The KGB Oracle Forums KGB National Announcements, News, and Help The KGB Sentinel Tasos addresses questions from Alliance Leaders

Its a good read:

MMORPG.COM Tasos Interview

all I got out of that was..

"Yes, yes we are working on it."

No actual information of worth given, these are blanket statements every game company makes when there are issues. Plus there was no mention of a NA server or release.

Where to even start with this giant turd...



Danielson, show me deflect the question...




Like where the hell are the NPC guards and zap towers that actually work as intended. By that I mean, if your red and not on "ally" status = zapped. As soon as you attack a member of ANY KGB ALLY in the city, and your not "Allied" or unguilded you immediately get targeted by the zap towers, no matter what your allignment.

Pretty much, business as usual from Tasos SaladTosser. General statements with open ended possibility for any type of action item resolution so no matter what you do you can say you addressed the problem.

They got the gates in pretty quickly. That's pretty unusual for a new game, especially an indie one.

I wish I could read the whole thing here at work, but they blocked mmorpg.com, the bastards.

FOR NETHERVOID:

Darkfall's Tasos Responds to Leader Issues
Recently, MMORPG.com blogger Paragus interviewed six alliance leaders in Aventurine's Darkfall. Each of them was asked: "What do you think are Darkfall's biggest issues right now?" Today, Aventurine's Tasos Flambouras responds to each issue.


MMORPG.com:

King Manus of the Hyperion Alliance had an issue with the lack of doors on city gates and cities in general. He complained that the ability of enemy players to come in through the gates or over the walls from elevated terrain is hampering enjoyment of the game's raid and siege mechanics.


Tasos Flambouras:

This has been fixed already by adding gates to cities. We also added guard towers to clan cities. We're working on fixing the few miscellaneous bugs with walls and access points to cities. So this issue has been addressed and will continue to be addressed.


MMORPG.com:

King Manus of the Hyperion Alliance also made mention of the amount of time that it takes the clan tab to load, feeling that the length of time it takes makes clan management "a
chore".


Tasos Flambouras:

This is being worked on as we speak in-game, but you'll be able to take care of clan administration outside the game as well. We're going to add this functionality in the next few patches.


MMORPG.com:

King Manus of the Hyperion Alliance complains that players being able to stand on the heads of other players negates the possibilities of battle lines, shield walls and the like.


Tasos Flambouras:

Standing on the heads of other players isn't very realistic, it's true, but neither is magic.

I will disagree strongly that battle lines are negated. We're seeing battle lines being used very effectively. Clans adapt and tactics evolve with what the players are able to do. This is the first MMORPG that we know about that formations are effective in combat, and where smaller, well organized groups can destroy much larger ones.

If a game mechanic gets in the way of a standard formation, then you have the freedom to modify your formation to deal with it.


MMORPG.com:

Lord Gluttony of the Coalition of the Chillin complained that "crashing sucks".


Tasos Flambouras:

Yes it does suck. We're addressing the client crashes some players have been experiencing, most have been fixed but it's time consuming to get to the bottom of all causes of client crashing since this exists at the user level. In our current patch we've addressed the virtual address crashes. As for the server going down while there are sieges in progress, we are modifying the siege mechanics to address this problem. We already made it so mounts and rafts remain in the game.

All these are high priority issues with us and we're heavily invested in solving every one of these cases.


MMORPG.com:

Yomm Hakine of the DUSK Alliance noted that Cheating and Exploits were issues with the game.


Tasos Flambouras:

This is another high priority issue with us.

I'm going to differentiate between macroing, exploiting gameplay mechanics, and using 3rd party programs to cheat with.

We are fixing any gameplay mechanics that can be exploited as fast as we can find them. Every patch has fixes for things that we've discovered since the last one. About macroing, we've taken many serious steps to curbing its use and making it less effective. We will continue doing so and have many more solutions waiting to be deployed.

Now about using 3rd party programs to cheat with: Cheating is an issue with every multiplayer game from Counterstrike to World of Warcraft. Because of Darkfall being a highly competitive game, any hint of exploitation causes quite a stir making it seem worse than it actually is. The truth is that this is not a big issue in Darkfall but we're treating it as one.

We've taken measures to detect and permanently ban anyone using 3rd party programs to cheat in the game. We're also working on many levels to address the problem at the source, from pursuing action against the makers of these programs in cooperation with other game developers, to rendering the 3rd party programs ineffective in our game, to detecting and banning the exploiters.

Don't mistake my saying that this is not a big issue, with a lack of willingness on our part to react. We have dedicated and continue to dedicate serious resources to this until it becomes a non-issue. I'll explain however what I mean:

First, almost every cheater we've banned seems to have created a lot of characters, some accounts more than 50. They delete and create new characters many times a day thinking this will confuse detection. So the same account can be reported dozens of times under different names making it seem like there are a lot more people cheating than there actually are.

It's very often that we see reports about specific players using exploits, and them being used over and over as examples to show how exploits are rampant in the game, and yet we know that these particular guys have already been banned. They are referenced for weeks though to illustrate how rampant cheating is in Darkfall. We don't like the idea of a hall of shame for our players however.

We take reports about cheaters very seriously, but please keep in mind that most of complaining is highly exaggerated, even bogus, and a lot of it is coming from the people making and promoting these programs, from players who are banned already, by players who are using the cheats, by people with an agenda, by people who aren't even in the game, and others who are just jumping on the bandwagon.

Most player reports of cheaters are about players who are not actually cheating. Our own GMs get reported very often if that's an indication. People that lose fights, in the heat of the moment often assume their opponent wasn't fighting fair. Very good players are often accused of using hacks.

