Originally posted by Darkstar111

 

Seems to me reviewers that LIKED the game where ppl who:

 

-Likes pvp.

-Plays in group

-Went further into crafting

-had a UO/shadowbane background (mostly)

 

And the reviewers that didnt like the game.

 

-Mostly Solo players

-didnt do alot of pvp

-didnt get very far into crafting

-REALLY didnt like it when someone jumped in front of them and tagged them grey.

 

Personally I find myself in the first category, I dont intend to solo the game, and from what ive heard once u get past the initial expense of crafting it really pays out.

Which is how it should be, hard.

 

-Darkstar

 

 

I fall into the first category which is why it is particularly sad to find that in its current form there is really little to commend DF.

You have been mis informed about crafting as it stands now. Having sadi that no doubt things will change as game systems are fleshed out. As it is the only thig that is remotely satisfying is pvp. To really compete there you need to grind your ass off for the majority of your time (oh and exploit and macro).

i fall squarely into group one, yet this game is very broken still. I am sure it can be fun once it is patched up, will take a look again in a couple of months.

Nice to see some good threads finally starting to popup. This section was so overrun with trolls, it forced me to official DF site. But if people will continue this streak of good threads I will for sure be around more

edit- Oh, thank you very much for this review. Seemed very unbiased. I'm used to the not-so-great PVE in EVE Online so lack of pve does not bother me much

well from the sound of the mob situation, it seems sort of like shadowbane.  All mobs being clustered and far between with groups being neccisary.

Originally posted by ste2000

*THE GOOD*

-CLIENT: Excellent
It never crashes, I tested around 20 MMORPG, this one is the best I tested, Aventurine wasn't lieing on that, well done AV.

Agreed, I've played for about a month now and only crashed 2 times. The client is badass.

-THE WORLD: Excellent
The world is beautiful, it is big and there are some very nice point of interests, detailed and well made.
Unfortunately there is a lot of empty space between those point of interest, but the world is big so it should be obvious.
Another good thing about the world is the fact that it looks handmade not randomly created like in some recent MMOs.
If you are an exploreryou will love Agon

The world is very beautiful and very empty. For an explorer it's a mixed pack as most points of interest serve no other meaning than mob spawn points; for example a large, exciting looking ruin that has skeletons patroling it, but that at the end offers nothing more than farming said skeletons.

-THE PVP: Good
The PVP mechanics need to be adjusted and balanced a bit, but as it is now is already good fun.
I am in favour to permanently mark as criminal players who kill their own race, but that's my opinion.
Archery is a bit too overpowered at low levels while Magic is underpowered, not sure what will happen when you advance with the skills.
But the good thing about DF is that by not having levels, 1 to 1 fights are always very close

I disagree somewhat, while PvP is a lot of fun, it also has loads of things to balance. At the moment 2-handed weapons uber alles because of their longer reach, this is especially true at newbie levels. I've pwned so many people just because they hadn't figured this out. Other thing is the hitbox size, Alfars are tiny compared to every other race, so they gain a substantial advantage in PvP because of this. Those are just some examples.

-COMBAT: Good
FPS style nothing revolutionary, some will hate it some will love it.
It is not as straight forward as in AAA MMOs, but if you played Morrowind and Oblivion you will be able to appreciate DF too.
Yes it is a "left click" spam fest, in that sense is not really innovative, but the fact you have to chase and constantly aim the mobs add to the experience.

I agree, it's a lot of fun and IMO every step away from the norm of auto-aim fests that todays MMOs are, is a big plus.

-AI: Good
Do not expect anything out of this world, but mobs will move around and dodge your hits, they will also run away when they are low in HP.
Mobs who use magic are particularly difficult to beat, they move around constantly, they will drop the nuke and then move away.
Only thing I don't really like is the fact that mobs can see you from miles away, for me this ruins a bit the thrills of sneaking around, I hope they will adjust that.

QFT

-CRAFTING: Excellent
Decently made, not too tedious, and the fact that the economy is driven by crafters is a plus.
Generally is good fun and viable by anyone, even people who never crafted
At the moment crafting costs quite a lot and testers complains the items they made costs too much and they are difficult to sell, AV should adjust the costs of crafting in particular at low level.
Also gathering can be a bit tedious, need to be more fun.

