Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

If you feel that i want any game to fail, you are sadly mistaken. What the real issue is, is that i comment freely about MMO's, all of them, and you do not agree.

 

 

I do not buy into the thinking that Hardcore sandbox is defined as: Incomplete, needless tedium, ganking low level players is a healthy feature for a game, convoluted system that require macros to circumvent are a acceptable alternative to a unfun and rewarding skill system, or that lack of polish is acceptable, creation of a community, that by its nature and by guidance is hostile to new users.

I could go on.

 

Other than that, the fact the even launched is a feat into its self, that i have congratulated them on many times truly an achievement to be prowled of, they have done what most here dream of doing. May of the systems they were going to create would have been great, to bad they didn't follow through, and talked smack while doing so.

 

Have you played Darkfall's retail, and if so, have you played it more than just one day?

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Everyone blames the reviewer, insted of the game. This is funny.

 

C'mon Bloodworth,..

IF what Tasos wrote about their total amount of playing time is true (which is pretty much backed up Eurogamer's offer to redo the review) it is utterly clear that this reviewer didn't even remotely try out DF.

Handing out an extreme verdict like this, whether it is extremely positive or extremely negative should be founded on FACTS and actual ingame experience. And if DF is close to, or exactly worth a 2 out of 10 to you personally, that doesn't change a thing to the fact that this is not a way to conduct any kind of serious journalism.

If this would have been a release of one of Eurogamer's primary advertisers, or a release made by a big and well established company, I seriously doubt that they would have made the same mistake of puting an external nutter on the job and support such a badly founded and extreme verdict.

 

 

Again, amount of time is irrelevant, i don't see where he commented on things he did not experience.

It is not the responsibility of the player to find the fun, its the responsibility of a game to show the player the fun.

This guy, for what ever reason, could not get past the games implementation of the most basic things, or even get bootstrapped into its game, or game play.

That's more revealing than any of his choice of words.

Awe, poor Tacos... the truth hurts doesnt it?

Originally posted by Dethnoble

Originally posted by CaesarsGhost

Originally posted by Dethnoble

I can understand MrBloodworth, who has a vested interest in this game's failure for some reason, but Caesar you should know better.  Heck, this could almost hit a hypocritical level with you Caesar.  Shall we go back to the RapidReality days with this one?

I'd like to address this right quick:

Go ahead and go back to my RR days if you wish.  Almost all my responses at the time were dictated from people above me, I had no Producer level powers as Tasos has.  On top of that, I believe I've well documented, to anybody who wants to bring it up in ANY given thread, the situation I was in, powers I had (read: none), and the final outcomes.

However:
I'd like to point out that I defend Darkfall where I feel it's warranted.  They released a game for a crowd (that does not apply to the one I prefer).  They got the game out the door, that's more then I can say for MY previous employers.

 

Finally:
There's absolutely no excuse to fail to update the "Features" page of the Darkfall website.  I don't care who you are, or what you say... that's easy.  Anybody can do it, and it takes only an hour max.  It's not the job of an interested gamer to go and dig through Forums for answers on basic feature sets (I said it at RR all the time as well) or even advanced features that'll be available AFTER launch.

So when a Game Reviewer goes to the website and reads the game has X and Y features as it's downloading, gets ingame, fails to see ANY of the listed features... well that makes the game a little difficult to give a good score.

 

The 'finally' argument is the only good argument you have.  The rest of it is coming from someone who was part of the WORSE MMO developers of all time.  Who DEFENDED them when they were ripping off people left and right.  No matter how many excuses you use, you had people more powerful than you or whatever, you were still a part of Rapid Reality and went along with the scam, even if you had a boss.

Now, let me ask you a question.  It seems you are a designer for another game.  If you had a review from a magazine that had someone test your game for two hours, when it takes a few weeks (at least) to get a full picture of it, would you not question the credibility of that review and reviewer?

Furthermore, what was your beta or retail name? Or, if you want to keep those private, how long did you play Darkfall?

 

  All one has to do is look at your signature to realize you can't discuss any topic rationally.  Just to make a point here, using the word hater strictly puts you in the fanboy department of people who have to put negative labels on anyone that criticizes something they like. 

