Darkfall Dev Journal #20: Fan Answers & Three Screenshots

In the final developer journal of the year, Tasos Flambouras chimes in with answers to a bevy of community questions. Topics include arrow physics, solo-ability, trophies and much more.

We also get three exclusive screenshots of the game that show off an Ork female, Human male and Alfar female respectively all in monster armor. There is an image on each of the three pages of this extensive article.

Ork Female (Exclusive)

In another post the uniqueness of Darkfall's characters was put into question by one of the posters. We've talked about this many times in the past, and I think that in testing where most of our screenshots are taken from we don't pay so much attention to modifying or dressing up our characters so you end up seeing a lot of the same stuff all the time. We won't implement character creation morphing because we're shooting for performance during massive battles, rather than spending time drawing everyone's uniquely disfigured character. Still...we've done everything possible to give your character variation and uniqueness and your character will definitely stand out in a crowd if you want him/her to. Henning took some quick screenshots with some new facial / hairstyle / equipment variations of characters exclusively wearing armor they looted off of monsters. The female ork is wearing face paint and angra skeleton shoulder pads, beastman bracers, and a servants of Malaut girdle, and revenant greaves. The Alfar female is wearing face paint, zombie shoulder pads, hobgoblin bracers, and Ciel Fey boots. The human male is wearing face paint, black knight shoulder pads, gloves, girdle and boots, and a hobgoblin helmet. That's a tar lake behind the alfar by the way.

Read more after the jump.

Permalink

Can we assume that the fact that You won't do the "head hunting" before the launch means that beta is right around the corner ?
I don't think it is a hard feauture to create, that's why I think what I wrote above.

Nice screenshots by the ways. Seem like better than any other ( better in quality of graphics and the content ).

cozmo88:
Can we assume that the fact that You won't do the "head hunting" before the launch means that beta is right around the corner ?
I don't think it is a hard feauture to create, that's why I think what I wrote above.

Nice screenshots by the ways. Seem like better than any other ( better in quality of graphics and the content ).

Yeah, that's the third time they mentioned something not making Launch. Must mean Beta is close. *Cross Fingers*

Well overall I did like this journal. It did ease some concerns and I especially liked the reassurement about how you can be an effecient player by soloing. For some reason the Ork and Human screen shots looked like the quality of the graphics were actually improving, but then I saw the Alfar "female" and I realized it still looks the same which is still decent. I wasn't impressed much by that Alfar but the other 2 still look good. As for the future of DarkFall, I think land and content can always be added into the game in future expansions, that is very reasonable.

I am happy to hear that "not much effort has been made to dress the chars up for the screen shots" which gives me lots of hope of what I can do in game. However, I still have valid concerns about character creation and hacks. You mentioned "character morphing", I am not too sure what that means. I don't think anyone here is expecting Second-Life or Vanguard type of customization, but MMORPGers today expect at least Anarchy Online or Guild Wars type of customization which is pretty standard and basic. I don't think you "morph" features in those games but rather choose from a good chunk of variety of faces, skin tones and hair styles. I think the part in your sentence about "spending time drawing everyone's uniquely disfigured character" was an unnecessary jab at RPers. RP customization is a huge factor as to why mmorpgs become successful and regardless of what anyone says, it is definately a real reason why games like ShadowBane and FPS Neocron have failed. You greatly underestimate DarkFall's potential by refering to it as a "PvP game". DF can be a whole lot more than that to so many people even with open-pvp. Yes open pvp/sieging/looting is fantastic, but an MMORPG/FPS must have more significant substance than just that to keep people entertained and to actually make them want to stay and pay a monthly fee for a game to make it all worth the while. Otherwise it makes no sense, there won't be an inscentive because no one will be "proud of their character", they might as well play one of the many other free FPS games out there where you die and it's not a big deal.

