Shows you how immature a lot of the general gaming player base is if this is all that it takes to get them riled up, they wouldn't know what real agression was if it smacked them in the head >_>

You don't seem to get it, this wasn't about spam, they simply banned people who had legitimate complaints or criticisms and this was something that we all got together on one thread about and discussed, doing this kind of thing basically acknowledges that we were right but they happily still keep the ban status' up.

Either learn to read or do your research its amazing how many people here don't do either.

www.darkfallonline.com/expansion/

I admit I have not been following Darkfall as closely as I was pre-release because I had pretty much given up hope that they were even going to fix the bugs that are in this game but this really pisses me off. You know what gets me more angry than arrogant game developers that love shoving steaming piles of crap in your face and telling you to buy it?

I get even more pissed off when game developers ban or encourage the decrying of legitimate player complaints and criticisms towards the steaming piles of crap that they shove in their face and then proceed to add and fix the very things they were complaining and criticising and act as if they had been planning to do it all along.

Lets just take a look at this list shall we?

. Crafting price Adjustments - People were complaining about this since beta started

. Player Housing - People were trying to find out why this hadn't been implemented yet

. The Village System - Same as above

. Darkfall's Weather System - They promised this would be in at release

. The Nexus System - Yet again this was promised at release and this isn't even what they promised, it was supposed to be some sort of 'intricate' system where you could end up dying along the way instead of being instantly teleported easily

. All figurines (mounts, cannons, warhulks, ships) have had their weight considerably increased. - Quite a few people thought this figurine idea was ridiculous and there was a general consensus that they should have some weight so people can't easily carry them

Most of the other ideas just look like some silly gimmicks to me and I'm seeing more of this kind of attitude in developers everywhere ( Not just Aventurine ) with the way they communicate with Darkfall, it isn't just these guys that do it, but its pissing me off even more than the corporates because they just have zero respect for the player base.

Well done, you've basically realized that pot spamming and macroing is how the clans got to the top in beta and will continue to stay at the top as long as they can be bothered to stay subscribed.

I swear, I don't get why people clamoured over something like Ultima Online, I know Darkfall is a poor example of its game mechanics but frankly if this is what combat was reasonably like I'd rather stick to something like Pre-CU SWG where you were rewarded for interacting with players instead of just killing everything constantly.

p.s. Combat mechanics in SWG were more complex too

'Niche' is just another overused and bullsh*t word derived by morons who somehow managed to weed their way into important positions and wanted to make themselves look clever just like with words like 'next-generation' this is just simply another product of that.

Darkfall isn't niche, no game is niche, we can't define what IS niche in this industry because its too early but we already have these said morons from other industries trying to create a standard when there isn't one yet, period. Frankly I think it would be dangerous to HAVE a standard in the games industry since a lot of the industry revolves around catering to certain personal preferences rather than churning out one really useful item which is what publishers don't seem to get.

You forgot 'Next-Generation' :)

Yes, developers feel the need to put a fancy word on in order to described pieces of plastic, overpriced and easily breakable pieces of crap in order to make them sell better.

Originally posted by bmdevine

So your point is that all games suck?  Don't play them, then.

Naw all games that don't even let you play them properly even after you've played them suck, the games that I can play are actually quite fun :)

"Because when you have instant death, that typically takes a large chunk of skill out of combat - a poor player could get a lucky hit in and poof you're dead"

You need to take a look at reality, in a real fight you have to deal with luck and also in a real fight the idea is that you take down the enemy as fast as possible, I find it laughable that people think watching peoples' HP go down while you randomly bash buttons is skill. Its obvious they haven't even seen a real fight in progress nevermind watching two people spar with each other. 

You can't have a stats based game dictating a battle, its impossible, you'd either have to be a real genious person that can put EVERY possible situation or you have the computer do it, why do you think there are situations where a small person can take down a huge muscular steroid-junkie? Unless you go at the game with that kind of thinking in a stats based environment then you stand no chance of creating a fair game for players.

Also, whats your definition of fair? Is it simply that you have to be the best? Which is frankly what I see a lot of on these forums everywhere when people make these complaints, or is it that you genuinely want to be challenged if the person uses clever tactics against you? 

