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Darkfall System Focus: Skills in DFO
MMORPG.com Darkfall Correspondent Andy Cormier writes this look at the skill system in Darkfall Online.
By Andy Cormier on May 20, 2009
In this article, we are going to take a deeper look into one of the core game mechanics of Darkfall Online, the skill system. Having a skill system in and of itself is a vast departure from the more mainstream mmorpgs such as World of Warcraft or Everquest. In Darkfall you are simply a sum of your various skills. You have no level, no class, and when you die...you will have no gear. Pretty much the only thing you can take with you are your skills. There are many skills in Darkfall ranging from melee skills, magic skills, crafting skills, and general skills (like running and swimming). To increase a skill, simply use it. For instance if I put an axe in my hand, and begin whacking away on a monsters (or player!) my axe skill will begin to increase. If I switch to a sword, my sword skill will begin to increase. Now magic has an extra skill set, the spells themselves. All magic spells are grouped into different magic "schools". You begin with Lesser Magic, and after you reach a skill level of 50, you can buy the Greater Magic skill. Once you reach 50 in Greater Magic you have a good many more magic schools that become available for purchase. ;)
So when I cast Mana Missile for instance (one of the two spells your start the game with), both my Lesser Magic skill as well as the spell itself will increase. This is a great mechanic and really drives home the fact that if you neglect a skill or a spell, it won't get better regardless of how skilled your character becomes in other facets.
One of the common criticisms you will hear about Darkfall is that skill levels mean nothing, or you only get benefits at certain points in your progression (25 skill, 50 skill, etc). The truth is that the skill system remains the most misunderstood facet in Darkfall. This is primarily for two reasons. One, the lack of manual and any concrete evidence by the developers leaves the player completely on their own to figure things out for themselves. Secondly, the few skill based games that you may have played in the past (Ultima Online, Asheron's Call) had skill systems that differed from Darkfall. So most newcomers assume skills work the same way. In fact it's very logical to think that the more skill I have in swords, the more damage I will do. This is actually not the case. In terms of melee combat, your skill does two things:
- It causes you to use less stamina per swing
- It causes higher "rank" weapons to deteriorate slower
Let's look at these two items in greater detail. First, stamina management is a huge part of combat, especially in PVP. With no stamina you cannot swing your weapon, fire your bow, parry attacks, or run away (well you could actually run away, but you can't "sprint" away). So the longer your stamina holds out the longer you are in the fight. There are ways to regenerate your stamina faster such as food, potions, and the resting skill. Typically however, once you are out of stamina your are dead meat. Item deterioration is also a huge facet of Darkfall. Darkfall tries extremely hard to put most of the skill involved in PvP out of the die rolls, and into the hands of the player. That's right, in-game skills are no match for player skills in the world of Darkfall. This is even more apparent when you realize that any player can equip 95% of all armor and weapons in the game from day one, the only restriction being racial requirements on epic gear which I do not believe anyone has seen at this point. This may sound like "twinking" to some, but I can assure you it's anything but. Better items in this game obviously cost more. Costs get exponentially higher the better the "ranks" of loot become. Also, items degrade with use and cannot be repaired. That's right... no one in Darkfall should get married to their gear. If you aren't killed and have your gear looted, it will eventually break and vanish forever. So when you spend your hard earned gold on some new equipment, it gives the same benefit to you as it would the newbie logging into Darkfall for the first time. The difference being that it will last far longer in your hands than in the hands of the unskilled. In fact, at extremes, the high ranking items can decay over five times faster if you don't have the appropriate skills to use them. It becomes an extremely interesting mix of allowing freedom, but making it cost you more to do so if you try and "jump the gun" so to speak.
;)
Some skills do offer benefits when you hit certain invisible markers. For instance, in many cases reaching a skill level in one particular skill, opens up other skills for purchase. In other cases it physically makes a spell noticeably better. For instance the self heal spell that you start the game with works as a HoT (Heal Over Time). It ticks a few times adding health with each "tick". When you reach 33.3 in the skill it gains an additional tick, and again at 66.6. Your skill in between (33.4 - 66.5) increases your overall health earned per tick.
