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Originally posted by antiherozero

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Originally posted by thark
Hmm..Well I think that you really overreacted when you try to convince the readers of this forum that the terrain details is just as good as Age of Conan..
Please, the outdoor areas are nice and all, just as you described in your reply to my own review, but as good as Age of Conan :)
And AI is second to none ?
And draw distance is the best you have ever seen ?

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Well I actually tested for AoC as well as DFO, plus I played AoC for ~2 months.  I built my entire old PC (my wife now uses it) for AoC gameplay, because the requirements were so intense.  So yes, I stand by my statement, and so does my wife.
 
How long have I been playing games?  Since about the time 16 colors were introduced and were a big deal.
 
Yes.
 
And yes.  If you dispute these points, please either bring a scientific arguement or move along.  You're wasting everyone's time.
 

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That's ok I guess..everyone can have their opinion ;)

I also played AoC for 3-4 months(and so did my wife) and my claim is that AoC is so far beyond Darkfall in graphics it's even funny, but I guess I must have something wrong in my eyes, as I can't scientifically prove it. Or wait I could do that, but I really do not see the need for it :)

I haven't played in Beta at all, but this sounds pretty much like I had expected.  I'm glad to hear that the mobs agro from far away and party is almost required (loved FFXI for that).  It is a bonus of Adventurine being a smaller company in that they will listen to thier players and are able to react quickly (reminds me of DAoC in the beginning).  Where as larger companies have to go through red tape from higher ups to get things changed.  I was skeptical of this game for awhile now, but more and more I see of beta, I'm starting to like what I'm hearing/seeing.  If only Adventurine would address the models/animations and lack of info, I would probably be the biggest fan boi for this game.  I'll remain a skeptic until I can get my hands on it a couple of months after it's release though.

Good Review

Good informative review Antiherozero, well done. I suggest you further break down each section (good layout BTW) into paragraphs though, better asthetically.

Good job.

Originally posted by SpyridonZ

Originally posted by Leviathonlx

Originally posted by antiherozero

Originally posted by Leviathonlx

That's to be expected in a game that decides to not do classes/levels.

 

I'd personally like to see different fighting styles associated with different weapons, and more of a hinderance for choosing heavy armor types.  I believe these things are on their way to the game, but I just wanted to give people an idea of the current beta builds strong and weak points.  Also, I want there to be about three different paths to magic mastery that players are sort of forced to choose to specialize in if they want to master something in magic and still be versatile in other areas.

 

Personally the having no classes and whatnot kills the game for me on the spot and by what you are saying it seems they did nothing otherwise to try to make charactars unique. I am a pretty hardcore gamer and I just cannot see how a game with no true progression with levels or individuality with classes can hold my interest. Now sure it may have worked for past games but the MMO genre as a whole has been evolving since then also. I just think the game is going to hurt itself (way more so though) the same way AoC and Warhammer did by trying to be too 'different' rather than how it should of took things it saw work pretty well from other games (yes this includes WoW no matter how much some Darkfall fanboys seem to hate it and foam at the mouth at the mention of it). But at least LotrO has managed to get me something fun to do other than play WoW.

 

Well, I cant speak for DFO as I have not played.

But skill systems as opposed to class systems DO give alot of diversity if implemented correctly.

You are basically making your own class when its done right. Instead of choosing a Tank-class who has high defense and uses an axe, you can choose the melee defense skills, armor skills, and axe skills, to make the same class.

Furthermore, you got MANY other options. Want to use something other then axes? Go for it. Want to cast damage spells? Go for it. You wont see melee's tossing magic nukes in non-skill based games.

Combined with gear, this gives a huge amount of options. Do you want to use lighter armor that boosts your spell damage and bust out the axe when their close to surprise em? Go for it. Want to wear melee gear and sacrifice a little spell dps for more survivability? Go for it.

Long story short, dont hate on skill systems in favor of class systems. I dont know if DFO did it right, but in games that do, they are MUCH better then class systems (usually).

