Originally posted by Fariic

The entire tone of the article felt like.

Skills don't do anything but unlock other skills to use.
In fact.  That is pretty much the case.

It's a leveling system.
Instead of having just a character level you have a bunch of skills you level instead.
Reach a certian milestone, like say level 25 and you unlock other skills to purchase that increase your damage.

The DFO skill system is no dif. then leveling in WoW or EQ. 

I thought this article was going to be about combat?
Pretty boring write up.

Actually the unlocking of different skills when you reach "certain" milestones is more of something solid to look forward to at a static point. As skills go up there is always some benefit, although the game does a piss poor job of explaining exactly what that is in all instances.

For instance, each school of magic has a spell that decreases the mana cost of all spells in the given school. When your character is out of mana, and you attempt to cast a spell, it tells you in chat why the spell cant cast. Something like:

"You need 6.52 mana to cast the spell. You currently have 3.46"

With each increment of the skill you can physically see the mana cost go down. Its just that in most cases you dont have a numerical representation of how much you benefit from any given skill gain.

Overlords are inside of racial cities? And towers didnt shoot you? Amazing. What race? I want to reroll one of those guys.

Originally posted by cosimusta

Originally posted by RBlackheart

Originally posted by cosimusta

 Macroing is a non-issue except all the guilds who control the majority of the world are ones that got their before anyone else, and MACROED to get their players skilled and harvesting supplies needed.  Who controls the game world is a non-issue though.

 

You also left out the worst part of the alignment system.  The fact that a game like Ultima online and Lineage2 have targeting and DF doesn't.  Fighting mobs in camps or group PvP became a joke.  A very frustrating unfunny joke.

 

And then there is exploiting.  Exploiting in DF probably needs an article on its own.  The exploits and the alignment system combined are what killed the game for me.

 

Why are DF reviews so blatantly biased one way or the other? 

Ok I have to call bullshit on your comments :). Hmm where to start:

 

• You cannot macro for resources. You never could, and you never will be able to. What you could do is create a macro that kept clicking your mouse button repeatedly while sitting at a resource to get its 51 TOTAL resources per node. However this does nothing to protect you from getting PKed with your abundance of 51 resources in your pack. And it takes approximately 8-10 minutes to empty a node. So your macroing attempts do not net any real gain
• You cant macro to get needed equipment. And your combat skills do not effect your ability to hit, or even your damage in Darkfall. So I fail to see how macroing skills helps me in the initial weeks where clans were making their initial land claims
• I am a bit confused by the statement regarding the alignment system. The issues you speak of is in regards to combat and has nothing to do with the alignment system in any way. Targeting in this writer's opinion is hands down one of the most welcome features in an MMORPG to come, ever. It's FPS style targeting. There is none of that bull shit where I stand inches from an enemy, swing with a giant halberd and somehow miss because the mob is such a higher level from me. The same goes for magic and archery. Gravity plays a role like in real life. Firing an arrow or spell takes skill as you have to both aim and time. You don't just see a magical targeting ring and land hits based on die rolls. This is actually my favorite aspect of gameplay. This also means you have to choose your fighting tactics carefully as if you begin firing arrows into crowds of people you will undoubtedly hit friendlies, and other untintended targets.
• Define what you consider exploits. There are cheats using third party applications which is bannable, and there is using the game mechanics to someone benefit in an unattended way, which is not currently bannable. I know of one exploit which I do not want to mention (but I will admit it exists if I see it posted in this thread) which they are actively kicking people for, but not banning. But I have a feeling you are referring to cheats. Regardless, as I said in my article, the cheating has dropped off dramatically since the ban hammer was dropped.

 

If you don't like the game thats ok, many won't. Just make sure what you post is accurate and up to date.

-what i meant by macro to get resources was of course a macro to harvest it.  Not a macro that magically creates it.

-never said you could macro for equipment.  You putting words in my mouth.

-Raising your combat skills does help your dmg.  It does this by raising your skill level so that you can use better weapons without them breaking insanely quick, by raising  stats like quickness that raise your overall dps, and by granting you access to spells that do more dmg.  I might be leaving some other methods out.

-The fact that there is not targetting in DF has nothign to do with the alignment system?  How about i swing horizontally and accidentally hit 2 players in one swing and no im flagged for 2 minutes.  That's the kind of thing that is frustrating.

-here's an example of an exploit.  I go into a hobgoblin camp and stand on the roof and all the hobglobins pile together at the wall below me, and occasionally run in lil circles while i nuke em down with mana missle.  Here's another example.  I'm blue, my teammate is blue, and you're blue.  Me and him take turns hitting you and backing off every 10 seconds until you're dead.

-This is not new stuff at all man.  Same stuff from beta pretty much with a few differences.  Hope everything is clear for you now.

 

You raise some good points, but they are not necessarily exploits, they are more an abuse of current game mechanics. When someone says exploit I would consider that to be duping gold or items, going invisible, teleport hacking, etc.

You are correct about the weapon and spell damage. But nearly every skill in game increases your attributes in one way or another. so really performing any action in the game has the same effect, including swimming, just sprinting around, or taking your horse for a stroll.

I am not sure if you are aware, but there are actually 2 types of standard attacks. A "left to right" swing if you will, and a "top to bottom swing". You can switch from one to the other at will, and is used for exactly this purpose. If 5 guys are whacking away on a mob with something that swings with a very wide arc (polearms being the best example) you will in fact all hit each other. You need to switch to overheard swings in close quarters and then you only hit what is directly in front of you. Taking that a step further I actually fell in love with this mechanic because it can work in your favor, and it brings a new element to mmorpgs which is the ability to hit multiple mobs with melee attacks that are not necessarily an AOE (area of effect) ability. If three mobs charge me I can actually swing my polearm from left to right and hit all three. I freakin' love that.

You make a good point about abusing the landscape to in essence become invulnerable. This definitely exists in places in this game, and many other games as well. The problem is if you are sitting on the roof and no one else is around then you have aggroed the whole camp to you. Which means when you hop off and try and loot anything you will get gang banged. Also, you do not mention that nearly all mobs, including goblins have ranged attacks either arrows or spells so you are not invulnerable completely.

Kelly,

I just got around to reading your article and I must say it's well done. I look forward to your next one. Its funny to see the same trolls in all the Darkfall correspondant threads saying the identical things over and over :). I think if they ever open up a new "opinion" tab they should also put in a new "petting zoo" tab where all the cute little trolls can gather together and we can pet them, feed them, and discipline them when necessary. 

I am not sure why people ask why the correspondant articles are often coming from people that enjoy playing the game they are writing about. The correspondant program was designed to grab individuals actively playing and involved in all walks of mmorpgs to write pieces on various topics and news from inside the game they play. The key here is "actively playing". If someone subscribed to a game and thought it sucked, hence ending their subscription... how can they write ongoing pieces for the site if they no longer play the game? 

The correspondant program works great because you can get first hand knowledge of the current ongoings on any mmorpg from people who actually play, and continue to play. If the game changes in a positive way, you'll know. If the game changes in a negative way, you'll know. If a new aspect of the game is discovered, you'll know. Paragus's writeup on his raft and subsequent boatride was a great example of this. How else would you get this information? And for those of you that dislike the correspondant program, the articles, the writers, or the placement of said articles... the first line of every correspondant article state's clearly that its a correspondant article and who its by. So they are simple to avoid should you desire to do so. 

Originally posted by Fariic

Originally posted by RBlackheart

If you read the TOS of any game, you will see all sorts of strange things. As much as I hate macroing, I will again make this statement. No one has been banned to date for macroing, afk or otherwise.

As I have explained several times, you make it sound as though anyone has the ability to launch spells and arrows all night long without penalty. This is extremely innaccrutate. Arrows and spell reagents are not free. They are damned expensive! So if you choose to shoot gold into the air all night long then so be it. If we all had bottomless pockets that regrew gold while we slept, then I would agree with your point on unfair advantages. Since this is clearly not the case, I again, have to respectfully disagree.

 

Stop it!

You're lying.
There have been multiple posts on the official DFO forums from people that HAVE been banned for macroing.  One guy was even banned for AFK swimming.

I have watched fist hand people AFK macroing archery. 
It takes one ingot and one timber to make 20 arrows.
I personally made near 10k one evening after spending a single night harvesting. 

Someone AFK macroing lesser magic to 100 hundred in a night or two is gaining a massive advantage over someone who's playing legit.  There is a world of dif. between 99 mana missile and 20.  The macroed person also gains access to other spells at  a much higher rate then someone playing legit. 

Av just removed the cooldown for ES.
People are macroing thier greater magic at a much faster rate giving them a much larger advantage of people who play legit. 
Cheaters don't care about the consiquences, are you really trying to say that they won't care about reagents?  Spells with a cooldown become even more appealing to macro since they can raise those skills at a rate INCREDIBLY faster then someone that is playing legit. 

There is a world of dif. between AFK macroing and legal macroing.  I have no problem with being at your computer and doing it, and do it myself.  It's not being there that is a problem.  AFK macroing is the same thing as botting; even if it's considerably less advanced.  Players are actually using the same software to macro that is used in other games to bot.  I know this for a FACT and have been incredibly vocal on the official forums that people running autoit at the same time as DFO should be banned.  It's software that FPS games will ban you fork, Blizzard will ban you for running it at the same time as WoW.

