More Tasos feedback

Well, well, it certainly looks like the expansion is coming very soon. 2 weeks maybe? In his last Activity Report post, Tasos has given us some nice bits of information even if I was expecting a lot more than that.

We’re doing well on the expansion activities, features are locked down, most of the checklist is checked off, and it looks like we’re good for next week.

Come on! If you have your features locked down, why don't you make a nice Spotlight explaining some of them? That's what I've missed the most from Av these days. I expected to see a lot more information about confirmed features but Av has been very quiet about them. In the post, among other things Tasos had this interesting and new thing to say.

Vendor inventories are now more complete and vendors have been added to dungeons. 

Vendors in dungeons! I guess they will be the ones giving out the repeteable quests we'll be able to do in dungeons after the expansion. Tasos also teases us with graphic improvements, more communication and, the best, some epic events in the horizon including some dynamic unannounced events. This looks nice! 

A happy escape

Yesterday I went for some PvE with some clanmates: Franko, uiskaM and Ankan. We wento down to a dungeon where we hunted some high level mobs, Menhir Sentinel, with classic tank and healer tactic. Our first recall didn't went very well for three of us. We were on top of a rock while Franko was recalling with all the loot from behind it. Then a stupid mob saw us and we three had to leave the recall but fortunately Franko could finish it. After that we decided to go to the exit and rode back to Frostbourne but then some zZzZz appear, I only could see Ellianor but Ankan said we had seen at least 2 of them. Right now, two zZzZz mean a tough battle and we decided to run. After the loading screen I quickly mount up and start riding looking my back. Lucky me, I fell in a hole. I hid there, I heard the sound of the enemy mounting and riding and I'm already thanking my wolfi gods when I goddam Windgraive found my hole and started hitting me. I jumped out of the hole and I saw the enemy, maybe Ellianor maybe not. Once again, I turned around and started riding but the Windgraive kills my mount. Some shrapnel and bunnyhop down later, when I looked back there were no enemy signs. I don't know what happened there but I'm surely grateful. After a too long recall I arrived home and among other stuff I received 3k gold, a portal shard, two r60 Greatclubs, a pair of full plate leggings and some nice enchanting mats. You gotta love this kind of stuff.

Offline Character Progresion

In a past interview Tasos said they had specific plans concerning AFK/Offline skill gains but people still discusses about it like in this Forum thread. There are some interesting bits in that I'd like to comment so here we go. First of all, we need to establish if there's a real need for a system like that. JCatano, among others, say that if the game needs offline skill gain, something is broken and that should be adressed first. Well, having a long term character progression is a good thing but, even with a skill cap, everybody wants to race through that progression to become as good as possible as fast as possible. That's human nature and that develops into AFK macroing or terrible grinding. Maybe instead of offline progresion, we need a XP limit like Final Fantasy. Another option is the "rested experience" system proposed by Fazar; this system works very good for players with less time to play and I think that this could be implemented even if other systems are implemented too.
There is another issue in all this that Lee Lonewolf has addressed: an offline progression system saves subs because people will not unsub if they aren't completely sure about leaving the game. All this people taking breaks would keep paying the sub price to Av so they can keep on improving their toon.
An offline progression system is not the panacea for every wrong in this game but I believe it would help those casual or non-macro player to catch up with everybody else. Of course, this system needs to be very well balanced and coded, else it will create more problems than it solves. As with everything else, we'll see!!

The Blue Hunt

In my second post on this blog, I wrote: "Probably I'll never steal an allied's horse, it's just my way of playing". I've never stolen an ally's mount but I've surely killed some blue players. Today, I was planning on hitting a hamlet's mine and in the way there I started hearing fighting noises. I quickly dismounted, unspawned it and hid to take a look. After some nice and quiet crouch walk I was in position to see what was happening: a blue ork player from the clan owning the hamlet I was going to hit was fighting a Vilegaunt with a Fire Bow. When I scrolled over him I saw he was at 30% of health so I gotta admit, there wasn't a lot of thinking involved. I rushed against him and after a non epic battle (he was just blocking and my aim was awful due to The Rush; yes, still) I managed to kill him. Then I realized my alignment received another serious hit (I'm at -22 now) but it was too late, I couldn't wait to see if their clanmates were coming or not so I ganked him, took all the unbagged loot (damn!) and got the hell out of there. It felt nice because the poor ork was carrying very nice bows among other stuff but I hate having a bad alignment since I'm a very nice wolf!
Right now, there aren't a lot of consecuences for being red, I just can't deliver the finished quests and I can farm alignment on someone's alt any day. In a proper alignment system, my action would have granted me negative points towards the clan and not the NPC cities. Av hasn't said anything about the alignment system but I surely hope they have it in mind.

