Beta Report 1- Tester First Impressions

Tasos
Darkfall Developer

Join Date: Jan 2003 Beta Report 1- Tester First Impressions

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Before the next wave of testers we thought it would be a good idea to post a representative sample of quotes from the current testers taken from an unsolicited first impressions thread in the beta forums. In doing so we cooperated with the testers in order to get a good balance of the good and the bad. I posted this update in the beta forums last night, and asked for help in order to make it a fair assessment of the experience so far. Everyone had the opportunity to pitch in and they seem to agree that the resulting preview accurately represents the sentiment of the testers.

Having said that, I have to mention that our tester sample so far is diverse. The testers range from our biggest fans to our biggest critics, and from near “carebears” to the most hardcore players out there.

Most of these comments are first reactions. Many of these have changed over the course, mostly for the better. There are many topics that haven’t been addressed enough to get a good sample of quotes on. We’ll post more when we feel we have a good balance of feedback. We’re also asking for feedback on specific topics to be used in subsequent updates. The lack of comments on some topics are due to the fact that the players are in the starting phases of their characters, and we wipe often so they haven't been able to advance enough to test advanced options. This is about to change soon.

These quotes are completely unedited so please make allowances for grammatical and spelling errors. I will be posting these by category one after the other under this post.

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Yesterday, 11:43 AM
Tasos
Darkfall Developer

Join Date: Jan 2003

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Overall Impressions:

Overall we’ve been getting very good feedback about the game, we were hard pressed to find anything negative and actually had to dig for it and to ask a few times for something more critical.

“i am testing for 3-4 Days now and have seen just a minimum of all the world has to offer, but i must give you compliments about the design... i tried out most starting Areas, and i find they are really great done (maybe Mirdain needs a bit of pimping so it fits adequately to the lore-part) and i find the surrounding area are all varied and give a good feeling of a "real world".

“I love the sandbox feel of the game. I can chop a tree for wood, skin a tombstone (doesn't feel right), mine a rock, and whack some weeds for herbs and feel like I'm in constant danger running around in the countryside doing so.”

“So far the game exceeds my expectations. I didn't think so much would make it in and it would be this stable of a client.”

“I'm very excited by what I've seen so far, and can't wait to see more and play more.”

“archery is really well done. I just wish there was a way to abort my shots. The graphics are nice and immersive, and that musical score is top notch. I'm incredibly shocked that the AI is as good as it is.”

“Anyway the servers are up and I'll go back in to play - amazing game! I really love what I've seen so far”
“I've followed the game for a while, and I'm glad to say it was not in vain. It's not vaporware or anything like that. It really stands out as a quality game, and even after just a few hours, the addiction is already starting to get me.”

“All in all its hard for me to judge Darkfall even in the slightest right now, the content is there, it just needs to be enabled/turned on and switched out of debug mode for me to get a real feel for it, there is a lot of various things I can comment on all day long as well, i've done this type of thing before with various server emulation builds etc for previous mmo's before, so having this little content activated/turned right now is nothing new to me, I want to help make Darkfall a huge success and cover the entire potential player base.”

“I have played MMO's for 10 years, there have been games I liked and games I did not. I played them because of the friends I made and kept along the way. Together we tried several games but although some were fun we always felt like interlopers, playing in a game that was made for others and that those like us were an afterthought.
As I wound up my first session, I realized today I was no longer a trespasser, today I was home.”

"Over all I'm having fun as I learn this game. This is no easy hit "A" and go get a coke or something. You do this even with those goblin souts you are dead big time!!"

“This game is extremely solid, and just needs polish. They've done all of the fundamentals right, and the remaining problems are things like UI, tweaking AI, hardware compatibility issues, etc.”

“Today I found some excuses why I needed to work from home instead of heading right into the office. Thanks for shutting the server down earlier today because I'm sure that DF was hurting my productivity. I'll probably have the same issue tomorrow though. I've never taken a vacation day or sick day for a game, but I can see how I might think about it for DF.”

