DF:UW – Newbie perspective

May 20, 2013

My guess is most of you did not catch MJ from Massively live streaming a little over an hour of her DF:UW experience a few days ago. It’s not exactly appointment viewing given the length, but it’s actually rather interesting from a “my god, that’s how people approach this game” perspective.

In terms of attitude I think MJ is in a good place. She knows she is playing something a bit out of her league, but rather than just slogging through it she is making the most of her time and actually going out and finding the fun. I think way too many gamers today just stand still and expect the fun to find them, and that’s just not how something like DF:UW works, so good on her for that.

But yikes is she bad. And I don’t just mean “lulz that aim” bad, but just from a basic gaming standpoint bad. When fighting ogres she continually uses exploding arrow at point blank range, hurting herself. Now yes, in most MMOs you can’t hurt yourself with your own AOE, so it’s forgivable to initially make the mistake. But not noticing you are taking damage after the 10th time? Or even picking up on the fact that the ‘hit sound’ when you land a shot is exactly that and tells you whether you connected or not (during the video she assumes she missed a few times, even though the ‘hit’ sound played). It makes me wonder if she is the exception, or a representative of the average gamer?

Learning how to play the game aside (and she will hopefully learn a lot once she joins a clan), it was also interesting to see how she viewed different situations. At one point a party member spawns a mount for her to ride, but she misses that in chat (forgivable given DF:UW chat system), and spends a few minutes wondering if she should take the mount or not, as perhaps a potential thief might dance back and forth deciding whether to steal something. It’s a funny situation, given how common mounts are and that you can, of course, always get off and give the mount to someone else.

The same goes for looting items and such. She loots a few pieces of gear off the ogres, yet does not equip them. Even the bows she receives from her party members she does not correctly equip until (accidentally) later. Small things, but again an interesting look into how others play the game. From a dev’s perspective, do you try to help someone like MJ have an easier time with the game, or do you go to the other extreme and address top 5% player concerns about class balance and UI micro-tweaking? In many ways it’s an impossible decision.

Between the actions in the video and MJs commentary on them, I think the biggest thing the video shows is just how different DF:UW is compared to what many view as a ‘normal’ MMO (WoW basically). And I don’t mean different on the large scale, like full loot PvP and such, but the thousands of little things that add up. As someone who has been around such games for many years, a lot of the differences in DF:UW are normal to me, and hence I have troubling seeing how anyone could look at some of the details and come to the wrong conclusion. MJ’s video did a really good job of bringing such things to the forefront for me.

Looking forward to see the progress she makes once she has some clan support. Should be interesting, and a great example of why joining a clan in DF:UW is a basic requirement for anyone new to the game.

18 Comments | Darkfall Online, Mass Media, MMO design | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Themepark goes F2P, take infinity

May 15, 2013

Some quick thoughts on the Rift F2P thing, since a few people have asked.

First, it’s not surprising. Scott Hartsman leaving Trion was basically the “Rift is going F2P” announcement.

Second, not surprising given what Rift is. It’s an above-average themepark MMO. Being a 3.0 themepark still does not fix the core problem (being a themepark), and so F2P happens.

Third, F2P won’t save Rift, like it hasn’t saved any other MMO going F2P. Trion will likely release some nice-sounding numbers in 2-3 months, telling us that players/sales/whatever are up 500% and F2P is a massive success. Then they won’t tell us anything for a few months and eventually layoffs will happen. It’s the Turbine story with DDO/LotRO all over again. Again, F2P does not fix the core problems of your game (being a themepark), and ultimately just adds issues to it (the shop and how to get people to buy).

WoW will likely be the last themepark to go F2P, and that will happen soon (2014 remember). The issue isn’t that F2P is great for players and devs (it’s not), the issue is that themeparks are all more of less the same, so when one is just above-average, unless it really clicks with you (and continues to click for months), you might as well go with the F2P one over the $15 one (not how I would do it, but I think that’s how many look at it). Or hell, drop $50 and mess around with GW2 for a few weeks and return whenever content gets added.

