Recently, MMORPG.com blogger Paragus interviewed six alliance leaders in Aventurine's Darkfall. Each of them was asked: "What do you think are Darkfall's biggest issues right now?" Today, Aventurine's Tasos Flambouras responds to each issue.

MMORPG.com:

King Manus of the Hyperion Alliance had an issue with the lack of doors on city gates and cities in general. He complained that the ability of enemy players to come in through the gates or over the walls from elevated terrain is hampering enjoyment of the game's raid and siege mechanics.

Tasos Flambouras:

This has been fixed already by adding gates to cities. We also added guard towers to clan cities. We're working on fixing the few miscellaneous bugs with walls and access points to cities. So this issue has been addressed and will continue to be addressed.

Read Tasos Responds to Alliance Leader Issues

Tasos, nice report. Now Take away city banks and add in clan city storage units thats lootable. So people will have a point to use boats and travel.

AND ADD IN Caravans with Npc guards as options.

OK - I am neither a fanboi or troll of this game and I have not played it so take my comments are mere observations.

Firstly, I think Tasos is to be congratulated on not only directly answering player generated questions and concerns in an open forum but also for, in the main, answering them properly rather than the usual marketing spin that does not answer the point made. I wish more game devs would take such an approach to community response.

I am sure the thread will fill with positive and negative takes on the actual answer themselves but overall I felt most of the questions were directly answered albeit I still have this huge issue, and maybe its me, that the whole limited selling strtaegy whilst they fix and implement stuff whilst players pay is too much like a beta that costs you. I like the approach of a steady launch rather than the "open 200 servers and merge them all a month later" but I would be pissed if the I was paying for an account if the game had a high rate of crashing, bugs or lack of intended launch features - I do not know if that is the case with this game but I would hope not for the people who are playing it currently.

Still, I give them overall props for having the nuts to answer in the open forum as I said.

The quote of the day: "Standing on the heads of other players isn't very realistic, it's true, but neither is magic." -Tasos

Nice one, there, rofl! Still I think it they are doing the right thing in answering this questionaire and giving feedback on their stance on existing issues. It seems they are really carefull with how they go about controling the release; first get stuff sorted before making the step to serving a wider audience. It is a pain for some, a gloating matter for others, but I think it is a necesary evil in DF's case; they can't allow themselves to let the game fail on a major scale.

(No, it hasn't failed as a game already; It hasn't even been fully released yet and developing cycle and release screw ups are just that; developing cycle and release screw ups. They won't influence your gameplay when the game is fully up and running).

WTB;

• Warhulks
• Player housing
• Hireable NPC guards for player cities and escorts
• Player sponsored NPC vendors
• Localised NPC city market system
• Rent/landlord options (player housing and bind stone use in PC cities)
• Weather

• Roadmap of where DF is going and a timeline to match
• Exploit fixes, not just banning of accounts
• Wield/unwield fix, especially for staffs
• Mouse drag fix when moving in and out of UI mode, your character is flicked to look in a direction based on where the mouse was when you came out of UI mode
• Alpha sorting fix (gfx have some other serious technical issues including this)
• Monster desyncs
• Player rubberbanding

• Additional servers (EU2, US1)
• Enchanting pointlessly expensive and they currently wear-off within a week or 2 (or should I say, randomly disappear)
• Armour durability is now similar to that of cheese. A nerf too far.
• Game information/manual - where is it? what are the point of 50% of the ranks? how do you packup a mount or open the clan bank (I know but they're examples of things I often have to tell people)
• Bag labels
• 10s of persistent mouse-over when trying to ID people (ie, you mouse over but it disappears straight away if someone steps in the way) - OR maybe have names over heads for people you mouse-over that is shown for 10s.

• Massively increase stamina drain of sprinting to remove 'headless chicken' combat, because can you really full sprint for 5 mins and swing a sword in full armour at the same time?
• Implement predictive loading of gfx assets instead of JIT, which is often Just too late and adds loading stutter/lag even on high end systems when entering a combat zone
• Key press detection sucks and keys can stick if ALT is pressed, other times you just won't move without pressing a different direction first.
• Use the 64bit JRE where applicable to remove the 2GB java limit for asset caching and speed things up.
• Make the hotbar/skill selection in combat easier - this is an action game, not WoW. Something like press mouse wheel down brings up your skills in a circle that can be selected by moving the mouse slightly in the corresponding direction the release the mouse wheel, is a lot quicker and effective than fumbling for the keys 6 to 0 when in combat!

Needless to say DF needs work.

WoT, anyone read this far?? :D

Quote : "First, almost every cheater we've banned seems to have created a lot of characters, some accounts more than 50. They delete and create new characters many times a day thinking this will confuse detection. So the same account can be reported dozens of times under different names making it seem like there are a lot more people cheating than there actually are."