As for the new debate about the NPC guards, I strongly believe that it should be up to those leading the city to tell the guards who they may attack and who they shouldn't. The kingdom should have a personal citizen/friend list and anyone not on that list should be up for attack. That being said, there should be an inscentive for kingdoms to stick with their alignment races, or else everyone will want to make an all race guild dilluting it's importance. This is my opinion and I feel that for every enemy race on the kingdom's list, while they don't get attacked, the guards lose a percentage of "morale" which makes the guards weaker whether it be by strength, hit points or both.

While I still have my real concerns, this journal has sparked new hope and interest in the game for me eventhough we have not heard a beta date yet.

well it is better not to say a beta date then having to delay again on it dont you think? might as well wait until there 100% positive this time

The graphics look worse than some of the games that came out 6 years ago. Graphics dont mean anything to me, but if you take a first glance at this game knowing nothing about it I really doubt that anybody is going to be enticed to play with such terrible graphics. Then they read into the games history and the company behind it, it is easy to see why people think it's all vaporware.

They really need to hurry up and release this game, they should of never tried to put everything in to one game because they will now be realeasing the game completely outdated. They should of released the game with a few core features then added to it over time. Now most likely this game will release and give Dark and light a run for its money in the shit releases and bullshitting category.

Got to love how they said in their last journal that they would love to do more videos which take 5 minutes to do, okay so where are they then? To be honest I don't think I will bother even trying this game when it comes out. It has waste of money written all over it.

I'll just settle with games that have half the features that I look for in a game rather than hope a game like Darkfall has all the features in the game when they have not proven anything to anyone in the last 7 years going on 8 years now. I don't mind the long development time but they dont seem to have anything to show for it except a few screenshots of landscape and player models on it.

Whats funny is it actually looks like Duke nukem forever will be out before this game, I remeber when that was joke and not a likely fact.
They obviously read their forums so it's not going to kill them to sit down for 10 mins and do a video that shows off at least half their promised features. If they can't do this which seems pretty likely, then like always it begs the question -- what do they have to hide??

--
**My eye caught a thread where the monthly subscription and billing methods of Darkfall were discussed. Several posters insist that there's no way we could offer Darkfall lower than other MMO subscriptions out there. I don't see why not. As a matter of fact if we're left to our own devices, or if we have a say in the matter, Darkfall will be extremely competitive. We have a lot of faith in this game and that's our competitive advantage. We want as many people as possible to be able to try it out.**
---

I think it's pretty safe to assume by this statement that nobody wants to publish this game and it will end up being self published....

so ya... whatever. good luck with all that there..

angelic7:
I am happy to hear that "not much effort has been made to dress the chars up for the screen shots" which gives me lots of hope of what I can do in game. However, I still have valid concerns about character creation and hacks. You mentioned "character morphing", I am not too sure what that means. I don't think anyone here is expecting Second-Life or Vanguard type of customization, but MMORPGers today expect at least Anarchy Online or Guild Wars type of customization which is pretty standard and basic. I don't think you "morph" features in those games but rather choose from a good chunk of variety of faces, skin tones and hair styles. I think the part in your sentence about "spending time drawing everyone's uniquely disfigured character" was an unnecessary jab at RPers. RP customization is a huge factor as to why mmorpgs become successful and regardless of what anyone says, it is definately a real reason why games like ShadowBane and FPS Neocron have failed. You greatly underestimate DarkFall's potential by refering to it as a "PvP game". DF can be a whole lot more than that to so many people even with open-pvp. Yes open pvp/sieging/looting is fantastic, but an MMORPG/FPS must have more significant substance than just that to keep people entertained and to actually make them want to stay and pay a monthly fee for a game to make it all worth the while. Otherwise it makes no sense, there won't be an inscentive because no one will be "proud of their character", they might as well play one of the many other free FPS games out there where you die and it's not a big deal.

Ugh, ignorance.

Morphing is where you decide the shape and size of most everything in your characters face/body. It creates a much bigger server load because instead of having a few integers deciding your looks, you have a ton of variables the server needs to communicate. It usually ends up looking terrible on everyone because very few of the players actually know anything about design.

