DF:UW – Scroaching

May 23, 2013

Last night there were multiple large sieges not involving OTG, and since our clan had no formal plans to attend, I made my way down to the area to do some good old scroaching.

For non-Darkfall players, scroaching is basically attending a siege as a neutral third party and picking off anyone you see, while also trying to grab as much loot as possible. It’s an evolution of the word roach (though I can’t recall why it went from roach to scroach, someone in the comments help me out)

Since I was solo, I focused more on the looting part than the fighting, and set out with some basic gear and a mount. Once I arrived at the scene of the first battle, I dismounted and crept from tree to tree, doing my best to not get noticed as I moved towards the closest gravestone. At each gravestone, I looted anything of value before ducking back into the shadows. After five graves I was close to being overloaded, and rather than push things further I rode off to bank my spoils. Round one was a massive success!

I returned to find that the battle had ended and the winning side was cleaning up the battlefield. Since I had little to lose, I took a chance and ran in, hoping people would assume I was an ally. That didn’t work, and shortly I had a small mob on me and was killed. Round two not so good.

A second city was also sieged that night, and since I still had time before our scheduled PvP practice, I again set out to see what I could loot. This city was on the coast with a lot of water surrounding it, and I was able to swim out to a little island with a good view and watched the battle unfold.

Making a judgment call on when the battle was at its peak, I swam across to the closest grave and again began the looting. I then made the mistake of killing a disconnected player (the allure of plate was too strong…), which drew the attention of a mage in the area, who started throwing fireballs at me. I ran towards the water and lost the mage, but sadly the island I swam to had a group of five waiting and I was brought down. Greed kills indeed.

Scroaching is far from an honorable act, but its part of Darkfall tradition and a good change of pace from normal PvE/PvP. Its low risk (other than time), high reward, allows you to see larger PvP battles play out, and gives you a bit of a rush as you sneak around and try to avoid any attention.

Tonight OTG has our own siege, and I’m sure random scroachers will be in attendance.

6 Comments | Darkfall Online, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

DF:UW – Sieging Alden Enak

May 16, 2013

Last night OTG had a siege against The Empire for their hamlet of Alden Enak (AE), located just south of our city of Kvit.

The nice thing about this siege was that the numbers, gear, and player skill were about as even as you are likely to find in Darkfall, resulting in multiple battles in a few locations rather than one steamrolling.

The unfortunate part was that on our end, we had a lot of crashing, which we believe is tied to using Mumble instead of TS3 or Vent. In each battle a good 20-30% of our force would randomly crash, which not only reduced our overall fighting numbers, but caused havoc for communication and organization. It did not appear that The Empire clan members were crashing nearly as often, which is good once we correct the Mumble issue, but bad for trying to win that particular siege.

For me personally, a few crashes aside, performance was excellent. I kept my game maxed out at 1900×1200 and never had my FPS dip below 60 or my ping go over 70, even though at the peak of combat we had over 100 total players fighting it out.

On to the fighting itself!

Right as I got home and was preparing to log on, Empire was raiding Kvit and blew up our bank. After they cleared out, we formed up a group of about 20, got on a boat, and sailed around for a sneak attack on their hamlet. The idea was to kill who they had before the siege went live, and hopefully hold the hamlet itself so they could not use it as a rally point.

The boat ride itself was uneventful, and we snuck up on the hamlet without incident. They had around 20 players as well, some right at the bank and others spread around the hamlet grounds. Our initial charge took down a few, but they quickly rallied to some high ground and counter-pushed. One warrior in particular, sporting Dread Plate (second-best warrior armor), was incredible disruptive and took a few of us down. After a few back and forth pushes, we lost too many and had to retreat back to our city.

After both sides gained some more members, a scout reported Empire was heading into our city. We decided to retreat up the lift we have in Kvit (the city itself is inside a mountain with three large cave entrances. A lift runs to the top of the mountain through a hole in the ceiling. There is also a path up the side of the mountain that leads to the top area). Once at the top, we waited for the enemy to follow us up, and planned to AoE the lift as it came up.

