The pop hasn't stayed even with the ease of skilling and obtaining of endgame gear. That's obvious from all versions of DF since the 3rd year of DFO and after. I'm curious to know in this thread what you remaining players would like to see to keep you returning to a brutal, full loot sandbox where everyone is basically done, with the same template (skills/spells) and gear within a month. What motivation do you have to remain playing ROA at that point? Diversity? Grinds of all types? Random bosses and hordes of pve that drop sieges and attack your holdings, etc? Changes in gear efficiency loss with use? Loss of skills/spell level with non use? Restrictions of skills/spells like they already have in destro, etc? What reasons are there, in your opinion, that give people a reason to stay and play instead of quickly maxing out, pvping, getting bored and moving on?
I could probably go on forever but it ultimately boils down to this: Things to do Things to fight for Things to grind for long-term (edit: and short term) that aren't ridiculous and perhaps most importantly... Clan based activities and tools that motivate us to play and fight. Clans are the heart of this game and they are sorely being neglected.
I'm with ya. The risk v reward is gone due to the ease of skilling. Due to that, all neccesity to play has evaporated, hence no pop --- Post updated --- End game sills, crafting has been removed for the sake of minimalizing the grind. You now have engame toons in pvp. Nothing has changed other than rapid endgaming play with unlimited supply due to quick crafting. Again, if all is easy to do/achieve, then why play ROA when you can relog in and focus on skill with an abundace of endgame gear everwhere --- Post updated --- B Bring back the dfo grind to give everyone something to strive for. Grinds suck, but are needed for risk v reward
but things to do are GRIND and grind is BAD and this game would be amazing if only we removed all the GRIND
Well no. Grind is fine if it's fun but right now it's not fun. It makes it so we spend our time grinding when we could be doing something more fun yet there's not much else to do. Problem is Darkfall isn't a sandbox; it's a box. The grind was designed to placate us and keep us busy because without it there's not much going on and therein lies the problem. Reducing or removing the grind will only help if there's a purpose once you finish your character and right now all we have is amassing wealth.
The human Ego wants to see its own growth, continually. For most people, this will translate to an upward progression of their character. Many people complain that they "just want to be finished with the Grind", but once they do, they lose incentive to stay in game. This is why I love the solution of PVE-only skills. They don't create a power gap in PvP, yet at the same time keeps the Ego's drive to improve satisfied. the vast number of subs in WoW was sure as hell never driven by the challenge that it provides. It's always been about "farming character growth" slowly, steadily, comfortably. And it's SUCH a simple solution to incorporate this into ROA without even affecting PcP balance.
It's much easier to have perpetual character growth in a game like WoW because you can't lose, trade or break your gear. Nor does epic gear really effect anything within that character's world. In Darkfall you can't give a player some weapon that deals double damage compared to all other weapons because that could cause a major imbalance that could cause lots of negative things. Such as people quitting due to not being able to compete. I think we all realize that Darkfall is a game where the more skilled you are at pvp, the more success you have overall in all aspects of the game.
Warcraft is a themepark but it has the greatest lore of all MMORPGs and a lot of people play the game just for the lore and story. They even made a movie about it and got a peak of subs after the movie, they are in other whole level. What I miss about that at Darkfall is the lack of lore, closed buildings, random spots of huts, empty castles, etc. But that's not fair for Agon because it's hard to compare to warcraft, starwars, conan, lores which comes from movies/books/big sagas of single player videogames. What we could learn about warcraft, guildwars and all those games is they have instant fun. You just log in and queue in a BG for pvp or in an raid for PVE. You have casual pvp battlegrounds and competitive gladiators for hardcore gamers. You have "story mode" raids so everybody can check the bosses but you also have the mythic difficult level which just the best clans can beat. So they give PVP and PVE content to casuals and hardcore gamers while maintaining a vast lore. Now let's be realist. Warcraft might have more storytellers hired than whole Agon number of employees. But focusing in fastest fun (reworking portals) is a nice starting point.
Play continually? I think they need to focus on keeping people playing for the first 90 days. Focus on making entry into the game interesting and the early grind must have purpose and meaning. Rushing characters to end game stats isn't going to keep people subbing or retain what new players happen to stumble upon the game.
/airplane There are many, many differences between WoW and Darkfall. The points you two raised had nothing to do with my points. Edit: to be fair to @coltaine, you do raise a relevant point, proposing that much of their success is attributed to their massive art/storytelling team. I agree that this plays a big part in their success. However, I believe that much of their success is about people collecting POINTS for their cyber-egos. Let me share an example, using the card game Bridge. Players are awarded Master Points for attending tournaments (and even more for winning). Collecting Master Points is such a draw, that players will fly all over North America to collect them. And in this card game, there is no massive art team like in WoW, players just LOVE THEM POINTS. So, I agree with you that much of WoW's success is from art and storytelling, that ROA will never have the resources to match. But I think the PVE POINT COLLECTION is something that ROA can certainly benefit from.