 I personally think the reviewer was a bit over the top, but then again, all Tasos did was prove how poor their logging system was.  Of course anyone playing the game knows how poor  the log system is.  Claiming the got rid of most of the cheaters is probably the most ridiculous claim to come out of a MMO to date.

Believing anything Tasos says at this point, labels you as one blind to obvious facts.  The guy has an uncanny ability to stick his foot in his mouth and swallow whole.

While I personally still would love to find the game to get, 2 hours does not a review make. And I know server logs since you make them very verbose for cheat tracking. To fake a server log would take many man hours and not worth it. It sounds like the game is not for everyone, and should be reviewed by 2+ reviewers as all games should. Its like a warhammer/blizard groupie reviewing any new game by any other company or any other genra. Or putting an FPS player to review an TBS game that takes months to play.

In all, I think that Darkfall needs to work on some sort of digital distribution to ease people playing. Then after that, if there is a problem, fess up to it. But Eurogamer needs to admit their failings too. I've seen reviews a plenty on that site which have no basis in reality. They need to get their reviewers to stop using paid review time as a good time to smoke pot. And start actually reviewing. I also knoticed some of the images used in the review look suspiciously like images publically available or available on other sites. They need to check this, becuase if their reviewer is plagarizing without even a slight "image taken from" or "Cropped image from". Then they are liable for that image. I've done reviews for quite a while myself freelance. I spend no less than 1-2 weeks for the review, and plan on a minimum of 12 hours of gameplay time and 12 hours of writing time. With 8 hours spread incase of needing a re-write or re-play.

Once I can find this game, I'm going to do a comprehensive review. And we will see how much of the eurogamer review is right, and how much of the overhype is right. Which I'll try not to get on all the overhype reviews right now. IF someone can tell me exactly how to find a retail box or digital download, please mail me on mmorpg.com.

Originally posted by Kaelas

While I personally still would love to find the game to get, 2 hours does not a review make. And I know server logs since you make them very verbose for cheat tracking. To fake a server log would take many man hours and not worth it. It sounds like the game is not for everyone, and should be reviewed by 2+ reviewers as all games should. Its like a warhammer/blizard groupie reviewing any new game by any other company or any other genra. Or putting an FPS player to review an TBS game that takes months to play.

 

In all, I think that Darkfall needs to work on some sort of digital distribution to ease people playing. Then after that, if there is a problem, fess up to it. But Eurogamer needs to admit their failings too. I've seen reviews a plenty on that site which have no basis in reality. They need to get their reviewers to stop using paid review time as a good time to smoke pot. And start actually reviewing. I also knoticed some of the images used in the review look suspiciously like images publically available or available on other sites. They need to check this, becuase if their reviewer is plagarizing without even a slight "image taken from" or "Cropped image from". Then they are liable for that image. I've done reviews for quite a while myself freelance. I spend no less than 1-2 weeks for the review, and plan on a minimum of 12 hours of gameplay time and 12 hours of writing time. With 8 hours spread incase of needing a re-write or re-play.

 

Once I can find this game, I'm going to do a comprehensive review. And we will see how much of the eurogamer review is right, and how much of the overhype is right. Which I'll try not to get on all the overhype reviews right now. IF someone can tell me exactly how to find a retail box or digital download, please mail me on mmorpg.com.

This is all based on if Tasos is telling the truth, from what i have seen he lies alot. so i will guess that EG really hated the game and gave a little worse review, but played it longer .

Originally posted by Kaelas

To fake a server log would take many man hours and not worth it.

update tbl_UserAccount set TimePlayed =  TimePlayedHour - 7 where UserName = 'Ed';

Yes, it would take years to change SQL data... YEARS I SAY!

slightly offtopic but... why did we need another thread on this, with almost the exact same title as another thread, outside of the darkfall forums?  could this either get moved to the darkfall forums, or simply deleted? there are 4-5 other topics on Tasos' response. let alone another 3 or so on the original rewiew, and plenty more attacking the reviewer personally.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Everyone blames the reviewer, insted of the game. This is funny.