“The biggest fear out there (and a sentiment shared by most of my guild mates) is that Darkfall has been in development for too long and has promised too much to be realized. Well, after my first weekend in game I honestly feel that your are onto something here in regards to the overall premise, that adequate resources are being devoted to the development, and that developer interaction and response bodes well for the future.”

Next: The World - Graphics - Technology

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Yesterday, 12:00 PM
Tasos
Darkfall Developer

Join Date: Jan 2003

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The World-Graphics-Technology

The consensus about the graphics is that they’re much better than expected, something we’ve been saying all along. The game has been very stable and smooth overall, even in the full debug mode it’s running in. We’re experiencing really good gameplay from all over the world, even though our beta servers are in Germany, we’ve had no problems reported by testers in Western N. America, or in the Far East.

"The Client is astonishingly stable (except for the Crashes while changing resolutions/graphic settings - though this has got alot better since the last patches too.”

“The meticulously detailed world map is as huge as promised and feels so much more 3-dimensional than past MMORPG's that relied on height mapping. The overpasses, caves, chasms and crags, they add huge amounts of atmosphere to the environment.”

“Only testing for a couple of hours now, but i just have to say, everything looks just so detailed... i am not really into gfx, but i am really amazed on all the things i've seen so far... very impressive...”

“I walked from Chopping Necks (westernmost Ork starter town) to the coast to the east over 2 or 3 hours and NOT ONCE was I bored with repetitive landscape. There is almost always a settlement of goblins, freaky bird-men, hivekin, or something going on, and it's on all sides of you. I swam to an island off the coast, then to a second island. In total, the trip took about 4-5 hours one-way. I explored what looked like ~3% of the total map. Do the math! The world is gigantic!”

“Build 50 is extremely stable. I haven't crashed once and I've been playing a lot of hours. I have found very few bugs.”

“The amount of scaling possible with the graphics is genius. You have more options than ever and they all make sense. You don't have to have an enthusiast-level rig to enjoy df.”

“From the moment of logging in I was in awe. The world is simply amazing and one cannot describe the intricacies and details of the vast world of Agon. I have never been a visually captivated gamer but I can't help but stop to admire the craftsmanship that formed this virtual world.”

“The graphics scale pretty well apparently. The game looks fine. They need to do some optimization, but everything is running in debug mode and I get 60-90 FPS.”

“The world is amazing, I must say. I've only been around the Alfar parts so far - pure awesomesauce there - and every part there feels unique.
I walked around fighting some goblins near one of the starting zones and looked up and thought that the sky looked abit strange, but then realized that it was not the sky that I was looking at, I were inside the mountain and I was looking at a huge cliff that were hanging over me. So you can see that they have spent alot of work shaping the world, which is again, pure awesomesauce.
Climbing mountains feels really cool as well. To stand up there looking down at the world and you get the feeling that you can almost touch the sky.
I've only been around the Alfar parts, but never get bored exploring. The world really is huge, when you look at how long it took to walk from A to B on the map.”

“I wont nit pick for silly things but the game it self ran very smooth I was running at 120-150 ping to the European servers. I only ran across one lag spot as I was running around the land. I love seeing the skill gain system working just from using abilities, it's been to long to see that. I have a high end system but I run on an 8800GT (waiting for release to get my new card) and it still ran smooth.”

“I think there should be more about the quality of the graphics as that was one of the major criticisms made by your detractors. After playing, I honestly think you guys managed to make fools out of them.”

“The client is very stable, haven't had a single crash. The worldbuilding is very good indeed (as other's have noted as well). It looks and feels believable as a world filled with strange creatures, and that you can go wherever you want is really fun.”

“Performance is better than I would have ever imagined on my machine.”