The plan initially worked, but once we started AoE’ing those on the lift, they jumped off, and we made the tactical mistake of getting on the lift ourselves and taking it back down into the city. The enemy was able to AoE us as the lift reached the bottom, and our general disorganization lead to a rather quick defeat (I crashed right as the lift hit the ground, so missed the fighting, and once back inside had to sneak my way out of the city). Though we did take down a few, overall we got wiped and they were able to loot most of our graves and ride back out of our city.

The final major battle occurred again at our city. Empire again made a push, but this time we were more organized and held them at the southern cave entrance. The choke point where a city gate can be built (we have not built the walls yet) was AoE’ed heavily by both sides, and the first push from the Empire was turned back as they lost half a dozen fighters, with the rest falling back outside to regroup.

However the second pushed got them through the choke point, and while we held for a while further inside, ultimately we again were overwhelmed and defeated.

It was only after this battle that the siege officially went live with our siege stones becoming vulnerable. At this point however moral was pretty low, people were low on gear bags, and we never reformed to defend the stones. Empire took them down quickly, and the siege ended with them retaining their hamlet.

Crashing aside, it was a very fun night, and while initially OTG was a bit down, identifying the Mumble-based crashing and getting on TS3/Vent will mean next time we don’t have to deal with the technical issues getting in the way.

12 Comments | Combat Systems, Darkfall Online, Housing, Old Timers Guild, PvP | 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 – Across the world and back to base

May 8, 2013

Last week OTG had a planned event to take down the red dragon on Cairn. We had a nice turnout (I believe we had 40ish), and after about 30 minutes we took the beast down. The fight itself is fairly similar to the red dragon in DF1, although this one seems to bounce people around more and hit a little harder. He downed a bunch of people, sent others flying off cliffs, and we learned that the Primalist bubble ability does not block his fireballs. Good times all around, and decent loot (30k gold and a bunch of rare mats, I think). His death animation, where he falls out of the sky, is pretty sweet, as is the giant tombstone he leaves behind.

Right after the event we got out three boats and set sail for Niff (top right island), passing by Ruby (bottom right). At some point I got knocked off a boat and had to swim the rest of the way (woops), but while sailing the group encountered three players on another ship (the one with the cannon!) and took it over. We seem to have the pirate thing down.

Our time on Niff was brief but extremely entertaining. The main ‘issue’ was the overabundance of PvP. Anytime a group went out to PvE, PvP would find them, and even though many times we ended up on the winning side, it still delayed gaining prowess and completing feats. Furthermore, the area was so hot that our less developed characters had a tough time getting anything done, and they really wanted (and needed) to work on prowess to become ‘viable’.

We did have some great fights on Niff though, from a 20v15ish battle that went back and forth for close to an hour, to some great small-scale (3v3 and such) fights over mob camps. We certainly have plans to return and do some roaming when more of us are ready.

The rapid move to Niff caused an issue for some of our more casual member, who either got left on Cairn or just had a tough time getting anything done on Niff. With that brought to light, we have decided to concentrate the clan in the city of Kvit, which comically enough we claimed by accident on the second day of the game being live. We are currently building up Kvit, and already have expanded the number of bind spots available, though we still need more (zerg yo). More on the city and its impact on the clan in a different post, but I’ll just say it’s been great.

With most of our membership relocated to either the city itself or the nearby safezone NPC city, we regularity have multiple groups of 3-5 working different mob spawns or simply patrolling the area for PvP. One spawn in particular, Ogre Bullies just to the south of our city, sees a ton of traffic, and we have become increasingly good at fending it off without losing a lot of farming efficiency.

Personally I’ve been involved in a number of battles over an ice elemental spawn, and just in that short amount of time I think my PvP skills have greatly improved (up from terrible to pretty bad). Prowess-wise I’m at 24k, and I feel like I’m basically there in terms of character power. Gear-wise I’ve started using banded and r30 weapons more regularly. I also finally stopped being lazy and rebound a bunch of functionality to my mouse, because I might as well use those 11 buttons if I have em (g700 ftw).