"RP customization" means absolutely nothing when it comes to MMOs. WoW has 10 races with less than 10 hairstyles, faces, colors, etc each. Maybe you don't consider WoW successful but I think that's the measuring stick most people use.

It's actually pretty laughable to call simple eye candy and playing dress-up "significant substance". Stick to Furcadia, Second Life, The Sims Online, WolfQuest and Aion please. Great thing about those games is that you'll meet a lot of girls too! I'd actually prefer a game that turns faggots away from it, if that means less eye candy then so be it. If I want to look at something pretty I'll watch movies or porn, or even porn movies.

hahaha timble im amazed you kep saying shit
so hey nimble nuts how about stfu already and stop copy and pasting from the mmorpg.com site thats full of trolls anyways guess youc ant think for your self stupid trolls im going to laugh so fucking hard at you wait when it release and is a good game you wont show your face because your a chicken shit that doesnt know wtf hes talking about

If this game is half done then expect to see it in 2012 or never. They have said themselves that the game has all its features in RIGHT NOW. So then what the fuck are they waiting for? Where is Beta? This is obviously a blatant lie on their parts.

There comes a time when a developer can not release a game that is so obviously outdated. Or more to tje point - they can not afford to have even more time to develop, this game really has it's last chance next year. It at the VERY LEAST has to go in to a public beta next year, and it needs to prove it hasn't bullshitted for the last 8 years.

It is also a fine balance between taking your time, and finishing the product even if it does not have all the features in at release. They should of concentrated on a few core features rather than try to implement everything to a finished state before they release.
That is why this company is a joke. They actually want to have more features than any MMOG game ever made, and have it ALL in at release, as well as having it all bug free so they can have a very short beta. That is VERY UNLIKELY to happen and shows their complete lack of experience , especially when their team is so small and inexperienced with anything related to MMORPG games.

Some companies actually have common sense. Something the Darkfall devs or most likely their management lacks severely. If you promise everything a hardcore pvper would want in a mmo -- here is a revelutionary idea ---> PROVE it actually works before bullshitting for 8 years about how your game has every single feature implemented and how you are going to go into beta soon etc etc.

I would much rather wait for features to get implemented bit by bit so you have a great pvp game in the end rather than what Darkfall has where everything is implemented in at once because more than likely a lot of their features will be crap due to them splitting their time. If Darkfall had all the features in FULLY WORKING as THEY CLAIM I really do not understand why they can't show people at least their main core features to prove they are not bullshitting, but THEY DON'T do that.

So in summary --- if this game was feature complete as they claim it to be (in one of their newer dev journals tasos mentions that it surely is) Then they should be showing that their servers actually can support all these features or that they actually ARE THERE and function instead of releasing a few generic screenshots once in a while.

Everything about Darkfall sounds WAY TO GOOD TO BE TRUE. The archery system described sounds great but YET AGAIN for some strange reason they CAN NOT SHOW IT ACTUALLY WORKS especially after saying they would love to do more videos in their last journal. So where are they???? No where...

Want to know why this game actually has enemies rather than critics? Because the developers lie , have a blatent disregard for their community , and have strung people along for almost a freakin decade now with their bullshit.

they said that last update he was only one in the office when he wrote this up so yea its caleld polshing hte game and making sure everythign works before Beta but you cant comprehend that so here ya go. I think this quote best suits you teedle.

"Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege."

Darkfall is beyond vaporware. It's into the 4'th state of matter called plasmaware..
This game is a joke plain and simple. The only people left following and believing in it are gullible idiots or ignorant 12 year olds. The big mainstream gaming news sites don't even cover its news anymore.

As much as I'd love to give it a try, nothing has shown me this game will be released anytime soon. And if/when it ever is, people will hardly care by than.