 

C'mon Bloodworth,..

IF what Tasos wrote about their total amount of playing time is true (which is pretty much backed up Eurogamer's offer to redo the review) it is utterly clear that this reviewer didn't even remotely try out DF.

Handing out an extreme verdict like this, whether it is extremely positive or extremely negative should be founded on FACTS and actual ingame experience. And if DF is close to, or exactly worth a 2 out of 10 to you personally, that doesn't change a thing to the fact that this is not a way to conduct any kind of serious journalism.

If this would have been a release of one of Eurogamer's primary advertisers, or a release made by a big and well established company, I seriously doubt that they would have made the same mistake of puting an external nutter on the job and support such a badly founded and extreme verdict.

 

 

 This guy, for what ever reason, could not get past the games implementation of the most basic things, or even get bootstrapped into its game, or game play.

As in: he didn't even remotely try. And for a proper review, you need someone who gives a game a shot. Which this guy obviously didn't. His clear dislike of FFA pvp and having to play in a vast open world without much handholding speaks volumes also. This guy had his verdict ready and didn't even try to get past the 'getting to know the UI phase' which we all go through when playing a new game for the first time.

Seriously, project this 'review' on any other game and you'll see how much it fails;

The Lotro equivalent would be having a hardcore FFA PVP fan stumble around in the shire for thirty minutes, failing some of the timed mail delivery quests, logging off and writing a rant on how much the lack of PVP and the silly timed quests are lame as hell.

Same thing with EVE; you wouldn't want to read a review on EVE by a handholding/storylined gameplay fan who barely played it for an hour.

Etc, etc. Goes for every game out there.

Whatever DF's shortcomings, this was obviously a case of very bad journalism and with an open mind and clear judgement you don't even have to like DF to see that.

Originally posted by Majinash

slightly offtopic but... why did we need another thread on this, with almost the exact same title as another thread, outside of the darkfall forums?  could this either get moved to the darkfall forums, or simply deleted? there are 4-5 other topics on Tasos' response. let alone another 3 or so on the original rewiew, and plenty more attacking the reviewer personally.

This one is the official one, technically the others are duplicates and should be moderated.

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Everyone blames the reviewer, insted of the game. This is funny.

 

C'mon Bloodworth,..

IF what Tasos wrote about their total amount of playing time is true (which is pretty much backed up Eurogamer's offer to redo the review) it is utterly clear that this reviewer didn't even remotely try out DF.

Handing out an extreme verdict like this, whether it is extremely positive or extremely negative should be founded on FACTS and actual ingame experience. And if DF is close to, or exactly worth a 2 out of 10 to you personally, that doesn't change a thing to the fact that this is not a way to conduct any kind of serious journalism.

If this would have been a release of one of Eurogamer's primary advertisers, or a release made by a big and well established company, I seriously doubt that they would have made the same mistake of puting an external nutter on the job and support such a badly founded and extreme verdict.

 

 

 This guy, for what ever reason, could not get past the games implementation of the most basic things, or even get bootstrapped into its game, or game play.

As in: he didn't even remotely try. And for a proper review, you need someone who gives a game a shot. Which this guy obviously didn't. His clear dislike of FFA pvp and having to play in a vast open world without much handholding speaks volumes also. This guy had his verdict ready and didn't even try to get past the 'getting to know the UI phase' which we all go through when playing a new game for the first time.

Seriously, project this 'review' on any other game and you'll see how much it fails;

The Lotro equivalent would be having a hardcore FFA PVP fan stumble around in the shire for thirty minutes, failing some of the timed mail delivery quests, logging off and writing a rant on how much the lack of PVP and the silly timed quests are lame as hell.

Same thing with EVE; you wouldn't want to read a review on EVE by a handholding/storylined gameplay fan who barely played it for an hour.

Etc, etc. Goes for every game out there.

Whatever DF's shortcomings, this was obviously a case of very bad journalism and with an open mind and clear judgement you don't even have to like DF to see that.

What? looks to me like he talked about the games mechanics and features, all most to a bullet list.

