Hi All, I have chossen to go back to NA from playing on Asia since it launched. I have done this for a variety of reasons and as I am getting PM's from members of the community about it, I thought I would explain it here. I think most of you know I love Darkfall and have been a member of this community for many years. I have tried to support it as best I can. I have supported Asia and really thought many of the changes were for the best. I dont want RoA to fail or we lose Darkfall forever. (I went destro on Asia FYI). 1). The Skill Leveling Grind. The grind on Asia is massive. Not just 2x or 3x NA but many times that. I have been using greatclub for days and its only 27. Holding down left click for months to get 100 Gretclub and 100 Mastery is not fun for me. 2). Crafting grind. I calculated that enchanting would be 2500 enchants to get from 1 to 25. Thats just to use Q2. I know the devs are looking into the crafting stuff but it feels like they just mutiplied the difficulty without doing trial runs or calculated hours spent. Also slowing down the crafting itself and watching a blue bar slowly crawl across the screen is not fun. 3). Research system - While I liked the idea of destroying items to level off them to avoid flooding the market. Having to get 50 Papyrus and 1 ink every day to create blank schematics to destroy and level off 10 items really take time. You also cannot queue up more than 1 day at a time so you have to log in every day to refresh your leveling queue. 4). Loot - Killing 1 mob and getting only 1 or 2 enchanting mats means you need to kill hundreads of mobs if not thousands to get all the mats you need to level enchanting. I thought I was a good idea but having to just stay in one spot killing the same mob type over and over for hours with low level spells or abilies is not fun. 5). Unlocking Abilites/Spells - Due to the grind it takes ages to unlock abilites and spells. This has taken the fun away for me. I liked swapping between weapons, using different magic, transmuted weapons etc. Now if I swap weapons my skill level is starting from 1 and I do low damage. Its not fun. 6). Billboards - Removing them made sence, until you try and ride accross a empty world on a slow mount looking for people to fight, that you dont find. I dont know if the grind is as bad as the orginal DFO or worse but its too much for me. Its too much cause I am a adult now with limited time to play. I dont live in my parents house rent free and I have a wife, family and friends to spend time with. I really thought the grind would be fine and I had nostaliga about DFO but thats all it was rose coloured nostaliga about the past. I have grown up. I expect more from my gaming time now. MMO's have moved on. Getting various abilties and spells in your first few hours is the norm and it makes the game fun. Removing tedium and helping you get into the action faster is normal and gets you to the fun parts faster. I know some people will say "your not the target audiance". They are right I am a westerner playing a Asia level grind MMO with most systems from 2009. So back to NA I have gone. I just hope if the devs do bring some of the changes they have made to NA or even launch a new NA server with some of the Asia changes they really look into what the NA and Euro players actually want. We are quite a different market after all. If living in a online world for days of real time where everything counts, is a challange and it take serious effort to advance is what you want then do give Asia a try. However if you want to play a game just for fun for a few hours a week you may want to keep more of the NA than you think.
Interesting post, thank you. I think it comes down to personal preference and expectations. While it is true that development is long-term, this also affects everyone else and while you may desire certain spells strongly now, there is a great feeling of satisfaction when you work toward them and acquire them over time. It is more about the journey than the destination. Crafting gains may be looked into further. Again, it is a long-term process. There is no dire need to be able to craft high-rank gear early because nobody has it, these items of great interest become available over time. The server is very young, there is plenty of time to develop your character and fill your bank. This does not mean one must play all day, every day, but they can if they choose to do so. That said, again, it comes down to personal preference so if you feel the original server suits you better, that is fine too
None of these things were tested. They were thrown into the game and there are tons of bugs and broken quests and hardly anyone playing. I’m not sure I understand why they did this and I don’t think I ever will. Every time you kill a monster for a quest it says you killed 1 of 200 Name. The server has been up for weeks and this still hasn’t been fixed like come on.
I think your right in that Asia is setup at a long progression jouney. Its more like the orginal DFO in that. Its also more like a old school MMO where you had to choose the skills you where going to level and not level everything. Unfortunaly there is no respec option so if you want to chance your mind and play a different weapon or spell school you have to start from leveling from level 1. I think its going to greatly appeal to people who want that long type of experiance and have the time to play it. I am just not one of them. I was honestly suprised I was not. I played old style MMO's for years when they first came out. I loved them at the time. I realised now I just want a game to play not to live in a online world. Asia is great for those that want that. NA is great for those that dont. NA does need some economy tweaks, its just a little to easy to get SO much loot but just a small nerf. After going back to it I really appreicate the leveling speed, removal of masteries, front loading, billboards and having excellent loot.
I can appreciate your stance, Ryco. One thing to consider is that it is not necessarily required to play huge hours, it is still optional and many players will also player shorter gaming sessions. Personally, as a gamer, I've been on both sides of this coin so I can understand how you feel If you enjoy the activities in the game I think it is not vital to get experience quickly as in a slower-paced setting of wealth acquisition and character growth, the smaller gains you get for playing an hour or two per day (or whatever) have a relatively larger impact than they appear because the value of those gains is proportionally higher, all things considered.
Only spent ~3 months implementing changes and testing them, then a 3 day heads up before the server went live? Way too rushed.
As far as grind goes the start of the DF1 was way to high, I think it was at a decent level near the end of DF1, RoA NA is just way to quick and easy. The problem with DF is the less grind there is the quicker people end up bank staring so its find to find a balance. You need people out and about in the world for content (pvp). Once you have finished your char and got plenty of gear there is no real reason to go out.