Ask me why I quit my guild?
Cheating!  I sat in vent and listened to them exploit mobs.  I got sick of seeing the guys sitting in the city afk macroing spells.
The cheating was a big issue for me, and for you to downplay it as a "non issue" is spreading misinformation.  The official forums for the game are filled with threads of people unhappy with the cheating in game.

One of the rampant cheats people are using in game is the loot macro; something you didn't even mention even though it's probably the MOST discussed cheat on the official forums.

Tasos NEVER said that they didn't ban anyone for afk macroing; thier official stance is very clear, it's been posted in the news forums on more then one occasion.  

Cheating, no matter how rare or rampant is NEVER a non issue in a game.  You're implication that it is, even though you admit that you'll see people doing it, is just disturbing and wrong.  The fact that a correspondent would actually be willing to write a piece in wich he admits that you'll see people cheating is just beyond me!  That's not a good thing!

If you can walk into any racial town and see people openly macroing at the bank at any time in the day, and say there are bans for macroing... I am sorry to say thats simply not the case. If you can show me one newb town on the map where you won't hear the sounds of mana missiles flying and arrows being shot, I will be utterly shocked and amazed. I'm done discussing the validity of macroing, its like debating religion. Everyone believes what they believe. This article simply discusses the negatives of the game, nothing more nothing less. Agree, disagree, you are free to do either.

In part 3 we will take a deeper look into the skill system, and part 4 will be all about combat. Until then...

Originally posted by xzyax

Originally posted by RBlackheart

Originally posted by xzyax

Originally posted by RBlackheart
...

They do not ban you for AFK macroing, they never have and they never will. They have made one giant banning of 200+ players, and in the news section Tasos specifically mentioned that macroing was not a factor. In fact, in my article where I talk about macroing, I took a picture of a guy afk macroing swimming in town :). If you go to Heimdal in Dwarf land, you will see at least half a dozen people macroing in the water there at any given time of the day. I am sure the same goes for all newb towns all over the world.

...

 

Umm... you do realize that is absolutely false and incorrect... right?

 

forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php

"Any macroing or disruptive skilling up within the protective radius of the towers is strictly forbidden. Offenders will be kicked. Repeat offenders will be banned."

 

"Unattended macroing anywhere is forbidden. Offenders will be kicked. Repeat offenders will be banned."

 

You do realize that AFK and unattended mean the same thing...right? 
 

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=182316

"We banned 213 cheaters today. These are the people using 3rd party programs to cheat with. They were not banned for macroing, they were banned for cheating. They were automatically detected and also verified manually in a variety of ways. This number represents 90% of the cheaters in Darkfall right now. The rest have also been detected, and we’re waiting for them to be verified before we ban them as well.

These people were warned repeatedly. They chose to believe that we cannot detect what’s going on in our game. They took the word of the makers of these hacks over the word of the creators and administrators of the game. There are no exceptions. We don’t care if journalists, clan leaders, or our friends are among them. They were cheating in order to gain an unfair advantage over the rest of us. They deserve to be banned.

What comes into play here is something called “selfish punishment” in social science. Cheaters are likely to be some of the most outspoken people against cheating, and more likely to report cheaters. This is as so to maximize the benefit for themselves - taking it away from others. This is also the case here; we recognize some of the people from the boards habitually accusing the company for not doing anything and complaining that cheating is rampant in Darkfall, when in reality it’s not.

If you cheat in the game, you will lie about it too. Whenever we ban a cheater he or she will appeal to the community, denying it on the forums. Then come the excuses to Darkfall support about their little brother, their roommate, or about their account being hacked. So now we expect a couple of hundred people to take to the boards. Threads along these lines will be removed and posters will be banned. Darkfall Support has been instructed to not provide more than the automated ban message. Do not side with these people just because you may have played with them and didn’t happen to observe them cheating. They were cheating beyond a shadow of a doubt, detected and verified in more than one ways. There is no appeals process, our decision is final, and we will not reveal our methods.

We will keep aggressively detecting and banning players that cheat in the game. If you’re not running 3rd party cheats, you have nothing to worry about. Those that don’t take our word for it, will be banned like those banned today.

Thank you,
The Darkfall Team"

I made the key elements bold. I say again, they have never banned people for AFK macroing. Please walk into any racial newb town and you will see this to be the case.

Just to prove a point:

 

In Texas, it's against the law for anyone to have a pair of pliers in his or her possession.

In Philadelphia, you can't put pretzels in bags based on an Act of 1760.

Alaska law says that you can't look at a moose from an airplane.

In Corpus Christie, Texas, it is illegal to raise alligators in your home.

In Miami, it is forbidden to imitate an animal.

It is against the law to mispronounce the name of the State of Arkansas in that State.

 

But again, if someone shooting gold into the air all night long somehow strips the fun out of the game world for you, then thats that with that.

Umm... did you not even look at the link I put out there for you?

 

Did Tasos post this link or not?

forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php

 

Have they posted a new policy on AFK macroing since that one?

You are saying that the 213 banned is the TOTAL players banned?

 

I'm sorry, you are wrong on this one. 

Tell you what.  Post your stance on AFK macroing on the official DarkFall boards and see how many players, mods, and Devs agree with your stance... and I'll do the same.  Heck, just make a poll on the official boards asking how many agree with your stance. 

You are wrong on this one... not looking good for a Coorespondant of a game advocating that players can cheat at will and not get banned.  Especially when there is a post on the News section of the official site that says just the opposite. 

I didn't advocate anything, in fact I deeply oppose macroing. I but also take note to anyone who says macroing (in the case of Darkfall) gives some kind of deep game breaking advantage because it doesn't. And yes, I stand by my statement that a single player has never been banned from Darkfall for AFK macroing to date. Will this change in the future? Maybe. But please dont make statements that I advocate and promote cheating because neither statement is true.

Originally posted by xzyax

Originally posted by RBlackheart
...

They do not ban you for AFK macroing, they never have and they never will. They have made one giant banning of 200+ players, and in the news section Tasos specifically mentioned that macroing was not a factor. In fact, in my article where I talk about macroing, I took a picture of a guy afk macroing swimming in town :). If you go to Heimdal in Dwarf land, you will see at least half a dozen people macroing in the water there at any given time of the day. I am sure the same goes for all newb towns all over the world.

...

 

Umm... you do realize that is absolutely false and incorrect... right?

 

forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php

"Any macroing or disruptive skilling up within the protective radius of the towers is strictly forbidden. Offenders will be kicked. Repeat offenders will be banned."

 

"Unattended macroing anywhere is forbidden. Offenders will be kicked. Repeat offenders will be banned."

 

You do realize that AFK and unattended mean the same thing...right? 
 

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=182316

"We banned 213 cheaters today. These are the people using 3rd party programs to cheat with. They were not banned for macroing, they were banned for cheating. They were automatically detected and also verified manually in a variety of ways. This number represents 90% of the cheaters in Darkfall right now. The rest have also been detected, and we’re waiting for them to be verified before we ban them as well.

These people were warned repeatedly. They chose to believe that we cannot detect what’s going on in our game. They took the word of the makers of these hacks over the word of the creators and administrators of the game. There are no exceptions. We don’t care if journalists, clan leaders, or our friends are among them. They were cheating in order to gain an unfair advantage over the rest of us. They deserve to be banned.

What comes into play here is something called “selfish punishment” in social science. Cheaters are likely to be some of the most outspoken people against cheating, and more likely to report cheaters. This is as so to maximize the benefit for themselves - taking it away from others. This is also the case here; we recognize some of the people from the boards habitually accusing the company for not doing anything and complaining that cheating is rampant in Darkfall, when in reality it’s not.

If you cheat in the game, you will lie about it too. Whenever we ban a cheater he or she will appeal to the community, denying it on the forums. Then come the excuses to Darkfall support about their little brother, their roommate, or about their account being hacked. So now we expect a couple of hundred people to take to the boards. Threads along these lines will be removed and posters will be banned. Darkfall Support has been instructed to not provide more than the automated ban message. Do not side with these people just because you may have played with them and didn’t happen to observe them cheating. They were cheating beyond a shadow of a doubt, detected and verified in more than one ways. There is no appeals process, our decision is final, and we will not reveal our methods.

We will keep aggressively detecting and banning players that cheat in the game. If you’re not running 3rd party cheats, you have nothing to worry about. Those that don’t take our word for it, will be banned like those banned today.

Thank you,
The Darkfall Team"

I made the key elements bold. I say again, they have never banned people for AFK macroing. Please walk into any racial newb town and you will see this to be the case.

Just to prove a point:

In Texas, it's against the law for anyone to have a pair of pliers in his or her possession.

In Philadelphia, you can't put pretzels in bags based on an Act of 1760.

Alaska law says that you can't look at a moose from an airplane.

In Corpus Christie, Texas, it is illegal to raise alligators in your home.

In Miami, it is forbidden to imitate an animal.

It is against the law to mispronounce the name of the State of Arkansas in that State.

But again, if someone shooting gold into the air all night long somehow strips the fun out of the game world for you, then thats that with that.

Originally posted by Fariic

Originally posted by RBlackheart

Originally posted by Fariic

Originally posted by RBlackheart

Originally posted by Fariic

If you're going to write an article that makes the accusation that there's a lot of misinformation floating around, you may want to make sure you got all your facts straight.

"The basic premise is that all characters start with +10 alignment on a scale of -50 to +100."

The maximum possitive aliengment a player can gain is 10.
From the patch notes: • Alignment has been tweaked. The maximum positive alignment you can have has been reduced to 10.

