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A look at this week's changes to Darkfall
MMO developer Aventurine makes no bones about Darkfall being an aggressive, PvP-centric game -- one that we've seen no small amount of debate over among Massively's readers. However, like all new MMOs (and some old), there are still some kinks Aventurine is working out with Darkfall. This week's patch brought significant changes to the game, which are detailed in the official patch notes, but MMORPG.com's Darkfall Correspondent Megan Clark has written her expanded take on the changes and what they mean for the gameplay experience. Clark breaks down the April 24th patch changes as "The Good, the Bad and the Mundane."As to the 'good', Clark points out improvements in sorting out friend from foe, crafting and trade enhancements (with greater protection when trading outside of one's own clan), and new quest lines added. The 'bad', as Clark sees it, is a 45-minute timer when quitting a clan or kicking a member. It resolves the issue of players quitting their clan to avoid conflicts with a warring clan, but it adds another risk. She says, "I feel it poses a greater threat to clans who need to kick members in an emergency to protect their members or banks." Clark explains, "Imagine if you had a rogue member of your clan killing your crafters/tradesmen in protected cities to steal their goods. The problem of an emergency kick doesn't arise often, but when you need someone out fast, that 45 minute timer will be devastating." Megan Clark takes a good look at how Darkfall is shaping up and you can see her angle on these changes at MMORPG.com.
Darkfall bans another wave of cheaters
Adventurine's public voice for Darkfall, Tasos, has announced through their forums that the have banned another 213 players for cheating using 3rd party programs. This is claimed to be 90% of the currently detected cheaters, with the final 10% awaiting verification. Cheaters were detected automatically but the verification process is manual.The message contains a warning that cheaters tend to be very outspoken and so are expected to be proclaiming innocence on the forums. These threads will be deleted and those accounts will also be banned. Darkfall has a zero tolerance attitude to cheating, and previously Tasos has declared that there were a couple of bannings per day.
Tasos addresses Darkfall's GM corruption charges
Darkfall dev Tasos Flambouras posted on the official forums regarding player accusations that GMs have been crashing servers, refunding money and items. As players are often unsure of what awesome powers the average Games Master possesses but Tasos is keen to reassure players such reports are completely bogus.He says: "First of all GMs cannot crash the server, or cause a client to crash. They cannot create items or money. All their actions and communications are monitored and logged. We re-checked all chat logs and GM activity for every report mentioned in the forums or reported to us at the help desk, over the time periods that the questionable conduct was supposed to have taken place and found absolutely nothing. Because of this, any public accusations on the forums accusing GMs or the company of any such activities will be removed, and everyone contributing in the thread will be banned from the forums. GM activity is always monitored by us. If you would like to report GM conduct, then you should use support.darkfallonline.com to do so if you have proof of misconduct."We're not quite sure why players have been accusing the GMs but crashing servers is certainly above their powers. That's more likely to do with technical problems with the game client or overpopulation on the servers. Tasos is also keen to remind anyone that if they've been banned from the game or the forums, a message will appear when they try to log in.
Siege the shores of Agon with Darkfall's brigantine class ship
In a game like Darkfall, it's hard to get people to fess up to owning powerful weapons of war. But if you're Paragus, you'll find ways to get the information out to the public on some of Darkfall's coolest features. This time he's gotten to tour the deck of one of Darkfall's larger ships, the brigantine, thanks to the invitation of The Mercs and Rainbow Ninja clans.Equipped with 8 cannons, a small captain's cabin, and a crew of angry siegers, Paragus was able to see the ship in action from the main deck as the clans took on a shoreline city. The cannons, which hit with the damage of a handheld siege hammer but fire from a range greater than that of most defensive cannons, pounded the city from afar and wrecked defenses.Even if you're not a rabid Darkfall enthusiast, the look at naval combat presented in the article is a good read for anyone interested in general PvP warfare. For the full story, check it out over at Paragus's blog at MMORPG.com.