“The graphics are strange in some places and absolutely superb in others. Some stuff like rocks, gardens and books just blew me away with the detail and beauty. Some rocks looked like a photograph while others had some pretty sharp edges to them and didn't look very real. Note that I have not seen much of the world and it is strictly limited to the dwarven starting area.”

“Main thing that has impressed me so far is the quality of the worldbuilding. The people responsible for that really outdid themselves and should be proud of their work. It is sheer delight to go striking out in a random direction and seeing what you can see; both overall settings and nuanced details are superb.”

“Have u ever stop playing, sit back and admire the sunrise or the sunset in ANY other MMO? Darkfall was my first...
Yes the graphics ARE that good”

“Every bit of the music I've heard so far fits the setting it's in, especially the Alfar starting areas and Shoal itself. It's not the typical fantasy MMO style tunes that I had expected but more eerie and dark, sometimes hollow feeling. Even the weird almost digital/ambient-industrial sounding splash screen music is well done and gets you in just the right mood to play.
And the sound effects are everything they should be, from the blocking of a wooden shield, the tinking of metal on metal, the character's vocal grunts and the spattering of blood... on everything. Even when I don't have arrows sticking out of me already, I can tell something is shooting at me and usually from which direction, when I hear the whizzing of an arrow fly past my head.”

“Client is stable and amazing, i've been playing since the MUD/"The Realm"/
UO 97 before T2A (The Second Age) and i've seen bad clients and good clients, ive seen non-stop .exe crashes and memory leaks (shadowbane.exe anyone? lovely memory leak that took over 6+ months to address) to amazing stability (darkfall client) WoW was another well done and stable client, even with all the add-ons that could be attached to the GUI, I also beta tested both WoW and Warhammer, my experience with warhammer was less than satisfying and there graphics aren't as good as people claim they are because for the graphics I receive compared to the performance I
get, to me indicates they did not optimize their graphics/polygons/etc. In closing the Darkfall client does not seem to have any noticeable memory leaks, however cluster loads can seem completely random at times, however are short, 5-15 seconds range = great.”

"The world is massive feeling and as I looked up at the sky I saw the sun moving. The shadows drew closer to me from a tower up on a hillside and I was looking at how the shadow changed as the sun moved. Then I got annihilated by a pack of goblins scouts because I was paying too much attention to the wrong parts of my surroundings."

“I can't give enough credit to the art direction. Everywhere you go, you get a pretty clear "Darkfall" ambience that is truly unique and immersive. There is a lot of attention to detail and you can tell that there was a lot of love put into some of the design. The quality of graphics and animation have a little inconsistency, but overall there is a "wow" factor that I never expected from an MMO that gives you free range over everything. Just watching the sun/moon phases takes up way too much of my time. I never thought I'd be sitting in the swamps of Morak and commenting on the beauty of the sun eclipsing as it sets under a misty horizon.”

Next: AI

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Yesterday, 12:10 PM
Tasos
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Join Date: Jan 2003

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AI

The AI has been reported very tough, even the newbie AI. When they’re very damaged they flee and are hard to catch up to. We’ve done some tweaking and as the players familiarize themselves with the game more, they seem to be enjoying the experience. Again these are not your run of the mill MMOG AI.

“The AI on the goblin scouts surprised me. They kept running from me when they were low on health and peppered me with arrows until I got exhausted from chasing them and died miserably.”

"Those little bastards are the bane of my existence with their strafing. I have never wanted to squash an NPC as bad as that before. I love it."

“Did some goblin hunting with [censored], explored for a bit and stumbled across a large cave system where we eventually found a nest of kobolds (ugly bastards). Eventually they got the better of us though.”

“The first mobs I found in dwarf area were hitting from extreme range and then did special attacks that were stamina draining. It was rather brutal for a starting area and I died several times to repeat the 5 minute run.”

“"When I engage a goblin in melee and he starts to run I quickly get my staff and nuke him from a distance, then when he is down I sprint to his buddies to engage them aswell. Its not easy but then again taking down 3-4 humanoid opponents at once 1 day from character creation should not be."