The sub model works for something like EVE because if you enjoy what EVE does, you either play EVE or nothing. There is no EVE clone (because making EVE is hard, cloning WoW is easy), and EVE is not designed to be fun for a few weeks. It’s a hobby. Same for Darkfall. The target audience is much smaller than EVE, but the fact remains that if you like what DF does, it’s that or (maybe) Mortal Online, and MO is a mess. Why does Camelot Unchained have a chance as a subscription game? Because if it does what it aims to do even reasonably well, the options will be CU or nothing.

I also think long-term F2P is either going to evolve or eat itself alive. Selling fluff junk is not sustainable, players will eventually catch on to the lottery schemes, and the NA/EU market is not nearly as tolerant of P2W as Asia is. As themeparks race to the bottom, the quality will continue to dip, the shop scams will get worst, and eventually most are going to wake up and realize that playing a graphically better version of Farmville is not worth the time, aggravation, or cost.

Themeparks need to evolve or they will go the way of Farmville.

Edit: Also see this TAGN post about F2P, as I agree with it 100%.

24 Comments | Dark Age of Camelot, Darkfall Online, EVE Online, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Rift, RMT, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

DF:UW – The value of owning a city

May 13, 2013

A popular topic on ForumFall of late has been the value of player cities and hamlets, with some believe they are not worth owning, or that the cost to build them up is too great and needs to be reduced. OTG has been living out of our city (Kvit) for about a week now, and it’s highlighted some ‘hidden values’ to me.

There are the obvious benefits of owning a city, such as being able to bind at the stone, receiving the system messages when anyone comes in/out, and the minor regen buff the city provides to its owners. Cities also have resource nodes (mines, farms, etc) that can be built, but OTG has yet to build ours so I can’t really comment on that.

The above are nice, but certainly not worth the large amount of resources needed to build up a city. But because DF:UW is a sandbox, the hard-coded benefits are only a small part of the value.

Since moving in, we have put up the keep and some houses to increase the maximum number of binds allowed, and currently we are at 71. This has allowed many (but still not all) of our members to bind from the same spot, making grouping and responding to attacks much easier.

For a more casual clan that has a wide range of PvP-skilled players, having numbers close by means we don’t get rolled whenever someone comes along. It also means we can farm high-value spots like Ogre Bullies or Arctic Bears with confidence, and have the numbers to chase someone off the spawn should we need to. It also allows for quicker grouping, so those with less time don’t spend most of it riding to get to a group. And since we are all concentrated, groups are always up and something is always happening.

Another benefit is learning the local area. By knowing where all of the local spawns are, as well as the major geographic features, we are better able to quickly respond to a call for help, and when fighting know the terrain and how best to use it. For instance, we know where the land gets relatively flat and clear of obstacles, so we know when to keep chasing someone on a mount and when it’s best to jump off and try to bow them down. We know the location of iron nodes for quick gathering, and where the best hiding spots are for escaping a chase.

Owning and building up a city also motivates us to take group mining trips, where a bunch of us will head and out clean out iron nodes for the clan. We do this geared up for PvP, and often find it (or it finds us). Seeing the city gain buildings and (soon) added functionality gives everyone a goal to work towards, and creates game and clan ‘buy in’.

Finally, because other players know OTG lives out of Kvit, we in essence have created a bit of a PvP hotspot. This is greatly beneficial for a number of reasons. First, DF:UW is a PvP MMO, and having PvP come to us saves us the trouble of having to finding it (though we do plenty of that as well). Near-constant PvP also means our members are getting experience and becoming better players, rather than sitting in a secluded corner getting fat and lazy off nothing but PvE (something that happened in DF1 to many clans). And thanks to the factors above, OTG has been holding its own in most fights, meaning not only do we have PvP delivered to our front door, but nice loot as well.

Owning and actively living out of Kvit has been a major boon for OTG, and we are excited to continue building up the city and carving out a place for ourselves in Agon.

Leave a Comment » | crafting, Darkfall Online, Housing, MMO design, Old Timers Guild, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

DF:UW – Distilled core

May 7, 2013

In the MMO gaming scale, time is far more valuable to me than money. $60 for a box or $15 a month is a trivial amount compared to the amount of time I spend gaming, so free crap is not something I bother with and paying for something I enjoy is always a good deal.