Oh and yamisniper - be sure to come back here in Jan 2009 and explain why theres still no Beta..

if there isnt then they have issues to bad beta is in 2008 there is no reaosnf or themt o hold out any long so be sure to come back when there is 1 k ? wait we dont want you gtfo

Bottom line, I dont give a crap if it DOES take till 2012, there are no other games out there that give me what I lost when I left Ultima Online ('The Undead' Siege Perilous). This game promises to be so much more, so who cares when it comes out, I may not like waiting, but at elast my grades are better for now HAHA!

angelic7:
You greatly underestimate DarkFall's potential by refering to it as a "PvP game". DF can be a whole lot more than that to so many people even with open-pvp. Yes open pvp/sieging/looting is fantastic, but an MMORPG/FPS must have more significant substance than just that to keep people entertained and to actually make them want to stay and pay a monthly fee for a game to make it all worth the while.

I have done alot of Roleplay PvP and totally agree, it gives you a reason to kill players, and only minimally effects your gameplay. Whereas, the victim, knows WHY he was killed, and has no reason to be pissed off at anyone but his own noobiness for getting pwnt. Besides, I love ransoming players, or Brigandry it could be called. With the player collision, this adds a very real element to holding a player hostage, ESPECIALLY if you can deny them the ability to just logout by keeping them in combat mode haha!

The fact of the matter is that as long as these stupid WoW clones hog all the playerbase alot of games dont stand a chance. I honestly wouldnt be surprised if they were posturing themselves to launch at a low time in WoW subscriptions, THAT would be smart.

By the way teedle, this time I didnt read EITHER of your posts, but I got the message, you are mad that you didnt get a copy of Darkfall for your 13th B-day, go cry somewhere else. NOBODY likes you, NOBODY reads your posts, and NOBODY would believe you if you grass was green. You have no rep left worth saving, at least make a new screen name and go back to sulking in the forum shadows like the good little noob you are. Buh-bye

"By the way teedle, this time I didnt read EITHER of your posts"

Are you sure about that?

The Darkfall fanboys sound more and more like religious fanatics with each passing day...

* If you say anything negative about their religion, you're a troll and are doomed to go to hell.

However, whatever delusional remarks given to try and push Darkfall down your throat by the ignorant fanboys should be accepted without question.

Believing in Darkfall is like believing in God: You can give your faith any shape you want, and no logical arguments can counter it. But the cold hard reality is: There is no "glimpse" of proof in one case or the other that there will be a materialisation of those concepts.

I am seriously going to get the biggest pleasure when 2008 comes and goes and this sorry excuse for a game project doesn't even enter a Beta. Maybe then people will "see the light"

posted from mmorpg.com AGAIN your a fucking idiot

I just hope you will have some sort of Standings system so if i wanted to be an human loving Ork
i could be.(The humans dont have to love me back just not kill me, and sell items for a "special Ork price")

teedle:
The Darkfall fanboys sound more and more like religious fanatics with each passing day...

* If you say anything negative about their religion, you're a troll and are doomed to go to hell.

Oh, I won't call you a troll or say you're condemned to hell. I'll just call you an idiot because you obviously haven't been paying attention to recent events related to darkfall.

teedle:
However, whatever delusional remarks given to try and push Darkfall down your throat by the ignorant fanboys should be accepted without question.

1) I'm not ignorant. You have no idea who you're talking to, so shut it.
2) I'm going to say this as nice as I can sweetie. If you don't want to have to listen to the fans of the game. Don't post here!!!!

teedle:
Believing in Darkfall is like believing in God: You can give your faith any shape you want, and no logical arguments can counter it. But the cold hard reality is: There is no "glimpse" of proof in one case or the other that there will be a materialisation of those concepts.