"However, with the massive demand for this game, the daily sales quotas were being consumed in under 5 minutes."

No.  It never sold out in less then 5 minutes.  Some days it took 45 some days it took 15, but it never took 5.  One day in fact it took almost an hour and a half.

"The game is purchased via digital download exclusively"

No.  If you read thier EULA you would also understand why they aren't allowed to sell you a copy of the game, and what you actually purchase is an account.  From the EULA: 1. Limited License to the World. Your participation in the Game and the World are subject to your ongoing agreement to and compliance with these TOS. Aventurine grants you a non exclusive, non transferable, revocable license to the Game and the World, subject to these TOS and the EULA.

The game client itself is free to download, and not dependant upon the purchase of your limitted lisence.

"I can confirm that cheating does in fact exist in this game"

Cheating in any form is never a "non-issue"; the fact that you can confirm it and say "You may see this from time to time," is not a good thing in any game.  In the 3 years of Lineage 2, and 4 years of WoW the worst cheating I encountered were bots.  I never encounterd speed hacks, teleport hacks, flying hacks, or aim hacks in those games.  You're attempting to downplay a serious issue with the game.  It blows my mind that anyone can in one sentence state that it's a non-issue, and in another say that you'll see it from time to time. 

AFK macroing is cheating.  It can get you banned.  Tasos himself has had to make mulitple posts covering this topic; that in itself implies a problem.  AFK macroing accures a LOT.  No, it won't make you uber overnight, but again you took a serious issue and attempt to downplay it.  The guy that will afk macro his lesser magic, will also afk macro is greater magic; they don't do this just one night, they do this for days on end.  This sort of cheating is gives people a considerable advantage and allows them to advance at a rate that a normal player has no chance of competing with.  It's hardly a non-issue.

The alignment change was in the April 10th patch.
Harvesting was changed in the May 1st patch notes.

Either the author isn't actually playing the game anymore, or this article was written over a month ago, and contanes "misinformation".

 

 

Read post #16, this explains the discrepency in the alignment info. Artciles are submitted up to 2 weeks prior to posting. I noted the changes as soon as the article was posted.

For anyone that tried to buy the game the first few weeks, it was gone in 5 minutes. I am not sure what to tell you. From what I am told recently the store has been open for as long as 45 minutes, as you claim.

I am not sure why you are nitpicking about the digital download. You give them 50 bucks, you get the game to download, you pay your 15 bucks a month after your free month like every other mmorpg. You cant buy it in a store. Not sure why that was confusing.

I never said cheating was a non issue, thats why it was mentioned in the article relating to "the downside of Darkfall".

AFL macroing does "occur" (hrm) a lot. I mention this as well. The reasons its a non issue were explained clearly. If you want to macro something that will make a difference, every arrow shot, or spell cast will cost you the same as someone using the same attacks on legit targets. On one hand you lose the cost, the other you supplement it. If you want to take your hard earned arrows and reagents and shoot them in the air go ahead. I prefer to use my gold to make more of it. Or at least break even.

Post 16 has nothing to do with why you have informatin in the article that became irrelivent over a month ago. 
This article could have been written in under 2 hours.
If it was submitted 2 weeks ago the information you provided in it is still outdated as the change to the alignement system was at the beginning of april

I purchased the game the start of the second week.
I purchased it more then 20 minutes after the shop opened.
The shop also had periods of being open for up to 45 min, and this was within the first month.  Believe me, I have nothing better to do, and if I have to sift there the filth on thier website to find the threads, I will.
It sold out the second day in in just under 15 min. 
The day after that it took 9-11 min.

Nitpicking?  You wrote an article making the acusation of misinformation floating around and your atricle has information that is wrong!

In the first 2 weeks of the shop opening one of the biggest contributers outside of the demand that prevented people from purchasing the game was.
1. shop server crashing.
2. no one being aware at the time that if you refreshed the page before it timed out you would get banned for 10 min.
These two things had a drastic impact on the ability of people to purchase the game; regardless of the demand.

No.  People playing the game legitimatly do not gain the same advantage of people that afk macro. 
If AFK macroing wasn't providing people with an unfair advantage then Av wouldn't ban you for doing it.
They will even ban you for afk swimming! 
You're attempting to downplay one of the biggest issues that people have with the game.  This isn't a haters perspective, this is a fan perspective.  Read thier forums.  There are post after post after post of people complaining about it.  For you to say it's a non-issue is ludicris.  The FANS are very clear, and extremely vocal that it's an issue they take seriously.

"To be honest, the rest of the "problems" you will see discussed on the message forums are non issues. The most talked about topic is obviously regarding rampant cheating."

Either you wrote the article or you didn't.  You can't say that you didn't call it a non issue when it's clearly written in the article.  Did you write it?  If yes then you yourself used the words non issue.  You were trying to down play the problem as not being that big a deal.  I do know how to read between the lines.

Edit:
So there aren't clan vendors in game that sell crafting recipies that utilize the clan resource nodes?

We will simply have to agree to disagree on the times. Accounts sold in 5 minutes or less, I dont know what else to say.

Can you please explain how AFK macroing grants anyone some kind of massive advantage? They do not ban you for AFK macroing, they never have and they never will. They have made one giant banning of 200+ players, and in the news section Tasos specifically mentioned that macroing was not a factor. In fact, in my article where I talk about macroing, I took a picture of a guy afk macroing swimming in town :). If you go to Heimdal in Dwarf land, you will see at least half a dozen people macroing in the water there at any given time of the day. I am sure the same goes for all newb towns all over the world.

I personally am not a fan of macroing, never have and never will be. Others are the min / maxers that feel every hour not in the game is some kind of gain that is lost. To each his own. If I felt someone else's AFK macro someone hurt me in any way, I would be up in arms as well. But the truth is I have profited heavily off of AFK macroers by snaeaking into clan towns, killing them, looting their arrows and reagents, banking them and repeating. Macroing AFK is a huge risk for skills that matter... all of this was fairly well laid out in the article. I am sorry you feel someone macroing up skills like swimming and resting someone have this tremendous advantage over you in PvP, PvE, or any other aspect of the game.

Macros have exited in every skill based game going back to UO. I would be "shocked" if anyone who had ever played UO didnt know what 8x8 meant. Or anyone who ever played Asherons Call didnt know what UCM meant. Or anyone who played Eve Online had never heard the term "macro miner". Macroing is a biproduct of skill based systems, always has been and always will be.

 

Unattended macroing anywhere is forbidden. Offenders will be kicked. Repeat offenders will be banned.
www.http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=150640

Afk macroing gives you an advantage because I can set up a macro to cast magic or shot a bow and then go to sleep or work while my character continues to progress.  The normal player actually has to log out at some point.

I shouldn't have to explain how afk macroing gives an advantage over legitimate players or why it's considered cheating in pretty much every MMO out.

Av has made it very clear, see the link and quote above, that if you get caught afk macroing you can get banned. 

8x8 was an exploit.  It wasn't just a macro and EA banned people for it; my brother included.

Edit:  You can stop telling people that the accounts were selling out in 5 min or less because it's a lie.
I already told you, I purchased my account the start of the second week, 20 minutes after the shop opened.
The fastest is sold out was something like 9 min.

Edit again:  I'm really irritated with this article.

I LOVE the correspondents program and appreciate it.  However, this article and a lot of what you've posted in this thread is misinformation; the very thing you attempted to adress in your piece.  You were wrong on numerous accounts in the article, you were wrong about a few things in this thread as well.  If you're going to be a correspondent you should at least be knowledgable in what you're writing about.

If you read the TOS of any game, you will see all sorts of strange things. As much as I hate macroing, I will again make this statement. No one has been banned to date for macroing, afk or otherwise.

As I have explained several times, you make it sound as though anyone has the ability to launch spells and arrows all night long without penalty. This is extremely innaccrutate. Arrows and spell reagents are not free. They are damned expensive! So if you choose to shoot gold into the air all night long then so be it. If we all had bottomless pockets that regrew gold while we slept, then I would agree with your point on unfair advantages. Since this is clearly not the case, I again, have to respectfully disagree.

Originally posted by Fariic

Originally posted by RBlackheart

Originally posted by Fariic

If you're going to write an article that makes the accusation that there's a lot of misinformation floating around, you may want to make sure you got all your facts straight.

"The basic premise is that all characters start with +10 alignment on a scale of -50 to +100."

The maximum possitive aliengment a player can gain is 10.
From the patch notes: • Alignment has been tweaked. The maximum positive alignment you can have has been reduced to 10.

"However, with the massive demand for this game, the daily sales quotas were being consumed in under 5 minutes."

No.  It never sold out in less then 5 minutes.  Some days it took 45 some days it took 15, but it never took 5.  One day in fact it took almost an hour and a half.

"The game is purchased via digital download exclusively"

No.  If you read thier EULA you would also understand why they aren't allowed to sell you a copy of the game, and what you actually purchase is an account.  From the EULA: 1. Limited License to the World. Your participation in the Game and the World are subject to your ongoing agreement to and compliance with these TOS. Aventurine grants you a non exclusive, non transferable, revocable license to the Game and the World, subject to these TOS and the EULA.

The game client itself is free to download, and not dependant upon the purchase of your limitted lisence.

