I can live with mediocre graphics and bad character animations – I play World War II Online and love it

I can live with the macroing and botters - I macroed and botted my ass off in UO and L2

I can live with gankfests – I play and Eve Online and love it

My major concern is about the lack of promised features/content/depth .....Baring some mega miracle patch at the 11th hour of beta my worries will become reality
 

e) All of the Above

Originally posted by Spoonpott

e) All of the Above

One of my teachers used this phrase alot, and it applies here. Aventurine makes me worried, Tasos' arrogant ass makes me worried, the amount of things they're promising makes me worried, the potential effect of having all the hardcore PvP gankers in one game makes me worried (well, actually, not really. Then they won't engage in Forum PvP anymore! ), etc.

My biggest problem is the leaks of PVP being a Gankfest.

To digress here for a bit I will bring up WOW. Great game. Until about the time the “Honor System” came out. What a bad name for that grindfest. Suddenly my level 40 druid became honor fodder for anyone on the other team. There were gangs going around camping low levels. Entire zones became unplayable and most of us had to grind out our 20 or so levels in out of the way places killing mobs. Not exactly a great experience. But it was to be expected in a hardcore PvP server you say? No. Just shut up. No. It wasn’t.

The game play changed after all those characters were played up to 40. Now back then it took a heck of a lot longer to level to 40. I was not about to go start a new character so I chose to go grind. But it really screwed the game for me. I ended up doing MC and then leaving and came back for a while after BC came out but eventually the entire experience caused me to leave the game. It just sucked a lot of the fun out of the game.

By far the biggest complaint I had was the fact that they implemented this “Honor System” crap as a way to make PvP have consequences. When it was originally mentioned the dev’s said that characters would be penalized for ganking lower level characters. That there would be real world type consequences for those people who seem to exclusively seek out lowbies to gank rather than try to use any skill to fight like level enemies. It excited a lot of people who like PvP because it was going to make combat fun again. To be honorable and gain access to special gear a player would have to behave honorably. They would be able to kill lowbies only if the lowbies attacked them first, or face negative consequences. But that fell by the wayside rather quickly when all the leet came out whining about how unfair and carebear like that was. So WOW ended up with a truly pathetic player ganking reward system that ended up making gankers quite happy.

Now keep in mind I like PvP. I think you SHOULD be able to kill anyone and everyone that you want to. I just think that you should have to be RESPONSIBLE for your actions. So if you decide to kill lowbies you get a rep for being a cowardly dog that flees from the first sign of real danger. If you go out and kill a merchant npc in town than the town guard wants your head. From what I am hearing Darkfall is going to be an open sandbox of ganking. Super. So you end up with players who have their own towns and just kill anyone and everyone that comes near them and camps the newbie spawn zone.

That sucks. I have been reading about DF for years and hoped we would actually have a developer get it right. Have an AI programmed that actually reacts to what people are doing and treats them according to a “normal reaction” rule set. Instead it sounds like every other open PVP experience where the first people in the game rocket themselves up the levels then return and gank the lowbies to their hearts content getting their jollies from showing how elite they are vs. people who just started playing the game.

PvP is supposed to be a contest of equals or groups of roughly equal power. Why? Because then each side has a relatively equal chance of winning. There are some out there that disagree and all I have to ask is how bad a player are you if you cannot fight people of equal power? I hope that the leaks are wrong. I hope that PvP in Darkfall does not suck like this. If it does I know I will not be playing it. I will stick with WAR until something better comes along.

Originally posted by Nomad40

PvP is supposed to be a contest of equals or groups of roughly equal power. Why? Because then each side has a relatively equal chance of winning. There are some out there that disagree and all I have to ask is how bad a player are you if you cannot fight people of equal power?

I think I will respectfully disagree with you on this one.  There is a popular saying in regards to PvP, that a fair fight is the product of bad tactics or poor planning.   There is really no such thing as equal powers fighting, especially in a non-instanced MMO.  It has nothing to do with being a bad player, it is just the nature of the game.   MMORPG PvP will never really be a fair fight, fair and balanced fights are better suited for genres like FPS and console fighting games.

Again, this is no way a flame at you, it is just a philosophical difference between different groups of players.  In a game like Darkfall with full looting, the stakes in most of your PvP fights will be pretty high.   Not just because of the looting aspect, but the travel time involved to get back to where you are at.  If you find 2 enemies while you are walking around with your group of 3, I seriously doubt you would have 1 of your group stand back and stay out of the battle like a Dragonball Z episode. 

Most people will strive to attain every possible advantage, be it numbers, terrain, positioning, and surprise.  A person who can master the balance of these tactics is a good player, not a bad one.  Real life war is the same way.   Before we invade a country, do we look at the enemy army and say, they have 50,000 troops, so we will bring 50,000 because it is the honorable thing to do?   No, we bring 200,000 because we want to minimize the damage to our side because the conquences are severe and the stakes are high.  Honor quickly takes a backseat to victory when you have something precious to lose.

My biggest worry is that siege warfare won't develop well. I'm not against the status quo as far as the two hour notification as long as when both sides start fighting it's fun.

