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DF: UW random questions
JayFiveAlive
Member UncommonPosts: 601
My friend and I miss the days of old school EQ. We played on Rallos Zek for almost 4 years from day 1 of EQ release and nothing has satisfied us. I tried DF and was put off by its poor UI and didn't feel like learning the game, but DF: UW has peaked my interest. A couple things have burned us in previous MMOs so I am curious about a few things:
One thing we loved about EQ is character progression. When you leveled/got stronger, skill effects would change, or at least you'd get new and better skills. If you saw someone high level, you knew it right away. We felt like GW2 killed the drive behind progression...anyone could do anything really. Is there true character progression and does in matter in DF: UW that we know of?
In EQ and on Rallos Zek there were PK and Anti-PK people. You had a reputation and made a name for yourself. If certain people walked in the zone, you were on the look out... does/will that happen in this game or will I be warrior #12234234, Priest #5489658?
I see DF is a full loot game... EQ was not exactly full loot (one could pick one item to loot and you couldn't loot weapons, but anything else on the person that wasn't NO DROP), can items be made NO DROP in this game? Is there anyway to 'protect' your investments per se? Call me a pussy, but I like my shiney sword of lala land that I farmed for... I want to use it though lol.
--- kind of a follow up to the above question, if there is no way to protect items, do people generally try to get serveral sets of items for the bank so if you lose stuff you won't come back to your body naked? Also, in EQ if you were killed by a player and someone wanted to loot something, they could look at your body and loot one item, but if they didn't take anything and stopped looting, if they tried to go back to your body it was locked and your stuff was safe... does that happen at all?
Comments
Darkfall is a game with less morals than your EQ PK vs Anti-pks story. Meaning, everyone and anyone was your enemy. That's why a guild really helped out and was recommended.
As to Unholy Wars, I hope to see more "good guys."
First off I think you will enjoy DF:UW. Onto your questions.
1. Character progression in EQ pales in comparison to Darkfall's progression, in terms of time involved to progress your character. This was on single game feature that single handedly killed it's playerbase more than anything else. There were games with slow grind and progression, and there were games with really really really slow progression, and then 59 levels above them, there was Darkfall progression. It was really bad. 2 years of playing 30+ hr/week before the skillup increase, and my character was perhaps 40% done (not even considering crafting into this, which was on a whole other retard level above regular skills).
This however has changed since couple months ago, you can now max out your character, assuming you have proper funds and the "know how" in less than a month. This will likely not be the case in DF: UW, because there are some MAJOR changes that will take place.
Going into DF:UW, there will be a lot of character progression. The key thing however is, the grind required to be "competitive" in PVP (and PVE for that matter) will be dramatically reduced because of the "role" and "specialization" systems. In the current version of the game, you had to level every(useful) spell from every school, grind up all schools themselves, then grind all the useful spells, then grind the intensifies and efficiencies so that those spells have strong effects. It was really mind boggling. I'm not kidding you, every spell from every school pretty much. There are 10 hotbars in Darkfall, with 10 slots each, and right now, every single of the 100 slots is used up, and on top of that I'm switching out skills on the bars depending if I'm PVPing or PVEing, because there are more spells to use I just don't have room for them on the hotbar.
So anyway, this wont be an issue in DF: UW, because you will have to first chose a "Role". Role is basically a class template. Currently we know of 4 roles (classes), and these are Warrior (heavy melee), Skirmisher (archer), Elementalist (mage), Priest (healer).
Once you select your "Role", which you can switch back and forth as you please (with some restrictions like no switching in combat, and there will be a cooldown of few hours before you can switch again). So once you select a "role", then you can "Specialize". For example let's say you pick "Elementalist" role, then you have an option of what kind of elementalist you want to be. You can pick maximum of two magic schools to specialize in, and you can not pick opposing magic schools. For example if you took fire, you can not also get water.
Furthermore, let's say you want to be Fire and Earth mage. This means that Fire is your 'primary' school and Earth your 'secondary' school. This is NOT the same as Earth and Fire mage, where Earth is your primary and fire is your secondary. What this exactly means, we don't know, but it probably means that spells from your primary school will be more powerful, then the same spells from the same school if they were in secondary slot. We also have reason to believe that you wont be able to use all the spells from secondary school, it will be somehow limited, whereas all spells from primary schools will be unlocked.
So, you can focus on one role/spec, and level that up, hopefully "reasonably" fast, and you will be 100% efficient in PVP with your role. Now if you want to level up more specs, then go for it! Switch it up and start grinding. That's the beauty of the new system, while you can level up to be effective reasonably fast, you still have an option to grind to your heart's content, which will provide you with more options to adapt to different things that you might find yourself doing in the game.