“Also the monster pathing is in need of tweaking and collisions of PCs and NPCs with environment or each other results in "bouncing" quite a bit.”

“The AI is very cool, and just needs some tweaking. You can get it trapped trying to run away from you in some cases, for example. Otherwise it presents a big challenge. One guy trying to take on 4 goblins is not simple - the goblins will melee you and then sprint away to kite you around while the other ones shoot you, and the second you go for them instead, the one that was running will pull out its own bow...”

“Intelligent AI? This is something I've not experienced until entering Df. It's as if fighting the mobs mirrored fighting other players. They actually work together attempting to kill you rather then serving as your training material.”

“Also, with regard to the AI. I found myself dumbfounded when fighting Ork Beastmasters who are mainly magic users in combat. I sat there staring at this Ork who was staring at me, waiting for me to fire another mana missile at it, anticipating where I was going to shoot and then firing back at me and hitting me! I was sure a dev had jumped into the body of the Ork and was playing a joke. It's like nothing I've played in an MMO.”

“I can take out goblins pretty easily by meleeing them until they run, and then playing LOS games using bow/magic. The spell is AE so shooting it at their feet works best. Arrows travel really fast and you should have no trouble hitting them most of the time when they're shooting at you too. Arrows don't really do enough damage though.”

“It's extremely entertaining to fight 2 or 3 goblins at once. Swings of my sword hit two or three at the same time, and part of the time I get to watch them kill each other from errant swings. Great stuff.”

“BTW [censored] got his freaking head chopped off by an Ork protector. I laughed so hard it hurt. Completely awesome though.”

“Starting in the game is rough, unlike most MMos where things are handed out to you on a plate at the beginning you need to work to get somewhere. The work you have to do in Darkfall is killing the newbie mobs in order to get resources to start off your in-game career, however, unlike other MMos these mobs aren't a joke. By the time you kill your first one you will probably be smiling to see the bastard dead infront of you and even happier if you actually get to loots the mobs corpse instead of being chased off by its friends.”

"The monsters are tough. I was looking for a challenge, but these things are just too damn smart."

“AI is great, it provides a challenge, but im no idiot, the AI knows exactly where my cursor is pointing and it zigzags and responds to it lighting fast, im a old time quake 3 player, predicting movement and using
splash damage was a requisite to becoming a great quake 3 player, these mobs currently put the highest level of quake 3 bots (nightmare bots) to shame, they respond much too quickly to cursor (aim) position for ranged attacks, even utilizing splash/aiming at feet technique. Another AI behavior i'd like to address is...are mobs really ALL supposed to have range abilities? I'm sorry, that's silly, yes it cuts down on players just messing up melee specific mobs with range/magic, but its a tad bit repetitive when mobs start hitting you from 200 yards away, if ogres have the ability to use bows, they should realistically drop a [heavy] type bow or at least a different type of bow. Others may agree with the fact that all mobs have access to ranged abilities, but I may just be a different type of person, I know I won't be the only person that disagrees with ogres hitting me with arrows, boulders or rocks? Sure, but it comes down to always being hit from 200+ yards off by every monster under the sun, regardless of size, being humanoid, etc...”

“The goblins seems to have been toned down considerably and I can farm them VERY easy now with my starter sword. That is the way it feels for me atleast. I used to get 1 goblin hitting me with a sword while 2 or 3 of his pals walked in a half circle around me hitting me with arrows. Now I just kick their asses. Have I gotten that much better since last time I played or have they been toned down alot?”

“For anyone who has kited mobs in other MMOs... Goblins are a very cruel payback.”

“The thing I hope will change the most is mob spawns and town npc's. The world is beautiful but it feels like a deserted wasteland for the most part. I understand that this is only beta so I will not comment on this more for now in hope that it is one of the things that are about to change.”

