Darkfall Devs: Eurogamer Sucks

[TsunamiWombat]

What!? Some random internet review site owned by corporate hosebeasts is lying do us!? THIS IS SHOCKING! RIOT! RIOT!

MMO reviews should take at least 1 month of gameplay to be accepted.

Remember the Age of Conan fiasco... the reviews were great at the beginning because the lazy rewviewrs just have played in the NOOB island. After that inicial zone the game was a complete garbage.

An interesting and poignant example of how the inverse of this situation can be a bad thing.

While fowl play on the part of the reviewer may be at hand, most of the review is pretty much spot on.

Darkfall is broken and shouldn't have been released in its current state. Tasos also is very quick to bash anyone that says a negative word about the game.

To give you an idea of how bad the state of the game was at launch, Vanguard launched in better shape.

I'm curious now. What exactly IS this game like?

 

[Phyleron]

I'm curious now. What exactly IS this game like?

Having actually played the game for more than 2 hours, I can address most of the inaccuracies in the Eurogamer review and give you an idea of what it is actually like. Considering the number of mistakes and falsehoods in the review, it is tantamount to slander. I wouldn't have bothered with such a long post if this review wasn't so absurd that it's almost unbelievable - I consider it to be equivalent to IGN posting a /b/ thread from 4chan as a professional review (it's okay if you didn't understand that comment). There are aspect of Darkfall that need work, but the Eurogamer review has no connection at all to the actual game.

-- Response to Eurogamer Review --

Unbelievably, to do anything that involves any interaction at all, you have to stop still - this includes any and all inventory management, looting, chatting - anything interactive.

1. You can move while doing chatting and inventory management. Corpses and NPCs are stationary, so you have to stop anyway for interacting.

you open your bag, and physically drag the items from one pouch to the other. There are no inventory 'blocks,' and thus your inventory quickly becomes a horrid mess of vague icons left on top of each other.

2. Items are managed UO-style. Inventory management is quite easy if you actually place items instead of randomly throwing them in, and this style allows you to keep a backpack organized even with hundreds of items in it, an impossible feat with block-style inventory.

This gets particularly thrilling when you ? try to loot something from a corpse in a particularly dangerous area

Comment: Does it not seem obvious that it should be dangerous to loot a corpse while in combat or in a *dangerous* area?

You have a crosshair, and your hits are dependent on whether or not this crosses the enemy at any given time - like an FPS, except with little to no reference point

3. All melee weapons have a swing arc that is quite obvious, especially since melee is done in third-person (no crosshair). Only archery and magic use the crosshair, and both hit based on projectile path (arrows arc, magic moves slower).

considering how slow and floaty the controls tend to be

4. This is only true if you have mouse smoothing enabled and set to a high level ? the vast majority of players simply turn off mouse smoothing, which gives very quick and responsive controls.

The difference in feedback between a sword hitting or missing is negligible

5. Not only do hits make impact noises, blood splashes, and enemy grunts, but you can also enable "hit sounds", which gives a very distinct sound on every successful hit with any weapon.

Judging the distance that one needs to be at to fight a foe is largely guesswork

6. Not only is the range visually apparent, but it is uniform across every weapon within a weapon type, so you only need to learn the range once for a weapon type. (i.e. every Great Sword has the same range).

your combat skills affect how often you actually connect

7. Hitting opponents is 100% player based. Combat skills only affect how much damage you deal (or take) on successful hits.

choice of changing weapon (a ten-second operation - five if you're particularly nimble

8. Most players just put their weapons of choice on their hotbars, so you can change weapons, use potions, eat food, etc. by pressing 1-9. The actual switch time is about 300 milliseconds.

And so hit those bloody [goblins] I did, not enjoying one second of it.

