Darkfall: Uhm, this is actually quite fun.
That’s it. This settles it. Me and Syncaine are going to be best friends.
Buddies, like Turner and Hooch, Dumb and Dumber…Bush and Cheney.
- Can you find Beau in the picture?
I actually LIKE Darkfall, quite a bit. NOW, stop..stop…no comments yet. I say that after a few days playing only, and I fully expect those strange half-fanboi-half-hater players to tell me “I love this game, and I play it a lot, but it sucks. You will see.” In fact, they were out in full force the other night, kind of just complaining about what the game should do, how it should work, what Nectarine should do. (That’s my new name for them. It’s easier to remember.)
I would show you screenshots from the last few nights of gaming, but although I hit the keys bound to take a screenie, nothing happened. I looked it up: screenshots impossible? (I hit alt-s?)
Let’s just get right to it, because there’s ganking to do. And remember, this is a basic, basic review that isn’t even covering half of what I have experienced. No death threats, please, unless you are 40 years old and living in Colorado.
1) The combat: DUH. That’s what we’re here for. I am kind of surprised people keep referring to it only as a pvp game, or as an “FPSMMO” (which isn’t a bad description) and I can see that, yes, if you spend most of your time pvp’ing you would call it that. Granted, I’ve only been in about 4 PVP fights so far, but the PVE combat is really damn fun, too. The mobs will run after you, get help, run away…it seriously felt about the same as when I fought a player. You know, they do that annoying side-to-side thing (I jump for CRITS! ™ ) and basically act as a player. For the life of me I could not kill some goblins for the beginning quests, and started to think that this game might be annoying, but then Jay Jay the Wonder Biscuit (that means cookie in their language) told me simply to switch how I was hitting. I hit T like he said and my lil guy switched to a downward chop instead of a sideways swing. It worked! I killed two goblins and stomped my feet as the last one ran away.
If only I had a bow…..wait a second…I looted one off that last goblin! I equipped it, drew it, and pushed my mouse key. RrrRRRrrAAAHHhhh said the bow string as I pulled it back. Aiming it was pure fun, and when my arrow slammed into another goblin (I later figured out how to hotkey weapons) I thought to myself “Ok, this just got A LOT BETTER.”
2) PVP: Again, I have only seen a small part of it, but as with all pvp’ing (which I have seen my share in 10 years) it can get as boring as any activity. Seems to me that with the wide open spaces and the ability to actually hide (I LOVE that) you can avoid pvp if you want (or, of course, to allow you to pick someone off from those shadows!) PVP is one of those things that players seem to take great pride in, as with raiding, but I don’t see the point of doing anything for such a great amount of time. I kind of want to suck at first, get better slowly, just like my lil demon man thing would if he were real. EVE was the same for me, meaning that I pvp’ed enough, but explored and snuck around more.
Luckily, Darkfall does play like an FPS, meaning that besides losing a few bits of decent armor, you just run right back to the spot you were before. It’s ironic that in a “hardcore” game, death means nothing. Make me have to wait in a hospital for a while, make me sweat while my corpse lies there. Just don’t let me pop right back up and get right back to it.
But I’ll get to pvp later, after I had a chance to see some bigger combat. The whole clan-war-and-land-holding thang looks great, and at the very least I want to sneak around and shoot at people. PVP in Darkfall? Exciting and fun, need to investigate more. Yes, yes, I know…DF is mostly a PVP game. I will get to it. Let me enjoy some of the scenery, first. Speaking of which….
3) Graphics: Wow, Darkfall can sure look pretty in some areas (shadows are beautiful) and downright dated-to-all-hell in others. I WOULD show you a screenshot of this silly “welcome” sign in my starter town (as though demon monsters would build a “welcome” sign) but screenies don’t work.
Having said that, I can understand if they intentionally left the graphics the way they are, being that they need the game to run on a wide array of PC’s, and with good performance. On my older machine it runs a lil rough until I shut off shadows (which I hated to do, but liked the performance better) but I kept everything else cranked. On the newer machine it runs beautifully, and sneaking through the shadows is pure gaming joy. And to think that you can literally hide from players (and mobs I think?) in the dark is wonderful. Awesome. FUN.
I don’t knock the game for looking so rough in some ways…so dated. It DOES look like a game that was started 7 years ago, and added to over time. Nectarine seems small enough, and if they built this engine themselves they should pat themselves on the back. Game-makin’ is hard. But the light/darkness of the game is what makes it shine, and that makes up for any poor character design or rough graphics.
Don’t get me wrong, the game looks great in most areas. This is a game of fog, shadows, and playing in the dark.
4) The sound: Dear, sweet Dog. Such dated sounds in some areas, and yet such great USE of some of those sounds. If I hear one more of those annoying blood SPLAT sounds (from Star Craft!) I am going to scream. It makes the game feel like they bought the sound file back in ‘99 and never updated it. Almost every sound needs to be tweaked for volume, and most of the sounds could just be more subtle. I understand, though, that some of these sounds could be audio clues to events like critical hits, but some are just over the top. (You can adjust them in sound settings I think.)
