogamer, but decided not to publish it after Tasos made his post, thinking it would be unnecessary to point out the multitude of errors in a review that was clearly an abomination overall. What’s amazed me most about this whole ordeal is how far people will stretch details to discredit a game they admit to having no interest in, and what some people accept as ‘opinions’.

Below is a breakdown of the lies or false statements made in the review, outside of the baseless opinions the writer throws out in his slander (a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report) piece.

As with many MMOs, you walk around using the WASD keys. However, to ‘do’ anything – talk to an NPC, bind yourself to a location, loot a corpse, and so on – you have to click the right mouse button to toggle between interaction or movement mode

Lie. The F key allows you to do all of the above, and it ONLY functions in movement mode. What the reviewer calls ‘interaction’ mode is what you use to bring up the mouse pointer and all its functionality, which does not allow any of the functions mentioned above. In fact, the game automatically places you in mouse mode once you interact with an NPC or corpse using the F key in movement mode, or keeps you in movement mode if the F key interaction is something like binding or looting a chest.

Unbelievably, to do anything that involves any interaction at all, you have to stop still – this includes any and all inventory management, looting, chatting – anything interactive.

False. You can chat by hitting the enter key in movement mode, as well as doing so in mouse mode. You can also do any of the above except for looting (by design) while moving using auto run. Using hotkeys, you can also perform inventory management tasks such as swapping out weapons/armor/spells without entering mouse mode.

You can’t turn off the UI

Lie. By default there is a key command to turn the UI on/off.

The lack of hit detection

False. The hit detection is spot on. This is not opinion, it’s a fact. The game detects when you hit something correctly, every time.

your combat skills affect how often you actually connect. It isn’t even an issue of timing your clicks based on the connection with your sword – it’s nigh-on random

Lie. Combat skills have ZERO effect on your ability to hit someone. If you are within range, you will hit whatever you are swinging at if you aimed correctly. There is ZERO randomness to this through ability scores or otherwise.

While playing for a few hours of reasonably solid combat

Lie. Aventurine’s server logs show he never played ‘a few hours’ in combat. He played for a total of two hours, and the majority of THAT time was spent in the character creation screen. Eurogamer declined an invitation by Aventurine (at their expense) to verify the logs, yet claim they are false.

For the most part, your first ten or so hours in Darkfall are spent dying, repeatedly, at the hands of either the AI or a cyber-bully in a wolf-suit. In fact, past that mark, it feels impossible to avoid the clammy hands and bloodied sword of somebody who has specially allocated part of their day to griefing

Lie. The reviewer never got beyond the first ten hours (even if you believe him when he said he played nine, rather than the server logs that show he ‘played’ two). Talking about ‘past that point’ is impossible for the reviewer, regardless of whose side you believe.

Even when you become semi-capable of operation without constant death, there’s little to enjoy.

Lie. Having self-admitted that he never reached this point in the game, it’s simply impossible for the reviewer to have personally experiences with it, and therefore he is attempting to pass second/third hand stories off as his own experience.

It doesn’t even have the basic features that make up even the most lackluster and dull cookie-cutter MMOs, … , or some form of tutorial.

Lie. When first logging in (and every time after, unless you disable it), the game opens up a tutorial screen explaining the basic commands and functions of the game. (many of the commands the reviewer does not understand are explained in this very tutorial)

Darkfall even lacks the basic lore that even the worst games have. There are wolf people, orks, humans, elves, and dark elves

False. The game does contain lore, explained in many of the games lengthy quest chains (starting with the first newbie quest chain a player starts directly in front of). Its opinion whether you think DF has ‘enough’ lore, but it’s a fact that it does contain stories,  quest chains,  and game-impacting racial alignment standings around the lore. Dwarves are also a playable race, but such an omission is slight compared to the rest of the writing.

Finally, to everyone surprised that Aventurine would respond to something like this, answer the following question: If someone at your workplace slandered you, and it cost you either a promotion or your job, would you remain quiet, especially if you had solid evidence to prove otherwise?

This is not an issue of a negative review (DarkFall will get plenty of negative reviews from general MMO players/reviewers, they fully expect that), or how long someone must play a given game before they are able to give an opinion, or whether the right ‘type’ of player was selected for the review. It’s a defense against slander done by a dishonest writer and the unethical website that continues to back him.

34 Comments | Darkfall Online, Mass Media | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Final word on the Eurogamer slander piece.

May 7, 2009

Game. Set. Match.

Well played Aventurine. Good luck to that hack Ed Zitron in pursuing his career as a writer, and good luck to Eurogamer, your name and site now being the punch line of a joke among gamers. Hope the short traffic spike was worth your reputations and credibility being reduced to that of a common forum troll.

28 Comments | Darkfall Online, Mass Media, Rant | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

DarkFall: Giving the skill system some direction

May 7, 2009

The skill system in DarkFall is one of the more hotly debated topics among players actually playing the game (and not just playing ForumFall). Some believe it’s too long a grind (oh nooz, you are not maxed out in two months!), others dislike its general confusion (does archery go up faster if you hit something when shooting? (yes, but not much faster)), and some just wish they could get XP per kill (back to WoW noobiecake!)