“I do very much love the game so far but my other huge gripe is with the AI strafing and running around like lunatics. I understand there is supposed to be more of a challenge then just standing toe to toe (or twenty feet away with bows pointed at each other) but the way the mobs run/jump/strafe reminds me more of a Quake Deathmatch then a serious role playing game even if it is a roleplaying game with heavy FPS elements.”

“The AI on the goblins in the newbie areas definitely needs to be toned down. I would even send out patrols of one or two goblins farther away from the spawn area with the great A.I. But having 2-3 linked and calling in even more so quickly as it is now makes soloing virtually impossible. Unless you're really really good which new players aren't. In other words, the AI in the newbie areas is TOO good. I know it is good training, but I've been getting my butt handed to me all day and as a new player it would be very frustrating.”

"There was a good dialogue about this in global chat last night. The consensus was the AI for noobie mobs (the first ones you encounter after creating a character) are just way to difficult. There needs to be a gradual progression of difficulty in the game to allow new players to adapt to the interface and learn the combat mechanics. Where are the bunnies and deer and cows of UO? Or training dummies? Or if goblins are intended to be the first mobs then they need to be toned down considerably."

Next: Controls - Gameplay
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Yesterday, 12:25 PM
Tasos
Darkfall Developer

Join Date: Jan 2003

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Controls

We started out the beta without any instructions whatsoever. This was done to assess the intuitiveness of the game. Darkfall isn’t like your average MMOG. There is a lot you can do in it and an unprecedented level of control. As such, you have a lot more controls and UI feedback you need to navigate. It has to be said that you can remap everything to your liking, and you can move everything around and set-up transparency on all the GUI elements. While there’s quite a lot of tweaking to be done, we’ve found that after the initial shock, the GUI and controls works well for the players.

It seems that the people having most trouble with the lack of documentation are players of other MMOG games. Those who play FPS games have reported fewer problems with the GUI and controls. However this is the area where we had the most criticism, so we’re looking at ways of improving the understanding for the new player.

“My initial impressions so far are not very favorable based on the newbie experience. Looking beyond superficial aspects such as non-functional character creation options, the interface is extremely non-intuitive and cumbersome. It took quite some time to learn the basic combat process, namely having to unsheathe before being able to attack.”

"I was very interested in checking out the keybindings available for the game, but then I saw this nasty little pop-up say "Don't push this button again". I just closed it and pretend the button doesn't exist any more."

“It's a unique experience, albeit frustrating none-the-less even after figuring
out how to properly use things such as "rest" "looting a monster"sheathe/unsheathe" "attach/detach weapon/item", i'll be honest, even after learning it, frustrating and clunky is the only way I can express my feelings in regards to it, I have to watch my system messages like a hawk just to make sure i've attached/detached a weapon from my hands before I even want to try and go into a sheathe/unsheathe type stance. I can say even with how it functions right now I can handle 4-6 goblins at a time quickly and efficiently and loot them without needing a break, I currently am very proud of how well I can melee them down and finish them off via magic/range...which leads me to my next subject."

“I know that the interface becomes second nature after a day that you use it, but it's NOT intuitive when one first starts. For the love of God, get people to go through a mock-up of the equip/sheathe/load/fire etc. etc. when they first start, when the game goes live.”

“The UI is very different from all other games, but once you get used to it, it is excellent. There are still some minor things to work out, but the core is there. One problem for example is that you must manually unsheath your weapon before attacking, but if you press the attack key, it does not automatically unsheath your weapon, even though the user would expect that to happen.”

“I dont want to offend anyone who would rather like it all easier and more "intuitive" - i just have a different opinion ... I love the fact that this here is no Clone of whatsoever.”

"I personally like the fact that there is no "tutorial" ... first steps can be written into a handbook inside the DVD-Box.
As i entered the world of DAoC a very long time ago.. i did know nothing - and it was great learning how everything worked... what different colors on Mobs meant etc.. I would wish everyone would feel that same "pioneer" feeling again. sure.. its more comfy if you know about all the internal processes and stuff.. but in my opinion this game should last for years.. so keep the learning curve hard, and the requirements really high."

