Dark and Light, once thought dead and buried is nearing ever closer to its eventual relaunch. It’s not the game it was 12 years ago, except in name only. Still, even with a few interviews, we don’t have much in the way of gameplay video or real details from the developer itself to go on. Ergo, today we’re offering up five things we want from Dark and Light. These are just five of our many hopes, so feel free to weigh in with your own.
5.) PVE Servers with PVP Optional
This one has yet to be clarified from what I can tell. Snail has announced that Dark and Light will have both full open world PVP servers with full loot, and more friendly PVE servers. That said, there are three player factions akin to Dark Age of Camelot, ESO, and more – and I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t love to be able to PVE without fear and still PVP when I want to.
From the early Reddit QnA:
“After creating a character, players will be able to choose from one of three factions, each with their own background and lore. Each faction controls a main "city" hub that serves as a neutral zone for players who belong to that faction. There's a lot we want to explore with inter-faction relations, a lot of what makes it into the full game will depend on how factions play out in testing.”
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4.) Don’t Be Too Grindy
Sandboxes of late, namely in the survival vein, have a tendency to overly rely on berry picking, tree punching, and spending most of your time harvesting tons of materials you have no real means to carry in order to get anything done. I love that Dark and Light is being positioned as a sandbox where you can explore, craft, and live life… just don’t make it so monotonous that it feels like real life.
3.) First and Third Person
On several occasions, Snail has referred to Dark and Light’s action combat as “being like a First Person Shooter”. Since, as of this writing, we still don’t have much gameplay to go on, I’m hoping that doesn’t mean we don’t have a third person POV option. FPS is good and all, but I love being able to watch my character’s looks grow and his animations fire when fighting. Right now, Snail can’t confirm or deny whether a 3rd person view will be in the game, which seems sad to this Panda.
2.) Player-Run Shops
One of the best parts of a game like Shards Online is that not only can you create your own goods or sell what you find, but when you log out you can leave a merchant behind to sell your stuff for you. With Dark and Light taking such a heavy focus on crafting, I really hope it has the option for players to run their own shops, even when offline.
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1.) Survival Shouldn’t Mean Boring
In so many survival games, you have to eat and drink so much that the core gameplay loops veers off and becomes all about finding and consuming rations. Think of No Man’s Sky and its ridiculous resource hunting. That’s all you really did in the game, especially early on. I can appreciate good survival mechanics, but make them behave rationally, much like Osiris: New Dawn and how players only truly need to eat and drink every few in-game days to stave off starvation and thirst. Not every 15 minutes of in-game play time.