Not everything is so cut and dry however. Skills like "run" (not to be confused with "sprint"), which claims to make you run faster, don't seem to do anything. I have raced several people in the game with my maxed run skill and regardless of the other player's skill, we seem to run the exact same speed. These instances only seem to amplify the confusion. The misnomers and confusion grows even larger when you throw attributes into the mix. It's widely believed that your attributes can greatly benefit your skills. For instance, higher Intelligence will add to your spell results. Since your intelligence slowly goes up as your cast magic, it's very hard to tell where the added bonuses are actually coming from. I am sure all of this will become clearer over time as more crafty players run tests and reach higher levels in both skill and attributes. But it sure would be nice to have a more basic understanding of what everything does, especially because the skill system works so differently than other skill based mmorpgs out there. There really is no excuse for not being clear and concise about exactly what various skills and abilities do, without necessarily giving us the math behind it.
;)
Last but not least I want to touch on actual player skill. Darkfall did something that I have not seen in years. They brought player skill back mmorpgs in a big way. Many mmorpgs suffer from the cloning effect. At a certain point in my character development I am essentially a carbon copy of anyone else at the same point in their career. The same spells, same damage, etc. Darkfall throws all of that completely out the window by allowing the skill of the actual player to play a huge role in the outcome of nearly everything you do. This is primarily because you have what I call "active combat", similar to Dungeons and Dragons Online. This means that you can choose to block with your shield or weapon whenever you want. It's not a button on a hotbar you push, you can map it to any key on the keyboard and try and physically block attacks at will. Combat does not have a "die roll style" hit or miss system either. Hits and misses are entirely up to you, much like a first person shooter. If you aim your bow or spell at an enemy and you are off, the attack simply misses the intended target. If you are dead on you hit, without exception. This is a blessing for any gamer who felt it ridiculous to stand point blank in the face of an enemy and somehow miss with your attack. The same holds true for melee attacks. If your crosshair is on your enemy at the time your weapon comes around, you hit. It's that simple. Regardless of how you feel about the game, it's great to see a developer put so much emphasis on the skill of the person sitting behind the keyboard, instead of how much time they have physically spent in the world itself.
"Skills like "run" (not to be confused with "sprint"), which claims to make you run faster, don't seem to do anything."
Such is the way of many thing in Darkfall. Lots of things seem to do nothing, and there is lots of mystery behind skills and attributes.
Didn't get through the whole article, but if he didn't mention the massive amount of copypasted abilities so that there is really only one true skillset, let it be known.
One really anoying draw back to this system is the great lengths people take to speed the skill progressions process. They fire mana missiles non stop... at anything or nothing at all. Some will group just to take swings at each other and others will swim into walls or crouch walk all over town just to raise those skills. Personally I find it more enjoyable to go out and pay the game but then I do tend to die more against those who have spent there hours in mindless skill grinding.
To bad they cant eliminate the benifits gained unlessits only from going out and experiencing the world. Yes I know it is a nieve thought.
Many of the skills are there to give you a slight edge in combat, yet people seem determined to grind every possible skill when Aventurine intended them to be trained as the user played the game. Mastery skills, spell skills and any craft skills are obviously very important. Others could be classed as sub-skills as they give improve your character in almost unnoticeable ways, but any highly competitive players would scratch for any type of advantage over other players, hence so many people grinding for seemingly useless skills.
When you speak of copypasted abilities, what exactly are you referring to?
Just incase you're not up-to-date: Spell skills now only advance if the player hits monsters/other players. Same with archery.
Yup, a lot of the exploits people were using at launch have been removed. The acid pool is gone, the stat increase after skill level 100 has been massivly reduced (swimming against a wall now is much less helpful) Hitting other players with shields no longer lets you skill up. Starter weapons no longer let you skill up. Earthquake no longer gives rigor without damage. Arros have to hit players/monsters to level as do spells.
