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Darkfall Players - Most Marketable?
Arnoagns
Member Posts: 100
I'm trying to keep my laid back attitude on games intact. Maybe I'm having a bad night, maybe I was wrong and everything does have a slightly serious indication, but I find myself incredibly irritated at the DF community.
Being someone who spent money and played DarkFall, I was extremely disappointed. So were you, let's not kid ourselves, it was a joke. Darkfall 2.0 being touted constantly with nothing too tangible as an example, I left. Let's not forget it started as Darkfall 2010, lads. Now they're finally releasing it under the new name Unholy Wars and my lord it seems people cannot learn. I hate being a naysayer, it sucks. I can't predict success or failure, that is not within my rights as a human being, it's not my position. That doesn't mean, however, I can't use logic.
Logically, this probably won't be that great. Come on, we're seeing the exact same team doing the exact same procedure, shouldn't we expect the exactly same results? You can make it look better, you can make a ton of changes on paper, you can show us one single video that is approx a 40 seconds of gameplay footage - but CAN you fool us with this? The answer seems to be an unwavering "YES!".
I say "No". I think what makes me take this more seriously than I usually take games is that it's kind of insulting. Not only that, I'm seeing people blindly go along with it, again! Even those excited, I think you have the same gut feelings I do, that this is simply a prettier reskin of broken fundamentals.
If it succeeds, freakin' awesome, you better believe I'll be with you guys playing. If it tanks, well, this is a great year for PC gamers. Guild Wars 2, Planetside 2, a new expansion for Rift, DayZ standalone, Overgrowth, Xenonauts Beta, Far Cry 3, Mists of Pandaria, Decent changes to Dwarf Fortress, Hawken, Planetary Annihilation, Arma 3 and make sure to check out the Occulus Rift.. So, I'm going to bring myself back to a calm level and I suggest you all do too, think about it rationally. Life moves on, either way.
Comments
Why do you feel it will tank?
What did the initial quote about the community have to do with the remainder of the post?
Only crazy people do the same thing and expect different results. It seems you are classifying DF:UW fans into this bracket. There is no real substance to your complaints though.
I think there is plenty substance in the product they release before. It wasn't a quote, I just italicized it as it was more or less a personal thought in my head before starting. If you want solid complaints you can look back into my OP and see that I saw very little difference in the one minute video and I have issue with them having the same process of development.
Considering they released a less than great product which did not do well, it is reason enough to think it will tank; simply because they have shown very little to prove otherwise, it seems logical to me.
i can't help but feel you didn't comprehend the fact that I never predicted whether it will fail or suceed. I'm just trying to rationalize that one is more likely than the other.
Well there are a few things to understand here... first I will start with the flaws in your argument.
When Darkfall1.0 was being developed the team was a skeleton crew of 5-10 people, they built their own engine and game over many years. Without the huge dev team larger titles put out there I think it's easy to see why they may have struggled upon release to fix broken aspects of the game.
Years later and AV now runs with a dev team of over 50 people, new offices, new animation studio. This larger more experienced team has already got the basics that were right in DF1.0 and has simply redone and built upon these features whilst replacing things such as the UI and character development.
Taking the above into consideration I would expect better results than before.
Now you have to think about marketing the game from AV's perspective.
With the original release they got so much attention and people wanting to play it hurt their reputation badly. Many people raged at the release and not being able to purchase the game even weeks after launch. The demand was TOO high. This time round they must have a managable launch. Whilst they're probably capable of taking 100k+ people now, it will still be a nightmare trying to keep it all running smooth come launch.
That's why they don't do mass marketing... for now.
For me Darkfall 1 was simply the best gaming experience ever.
You listed GW2, PS2, WoW, Rift.. maybe you should just go play those games.. Its not your fault if you're appealed by games studied to entertain the masses.
A few things.
1) Original DF was a very small team. Tasos stated 11 people in development, 19 at/around launch. Since then, and with the development of UW they are now up to about 60 people and possibly still growing as they ramp up for launch. Theyve also had more funding this time around to make use of some better tools & technology
2) Experience, more of it. The early stages of development for DF1 started around 10 years ago. As time went on they gained experience, some of which wasnt shown in DF1 due to a large portion of the game already being done and they werent going to scrap the entire project and start over to make use of some of that new experience. Now after having launched DF1 and ran it for a few years, theyve had a chance to gain much more experience and also see what sort of problems existed in DF1 and try not to make the same mistakes this time around. If youve watched some of the interviews with Tasos, like the 45 minute or so intervew for gameover.gr, he talks a lot about things they have learned in the process of creating and running DF1 and some of the mistakes they dont want to repeat. DF1 was a 1st attempt which had its flaws.