I agree, it all depends on how well it's done. There are some boring games with Classes (Early EQ2). And some games with great variety that is skill based (Pre-NGE SWG).

Originally posted by thark

Antiherozero wrote:

"This game has very impressive terrain details (in beta everything was locked to medium textures and the terrain is as good as AoC's was on higher settings, according to my wife and myself"

Hmm..Well I think that you really overreacted when you try to convince the readers of this forum that the terrain details is just as good as Age of Conan..

Please, the outdoor areas are nice and all, just as you described in your reply to my own review, but as good as Age of Conan :)

And AI is second to none ?

And draw distance is the best you have ever seen ?

Ever thought that you run extremly slow in Darkfall ?

Makes me really wonder how many previous MMO's you actually played

If my review was biased this one has it's biased parts aswell..

Other than that, thanks for the writeup. :)

 

 

Yes I  agree  but there whre other  biased points. To paraphrase the UI is so craptastic it can't be the one they are going to release with. Errrm OK. A reasonable review but I cant help feeling that you will be one of the ones that slips away when you recognse the warts for what they are......big ugly warts.

i think it's a pretty fair review.

the UI *does* suck the first few days of playing. once you get used to it, it's actually pretty damn nice.

there *are* some annoying/bad things, such as always having to sheath when talking to merchants, sheath when resting, sheath when looting, but on the whole, it gets the job done well, *as long as* you realise it's more like a FPS GUI than a traditional MMO GUI.

Originally posted by javac

i think it's a pretty fair review.

 

the UI *does* suck the first few days of playing. once you get used to it, it's actually pretty damn nice.

 

there *are* some annoying/bad things, such as always having to sheath when talking to merchants, sheath when resting, sheath when looting, but on the whole, it gets the job done well, *as long as* you realise it's more like a FPS GUI than a traditional MMO GUI.

Sure you can get used to it but that dosen't make it nice. That whole two mode thing is utter BS.

Originally posted by Gorilla

Originally posted by javac

i think it's a pretty fair review.

 

the UI *does* suck the first few days of playing. once you get used to it, it's actually pretty damn nice.

 

there *are* some annoying/bad things, such as always having to sheath when talking to merchants, sheath when resting, sheath when looting, but on the whole, it gets the job done well, *as long as* you realise it's more like a FPS GUI than a traditional MMO GUI.

 

Sure you can get used to it but that dosen't make it nice. That whole two mode thing is utter BS.

I disagree, its been used in RPG games to no end, from System shock to Tabula rasa.

-Darkstar

 Its fine for single player games where you go 'out of real time' when you hit tab. It sucked in TR as it does in DFO. That is an opinion (shared by many many). There are just far better ,smoother, more seamless ways of achieveing the same effect. That is a fact. A game should not be made 'hard' by having to struggle with the UI. You could make combat far more fun and fluid by streamlining the UI. Whatever you think of the game now it would improve it massively.

how far is the drawing distance?

And no, I'm not talking about the "ISO 2 minutes to run to the horizon norm"; I'm talking about how many meters, or, if you like, feet.

And don't tell me this can't be measured, of course you can't distinguish between 200 and 250 meters, but well between 200 and 20000.

To give examples:
The drawing distance at max in LoTRO is 140 meters for characters and 3500 meters for landscape (before it disappears)

The drawing distance at max in WoW is 80 meters for character and around 600 for landscape (EDIT: before it vanished in the omnipresent haze that is, you can guess that landscape is behind the haze for much longer, though you can't see anything)

The drawing distance at max in Dark and Light was 300 meters for characters and 20 000 meters for landscape.

So where does DFO hit the mark here. The screenshots I've seen suggest something around WoWs drawing distance but I couldn't really tell if the settings were on max and if you could see farther if weather/environment allowed it...

M

Originally posted by Gorilla

 Its fine for single player games where you go 'out of real time' when you hit tab. It sucked in TR as it does in DFO. That is an opinion (shared by many many). There are just far better ,smoother, more seamless ways of achieveing the same effect. That is a fact. A game should not be made 'hard' by having to struggle with the UI. You could make combat far more fun and fluid by streamlining the UI. Whatever you think of the game now it would improve it massively.