9. It may not have been clear to the reviewer, but the player was clearly commenting on him, as a player, having very poor aim. Successful hits is entirely based on the player, and I have often sent newbies that I am training to do PVE as practice for aiming and combat before attempting PVP.

old-school EverQuest - which was actually graphically superior

10. I consider the graphics on Darkfall to be quite impressive, especially the landscapes and character detail. However, it is optimized for higher resolutions ? I play at 1680x1050. The reviewer was clearly playing on what I would term ?a shitty resolution for anything?.

random placement of flora with little in the way of lore to tie it together

11. Resources have clear patterns based on terrain types and regions, though I'm not sure why he expects a backstory for trees. Darkfall has quite a bit of lore, and many players stick to the lore surprisingly closely. (i.e. there's quite a lot of anti-Dwarf and anti-Human sentiment on the Race Alliance for Mahirim and Orks, even though quite a few clans are All-Races, and we often crack jokes about the enemy races).

It may also be tied to the fact that there's very little to see

12. There's an enormous amount of stuff to see. It probably would have helped the reviewer to actually open his map or check the Sinister wiki map (which virtually every player uses). It also sounds like the reviewer was walking the whole time (and didn't use either sprint or a mount, which everyone uses for long distance travel).

On one such jaunt, I walked for around six minutes

13. The game map is quite large. Six minutes walking is a negligible distance. Even mounted, the central continent takes over an hour to cross.

Players can build "camps" and "towns", and fight each other in "epic" wars.

14. Guilds can own and build up Hamlets or Cities (which takes a huge amount of work, but has huge benefits). There are no ?camps? or ?towns? as he suggests. Also, there most definitely is an epic war going on right now, a World War of sorts involving several thousand players as the COTC, DUSK, SB, and Death Alliances are fighting against the Hyperion alliance. Over a hundred separate guilds are involved in this war, and dozens more are indirectly involved. I have personally been to Sieges involving hundreds of players, and when you're riding in to assault the enemy with 80 mounted warriors, it definitely feels pretty epic.

You see, anyone can kill anyone.

15. Races that are at war with one another can kill each other freely (as the Mahirim apparently killed him, a Dwarf). Players within the same Race Alliance can only afford to kill 1 friendly without going Red, which makes them hostile to all Race-aligned NPC cities and KOS for everyone of their Race Alliance. Most clan alliances don't allow killing of allied members, either, but any player should still be considered a potential hostile. Most of the random PKs are simply looking for easy loot against newbies, and clans tend to ignore them. Clans do often raid each other, though, which much more serious fighting.

The quests are repetitive kill-X-of-Y monstrosities

16. The starter quests (the only quests) are very clearly meant to teach newbies how to play. It is very unusual for anyone to do the starter quests more than once. Most people just ignore them. Quests are not at all the focus of Darkfall.

The world is bland in the extreme, with no definition in areas

17. This is simply untrue. There is a vast amount of variation between the different regions and I've seen so many unique and interesting things while scouting that I know he didn't do any real travelling at all.

It doesn't even have ? a simple experience system, or some form of tutorial.

18. There is a tutorial and starter quests. Having a UO-style skill system is one of the key selling points of Darkfall (which makes this comment from him seriously confusing).

There hasn't even been an attempt to construct a faux-story

19. The reviewer obviously didn't read *any* of the quest information. There's actually a surprisingly large amount of lore written into the game, especially considering that lore isn't on the priority list for the vast majority of players.

this is just an excuse for Aventurine's inability to create a balanced, playable game

20. The game is fairly well balanced at this point, and entirely playable. Some crafting skills could use buffs, though. However, the reviewer is obviously in no position to make any such claims, as he didn't even get into any real PVP, PVE, or even crafting.

Its skill system is like a twisted version of EVE Online's

21. There's no real relation. Darkfall's skill system is almost directly inherited from Ultima Online.

few have abused the sandbox mentality so readily as Aventurine

22. There is a ton of content in Darkfall. However, I suspect the reviewer never took the time to actually do anything. For example, it probably didn't occur to him that he had to actually *purchase* most crafting and others skills before he could use them ? and so he assumed the short list of skills he had was everything, which it most definitely is not.

 

[Nurb]

all the more reason not to take online game reviewers too seriously.

