No, this post is not about the skill grind in DarkFall (that was yesterday), but rather the final step in the Wisdom title quest chain. I had previously mentioned how I screwed up step two, thinking I just had to turn in 100 ingots, 200 wood, 200 cooked food. What I really had to do was have the quest in my log, and then CRAFT the 100 ingots, 200 wood, 200 cooked food. The final surprise came last night, when I went to turn the quest in and was informed my bags were empty. It turns out that not only do you have to craft those items; you also have to turn them in.
Now as bad as turning in all those mats was, step three requires you to craft a whole bunch of stuff (50 chain armor pieces, 50 rapiers, 2000 arrows), which of course would have been a lot easier had I not just lost 100 ingots and 200 wood. Back to mining/chopping, and it’s going to take more than 100 ingots to craft up all that stuff.
The funny thing is, I don’t mind, at all. I’m playing the role of server carebear anyway, PvE’ing and crafting more than PvP’ing, and when I do finally complete step three of the Wisdom chain, my mining and lumbering skills will both be above 75, meaning I can pick up their related mastery skills. Not only that, but crafting all those items will raise my weaponsmith, armorsmith, and bowyer skills a good bit, not to mention my smelting and woodcutting skill for turning ore to ingots and wood to timber. On top of all that, all those skills increase your strength, vitality, and wisdom. At 40 wisdom you can buy the Trueforge skills, which increase the durability of the items you craft (very helpful), and I’m guessing I’ll be very close to that 40 wisdom mark at the end of all this as well.
Each step of the quest chain also gives you some rewards, the two main ones being a large sum of gold (2000, 2500, 3000), and of course the title that boosts wisdom (+2, +4, +6). In addition, each step gives you some items, the first giving 5 of each crafting tool, the second some rank 40 weapons and plate greaves, and the 3rd more weapons and a plate helm. Not “zomg amazing” items, but certainly better than nothing.
Between my usually PvE trips, the occasional PvP encounters, and slowly working my way towards the completion of this title quest (there is a title chain for each stat), I’ve got plenty to keep my busy in DarkFall.
Hardcore Casual 
Man, you make Darkfall sound so not fun.
Beau
Says the champion of the F2P ‘revolution’ (soon right?)
Ha ha, like some bloggers’ lover’s quarrel. The title already made me rofl.
Uhm I know I might be missing something, but explain to me how my enjoyment of all gaming (F2P included) for the last 10 years has anything to do with you writing a blog post that basically says “I PROMISE I’m having fun.”
Seriously, I’m missing something aren’t I?
Beau
It seems you are. You find the description of an OPTIONAL part of DF boring, yet champion a sub-genre (F2P) whose very model is to not only force mass grinding, but make it so unbearable that you pay the company money to speed it up (with the greater irony being that you speed your current grind so that you can reach the next, slower and more painful grind, where you not only get to spend money again, but more of it for lesser content)
It is this quest chain that made me walk away from Darkfall very early. As I was working my way through the gathering of 1000+ iron ore for the three quests, I found that watching a progress bar fill up over and over again was actually quite boring. So after a few nodes I started reading while I gathered, only interacting with the game when I ran low on stamina, had to run to another node, or deposit materials in the bank. Not only that, but there were three other resources I would need to gather to complete the chain – stone, wood, and fish – all in relatively large quantities. This got me to thinking. Why the hell am I not just reading when I want to read, and playing a video game when I want to play a video game? Instead I’m partially invested in both at the same time.
You may be thinking, “Just don’t do the damn quest chain then.” Well the quest chain is a red herring for, in my humble opinion, Darkfall’s real problem. There is far too much boring gameplay required to fund the real gems of fun. But there’s a tradeoff in that equation. The moment you tone down or remove the time sinks from the game, the PvP component becomes less meaningful.
Thinking about this a little more, I feel this speaks to a comment I made yesterday about fundamental problems in MMORPGs. Frankly the problem is not specific to Darkfall or Aventurine. Like most people, I approached this MMORPG with the expectation of spending a great deal of time there — months, maybe years. Yet this is a wildly unreasonable expectation for me to place on the game. I don’t demand that single-player games keep me interested for that long, so why do I apply that logic to this genre? My guess is that I don’t have a choice in the matter, since MMORPG developers throttle your ability to fully experience the game by design.
The title quests actually say in the quest dialog “Don’t do this all at once!” — For once, these quests are activities you would do anyway!
For instances:
Kill 200 akathars
–> Kill 5 spawns of 4 akathars for 10 days. Done!
Gather 200 timber
–> Put 50% of your timber into saving for the quest. Gather 50 timber a day (1-2 nodes-ish) for 8 days. Done!
Take your time and enjoy the journey. What’s the big rush anyway?
Which is why I like them. I don’t sit down and grind them out one after another, I have them and ‘work’ on them when I’m not in the mood to PvE or PvP, or as you mention, have them increase through my normal play (my goblin title quest is at 50% or so, and I’ve not once sat down and ‘worked’ on it).