"I can confirm that cheating does in fact exist in this game"

Cheating in any form is never a "non-issue"; the fact that you can confirm it and say "You may see this from time to time," is not a good thing in any game.  In the 3 years of Lineage 2, and 4 years of WoW the worst cheating I encountered were bots.  I never encounterd speed hacks, teleport hacks, flying hacks, or aim hacks in those games.  You're attempting to downplay a serious issue with the game.  It blows my mind that anyone can in one sentence state that it's a non-issue, and in another say that you'll see it from time to time. 

AFK macroing is cheating.  It can get you banned.  Tasos himself has had to make mulitple posts covering this topic; that in itself implies a problem.  AFK macroing accures a LOT.  No, it won't make you uber overnight, but again you took a serious issue and attempt to downplay it.  The guy that will afk macro his lesser magic, will also afk macro is greater magic; they don't do this just one night, they do this for days on end.  This sort of cheating is gives people a considerable advantage and allows them to advance at a rate that a normal player has no chance of competing with.  It's hardly a non-issue.

The alignment change was in the April 10th patch.
Harvesting was changed in the May 1st patch notes.

Either the author isn't actually playing the game anymore, or this article was written over a month ago, and contanes "misinformation".

 

 

Read post #16, this explains the discrepency in the alignment info. Artciles are submitted up to 2 weeks prior to posting. I noted the changes as soon as the article was posted.

For anyone that tried to buy the game the first few weeks, it was gone in 5 minutes. I am not sure what to tell you. From what I am told recently the store has been open for as long as 45 minutes, as you claim.

I am not sure why you are nitpicking about the digital download. You give them 50 bucks, you get the game to download, you pay your 15 bucks a month after your free month like every other mmorpg. You cant buy it in a store. Not sure why that was confusing.

I never said cheating was a non issue, thats why it was mentioned in the article relating to "the downside of Darkfall".

AFL macroing does "occur" (hrm) a lot. I mention this as well. The reasons its a non issue were explained clearly. If you want to macro something that will make a difference, every arrow shot, or spell cast will cost you the same as someone using the same attacks on legit targets. On one hand you lose the cost, the other you supplement it. If you want to take your hard earned arrows and reagents and shoot them in the air go ahead. I prefer to use my gold to make more of it. Or at least break even.

Post 16 has nothing to do with why you have informatin in the article that became irrelivent over a month ago. 
This article could have been written in under 2 hours.
If it was submitted 2 weeks ago the information you provided in it is still outdated as the change to the alignement system was at the beginning of april

I purchased the game the start of the second week.
I purchased it more then 20 minutes after the shop opened.
The shop also had periods of being open for up to 45 min, and this was within the first month.  Believe me, I have nothing better to do, and if I have to sift there the filth on thier website to find the threads, I will.
It sold out the second day in in just under 15 min. 
The day after that it took 9-11 min.

Nitpicking?  You wrote an article making the acusation of misinformation floating around and your atricle has information that is wrong!

In the first 2 weeks of the shop opening one of the biggest contributers outside of the demand that prevented people from purchasing the game was.
1. shop server crashing.
2. no one being aware at the time that if you refreshed the page before it timed out you would get banned for 10 min.
These two things had a drastic impact on the ability of people to purchase the game; regardless of the demand.

No.  People playing the game legitimatly do not gain the same advantage of people that afk macro. 
If AFK macroing wasn't providing people with an unfair advantage then Av wouldn't ban you for doing it.
They will even ban you for afk swimming! 
You're attempting to downplay one of the biggest issues that people have with the game.  This isn't a haters perspective, this is a fan perspective.  Read thier forums.  There are post after post after post of people complaining about it.  For you to say it's a non-issue is ludicris.  The FANS are very clear, and extremely vocal that it's an issue they take seriously.

"To be honest, the rest of the "problems" you will see discussed on the message forums are non issues. The most talked about topic is obviously regarding rampant cheating."

Either you wrote the article or you didn't.  You can't say that you didn't call it a non issue when it's clearly written in the article.  Did you write it?  If yes then you yourself used the words non issue.  You were trying to down play the problem as not being that big a deal.  I do know how to read between the lines.

Edit:
So there aren't clan vendors in game that sell crafting recipies that utilize the clan resource nodes?

We will simply have to agree to disagree on the times. Accounts sold in 5 minutes or less, I dont know what else to say.

Can you please explain how AFK macroing grants anyone some kind of massive advantage? They do not ban you for AFK macroing, they never have and they never will. They have made one giant banning of 200+ players, and in the news section Tasos specifically mentioned that macroing was not a factor. In fact, in my article where I talk about macroing, I took a picture of a guy afk macroing swimming in town :). If you go to Heimdal in Dwarf land, you will see at least half a dozen people macroing in the water there at any given time of the day. I am sure the same goes for all newb towns all over the world.

I personally am not a fan of macroing, never have and never will be. Others are the min / maxers that feel every hour not in the game is some kind of gain that is lost. To each his own. If I felt someone else's AFK macro someone hurt me in any way, I would be up in arms as well. But the truth is I have profited heavily off of AFK macroers by snaeaking into clan towns, killing them, looting their arrows and reagents, banking them and repeating. Macroing AFK is a huge risk for skills that matter... all of this was fairly well laid out in the article. I am sorry you feel someone macroing up skills like swimming and resting someone have this tremendous advantage over you in PvP, PvE, or any other aspect of the game.

Macros have exited in every skill based game going back to UO. I would be "shocked" if anyone who had ever played UO didnt know what 8x8 meant. Or anyone who ever played Asherons Call didnt know what UCM meant. Or anyone who played Eve Online had never heard the term "macro miner". Macroing is a biproduct of skill based systems, always has been and always will be.

Originally posted by Overfiend138

[quote]

You bring up 2 good points. The first 3 days the game was released there were issues with mobs becoming out of synch with the world. This made it so that many camps did not actually attack back. The players in beta apparently knew where the higher end mob camps were and when they realized the sync issues they began to exploit. This is both a true and legit statement. They then garnered the 10k gold necessary to purchase a clanstone and grabbed a city. Keep in mind 10k is actually not that much. Consider your clan has 100 players, and each players donates 100g. This is the equivalent of killing 25 - 30 goblins. At any rate this caused people to gain cities faster than normal. However this is brought up time and time again as some sort of game breaking issue where in reality it is not. Games like Ultima online used to cost a shitload to build a castle or a large structure. But its not like these were popping up on day 1 :). In Darkfall there are set plots of land laid out for hamlets (small cities) all the way up to the full cities. I believe there are 97 total spread out all over the place. It doesnt matter if players grabbed all 97 sites on day 1, day 11, day 111, day 1111 or whatever. At some point all cities are going to be owned. FYI any and all cities can be stolen, and this includes any and all resources spent on building the city up. Once you take it over its yours. Its called sieging. Cities change hands on a daily basis, and I have been called on more than one occasion as a solo mercenary who does good work in city defense. I have been paid quite hansomly on several occasions.

The second comment you make is also valid, about the stress testing. However, at some point they have to release like any mmorpg. 30 days from now the game will be be better than it was 30 days ago. In fact, every mmorpg works that way. Lord of the Rings Online, one of the most stable mmorpgs ever released, contantly adds content. Would they hold many more subs if they waited years (until now) to release with the included content that has been developed over the past several years? Probably. But at some point the developement needs to stop, the game needs to be released, and what didnt make it into release becomes future content.

Your comment about clans having some fair unbalance is not as accurate. Owning a city provides only one real benefit other than having a safe area outside of the newbie cities to hang out in. That benefit is having in town nodes for various resources. These nodes are the equivalent of 20 or so regular nodes in one, and regen very slowly. This happens to be the only way to harvest rare ore other than killing the spefic golems themselves. This is the reason cities are both sought after and warred after. The resources are typically turned into building blocks used to create more structures in the city. It actually takes massive amounts of resources to build structures in Darkfall. But say they have an unfair advantage is like complaining that the well orgranized group of 100 just slayed the dragon and is flashing all sorts of loot in your face, all the while you tried and failed to solo the dragon on your own. I am a through and through solo player and have been all the way back to UO. I like grouping with close friends but I am not a fan of clans, especially large "leet" ones. But its not fair for me as a player to expect to accomplish the same thing as a large clan for that very reason. Some clans literally have hundreds and hundreds of active players. But claiming an unbalance is a bit harsh. Its just a numbers game short and simple.

The rigor exploit was well known and was corrected within 10 days of the game's release. It was actually fixed before I even knew what rigor was. This was again used by beta testers that apparently already knew about it. And as you have already pointed out there werent enough beta testers :). And we have done quite a few tests against people with 100 rigor. Through normal play to this point your should have around 30-50 rigor which gives .3 - .4 in your applicable defenses. 100 Rigor gives you 1.0. A suit of scale (which is mid grade armor, costs 1000 gold or so for a full suit) gives you about 7.0 or so to your applicable defenses. So exploiting at this point would put you at about 8.0 vs 7.4 in the given defensive area. Thats approximately a 7.5% advantage to the beta players who decided to exploit in the first 10 or so days the game went live.

If you went to another server, played for 60 days or so, and all of the towns are swallowed up by clans, won't your same issues with the alleged imbalance exist?[/quote]

 

No, because the exploits used for resources around these towns still exist and are used daily. For the new server to succeed these will need to be looked at and patched. Hacking was the next big concern, but it seems that since they are taking action on this we can check this one off the books. Macroing still needs to be addressed in a big way.