In DF you probably don’t want music blaring so you can hear someone approaching, so I forgive the games lack of so many wonderful sounds/music. But it would be nice to hear more, like if players were chatting in a group, you could hear slight whispers.
I love the sound of the bow pulling back, and I love how some of these sounds will warn you of hidden players, but many of them just need to be updated/tweaked. Simple fixes that will probably come.
If you want to give Darkfall a try, go to https://accounts.eu.darkfallonline.com/account/ and go for it. Enjoy figuring it all out, although even finding that page is not something easy to do.
Let’s not even get too far into why their website is horrible. Just looking at it will tell you why. At the very least, update it to today’s standards…make it larger, center it, update the information. There’s one simple, simple thing: add a link to a dev blog on the front, and go EVERY DAY and update that blog. Hell, players have been giving out better information than the developers. It doesn’t matter if the dev’s just put “Having some coffee while working on some bugs, click here for pic…” on the blog, it would let the community and potential customers know that Nectarines’ web guy is not a guy in a basement that has been frozen in time since ‘01.
But I don’t want this semi-review to seem all bad. All these things will be tweaked, I think, with time. I come from being the worlds biggest Vanguard fan (and still am) so if there is one thing I know about it’s patience with a wonderful dev staff that might not have all the money in the world. Support them, and do it in constructive ways, and they will try their best. Remember, players and developers are actually in it together. This is the world of indie games, and needs to be treated as a community project. I get a lot of enjoyment out of seeing a small game get better, and the community helping along that process.
Speaking of the community: This community is about what you would expect. Mostly men (just a gut feeling) in general chat talking about a few subjects:
a) The developers suck.
b) So and so is a hacker. Haxxor. Whatever.
c) *beep* *beep* *beep*
d) Other games.
Typical MMO stuff, with the chat filter removed. Woop-dee-do. I have dealt with the worst of the worst community members in some of the players I know from VG (hate mail much?) so this is nothing. The simplest fix is to shut off the chat, which I always do anyway.
In the one-on-one world, the players have all been really cool. Within minutes of playing I had two players give me advice and offer help. While I became quite dead thanks to other players once or twice, that might of been the result of me hitting them first. ( I dunno, still learning all that.) But other than that, the community reminds me of any FPS community which is to say that the bad ones are easily ignored. It sucks that many, many of them are bad ones, but still easily ignored.
There seem to be players that are trying to role-play, but so few and far between that I wonder how many do. This game is PERFECT for role-play, from mild stuff to “hard-core” Immersion rules. The game begs to be role-played in!
And isn’t it ironic that in a “hard-core” game in which the players take playing a game SOOOOOO seriously (think raiders after a major patch) that most of their characters names are “_______Mc _______sAlot” or some form of “IcAnHAZyerGear”? How do these serious players have such an easy time with their guild names or characters? Kids these days….
I am going to wrap up soon because I hate long posts and I want to get some playing in before Leala tells me to get off her nice PC. All I can say is that, so far, Darkfall is one of those “diamond in da rough” that I have grown so fond of over the years. Ryzom, Mabinogi, Vanguard…all games that are taking unique ideas and trying to show you what they can do. If the community is supportive and recognizes that the development team is not the size of a small town, and does their part in spreading the word (yes, I know it is the job of the developer, IF they have the money) by starting blogs, podcasts and constructive posts, this game could slowly climb up the ladder and stick around a while.
I will go into more PVP next time, crafting and all that other jazz. Understand that most of my info is pulled from in-game, and I usually avoid looking at websites and data-bases. That’s a sure-fire way to kill my fun. I want to learn organically.
Now, if you don’t mind, I am hiding in the shadows, pulling my bow back!
Beau Turkey
great man glad you are enjoying it. just yea watch out for people trying to jump between you and a mob just as you are swinging hoping to turn you rogue thats always a bummer when it happens
Ah, so maybe that’s what happened! lol
I’ll play it out some more, get into some trouble. lol I am keeping back-up stuff in my bank, so I’ll be good I hope.
Beau
Great review mate. I’ll look forward to ‘hooking up’ at some stage in the future. I think the game will get more popular when the NA1 server is activated. If Spellborn is anything to go by it should fill the world nicely.
Oh my god where did you get that cartoon from?? That looks exactly like syncaine.. Classic stuff.
Awesome man, glad you’re enjoying the game.
The sound rendender was very recently overhauled or replaced. Many of the current effects seem to have missing or incorrect positional data. I expect big improvements in this area in a short time, as I think their main hurdle was the renderer itself.
That DOES? I’ve never seen the guy. That is from “Stroker and Hoop” a Cartoon Network show. I look exactly like that guy on the right, and like Andy Dick and Garth from Wayne’s world.
Beau
Wait… why would you think that looks like me? (It’s not even close)
Creepy internet aside, can you at least understand now why anyone who read the EG review instantly knew the guy played for 10 minutes and not 9 hours?
