What Darkfall Expects Of You: To TAKE YOUR FORUM INVASION LIKE A MAN!

EVE has a pretty strategic PvP endgame with regional control.

You’re approaching this discussion with the perspective of someone who wants the biggest slice of the pie, rather than an opportunistic outside who realizes that a smaller piece is a lot better than nothing.

The irony of what you said here, to whom you said it, is beyond words… Do you know you are talking to the designer who basically embodies, and has championed the concept of Niche games, more or less since the dawn of the industry? Honestly, without Psychochild proving ‘niche’ could still mean successful, games like Darkfall wouldn’t even have the .00000001% chance of ever running black, let alone seeing light past a few design docs.

As I’ve pointed out, these are the vocal few. Over thirty thousand people have registered on the Darkfall forums and although a few have come out this way to stir the pot, they’re hardly indicative of the total base of interested individuals. They’re the proselytizers, and like most with a proselytic bent, they’re sometimes inscrutable.

Did you play UO? Perhaphs 1% of your population is wretched excuses for human beings, while the rest of you are mature, respectable individuals who are just looking for ‘something different’ in the genre…

The problem is, those 1% will be online twenty two hours a day, slaughtering every single person who tries to make an honest virtual life in your game. They will be relentless, viscous, rude, and they will have absolutly no concern for the well-being of the community as a whole.

Your dream of mature, consequence-free PvP will be redued to a rabid pack of dogs, preying on the weak, spitting on their corpses, and then vanishing when the honest pvp’ers come to ‘keep the peace.’

Your community will fall apart because the weak will leave, the honest will grow bitter and either quit or sink to the level of their enemies, and your ‘niche’ game will become a cellpool of humanity.

Finally, there’s an alignment system to encourage people towards clan versus clan or race versus race fighting, rather than simply turning everyone loose into a total free-for-all. You can RPK if you feel like it, but it changes the game experience substantially.

The problem players in your community will exploit this system to the hilt, and wear their dishonorable titles like badges of rank. Dread Lords mean anything to you?

Fylraen wrote:
Well, the people weren’t commanded to raid. Tasos mentioned that this discussion was going on and people ran over here and flooded the comments because they care enough to do so. They might not play nice, but at least they’re more than happy to play.
No … they weren’t commanded, but they were pointed in the right direction. Is there really any difference between saying “GO GET HIM!” and tossing the bug bait to watch the antlions storm the fort?

And what’s the difference between caring and bloodlust? There has to be one in there somewhere …

You’d think they would learn Azaroths lesson. Fylraen…keep thinking there might be a redeeming playerbase out there, the rest of us know better. Something tells me Darkfall is going to end up like IPY:

http://azaroth.org/ipyuo/ipyuo.html

Cyndre wrote: Your dream of mature, consequence-free PvP will be redued to a rabid pack of dogs, preying on the weak, spitting on their corpses, and then vanishing when the honest pvp’ers come to ‘keep the peace.’

Consequence-free? We don’t want that. At all.

I don’t care if someone spits on my e-corpse. If you’re the sort of person who gets huffy about that sort of thing, Darkfall won’t be a good game for you. Darkfall makes no bones about the sort of game it aspires to be. It’s not ten years ago, where people are signing up for Ultima Online because it’s essentially their only option. Massive players have plenty of options to find what suits them best, and those who want a grittier experience will go looking for it.

The “weak” won’t even want to play Darkfall. And happily for them, they don’t need to, as there are several other titles that can provide a friendlier atmosphere. Honestly, for that reason, I’d expect them to be just bigger targets for the true exploiters and griefers than something like Darkfall, where a lot of the player base is simply thick-skinned and won’t get mad about being ganked. Someone who’s out to make other people miserable is going to find “the weak” and go after them.

For the record, I don’t see your mainstream MMO gamer as weak, either. I just think they want a different game experience than the Darkfall fanbase does, and that’s fine.

Fylraen, I think you missed my point in that paragraph…

My point is, you want good PvP, which by Darkfall’s proposed system mechanics, and human nature online, is highly unlikly to ever occur.

Rabid pack of dogs, preying on loners, or smaller groups of players. When the challengers show up for a fair fight, your gankers will vanish like the wind.