"Sadly, every little thing Darkfall does is tragic, but without a personality that might make you feel sorry for its developers, Aventurine. From the grubby textures and grammatically incorrect quest text to the anarchic control system, any attempt to glean joy from this torrid husk of an entertainment product is met with disdain. It's almost as if Darkfall doesn't want you to play. But nevertheless, a job is a job, and play I must."

Again, I am trying to figure out, what because of its style of game play, its excused from being a complete, and polished product. There are other PvP sandbox hardcore games that seem to meet this standard, but apparently darkfall is excused from this measurement, even after calming for years, that they are more polished than AAA games, to the point of insulting them, and the developers.

Please, explain it to me.

Originally posted by Dethnoble

Originally posted by CaesarsGhost

Originally posted by Dethnoble

I can understand MrBloodworth, who has a vested interest in this game's failure for some reason, but Caesar you should know better.  Heck, this could almost hit a hypocritical level with you Caesar.  Shall we go back to the RapidReality days with this one?

I'd like to address this right quick:

Go ahead and go back to my RR days if you wish.  Almost all my responses at the time were dictated from people above me, I had no Producer level powers as Tasos has.  On top of that, I believe I've well documented, to anybody who wants to bring it up in ANY given thread, the situation I was in, powers I had (read: none), and the final outcomes.

However:
I'd like to point out that I defend Darkfall where I feel it's warranted.  They released a game for a crowd (that does not apply to the one I prefer).  They got the game out the door, that's more then I can say for MY previous employers.

 

Finally:
There's absolutely no excuse to fail to update the "Features" page of the Darkfall website.  I don't care who you are, or what you say... that's easy.  Anybody can do it, and it takes only an hour max.  It's not the job of an interested gamer to go and dig through Forums for answers on basic feature sets (I said it at RR all the time as well) or even advanced features that'll be available AFTER launch.

So when a Game Reviewer goes to the website and reads the game has X and Y features as it's downloading, gets ingame, fails to see ANY of the listed features... well that makes the game a little difficult to give a good score.

 

The 'finally' argument is the only good argument you have.  The rest of it is coming from someone who was part of the WORSE MMO developers of all time.  Who DEFENDED them when they were ripping off people left and right.  No matter how many excuses you use, you had people more powerful than you or whatever, you were still a part of Rapid Reality and went along with the scam, even if you had a boss.

Now, let me ask you a question.  It seems you are a designer for another game.  If you had a review from a magazine that had someone test your game for two hours, when it takes a few weeks (at least) to get a full picture of it, would you not question the credibility of that review and reviewer?

Furthermore, what was your beta or retail name? Or, if you want to keep those private, how long did you play Darkfall?

 

Paragraph 1:
when the refunds went out, that was out of my own personal pocket.  So when you say that I (CaesarsGhost) was ripping people off, you should note that I A) Did not get a refund myself, and B) Paid out of my own pocket for people who felt "ripped off" (it was well into 4 figures).
...I'd dare Tasos to do so... I'd dare him to even think about paying out of his own pocket!

Paragraph 2:
I'd accept the review actually... last game I helped with got a rather dim review, I didn't fight it.

Paragraph 3:
I cannot divulge as it was leftover time on a friends account.  A dozen or so hours a week for about 2.5 weeks though... it definitely wasn't for me, I won't even pretend it was my type of game.

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Everyone blames the reviewer, insted of the game. This is funny.

 

C'mon Bloodworth,..

IF what Tasos wrote about their total amount of playing time is true (which is pretty much backed up Eurogamer's offer to redo the review) it is utterly clear that this reviewer didn't even remotely try out DF.

Handing out an extreme verdict like this, whether it is extremely positive or extremely negative should be founded on FACTS and actual ingame experience. And if DF is close to, or exactly worth a 2 out of 10 to you personally, that doesn't change a thing to the fact that this is not a way to conduct any kind of serious journalism.

If this would have been a release of one of Eurogamer's primary advertisers, or a release made by a big and well established company, I seriously doubt that they would have made the same mistake of puting an external nutter on the job and support such a badly founded and extreme verdict.

 

 

 This guy, for what ever reason, could not get past the games implementation of the most basic things, or even get bootstrapped into its game, or game play.