When DF1 launched I had a blast in part because the game felt so new and fresh compared to everything else in 2009. This time around, that “new game smell” is less a factor, yet I’m having more fun than I’ve had in years because most of the warts that DF1 had have been removed, and I’m playing the kind of MMO I love the way I want to play it (mix of PvE and PvP, heavy on clan-based interaction) without the game punishing me for doing so. I’m progressing at a pace I’m very happy with, I don’t feel like others are miles ahead, and I don’t see the inevitable “game over” screen or 180 gameplay turn on the horizon.

 

3 Comments | Combat Systems, Darkfall Online, Old Timers Guild, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

DF:UW – Story of a new player

May 1, 2013

Copy/pasting this from the Darkfall forums, written by Hydride.

—————

So I’m currently working abroad, playing on my laptop and have crap internet. I have a 6k pp Warrior. My FPS in the cities is around 10 and outside 17 on average. So I am forced to be a Crafter because every time I go to hit a Mob, by the time I’m synced the MOFO is on my back.

So I hit nodes all day, buy and sell stuff and I know what your saying that is boring as hell “Yes it is”. However, I will be home in a few Months and I love this game so much that I am totally dedicated to it and can’t wait to start actually being able to PvE and PvP. By that time, gold and equipment will not be a issue because I will hopefully have a lot of crafts maxed out by then.

So Today, I got real tired of running round looking for full nodes and not finding any. I decided to empty my pockets into the Bank and just kept on me a 2 Pick Axes and a Mount. I jumped on my Mount and for the first time ventured way outside the SZ. I decided to head for the Coast and was constantly looking around me to make sure there was no players chasing me and also looking at the terrain. I stayed away from Mob spawns, also I used the terrain to my benefit by riding in the shadows, dead ground and also terrain that was the same colour as myself and my mount. Laugh some of you might, but it worked.

So I get to the Coast, jumped of my Mount and went in to total tactical mode. I crouch walked everywhere, I stuck to the shadows, manoeuvred round rocks and trees, checking my every direction there was before moving, popped my head up from behind rocks and through bushes to make sure I was alone. Believe me if I could have done a combat roll I would have done. I remember thinking to myself that if there was a GM in invisible mode, he would be laughing at me saying “Look at this Ninja Noob right here”. But hey it worked!!!

So I see a nice place to mine with 5 nodes within reasonable close prox of each other. Now 4 of the nodes was in cover or within the shadows, so I told myself I will only hit the ones that had decent cover from view and I did just that. Now I started tapping away and I would stop at any sound, because I had the in game music on, so I turned it off. Now I could hear everything and anything that sounded out of place I would stop, pop my head out left and right and carry on again. I soon got tired of this and said to myself I’m being paranoid. Low and behold I start tapping and I see this player on a Mount in the distances, I pressed C so damn hard to stop tapping this node and to crouch down that I am surprised I didn’t snap my laptop in Two right there and then. So this player on this Mount stops quickly and starts looking round, I already had my escape routes pre planned out and jumped in this bush where I could see what he was doing. He came right up to the node that was in the open and look at another node and must of said to himself I must of been hearing things and pushed off. My Heart was beating so fast it, I thought it was going to jump out my Chest. I kept eyes on him until he hit the horizon and carried on tapping the nodes. Every time I would tap out a node, I could hear this voice inside me saying get the hell out of there now, but there was one more node to rinse so I decided to stay and carry on.