The mechanics in the proposed design lend themselves to those without care for fairness and a strong PvP’centric community finding that their world is turned upside down by a small subset of the population who will go to great lengths to ruin the game experience for everyone else, and who will run from real combat.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved UO. I slaughtered poor noobs with reckless abandoned, and enjoyed large scale combat. But even in UO, meaningful PvP was almost non-existant. I was either jumped and died, got lucky and killed them or someone ran. Good, fair combat happened so rarely it was almost an endangered species. I long for a game with meaningful PvP, but the systms proposed by the designers of Darkfall just lack the foresight to really create anything more than a sand-box that will quickly be soiled by the lowest common denominator in your community. That is to say, if they can even get past the conceptual phase, and forum trolling long enough to ship a product, which has been in question for quite some time now.

I have to agree completely and utterly with Brian.

I hate it when that happens.

You Dark Fall Panzies know nothing of the days of old… Literally.

I was pissing in to the wind when most of you Dark Fall Ladies were still in grade school!

Soulflame,
Professional sycophant? ;^)

Hugs,
D-0ne

How could I miss this whole train wreck of a flame war? That what I get for not visiting.

Lum, you *love* your soap box, don’t pretend otherwise, and its not at all surprising that certain people fly off the hinges after your ‘witty’ remarks. So don’t act surprised that people get offended and pretend you didn’t mean to cause such reaction.

Uh Lum, don’t you understand by now that refusing to endlessly entertain 40 rabid mouthbreathers on the internet qualifies you as a coward?

Reminds me those zealots from that vapor title back around Shadowbane in 00/01… Dawn, was it? Wish? The one that promised basically everything from a living world to fucking -digging- in the ground… but just straight down…

Blind fanaticism at its best.

Tasos point is theoretical. He believes there is a way to the holy grail. Lum, and even more concretely Psycochild, know from experience that the holy grail of creating a game “that can handle every play-style” flat out doesn’t exist. Experience trumps theory. For the record, Lum wrote his responses (Unbearable darkness and Reroll: Game) so Tasos should have responded to those rather than some generic “we can do it right” nonsense.

You can’t code around behavior. You really can’t code around it when your game pretends to be free. It’s no kidding, what were they smoking impossible to code around it when you expect your players to police themselves. Some people just can’t play together nicely.

So, I’m just curious: Darkfall’s alignment system. Spend enough time PvPing the wrong targets and you get a unique-color nameplate, notoreity among your fellow players, and a reputation as such an amazing bastard that the game itself offers rewards for your demise.

What’s the backup plan when the people this system is supposed to discourage decide that the cool nameplate and in-game reward are the best encouragement ever and they pursue this goal quite successfully and to the exclusion of all others?

Because I have the sad, sinking feeling that the alignment system is the backup plan, and it’s so obviously foolproof that I’m about to be trolled by the same group that told the owner of Meridian 59 that he’s so focused on the mainstream that he just doesn’t understand how niche gaming works.

How is doing what UO did progressive? How is doing what Shadowbane did progressive? How is doing what Dawn did (all promises with no product) progressive?

The Parker Brothers made a really fun, balanced game called Monopoly. Players cheat at it. You want to pretend that it’s the fault of the developers for not making unbreakable, iron clad rules and any cheating or bad sportsmanship that is done is the fault of the Parker Brothers. There are others of us that know that it’s on the players.

If I could respond to one point made in the post itself: So what if this argument has been raging? So what if it happened 8 years ago? So much has changed since then. That’s like saying that the big debates over tax policy have been raging for 30 years, and all the major points have been made, so let’s just call the matter closed. And many economists like to say that. But let’s face it, everything is changing all of the time, and so it’s frequently good to go back and reexamine our arguments. Much has changed in 8 years. 8 years ago, I doubt there were 9 million people worldwide playing MMOs, much less playing ONE GAME. The market has expanded dramatically, and the technology has bastly improved; thus, with new desires in the player base and vastly expanded technical capabilities, I’d say now is as good a time as ever to continue the argument over whether an open PvP system is, in fact, workable.
Of course most people here seem to think this whole issue boils down to human nature, and the flaws therein, and they may well be right. Personally, I don’t think DFO is going to be overtaken by “leet gankers” or whatever you want to call them. After playing EVE for a long while, I was ganked quite a few times, but usually by organized, roving bands of pirates, to whom ganking was a living, certainly a legitimate pursuit in my opnion. I never once ran into people who made the game unenjoyable for me, and if I had, well, I would have tried my utmost to find a way to kill them.
Which brings me to the main point, which is that EVE showed me, at least, that an open PvP world (I spent virtually all of my time in low-security space) where actual players (as opposed to people there just to make life miserable for others) were the vast majority. If a bandit clan wants to claim a space of highway and kill anyone who comes through, good for them; that will make the world far more exciting in my book. Frankly, I just want a game where I can lead that ragtag group, or perhaps be part of the local posse who goes in to take them down, or perhaps even the hapless traveling merchant who is brutally murdered and stripped of all of his goods by the aforementioned. At least all three of those “story lines” are player generated and enacted, but only made possible by a world where people can act without nearly as many of the artificial limitations whic are imposed by so many games today.
As for hackers and exploiters, well yes they will be around, unfortunately, and they will be a thorn in the side of everyone else. Personally, I’m willing to put up with that, if only for the chance to actually feel like my actions have an actual effect on the game world. When I go stomp on those bandits, they’ll think twice about setting up on that stretch of highway again, and that actually means something.

