I was in game all day (4 1/2 hours) today answering peoples questions in vent.

The first thing I did when I logged in (granted I was lucky to be one of the first) was to run as far away as possible after the tutorial and get into another grid.

I then went about taking notes on vendors/trainers and costs of everything.

I then killed a couple of spiders outside of the town I bound to.

I then took tools and harvested 1 of each node to completion and took notes as to drops.


So far I can say this:
DF2 is not as different as you think. The only exception is that the role system is involved. You will still be grinding a shit ton to purchase/upgrade skills.

Skills upgrade fairly quick but base stats are similar gain to DF1 which is pretty crappy thus far. It will be easy to just stick to one role for those that are casual players but you will have to level each skill in each role in order to be 100% combat effective over time.

I grade these based on skill lists and metagame.
Warrior: Decent.
Once base stats rise and the skills did not look all that impressive. Like warriors in all games they will be good for lower end camp smashing and rushing fixed positions in objective based PvP. Very reliant on gear in all slots.

Skirmisher: Good.
This seems a solid choice right now with a lot of utility and range as well as some close quarter abilites. This will be a mass start up selection for sure as you will be able to kill lower end mobs faster with less downtime and increase your farm. I think this will be a solid choice for open field PvP as you can hit from range, are very mobile and can take a few hits if someone gets in your face thanks to the medium armor.

Elementalist: Best.
History tells us that the best defense is not getting hit. With the abilities that I found on the trainers this will be the late game sure choice of most PK's as regs will be cheaper and easier to come by then top end gear which is needed by other classes to be considered real threats on the field.

The radial system is a far cry better than DF1 but will still pose a problem to those that don't have quick fingers.

If the target locking function actually starts to work that would be interesting. (I believe this allows you to LOCK on a target to monitor its health, not auto lock to target for attacks and abilities.)

The vendor menus and inventory system is total crap in my opinion even though it is better than the original.

Mount spawning is essentially the same from what I can gather and is still a terrible system.

No more enchanting which I think is good because it will combine the elements into straight crafting and will be more like the UO system.

Archery (granted this is just at the beginning and I have only had one bow) was done opposite of every shooter you have ever played. The toon holds the bow in the right hand and draws with the left. This screwed me up immensely as it cuts off the most important viewable areas of the screen and makes archery fairly rough to get used to.

The camera change style is interesting I suppose but nothing to poop your pants over. 1st person range is still the way to go with 3rd person melee as king. I really only think the 3rd person shooting will be useful to those that have a hard time with map awareness as it increases your lateral visual range slightly. With archery looking over the right shoulder while shooting left handed really tripped me out.

Map: The map now has toggle switches that show you everything. You can see where every bank, bindstone, town, cities are and this is a good change.. You can also activate the option to see where every MOB CAMP is and I think that is fairly crappy as it will give away an aspect of exploration and will turn the camp skirmishing PvP into fighting in phone booths with each camping being its own little battle area and after some game time people will have the best routes to run and which directions/terrain to attack from.

The knocked down system is a really nice edition as unlike DF1 if you are incapacitated and not finished you will eventually pop back up. So overkill is needed in PvP and by mobs dealing massive damage or persistent aggro to kill you. My concern is that when you pop back up you have the invuln shield. Granted any action you take other than moving removes the shield I still see this as being exploitable later on and a massive gimp area in small scale PvP. (You down a guy but can't finish him, he pops back up and gets free heals from an ally while you can't do anything about it.)

All in all I give DF2 a "D" and am not very excited about it overall.

[Linked Image from nodiatis.com]