No u couldnt pause system shock, mobs could attack u in both modes. Goes for System shock 2 as well.

And it worked fine in Tabula Rasa, there are other ways of handling a UI, but basically they all involve holding down ur right mouse button at all times during gameplay, to move the camera, not my preferance.

-Darkstar

Originally posted by Gorilla

Originally posted by javac

i think it's a pretty fair review.

 

the UI *does* suck the first few days of playing. once you get used to it, it's actually pretty damn nice.

 

there *are* some annoying/bad things, such as always having to sheath when talking to merchants, sheath when resting, sheath when looting, but on the whole, it gets the job done well, *as long as* you realise it's more like a FPS GUI than a traditional MMO GUI.

 

Sure you can get used to it but that dosen't make it nice. That whole two mode thing is utter BS.

i honestly like it a lot -- i have the world map open, skill window open, journal, backpack and paperdoll open, and can access it all in an instant with a single right click. right click again, and it's gone.

reviewer claims to know 300 testers and asked each one if they are pre ordering in another thread.

sorry that bull makes his review worthless to me.

Originally posted by hercules

reviewer claims to know 300 testers and asked each one if they are pre ordering in another thread.

sorry that bull makes his review worthless to me.

he may be referring to the leaked beta tester poll of 300 people that showed 90%+ were going to preorder.

Originally posted by demc

It does not matter to me who is trolling where as much as what if anything has this game to offer me besides FFA PvP with full looting?

Someone start trying to sell me on playing it  with some decent review or someone give some sensible information besides all the fucking babble please.
 

Kettle, you have a phone call from a Mr. Pot, something about black.

Originally posted by Gorilla

Yes I agree but there whre other biased points. To paraphrase the UI is so craptastic it can't be the one they are going to release with. Errrm OK. A reasonable review but I cant help feeling that you will be one of the ones that slips away when you recognse the warts for what they are......big ugly warts.
 

Uh, what?  If you had the reading comprehension of a 3rd grader you might have realized that I stated the UI we used in beta is clearly not identical to a release UI.  This is painfully obvious because when you re-bind your keys instead of reading descriptions of in-game functions like "Jump = Space", you get something more like "a_input_jump = space", etc.  Obviously they are very unlikely to release that version of the UI to the public.  However, as I also stated, core elements of the UI were quite poor, like the html-based and very slow loading journal or clan screens.  I cannot fairly review the "release" UI because I haven't used it yet, but I can confidently state that certain elements of the UI are very likely to be quite poor and cumbersome on release. 

Originally posted by Meridion

how far is the drawing distance? And no, I'm not talking about the "ISO 2 minutes to run to the horizon norm"; I'm talking about how many meters, or, if you like, feet.

So where does DFO hit the mark here. The screenshots I've seen suggest something around WoWs drawing distance but I couldn't really tell if the settings were on max and if you could see farther if weather/environment allowed it...

I am not really certain.  The impressive part of the draw distance is with the other players though, not the terrain features.  Generally speaking, most players had every extra feature turned off in beta and every slider turned all the way down.  This was necessary because of running the debugger in the background while using the client.  The character draw distance seemed to be locked in place, where as the terrain draw distance I believe was something we could toggle.  The character draw distance was =/a bit better than what you'd see in Fallout 3 with characters there.  The terrain wasn't near as good for me, but I had everything lowered because I was one of the few unfortunate souls who had some issue with abnormally low FPS (20-60).  This was a fluke some of us experienced.  I'll make some time to get back into the game tonight if I can and try to get you an estimate in meters (I assume the beta will be going down for good quite soon though, so I might not have the time).

Originally posted by hercules

reviewer claims to know 300 testers and asked each one if they are pre ordering in another thread. sorry that bull makes his review worthless to me.
 