The rigor exploit was just one example of the exploits that can be used to alter stats. There are still exploitable mobs in this game that can be used for stat increase as well as material gain, not to mention macro tactics that can also build these stats. Your comment about armor brings up another good point, these naked pk's have nopthing to lose while the honest citzen is out a set of plate. Unfair, imbalanced.

My comments on the imbalance of clan cities has nothing to do with a numbers game, it's about  providing a worry  free macro environment which others are not privy to, as well as access to the exploits in that area which are also in a worry free environment so far as getting ganked is concerned.

 

Am I mistaken in that the resource nodes outside of clan cities give the same 51 resources and regenerate at the same rate as ones found around newb cities, and ever other place in the game? I actually found an uninhabitted island where half of the nodes are ore. I have never seen another single player on the island. I go there twice a day and come back with like TONs of ore. Its actually been my bread and butter for 2 weeks now. Try exploring some and get away from the newb areas if you cant find nodes. They are literally everywhere. And they are all identical...

Originally posted by 0theri0n

Just for the fact that this company is indie ill give them the benefit of the doubt. I understand its hard to start from sratch and only limited copies are released. But they need to shape up soon and start giving out Trials or something so they can defend themselves, as well as players in the game, properly. Right now the future of this game does not look so pretty....

I guess that depends on if you are playing or not :). That being said a trial is a great idea. But truthfully the way they are focusing their attention, it seems the next 6 months will be consumed by patches, content additions, and primarily opening up new servers in Europe as well as North America.

Truthfully if its so much work just to buy the damn game I doubt we will see a trial ever :). But here's to hoping.

Originally posted by Fariic

Originally posted by RBlackheart

Originally posted by oddjobs74

Originally posted by RBlackheart

Originally posted by cosimusta

 Macroing is a non-issue except all the guilds who control the majority of the world are ones that got their before anyone else, and MACROED to get their players skilled and harvesting supplies needed.  Who controls the game world is a non-issue though.

 

You also left out the worst part of the alignment system.  The fact that a game like Ultima online and Lineage2 have targeting and DF doesn't.  Fighting mobs in camps or group PvP became a joke.  A very frustrating unfunny joke.

 

And then there is exploiting.  Exploiting in DF probably needs an article on its own.  The exploits and the alignment system combined are what killed the game for me.

 

Why are DF reviews so blatantly biased one way or the other? 

Ok I have to call bullshit on your comments :). Hmm where to start:

 

• You cannot macro for resources. You never could, and you never will be able to. What you could do is create a macro that kept clicking your mouse button repeatedly while sitting at a resource to get its 51 TOTAL resources per node. However this does nothing to protect you from getting PKed with your abundance of 51 resources in your pack. And it takes approximately 8-10 minutes to empty a node. So your macroing attempts do not net any real gain
• You cant macro to get needed equipment. And your combat skills do not effect your ability to hit, or even your damage in Darkfall. So I fail to see how macroing skills helps me in the initial weeks where clans were making their initial land claims
• I am a bit confused by the statement regarding the alignment system. The issues you speak of is in regards to combat and has nothing to do with the alignment system in any way. Targeting in this writer's opinion is hands down one of the most welcome features in an MMORPG to come, ever. It's FPS style targeting. There is none of that bull shit where I stand inches from an enemy, swing with a giant halberd and somehow miss because the mob is such a higher level from me. The same goes for magic and archery. Gravity plays a role like in real life. Firing an arrow or spell takes skill as you have to both aim and time. You don't just see a magical targeting ring and land hits based on die rolls. This is actually my favorite aspect of gameplay. This also means you have to choose your fighting tactics carefully as if you begin firing arrows into crowds of people you will undoubtedly hit friendlies, and other untintended targets.
• Define what you consider exploits. There are cheats using third party applications which is bannable, and there is using the game mechanics to someone benefit in an unattended way, which is not currently bannable. I know of one exploit which I do not want to mention (but I will admit it exists if I see it posted in this thread) which they are actively kicking people for, but not banning. But I have a feeling you are referring to cheats. Regardless, as I said in my article, the cheating has dropped off dramatically since the ban hammer was dropped.

 

If you don't like the game thats ok, many won't. Just make sure what you post is accurate and up to date.

 

Based on you list of items here I just have 1 question.

And please bear with me, as it is an honest question...

If  combat skils do not effect damage or hit rate, or I'm assuming effect the outcome of combat at all, why are there combat skills?

That is a very legit question, and is answered in my next part of the overview on skills. Darkfall is very strange in the way it works its skills, and its not like other skill based games (UO, AC, etc). Darkfall does everything it can to put as much of the final outcome of a battle into the hands of the player themselves. We will call this player skill. They do this by offering advantages to higher skills, but not necessarily how you would expect. For instance if I have a skill of 1 in sprint, I will run just as fast as someone that has 100 sprint skill. The difference will be that my stamina will deplete faster at a skill level of 1, meaning I can travel that much farter while sprinting the higher my skill goes.

In regards to combat fighting skills do 3 things:

 

* They make you consume less stamina per swing (more ttacks before you are out of stam)

* At skill level 1 you can use any weapon in the game. However each weapon (all items really) have a durability that decreases with use. Once it reaches 0 it breaks and disappears, no repair skills or repair NPCs... the item is gone forever. The more higher rank (higher end) the weapon, the faster it will degrade without proper skill. So this saves you a shitload of money later on because the real high end stuff is insanely expensive, and if it breaks after an hour its hardly worth it. Very neat system in that it allows anyone to use anything, but for a price

* Using weapon skills increase your strength (or dex for archery) which also secondarily increases your damage

 

ARE YOU STILL PLAYIG THE GAME!

You have informatin in your article that is WRONG!

The alignment system was changed over a month ago.
How can you not know this?

Edit:  You also made a comment in this thread about clan cities not giving any real benefit and that is also WRONG.  Clan cities have access to vendors that sell things you can't get unless you have a city and have placed that vendor.

See post #16, this explians that the articles are often submitted weeks before they are published. It was patched after I submitted my article. In fact it was patched after I submitted my third part :).

See the above post in regards to your clan city vendor comment.

Originally posted by Fariic

Originally posted by oddjobs74

Originally posted by RBlackheart

Originally posted by cosimusta

 Macroing is a non-issue except all the guilds who control the majority of the world are ones that got their before anyone else, and MACROED to get their players skilled and harvesting supplies needed.  Who controls the game world is a non-issue though.

 

You also left out the worst part of the alignment system.  The fact that a game like Ultima online and Lineage2 have targeting and DF doesn't.  Fighting mobs in camps or group PvP became a joke.  A very frustrating unfunny joke.

 

And then there is exploiting.  Exploiting in DF probably needs an article on its own.  The exploits and the alignment system combined are what killed the game for me.

 

Why are DF reviews so blatantly biased one way or the other? 

Ok I have to call bullshit on your comments :). Hmm where to start:

 

• You cannot macro for resources. You never could, and you never will be able to. What you could do is create a macro that kept clicking your mouse button repeatedly while sitting at a resource to get its 51 TOTAL resources per node. However this does nothing to protect you from getting PKed with your abundance of 51 resources in your pack. And it takes approximately 8-10 minutes to empty a node. So your macroing attempts do not net any real gain
• You cant macro to get needed equipment. And your combat skills do not effect your ability to hit, or even your damage in Darkfall. So I fail to see how macroing skills helps me in the initial weeks where clans were making their initial land claims
• I am a bit confused by the statement regarding the alignment system. The issues you speak of is in regards to combat and has nothing to do with the alignment system in any way. Targeting in this writer's opinion is hands down one of the most welcome features in an MMORPG to come, ever. It's FPS style targeting. There is none of that bull shit where I stand inches from an enemy, swing with a giant halberd and somehow miss because the mob is such a higher level from me. The same goes for magic and archery. Gravity plays a role like in real life. Firing an arrow or spell takes skill as you have to both aim and time. You don't just see a magical targeting ring and land hits based on die rolls. This is actually my favorite aspect of gameplay. This also means you have to choose your fighting tactics carefully as if you begin firing arrows into crowds of people you will undoubtedly hit friendlies, and other untintended targets.
• Define what you consider exploits. There are cheats using third party applications which is bannable, and there is using the game mechanics to someone benefit in an unattended way, which is not currently bannable. I know of one exploit which I do not want to mention (but I will admit it exists if I see it posted in this thread) which they are actively kicking people for, but not banning. But I have a feeling you are referring to cheats. Regardless, as I said in my article, the cheating has dropped off dramatically since the ban hammer was dropped.

 

If you don't like the game thats ok, many won't. Just make sure what you post is accurate and up to date.

 

Based on you list of items here I just have 1 question.

And please bear with me, as it is an honest question...

If  combat skils do not effect damage or hit rate, or I'm assuming effect the outcome of combat at all, why are there combat skills?

 

I'd also like to know how you could never macro for resources?

Because I macroed for resources before they implimented the harvesting toggle.

And I would really like to know if Andy is still playing the game.
Some of the things mentioned in the article were changed over a month ago.

Edit:
There are NPC vendors that can only be accessed if you have a clan city/ hamlet and place that vendor. 
Vendors that sell things like recipes that unless you have access to a clan city you can't get.  I also believe that there are supposed to be other skills that clans in control of cities will gain access to through vendors only they can put in place.

If you're going to be a correspondent for a game you should at least be playing that game.  I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that Andy isn't playing any longer as much of the things I'm seeing him write aren't relevant to the game today, or he's very uniformed about some of the mechanics of the game.