Must be a few dumbass cheaters to create 50 characters. However most players know that reporting also lists the account. I especially liked when he was talking about clans shifting tactics etc. Im gonna bet most of them macro'd up which IMO is skill less cheating, yet the devs do nothing about it.

Tasos is da man!

 I see he is out of hiding and still generating the "no problem" here messages....

Carry on regardless my brave man !

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Posted by Tasos Flambouras:

Well this is of course true, but things are improving every day. This is a temporary problem and it stems from the demand. Consider this: Theirs is no "buy Darkfall" link. It's all happening by word of mouth and still the demand is overwhelming. We're opening up the shop every now and then and thousands of copies are bought up in a matter of minutes. Our first priority is to serve the players who are in the game, making sure they're having a good experience. This is why there are no queues to get into the game anymore, why we're not selling this game 24/7, and why we're just not throwing up servers in a hurry just to meet the demand - and we won't until we're ready to give good service. We're working non-stop on getting our capacity up, to get new servers up and on improving conditions in the existing ones.

This issue will be a thing of the past soon, and what's going to be left is an excellent game and an excellent user experience.

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Ironically, you know how much the trollhaters actually ADDED to that demand by flaming Darkfall and keeping the threads so active making people curious about the game who never heard of it before?

Darkfall trolls really have to be kicking themselves right now and saying "Why didn't we just stay quiet and let the game die?" This has got to be one of the funniest developments in MMO history how trolls kept massive buzz alive for a game they absolutely hated to death and inadvertantly helped it prosper. No advertising needed.

Aventurine- 1. Trolls- 0.

Ill admit ive been a bit sceptical in the past of the way this game has been handled by Tasos and his team but its refreshing to see him respond directly to players issues/questons this way. Maybe there is hope for darkfall yet =)

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Originally posted by moozaad

WTB;

Warhulks

Needless to say DF needs work.
WoT, anyone read this far?? :D
 

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Scratch Warhulks. Sighted in game. Wonder what else on your list is outdated.

Good answers to solid questions.  Didn't shy away or sugarcoat them.  You sure Tasos actually was the person who replied, just didn't seem very much like him.

Sounds like they are actively working on issues in an orderly fashion. Can't really ask for much else, except of course, to please hurry up.  (but that's always the wish)

Originally posted by popinjay

 

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Originally posted by moozaad

 

WTB;

Warhulks

Needless to say DF needs work.
WoT, anyone read this far?? :D
 

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Scratch Warhulks. Sighted in game. Wonder what else on your list is outdated.

Eliminating one issue on that list doesn't make other points less valid.

The guy is obviously a player and only doing his best to describe the issues which need addressing in his opinion.

Originally posted by Neopsych

OK - I am neither a fanboi or troll of this game and I have not played it so take my comments are mere observations.

Firstly, I think Tasos is to be congratulated on not only directly answering player generated questions and concerns in an open forum but also for, in the main, answering them properly rather than the usual marketing spin that does not answer the point made. I wish more game devs would take such an approach to community response.

I am sure the thread will fill with positive and negative takes on the actual answer themselves but overall I felt most of the questions were directly answered albeit I still have this huge issue, and maybe its me, that the whole limited selling strtaegy whilst they fix and implement stuff whilst players pay is too much like a beta that costs you. I like the approach of a steady launch rather than the "open 200 servers and merge them all a month later" but I would be pissed if the I was paying for an account if the game had a high rate of crashing, bugs or lack of intended launch features - I do not know if that is the case with this game but I would hope not for the people who are playing it currently.

Still, I give them overall props for having the nuts to answer in the open forum as I said.

I agree 100% and I am in the same position as you, since I have stayed away from having an opinion about this game until I actually play it.

The last MMO I purchased, and the one that caused me to take a hiatus from MMO's until something actually FUN comes out, was Age of Conan.  One of the things that pissed me off the most, and caused me to permanently cancel the game before I even paid my first month's sub was the complete and utter lack of communication from Funcom. You couldn't get them to shut up with all the hype before the game launched, but when it did launch and problems arose, their silence was deafening.

What Tasos is doing here, in my opinion, should be highly commended, and their company just gained a lot of respect from me if for nothing else but taking player questions, and making an excellent effort to communicate with the community.  If Funcom could have done something like this, they might not have lost so many players in the first month after launch.

Also, I respect how they are handling their launch population numbers.  This is a small dev shop, as and such I believe the decision to throttle sales while the games issues are worked out is brilliant.   Controlling the population allows them to  steadily increase users in tandem with performance / bug fixes.