How is doing what UO did progressive? How is doing what Shadowbane did progressive? How is doing what Dawn did (all promises with no product) progressive?”

It’s not. It is its own project, but yes, it’s obviously partially inspired by those games. Read the list of promised features and you’ll see it’s a very different game.

The Parker Brothers made a really fun, balanced game called Monopoly. Players cheat at it. You want to pretend that it’s the fault of the developers for not making unbreakable, iron clad rules and any cheating or bad sportsmanship that is done is the fault of the Parker Brothers. There are others of us that know that it’s on the players.

Whoever said there’s freedom to cheat? We don’t know if it’s even possible to cheat at this game or not. If people could cheat, it would be a design flaw that would be the fault of the developers.

What, specifically, has changed in the last 8 years that makes the lessons learned in those 8 years irrelevant?

What in the last 8 years makes you think that the playing field hasn’t changed at all?

It’s not.

Good. Then we can stop pretending that it’s a unique game that will avoid the pitfalls of the past.

Read the list of promised features and you’ll see it’s a very different game.

The lists of promises made for Shadowbane and this list of promises made in Darkfall are almost identical. So it’s not progressive which you seem to agree with now. Which means that it is going to suffer the same problems as the past – The people.

If people could cheat, it would be a design flaw that would be the fault of the developers.

So you are saying that people cheating at monopoly is the fault of Parker Brothers.

I don’t even have to use cheating. I’m standing at a popular spawn point spamming out details about you that you don’t want to get out. Without using dev powers, police me. Make me stop. Better yet, make a rule that doesn’t involve CS time that automatically makes me stop.

What in the last 8 years makes you think that the playing field hasn’t changed at all?

You can’t prove a negative so the question can’t be reversed. The positive claim is that changes have been made in the past 8 years without a single example. I want the example.

If the people aren’t the problem then why the 3 day wait to post in the forums?

“Most of the anti-PvPers in this thread aren’t carebears, but pro-PvPers who have been burned one too many times to really believe in a Holy Grail of competitive online PvP anymore….”

Just to be clear, we’ve been talking about FFA PvP not PvP in general. There seems to be lots of fun PvP happening online; its just not the kill-anybody-anywhere-anytime system that seems to be the holy grail for some….

The features that Darkfall is offering is identical to what Dawn said they would do, which was just about everything, and Shadowbane attempted realistically since Darkfall hasn’t been seen anywhere in the eye of the public. I’ve seen the feature list for Darkfall. I saw the feature list for Shadowbane before it was in beta. I saw the wild promises of Dawn (to be fair they were never going to keep them) and they are all but identical. You could list the top 10 features, the important ones, and the list would be identical.

It doesn’t matter where the game takes place, people are still people. The fact that it is easier doesn’t change the fact it is still people doing it and you are still blaming Parker Brothers for letting people cheat at Monopoly. Anyone who has worked CS or played a game knows that catching people like I’ve spelled out is rare. You made a claim that they could design around abuse or cheats or whatever. I gave you an example to design around. Your rules seem to be that anything not prevented by design is permitted so I’m asking you, again, to design around the abuse I’ve mentioned.

If I’m right and the problem is people then adding 8 million or 80 million doesn’t make the problem go away. If I’m wrong and it’s not the people but the technology then pointing to the number of people doesn’t really say anything because they aren’t the problem. Your evidence is counterproductive or useless depending on which side you take.

So what has changed in the past 8 years that makes the problems of yesterday disappear today?

The 3 day wait was because it is people who are the problem. The people who want to take pot shots, the people who want a safe zone, and those vets who want to abuse the new guys. All of these are people problems. So why is it that they admit that it is the people who are the problem in the forums but can’t see the same exact people being a problem in the game?