"Its a matter of personal taste, really. I prefer to manually unseathe my weapon the same way i cannot autotarget the enemy. I also like the idea the game starts hard mob-wise (its a cruel world) and, according to an "upscaled" difficulty gets even harder. Imho people that come to play darkfall dont want to see carebaring ruining hardcore aspects of the game."

"I do understand some concerns people have with the UI and the whole "equip and then use" system instead of just click to use but since it's an fps style game I don't see any alternative. Plus I am getting quite used to it and it will allow good players to shine in combat as other will be strugling to equip their staff and then ready their spell to cast it. I believe it promotes the "player skill" element very much."

"The chat and Interface is a little tough to get used to, especially without directions. At first I was wondering why everything stopped and I couldn't move after I right clicked. It would be nice if I could organize my pack and chat, look at icon descriptions etc... while I ran long distances. Or even had a mouse option for checking out the icons at the top of my screen when I get hit with a spell so I could see the description. I am completely vulnerable while I'm chatting, looting, selling, looking at options, spells, skills, etc... But that's also the beauty of it if anyone attacks me."

Next: PvP - Looting

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Yesterday, 12:37 PM
Tasos
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Join Date: Jan 2003

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PvP – Looting

We’ve been wiping characters very often so it’s still hard for the testers to dive headfirst into PvP. We expect a lot more feedback in the very near future.

"My biggest gripe at the moment is looting corpses. It's easy enough to switch between weapons during combat but I find it near impossible to quickly loot something. I have to drop out of FPS or combat mode, switch into pointy clicky mode open up the corpse, drag everything at once, pray i'm not dead yet, switch back into combat."

“Furthermore, the everchanging surroundings allow for great stealth/ambush tactics. Crouching behind an abandoned cart alongside a large road, waiting for your target to pass by and quietly landing a few arrows in their back was a very gratifying experience.”

"Seriously guys, the drag & drop looting is something that should not be touched. It *should* take awhile to loot corpses and sort through piles of things. This worked great in UO and there's no reason why it shouldn't work great in DF."

“PvP combat in this game reminds me so much of watching a sword fight in a movie where the fighters almost dance around each other looking for a weakness to strike at. There is no break and there is no breathing space. Every moment of combat contains so much movement and requires constant brainpower. You won't have time to turn away from your screen or take a phone call, even while fighting mobs.”

"As i have understood this game is not targeted to the absolute casual player that logs in now and then for 30 minutes.. In Darkfall roads are long and dangerous - and its good this way.. Looting takes time.. and its good this way... even if it bothers sometime - go buy a sack !"

“The PvP actually takes skill! I stood toe to toe with another player with equal stats, equipment, and still got owned!”

"Is looting intented to be that hard? I reply to myself "yes" since when real pvp starts looting should be hard and not automatic."

“Group PvP is going to be neat. It's already dangerous going 3v1 because the '3' side will constantly hit eachother in melee or with spells accidentally. A skilled solo player can definitely pull off some cool stuff there.”

“I love the fact that you can hear someone fighting from quite far away. The other day myself and a couple of others ran from the alfar land to the human one, which took a while btw, and we eventually found someone killing goblins when we started hearing the sounds of fighting.
Of course our attempt at ganking didn't exactly go as planned, since we didn't really have any way of slowing someone down and the one starter spell available to us does about as much damage as a ball of yarn at the newbie skill levels we had, so our target was able to escape back into a town. We did get him eventually though, when he came out to bait us and stayed for a bit too long before retreating back to safety (the npc towns have guard towers that do some damage, you can handle one tower for a while but as you go deeper in you get in range of multiple towers and the damage starts to mount up).”