Given the above, I don’t really understand what Azuriel is doing with his 3-part Darkfall series. Yes, AV sent him a free copy, but why waste so much of your time just to prove that ‘doing it wrong’ is a good way not to enjoy a game? I mean, I’m not going to grab Axis and Allies, slot two hours for it, and then slam the product as inferior to Candyland because in my two hours I didn’t have fun and ‘lulz the UI’.

Wasting time aside, the series was in part the inspiration for yesterday’s post, because while it’s pretty clear Azuriel went in knowing he was doing it wrong, I’d bet many themeparkers have a very similar approach and a “must have fun NOW” mindset. I don’t know if it’s just an age/generation thing, or just a normal difference in human nature put on display thanks to things like Twitter, but in no way can I relate to that kind of approach to things.

Investing in something to build towards a ‘payout’ later is just something I’ve always done. I spent hours painting Warhammer miniatures because at the end, I’d have a great looking army to play with. Not once did I consider painting yet another foot soldier ‘a grind’, nor did I expect every miniature to look as special or unique as a leader/hero unit.

I approach MMOs the same way. It’s why I invest in the social fabric by joining or running a guild, reading the forums, and trying to keep up with that is happening in-game. It’s why short-term MMOs like GW2 feel to pointless to me; I’m not looking to have 3 weeks of instant fun, I’m looking to add a solid block to 15 years of MMO gaming.

It’s why seeing clans like Lords of Death, Sinister, Blood, SUN, LotD, OTG, and others is special; people and clans have gaming history with those names and the people behind them, sometimes YEARS worth of history spanning multiple titles. Those rivalries take time to build, but that time is well invested and the payout is worth it when clashes happen.

It’s why I deride the notion of the “jump in, jump out” MMO, or those that dabble in multiple titles at all times. While maybe that works on an individual level for some, an MMO should be far more than just your individual story or instance, and if you are constantly leaving you never become a piece of something greater.

In a way, it’s a bonus that a game like DF does not attempt to cater to that approach, because it weeds all those players out quickly and you refine down to your ‘core’ faster. DF:UW also has the carryover benefit of DF1, so much of the established history transferred over, and the distilled core was in place day one.

This is not to say new players can’t become part of such a world. They very much can, and do all the time. But in order to do so, you have to invest. And the investment does not have to be all-encompassing. You don’t need to be the leader of thousands to ‘get it’. But you also can’t just log in, look around, and expect things to happen. Joining a clan is one step, of course, as is being social-enough in that clan to learn from others and get up to speed. Being an active member is another; like the game itself, most clans won’t bring the fun to you, you have to interact and find it with others.

If any of the above sounds like a chore or pain to you, maybe this genre is not the right one for you. It is, after all, pretty niche.

 

21 Comments | Darkfall Online, MMO design | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Ghost audience

May 6, 2013

When I wrote my PvE sandbox series of posts, I wrote them thinking that the audience would be similar to those that play PvP sandbox MMOs, but instead of competing directly against each other, those players would be more focused on cooperation. I think I misjudged that audience.

Themepark MMOs on average are for dumb and/or lazy MMO gamers (compared to sandbox players). That’s insulting, yes, but it’s also true. There is a reason WoW got ‘dumbed down’. There is a reason core themepark design revolves around holding the players hand and guiding them, and much of the ‘innovation’ since 2004 has been in that area (quests on your map, auto-grouping, instant travel, instant mail, from anywhere auction house, dungeon finder, etc). “You can’t fail” and “everyone is a winner” design is there for a reason. Themepark players need to be treated like infants, and the minute you take away a toy, they throw a tantrum, and tantrums are bad for business.

“Bite sizes” content exists because that’s the attention span of your customer. It’s also the maximum amount of life planning they can do. Figuring out how to free up a two hour chunk of time is too hard for that audience, and even if they could do it, you would lose them over those two hours unless you rewarded them every 15 minutes or so. Long-term investing is not a concept that audience is familiar with, which is why guild structures are so loose, goals are so short, and the ‘ability’ to jump in and out of any one game is viewed as a positive.