I don’t understand why this so-called “human nature” will by default make FFA PvP undesirable. People play games to have fun, and it’s true that many people have fun just running around randomly killing players in games. But from what I’ve seen, those players don’t make up the majority of MMO players, since the whole idea of an MMO is to have a persistent, constantly evolving character in a persistent, constantly evolving world. Just walking around constantly killing everyone certainly doesn’t follow the idea of “evolution”, and frankly, gets boring for almost anyone after a while. I’ve certainly engaged in random killing and ganking from time to time myself, but it’s only to get some extra cash quick or to have good laugh. That quickly wears thin, however, and I want more, like most folks.
I’d say that when it comes to games, the whole idea of what “human nature” is changes, because when you’re in a game, you’re no longer “human”, per se. You no longer feel pain, death is temporary, and fear is entirely artificial. The search for power is different, too. Power in these games means different things to different people. For some, power means the ability to kill anyone. For others, it’s to be wealthy. For others, it’s about respect, so even if you go down, you want to go down “honorably”. I just don’t understand this constant turn to human nature in these comments, because to me, it seems largely irrelevent.

And to respond as to what has changed in 8 years: market size is very, very relevent. Number of large market options is also. As was stated earlier, Darkfall does NOT need to be the most popular (or even remotely close) to be successful. The reason that’s relevent is because if indeed Darkfall “doesn’t work” for many people, they can all leave and there will still likely be enough subscribers around to keep the game afloat. While it’s true that the concept of the MMO has nottruly changed, the group of people playing and looking for certain things in their games has vastly expanded. I ran into so many people in EVE who were far more interested in politics, economics, or just interested in playing in an honest laissez-faire capitalist environment than “gaming” per se. I hope Darkfall has a similar draw, since in an open PvP game those things become very important. If Darkfall can manage to draw enough of that sort to balance out the “leet gankers”, I could see it working.

I kept clear of posting in the previous blog because Jennings is entitled to his opinion, if he wanted to debate it with the darkfall forum users he would wait the unbearable 3 day waiting period, or possibly even step down from his horse to ask a darkfall moderator to instantly activate the account.

But this just rubbed me wrong. I think its pretty obviously idiotic to compare a board game’s mechanics, where the rules are clearly governed by other players, compared to a computer game, where the rules are generally governed by the limitations the programmers have placed in the game software.

“People also like to be free, but as many people can tell you, your freedom ends where it would take away the freedom of others.
This, in a game, SHOULD apply to fun too. Youre allowed to have fun in any way that doesnt stop someone else from having it. That’s how desirable PvP should work. Both sides enjoy the fight.” (sorry couldn’t figure out how to “quote” something)

The problem I have with this is the assumption that players don’t enjoy risk. Risk means sometimes finding yourself in situations you’d rather not be in, sometimes even REALLY rather not be in. One assumes that anyone coming to play a game with open PvP would understand this. These people are basically stating by their participation that they are willing to accept the fact that they will die often, maybe even losing many hours of accumulated gear in the process. I remember making a trade run in low security space in EVE. Some pirates got me in the middle of the route and I lost literally half of my net worth. Did it ruin my day (at least game-wise)? Yeah, kinda. But I didn’t quit, and frankly I decided that the risk was worth the potential reward, and kept doing trade runs, and eventually managed to make quite a hefty sum of money, by finding better, safer runs, and modifying my tactics.
So technically, these pirates definitely interfered with my fun. But I was ok with that, because I knew that sort of thing could happen when pilotting a ship through dangerous territory. That’s exactly the sort of attitude anyone logging into Darkfall will have to have, or else they won’t last long in the game. The freedom to play in a genuinely risky environment (at least in terms of the chance of losing networth in game) is an important freedom as well, and one that I think many players desire.

“compared to a computer game, where the rules are generally governed by the limitations the programmers have placed in the game software.”

your argument fails based on the fact that it has been said there will be no limits. If there are “limits” then well it’s not completely open/FFA now is it.

In effect

“But this just rubbed me wrong. I think its pretty obviously idiotic to compare a board game’s mechanics, where the rules are clearly governed by other players”

your players are in fact supposed to govern themselves in a FFA/Open system. Since there is no penalty otherwise. This is why they can compare this system to a board game which is governed by the players themselves.

Guild Wars has a pretty good PvP rule set. Seriously.