While you could argue that all these things should have been fixed before launch, you can't really argue that AV hasn't been active. They have a patch pretty much every Friday and almost every patch so far has reduced problems and improved the game. I agree many people might still not like Darkfall but AV really are slowly making the game better and better
Yes even if launch day was borked AV have been very good with patch frequency and patch content, and all the changes they have made have been good ones. The only real thing I can fault them on is not penalising those who used the exploits before they were patched.
That is a huge bug though! All the players that have been playing since launch have all those skills maxed now. Now everyone new that joins can't do that, making it even harder for new players to enjoy the game. And in a game where you get killed and lose all your stuff all the time, it's annoying to know those "badasses" that kill you most likely cheated to get to where they are and then AV removed it. It's good they fixed it, but its a little late. That's a benefit I guess to pay to play their beta testing, but if they were a legit company they would of made it an actual beta and then reset the server once the game went live to the public.
That is a huge bug though! All the players that have been playing since launch have all those skills maxed now. Now everyone new that joins can't do that, making it even harder for new players to enjoy the game. And in a game where you get killed and lose all your stuff all the time, it's annoying to know those "badasses" that kill you most likely cheated to get to where they are and then AV removed it. It's good they fixed it, but its a little late. That's a benefit I guess to pay to play their beta testing, but if they were a legit company they would of made it an actual beta and then reset the server once the game went live to the public.
in 6 months most people playing now will have their skills maxed.
WHOAA, you touched on something, Hence why they haven't opened another server yet. Once they get everything working good on the EU server 1, they will open new servers maybe. But I swear I head someone say that you can transfer your TOON to another server from EU1 to NA1. But then again maybe I heard wrong. OR,, maybe AV may let you transfer your TOON over but at a cost of all your stats to 25% hehehe.
Anyone know there sub count yet?
they don't open up a new server because they simply can't afford a second, you are currently playing an unofficial pay to play closed beta, they only open the shop when they have banned players or if enough people cancelled their subscription. don't worry, there will be another wave of players banned soon, as all old hacks still work and being advertised, even improved. blame the poor code of df.
there was no announcement of av (as if there were any at all, except some nerdrage of tasos because of the eurogamer review or the announcement of open shop times) that you will be able to transfer your toon. most likely this will not happen, but you never know.
no one knows their sub count, the list of all guilded players that currently floats around also counts deleted, banned and of course characters that have already quit.
the skillsystem in df plain and simple sucks. you have 4 levels, that's all. all your skillgains mean nothing until you hit 25 / 50 / 75 / 100. i also disagree with the "player skill" needed in df combatwise as an oldschool shooter player. but that is maybe only my opinion.
No one can know for sure, but they claim they sell 1000+ accounts each time they open the shop. So I would guess maybe 30,000 - 60,000 accounts sold total. If we use WAR as a worst case scenario for people leaving ( 1 million down to 300,000) we could guess that 2/3 have left. so 10,000 to 20,000 active subs.
All numbers are pulled out of my arse (accept for the 1000+ per opening of the store) so really its a stab in the dark
They are stuck with EU-1 while Tasos keeps running from investor to investor asking for money
Darkfall will be lucky to make it to the end of the year. And most of the exploits still work in the game. They fix one thing and break another. It is like a 3 alarm fire being fought with a bunch of volunteers. Despite claims to the contrary, people are still macroing skill gains using methods Aventurine has not patched yet.
the whole server situation is a joke anyway. so many people exploited their skills and exploited insane amounts of gold, all those people that start now or later will have a huge disadvantage, because skill matters much in df if you have weapon mastery, it's not that different to other themepark games where you grind high end equipment.
maybe mo will do it better with the twitch based combat and skill system... well and everything else, at least they don't seem to lie everytime they open their mouth.
No one can know for sure, but they claim they sell 1000+ accounts each time they open the shop. So I would guess maybe 30,000 - 60,000 accounts sold total. If we use WAR as a worst case scenario for people leaving ( 1 million down to 300,000) we could guess that 2/3 have left. so 10,000 to 20,000 active subs.