One Shots: Follow the light
In many games, a lighthouse may call players to the safety of shore; safe harbor, as it were. Of course, in Darkfall, you really never know what will greet you in a new area, and whether it will mean life or death for you and your friends.Today's One Shots shows off a moment offshore, and was sent in to us by Paragus, who says only "castle on remote island." If there is more to this story or location, we'll simply have to guess, or hope someone adds in details in the comments below. One Shots is about community, and that means we need your screens and stories! Want to contribute but don't know how? It's easy. Just email your screenshot along with whatever you'd like to say about it to oneshots AT massively DOT com. Include your character name (server and guild optional) along with the game so we know who to give credit to. Pretty simple, no?%Gallery-9798%
Keen talks more on Darkfall, highlights good and bad issues
One of the best looks we get at Darkfall is from the varied community that plays it, and one of the most outspoken proponents of the game's ups and downs has been Keen from the Keen and Graev Gaming Blog.In his most recent post, Keen has gone into the specifics of what he finds off with Darkfall the most -- the pacing issues. While the game presents enjoyable concepts, those concepts are overshadowed by globs of downtime paired with grinding. The fast-paced action of the game is drowned out by the slow pace that the game itself moves at. Certainly the city building and politics of the game work as intended and are fun sections, but the sieges themselves move slowly as they usually feature 10 guilds attacking one guild.Another one of Keen's issues is the lack of incentive. He gives the example that he could walk across the world and spend hours doing it, but why should he when everything he has can be found in a small area? Players aren't encouraged to get together and tackle with trust issues, they're encouraged to stay apart in their own borders.For Keen's full thoughts on the many facets of Darkfall, check out his posts over on his blog.
Leaders have questions, and Darkfall's Tasos Flambouras has answers
Darkfall blogger extraordinaire Paragus recently sat down with some of the biggest alliance leaders of Agon, collecting questions to take back to Aventurine's very own Tasos Flambouras for answering.While not all of the questions are actually questions (we see those declarative statements, you can't hide them from our prying eyes), Tasos attempts to provide answers to some of Darkfall's biggest problems. Crashing during battles, game mechanics overthrowing battle strategies, six hour sieges, political options in the interface, inability to purchase the game, and the burning question of what Aventurine is doing to deal with cheaters are all covered in this lengthy two page interview.The entire interview has been posted to MMORPG.com. If you're looking for a peek inside of the mind of Aventurine, or the mind of Tasos, in the very least, don't hesitate to jump on over and catch his answers to some burning questions.
Some players feeling burnout in Darkfall already?
Syncaine has another interesting Darkfall post up on his blog discussing why he thinks some players have started experiencing burnout so soon after release. He feels some of the issues are a result of how the game world has been playing out, while others are attributed to individual play style.Game specific issues include large alliances that have been forming up in Agon and that some people feel they must keep up with the Joneses. Being in an über-alliance means that nearly (if not) all your neighbours are friendly and that you must travel far and wide to find any PvP. Perhaps due to exploitation methods in the past (e.g., being able to skill up on invincible mobs), some players feel they need to grind before they can be truly effective in the game.Play style specific issues include trying to play a sandbox game with an "on rails" mentality and that some people simply can't handle the notion that for every triumphant gaming session, they will probably encounter an equally disastrous one. While some people think they crave a wide open, hardcore PvP experience, they refuse to accept that it may not actually be their style.
Anti-Aliased: You don't need PvP to be successful, honest
Player vs. player combat has always been a double-edged sword, in my opinion. While it has the ability to be an amazing part of a game, I find that it usually falls flat thanks to a few loudmouthed jerks and people who exploit their way to "fame." Please note the use of fame in quotation marks, as fame through PvP isn't exactly fame as we understand it by dictionary definition. It is something far less desirable.So, I knew my stance on the issue. I like well executed PvP, but I don't like PvP in general. But I wanted your opinion, readers of Massively, and I got it thanks to a spot on The Daily Grind this week. What resulted from that story was a very interesting discussion on the place of PvP in MMOs, and if PvP is really the staple we think it is as a community.
You wouldn't like Aventurine when they're angry...
Aventurine smash! Well, they smash people who attempt to impersonate GMs and cheat in their game, at least.Over at Hardcore Casual, Syncaine has put up a post discussing Aventurine's hardline attitude to players in their game, Darkfall. The company has already said, straight out, that they will ban players for an offense like attempting to impersonate a GM or cheating in their game. No warnings, no temporary boots, we're talking a full ban on the first offense.What is unclear, from the perspective of a player, is how well Aventurine is implementing their own policies. From one player's perspective, it seems that the GMs are certainly on the ball and are dealing with people who attempt to use joke names. But as to how many people may have been banned by Aventurine's staff? Well, that's an unknown number that most likely will never be released outside of the company.Even so, a hardline stance like the one Aventurine is taking isn't seen very often in MMOs. Companies worry about alienating their player base with moves such as those.Interested in the full post? Check it out over at Hardcore Casual.