Another thing, there will be Wisdom based magic schools, and Intelligence based magic schools, another layer of complexity, but we honestly don't know anything about it. If I had to guess, I would say that "wisdom" schools will be available to Priests, and "intelligence" schools will be available to Elementalists. But that's just a guess and we don't know how this is actually gonna affect things. So stats are another thing that you migh have to level when you switch up roles.
Roles also determine what kind of gear you can wear (heavy, medium, light).
Also, currently in Darkfall, every spell has it's own level. So for example, when you unlock Inferno from Fire magic, you start off with LVL 1 Inferno. When you fire off a lvl 1 inferno, it's just some tiny fire ball spell, when you hit lvl 25 Inferno, that small fireball becomes a little bigger, it's AoE increased. When you hit lvl 50 with that spell, then it becomes even bigger, and then even bigger at 75, and finally even bigger at 100. So you yes, you can tell how developed somebody is just by the spells they're casting.
2.
As you may or may not know, in Darkfall you can have only one character. So whatever you do, THE REPUTATION will follow you, people will talk both about good and bad deeds as well as your successes and failures.
It's a good example you give about EQ, when you are on the lookout when certain individuals walk into the zone. This is more true in Darkfall than any other game. Not only individuals, but clans have reputations as well. If somebody from "A" guild hits your city system, even if you don't know the individual personally, you might know of his guild's reputation and react differently than if another individual from "B" guild hit the system.
But overall, individual reputation is extremely persistent in DF, you will get to remember people's names. Unlike other games that I've played over the years, where I can name perhaps 3 people who were not in my clan, in Darkfall, I can easily name 100 names and write short footnotes on all of them, about their reputation, their pvp prowess, their trading record, their clan history etc. And no, I don't keep notes, this is just a very intimate game, because your gear is on the line for every fight, YOU PAY ATTENTION TO EVERYBODY that you fight, so you know if you want to stay and fight next time or try to run for it.
3.
Darkfall is full-loot, no way of "protecting" your items. This also includes gold, as gold is an actual item, that sits in your inventory or bank (you can even delete it if you want lol). With that said, items in Darkfall, and the whole system, is meant to "come and go". There is durability on each and every item, so even if you don't lose it in PVP, you will eventually break it, once an item reaches 0 dura, it's gone, poof, and no you can't repair items in DF at all.
Understand that there are no "shiny swords of lala land". Well, that's not entirely true, there are rank 80 (top rank) "racial" weapons that are fairly hard to craft, but you shouldn't be worrying about that, if you play long enough to get some of these, you'll be in love with Darkfall anyway and will know what to do with them.
In the current version of the game, the "TOP" end gear (dragon armor, infernal armor, rank 70 wpns), takes little bit of effort to get a good supply of, while "High" end gear (full plate and rank 60 wpns) is really easy to get. Plus you can chose to do a mix of high end and top end ...or crap end, it's up to you. The difference in performance/effectiveness is less than 10% between top end and high end, but "top" end gear still provides an edge. On the other hand, "high end" gear, which most people use and have plenty of, is fairly easy to get.
In your bank, you will have many "ready" bags (these are bags you put together with all the required armor pieces, weapons, food, potions, reagents etc) and a lot of spare gear/money. You might spend 3 days farming stuff, then make/buy enough gear to last you for 2 weeks even if you lost multiple bags daily. Think about it like raiding in a themepark MMO. You might spend 3 hours doing an instance, and then not get a single piece of useful gear out of it. When you die in Darkfall, just attribute it to having bad rolls in an instance or shit drops from the bosses.
Also, no, when you die, and you leave a grave behind. The grave will contain everything that you had on you, both in inventory and equipped. ANYBODY can access it at any time and take stuff from it. Even if you were killed by mobs, a player can walk by, see your grave, and loot it take off. They can also go back as many times as they want and look inside your grave. They can chose to take everything, take few items they find most useful/need, or take nothing at all. But always expect that you wont find anything but useless crap left on your grave. However, it's a common practice in the community that slack is given to newer players, so they either get resurrected or their stuff left on their grave. You can't tell if somebody is a noob until you fight them, and when you see how they move, what spells they use and overall how they fight, you can easily judge who's "new" and he sucks, who's new but he's good...or who's just bad... or good (when they kill you lol).
So just go into the game with the mindset that you're meant to lose any one piece of gear one way or another, and that gear is replaced easily enough, you'll do fine. The rush, the rush of combat when you have good stuff on you that you don't want to lose is indescribable... and will get you killed a lot haha and you will be shaking a lot until you get used to the game.