What is your dream sandbox feature?

The sandbox theme is very common in Darkfall forums. Most of the threads about sandbox ask Aventurine to introduce "more sand to the box" or more tools to play with it but nearly never do they propose something. Av said that Funhulks and Flags are some of those tools and I'm eager to see what can you do with them. Now, there is a thread with the same title as this post and even now, some people ask for more mobs, so the sandbox concept is not as clear as it may seem. In said post, there are very good suggestions that I'd like to quote the ones I liked the most.

[by krag] being able to sit on chairs 

[by ChinaCat] Hot Air Baloons that can be crafted

[by Bomanz] gaming houses for player cities with tables inside for Chess, Checkers, poker, blackjack, slot machines, roulette.

[by many people] Custom city building

[by Signus, my favourite] being able to write books in game and leave them in places

[by xpiher] territory control that actually affects other people's game play

[by Troy McShall and wicked] Free placeable houses and Customizable housing would be really cool.

[by TheDave] The option to make fake Chaos Chests so that u can use them to make traps for people

[by halldorn, this one might need tweaking but it's some clan content, much needed] Have the surrounding areas of a city be resource nodes, such as farms a high concentration of tree´s(grove) rocks rare metal rocks etc etc

[by Cunning] Boat collisions with consequences; chat bubbles options; meaningful economy; engaging crafting

[by noycex] hire npc workers that would go to nodes and harvest resources for them

[by Kyrer] add more clothing options

[by Master Isaac] Local goods / global cash. Tiered clan banks

That's a lot of things, huh? It would be very nice to see all of this suggestions implemented, right? Well, We'll see what Av have for us. My suggestion would be to add a more complex holding owning system, with taxes, building decay if not used, free configuration and so on. That would make alliances and clans work harder if they want to grow or maintain a vast empire. That might start some kind of politics!

What politics need

What does Darkfall need to have some politics in each server? Some players might say there already are politics in Darkfall and it's kinda true but I don't like the current style of politics, at least in EU1. This is something I was trying to change with my politics section but I don't see the light right now. Politics in EU1 are based on two things: forums and mines. Mines are of course a very important thing for any clan in Darkfall and it's logic that they cause wars and battles. Forums are also important since it's the main communication tool for players; there someone would say something other people don't like and that might start a war, a siege or some asset destruction. That's what this is all about. Right now, in Darkfall there's not a lot of things to do besides fighting somebody. You can't do economic war or guerrila warfare. You can raid any city you want but the only thing you'll win or lose are gear bags.
Well, today I'm not very inspired nor clear minded but I hope you know what I mean. I'd like to be able to cut some clans supplys, kidnap some valuable object or NPC, sabotage their objectives and so on. This might not come any time soon but I hope that ClanVsClan options grow sometime. We'll have to wait and see.

Some awaited developer feedback

Today, Tasos has once again appeared to give us some insight on what's going on in Aventurine. You can find the whole post here but I'd like to highlight some of the most interesting parts.

This week we had engineers visit us from our hosting provider to work with us and to set up a new basis for cooperation following the recent problems with the EU server connectivity. (...) As far as the player experience goes, the recent issues have been mostly addressed, but we’re not happy yet, so there’s quite a bit of work ahead of us.

The lag issues in EU1 are not as bad as they used to be but there's still a lot of sudden and unexplained lag spikes. Performance is a very important aspect of every multiplayer game and I truly hope Av improves it until the game runs without any problem.

The upcoming expansion is undergoing final testing and there are many last minute additions wherever we can make them. The delay has had a positive effect on the number of dungeons that are revamped and now about 50 percent of them have been redesigned, themed up, have repeatable quests added to them, new monsters, balanced rewards, and have generally become much more meaningful and connected to the lore.

What does final testing means in days? That's the question everybody is asking right now. We can only hope is sooner rather than later. It also seems that dungeons are the main objective in this expansion and that's not bad news at all but I'm happier with the general PvE news: better AI, new attacks, new monsters, better loot... Tasos says that the new terrain system is nearly concluded aswell but it still looks like a mere graphic revamp that doesn't imply any gameplay change. Graphic revamps are good and will help to bring more players to the game but it's not what current players are expecting.

About the lore, there are significant updates in progress which put things into perspective, old questions are being answered, hints and teasers offered on major world-events to follow. We’ll try to do better at communicating changes like this in the future.

I truly hope this becomes a reality as soon as they can. The Dinamic Lore System was one of the main things that made me buy Darkfall but I've only managed to participate in one event and it wasn't lore related. I'd like to see a lot of events going on weekly. I know it's hard to pull that but I believe this could be a major improvement for Darkfall.
The rest of the message showed me something very important: Aventurine is still growing and that means Darkfall is still a healthy game. Keep on playing!!