3) You point out that it was originally called DF 2010, which is true, but they also took on a lot more changes than were originally planned. It went from changing a few features around to doing pretty much a complete overhaul of the game. Just consider the point that it isnt even the same world & lore anymore. The entire world has been redone, story has changed, alliancs have changed, locations have changed, etc. None of that stuff was planned back for DF2010. That doesnt happen in just a few months. As more time went on they found new things they wanted to change and new ideas / requests from their fans which they decided to implement which kept adding more and more time to the development.
Anyway, in the overall picture one of the big things is this: Looking at what they have revealed of the game so far through blogs, , Q&As, interviews, etc. They seem to have done what a lot of companies refuse to do. Listen to the players. They haven't simply turned a blind eye and insisted problems never existed and that players just have to deal with it. They realize things could have been done better, and appear to be taking that to heart when it comes to UW. That is pretty clear by things such as improving the new player experience, attempting to remove or at least hinder certain features that were big thorn in the game (like bunny hopping), and overhauling things that really turned players off in the 1st game (like the ui).
UI was a major complaint. But the average dev company would have been like "WTF are you talking about? Our UI is the most epic thing ever. We cant make it any better" when really they just dont want to put the time & effort into doing it.
Very interesting replies. Good points. I'll eat my words on that and say I was too hasty, I should of researched more. Thanks for informing me in a more polite way than I afforded you.
I listed those games to illustrate the choices we have of fresh games this year, though PS2 and Overgrowth really do captivate me a bit. I'd wet my pants if darkfall UW really does deliver, that'd be great. But if it doesn't, we have a lot of quality games to try, I won't give WoW or Rift the time of day but I can see why someone would like that.
[mod edit] It's natural that I had the same opinion from my post on the thread you saw and this thread that inspired it. I do not post on the Darkfall forums, I don't even think I did when I played at launch. Even if I DID make a thread like this on DF forums, how would that be trolling? I want legitimate discussion and am listening to replies. I never claimed to be right and simply said what I thought made sense. The posters above gave me some great counter points and I concede to that.
[mod edit]
I'd like to add further, as a disclaimer. I use controversial or bold sentences at times because it's how I like to attention grab. I like making little quips, they are meaningless. Don't be offended by them, I have no ill intentions towards anyone on the forum, I don't dislike people I don't know. It's part of my writing style, I'm a nice guy. If I say something that really pisses you off, PM me and I'll talk to you about it.
Of course I want this and all games to be great. I gain nothing by this failing. I was super pumped for DF, I remember checking leak sites hourly for new footage and reading/rereading articles constantly. I don't really get excited like that anymore about games, but it'd be cool if this one lived up to the previous and current hype.
I can't talk for the future either, but I know for a fact that Tasos and AV has openly said in their mini-doc that they were fully aware of the failures and flaws and that they know it didn't go accordingly. They even described the launch of how there was so much demand but the system couldn't handle it, and they could see players turning their back and never return. They said that if the launch had gone accordingly it would have been the best greek based product to ever be released internationally. This is something they know and that is what they have in their back heads.
AV know exactly what they are doing. Tasos and the other devs are very clever people, and they are much aware of how things work and how they do things.
Could you direct me to that source please?
they start talking about launch further into the video. I think the whole documentary was made just when it came clear that DF 2 was going to be a new game and not DF 2010
This is also a great series of videos to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cOTQ2TkWZQ
Thats the 1st in a 3 part series of the same interview covering about 45 minutes. Tasos discuss a lot of how the game came to be, issues that came up with the game and ways theyre trying to make it better this time around, some of his own opinions about the MMO genre, etc. The stuff about the Eurogamer review where they received a 2/10 was pretty ineteresting. Review done by a guy who did not even play the game, just read forums and created his review based off of forum posts. They gave him the account and tracked what he did, which was nothing. They later sought a 2nd review by a freelancer for Eurogamer who actually played the game. Sounds like a lot of "reviews" we get from users on these forums with a lot of games lol.
Its all in greek but with subtitles (turn the CC button on at bottom), but a nice interview.