It’s funny that even though the game asks you not to force-grind, so many players look at the raw numbers and go out of their way not to have fun, all for an overall not-that-great reward.
The far more obvious example is something like WoW and achievement grinders. Not only are you doing something inherently not fun (unless you really love killing countless gray mobs), but you are doing it for literally ZERO reward.
Maybe I’m not communicating this clearly. It has nothing to do with the amount of time it takes to complete the quests. You can absolutely trickle the resources that you normally gather into a “quest fund” or something. The problem is that resource gathering is both necessary and very, very boring. Like I said, the quest chain is a red herring for the real problem.
So to answer your question, there is no rush.
“Take your time and enjoy the journey.”
If only I could actually enjoy the journey.
I think you provided your own answer. I am enjoying the journey, while you did not. That has very little to do with the game systems behind DF, and more to do with the player. What DF offers you are not interested in, which is perfectly fine as the MMO genre is now full of choices.
I would HATE the gathering system if it was some cutesy mini-game of Tetris or something else ‘gamey’. I did not buy DF to play Tetris, I got it to PvP and to live in a world most similar to UO. On both accounts, DF delivered.
I’ll second Syncaine’s response. Adding autoharvesting was one of the best changes they’ve made so far.
It’s funny that people point to this as a reason for not playing Darkfall. This is one three part quest line among hundreds. I don’t even know who plays this game for the quests. I haven’t bothered with a single one on the NA-1 server. Not to mention the fact this quest isn’t even that hard. It’s about 250 raw ore, 500 raw timber and 200 raw fish. I can do this in 2-3 hours.
Outside of this one silly quest there is a ton of great content in Darkfall. The satisfaction of working together with your clan to build a unique city. Working on your character progression and watching him (or her) become more powerful. The excellent political metagame because your actions actually do effect the game world. PvE that is actually bearable since you are always on edge, watching for PK’s. PvP itself, is excellent in this game. Even though I’ve been playing for a few months now on both servers I still occasionally get ‘the shakes’ and suffer from tunnel vision in intense battles. A far cry from the boring ‘1’ ‘2’ ‘3’ ‘1’ ‘1’ ‘1’ spam fest of games like WAR.
There is obviously a disconnect in our communication. I never asked a question to which an answer needed to be provided. I never proposed a ‘cutesy’ game of Tetris or a ‘gamey’ version of resource gathering. I never stated that I played Darkfall for the quests. I never claimed that games such as WAR or WoW are any better.
I did state, after some reflection in my comment, that the quest itself is not the problem. We are in agreement on that point. Okay? I also stated that Darkfall itself is not to blame for this problem. The MMORPG genre, as it has evolved, has inherent problems.
The manifestation of the problem in Darkfall is that resource gathering is both necessary and boring. You’re not going to convince me that you truly enjoy gathering stone, iron, wood, or fish. You’ve stated on this very blog, Syncaine, that you played other games while gathering resources on EU1. Grimhawke, the very fact that you find auto-harvesting “one of the best changes they’ve made so far,” indicates that you don’t find harvesting enjoyable either. It’s just that now you can pay less attention while performing that particularly boring activity.
You don’t gather resources because it’s fun. You do it because it yields materials which are required by the other parts of the game — the things that you do find enjoyable. You’re right that there is some great content in Darkfall. You may find the ratio of boredom to fun sufficient. I find any amount of boredom in my gaming time to be stupid, and Darkfall has a lot of it.
Matt,
Have you played any games with 0 (i.e., zero) amount of boring elements? Could you name a few so I can try?
Are you guys writing rebuttal responses to my comments in your head before you finish reading what I have to say?
I’ve played several games that I would consider to be nearly boredom-free, but the point I am making is that Darkfall requires a great deal of boring activity. This was apparently difficult to ascertain from my “Darkfall has a lot of it” comment. I’m going to assume that it’s consensus that watching a progress bar fill up (i.e., gathering in Darkfall) is considered very boring.
But, sigh, to answer your question I enjoyed the following recent games and found them to be relatively entertaining for a majority of their duration: BioShock, Half Life 2, Call of Duty 4, Portal, Braid, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Halo 2, …, … You’ll notice that none of them are MMORPGs. +1 if you can tie that characteristic back to my recent comments.
I must admit I get more attracted to the idea of giving Darkfall a go with every post I read on here. I think it sounds like a harsh experience with big learning curves.
If you dont like or arent interested in Darkfall fair enough, but this flame war on DF has to stop. Everyone knows that Darkfall isnt everyones cup of tea but it doesnt pretend to be anything its not or make any excuses for itself. It simply is what it is. Whilst Im not playing it Im glad it’s there and doing reasonably well. I know it is definately a game I will pick up at some point. I’d of course prefer it if they did a free trial but I doubt they will be thinking about that at this stage