All numbers are pulled out of my arse (accept for the 1000+ per opening of the store) so really its a stab in the dark
Well, nobody knows for sure, but we do know somethings and can extrapolate numbers from there. For example, we know that the count of players in clans was ~16k on May 1st. I know this because I tabulated the counts from the in-game clan screens and published them in a spreadsheet. As of May 18th, that number dropped to ~15k. Additionally, we've had confirmation that the clan counts include ex-players and deleted characters that were re-rolled with new names (deleted names aren't freed up for future use). The total alliance membership is ~10k.
So, the maximum possible number of clan members as of yesterday is ~15k. Subtract x amount of invalid characters from that and you have a true clan count. Why is this important? Because most players are in clans, especially those who stick with the game. The percentage of un-guilded players to guilded players is probably pretty small. Bsaically, a formula for identifying the sub count would be:
(Clan Count - invalid clan members +non-guilded characters) = total subscriptions
Furthermore, Signus--an IRC Mod for Darkfall--posted that there were 13k+ players on the official boards. I copied and pasted his statement in a few threads here, which is a good thing, because his post mysteriously vanished.
So, the player count is probably somewhere between 13 and 16k. I seriously doubt if it's over 16k. With a 1k drop in the clan count in less than a month, major alliance leaders complaining of players leaving due to the grind, etc..., I think Darkfall is hurting for membership.
~Ripper
That had to be one of the most boring articles I have ever read on this website.
How on earth the writer was able to stretch the content out so far is beyond me, for heavens sake having a paragraph about the "Run" skill and stamina management, you know if I hadn't played all the popular MMO's out there I think the guy was calling me an idiot the way the piece was written.
Really poor article which really talked about a very very small set of skills that really didn't need such a wall of text to explain, 1 paragraph would have been able to convey what they did and the impact of useage had over passive/button mashing skills from other level based MMO's have.
I joined Darkfall on day 3 after launch. I spent 2 days getting ganked, and getting the loot from my kills stolen by other players.
On my third day of playing ( 6 days after launch), I joined a clan. I was immediately told
1. Here is a link to download two 'needed' hacks. One was a stamina hack that allowed you to never run out of stamina. The other was a hack that allowed you to insta-loot your kills.
2. I was lead to a group of mobs by a river that my clan had been exploiting since launch. 2 mobs would spawn, it was very easy to get them to 'bug out' so they wouldn't fight back. My clan had been working this spawnpoint since launch. Players were given a portion of the gold, and the rest went to the clan to build a city. By my second day in the clan, we had built an advanced city.
3. I was taught the 'wall' trick with archery, and with the gold I had acquired, I quickly trained up my archery skill. My melee skills were already pretty high from beating on mobs that couldn't fight back.
The skill system in Darkfall is 'interesting' in theory... but the actual implementation of the system is terrible. Exploitations are rampent and if you raised your skills naturally, you would be so far behind other players that you would just get owned all the time. In a pvp-centric game with full-loot, it is just no fun to play fair and raise your skills naturally while constantly getting ganked/looted by players who macro'd/hacked
Everything about Darkfall sounds good on paper, and it sounds like the ruleset everyone wants. But everything about the actual game is terrible. It's hard for me to find a game where I could say 'nothing is good' about it.. but Darkfall is about as close to that as I've ever gotten.
The second I heard "stamina" I had an AoC flashback and that derailed my reading. Still, I might try this game if I can actually make it through reading about it (oh and they had a game you could buy, has that changed yet?)
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.
Still sounds like DFO doesn't really get around the big downside of use-based progression systems: being pigeonholed into a playstyle.
Instead of playing how you want, and leveling how you want, use-based progression forces you to play in a specific way to level the skill you want. Which is fine for a while until either (a) one of the skills isn't as fun to level (running) or (b) one of your skills lags behind and you're forced to fight weaker monsters than normal just to get it raised.
Still seems like Asheron's Call 1 had the most successful use-based model by augmenting it with XP Investment. So you'd still fight using the main combat skills you wanted to raise, but you'd also be getting this income of XP which you could invest in any skill you chose - which let you sidestep both of the major disadvantages of a use-based system. Really the main downfall is the abilities in AC1 weren't all that deep and didn't make for particularly compelling combat.
(edit: Oops...I would delete this post if it let me. I'm not a fan of 4+ day old forum necromancy :X )