I hate crafting in every MMORPG, Darkfall is no exception.

-FULL LOOT: Good
Yes it is annoying to lose your stuff but after you play for a while you will understand that you will loot as much as you lose, and in truth there is very few items you really cannot affort to lose.
So even if you lose all of your precious stuff, you just need a plate run  or a gank run with your guild to rebuild your equipment.
Not a big deal

This is the biggest reason I keep playing Darkfall, the thrill of losing/gaining stuff. A bit like playing poker for money.

-SKILL BASED GAME: Good
Nothing better than not having to watch the level bar while you play.
In fact you can only concentrate on playing and forget about leveling.
I missed that feeling.

QFT

*THE UGLY (Acceptable features which should be better)*

-ANIMATION: Acceptable
Animations are very basic, if you are used to WoW you will be gutted by this, but if you played older MMOs you won't notice it too much.

I couldn't care less how my character moves as long as I'm having fun.

-UI: Acceptable
The UI looks pretty plain, but it is very functional, you can move them around as you wish, resize them, and I find the right click of the mouse quite useful to recall all the open windows.
I believe Aventurine will make a more pretty UI in the future but that's not a priority atm (see the BAD)

Needs a lot of tweaking, but it's functional.

-GRAPHICS: Decent
Although the world gives a good feeling about it (the art style is good), generally graphics could be much better, in particular the characters model and armors.
They are not consistent, some are very well done some are pretty average and quite dated, yet graphics are better than most MMOs, but definetly could be improved.

Someone recently put it nicely: "it's like there were two people doing the graphics, the other one was a real artist and made the surroundings, mountains, castles, waterfalls, things like that. The other one was the janitor and he made all the animation".

-LAG: Acceptable
Generally is actually quite good, but being a PvPgame you get the occasional lag spike which can be quite annoying when fighting an opponent.
Nothing too bad though (didn't tested the sieges though)

I've had no problems with lag, biggest fight I've been in was with 30 or so players. Still, 30 players is a small number.

-MAGIC TREE: Acceptable
Many believe that the Magic at lower level (lesser magic) is not very effective.
Not many people reached high level in magic to tell if this changes at higher levels.
Can be improved.

Never did much magic, but they deffinetly took a different aproach on how magic works in this game. Mages will have a loong road a head if they want to reach the top levels.

*THE BAD*

-PVE CONTENT: Disappointing
Apart from crafting there is little else, you basically have to PvP or craft in this game............alternatevly you can grind Goblins, which isn't what I call PVE content

Biggest disappointment in PvE is that there are no dynamic mob spawns, which was supposed to be one of the big features that Darkfall promised.

-QUEST: Poor
Very few, and uninteresting, although the rewards are fairly decent.
Also they are not repeatable

Some quests are repeatable, some are not. Not many quests and all of them are uninteresting.

-MOB POPULATION: Poor
At the moments mobs spawns only in designated point of interest which are constantly camped.
Very difficult to find mobs anywhere else.
AV needs to put many more mobs in Agon, I am not talking about 1 every metre like in WoW and WAR, but surely they need more, at the moment Agon is underpopulated.

True in that they need to put more mobs, but it's actually easy to find mobs that are not camped if you bother to walk away from the starting areas.

-LACK OF BOSSES OR GROUP ENCOUNTER
The PVE consist in grinding normal mobs.
No Bosses who drop phat loot, so no real reason to group at all except for ganking and the occasional plate run.

Did you ever even leave the newb areas? Because most mobs are anything but soloable. Soloing in this game (past the starting areas) is super hard.

-WILDLIFE: Poor
Well not existent.
I know it is fluff, but to complete the beautiful world you need some wildlife too.
At the moment the world seems quite empty.

QFT

-LACK OF NPCS: Poor
Well in Agon there are only the essential NPCs, the ones that give you quests and the vendors, nothing else.
Cities and villages feels quite dead because of this.
Need to be addressed.

QFT

*CONCLUSION*

Personally I think Aventurine should have delayed the game 2 more months,
Lastly I would like to congratulate Aventurine, yes the game is not entirely complete, but considering the little resources they had, compared to AoC, WAR and Vanguard they did a pretty good job, in particular they could teach Mythic, Funcom and some others how to code a client.
Go indies.
 