I do worry a bit that it'll become more about who has the most gold if they're swapping 10k every night just to attack.

Anyway, the whole siege thing needs to be fun. I think that's a tall order. You want to make the defenses mean something, but at the same time you don't want 10 defenders holding off 200 attackers.

So you have to figure out ways to give the defenders some slight advantage, but not enough to make it so it's only possible to take a keep when the defenders are asleep.

If they can nail that, then I think the game will be a winner.

Edit: Paragus, I agree with you, but I would say that the unfairness needs to be closer to fair than many games.

The very best equipped player that is awful at combat shouldn't win every time against the average player that's above average skill. (I include strategy, tactics and twitch as skill, and not just twitch)

Gear, and the level of skills you have should matter some, but I would hope that it never dictates the winner like levels would in other games.

Originally posted by Paragus1

Originally posted by Nomad40

PvP is supposed to be a contest of equals or groups of roughly equal power. Why? Because then each side has a relatively equal chance of winning. There are some out there that disagree and all I have to ask is how bad a player are you if you cannot fight people of equal power?

 

I think I will respectfully disagree with you on this one.  There is a popular saying in regards to PvP, that a fair fight is the product of bad tactics or poor planning.   There is really no such thing as equal powers fighting, especially in a non-instanced MMO.  It has nothing to do with being a bad player, it is just the nature of the game.   MMORPG PvP will never really be a fair fight, fair and balanced fights are better suited for genres like FPS and console fighting games.

Again, this is no way a flame at you, it is just a philosophical difference between different groups of players.  In a game like Darkfall with full looting, the stakes in most of your PvP fights will be pretty high.   Not just because of the looting aspect, but the travel time involved to get back to where you are at.  If you find 2 enemies while you are walking around with your group of 3, I seriously doubt you would have 1 of your group stand back and stay out of the battle like a Dragonball Z episode. 

Most people will strive to attain every possible advantage, be it numbers, terrain, positioning, and surprise.  A person who can master the balance of these tactics is a good player, not a bad one.  Real life war is the same way.   Before we invade a country, do we look at the enemy army and say, they have 50,000 troops, so we will bring 50,000 because it is the honorable thing to do?   No, we bring 200,000 because we want to minimize the damage to our side because the conquences are severe and the stakes are high.  Honor quickly takes a backseat to victory when you have something precious to lose.

I do not disagree with the basics of what you are saying. However what I am talking about  and what you are talking about is not that far apart. 

The main difference of what I am talking about are those players who seem to almost exclusively target players of low power (IE a level 30 vs level 15) and rarely if ever PvP unless they have a significant advantage. True, some might call that a strategic player. But there is a huge difference between playing intelligently and playing as a min/max ganker.

There are basic, common sense metrics that can be applied to players that would make the rules as fair as possible. True, you will always be able to wait for the most opportune moment to strke. But if you are always being an opportunist and are always preying on the weak you should get a bad reputation for it.

It sounds as if the DF consequences for ganking are nearly non existent. If that is true it makes this another in a long string of games that falls far short of where their PvP rules should be.

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But there is a huge difference between playing intelligently and playing as a min/max ganker.

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PVP stands for Player Vs Player. There's no C for contest, F for fairness, or even an R for roughly equal in power. These are alternative definitions for particular people who want an alternative type of PVP, namely the type you described.

Suffice to say, it's pretty obvious that Darkfall isn't aiming to be fun for that group of people.

As for where their PVP rules and penalties "should be", that's something you can only claim for yourself as far as your own interests lie.

Originally posted by Ashrik

 

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But there is a huge difference between playing intelligently and playing as a min/max ganker.

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The only difference is in perspective.

 

PVP stands for Player Vs Player. There's no C for contest, F for fairness, or even an R for roughly equal in power. These are alternative definitions for particular people who want an alternative type of PVP, namely the type you described.

Suffice to say, it's pretty obvious that Darkfall isn't aiming to be fun for that group of people.

As for where their PVP rules and penalties "should be", that's something you can only claim for yourself as far as your own interests lie.

Ah perspective as an argument. Well that is a reasonable point of view. 

As I said I have hopes for the game that seem to have been dashed by the information coming out.

I have little interest in devoting large amounts of time again to being the fodder for others cannons.

As for my claims about what PvP rules and penalties should be? I base them off of every other game in the world. Those games have rules. Those rules are designed to even the playing field and let the best player win. Arguments supporting the basis of having a system heavily favoring one side of a group or another leave me utterly mystified. Why would you not want a game to offer as fair a rule set as possible? That way you base victory off tactics and intelligence rather than an unfair advantage. I have a hard time understanding why one would support a one sided system that penalizes people for just starting out in a game and being lower powered.

Perhaps it is naïve of me to believe that anyone would ever want to play fair. Perhaps I am deluded to think that people could have fun by playing on an even and just playing field. However, I can assure you that I have no desire to be the mob for other players to kill when I have no recourse to fight back. Only a bunch of cowardly dogs would play in that manner and I have no wish to associate with them. So if that is what Darkfall turns out to be it will join a long list of games that I simply chose not to play. If that kind of game sounds fun to you by all means run forward into the cannons.