I was tapping the last node and I heard another Mount, voice inside me saying “I f-ing told you to get the hell out of there”. I pressed C again but didn’t have eyes on this player, I moved across in the shadow to a Bush and jumped in it. Waiting to see where this Mount was and then I laid eyes on this Player and this Mount, but wait he was stood still and I could hear a Mount. I kept on watching and this player was being chased and was setting a ambush. “WAM PAM BOOM” they was going at it, I was like $%^& the Ore I gotta see this !@%^. So I ducked and dodge my way to a safe spot to get eyes on and on my way there, I had to bypass the Ambush dudes Mount. So I done what any half decent DF Noob would have done and I stole his Mount. I watched the fight to the end and see the Ambush dude win and the best bit afterwards was watching this dude who won try and find his Mount. After he left I found a nice place behind two big rocks with a bush in front of it to bindstone recall back.

Today was my most fun day in DF and I pocketed 800 ore, with 2 other trips out. I am a solo crafter and for the rest of the Noobs inside the SZ don’t be afraid to go outside. I have been lucky not to get killed, but Tomorrow I might get killed and so what if I do. This game is a dog eat dog world and only the strong or the smart survive. They might take your gear and your mats, but they can’t take away the fun moments or your pp and they can’t make you pregnant, so it’s all good.

I hope my fellow Noobs have the same experience I had Today and stay with this great game. To all you 10 year olds that want you hands held through this game and moan about dying on global and this forum, I don’t care you can quit. Because the real world is very much like DF and your Mum’s ain’t gonna be there to swipe your butts for you forever.

7 Comments | crafting, Darkfall Online, PvP | 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 – Weekend update

April 22, 2013

I had a very busy weekend in DF:UW. Here are a few of the highlights and what I’m liking so far.

On Friday I spent most of my time trying to finish up kill feats for the mobs available around our chaos stone. I managed to wrap up goblins, skeletons, ghouls, and trolls. The nice thing about the easy spawn camps is that as soon as you finish looting and skinning, the next wave spawns, leading to little downtime and a quick pace to finishing your feats. They may not be worth a ton of prowess, but every bit counts and these type of camps are easily soloable with just basic (mob-drop) gear.

Friday night I was in a clan group farming a spot when two enemies came by. As we had five in our group, we fought them off at the spawn and gave chase when they ran. They fled across some water onto an island containing a portal chamber (fast travel location you need a portal shard to activate). The island is fairly small, and has a circular path up to the top where the portal itself sits. Along the path up there is a fallen tree that blocks your way, and you can either crawl under it or go to the side and jump over. Our enemies fled up this path, dodging arrows and spells.

Just as I jumped over the fallen tree, they sprung their ambush and suddenly two fleeing enemies became multiple (5-6?) people ready and looking for a fight. On top of the element of surprise, they also had our party a bit separated due to the chase, and the fight quickly turned into a slaughter thanks to the tight confines of the island path. Pretty cool little ambush I must say, and very clever use of the terrain (the fallen tree made it almost impossible to get away quickly).

Saturday started off very similar to Friday in terms of farming mob camps and responding to PvP calls, although the frequency of the PvP was much higher, resulting in much slower prowess gains from farming.

We also had a larger, more coordinated attack on the chaos bank itself that resulted in a near-total wipe after what must have been a 30 minutes, back and forth battle. Even in defeat it was still a blast.

Saturday night a clan member was offering a trip up to our city in the dwarf lands via his boat. A few of us took him up on the offer, and rode out to the coast to catch a ride and do some fishing. The cool thing about the cheapest boat (Wherry) is that it’s actually fairly large, and with its flat deck, makes for the perfect fishing boat.

I also learned that fishing is a great source of prowess, since the body of water you fish in has a lot more resources than a standard node (rock, tree, bush), and each fish yields just under a point of prowess. Better still, treasure maps are worth a nice chunk of prowess, and once dug up provide thousands of gold and rare crafting resources. I’m certainly going to either buy or craft my own Wherry to go on some trips.

Sunday I spent exploring the dwarf lands around our city, seeing what spawns were around and the best paths into the safe zone. Finally being back in a safe zone, I refined some mats and did a bit of gathering to finish up some more feats.