It's funny, you know. All of these problems are the same complaints from original DFO. And the solution everyone was always yelling: "need more population", and they weren't wrong. Or, "reduce the grind!", which they did multiple times and folks left in droves each time because there was nothing to do. Having 100 players in a grind fest is... sub optimal, stated at best. It's almost like, in the past 10 years, the gaming atmosphere has evolved or changed. Like people prefer jumping out of the sky, or into an arena, or resetting their gear, or fighting for points, or something to that nature is more popular. I know for sure that games with gear have evolved to reset every few weeks. That's actually wildly popular nowadays. Edot: holy fucking SHIT look what i found... (thumbnail) lets go over it right quick 1. Cs, fragger, RESETS 2. Dota, fragger, strategy, RESETS 3. Apex, fragger, LOOT BASED, RESETS 4. Playerunkown, arena, fragger, LOOT BASED, RESETS 5. Tf2, fragger, RESETS 6. Destiny, loot based, but up to date gfx, META RESETS WITH PATCHES 7. Ark, arena/fragger, LOOT BASED, RESETS 8. Rust, arena/fragger, LOOT BASED, RESETS 9. Gta v. Streamers. So there we have the numbers. The data is there. The most successful and fun and addictive games. Theyre all pvp, and they all reset. Hell, some of them even have ranking systems in place. Rust and ark dont have ranking systems, but at the very least, thsy have multiple servers all of which reset andngive players a fresh start. In fact, if you love darkfall, RUST AND ARK are the only real alternative. Whatever, fuck it
MMOs usually add content and levels making it so you need to grind all over again to get max level / max gear. Resets every 3-6 months on DF could work and so could what MMOs usually do, however with both of these you need a decent amount of contend added every so often. For a game like DF you would also need a decent amount of advertising. Neither of which BPG is in a position to do. I don't play Dota but I use to play HoN and there was constant balance changes to change the meta and always new heros I presume dota is the same. Ark they keep adding new maps / items / dinos. I presume that most if not all the games u mentioned do similar things. Resetting wouldn't work for DF unless they could do significant patches every time they reset, if not you would just get lower and lower pop every reset. Also I feel like most of the people coming back for the reset would be bad players thinking that they would some how do better this time around.
Thanks for revewing asia1 for those who dont play it. But now, i wish we had a wipe and a grind even more after reading all this. No, not that hard of a grind, but something to do. Im not a crafter. Yet, i can do q5, infernal, r60's... Asia not having bill-boards sounds so great to me. Other issues is just based on the fact that the world is huge with a small pop. I wish it was human-land only. Then, you unlock more area as the pop grows...
Who would be curious about what is known and grind it?This version of LVL is shit.It's worse than any version of Darkfall.It's not even as good as a tenth of new dawn.There is nothing new, but we have to pay 10 times as much time.Why don't I look for something fun I've been playing for nearly 20 days everyday 4H and now it's a piece of shit
Could I suggest some form of non-linear levelling so the poopsockers don't leave the rest of the server behind and most players who can only play 6-12 hours per week aren't spending hours upon hours just levelling a single weapon?
A power leveling hour could be good, you could have something you could activate once per day that gives leveling / loot a multiplier. Could also have increased leveling on the weekend when more people can play.
you forgot those are almost all team games so when you actually suck you can just blame other people, except for Rust which you have to be on the spectrum to actually play.
From the beginning, most of the vets were 100% unified that the game needed content first and foremost. Everything else was good enough to wait. Instead, years later we have a game that actually feels and plays like it has less content than what we started with. We wanted stuff to do in game, including non combat activities. Things to help make the game funner for all and help prevent it from becoming too repetitive of a pvp/pve farm fest that chases away everyone but the top 1%. We did get some 'content' to be completely fair like dyes and champions, but most of it was so poorly done and implemented that it become not fun to even do very quickly. The only surprise in how this version of DF turned out is that its still running (barely) despite a avalanche of poor design and dev team choices that were obvious to nearly everyone. And to be fair, population magnifies a lot of problems. The economy is virtually impossible to balance without a population. Its impossible to force any kind of scarcity when no one plays and you can just farm whatever you want, at least not without making it literal work to farm and who the hell wants that? Lack of pop also magnifies the lack of content issues. Its a lot easier to forget you have nothing to do in game besides combat when you at least have a lot of good combat. Politics works a lot better when there are a lot of players and doesn't really work at all with only a few hundred. While its true pop isn't the main cause of any single problem, lacking pop definitely magnifies the effects of almost every single issue the game has substantially. Basically every flaw stands out so much stronger when you have nothing to distract you from it. Also DFO (and even launch RoA) for a long time was the kind of game I could log into and within 5 minutes be having fun somewhere. It was literally just as instantly rewarding and fast as any arena or battle royal game. There were a hundred places I could go and get random encounters, city raids, pve, pk, roam, whatever. It provided everything those games provided while also adding long term goals, politics and territory control to it. RoA doesn't really do anything now but village pvp (that is rarely a close fight) and some of the most boring and excruciatingly bad pve in any game I have ever experienced (it literally feels like a dumbass mobile clicker game now). RoA has lost almost everything that made the original fun for a wider audience, and failed to address any of the originals shortcomings that led to its slow bleed to failure.
1- personal preference for who lol? Brand new server launched with a DOA population? Those imaginary people? 2- nobody enjoys a giant grind in a PvP full-semi loot game ffs. Literally nobody, that’s why there isn’t a successful game with one anymore that’s launched in the last few years. It’s a final cash grab before the lights are turned out. The only real question is who the heck is making these decisions and HOW did they all end up on BPG. Worst collection of ideas I’ve ever seen.