Darkfall patch surprises with changes to the core game design
Usually games give players a heads up when they're going to be changing some things, so this way people can prepare or comment on the upcoming edits. This isn't the case for Darkfall, however, as the development team has literally surprised the player base with some worthy changes to the game.One of the biggest changes is the reduction of maximum positive alignment from 100 to 10. This means a player will only be able to kill someone from their own faction once before they feel the sting of the "rogue player / murderer" social system, instead of letting players gain reputation up to 100 and then go on a virtual killing spree without any punishment.
The Daily Grind: Does a game need PvP to be successful?
Player vs. Player combat seems to be a love it or hate it scenario. Players either engage in the behavior with an extreme liking, wondering when their blades will get to silence a screaming newbie or go up against the best of the best in battlegrounds, or players hate the activity with a passion to the point where they'll avoid it as much as possible.In any case, this feature certainly has become a staple of MMOs, even going so far to have a couple games, like Darkfall, EVE Online, and Aion: The Tower of Eternity, making it one of their core focuses. So this leads to today's question: Do you think a game needs to include some form of PvP to be successful? Or can a game go with a purely player vs. environment or cooperative approach and still succeed?Drop your thoughts into the comment box below and sound off.
One Shots: Swimming is for the weak!
Okay, okay, so that's not really true, but somehow it just fit with the image above. Darkfall is becoming known as a hardcore type of game so it seems to make sense that players in Darkfall might likely take the much more difficult route of building rafts to get across water rather than jumping in and swimming like players in many other MMOs do. Still, it's certainly a lovely, bright shot from within this unforgiving game. Today's One Shots was sent in to us by Paragus, who notes that this group is an Inquisition raft fleet. Certainly doesn't look like a bunch of people you'd want to run across. Have you been exploring parts of your favorite game that we haven't seen here? All games are welcome, all images too! Send us combat, group posed shots, landscapes, you name it, to oneshots AT massively DOT com. Some information like your name, guild, server, and a description of what's going on in the screenshot is awesome too. We'll post it up here and give you credit.%Gallery-9798%
Blood, sweat, and valor in Darkfall
Paragus has continued his stories about adventuring through the Darkfall world on MMOCrunch, this time centering on the concepts of alliances and city sieges. While many aspects seem similar to EVE Online's corporation wars, Paragus's retelling of what it's like to be on the front lines of a siege battle makes Darkfall sound more like 300.His overall report is in Darkfall's favor, commenting on how well the game seems to be holding up when there are huge amounts of players fighting in the same area. Certainly there are still client crashes and disconnects, but the performance is overall very stable for mass combat.The only downfall to the whole system lies in the rules of the siege challenge. One of the rules states that if the attacking guild's leader drops offline at any time during the battle, the challenge is immediately lost. During Paragus's siege, the guild leader suffered a timeout, and the guild found themselves losing the challenge all due to connection problems.While Aventurine patches up all of the problems, the overall report of sieges is good, in Paragus's opinion. For the full details, head on over and check out his writeup of the event.
One Shots: You should drop better stuff
For those who were looking for a much more hardcore experience including pretty tough mobs and free-roaming PvP, Darkfall has quickly become a favorite. While the players will tell you straight off that the game isn't for everyone - and they're quite glad of that - we are lucky in that they've been so kind as to send in some screenshots from this relatively new title for us to enjoy. Today's One Shots sent in to us by Garett shows off a recent battle, which he expounds on: Here's a pic from a night of fighting Black Knights deep in the heart of a dungeon in Darkfall. These things hit pretty hard, but a skilled group of players can take them down pretty quickly if they know what they're doing. Its just too bad they never have leather armour on.Screenshots from all games from small to large, and MMOs of all genres are welcome! Just email those in to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the game it's from, and a quick note about what we're seeing. We'll post it here and give you the credit for sending it in.%Gallery-9798%
Darkfall's March 21 update addresses lag, macroing and game availability
Tasos, Darkfall's community guy, posted an update on the official boards on Saturday addressing a litany of concerns that have been plaguing the user base since the game's launch.While he did include patch notes in the update, the majority of his message dealt with issues beyond the game's live design. Tasos claims server queuing has been resolved, as have lag and random crash issues that have been popping up since release. He also says Aventurine, Darkfall's developer, will credit players with 34 days of free play time to compensate for the problems they've been experiencing. Since Aventurine only made the game available to a limited number of subscribers, North American fans of the game haven't yet been able to actually buy the game. The company is hoping to make the game available for sale again "sometime this coming week; again it will have to be a limited amount of copies to allow a smooth integration of new players into the game." But no news on which regions will have access to Darkfall yet. In addition to availability issues, Tasos specifically mentioned unattended macroing as a problem Aventurine wants to address. The practice of using third-party programs to improve a character while the player doesn't monitor the character's progress is as old as MMOGs; it was particularly popular in another skill-based game, Ultima Online. The company as yet doesn't have a hard-coded solution to deal with macroers, but Tasos included this note in the update: "we will appeal to players not actually playing the game to log off rather than leaving their character in-game. This will allow more people to be able to enjoy Darkfall instead of unmanned characters taking up server space. If you're skilling up by not playing the game as it was intended, you will be kicked and repeated offenses will result in a ban."