On the original Age of Chivalry before the patches came and butchered everything the balance for me was brilliant, you could go down in one or two hits if you weren't careful just like in real life and if you were skilled enough using the right tactics as well you could take down several opponents coming at you. And then updates came in that basically turned the game into exactly what your describing where people had more health and weapons had different damage values etc. to be honest, even while it was reasonably fun, it was an utter nightmare, certain classes were more powerful than the other so no matter what the class going against it did they ended up dying and that class would always win, so now everyone decided to pick that class because they realized it was the only one that worked and the whole balance of the game was ruined.

Unless you have someone really genuinely clever working on the balance you do not make it more complex than necessary, it just doesn't work, pure and simple.

Its not just FFXI and no, waiting for a couple of hours for a download isn't an issue for me at all, but ALL games force you to deal with the same garbage one way or another, pages and pages of registration details and agreements designed to cover their asses, lots of DRM which you need to sign into constantly and being online for and for the most part, you also have to deal with the fact that they have horrible technical issues as well.

Originally posted by giggal

the problem is that until an mmo is released which gives access to all types of abilities then you will never get true balance the only thing a company can do is keep classes at least balanced vs other classes but not against others.

 

gobble gobble, ignorance and bad information is funny.

As long as you have a stats based game you cannot have the 'balance' your thinking of, humans don't think in stats, they don't think in numbers, when they want to blast an enemy with a fireball they want to blast an enemy with a fireball, they don't want to do 'x amount of fire damage' so in the end you are always going to have a bunch of people including me going "Why the hell hasn't that guy even flinched after I just shot him in the arm and the head?" 

Also, this whole level based system as well as skill based is from the classic D&D it was designed for going up against monsters and NPCs not against other players, the players were their to supplement each others' weaknesses not to fight each other. This is why games like Everquest and Pre-Cu SWG were awesome, you had the stats suited for things like crafting and going up against tough NPCs which were perfectly suited for that kind of system because it was either in a controlled environment or the opposing side could play by the rules.

As long as MMORPGs keep trying to use a PvE model for PvP then there will always be an imbalance, the game engine and combat mechanics has to be properly designed and actually started off in mind for PvP for it to work.

Please do your research, all this is out there, I'm tired of seeing people like you as well as other developers making it seem like fun MMO's are impossible to make.

I pretty much described exactly whats happened to me in the past hour when I've tried to legitimately install a game, I think its pretty obvious lol.

"It can be good, no doubt about that, but does it really deserve all that hype at this time?"

Irony alert, its obvious your thinking that the game is going to be good because its Bioware, the majority of the original developers will have left by now as is exactly what happened with all the other companies that EA sucked into the blackhole.

So here I am, wondering what random MMORPG I'm going to try next and be instantly dissappointed by or what singleplayer game I might and I pick up Final Fantasy, now regardless of how much I complain on forums ( Thats what forums are for aren't they? To give your opinion, lol at people who say otherwise to try and make their view more important ) I am actually incredibly patient when it comes to dealing with these games and it takes a LOT I mean a LOT to throw me off one as it has to be either broken and unplayable or boringly repetitive in order to do so.

I check out the FFXI website, sure fine, login to fileplanet and get your trial yadiyada, I log in using firefox only to find that I can't use firefox and for some reason I now have to install a download manager off their site in order to download the thing. Okay, fair enough, you've got to make money somehow, I can deal with that, so I download the download manager and I wait for the download to finish and install it. I try to get the file running and extract it fine enough and then I click on the launcher to install Final Fantasy, okay, so it says I need to install some weird community DRM called 'PlayOnline' that corporations are clamouring over these days, alright fine, I can deal with it since i'm going through legal routes. I install it, then I need to register through the thing for an account, now I'm in slightly angry twitch mode because basically I have to go through 7 pages of PR speak which basically says "We will not be held accountable for any unexpected gameplay changes or loss of your money" to try and cover their arses and then after that I go through a survey and finally finish the thing.