Honestly gamers get super bored of games now all across the board. The games retaining player bases are instant bang pvp games or games with an ungodly amount of storyline quests, sand in the box, and cosmetics. Darkfall grind could have only worked at launch if the devs bottlenecked character development via world bosses. Maybe like 1 a month. So all players would be locked at lesser and greater magic, skill level 50 bows and melee, crafting skills 50. And once world boss is killed next phase of skilling up is released. This would allow for newbs and casuals to catch up and compete. If a player joins a game on month 3 phase 3 the skill ups on phase 1and2 are x5 speed so they can get to phase 3 with everyone else super fast. Darkfall with maxed toons instead of a grind could have worked also if marketed right and you did a gear grind. But gear would need to be a lot closer in ranks magnitude and protections than it is now. The best player in the game should be able to wear a banded set and compete w a medium player in a infernal set etc. this would make lower tier gear more desirable. And higher tear armor should be more pricey. If you go for a sandbox storyline quest df with a lot of online store pixel items to buy for cosmetics etc than you would have to set up some type of safe zones and a lot more PvE dynamic spawns and encounters etc. this would take a shit ton of time and roa could only do it if they use ALL their money to hire professionals. Spend money to make money. Ultimately the issue why this game and other games willl most likely fade away is because the company in charge is not 100% dedicated. If you guys watch shark tank they never ever invest into a company that the owners have a primary real life job and do a business on the side. They only invest in companies that are 100% working in their business all day every day to become successful. If you just do a part time business it will never grow at the speed it needs to be to keep up with the markets demands. This also means going into dept and spending all your money into the business the first few years.
No cinematic opening movie with lore explanation, no good tutorial, no exclamation marks above npc heads, too many skills, windows hotbars etc. no direction to follow. Players get thrown into a not-so-good looking world without any clue what to do. Why are they here? Why should they fight against others? Then they see no other players, dead chats and get killed after they accomplished something. Why would any new player would want to stay in a game like that?
My List? 1. Advertising Right now this game is running off purely word of mouth. I'll save the whole "needs to be on steam" speech. I'm trying to do my part and have started streaming daily, but if i could say one more thing that does does need? Compassion for new players / people trying to get geared up but that wont change, people are too toxic. I.E Don't stream snipe new characters when they're trying to give free advertising for a dying game.
Honestly I don't think platforms like Steam will help. ppl in Steam are toxic in a different way. Much worse than in df reddit or good 'ol forumfall. They will rule the community section and poison the game slow and steady. (Warning: Do NOT play this piece of garbage in 2017, WORST DEVS EVER, lol wtf graphics look like 2003 and gameplay is clunkly as hell, How to get money back? [...]). A whole new generation of assholes awaits, nothing more.
What's missing: 1. Sandbox tools, for example, free built housing and harvesters, camps, etc. 2. Systems to encourage on-demand PVP (i.e. not timer based). Both of these should be pretty easy to implement if they stop trying to gnat's-ass combat balancing and other stuff that will never matter.
The player is definitely not given much of a sense of direction. This game is very overwhelming starting out unless you know exactly what you're in for. Part of that is just the nature of the freedom of the game, but it doesn't feel modern at all and initially very barren of meaning. I don't know the answers to what the game needs, but I feel confident that there needs to be reexamination of very established core parts of the game if the goal of this project is to grow it's playerbase. I think even relatively smaller changes can help a lot though, and the game is heading in the right direction I think. It just may be a very long time before the game is fully realized at this pace.
I feel the complete opposite. Instead of there being no sense of direction I feel there is no direction. After the initial character grind you just have to ask yourself: do i have a group or am i solo? where do i want to find pvp? Where do I want to PvE?
I do think this is accurate. If a player decides to roam then they are officially on their own. Depending on the direction they go, they should probably be prompted into what they are getting themselves into. How difficult would it be to implement a more newbie friendly guide to the map? Literally as if a veteran is walking them through things. If a newbie strolls into a different area, warn them of PVP and maybe some nearby PVE options. This of course is only for newbies. I also think maybe we can have some sort of either gains to having a vet help newbies. On the flip side, having some sort of flag on reds who are feasting on people of drastically less experience. Is it possible to put in a system where if someone with 420HP kills someone with 300 HP, they get a flag or a penalty of some sort? Newbie abuse is sounding like a real problem. Hardcore is great, but the main population still needs a little nut cup till they are mentally ready to be killed.