The ruleset as far as being a full loot PvP game? Yeah thats the same.
That was hardly the games problem. Its part of the reason people were excited for the game in the 1st place. One of the big problems they had was the relative difficulty to learn the game and become a viable PvPer if you were later to the game, which they have changed via roles instead of an open ended skill system, implementation of the new player experience stuff. Theyre making it a bit more "newbie friendly".
It was the same problem EVE used to have. It was much more challenging for new players to get into the game and feel useful. But EVE also improved the new player experience a lot through a series of nice tutorial missions and stuff.
I don't think it failed, I wasn't even disappointed. I played for a year and more. Nothing else since has even come close to what I want to play.
I feel like the majority of people who didn't like DF at launch 1 fell into 3 categories:
1. People who hated the UI and didn't even give the game a few days chance. I know a lot of these.
2. People who didn't like a world that didn't guide you.
3. People who didn't like the FFA PvP.
I think there's also a large number of people who liked DF 1, like me, but felt that it didn't have enough to do. I loved what I did, but doing the same thing gets boring.
Last point for me would be that the boats in DF were the best anywhere, no game touches the ships and ship fighting. My wishes for boats would be that they were 1/100th the cost so that everyone could go out fighting on ships, and that ship to ship fighting had more damage.
Asdar
4. The grind to become pvp viable.
The UI was horrible, and the worst ever made in any game I`ve played the last 30 years. Some made it through the UI problem by using script programs and macroes, but that`s not how it`s suppose to be. AV hopefully have fixed this huge problem in DFUW.
I really don`t understand why some would chose to play a full-loot mmo and then complain, so I don`t think there were a lot of those players. Sure it could be a problem for wow players not to have huge exclamation marks over the NPC head, but that wasn`t the problem. We had fun the first three months with thousands of players, then something happen that almost killed the game.
The biggest killer of players was the grind. The time and work we had to do just to play the game was immence. Bloodwall, afk swimming, rigor dance, macroing etc. killed of most of the pvpers. This will be the most important thing in DFUW. Get players pvp viable fast, or we will not be able to grow the population. I do hope AV and Tasos understand this crucial point of a full-loot pvp mmo.
Ohh, and OP...We will buy this game again and a again. No matter what AV does, Darkfall will still be more fun than anything else out there.
Peering back through to release of Darkfall I remember the utter disaster that it was... i..e. the lack of Beta testing (bugs galore) through to the disaster of ordering the game (allowing waves of people in becuase the ordering system was overloaded, downloading and logging in systems were broken and they did not anticipate the numbers).
My main concern now is that here we are several weeks out from release with supposedly a brand new game with a lot of new feature that has not been properly Beta tested, stress tested etc.
Seems they have not learnt from the original release .. or have they?
My prediction is the release will be rough and many of the new systems bugged or not implemented properly through lack of testing.
It is beyond belief that they are going down the same path.
If DF1 was released as it is NOW it would have been a great success.. too bad that when it got really good with reduced grind and tweaks for the spells, armor etc the population was already too low.. And ppl dont want to start playing a MMO long after the release so the population never raised again..
I kind of get where those players are coming from. They really want this kind of MMO. Even though it is not my cup of tea, I do think that this kind of MMO, if executed well, could have certainly enough players to be succesful. But I doubt too if it will come from this company. I agree with the OP on this, they don't seem to learn. And the players that really crave for this kind of MMO becomes somehow blinded and are setting themselves up for disappointment. I would be very wary anyway.
When I see Aventurine promising and claiming things, I have to think back about Dark & Light devs.
I will admit it appears AV has fixed everything that caused me to leave back in 2009. Im very hopeful regarding UW based on the changes they've made to DF1 alone.
I never played Darkfall, but from what little is out there to read about Darkfall:Unholy Wars, it seems it's a facelift of the original with more added to it as well. That's what other companies need to do with classic mmo's like Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot...Give them a facelift to make them more appealing to the 2012-2013 and beyond mmo fans.
I'll stay lurking about, reading reviews once Darkfall:UW comes out. If it turns out to be good, I'll buy it, if not, I won't.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
they actully did have beta test for df1 just the release caused problems that didnt appear in beta for some reason. and there was other issues that didnt get resolved either
i was in the beta. Plus they bassiccly been using df1 as the beta since the new game is just optimizations and BIg changes