 

 

To answers your comments:

* You cannot macro to the capacity of massive gains as some are suggesting. As I have already stated, each node carries 51 resources and can be wiped in 8-10 minutes. If you have a macro that can run from resource to resource, hide from PKs, defends against PKs, run to the bank when you are full of resources, switch tools when they break with use, then I stand corrected. If your macro just pressed the mouse button 51 times instead of you doing it with your finger, I fail to see the game breaking nature of this.

* Your comment on special vendors in towns that are not available elsewhere is false. There was one spell in the game which was bugged and only appeared in Player Cities (on T2 Mage vendors) and this was the spell Teleport Anchor which allows you to bind a runestone to a location. As of a patch or two ago, this was fixed and is now found in all racial capital cities

Originally posted by Fariic

If you're going to write an article that makes the accusation that there's a lot of misinformation floating around, you may want to make sure you got all your facts straight.

"The basic premise is that all characters start with +10 alignment on a scale of -50 to +100."

The maximum possitive aliengment a player can gain is 10.
From the patch notes: • Alignment has been tweaked. The maximum positive alignment you can have has been reduced to 10.

"However, with the massive demand for this game, the daily sales quotas were being consumed in under 5 minutes."

No.  It never sold out in less then 5 minutes.  Some days it took 45 some days it took 15, but it never took 5.  One day in fact it took almost an hour and a half.

"The game is purchased via digital download exclusively"

No.  If you read thier EULA you would also understand why they aren't allowed to sell you a copy of the game, and what you actually purchase is an account.  From the EULA: 1. Limited License to the World. Your participation in the Game and the World are subject to your ongoing agreement to and compliance with these TOS. Aventurine grants you a non exclusive, non transferable, revocable license to the Game and the World, subject to these TOS and the EULA.

The game client itself is free to download, and not dependant upon the purchase of your limitted lisence.

"I can confirm that cheating does in fact exist in this game"

Cheating in any form is never a "non-issue"; the fact that you can confirm it and say "You may see this from time to time," is not a good thing in any game.  In the 3 years of Lineage 2, and 4 years of WoW the worst cheating I encountered were bots.  I never encounterd speed hacks, teleport hacks, flying hacks, or aim hacks in those games.  You're attempting to downplay a serious issue with the game.  It blows my mind that anyone can in one sentence state that it's a non-issue, and in another say that you'll see it from time to time. 

AFK macroing is cheating.  It can get you banned.  Tasos himself has had to make mulitple posts covering this topic; that in itself implies a problem.  AFK macroing accures a LOT.  No, it won't make you uber overnight, but again you took a serious issue and attempt to downplay it.  The guy that will afk macro his lesser magic, will also afk macro is greater magic; they don't do this just one night, they do this for days on end.  This sort of cheating is gives people a considerable advantage and allows them to advance at a rate that a normal player has no chance of competing with.  It's hardly a non-issue.

The alignment change was in the April 10th patch.
Harvesting was changed in the May 1st patch notes.

Either the author isn't actually playing the game anymore, or this article was written over a month ago, and contanes "misinformation".

 

 

Read post #16, this explains the discrepency in the alignment info. Artciles are submitted up to 2 weeks prior to posting. I noted the changes as soon as the article was posted.

For anyone that tried to buy the game the first few weeks, it was gone in 5 minutes. I am not sure what to tell you. From what I am told recently the store has been open for as long as 45 minutes, as you claim.

I am not sure why you are nitpicking about the digital download. You give them 50 bucks, you get the game to download, you pay your 15 bucks a month after your free month like every other mmorpg. You cant buy it in a store. Not sure why that was confusing.

I never said cheating was a non issue, thats why it was mentioned in the article relating to "the downside of Darkfall".

AFL macroing does "occur" (hrm) a lot. I mention this as well. The reasons its a non issue were explained clearly. If you want to macro something that will make a difference, every arrow shot, or spell cast will cost you the same as someone using the same attacks on legit targets. On one hand you lose the cost, the other you supplement it. If you want to take your hard earned arrows and reagents and shoot them in the air go ahead. I prefer to use my gold to make more of it. Or at least break even.

Originally posted by oddjobs74

Originally posted by RBlackheart

Originally posted by cosimusta

 Macroing is a non-issue except all the guilds who control the majority of the world are ones that got their before anyone else, and MACROED to get their players skilled and harvesting supplies needed.  Who controls the game world is a non-issue though.

 

You also left out the worst part of the alignment system.  The fact that a game like Ultima online and Lineage2 have targeting and DF doesn't.  Fighting mobs in camps or group PvP became a joke.  A very frustrating unfunny joke.

 

And then there is exploiting.  Exploiting in DF probably needs an article on its own.  The exploits and the alignment system combined are what killed the game for me.

 

Why are DF reviews so blatantly biased one way or the other? 

Ok I have to call bullshit on your comments :). Hmm where to start:

 

• You cannot macro for resources. You never could, and you never will be able to. What you could do is create a macro that kept clicking your mouse button repeatedly while sitting at a resource to get its 51 TOTAL resources per node. However this does nothing to protect you from getting PKed with your abundance of 51 resources in your pack. And it takes approximately 8-10 minutes to empty a node. So your macroing attempts do not net any real gain
• You cant macro to get needed equipment. And your combat skills do not effect your ability to hit, or even your damage in Darkfall. So I fail to see how macroing skills helps me in the initial weeks where clans were making their initial land claims
• I am a bit confused by the statement regarding the alignment system. The issues you speak of is in regards to combat and has nothing to do with the alignment system in any way. Targeting in this writer's opinion is hands down one of the most welcome features in an MMORPG to come, ever. It's FPS style targeting. There is none of that bull shit where I stand inches from an enemy, swing with a giant halberd and somehow miss because the mob is such a higher level from me. The same goes for magic and archery. Gravity plays a role like in real life. Firing an arrow or spell takes skill as you have to both aim and time. You don't just see a magical targeting ring and land hits based on die rolls. This is actually my favorite aspect of gameplay. This also means you have to choose your fighting tactics carefully as if you begin firing arrows into crowds of people you will undoubtedly hit friendlies, and other untintended targets.
• Define what you consider exploits. There are cheats using third party applications which is bannable, and there is using the game mechanics to someone benefit in an unattended way, which is not currently bannable. I know of one exploit which I do not want to mention (but I will admit it exists if I see it posted in this thread) which they are actively kicking people for, but not banning. But I have a feeling you are referring to cheats. Regardless, as I said in my article, the cheating has dropped off dramatically since the ban hammer was dropped.

 

If you don't like the game thats ok, many won't. Just make sure what you post is accurate and up to date.

 

Based on you list of items here I just have 1 question.

And please bear with me, as it is an honest question...

If  combat skils do not effect damage or hit rate, or I'm assuming effect the outcome of combat at all, why are there combat skills?

That is a very legit question, and is answered in my next part of the overview on skills. Darkfall is very strange in the way it works its skills, and its not like other skill based games (UO, AC, etc). Darkfall does everything it can to put as much of the final outcome of a battle into the hands of the player themselves. We will call this player skill. They do this by offering advantages to higher skills, but not necessarily how you would expect. For instance if I have a skill of 1 in sprint, I will run just as fast as someone that has 100 sprint skill. The difference will be that my stamina will deplete faster at a skill level of 1, meaning I can travel that much farter while sprinting the higher my skill goes.

In regards to combat fighting skills do 3 things:

* They make you consume less stamina per swing (more ttacks before you are out of stam)

* At skill level 1 you can use any weapon in the game. However each weapon (all items really) have a durability that decreases with use. Once it reaches 0 it breaks and disappears, no repair skills or repair NPCs... the item is gone forever. The more higher rank (higher end) the weapon, the faster it will degrade without proper skill. So this saves you a shitload of money later on because the real high end stuff is insanely expensive, and if it breaks after an hour its hardly worth it. Very neat system in that it allows anyone to use anything, but for a price

* Using weapon skills increase your strength (or dex for archery) which also secondarily increases your damage

Originally posted by Overfiend138

Originally posted by RBlackheart

Originally posted by Overfiend138

the part about macroing being a nonissue made me laugh.

 

Try going into one of the big player cities. All you will see if afk macroers leveling up skills whether its magic / archery solo or a team macro for weapon skill. The game pretty much forces you to do this to compete. Macrofall am i right?

better to give the game an honest heartfelt 2/10 then try and feed this line of BS to people.

 

I explained clearly in my article why macroing is a non issue, but I shall reiterate here. I never said macroing doesn't happen, because it absolutely does.

Macroing magic, and archery takes resources (arrows and reagents). Gold in this game is tough to come by. Arrows, and reagents especially are very expensive in this game. As an example, a newbie goblin will drop 5 gold about 75% of the time. Reagents on average cost 3g EACH. So if you have arrows or reagents you really want to be using those on monsters to try and recoup some of your costs. If someone wants to spend their money with zero return, and blow off arrows or spell in the air then more power to them. This in no way effects how you play, or your character in any way. If they earn enough money to blow arrows and reagents on the thin air, then so be it. Not to mention they have big red targets painted on their backs for anyone sneaking into their city because you can hear bow shots and spell casting from a mile away.

Please understand the mechanics of the game before bashing them. Macroing is, and will continue to be a non issue in this game. The same as it has been in UO for 10 years running now.