“And the sound effects are everything they should be, from the blocking of a wooden shield, the tinking of metal on metal, the character's vocal grunts and the spattering of blood... on everything. Even when I don't have arrows sticking out of me already, I can tell something is shooting at me and usually from which direction, when I hear the whizzing of an arrow fly past my head.”

“Yesterday I had my friend lure somebody out of town, where the rest of us popped out of the shadows and took all his cool stuff. He couldn't see us because it was night out, and we had taken off our shiny armour. Pings from north america to the EU server are in the 150-200ms range and are very stable. Ping shouldn't make a difference until people get really good.”

“Looting is fine UO style and I don't want it to change. Yesterday as an Alfar I ran into a human town and PKed someone while getting attacked by the guard towers. I didn't have time to loot all his stuff and I didn't notice his mount figurine piled under some other stuff, so he was saved that by the cool looting system.”

“Oh, and you'll be crouching a LOT. Surviving while hunting is done by being inconspicuous. Breaking line of sight is -not- a surefire way to get rid of monsters on your tail. They'll keep coming and firing at you until they're comfortably sure you know they mean business. Currently I hate them, I hate it, I need thicker armor and hax. Or maybe I'm just going after Ogre's by myself and that's absurd to think of.”

"Yeah looting is suppose to be hard. For those of you that never played UO, this isn't anything."

“Oh a thing that is not directly linked to PvP but does affect it quite a bit is sound range. You can hear other characters jumping or fighting a mob from quite far, probably as far as you would hear it in real life and you are alerted of their presence. Sneaking up on someone will be quite hard but very rewarding too.”

“What I liked with the PVP, was that you never know what the other player might have as skills or equipment. You can sort of see it, but if he wears a robe over the armor, you have no idea until you see you're doing little damage.
The tricky thing about PVP was actually hitting the other player, when both are running/sprinting around it requires real skill or luck to keep hitting the other player repeatedly. I assume when you gain more skills it will be a different experience, but the x noobs can kill a highly skilled player story is still true.
When we'll get into clan wars, ambushes and such will really be a lot of fun. Because of how the world is made, spotting hidden players is almost impossible, because of the vegetation and such.”

Next: Crafting

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Yesterday, 12:46 PM
Tasos
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Join Date: Jan 2003

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Crafting

The testers haven’t been reporting on crafting much yet. I suppose you start delving in it after you check out the basics, so we expect more on this soon.

"Crafting is pretty neat, rudimentary and to the point. Nothing big and fancy like Vanguard, but it gets the job done without becoming a hassle."

"Did some cooking and the crafting system is alright. It's nothing new but it is straighforward and works fine, at least for the few things I crafted."

“none of us have located any leather and many of the more advanced crafting skills such as smithing and bowcraft require it even for the first few produceable items in the menus.”

"I would like to have a more clear message about resource gathering results. At the moment is says that either I failed, but it doesn’t tell me if trying again will make any difference, I succeeded, but I get nothing in my inventory and that I succeeded and get some material or whatever. Last part is ok, the other 2 need clearer messages I believe."

“Crafting made sense. It was basic and easy to get, but you could make almost everything you want. I would say it was like how crafting should be in a game.”

“Yesterday I finally got the money to start crafting arrows and bow. I really wanted to try out arrow making but was a little mad that one the items you needed was 5gp. I believe that money should never be needed to craft anything. The only time you should be ask for money might be for rent of the crafting table you are using but then you should be able to craft everything without having to spend more money. I think it’s easier and faster to just farm goblin scouts for their arrows then the time and money it would cost to make arrows.
If I sell these arrows to vendors I get 5gp which is a lost to me on time. Now true you can sell these arrows to other player for more money for the vendors sell 5 arrows for 20gp. I just have not seen at this time where or how you can sell your items. You can trade which is in game but have not seen any market options yet like in other games.
I plan to test jewelry crafting here soon but please take the gold requirement out of anything that you can craft.”