Crappy rhetoric. What's worse is that I'm willing to bet that you spent a great deal of time writing that. And as far as Darkfall is concerned, you're dead wrong again. People have actually visited Aventurine and seen them working on the game. It exists and is being worked on every day they work. Epic fail.

teedle:
I am seriously going to get the biggest pleasure when 2008 comes and goes and this sorry excuse for a game project doesn't even enter a Beta. Maybe then people will "see the light"

You really are sad. I can't believe you honestly think that Aventurine took out a multi-million dollar loan and spent as long as they have just to let it be discarded as vaporware? Are you really that shortsighted to see that a game like this requires a huge amount of time to develop completely along with a huge developer team. Now let's do some simple logic here.

<Huge game that requires nothing short of the time it's taken to make.>
+
<Extremely small developer team compared to most MMO's.>

-Equals-
[A really long time in development stages.]

I honestly don't think you understand exactly what has been implemented in this game that many others haven't. Go read the FAQ on their main site and all of the dev journals and skim through the forums for past info posts then come back to me. Until you've read most/all of this information, your opinion has no basis on reality, really.

Then again, all you're going to do is simply ignore all of the overwhelming information on their site that proves this game exists and is going to be awesome and continue to call it vaporware. I'll be here every time to stamp out your ridiculous vaporware theory and call you intellectually dishonest which it's obvious you are.

This was a great journal, the arrow info sounds awesome.

Just one question- if this game is soooo pathetic, why do you naysayers still bother to come to the forum and complain about it? Is it worth your time?

I was banned from the DF official forums because I said that we wouldn't see beta in 2007.

I was right.

(Not saying its vaporware, and have never said that)

what else did you say they dont just ban on that any mention of vapor mods will ban not because you said beta wont be in 2007 or else a shit load of people would be banned lol

whats your name ill search for the posting you made : )

yamisniper:
what else did you say they dont just ban on that any mention of vapor mods will ban not because you said beta wont be in 2007 or else a shit load of people would be banned lol

Nope, never said it was vapor. The gist of what I said was "based on the cat video: no beta in 07." Some mods got pissed and started arguing with me, and I argued back.
Then they banned me for like a week, and I said "f**k you, just make the ban permanent."
No point in having a censored discussion.
I was labelled a "hater" for suggesting it wouldn't release in 07.
Well.. I was right. So I just wanna say "F you" to all the df forum mods.

yamisniper:

whats your name ill search for the posting you made : )

Same name as here, but don't bother, they deleted the posts in question.

well, if in the heat of the debate the posts got insulting or whatnot they probably banned you for violation of forum rules and not for what you said.
Anyway, the mods are not beyond mortal passions (hey, i liked that :p) so you may have run into an immature one that got pissed off and abused his powers banning you.

dno most of them are level headed dude they dont ban because you said it would release in 2007 lol it had ot be something else

yea they didnt delete it i found it this is part of the reason youw as question there mount vid no combat no turning blaa blaa blaa

(RE: The new video -
Props for the shadows and the fluid motion (both while walking slowly in the beginning and sprinting afterward).

you dont say this to a mod in the first place (#2 - I don't appreciate the personal flame. Grow up.
I don't know why you would take it personally.
You're just some forum admin.
It's not like its your game or your cat or your video.
What's the rule here? Positive comments only?)

you was in the wrong you shoulda just sid ok my mistake or something and you wouldnt of bene banned

But the lack of combat, turning, or basically anything other than moving in a straight while the rider does nothing... raises questions.
Questions like.. how could the game be anywhere near beta without those things?
Honestly, the quick sword-swing at the very end indicates to me that they have little or no progress on mounted combat. The rider is going to have turn to face the opponent.) there more but i dont feel like posting it this was 1 of the flags

these are just some flags but this would piss me off 2

You really are sad. I can't believe you honestly think that Aventurine took out a multi-million dollar loan

Sorry but they didn't. They tried selling convertible bonds. They did not get a multi million dollar loan.

Basically Aventurine is/was trying to produce money by selling bonds, those bonds are completely worthless unless Adventurine makes money...

Proven wrong in 2008?
like 2007
2006
2005
2004
2003?

when will it end?

your a fucking idiot