I have been a DF player since day one until a couple weeks ago. As a solo player in the newb cities it may be a non issue, this is not where the bulk of the players who actually matter in the game play. (by "matter" I mean those that belong to the guilds who are shaping this PvP sandbox world) Money is not an issue in this game for those that belong to the large guilds / alliances, resources are just about unlimited in and around player cities. Because of territory control you don't have much at all to risk as far as getting ganked. This gives these guild members an unnatural advantage over those who do not have access to these resources and is, in effect, a game breaking imbalance, especially when the death penalty is what it is (which, for the record, is what I like about this game in the first place.)

This coupled with the fact that the guilds that have built these cities did so from exploits that were available from day 1. I couldn't understand how these cities were springing up so early in the game until I learned of the mob glitch that caused some camps to drop 500g each, which was very quickly taken advantage of.  Next thing we see is people running around with 100 rigor from abusing another exploit (yeah try fighting a naked ork with 100 rigor sometime, it's not fun).

Also, let's face it, Aventurine never stress tested their servers. Everyone who bought the game up to this point has been involved in a paid beta program. Had they waited and done an open or even just a larger scale closed beta test for bug reporting purposes and capacity tests, this game could have could have been much finer tuned. Instead we have a community that was built on exploits and has enabled an unfixable imbalance in the game.

Most of us that have left are waiting for the NA server to come up in hope that the exploits will be fixed and everyone can start on a level playing field. However, since the Aventurine team can't even get enough manpower to update their front page and seemingly always are addressing crashes due to hardware or connectivity issues, this just doesn't seem like it will be coming to fruition any time soon. 

So yes, I understand, have used, and now bash the mechanics of the game.

I will say the fact that they actually did take action on the hackers is a good sign. But they have a long way to go before they get subs back.

 

You bring up 2 good points. The first 3 days the game was released there were issues with mobs becoming out of synch with the world. This made it so that many camps did not actually attack back. The players in beta apparently knew where the higher end mob camps were and when they realized the sync issues they began to exploit. This is both a true and legit statement. They then garnered the 10k gold necessary to purchase a clanstone and grabbed a city. Keep in mind 10k is actually not that much. Consider your clan has 100 players, and each players donates 100g. This is the equivalent of killing 25 - 30 goblins. At any rate this caused people to gain cities faster than normal. However this is brought up time and time again as some sort of game breaking issue where in reality it is not. Games like Ultima online used to cost a shitload to build a castle or a large structure. But its not like these were popping up on day 1 :). In Darkfall there are set plots of land laid out for hamlets (small cities) all the way up to the full cities. I believe there are 97 total spread out all over the place. It doesnt matter if players grabbed all 97 sites on day 1, day 11, day 111, day 1111 or whatever. At some point all cities are going to be owned. FYI any and all cities can be stolen, and this includes any and all resources spent on building the city up. Once you take it over its yours. Its called sieging. Cities change hands on a daily basis, and I have been called on more than one occasion as a solo mercenary who does good work in city defense. I have been paid quite hansomly on several occasions. 

The second comment you make is also valid, about the stress testing. However, at some point they have to release like any mmorpg. 30 days from now the game will be be better than it was 30 days ago. In fact, every mmorpg works that way. Lord of the Rings Online, one of the most stable mmorpgs ever released, contantly adds content. Would they hold many more subs if they waited years (until now) to release with the included content that has been developed over the past several years? Probably. But at some point the developement needs to stop, the game needs to be released, and what didnt make it into release becomes future content.

Your comment about clans having some fair unbalance is not as accurate. Owning a city provides only one real benefit other than having a safe area outside of the newbie cities to hang out in. That benefit is having in town nodes for various resources. These nodes are the equivalent of 20 or so regular nodes in one, and regen very slowly. This happens to be the only way to harvest rare ore other than killing the spefic golems themselves. This is the reason cities are both sought after and warred after. The resources are typically turned into building blocks used to create more structures in the city. It actually takes massive amounts of resources to build structures in Darkfall. But say they have an unfair advantage is like complaining that the well orgranized group of 100 just slayed the dragon and is flashing all sorts of loot in your face, all the while you tried and failed to solo the dragon on your own. I am a through and through solo player and have been all the way back to UO. I like grouping with close friends but I am not a fan of clans, especially large "leet" ones. But its not fair for me as a player to expect to accomplish the same thing as a large clan for that very reason. Some clans literally have hundreds and hundreds of active players. But claiming an unbalance is a bit harsh. Its just a numbers game short and simple.

The rigor exploit was well known and was corrected within 10 days of the game's release. It was actually fixed before I even knew what rigor was. This was again used by beta testers that apparently already knew about it. And as you have already pointed out there werent enough beta testers :). And we have done quite a few tests against people with 100 rigor. Through normal play to this point your should have around 30-50 rigor which gives .3 - .4 in your applicable defenses. 100 Rigor gives you 1.0. A suit of scale (which is mid grade armor, costs 1000 gold or so for a full suit) gives you about 7.0 or so to your applicable defenses. So exploiting at this point would put you at about 8.0 vs 7.4 in the given defensive area. Thats approximately a 7.5% advantage to the beta players who decided to exploit in the first 10 or so days the game went live.

If you went to another server, played for 60 days or so, and all of the towns are swallowed up by clans, won't your same issues with the alleged imbalance exist?

Originally posted by cosimusta

 Macroing is a non-issue except all the guilds who control the majority of the world are ones that got their before anyone else, and MACROED to get their players skilled and harvesting supplies needed.  Who controls the game world is a non-issue though.

 

You also left out the worst part of the alignment system.  The fact that a game like Ultima online and Lineage2 have targeting and DF doesn't.  Fighting mobs in camps or group PvP became a joke.  A very frustrating unfunny joke.

 

And then there is exploiting.  Exploiting in DF probably needs an article on its own.  The exploits and the alignment system combined are what killed the game for me.

 

Why are DF reviews so blatantly biased one way or the other? 

Ok I have to call bullshit on your comments :). Hmm where to start:

• You cannot macro for resources. You never could, and you never will be able to. What you could do is create a macro that kept clicking your mouse button repeatedly while sitting at a resource to get its 51 TOTAL resources per node. However this does nothing to protect you from getting PKed with your abundance of 51 resources in your pack. And it takes approximately 8-10 minutes to empty a node. So your macroing attempts do not net any real gain
• You cant macro to get needed equipment. And your combat skills do not effect your ability to hit, or even your damage in Darkfall. So I fail to see how macroing skills helps me in the initial weeks where clans were making their initial land claims
• I am a bit confused by the statement regarding the alignment system. The issues you speak of is in regards to combat and has nothing to do with the alignment system in any way. Targeting in this writer's opinion is hands down one of the most welcome features in an MMORPG to come, ever. It's FPS style targeting. There is none of that bull shit where I stand inches from an enemy, swing with a giant halberd and somehow miss because the mob is such a higher level from me. The same goes for magic and archery. Gravity plays a role like in real life. Firing an arrow or spell takes skill as you have to both aim and time. You don't just see a magical targeting ring and land hits based on die rolls. This is actually my favorite aspect of gameplay. This also means you have to choose your fighting tactics carefully as if you begin firing arrows into crowds of people you will undoubtedly hit friendlies, and other untintended targets.
• Define what you consider exploits. There are cheats using third party applications which is bannable, and there is using the game mechanics to someone benefit in an unattended way, which is not currently bannable. I know of one exploit which I do not want to mention (but I will admit it exists if I see it posted in this thread) which they are actively kicking people for, but not banning. But I have a feeling you are referring to cheats. Regardless, as I said in my article, the cheating has dropped off dramatically since the ban hammer was dropped.

If you don't like the game thats ok, many won't. Just make sure what you post is accurate and up to date.

Originally posted by khaelf

To be honest, the rest of the "problems" you will see discussed on the message forums are non issues.

If I came to this site to find some information about DFO from the articles written by people trying to pass themselves off as journalists, I'd probably think that that there is nothing wrong with the game and all the bad press surrounding it is generated by a bunch of angry trolls. You admit that there are indeed some issues, seemingly breaking the trend of constantly praising the game and its dev team, but the things you list as the game's greatest shortcomings aren't really issues at all. Not because there aren't any bigger problems to be worried about, but because you conveniently forget to include them in your article, giving all uninformed readers the impression that the game's pretty much perfect. I'm sure there's some kind of definition for this kind of cover up dance you're doing in your little article. Or is it that you're simply clueless and ignorant?

 

Let's start off with the alignment system. I doubt anyone who wants to PVP in a legitimate manner (that excludes griefing newbies under the disguise of a lawful citizen), has been playing the game for a while, and/or has access to a player run city cares whether he's blue or not. The alignment system is simply a bad copy of the alignment system they had back in UO. In UO:

- you couldn't grind your way back to being a lawful citizen in a matter of minutes by rezkilling your alt
- you couldn't grief someone by constantly looting their kills without any repercussions, because you'd go grey, and then they'd be able to kill you without taking an alignment hit
- you couldn't as easily grief someone into going grey/red, because of the personal flag; if you're grey and someone attacks you, you remain grey to him for as long as it takes for him to kill you, while in DFO if you don't attack back while you're grey, you'll always remain grey for the set duration of 120 seconds, and as soon as you go back blue, the person attacking you will go grey, or red if he's unlucky enough to score a killshot or a "gank" the second you turn blue
- you could actually defend yourself if you were grey (because of mistakenly looting someone's corpse, for example), once again, because of the personal flag; if you were grey or red and someone decided to attack you, he'd flag grey to you and be attackable and freely killable throughout the whole duration of the fight
- you couldn't accidentally kill a person that easily, and even if you did, you wouldn't immediately go red because of it

Yes, the system was exploitable, but much less so than the one in DFO. And no, DFO is not UO2, but if you're going to copy something, then copy it well or don't copy it at all (speaking of doing a piss-poor job copying features from UO... hello, inventory and skill systems!). You didn't even touch any of the stuff I mentioned, I guess these are just some of the non-issues people whine about for no reason at all.