As in: he didn't even remotely try. And for a proper review, you need someone who gives a game a shot. Which this guy obviously didn't. His clear dislike of FFA pvp and having to play in a vast open world without much handholding speaks volumes also. This guy had his verdict ready and didn't even try to get past the 'getting to know the UI phase' which we all go through when playing a new game for the first time.

Seriously, project this 'review' on any other game and you'll see how much it fails;

The Lotro equivalent would be having a hardcore FFA PVP fan stumble around in the shire for thirty minutes, failing some of the timed mail delivery quests, logging off and writing a rant on how much the lack of PVP and the silly timed quests are lame as hell.

Same thing with EVE; you wouldn't want to read a review on EVE by a handholding/storylined gameplay fan who barely played it for an hour.

Etc, etc. Goes for every game out there.

Whatever DF's shortcomings, this was obviously a case of very bad journalism and with an open mind and clear judgement you don't even have to like DF to see that.

/agree.

Look folks, I don't play Darkfall and I don't plan to either.  However, I would hope that you Darkfall bashers could find a better review than this one to point out the failings of Darkfall (let's define failing as what you don't like in the game b/c a lot of people don't see it as failed and find it quite enjoyable).  This guy obviously didn't even attempt to play the game... the entire read sounded like he came onto these forms and just picked a random Darkfall thread and summarized it.  You can't say that he gave the game a fair shot and in this instance I would actually believe Tasos.  If you're going to copy and paste images from websites to do a game review, at least word the article so that it sounds like it's unbiased... This guy didn't even try.  I love how all of you are always so quick to jump to the extreme... The simplest answer is usually the correct one and I bet this reviewer only played 2 hours.

public void RapidRealityComeBacks ( bool HorseIsDead, object Horse )
{
    if(HorseIsDead)
        Beat(Horse);

    return Horse;
}

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Everyone blames the reviewer, insted of the game. This is funny.

 

C'mon Bloodworth,..

IF what Tasos wrote about their total amount of playing time is true (which is pretty much backed up Eurogamer's offer to redo the review) it is utterly clear that this reviewer didn't even remotely try out DF.

Handing out an extreme verdict like this, whether it is extremely positive or extremely negative should be founded on FACTS and actual ingame experience. And if DF is close to, or exactly worth a 2 out of 10 to you personally, that doesn't change a thing to the fact that this is not a way to conduct any kind of serious journalism.

If this would have been a release of one of Eurogamer's primary advertisers, or a release made by a big and well established company, I seriously doubt that they would have made the same mistake of puting an external nutter on the job and support such a badly founded and extreme verdict.

 

 

 This guy, for what ever reason, could not get past the games implementation of the most basic things, or even get bootstrapped into its game, or game play.

As in: he didn't even remotely try. And for a proper review, you need someone who gives a game a shot. Which this guy obviously didn't. His clear dislike of FFA pvp and having to play in a vast open world without much handholding speaks volumes also. This guy had his verdict ready and didn't even try to get past the 'getting to know the UI phase' which we all go through when playing a new game for the first time.

Seriously, project this 'review' on any other game and you'll see how much it fails;

The Lotro equivalent would be having a hardcore FFA PVP fan stumble around in the shire for thirty minutes, failing some of the timed mail delivery quests, logging off and writing a rant on how much the lack of PVP and the silly timed quests are lame as hell.

Same thing with EVE; you wouldn't want to read a review on EVE by a handholding/storylined gameplay fan who barely played it for an hour.

Etc, etc. Goes for every game out there.

Whatever DF's shortcomings, this was obviously a case of very bad journalism and with an open mind and clear judgement you don't even have to like DF to see that.

What? looks to me like he talked about the games mechanics and features, all most to a bullet list.

"Sadly, every little thing Darkfall does is tragic, but without a personality that might make you feel sorry for its developers, Aventurine. From the grubby textures and grammatically incorrect quest text to the anarchic control system, any attempt to glean joy from this torrid husk of an entertainment product is met with disdain. It's almost as if Darkfall doesn't want you to play. But nevertheless, a job is a job, and play I must."