It’s also why F2P themepark MMOs are semi-successful. F2P is a math tax business model, and much like slots or the lottery, the target audience is anyone not smart enough to do the math. By tricking the average themeparker into believing they are paying less, while they pay more, the company gets more money from them without the dummies noticing. Plus designing store ‘content’ is trivially easy compared to, you know, real MMO content. Who needs complex, long-term sustainable systems when you can just release another sparkle pony or neon baseball cap? (Let alone selling someone the ability to not play).

So a PvE sandbox wouldn’t really work. The players who would ‘get it’ already play in their sandbox of choice, and while they might not love PvP or actively seek it out, they accept it and continue to play the way they want (because, you know, sandbox). Meanwhile, the real PvE fans who THINK they want a PvE sandbox simply wouldn’t be able to play it. They would hit the first 15 minute stretch without a reward and get distracted by a shiny. They would see that in order to reach a goal they need longer than 30 minutes and declare the goal impossible. They would expect to jump in/out of the game and destroy the needed social structure of a sandbox, assuming of course they even took the first step of actually getting INTO the social structure to begin with.

So the angst over something like CU getting funded is a bit funny to me. PvP sandboxes continue to see funding and success because it’s proven they work when done right. McMMO themeparks work when done right as well. But a deep, solid PvE MMO? I’m not sure that audience actually exists outside of the tiny niche that is currently playing AtiTD, and so far, the industry agrees with me.

44 Comments | MMO design, Rant, RMT | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Darkfall: Unholy Wars – Peaks on top of peaks on top of peaks

April 29, 2013

Readers here know that I like MMOs (hence, you know, this here MMO blog). And unless this is the first post you are reading here (hi), you know I prefer my MMOs to be more sandbox/virtual world than themepark, and I express that opinion often and generally with examples. This is one of those posts. Enjoy.

One difference between playing a themepark and a sandbox happens even before you log in. In a themepark, you pretty much know what you are going to be doing that login, be it a quest, a raid, some instanced PvP, whatever. And short of a miracle, odds are good you are actually going to do what you logged in to do (and if you logged into WoW, you will succeed, 100% of the time).

In a good sandbox, before you log in you will have something you want to do, but sometimes the sandbox will have other ideas and you end up doing something completely different. Those moments are usually memorable too. You head out to mine and you get ganked. You go to farm some mobs and a clan war breaks out. You log in to find your Corp has been war-decced. Someone did some really crazy stuff with the local/world economy. Etc.

The themepark model relies on giving you a consistent drip of fun, and the longer you play, the higher the dosage you need just to get the same high. Many confuse this with burnout, but really it’s just the core flaw in the model. A good sandbox is a continuous set of peaks and valleys, and those memorable peaks justify the mundane valleys. Blowing up a Titan is special because a lot of time was spent shooting a mining laser at a rock to build it. A city siege is an event because some clan spent hundreds if not thousands of game-hours building it up, living around it, and planning the virtual lives of its members around that location.

This weekend was an unusual string of peaks for me in Darkfall.

The first such peak happened when a group of OTG members got on a boat to go be pirates; we geared up and sailed out looking for other ships. Our ‘tracking method’ was to fish while sailing, and based on tiles empty of fish, we tried to pinpoint where a fishing ship or two might be located. It was an inexact science, but still fun.

After sailing much of the eastern ocean with little luck (but a lot of fish), we meet up with another ship from OTG and decided to sail back home to Cairn, splitting up so that we covered two tiles as we went. The ship that I was on and piloting had two of our members recall out, and with just three left we decided to pack the ship up and just recall back ourselves. As the others recalled, I despawned the boat, accidentally cancelling their recalls and setting off their timers (the boat disappearing caused them to fall into the ocean, whoops).

As we floated in the water, I spotted a boat sailing towards us. It would be just our luck that as soon as we despawn, a target comes along. The others quickly swam towards that boat and began shooting arrows and magic at the captain, causing him to attempt to dodge, which is a very slow process in a boat. Over Mumble I called out the target, and our other boat began to sail towards us in an attempt to cut them off. In a “wonder if this works” moment, I tried to spawn our boat from the water and much to my surprise, it worked. Climbing quickly on board, I sailed in pursuit.

After about two tiles of chasing, our second boat finally got itself into position, and the two members on board started shooting at the enemy captain. The more he dodged, the closer we got, and eventually his fate was sealed and he went down, leaving his boat floating in the water for us to claim. +1 pirate success!