“Not sure if its a bug right now, but I've probably utilized every single gathering skill there is (Woodcutting/Fishing/Herbalism/Mining)
minus skinning, the animation for gathering for all the different types of things is great (however fishing could probably use a animation upgrade of some sort) ive only gotten most of my gathering skills to 25-30 range and for ex: fishing im able to access 8 types of item pulls right now woodcutting 2 item types, timber and risen, zzz boring) right from the get go, failure and success rate doesn't seem to vary much regardless of 1.0 skill level compared to 25.0 skill level. There's also the progress bar, very plain and boring and set in stone 10.0 seconds, maybe increase in skill level can/should decrease the time? I know a lot of this stuff is still rather specific, but if characters are being wiped on a regular basis, will we ever get the chance to acquire 75-100 skill level to see if there are in fact different types of items that can be pulled from resource nodes? Or are we supposed to have access to every type of resource on a node from the get go? A lot of this is completely subjective on if we are going to get beta phases under various types of conditions (all skills set to 100.0, 100,000 gold in everyones bags, etc)”

“Crafting so far seems fairly simple but very robust; there's nothing really new or groundbreaking here but it works and it covers a ridiculous amount of stuff. One really nice touch I appreciate here is the fact that any equipment-grade crafting acts as a gold sink - a very cunning ploy by the devs there, and one that should go a long way towards maintaining equilibrium in the in-game economy once in the long run. It all gets stamped with your name too, so pretty satisfying!”
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Yesterday, 12:50 PM
Tasos
Darkfall Developer

Join Date: Jan 2003

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Final Thoughts:

This was just posted by one of the testers, I think it gives you a good idea of what to expect, so I'm including it here:

"Oh well, on a lighter note... I went exploring the world today with a few other testers. As we traversed the landscape, I was constantly reminded of the gameplay video. Always, in the past, I've seen gameplay videos and screenshots touched up by a professional staff and given a production quality that surpasses the game experience. So I've come to be a little cynical against trusting what is more accurately "marketing propaganda" instead of genuine advertisements about a game. This wasn't the case at all in Darkfall. As we made our way through the world, the feeling of adventure and awe was just as much there... no, more pronounced than the gameplay video would have you see. If I could correlate the majesty of Darkfall in any sensible way to some one who hasn't played it, it would be to tell them "Look again at Aventurine's long gameplay video... and this time, even if it's hard to do now that you're grizzled from all the lies and deceit you've been fed by other games in the past, don't be afraid to let your imagination run wild".

Upon running to a distant castle we spotted over a frozen lake, hopping between the floating ice blocks as fast as our stubby dwarven legs would take us, it was like a book coming to life in front of me. Only in this case the book was a particular scene from the gameplay video where that very thing had played out. Something so simple as that in a video can spark the imagination. Sure, we all looked at that and said "Man, those guys in the video are going out on a cool adventure!" but is the game really going to be like that? Are you really going to be solemnly exploring the rich world with your friends at your side, without a watered down experience where you're more practically chasing down some flashing waypoint in easy-mode? Yes, you absolutely are, and every bit of back-story and reasoning you interpreted into the motives of those intrepid explorers are there as well. I guess with the current trend in gaming, the grandeur of simple things has been completely lost on much of the current generation of gamer... but I sure in the hell was impressed that I could have such a fulfilling experience from something so base as mere wanderlust.

Of course, it helped cap off the night that the location we were traveling to was just itching to dish out wholesale slaughter on anyone curious enough to take a peek. I felt like I was being shelled by artillery after some of the mobs unloaded their repertoire of spells on us. Screen shaking, firebombs exploding all around you, your friends screaming obscenities and running away... the game definitely has a tendency to abruptly take your head out of the clouds and grind your face into the dirt with its heel on the back of your head with no warning at all. And this was just the PvE! PvE!"

We'll follow up with more of these reports as we progress with beta
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Last edited by Tasos; Yesterday at 03:02 PM..