Again, I am trying to figure out, what because of its style of game play, its excused from being a complete, and polished product. There are other PvP sandbox hardcore games that seem to meet this standard, but apparently darkfall is excused from this measurement, even after calming for years, that they are more polished than AAA games, to the point of insulting them, and the developers.

 

Please, explain it to me.

 

After you made clear what you consider to be a properly executed review and why this review doesn't stink.

The paragraph you quoted consists of general conclusions anyone could have written after a quick glance of the game and it most definately hints to what I wrote before: "This guy had his verdict ready and didn't even try to get past the 'getting to know the UI phase' which we all go through when playing a new game for the first time."

p.s. This is not about whether DF is an utter failure, which it arguably is. And DF OF COURSE shouldn't be exempt from devastating reviews when it is merrited, but that devastating review should be based on a reasonable experience with said game.

The mere fact that this guy goes on ranting about how looting a corpse takes so much time shows how much he knew or read about DF beforehand; next to nothing. He is totally oblivious that this was a conscious gameplay decision; to have looting be a risky affair in a combat situation and more true to realism in that it takes actual time. A thing everyone who has remotely followed this game knows about.

In that regard I think that you would do a much better job in writing that devastating review than this Ed Zitron, in that you actually know much more than him about DF's and AV's shortcomings over the past years. Then again, you would have to play it and it doesn't look like that will ever happen, lol :)

I never said he wasn't extream in his wording, or that he was inaccurate about some things. However, looting? Even the darkfall community thinks it sucks (Read: Auto-loot-macro).

Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog Seems to agree with me.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

It is not the responsibility of the player to find the "Fun" in a game, its the responsibility of the game to show the player the fun.

THAT!!!...

That right there... makes a GREAT quote...

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

I never said he wasn't extream in his wording, or that he was inaccurate about some things. However, looting? Even the darkfall community thinks it sucks (Read: Auto-loot-macro).

Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog Seems to agree with me.

Sure, but the fact that he doesn't even mention the reasoning behind looting being as it is, is the crucial part here. The guy didn't know why or he would have at least mentioned it briefly.

Or take this part:

"You see, anyone can kill anyone. For the most part, your first ten or so hours in Darkfall are spent dying, repeatedly, at the hands of either the AI or a cyber-bully in a wolf-suit. In fact, past that mark, it feels impossible to avoid the clammy hands and bloodied sword of somebody who has specially allocated part of their day to griefing."

This clearly shows that this guys is not exactly a prime example of the niche AV has targetted with DF (that was a nice understatement). Most possibly he got frustrated by being ganked while he was frantically trying to come to terms with the UI, hehe.

I'm not saying that a pve fan can't write a proper review on a ffa pvp game, but you need an unbiased person for that .... who actually puts some time playing the game rather than venting the frustrations of his personal experience as a noob and rewarding it with a 2/10 "because it is an insignificant game by an indy dev who doesn't advertise on our site anyway."

Originally posted by Fr0z1nDuDe

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

It is not the responsibility of the player to find the "Fun" in a game, its the responsibility of the game to show the player the fun.

THAT!!!...

That right there... makes a GREAT quote...

That is something i agree with, 100 %..... but try saying it in the Eve forum here and see how those guys respond.  I bet they come up with at least ten synonyms for moron.  ;)

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

I never said he wasn't extream in his wording, or that he was inaccurate about some things. However, looting? Even the darkfall community thinks it sucks (Read: Auto-loot-macro).

Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog Seems to agree with me.

 

Sure, but the fact that he doesn't even mention the reasoning behind looting being as it is, is the crucial part here. The guy didn't know why or he would have at least mentioned it briefly.

Trust me, he knows why, and we all know why its circumvented. Same reason it has always been. Who is the most "unknowledgeable" here, Darkfall developers for putting it in, and being surprised its circumvented, or the players, who mention it was a stupid mechanic to begin with, 10 years ago.

There is no way you can convene anyone, in this day and age, that grieving new players, or even allowing it, is a good game design. It appeals to only one type of player, the type that would dedicate a day to it.

Refer to my bootstrapping comment.