Later in the weekend, I was riding around exploring on Cairn when I came across a random iron node. Needing to read something on my iPhone, I figured why not and started mining. About ten swings in, I heard the sounds of a mount approached, and turned to see if it was an alliance member or someone about to gank me. It was an enemy, and since I had just basic gear on me, I decided why the hell not and attacked.

Oddly, he turned to run immediately, even though our prowess levels were about even and he was a skirmisher in better gear. I chased on my mount, not expecting much to happen since unless someone makes a mistake, you can’t really catch up when both people are mounted. To my surprise, he started fleeing directly towards the ocean (mounts swim slower than players, so it’s never a good idea to enter water on a mount when combat is a possibility), and even more surprising, he jumped in and began mount swimming.

I got to the shore, jumped off my mount, and chased after him. A quick pursuit swim later, I was able to kill his mount with my starter staff bolt spell. He kept swimming, and I kept chasing. Then, he dived down deep into the water. I figured he was luring me into a deep underwater fight, and being a skirm, he would have the advantage, but since I had little to nothing on me, I figured what the hell and dove down as well. Rather than turning to shoot, he kept swimming, eventually leaving my line of sight. Lost him.

I swam a little further in the general direction of the pursuit and was about to swim back when I noticed something far off in the water. As I swam closer, I realized it was a player gravestone. Swimming closer still, it displayed the name of the player I was chasing. The guy hadn’t escaped; he drowned himself.

When I opened the gravestone, I figured out why he had panicked and run. He had a treasure map on him. Looting it and the rest of his (pretty decent) gear, I double-clicked the map and my assumption proved true; his treasure was very close to my initial mining spot. Very, very close in fact; just over a ridge and near the general flight zone of the local red dragon.

As I attempted to pinpoint the location, I noticed a player grave in some lava. Because “why not” was the theme of the day, I jumped in, got some nice burns, and looted it. Another treasure map, more decent gear. My lucky day! Oddly, this treasure map was nowhere close to Cairn based on the blinking, so this seemed like just a random death.

The fire dragon corrected me on the random part.

The ‘fun’ thing about the red dragon is it has a giant agro range as it flies high above. Sometimes it notices you and says hello, other times it keeps flying. Just as I was getting out of the lava, the dragon decided it was a good time to fireball me. That hurt, and flung me a good distance (luckily, not back into the lava). Not content with as single scorching, the dragon then showed me it also has a streaming breath attack that really, really hurts. Down I went. My guess is the gravestone in the lava was some poor soul that also experienced the above, but was additionally unlucky and died in the lava (insta-death). I simply had to wait out the revive timer and pray no enemy came by to gank me.

My luck held, I got up, and shortly after located the initial treasure and dug it up. 3k gold richer, I rode back to our bank and called it a day.

Finally, on Sunday I started my day by farming some ogre bullies just south of the human safe zone. Most (all?) ogre bully spawns are a PvP hot spot right now because completing their feat is worth a good chunk of prowess. As I farmed, another player ran into the spot, and I turned expecting a fight. However, when I looked at his prowess total I saw he was just at 4k (I’m at 17k), so rather than instantly attack I waited to see what he would do. He ran up, stopped next to me, and sent me a “hello” message. I said hello back and we grouped up to share the spawn.

About three mobs later, an enemy skirmisher that I’ve actually died to before ran up and started attacking. My new friend and I fought him for a bit, but the guy was good and eventually we both went down. Since I was bound to a chaos stone close by, I ran back to my corpse to see what loot was left. Luckily, the guy only looted some ore off me, leaving all my gear. After re-equipping, I went back to farming the bullies.

A few mobs later, the guy was back and attacked again. As I still had little of value on me (a bit of gold off the bullies), I figured more PvP practice never hurt and fought him, dragging the fight out by ducking behind trees to make it difficult for him to hit me with arrows and forcing him into running into melee range. The strategy worked in terms of delaying him and forcing him back, but I could never finish him and he was always able to dash away and recover. This cat and mouse game continued for a good bit of time.