For me the issue with the skill system is that it lacks direction. When you are in-game and working on your character, it’s not an issue of direction to take your character in, but which skill you are aiming to max out today, since eventually they will all be high. The skill system is not an open-ended ‘create your own class’ system, but simply a long path until everyone becomes a multi-weapon tank/mage crafter.

The system resembles UO, a game which had a hard-cap of 700 points. It worked for UO because overall the skill system was more limited, and the game itself was not nearly as complex as DarkFall. I don’t think the same type of overall hardcap would work in DarkFall, as it would be too limiting and force players to pick between a ‘needed’ character (guild crafter) and a ‘useful’ character (tank/mage). EVE has no cap on its skill system, but since it’s based on real-time gain, it’s not a good comparison.

The first fix to DarkFall’s skill system would be the removal of pointless, easy-grind skills like swimming, running, riding, sprint, etc. Everyone will eventually have all these skills at 100 whether they aim for it or not, and as they already provide a minimal advantage, just remove them and stop the far-to-easy abuse of macroing them for stat gains. Skills should be limited to activities a player ACTIVLY does, not basic stuff like getting around.

The next fix would be to change how skill gain works. Currently swinging at a goblin gives you the same gain as swinging at a dragon. Swinging at a naked player gives as much gain as swinging at someone in full plate. Crafting a dagger gives as much gain as a top-tier weapon. That not only seems wrong, but also encourages silly grinding. Scale skill gain based on challenge, without ever ‘graying out’ the easiest levels. Already skill gain goes up quickly 1-25, moderately at 25-50, and rather slow at 50+; why not allow those with 50+ skill to increase their gains by taking on bigger challenges, be it mobs/players or crafting? If a guild group heads into a tougher dungeon, and spends a few hours swinging at top-tier mobs, shouldn’t they get more skill gain from that then someone killing goblin scouts over and over? Would it not make more sense for crafters to always be challenging themselves by crafting tougher items, rather than pumping out daggers until they cap out? Would that not encourage players to leave the ‘easy’ parts of the game, and be more rewarded for seek a challenge?

Finally, a skill cap should be added, but not the traditional UO hardcap. Instead, every skill should fall into a category, be it crafting, weapons, magic, or whatever else. Each category should then have its own skill cap (whatever number would work best for balance), and a final, overarching category of master skills should be added.

Let’s use crafting as an example. The skill cap would allow you to either max out all gathering skills, the majority of the crafting skills, or a combination of both. A player looking to be a traditional blacksmith would pick up mining, weapon and armor smithing, and perhaps one other supplemental skill (artillery, boats, architecture). His crafting choices would not impact his other skill categories, so one blacksmith could also be a fire mage, while the other would be a mace fighter.

For combat skills, players would again be limited. One could focus on close combat, and pick both a one hand and two hand skill to max, along with parry and defensive skills, while giving up something archery-related (but not completely losing the ability to shoot an arrow). Or a player could try for a jack-of-all-trades build, and pick only one weapon, focus more on archery, and giving up some of the armor focus. Someone looking to be a top-tier archer could max out those skills, at the sacrifice of either close combat abilities or defense.

Magic would work similar to how it does now, with a player picking to focus on Fire magic losing the ability to train in Water. Additionally, the cap could work in such a way as to block the ability to train ALL related magic skills, so a player would have to decide between focusing on stronger basic spells, or weakening those in exchange for better supplemental Fire magic skills.

Finally, the overarching “Mastery” category would allow a player to pick 2-3 master skills to work on. This category would contain all the crafting mastery skills, all high-end supplemental magic skills (damage boosts, mana efficiently, etc), all weapon mastery skills, and all higher-end defense skills like ignore pain. The goal here is to allow further player specialization and focus. If someone really wants to be a top-tier crafter, they sacrifice weapon and magic mastery skills and dedicate themselves to the weapon crafting mastery. They won’t be as effective in combat (but they will still posses say 80% of the power of a master), but in return they will be able to craft more powerful and durable items (which would allow them to charge a premium over standard crafters for the same items).

At any point, a player would be allowed to ‘lock’ a skill, preventing it from gaining or losing points. If a player is at the cap and gains skill, an unlocked skill would decrease to compensate for the gain. Regular skills should be fairly easy to reach a level of 50 or so, but much tougher to max at 100. Mastery skills should be far harder to level in general, and changing your mastery skills would be a major directional shift for a character. Titles could be added to identify players by their masteries like in UO.

Any major change like this would be difficult to add midway through, but the opening of the NA-1 server could be the perfect time, and something needs to be done with the skill system in DarkFall, or in 3-4 months everyone is going to look eerily similar.

9 Comments | Darkfall Online, MMO design, Ultima Online | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

DarkFall in-game reaction to Eurogamer.