 

[Jakkar]

Phyleron: Thankyou for the clarifications =)

Heard about the game years ago, rediscovered it a few months ago and have been watching with great curiosity, waiting for a more mainstream release than the graded shop openings at present. It seems like caution on their part - they know they have limited means and money and are choosing to slowly ease their way into the market with the hardcore fanbase before they consider opening up to the curious masses.

This whole Eurogamer debacle appears to only be doing them good - It invites attention with scandal, but the negative review is so unbelievably badly written and unjustified it immediately biases the reader toward -liking- the game

I'm very pleased to see a developer standing up for themselves, dropping any professional facades and simply being honest, with a hint of self-respect. This needed to be challenged, and the challenge has been delivered with maturity and good judgement. They don't really seem to have much recourse but to bury their heads in the sand or make peace.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

I'm curious now. What exactly IS this game like?

Spoiler: Wow thats big. Snipsnip!

Having actually played the game for more than 2 hours, I can address most of the inaccuracies in the Eurogamer review and give you an idea of what it is actually like. Considering the number of mistakes and falsehoods in the review, it is tantamount to slander. I wouldn't have bothered with such a long post if this review wasn't so absurd that it's almost unbelievable - I consider it to be equivalent to IGN posting a /b/ thread from 4chan as a professional review (it's okay if you didn't understand that comment). There are aspect of Darkfall that need work, but the Eurogamer review has no connection at all to the actual game.

-- Response to Eurogamer Review --

Unbelievably, to do anything that involves any interaction at all, you have to stop still - this includes any and all inventory management, looting, chatting - anything interactive.

1. You can move while doing chatting and inventory management. Corpses and NPCs are stationary, so you have to stop anyway for interacting.

you open your bag, and physically drag the items from one pouch to the other. There are no inventory 'blocks,' and thus your inventory quickly becomes a horrid mess of vague icons left on top of each other.

2. Items are managed UO-style. Inventory management is quite easy if you actually place items instead of randomly throwing them in, and this style allows you to keep a backpack organized even with hundreds of items in it, an impossible feat with block-style inventory.

This gets particularly thrilling when you ? try to loot something from a corpse in a particularly dangerous area

Comment: Does it not seem obvious that it should be dangerous to loot a corpse while in combat or in a *dangerous* area?

You have a crosshair, and your hits are dependent on whether or not this crosses the enemy at any given time - like an FPS, except with little to no reference point

3. All melee weapons have a swing arc that is quite obvious, especially since melee is done in third-person (no crosshair). Only archery and magic use the crosshair, and both hit based on projectile path (arrows arc, magic moves slower).

considering how slow and floaty the controls tend to be

4. This is only true if you have mouse smoothing enabled and set to a high level ? the vast majority of players simply turn off mouse smoothing, which gives very quick and responsive controls.

The difference in feedback between a sword hitting or missing is negligible

5. Not only do hits make impact noises, blood splashes, and enemy grunts, but you can also enable "hit sounds", which gives a very distinct sound on every successful hit with any weapon.

Judging the distance that one needs to be at to fight a foe is largely guesswork

6. Not only is the range visually apparent, but it is uniform across every weapon within a weapon type, so you only need to learn the range once for a weapon type. (i.e. every Great Sword has the same range).

your combat skills affect how often you actually connect

7. Hitting opponents is 100% player based. Combat skills only affect how much damage you deal (or take) on successful hits.

choice of changing weapon (a ten-second operation - five if you're particularly nimble

8. Most players just put their weapons of choice on their hotbars, so you can change weapons, use potions, eat food, etc. by pressing 1-9. The actual switch time is about 300 milliseconds.

And so hit those bloody [goblins] I did, not enjoying one second of it.