How to stop worrying and enjoy games like Darkfall
While they seem to draw a fair amount of controversy and commentary, massively multiplayer online games that offer kick-in-your-ribs PvP aren't really a new thing. Darkfall is the title that everyone's talking about of late, but it's really cut from the same cloth as the progenitor of all MMOs, Ultima Online. Granted, Ultima Online wasn't and isn't purely focused on player killing, but the fact remains that when you log into games that allow for the possibility of being ganked, in some respects it is what you signed up for. While the no-holds-barred style of play isn't for everyone, it certainly is what some players want. Or at least think they want. MMO world celeb Sanya Weathers, writing for Examiner, says "Darkfall has been, since its conception, an unapologetic return to Ultima Online's original style of full metal ham kicking. The gang at Aventurine never pretended their game would appeal to a mass market, and certainly never pretended that the game would have anything but a vicious learning curve."
Mortal Online reveals beta signups, new video, and well rendered buffalo
So you guys flooded our in-boxes with requests for us to cover Mortal Online's beta registration opening up. So, without further ado, Mortal Online's beta registration is open. Also, they have some new in-game footage on their front page.What? You were expecting something more? A few paragraphs at least? Ok, ok, you twisted our arms enough. Mortal Online is the new PvP MMO that everyone's squeeing about -- one that's set up to attempt to out Darkfall, well, Darkfall.Sporting game systems very closely related to Darkfall's, such as skill based progression and action based combat, Mortal Online is a PvP, action based, first person MMO being run on the Unreal Engine. From what we've been able to see from the in-game footage, MO will be a bit slower combat-wise when compared to Darkfall, but will feature more interactivity between the user and the environment through well placed camera angles and the ability to see your own body.The video shows horse riding, dungeon crawling with a torch in one hand and sword in the other, mounted combat, and even a peek at siege weaponry through the use of a ballista. If it sounds like something you're interested in, jump on over to their main webpage or download the official video through their torrent.[Thanks, Jonathan, Daniel, Amisch, and Brian!]
Darkfall delivers on player expectations?
When you go into a movie, sporting event, or new MMORPG with very high expectations, you're likely to be disappointed. In the case of pre-release Darkfall Online, player expectations were all over the map from dismissive naysayers, to undecided fence-sitters, to drooling fanboys. Actually, it's like that for most MMOs, isn't it?Based on information he read on forums, fansites, and gleaned from videos, Keen established his own set of expectations for the various features advertised for Darkfall (he wasn't in beta). Now that he's been playing a while, he decided to rate his initial expectations versus his early impressions. The list includes items like the skill, magic, and crafting systems, graphics, PvP gameplay, and many more.Keen rates 12 parts of Darkfall in total on a highly scientific scale of Fantastic to Total Crap and gives his overall impressions so far. For instance, he expected the combat to be Decent but finds it to be Great, the magic system to be Good but finds it to be Mediocre, and server stability + communication from Adventurine to be Bad but finds it to be Total Crap. It's an interesting way to rate a new MMO, so check out his blog for the full details.
One Shots: One reader's love of Darkfall
Normally we get cursory notes to tell us about the different screenshots that are sent in to us for inclusion on One Shots. A line here, once in a while a paragraph there. Today, however, we have a bit of a lengthy love note from one of our readers who is really, really enjoying playing Darkfall. Today's One Shots features Vodnik Thunderhawk, posing on his mount, and telling us why he's enjoying the game so much. As it's fairly long, I'm only including the first paragraph before the break. Those curious will want to pop past the jump and check out the rest of his note. Of course, if you'd like to wax poetic about your favorite MMO, feel free to send in your screenshots and notes to oneshots AT massively DOT com too! For now, on with Vodnik's tale.... I was heading south from my guild city towards the Alfar starting area to sell a batch of Steedgrass (the herb you craft mounts from) that I had collected, when I suddenly came across what looked like a beautiful little NPC village. I couldn't stop myself from walking into the village to explore and see what it had to offer. There are a lot of treasure chests hidden across the world, so sometimes exploring the world can actually even be profitable.%Gallery-9798%