Okay, minor annoyance dealt with, to be expect from a large corporation, now I have my weird DRM account set up so that the corporation can spy on me while I'm playing I get what I thought would be the actual up to date Final Fantasy XI installed, fair enough, that went relatively smoothly and I didn't even have to enter in any product key, of course that came before hand when I had to register my account instead. Relief at last, I finally go into the actual Final Fantasy and click the play button after being logged in through the PlayOnline viewer, here it comes, the loading screen, then..... Updates, I think I literally twitched in anger after seeing that flash up on my screen, okay, fine, since I've gone all the way through this garbage I might as well see it through even if my percentage is only at 5% and there are thousands of files that all look reasonably large.

Why the hell have corporations stooped to this level? It took me about 1 and a half hours just to reach the update screen and in that time I could have gotten one of the older games simply put the CD into the drive and played in about 3 minutes, 3 minutes, don't these morons know the reason why people aren't buying their crappy games? Its because of sh*t like this! Every game that comes out from Grand Theft Auto IV to Fallout 3, if its playable, craploads of DRM, if its not, its totally broken and the company is begging for more customers to play it even though they never fix anything.

There is no way in hell any of these companies are going to be getting my money, no matter how impressive the game is, if they continue to make poor quality products they will continue to get nothing, it is sad that the majority of these companies remain arrogant and blame their hardships on internet pirates when it is blatantly obvious who is to blame and how it can be fixed.

A game that can't entertain someone for two hours is not a game at all, you don't need to play to the max level, you don't need to get that skill, if it doesn't entertain in any form then it deserves a low score, I can't believe the incessant whining about this piece of common sense.

My god, some people really have some balls in this industry and a whole heap of arrogance and I'm not just talking about Darkfall either. Do you seriously expect new players to buy a broken product 'just because'? I see idiots on the Empire Total War forums saying the same thing as if they're on the moral high ground, they aren't, not when developers are releasing crap like this.

The industry as a whole is never going to progress as long as game developers keep churning out broken and unplayable crap games, would you buy a broken fridge if the salesmen said that you should support them or they will fail as a company? No, that exact kind of thinking is why the bailouts happened in the first place and why we're all currently in a recession right now companies didn't have the balls to be productive and pay off their debts and so the taxpayer ended up having to foot the bill. 

Show some bloody brains and to the 'new players' do your research on a product before you buy it, don't be suckered in by this kind of garbage.

I remember the fanbois telling me that the reason the graphics look crap even for low-grade graphics was because of video compression, I actually burst out laughing RL after reading that as thats honestly an excuse they gave me.

Its a shame you guys don't direct your energy to ripping apart companies like EA and SOE, this games already done, companies like EA and SOE take years to take down.

"That still says nothing about the viability of a roleplay-focused MMO."

Please do your research before commenting on a subject like this as if you know everything, if you had you'd realize that the reason a certain MMO is making billions is because of the huge marketing campaign it pulled to get interest outside of the usual playerbase.

If you did your research you'd also realize that the Games Industry is in fact very young and has only been going for a decade or two, so its way too early to even say crap like that since we haven't reached enough people who might be interested in player games.

And frankly with all these games coming out that just revolve around killing x number of enemies to reach a goal and in such boring fashions too I predict that we're going to have to deal with another decade of notably boring and generic games until either the publishers churning them out die off or we get some good indie companies taking up the helm again like the good old days.

My god, its amazing people wonder why we have so few people subscribing to MMORPGs in the first place.

I love how a lot of people seem to think that a genre completely defines the ruleset of a game and it MUST be followed or it isn't that genre.

Roleplaying used to be about getting together as a group and having fun pretending you were actually in the game world and as that character, now all I see are a bunch of elitists with superiority complex issues that take roleplaying too seriously who think they're better than everyone and cyberers.

That is why roleplaying is dying, oh that and there are no games out that have decent mechanics to roleplay with anymore because its all about killing randomly spawning monsters constantly which doesn't offer very much in the storyline and lore department.

"I love how every dweeb with three minutes worth of Wikipedia education and cracked copy of Maya thinks they're an authority on graphics and animation."

I love how you think that you can act like the cool or tough guy on the internet and not look like a complete moron.

Do you seriously think any of these developers currently making these games even have a degree? Maybe some do, but the majority of them probably just learned the skills like the rest of us.

Go back to your cave troll