9. It may not have been clear to the reviewer, but the player was clearly commenting on him, as a player, having very poor aim. Successful hits is entirely based on the player, and I have often sent newbies that I am training to do PVE as practice for aiming and combat before attempting PVP.

old-school EverQuest - which was actually graphically superior

10. I consider the graphics on Darkfall to be quite impressive, especially the landscapes and character detail. However, it is optimized for higher resolutions ? I play at 1680x1050. The reviewer was clearly playing on what I would term ?a shitty resolution for anything?.

random placement of flora with little in the way of lore to tie it together

11. Resources have clear patterns based on terrain types and regions, though I'm not sure why he expects a backstory for trees. Darkfall has quite a bit of lore, and many players stick to the lore surprisingly closely. (i.e. there's quite a lot of anti-Dwarf and anti-Human sentiment on the Race Alliance for Mahirim and Orks, even though quite a few clans are All-Races, and we often crack jokes about the enemy races).

It may also be tied to the fact that there's very little to see

12. There's an enormous amount of stuff to see. It probably would have helped the reviewer to actually open his map or check the Sinister wiki map (which virtually every player uses). It also sounds like the reviewer was walking the whole time (and didn't use either sprint or a mount, which everyone uses for long distance travel).

On one such jaunt, I walked for around six minutes

13. The game map is quite large. Six minutes walking is a negligible distance. Even mounted, the central continent takes over an hour to cross.

Players can build "camps" and "towns", and fight each other in "epic" wars.

14. Guilds can own and build up Hamlets or Cities (which takes a huge amount of work, but has huge benefits). There are no ?camps? or ?towns? as he suggests. Also, there most definitely is an epic war going on right now, a World War of sorts involving several thousand players as the COTC, DUSK, SB, and Death Alliances are fighting against the Hyperion alliance. Over a hundred separate guilds are involved in this war, and dozens more are indirectly involved. I have personally been to Sieges involving hundreds of players, and when you're riding in to assault the enemy with 80 mounted warriors, it definitely feels pretty epic.

You see, anyone can kill anyone.

15. Races that are at war with one another can kill each other freely (as the Mahirim apparently killed him, a Dwarf). Players within the same Race Alliance can only afford to kill 1 friendly without going Red, which makes them hostile to all Race-aligned NPC cities and KOS for everyone of their Race Alliance. Most clan alliances don't allow killing of allied members, either, but any player should still be considered a potential hostile. Most of the random PKs are simply looking for easy loot against newbies, and clans tend to ignore them. Clans do often raid each other, though, which much more serious fighting.

The quests are repetitive kill-X-of-Y monstrosities

16. The starter quests (the only quests) are very clearly meant to teach newbies how to play. It is very unusual for anyone to do the starter quests more than once. Most people just ignore them. Quests are not at all the focus of Darkfall.

The world is bland in the extreme, with no definition in areas

17. This is simply untrue. There is a vast amount of variation between the different regions and I've seen so many unique and interesting things while scouting that I know he didn't do any real travelling at all.

It doesn't even have ? a simple experience system, or some form of tutorial.

18. There is a tutorial and starter quests. Having a UO-style skill system is one of the key selling points of Darkfall (which makes this comment from him seriously confusing).

There hasn't even been an attempt to construct a faux-story

19. The reviewer obviously didn't read *any* of the quest information. There's actually a surprisingly large amount of lore written into the game, especially considering that lore isn't on the priority list for the vast majority of players.

this is just an excuse for Aventurine's inability to create a balanced, playable game

20. The game is fairly well balanced at this point, and entirely playable. Some crafting skills could use buffs, though. However, the reviewer is obviously in no position to make any such claims, as he didn't even get into any real PVP, PVE, or even crafting.

Its skill system is like a twisted version of EVE Online's

21. There's no real relation. Darkfall's skill system is almost directly inherited from Ultima Online.

few have abused the sandbox mentality so readily as Aventurine

22. There is a ton of content in Darkfall. However, I suspect the reviewer never took the time to actually do anything. For example, it probably didn't occur to him that he had to actually *purchase* most crafting and others skills before he could use them ? and so he assumed the short list of skills he had was everything, which it most definitely is not.