Then someone on Mumble asked if I wanted to join their group that was about to start farming the bullies. I told him sure, but first we would have to take care of this enemy skirmisher. A bit more delaying later, they arrived and eventually killed the guy after a lengthy chase both in and out of the water. Recovering my previously looted ore and gold, I went on to finish the ogre bullies feat with the alliance group. Double success!

As the safe zone was close, and since I needed to do a bit of crafting, I said thanks for the group and headed north. Between me and the safe zone boarder was a small water inlet, and because this was just that kind of weekend, I spotted a boat sailing directly towards me. I called it out on Mumble, the ogre bullies group scrambled towards me, and I did my best to delay the boat with some archery shots.

The boat, with just two people on board, started to turn back towards the safe zone, but then suddenly stopped and just sat in the water. After the ‘wtf’ shock wore off, I climbed up the side of the boat and killed the mage who was not the captain (not much room to run on a boat). I then figured out why the boat had stopped; the captain had crashed/disconnected.

I waited for him to log back in, and when he did I fully expected a fight. Surprisingly, in a panic move, he instead started to steer the boat, no doubt hoping to hit the safe zone. He never even got close as I hacked him down. +1 boat, +2 graves!

And to top everything off, a SECOND boat had made its way down the inlet and got caught by my alliance group.

Pretty unreal weekend, and a very high peak in the sandbox.

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

DF:UW – Review after two weeks

April 26, 2013

(Note: I write this sitting on my just-crafted boat, fishing away far off the Agon coast. Let’s see what I end up with at the end.)

MMO sequels are tricky. When you create a sequel, you generally do so because you can’t fix/patch/expand the original game to get it where you want it to go, and instead have to start fresh. The fact that EVE is 10 years in and without the need for a sequel is just another rock on the mountain of its amazing design, but then there is only one EVE/CCP.

Darkfall 1 was a great but greatly flawed game. For everything it did right (combat, seamless world, atmosphere), it was dragged down by design mistakes (increase-by-use progression system), bugs (rigormax), or exploits/hacks. It was a very harsh game right from the moment you logged in, and posed a giant hurdle for new players to catch up, not only in the skills needed to compete, but with complex UI scripts and keybinds. Near-forced overnight macroing did not help either.

Based on just over one week in, Darkfall: Unholy Wars is everything good about DF1, with most (all?) of the major negatives fixed or removed, and a lot of great stuff stacked on top of that solid core.

As previously described, the prowess system is wonderful. It truly rewards you for just playing the game, and allows you to progress in different ways. If you want to PvE, you can PvE and see progress. If you want to focus on harvesting/crafting, you will progress as well, and not JUST as a crafter. The game also rewards exploring Agon in many ways, be it random chaos chests, hunting down treasure maps, or simply finding resource/weapon stashes.

Combat has that DF1 feel, but is improved with the addition of the four roles (classes you can switch between at will) and the skills they bring. For me the biggest improvement is that unlike DF1, you don’t have half a dozen hotbars full of abilities, but instead 6-8 core skills you use, and those are easy to access with the base UI. Combat still gives you that huge adrenaline rush, and you still need to manage your stats like in DF1, but you can jump in and be effective much sooner, and without having everything maxed like in DF1.

Graphically the game is a better looking version of DF1. The character models are still average, but get the job done. Some of the animations could use work. The world itself is, IMO, one of the best-looking virtual worlds out. Not from a purely technical, poly-count high-rez textures way, but in terms of how you interact with the terrain and what it means. Seeing a giant spire in the middle of a lava field is not just a fancy instanced dungeon entrance or some “focal point” of a zone you quest to once and never see again, but a logical spot in a world that can be used for a number of things (siege stone location, epic PvP battleground, dragon farming encounter).

The lighting and shadows really add a lot of atmosphere to the game, and the musical score is a somewhat subtle but great addition. The sound (finally fixed just as of today) is as great as it was in DF1. You can pinpoint the location of someone based on noise, and keeping quiet is actually important when sneaking up on someone for PvP.

The starting experience is improved not only by a brief initial tutorial that shows you the basic controls, but with the inclusion of PvP-free safe zones around the starting NPC cities. These areas will allow new players to learn the ropes without having to worry about being ganked as soon as they leave town, and will also allow them to do some basic PvE to get their characters started and deposit some wealth in their banks. The decision on when to venture out and expose yourself to PvP is now up to each player, rather than some 24 hour newbie shield.