I didn't claim to personally 'know' 300 testers, at least not in the sense that we hang out together in our free time or something.  I have been associated with that many in beta though, yes.  There are several large coalitions of guilds all allied together in beta.  The larger of these alliances usually has ~100 testers in it.  I am part of the largest alliance in beta with ~200 testers or so (this is hard to estimate because the clan screen counts alts with the total tally).  Before I joined my current clan, I was with another large alliance of guilds.  I used the "~" symbol to indicate that it was an estimate, not a precise number.  Since so few of the beta testers have been openly vocal about disliking the game and deciding not to pre-order, the list of those not pre-ordering was easy to estimate.  I can live with you not believing me.

In a rare charitable moment I decided to screenshot some images to showcase the draw distance in DFO.  Some seem to believe the draw distance in DFO is quite poor, which completely baffles me.  I believe these pictures should indicate otherwise.  Please excuse the large file sizes, but I'm afraid that was the only way I could properly illustrate my point about the vastly superior draw distance in this game.

These screenshots were captured with an EVGA 9800 GTX+ at 1680x1050 resolution.  The in-game settings were all lowered as far as possible, with shadows turned off, AA turned off, and every texture set to low.  This game looks much different (in my opinion far better) with shadows turned on.  I reduced the file sizes to 7/10 .jpg in Photoshop so they would retain most of their clarity while still being a reasonable size to download.

Longest View (~100 meters).  Note: If you look carefully you'll notice there are several players barely visible. I could have actually moved a bit further away and the players would have continued to show up, but the terrain prevented me from doing so.

Long View (~75 meters).

Medium View (~25 meters).

Short View (~10 meters).

Very Short View (0 meters).

Forest Island (high elevation).

Forest Island (low elevation).

Note: Unfortunately, it seems photo bucket has seen fit to resize all of these screenshots down to nearly half of their original size.  As a result, most players are quite difficult to see, but if you zoom in you can still make them out just barely.  The originals are in much higher resolution as well.

 Nice review.

Good news is, you're applauding the textures, but right now in debug mode the textures on are LOW quality.  you can change them to medium/high, but it does nothing.   Last beta patch updated melee animation, and a dev released a statement in beta boards about their beta sounds NOT being their final sound cuts.    After about 40 hours of gaming i'm finding myself able to solo many types of mobs, not thru exploits just using line of sight, food, good aiming, and lucky pulls.

It's going to just keep getting better.  LOTS of skills weren't in beta that are in final so i'm very excited.

Originally posted by antiherozero

In a rare charitable moment I decided to screenshot some images to showcase the draw distance in DFO.  Some seem to believe the draw distance in DFO is quite poor, which completely baffles me.  I believe these pictures should indicate otherwise.  Please excuse the large file sizes, but I'm afraid that was the only way I could properly illustrate my point about the vastly superior draw distance in this game.

 

These screenshots were captured with an EVGA 9800 GTX+ at 1680x1050 resolution.  The in-game settings were all lowered as far as possible, with shadows turned off, AA turned off, and every texture set to low.  This game looks much different (in my opinion far better) with shadows turned on.  I reduced the file sizes to 7/10 .jpg in Photoshop so they would retain most of their clarity while still being a reasonable size to download.

 

Longest View (~100 meters).  Note: If you look carefully you'll notice there are several players barely visible. I could have actually moved a bit further away and the players would have continued to show up, but the terrain prevented me from doing so.

Long View (~75 meters).

Medium View (~25 meters).

Short View (~10 meters).

Very Short View (0 meters).

Forest Island (high elevation).

Forest Island (low elevation).

 

Note: Unfortunately, it seems photo bucket has seen fit to resize all of these screenshots down to nearly half of their original size.  As a result, most players are quite difficult to see, but if you zoom in you can still make them out just barely.  The originals are in much higher resolution as well.

 

 

Ah if you're talking about drawing distance as how far away players appear on the screen then yes, DFO features a rock solid drawing distance, which is essentially a very good thing for PvP.

As far as drawing distance of the environment is concerned, it is on level with games like WoW or WAR, environment fades into blue haze after around 200, 300 meters. There is no "distant environment" engine in DFO like low res landscape or bitmap-trees or things like that...

M