Playing: Darkfall Unholy Wars
Played: Darkfall, EVE, AoC, Ryzom, Ragnarok Online, GW2, PS2, Secret World, WOW, City Of Heroes/Villains, Champion Online.
Definitely did not read the wall of text to see what he said... probably got some good info though if you do read.
There are some No Drop weapons... the starter weapons you can get up to 3 in DF1... they do not allow you to skill up... but it lets you always have a weapon... its not great though.
There are people who become well known. If you make a name for yourself you will be known good or bad. But for the most part the individual may not be known but the clan/alliance would be.
I also played EQ and DF is the only MMO since I have actually enjoyed... enough to want to play again.
You sir, have me hyped as hell
Wow, just wow. Drvanitus - thank you for taking the time to write all of that. With keeping in mind we will lose our items (I suppose I can handle that haha), this game truly sounds awesome!! Finally a game that your spells look more powerful the higher they are and with actual character progression, finally a game where reputation matters, a game where there is danger and the rush from PvP that I miss so much from EQ. Oh and as silly as it may be, the fact that you said a bag with food in it really made me happy lol. I miss the whole eating/drinking in mmos.
This is awesome! I really hope UW is a smooth launch and they are further along then some fear. After reading the above posts, my interest is much higher now
Thanks to the others who've replied as well
Oh and I also love how there are no instances. That's a huge plus IMO.
DF1 was truly a great game. on top of all that Drvanitus mentioned the AI in DF is one of the best i have ever seen. mobs that actually run away when they are low in hp, they see you from far away and have good aim, they call friends, they come find you if you are inside a building. world bosses are some of the funnest most dynamic AI fights i have ever seen.
boat making, exploring and naval battles are insanely fun.
the world is incredibly large and very beautiful.
it was really sad actually to see the few basic flaws ( huge grind, nube to vet gap, everyone being the same) really hold this game back as it is hands down one of the best open world, pvp, skill based, sand box games. this is why i'm so excited they decided to change those major flaws and reset the server.
i really hope they nailed the formula this time arround. i personaly would still like to see a portion of the map with a very heavy "protection towers" presence so that more pve minded players could have a semi-saf area in which to live, but sadly it doesn't look like it. either way i think the changes they made are for the better.
It sounds like a good improvement.
Still think they need equivelent of low sec areas though.
Agree. The stuff you're mentioning is really the essence of the game. Actually seeing your character develop its skills into more powerful versions if you work hard at improving them, politics and rep mattering, and the rush of danger instead of always being safe.
That danger is also one of the reasons a lot of people knock the game, but for people who actually enjoy it, DF does it the best. Can't tell you how many times Ill be doing something like farming for an hour or 2 in a dungeon and suddenly seeing that lag spike (other players loading in) and just being like "Oh shit. Is it a friend or enemy? Should I stay and fight or try to get out with what I have?"
BTW there are instanced dungeons spread around the world. Its not 100% seamless, but the majority of the game is.Its like 80-90% open.
As long as the game is heavily non-instanced, then thats good. I kinda wish dungeons weren't but I understand it's not as practical as it once was with so many more people playnig.
To be fair, the dungeons are not instanced in the traditional sense, meaning, it is not just you and your group in there.
Anyone can come in at any time and kill you or you kill them, there's just a loading screen between the dungeon and the overworld.
I have never had as much fun or heartbreak in a game as i have ahd in Darkfall. The epic fights over player cities, raiding hamlets for their resources, taking down the kracken with my clan. Its just completely memorable and i can not wait for DF:UW to launch. Some one mentioned it before, theres nothing like the rush of adrenaline you get from Darkfall PVP.
-Ghost Chant, former Mayor of Monkfield
Ohhh- then this is exactly like what I enjoy! As the poster above me asked - it's one copy of the dungeon then?
If that's the case then this really does sound like my next MMO. I don't mind zones, I just don't care much for instances (like WoW dungeons, or the world in GW2 where there can be many copies of one area for overcrowding... I say, let them overcrowd!!).
Correct, 1 copy of the dungeon, no sharding, no instancing, nowhere to hide.
See you on Agon.
Exactly!
Yes that is correct. I suppose instanced was the wrong word to describe it. They are just like a seperate zone that you load into and all players entering it are int hat 1 copy.
And then you literally fight tooth and nail to see who gets to run through the dungeon and fight the AI. It can get very hairy.
There is one particularly dangerous sweet spot dungeon on the southern end of the main continent called "Fire's Edge" where I spent a lot of my time. Many great mobs in there to train on, and good to for mid-low level players, but it could sometimes just be a slaughterfest trying to gain a foothold in that place.
No telling if it will still be there in UW, it's doubtful.