Darkfall had two very distinct periods, the period of low magic where the grind kept the vast majority in combat roles, white damage carnage. The second was the dawn of the macroer, basement dwellers emerging on the scene with vastly superior skills and very high magic usage which would become the norm for the years to come. Which was your most enjoyable period? Disclaimer: Magic was messed up due to the absence of a GCD/ray spam at the time most were utilising melee in PvP, so lets try compare magic post GCD/AoE fix.
The latter, but only once i had caught up with the grind. It was far more intense, far more depth to combat, far more dependant on player skill and playstyle. Obviously the early days had some flair to them aswell, and if the gap wasnt made so huge by macroing the game could have slowly progressed. Not forcing people to feel the need to macro aswell to catch up. Or even feel the need as much to use magic all the time.
I think this poll is a bit flawed, there was a few distinct periods of magic that were completely different. Firstly there was the magic spam period where there was no global cool downs and aoe did full damage and took very little skill. The white hat period was more fun than this. Then after the balance patches, this was the most skillful period of the game. With global cooldowns and direct hits rewarded. This was the most fun time.
Periods from Best to Worst. Everyone is grinded up with all magic, buffs, knockups, melee and range combined -2011-2012- Early on when few people had magic and mostly used range/melee/mana missle -Launch- When people started grinding magic a bit(I was 60 fire magic on eu1 and raped people)-2-4 months after launch- Ray Spam bad but still not the worst-late 2010 early 2011?- R90 spam where everyone would spam Aoes for easy wins.-late 2009-early 2010
I always found the days a few weeks after release where magic was OP as fuck and a few select people had exploited and macro'ed them enough to take advantage of it and basically 4v30. It's a neat idea to think that some people could attain that status but it's not a sustainable thing. I really loved launch before even the exploiters had magic though. Just a bunch of noobs trying to do their best at killing each other.
mass field PvP where the fallen ran back from their clan city, looted whatever weapon and ran back into the fray naked.