I’m sure I’ll cover more aspects of DF:UW as time goes by, but to wrap this post up I’d say if you enjoyed DF1 for what it was, I can’t imagine you won’t like DF:UW as much or more. If you missed DF1 but have interesting in a virtual world done right, and don’t rage-quit over FFA PvP, I’d recommend the game. Currently there are many clans open to new players, and overall the world is populated and lively.

(Two ocean tiles fished out from my boat. Gained 250 prowess, fished up two small treasure maps, and a ‘boatload’ of fish.)

12 Comments | Combat Systems, crafting, Darkfall Online, MMO design, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

DF:UW – The pace of progression

April 24, 2013

The early ‘controversy’ in DF:UW right now is progression. Specifically, some are very upset that those with more time and more efficient farming methods are ahead of them in prowess. Yes, people with more time and skill get more done than those just looking for a handout. Shocking huh? The most laughable are those asking for a return to macro/exploit ‘progression’, or for a pure P2W method of just buying prowess.

In any MMO, a balance must exist in between short-term viability and long-term progression. This is especially important in a PvP-focused MMO like DF:UW. If it takes too long to become viable, new players will be discouraged that they can’t catch up. If overall progression is too short, players will ‘cap-out’ and one of the core activities MMORPG players enjoy (character improvement) will disappear. Countless MMOs have hammered home how disastrous it is when players cap-out too quickly, and only a fool would miss the link between EVE’s ‘endless’ progression and the fact that the only MMO still growing after 10 years.

DF1 was too heavy on the long-term. Progression was very lengthy (which is good), but new players faced a huge wall once vets had complete characters. On top of this, most early vets gained those completed characters through dubious means, and new players had little choice but to jump on the macro train if they wanted to compete in a reasonable amount of time.

I think DF:UW is in a much better spot right now. First and foremost, we are not seeing exploit-fueled god-like characters running around, nor are all of the top clans holed up under the world macroing. The biggest ‘offenders’ so far have been Zealots; who simply figured out the best mobs to farm in beta, and using that knowledge to get ahead in week one. The most common reports of macroing are the ‘potato farmers’; people running a simple macro to dig repeatedly for them. AV should still ban them, but the gains from that are minimal and the act itself is pretty laughable.

The overall time to ‘finish’ a role (50k) is also a very low hurdle, and all but the most casual players should be able to accomplish it within a month or two. At the same time, with AV being able to add new roles (and likely new classes in expansions), total progression length can always be extended to give everyone something new to work towards and spend prowess on.

Point blanks, when the major complain from some Darkfall players is that there is too much PvP over mob spawns, YOU ARE DOING IT RIGHT!

Now, there are some tweaks that need to be made.

I think the diminishing returns cap at 6k prowess needs to be raised to somewhere around 20-25k. It makes little sense to slow someone down at 6k, because at that point they are just starting to put together a character and invest in skills/stats. At 20-25k, you are rounding yourself out and finishing some things up in your first role, which would be a more logical spot to start slowing things down.

Diminishing returns DO need to exist however. They slow vets down, which helps new players, they delay the ‘maxed out’ characters, which helps retention, and they help put more emphasis on finishing feats which in turn get people out and doing different things. Tweak them, but don’t remove them completely.

I’m not as against the 150 kill feat as others, but I agree that something between the 30 and 150 feats would help keep player momentum up and smooth out the progression a bit. Right now finishing a major 150 feat (or double feat, for something like giants) is a huge power spike that can create a have/have not gap. Again, not THAT big a deal, but something that could be smoothed out.

Revealing the hidden feats would help as well. They are a big source of early prowess, and would help those that don’t scour the forums to map out an efficient prowess path.

Finally, I think post-150 repeatable feats should be added so that mob spawns don’t lose 99% of their value once you have finished the 150 feat. The repeatable feat should give perhaps 25%-50% of the prowess the original feat gave. That way, you can keep farming one spot, but the system overall still encourages and rewards moving around and killing different mobs.

As I stated earlier, the system overall is working beautifully. Players are fighting over mob spawns, different areas of the world all have value, and both short and long term the progression system is reasonable and sustainable.