It sounds like the primary problem the reviewer had is he's from a completly different generation then the one this game was made for. The MMO market is saturated with WoW and WoW-esques who have differences admittedly, but are geared towards streamlining. UO however is the definative past generation game and has considerably more depth and lets structure.

So, three questions:

1. Is it hard to get into and learn? I won't be memorizing math equations and macro's, or hunting phat lewts will I?

2. Is there roleplaying, and if so, what is the emphasis on it?

3. Is there a monthly fee?

Thank you for any responses.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

I've heard about this game, but... it was released? Woah.

I'm with you. This game came out in February? Where was the welcome party?

 

[Eric the Orange]

Sadly this is common of anyone who does reviews. You can always tell if the reviewer didn't play the game, watch the movie, ect. if you did.

I side with the developer in this case, but I do have some sympathy for the reviewer. Some games, MMOs in particular, take alot of time to "fully experience" and a reviewer is on a scedual.

related to this is when a reviewer has no experience with a given topic. Like when an adult whos never heard of pokemon writes a review on a pokemon movie.

 

[Elven_Star]

Nice read but this "Go figure" thingie in every single news is kinda on my nerve. Innovation?

 

[Phyleron]

It seems like caution on their part - they know they have limited means and money and are choosing to slowly ease their way into the market with the hardcore fanbase before they consider opening up to the curious masses.

The primary reason for the still limited release is simply server capacity. The devs have been continuously expanding the server cluster and optimizing the servers and client, so things have been improving quite a bit, but they just don't have the server capacity for an uncontrolled release yet. From Tasos own statements, they'd rather preserve the playability for those already in-game than cram in more people.

So, three questions:

1. Is it hard to get into and learn? I won't be memorizing math equations and macro's, or hunting phat lewts will I?

It's a little tough to adjust, but there's nothing particularly hard. The general learning curve is 1-2 days to adjust to the controls, 4-5 days to become comfortable with PVP, and 1 week to be fully adjusted. The only 'math equation' is to remember that Iron Ore smelts to Ingots in a 5:2 ratio (and the same for Timber cut to Wood). Crafting can be a little imposing at first, because the crafting stations list *everything* you will ever be able to make with that skill, but you figure out what to make fairly quickly. You will also have to learn the armor types and differences between the weapon types, but that will come naturally.

2. Is there roleplaying, and if so, what is the emphasis on it?

There definitely are roleplayers in various forms, but I don't participate in it much. For example, the Hyperion alliance actually has a *KING* - who has a Herald, and to whom all the clans under his control pay taxes. Some of the primary Hyperion clans have names like Duchy of Wessex, Fiefdom of Oxford, etc. Many of the anti-Hyperion forces avoid roleplay specifically because Hyperion does it so much.

3. Is there a monthly fee?

Yes, as with virtually every MMO. It's about $14 US.

Thank you for any responses.[/quote]

 

[LeonLethality]

Heh at least Escapists reviewers are not lazy

Can you tell my mom that? She still wants me to go do something more productive than just talk about games all day.

Okay, Susan's mother, Game reviewing IS productive, and talking about games all day isnt lazy
(Side note: PLAYING the games is less productive... maybe... or not >.>)

 

[Asehujiko]

Even if the review isn't a review, darkfall still has several massive problems:
-The game is only available on their site for a limited ammount every so often when they can scavenge another server cluster.
-The community is about as hostile as it gets. Their response to me mentioning wow in a topic of "what other games do you play" was "GTFO of our forums weak minded fucktard".
I think alot of people will be put off from buying it when the game is either unavailable or they get yelled off the forum for not playing UO exclusively.

Also, didn't adventurine borrow about 20 million euros a while back from the government? Where did they spend all that on?

 

[Undo]

IF the Game IS broken, wouldn't it deserve a 2/10, or is the number generally forbidden for "professional reviewers"?

From what I understand, a game that doesn't even start, hence is unplayable, gets a 1/10.
So yes, a 2 would be incredibly bad. But it doesn't seem the tester done more than loading it up...