May 6, 2009

Silly sandbox…

Reaction to the eurogamer review in DarkFall

Reaction to the eurogamer review in DarkFall

6 Comments | Darkfall Online, Mass Media, Random | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

FreeRealms: Gay Simulator, 2/10 score after 20+ hours played.

May 6, 2009

I want to write a bit more about the whole Eurogamer ‘review’ of DarkFall, because I feel some people are missing exactly why this is not just ‘someone not liking your game’, but actually a much more damaging two pages of lies. It’s one thing to give a bad review of a game based on design decisions and your opinion of them, no issues with that. It’s another to lie about both the game itself and your time spent playing it. That is not okay for a variety of reasons.

First let’s start with the facts. It’s very clear that the reviewer never got beyond the most basic aspects of DarkFall. He figured out how to move around, how to swing a weapon, and how to ask for help in public chat (check the screenshots). All of that takes a few seconds when you first log in. After a few minutes, you figure out how to manage your inventory/hotbars, how combat works on the most basic levels, and you start to get a feel for what is going on in DarkFall in terms of the world and it’s PvE/PvP balance. The reviewer never reached the second stage, yet claimed he played for nine hours. Either it takes him nine hours to figure out the same thing it takes most people a few minutes, or he is lying. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter.

The major difference here however is his trash got published on a major website, and not some troll posting on a forum or commenting on a blog. His lies are picked up by sites like:

Warcry, who add about as much to the story as the reviewer added to DarkFall, good effort and explains why you are so relevant today.
Massively, who try to stay neutral, which in part gives some credibility to the initial piece due to a lack of research.
MMOCrunch, who admit to their in-game time, and at least give solid reasons for disliking the game.
Keen and Graev, who’s personal review style can be described with a simple: “1st month? Best game ever. Second month+: worst game ever, but this upcoming title is Awesomesauce guys!” trend each month or new release.
And finally Kill Ten Rats (I site I love, which is why I’m disappointed most by their post), who unfortunately quote some of the lies in the piece and take joy in its final 2/10 score, again a major failure in basic research.

Metacritic also considers the Eurogamer review in its overall ranking, and we know some studios (not Aventurine) base pay bonuses on a games final metacritic score (not to mention stock prices are also affected if a major game gets panned or praised). If someone reviewing your work blatantly made up lies, and this affected your paycheck, would you not react?

This is not whether DarkFall should have scored a 5/10, a 10/10, or a 1/10. It’s not a debate on how long someone has to play a game before they can pass judgment. It’s about a major news site publishing lies, and then standing behind them when called out. If I wrote that FreeRealms is just a gay life simulator because I read you can play a fairy (but in my review I say I’ve played it for weeks and it is indeed just that), and CNN or BBC quotes me on that, do you think SOE is not going to react? If enough news sites misquote the story and eventually “FreeRealsm: Gay simulator” is the headline, you think Sony as a whole is going to sit back and just lulz about it while portfolio managers adjust earning expectations and buy/sell rating based on the size of the gay simulator market? If you see the headline that FR is a gay simulator, are you as an average customer looking for a kids game going to rush out and find out more, or pass on it and never look back?

Eurogamer made a mistake in paying this guy for the review. They made another mistake in never checking his work. They made the biggest mistake when they backed him up after being provided countless examples of his lies and factual errors. Get it right: fire the writer, take down the review, and issue an apology to both Aventurine and the gaming community.

(Side note: In case someone wants to read a review by someone who has actually played the game beyond character creation, check out this 60 day write-up by Paragus Rants (from Inq, my DF guild), and the beta impressions linked within, which at least offer factual information along with real player opinions)

22 Comments | Darkfall Online, FreeRealms, Mass Media, MMO design, Rant | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

That awesome DF review? It gets better!

May 6, 2009

Continuing to dig the hole a bit deeper, the fine folks at Eurogamer posted this response to their award-winning journalism.

Tasos responds here.

Aventurine 2, trash website 0.

I can’t imaging what Eurogamer is going to do with their second review. Either it’s going to be another 3 minute login laughfest, or their reviewer is going to realize 90% of what the first review stated is indeed BS, as already pointed out on the DF forums. Either way, it’s going to be entertaining. One would think only forum trolls are capable of this kind of nonsense, but I guess gaming media really is desperate these days.

12 Comments | Darkfall Online, Mass Media | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

The worlds most accurate DarkFall review!

May 5, 2009

First, go read this fine piece of gaming journalism.

Done?

Amazing right, I mean that guy has the game down to the minor details, everyone quit DarkFall NOW!!

.

.

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Oh now wait, it seems Tasos from Aventurine did a little digging, and I guess the guy did not exactly get as far into DarkFall as he claimed… Check out the comments section for the article too. See all those lemmings chiming in after? Priceless.

Nice to know at least some developers are willing to call people on their BS, nicely done Aventurine.

40 Comments | Darkfall Online, Mass Media | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

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