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

DF:UW – Nighthags

April 18, 2013

Near our chaos stone there is a mob spawn that changes depending on the day/night cycle. During the day, the mobs are easier, while at night there is a chance a far more powerful version of the mob will spawn.

This resulted in some pretty cool player behavior in our clan last night. As soon as the sun started dipping low in Agon, the players farming the spot called it out on Mumble and most left the spawn. I think one guy must not have been paying attention, because he stayed and kept farming. He finally noticed when the harder mob spawned and dropped him in short order. A good laugh was had over Mumbled as he asked for a rez.

DF:UW is not the first MMO to have such a feature, but for a number of reasons it feels far more organic here, and reinforces the whole “living in a virtual world” feeling versus just jumping from one themepark ride to the next.

3 Comments | Darkfall Online, MMO design | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Darkfall: Unholy Wars – End of beta and the plan going forward

April 15, 2013

Originally I was going to chronicle the DF:UW beta from day one to close, but a lot of what I had down no longer applies, and after re-reading it, it was honestly not that interesting. Instead, I’ll just type up a few quick hits, and then talk a bit about what I expect at release and beyond.

Day one of beta was a comical disaster of epic proportions. You had the normal issues of login queues, disconnects, and patching failures that most/all MMOs have on day one. But magically, on top of all that, you had some pretty unique stuff as well.

For instance, since all new characters now start in a tutorial area, on day one everyone was piled on top of each other, and since DF has hard collision detection, most people were stuck and unable to move.

To make things even more fun, on day one characters stayed in the world even when you would disconnect, which meant the meatpile in the starting area was an ever-increasing trap of fail. The cherry on top was the inability to delete a character, and with DF:UW only allowing one character per server, if you were stuck in the pile, you were done playing.

For those lucky enough not to get stuck, they encountered the wonder that was the persistence bug. Basically, whenever you crashed or logged off, every item on your character and in your bank would go poof. For the first month or so, the only way to safely store anything was to put it in your clan bank, and you needed 2000 gold to start a clan. Oh the joy of farming 1900 gold and crashing!

Fast forward a few months, and Aventurine fixed many of the major issues and game became more (or reasonably) playable. Once that happened a lot of feedback was given and many things changed, not the least of which was the prowess system. In the last few weeks of beta, AV did a lot of patching around combat balance, and the last few days felt more like DF1 than at any point in beta.

Finally, debug mode, a mythical unicorn of performance issues and other assorted items, will be turned off for the live game, and what that means will be something to watch.

The false-start of the November launch burned a lot of Inquisition members, among them leadership, and as a clan Inq won’t be playing DF:UW at release. I and a few others will be playing with The Old Timers guild, and I’m really looking forward to being part of that well-established, solid group.

One of the interesting things right now about DF:UW is how similar it is to DF1 at release. On the one hand the game is missing a lot of features (few dungeons, few boats, no hot-spots like Sea Towers, only 2/4 specs per role), the performance is less-than-perfect, and no one really knows how certain aspects will play out (like the reduced number of holdings, or how the prowess system will hold up long-term).

On the other hand, even in its debug beta state, playing DF:UW is still more fun than just about any MMO out, the combat system makes games with ‘active combat’ like GW2 look like a bad joke, and it’s one of the few true virtual world PvP games out (still).

DF:UW won’t live or die by the minor tweaks it made to an established MMO formula like GW2 or SW:TOR did, simply because if a game like DF is your idea of a good time in an MMO, your options are to play DF or spin on your thumb (or fly a spaceship of course). It will live and die by how quickly AV can fix the major issues (and there will be major issues), and how quickly they can deliver the missing content and then keep going with new stuff.

DF1 was able to remain a subscription MMO for three years because in the first two, AV did a good-enough job with the updates and fixes. At the same time, DF1 could have been FAR more successful if major design mistakes (bloodwalls for example) where not present. DF:UW is that chance, and hopefully they don’t blow it.

Should be a fun ride. Hopefully it’s a long one. More to come as the game goes live tomorrow (probably…)

 

15 Comments | beta, Combat Systems, Darkfall Online, Inquisition Clan, MMO design, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

« Previous Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 99 other followers