The player agro system currently works like this. If you hit a blue player once, you go gray for 6 seconds. If you hit them again while gray, you stay gray for 2 minutes. When gray, anyone can kill you without penalty. If you kill a blue, you lose 8 standing, and if your standing goes below 0 you go red and will be hit by guard towers (basically can’t enter NPC towns), not to mention anyone can attack you without penalty.
So if you accidental hit another player, simple block/parry if they attack you, and wait the 6 seconds. If you hit them twice by mistake, they will likely kill you in the 2 minute time frame (or you will be running for 2 minutes)
Printscreen works for screen shots, but you have to copy/paste into another program after every shot. So yea, no screenshot functionality really, but it’s possible.
Good writeup though, and at least to me, it came off way more positive than negative. The website and all other media related stuff is (IMO) intentionally outdated because they have yet to really make there ‘look at us’ push yet. That I believe will come when NA-1 is released.
The whole alignment system of course only works for the allied races (human/dwarf/merdain, mahirim/orc, or alfar). So an alfar can attack any race other than their own without penalty at all times, while humans will be blue to merdain, dwarves and other humans.
when should be done downloading(59%) within 5 hours. Im pretty excited but is there a lot of people running around just killing everyone?
Some advice:
1- enter a clan; you will need friends for group, both for PvP and PvE;
2- soloing is dificult, but not impossible; see advice #1 above;
3- if you hear the bow, your target too; learn how to move for escape arrows, it will be usefull when you are the target;
4- the Aroundir’s advice above is important; players try to jump between you and your mob for force you to hit them and you go gray, so everyone can attack you and not lose alignment; there are other tricks that players too use for kill you and not lose alignment, like throw you at an acid lake; paranoia is your friend, the best solution is advice #1 above;
5- I think that crafting is intentionally boring; complex, hard working and boring can be the better definition; the devs don’t want everyone crafting, only who really wants to make money crafting will advance it; if everyone is crafting everything, there isn’t a player made economy;
6- durability is important, that is the reason why crafted itens are better than droped ones; it is sad when you are using a sword and it breaks;
7- the only problem with sieges is the lag; if not for the lag, it was to be the best PvP possible; 500+ people at a city fighting, some players defending the city, other players attacking it, cannons firing, the sky raining Mana Missile like a tempest of blue fire, it is like a real battle, a true nightmare; just remember you are cannon fodder and it will be fun for you;
8- the devs fixed a lot of exploits the game had at its launch, so it is not so easy to skill up now; that is the reason everyone is waiting for the NA-1 server: a new start, where everyone will skill up honestly and no one will have a million of gold at the first game hours; at EU-1 currently it is very hard to PvP against a guy with 100 skill at everything;
9- the devs will revamp the site just before the NA-1 launch.
Well, I can see how they would know he didn’t know about the game within a few minutes, but to be honest I knew none of that either until you typed it. I don’t go to websites and read much of anything beyond the basics. If I didn’t find out in game, I usually won’t know it. If I’m clueless, so be it…being that I am playing a character that wouldn’t know much of anything, either.
There is not (to answer Delarm) a lot of people running around killing, just like in any pvp mmo, but I have always maintained that there is plenty of ganking. I have already experienced that, but that’s to be expected. The death penalty means nothing, and any stuff I have found is either left as a copy in the bank or just robbed from someone else.
Later I am sure losing equipment will not be that fun, mainly Mounts. But who knows? Either way, the wide open empty spaces can be somewhat forgiven because the game is built around players hiding, killing each other…
Anyway, time to log in.
Right you won’t know most of the stuff (and as far as I can tell, the internet is sparse on ‘guides’ for DarkFall atm), but you would know to hotbar a weapon, or how the whole mouse/movement switch from right-click works.
As for gankers, they know all the noobie mob spawn points, so they will patrol those spots looking for easy targets. If you find a good ‘out of the way’ spawn point of good mobs, it can be a gold mine. But sometimes dealing with gankers can be entertaining, especially if it’s only 1-2 and they are bad players. Gankers drop some nice loot
Exactly like him.
I liked your comment about such ‘hardcore’ players giving themselves such asinine names. This has always kind of irritated me, and I switch off player names as I’m able and circumstances allow.
Personally, I think the type just wuss out when it comes to naming themselves. They think they’re hardcore but feel some need to prove to others that they’re not ’silly RP’ers or nerds or something’… even though gaming is now more or less mainstream, and they’re planning on spending so much of their free time playing a fantasy game to begin with.
Kind of like saying ‘yeah I’m hardcore, but don’t look at me straight because fantasy games are for wussies’.
Douchebags.
Well its been fun. excluding i got ganked easily like atleast 8 times =(
haha Keep it up man, go out and explore a ton. I like how prepared I have to be before I go out. GEt a bow and learn to hide well!! Oh yeh send me your screen name and I’ll send ya a tell if I’m on.
Beau
I real like the feeling Darkfall has given me. It reminds of my first time in a Battleground in Dark age of Camelot. I had no idea what to do, but knowing an actually player killed me made i feel so cool. This game is also giving me a sense of exploration that i miss.