Even with all the mistaken reports of people exploiting and the multiple characters per account, there are actually few names reported, and few screenshots or videos of people cheating. If cheating was rampant then we would expect to see reports with specific player names everywhere. It's all really about perception.

And who are the people that use these exploits anyway? We understand that any encounter with an exploiter is annoying and frustrating but are these people actually impacting the server? Are they a factor? You'd think they would be if it was widespread but this is not the case.

All the top players and clans on the server are there without having to resort to cheating. In assessing the significance of cheating in Darkfall, this fact speaks for itself. We won't rest though until the players feel comfortable about these facts too.


MMORPG.com:

Throne Rage of the Stasis Alliance said, "Lack of varied and meaningful ingame political options, a credible list of city siege features that actually mirror what happens ingame and lack of server optimization for massive siege warfare."


Tasos Flambouras:

Politics is a process where groups of people make decisions. Hard-coding this should be necessary only if your game has limited interaction options. Darkfall is highly political due to the level of interaction and freedom it allows, and because of the sheer number of players it supports in one world. We understand what Throne Rage is saying here however, and we're trying to find a good implementation of political and diplomatic options that won't stifle what's already occurring naturally. We're learning along with the players what's possible in the game. The same goes with the city siege features. We're always working on the mechanics and continuously trying to find if there's a better way. Expect to see major improvements wherever these are possible.

About massive battles, we don't know of another game that gets even close to supporting the size of battles Darkfall is supporting. We've said before that Darkfall's small skirmishes are considered massive battles in other games. Several hundred players on each side are an everyday occurrence, and we recently had over 2 thousand players fighting in the same area. Continuing to optimize performance for massive battles is one of our first priorities. This is what Darkfall is all about, and there will be major improvements in this field as well.


MMORPG.com:

Gordric Hirsh of the Yssam Alliance worries that 6 hours for a siege isn't a sustainable timeframe for moderately busy people.


Tasos Flambouras:

We agree with Gordric, and we're working on improving the siege mechanics so this is no longer such an issue.


MMORPG.com:

Gordric Hirsh of the Yssam Alliance said that there were still a few advertised features that weren't in-game yet.


Tasos Flambouras:

We're adding features to the game in every weekly patch, and we have a long prioritized list of features to be added, most of which haven't been advertised.


MMORPG.com:

Gordric Hirsh of the Yssam Alliance complained that "the ordering process has been terrible", which is splitting clans whose members are still attempting to purchase the game.


Tasos Flambouras:

Well this is of course true, but things are improving every day. This is a temporary problem and it stems from the demand. Consider this: Theirs is no "buy Darkfall" link. It's all happening by word of mouth and still the demand is overwhelming. We're opening up the shop every now and then and thousands of copies are bought up in a matter of minutes. Our first priority is to serve the players who are in the game, making sure they're having a good experience. This is why there are no queues to get into the game anymore, why we're not selling this game 24/7, and why we're just not throwing up servers in a hurry just to meet the demand - and we won't until we're ready to give good service. We're working non-stop on getting our capacity up, to get new servers up and on improving conditions in the existing ones.

This issue will be a thing of the past soon, and what's going to be left is an excellent game and an excellent user experience.

So the joke of paid beta is true?

After reading this, and not playing since beta stopped, Thats what it sounds like.

Yadda Yadda Yadda. I know games have bugs and what not but from all the bitching I have read it reminds me of AOC.
Please say it aint so.








At least with AOC you could buy the game on a working mans schedule.

Every new release is loaded down with bitching. Even if jesus made a game called Heaven Online, there'd be people whining because he didn't add some feature from like Exodus 4:3. Jesus would be like 'Dudes, that was a LONG time ago during the old testament, before I was even born!' And they'd be like 'We don't give a crap, Jesus. We just like to bitch!'

If I decided not to play any games because there was a part of the game that pissed me off or it wasn't totally all the way ISO SOX certified perfect, I'd not be playing any games at all. Even the holy grail, UO.

You should have seen UO when it released. lol Talk about a paid beta.
You should have seen EQ when it released. lol Talk about a paid beta.
You should have seen SB when it released. lol Talk about a paid beta.
You should have seen SWG when it released. lol Talk about a paid beta.
You should have seen...

... I think I see a pattern.

Manage your expectations. There are MANY things that work great, which make Darkfall fun. There are a few things that are busted. Don't let the few things ruin everything else. Same advice with women/men in relationships.

Lets not kid ourselves, SB was paid alpha; and Darkfall is fun, but the fact that a large portion of the community can't even get the game is utter nonsense.

Sure there's problems with every release, but only Dark and Light rivals Darkfall in account management problems (or lack of accounts), and that's saying a lot.

I just hope they'd just speak to us like we're not idiots, being vague and crap. If they don't want to say it, why not just say that.

First off I'd have to agree with Nether, I have never seen a game release that truely is out of second phase beta, the communities always quickly forget that aspect, even the god almighty world of warcraft had some issues.

Secondly yes it comes down to communitcation, and action, both of which design studios always feel is beneath them, and that the community has no need to be privy to or have anything to do with. The God Complex as I like to call it happens all the time with design studios, because of course what could people who are actually playing the game know that they don't.

Third and most importantly, this is the best quote I have ever read, and I will be taking that as a sig. rofl

Yep I covered all that with yadda yadda yadda.

The simple fact that I can not come home from work and buy the game shows they were not ready to release.

I will insert more yadda yadda yadda's for the guys who defend stupid.