Sunday night consisted of farming a very active ogre bullies spawn, fighting off multiple waves of player attackers, and ultimately losing the spawn when a much large force rolled in. The weekend ended with another boat fishing trip, putting me at just under 8k total prowess.

Compared to DF1, progression in DF:UW is much smoother and more enjoyable. Since launch I’ve just been playing the game rather than focusing on progression at the expense of fun, and I don’t feel like I’m behind or gimping myself because I’m not at a bloodwall or afk swimming overnight. I don’t need to cycle transfers at all times to skill them up, and I’m not fighting players with exploited skills and impossible gains (rigormax).

I also believe that long-term the prowess/progression system is going to hold up very well. The time it will take to near-max a single role is not long (I suspect I’ll be there within a month), but after that there will still be a lot of things to spend prowess points on, and being able to switch effectively amongst roles will be a huge bonus that will give my character some great gameplay variety (but not pure power).

Even right now at lower prowess levels, PvP combat is a lot of fun. It’s a great mix of DF1 in terms of the pace and how it feels, but the special skills and abilities the different roles bring add variety without forcing you to max out everything like in DF1. The few very powerful (30k+ prowess) characters I’ve fought have beat me handily, but aside from simply hitting harder and having more HP, those players were also just better skill-wise (great aim with a bow, better skill usage, doing all of the little things that add up in DF), and I have no problem losing when I’m out-played.

A final note about the in-game population; right now its booming. There are dozens of players in the NPC cities I’ve visited, and world PvP encounters are very frequent. OTG always has dozens of actives in Mumble, and I believe we are just under 200 characters in the clan (recruitment is closed atm). It’s a bit scary to think what is going to happen population-wise once DF:UW is released on Steam.

9 Comments | Combat Systems, crafting, Darkfall Online, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

DF:UW – The first two days

April 18, 2013

Quick report on my first two days of DF:UW for today.

Installing and patching the game went smoothly for me, in large part thanks to a private Torrent that an OTG member had setup for us to use. I would occasionally experience the lobby not connecting, but that never required more than 2-3 quick restarts to get around.

Once in-game, I created my character and started in Maharim lands. This worked out very well because OTG had already claimed a hamlet just to the south, and were also using a nearby chaos stone (unlimited character binds) with a bank as a base of operations. A quick run and I was bound to the stone and surrounded by clan members.

A cool little ‘sandbox’ aspect comes into play here. Because so many OTG members were bound to that chaos stone, we effectively ‘owned’ the surrounding area, as we would attack any strangers who came around. This has two almost opposite effect; one being that we can effectively farm together in safety and away from the over-populated starter areas, and the other being that we have now created a mini PvP hotspot, with various groups coming to our area looking for a fight.

Most of my time so far has been spent farming either mobs or resource nodes. The mob farming is helping raise my prowess while supplying some basic gear and gold. The resource nodes provide some nice downtime that also gets me some prowess and mats for crafting. Almost everything I’ve acquired has gone to the clan bank, as OTG has a few crafters we are ‘power leveling’ up to get everyone access to better gear. So far, that plan is working very well, and I believe we are up to r30 or r40 gear in most areas.

I’ve done a bit of PvP, and so far it’s been a blast. Most of the encounters have been a few unlucky fools attacking our members at a mob spawn, only to have 10+ people show up in force and beat them down. What we lack in skill we make up for in numbers without shame.

Most of the time anyway.

Late last night a small group of enemies attacked some of our members and managed to kill most of them. Our usual response managed to kill two or three of them, and a large (20+?) number of us chased the rest. As we chased however, the enemy was able to recover and their group of about ten fought back. As we were fighting some of the server’s best players, we got butchered in short order despite our superior numbers.

The best part was the clan’s reaction after the blowout. After a quick recount of what happened and what could have been done differently, everyone brushed off the defeat and instead focused on the fact that we had an enjoyable PvP encounter. Zero drama, zero raging; good stuff.

3 Comments | crafting, Darkfall Online, PvP | 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

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