 

Cheating has a huge impact on the game, since it revolves around PVP and competition, and yet, once again, you're trying to margninalize the issue by saying that it's is not as widespread as some people claim, which is a load of crap. You might want to take a look at the video where a legitimately stolen boat gets hijacked by a cheater (member of the guild the boat got stolen from). Not that big of a deal, right? Just do a search on youtube if you want to find more videos of people cheating or even actual cheat ads. Yes, they've made some strong statements toward banning cheaters etc., but anyone who believes any word that leaves Tasos' mouth at this point should be immediately put under medical observation. If they can simply go through the server logs and find cheaters based on what they see in there, then why the need to report every cheater by name? I'm guessing having a piece of code that highlights logs with some suspicious client behaviour is out of the question? The GMs cannot and will not do anything unless they have the name of the suspected person, because they have no means to determine whether someone is cheating or not other than to follow them, watch them, and catch them red handed, so anyone being careful with their 3rd party tools, for example only using the part of the hack that negates stamina drain (that's how "the best pvpers" of darkfall can sprint/shoot/jump for 5+ minutes straight without having to worry about running out of stam), or only using the radar hack that allows them to see every player in their range on the minimap is never going to get caught.

 

Exploiting falls under the same category. The exploiters have it great in Darkfall. If I was the kind of person who doesn't care about actual competition and tries to win at any and all cost, I'd love this game. There are exploits in every game out there, what's important is how quickly and efficiently a dev team can deal with both bugs and people exploiting them. Aventurine has this original, one of a kind, ass-backwards way of fixing exploits, that actually rewards exploiters and punishes those who play fair. Acid pools, guard towers, newbie weapons, skilling up on invulnerable targets etc. Every player who took advantage of any of the aforementioned exploits was already ahead of everyone who played fair, but by fixing the exploits and not doing anything about the exploiters, Aventurine indirectly punished everyone else, because they now have to fight people who are much stronger than them and work twice as hard to catch up ("twice as hard" is a major understatement in most cases). There are many other exploits that have existed since the game's not-so-official release and haven't been fixed to this day, like people farming tons of gold and high-end equipment by sitting inside walls, trees, rocks, and other similar objects, chain-soloing mobs that are nearly impossible to solo. Some people are already insanely rich, they're way ahead of the curve in every way imaginable since they can easily afford buying all the stuff they'll ever need to finish building their characters, they get a huge edge over normal players thanks to the high-end equipment, they don't have to worry about losing any of the stuff they wear, since they've got tons of it banked anyway. Nothing is being done about it. How the hell is this a non-issue in a PVP game? Do explain.

 

Aside from AutoIt loot macros allowing you to empty a tombstone filled to the brim with nearly weightless items in a matter of seconds, I wouldn't say there are any macros that hurt the game at all. Macros are not the problem. The problem is the insanely slow skill grind coupled with the fact that the game is devoid of any actual content, which leads to a situation where macroing is the only way of building a character without going batshit insane.

 

There are so many other issues with Darkfall, that it would take at least 10 more overviews to list them all. Not like this one, however, since all you do is beat around the bush as much as possible to distract the readers from the real problems. Client and server performance being one of them, considering that city building, sieging, and zerging each other is supposed to be one of the key features of the game. Unfortunately for everyone paying for the game, though, the server lags and crashes every time a big siege is about to take place. The lack of communication with the customers is another thing someone writing an article like this one would most likely list as a problem. It's funny in a sad kind of way how we had to beg Aventurine to start posting some patch notes, and all it takes to make that big-mouthed fraud, Tasos, go on a posting spree is to post some half-assed review consisting of pretty much the same amount of factual-substanse as their official website. I guess they just can't take what they dish out on a regular basis.

 

tldr version: MMORPG.com game correspondents are full of crap.

Your post is well thought out, but again is devoid of many concepts. For one, you like to use Ultima Online as the example of what they did right, and what in your opinion Darkfall does wrong. In reality UO had far more exploits, far more cheating, then most mmorpgs in history. It was the pioneer this is to be expected. But if you are going to compare the good, please show both sides and compare the bad. Throughout UO's history there were all sorts of duping bugs, primarily for gold but for resources as well. There were also MANY player trading exploits that have popped up over the years.

The alignment system is not perfect. I mentioned this in my article. However 2 months into it and they have already made large strides in balancing it, and Im sure more will come. I'm not sure why you make it seem as though what is here is here to stay and can never at any time be fixed, changed, balanced or altered in any way. The crux of the entire post revolves around this all important statement:

There is not a single issues in Darkfall that cant be patched and balanced out of the game. Not a single one. The core of the game is solid. Games with no solid core can't be changed, Age of Conan being the example. Games can try and change their core, Star Wars Galaxies being the example of that :).

You call the game a grind because its slow gaining skills. I think thats one of the large problems in this game where people expect to play 24 / 7 and see and do all there is to the game in a month... much like you saw with World of Warcraft expansions. This game was not designed in a way where you max your weapon, magic or archery skills in a week. If you are a high end mage, then you earned it. If your goal is to become the max skill level in everything then perhaps this is not the game for you. If you play the game, simply play it... go pk, siege, PvE, craft and trade, your skills will go up naturally and over time, with use as intended. Skills will feel like a grind if your sit in town shooting spells and arrows into the air watching your skill gains.

99% of the cheating videos you see are recycled videos from the first 2 weeks of the game. I actually saw the boat video and from what I heard it was a legit exploit. In one way this is a shame but in another it's almost expected. In one of the first games to actually intoduce sailable ships... and then kick it up a notch and offer up all out naval warfare (even against other cities) I will be expecting major balance issues, tweaks, and exploit fixes to be incoming. I think this may be a ways out though since the amount of big boats crafted to date can still be counted with my own two hands.

Lastly, to put things into perspective, I had 1500 words max to use in this article. Your entire post was 100 words short of my entire article.

Originally posted by Overfiend138

the part about macroing being a nonissue made me laugh.

 

Try going into one of the big player cities. All you will see if afk macroers leveling up skills whether its magic / archery solo or a team macro for weapon skill. The game pretty much forces you to do this to compete. Macrofall am i right?

better to give the game an honest heartfelt 2/10 then try and feed this line of BS to people.

I explained clearly in my article why macroing is a non issue, but I shall reiterate here. I never said macroing doesn't happen, because it absolutely does.

Macroing magic, and archery takes resources (arrows and reagents). Gold in this game is tough to come by. Arrows, and reagents especially are very expensive in this game. As an example, a newbie goblin will drop 5 gold about 75% of the time. Reagents on average cost 3g EACH. So if you have arrows or reagents you really want to be using those on monsters to try and recoup some of your costs. If someone wants to spend their money with zero return, and blow off arrows or spell in the air then more power to them. This in no way effects how you play, or your character in any way. If they earn enough money to blow arrows and reagents on the thin air, then so be it. Not to mention they have big red targets painted on their backs for anyone sneaking into their city because you can hear bow shots and spell casting from a mile away.

Please understand the mechanics of the game before bashing them. Macroing is, and will continue to be a non issue in this game. The same as it has been in UO for 10 years running now.

Originally posted by Sanguinia

Originally posted by sempiternal

Originally posted by popinjay  

---

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth  

Other sites report (Patch notes, and Drama pices), yes, but I was referring to your user base. This site is the only one where the user base has been rather concerned with this game (Mostly due to trolling, and outrageous claims by its fans, and Moderators and other representatives of the game and its company coming here and hyping) , the rest...don't really care. So, calling it the most talked about game in history,...uh...maybe on this sites forums, sure.

 Not sure you are being fair about your postings, Blood.

You claim only so many care about Darkfall here and this is the only place people show interest. But if someone was to check your post history, I bet you probably have 500 postings on the Darkfall threads, all negative. Now the negative part isn't really important as everyone has a right to post their mind I say. It's the fact that you've posted THAT many times daily on a game you say "no one cares about". Right now you aren't interested in playing it, but you post as much as you do there shows you DO have quite an interest in Darkfall. I would say the trolls on the forums here have more of an actual interest in Darkfall than the fanbois do, although for a different reason altogether. (not calling you a troll)

 

500 negative posts about a new game he's never played?

That is pretty weird!

I can understand if he had played the game for years and had become a critic, but what would be a person's motive to bash a game so faithfully before it was even released? Aside from being crazy...

I don't need to know anything more about Mrbloodworth...

 

Maybe he did play it. We don't know. There are plenty of people playing the game already. Games don't need to have 11 million subscribers to be a success. [They just need that many to be the best! ]

I agree. Eve Online is one of the most highly regarded MMORPGs. They just hit 6 years running and just announced a record of 300k subscriptions. Thats it! They still manage to pump out epic amounts of content on a regular basis and none of the content is paid for. If the game is fun, players will come.