Too many companies rely on throwing up 50+ servers for launch day, which has to be a huge time and money waste for not knowing how many players will even like and/or stick around to play it. The way Darkfall is being handled allows those resources to be put back into game improvements right now, and lowers business overhead. If game companies would learn to adopt a more conservative launch system, scaled for their respective market potential, fewer of them may go out of business and some games that never go mainstream would still make decent money as a niche market games.

Yes, it sucks that some of us can't get in the game yet, but being a seasoned MMO player, I really don't want to.  I'd rather wait a few more months and let them dial the game in.

Im schocked. DF haters might actually understand some of that : )

Good reading.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Good answers to solid questions.  Didn't shy away or sugarcoat them.  You sure Tasos actually was the person who replied, just didn't seem very much like him.

Sounds like they are actively working on issues in an orderly fashion. Can't really ask for much else, except of course, to please hurry up.  (but that's always the wish)

 

You can tell by the way he talks, he is a gamer.   I remember when the original AoC director would issue his State of the Game letters that were 2 pages long full of flowerly language that didn't tell you anything.  Tasos is very much the opposite, and while he is perceived as unprofessional by people who hate the game, his candor is appreciated by the people who do play it.

They're actually communicating with playerbase! that gives them +1 over Funcom

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Originally posted by DarkPony

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Originally posted by popinjay

 

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Originally posted by moozaad
 
WTB;
Warhulks
Needless to say DF needs work.
WoT, anyone read this far?? :D
 

---

 
 
Scratch Warhulks. Sighted in game. Wonder what else on your list is outdated.

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Eliminating one issue on that list doesn't make other points less valid.
The guy is obviously a player and only doing his best to describe the issues which need addressing in his opinion.

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Not arguing the "validity", just the timeliness and need to post something that was already fixed at the time of his posting.

Eliminating one issue at a time is how you complete any list of tasks ultimately, so its a good start.

 good read

The one thing he probably shouldn't have said is the bit about the hackers being rumored to be more widely spread than they are.  I would guess, that he's probably 100% correct, but complaining customers don't want to hear excuses.

It should be pointed out that this is the list of all the sold-out MMO's in the world:

Darkfall

Right now the game is like a restaraunt that can only serve so many customers, but it's potential to be franchised is huge.

Originally posted by FadeToBlack3

Ill admit ive been a bit sceptical in the past of the way this game has been handled by Tasos and his team but its refreshing to see him respond directly to players issues/questons this way. Maybe there is hope for darkfall yet =)

You may read it as direct responses, I read the content of those direct responses, which were all empty promises for the future.

I don't have much interest in this game, as I'm not really into PvP very much. However, I have to say that the way they are handling launch, as well as the refreshing "marketing speak free" response to player feedback gives these guys a big plus in my book.....

I may even try to check out the game when it becomes widely available. Doubt I'll play it, as my tastes run more toward PvE and RP.... but I've got to give them credit for their approach.

personally i have always liked Tasos' straightforward, no bullshit attitude and this interview is no exception. i wish more game developers would take a leaf out of Tasos' book.

If a character is caught hacking, why are they banning the character and not the whole account? If people keep deleting  their characters to "hide" their account, its a simple task of having a separate table of retired characters with dates they were active and account numbers they belong to. This way there would be no need to "chase" their accounts.

Originally posted by popinjay

 

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Posted by Tasos Flambouras:

 

Well this is of course true, but things are improving every day. This is a temporary problem and it stems from the demand. Consider this: Theirs is no "buy Darkfall" link. It's all happening by word of mouth and still the demand is overwhelming. We're opening up the shop every now and then and thousands of copies are bought up in a matter of minutes. Our first priority is to serve the players who are in the game, making sure they're having a good experience. This is why there are no queues to get into the game anymore, why we're not selling this game 24/7, and why we're just not throwing up servers in a hurry just to meet the demand - and we won't until we're ready to give good service. We're working non-stop on getting our capacity up, to get new servers up and on improving conditions in the existing ones.

This issue will be a thing of the past soon, and what's going to be left is an excellent game and an excellent user experience.

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Ironically, you know how much the trollhaters actually ADDED to that demand by flaming Darkfall and keeping the threads so active making people curious about the game who never heard of it before?

 

 

Darkfall trolls really have to be kicking themselves right now and saying "Why didn't we just stay quiet and let the game die?" This has got to be one of the funniest developments in MMO history how trolls kept massive buzz alive for a game they absolutely hated to death and inadvertantly helped it prosper. No advertising needed.

 

 

 

 

Aventurine- 1. Trolls- 0.
 

What is so funny is you let the trolls win by being so thin skinned.  The "trolls" obviously cause you much grief but that grief is your own fault.  Their agenda is to wreck havoc and you fall into the trap by coming out swinging in defense of darkfall as if you could ever save the game.  

Trolls -1.    You-0.