Agreed
 

Just wanted to share my opinion somewhere, couldn't bother to do yet another beta review thread.

I  want to add a couple more things I missed in my OP, which I picked up reading the replies.

CRAFTING: I would like to explain why reviews on crafting differ so much from player to player.
I consider crafting a job for few, therefore it has to cost money and it needs to take time to level.
For some this is negative that's why they give crafting a low score, while i give it an high score.
But crafting in DF is viable by everyone who wants to put the effort, the only thing is that if you decide to  craft, you only do that, you do not adventure too much.
In short do not expect to be a successful crafter AND a successful fighter as well, it is one or the other, which for me is good.

PVE: I read few people trying to defend the PVE, I want to address those.
I am aware DF is a PVP game, and if it was for me PVE would be suffient.
But I wanted to make a review aimed to everyone.
For the average player DF PVE is very poor, no matter how you put it.
There is no Lore involved, no meaningful quests and the mobs are limited to selected areas.
I don't doubt that there might be some kick ass PVE areas in game, in fact I visited an awesome NPC city on top of a mountain which was obviosly for group content only (I swear the city was beatiful)
But generally PVE in DF is not what an average player would expect from a MMO, it is not a viable alternative to PVP.
For this reason I won't recommend it, but for hardcore PVPer it might be enough.

Also I would like to add something I completely missed:

CUSTOMISATION: Decent
There is no body customisation as in AoC, but the face customisation is pretty decent.
No you can't morph the different parts of your face either, but there are loads of tattoos, hairstyles and accessories to give you lots of different appearances, the Orc ones are the best IMO, you can get seriouas badass faces
 

Agreed with most of what you said. I beta tested as well, and found that there was a lack of mobs. The client gets random lag spikes b/c of debug mode, but I still can get plenty of players on my screen at one time no problem.

Melee requires stamina far too much, though the combat system still owns WoW and all the current MMOs. PvP is awesome, with random skirmishes, battles, and duels. The world allows for traps and ambushes, as night time is...creepy, in a cool way. Ground clutter, rocks, and trees provide great terrain with which to hide behind

Graphics-wise, it has its moments. Some parts are pretty crappy, and some are spectacular, almost as good as AoC (only a few, but still). They haven't enabled the 'high' settings for graphics yet, though, so it could be a lot better. I never get lag due to players, terrain/environment, or other such things, but only every now and then with some lag spikes (may have to do with debug mode, not sure).

There actually are group encounters, depending on where you go, and wildlife. I was up in Niflheim and saw some polar bears, and down in Mercia, Black Knights and Greater Belows require groups to farm, and they drop good 'beginner' gear (don't think anyone has really got any end-game gear yet).

Aventurine says they just haven't enabled all the mobs/NPCs, so unless they somehow have a big patch this weekend, the lack of mobs will be there at launch (or rather, the mobs wont be there).

Ah, yes, I almost forgot--Mirdain and Alfar females have biggest advantage in the game, since they have smallest hitboxes. Mahirim and Orks are massive, same with Dwarves.

Originally posted by busdriver

Originally posted by ste2000

-LACK OF BOSSES OR GROUP ENCOUNTER
The PVE consist in grinding normal mobs.
No Bosses who drop phat loot, so no real reason to group at all except for ganking and the occasional plate run.

Did you ever even leave the newb areas? Because most mobs are anything but soloable. Soloing in this game (past the starting areas) is super hard.

I just want to address this point, since a couple of people picked up on that.

I actually explored a lot and encountered several kind of mobs, like the skeletons and  the ones that look like Anubi the Egyptian God.
I even tried to kill some, but couldn't do any damage and got hit 30% per hit...........so I know definetly those are for groups.

But what I meant is not that there are no normal group encounters, but specifically there are no Boss encounters.
Since I believe what makes part of the PVE experience is killing the final Boss after clearing all the trash, this element is missing, therefore PVE is missing a big chunk of fun.
Killing a Boss is for PVE what conquering a fortress is for PVP...........I hope it is more clear explained this way.

boss-level mobs were deliberately left out of the game, so that beta testers didn't go straight for them on release.

there were several named mobs in the beta i encountered though, and there were dragons flying around the centre area.

personally i see huge potential for high-end PVE in DF, once people start collecting armour with the appropriate resistances.