Posts from Darkfall Closed Beta - Post 1

Disclaimer: I did not make this post and I have not tested the claims.

Posted by Homebrew:
Arrow Crafting UNPRACTICAL - Detailed Explanation

Since, I've always enjoyed archery, I decided to look into bowyer because it is quite needed to really level up archery high. I found bowyer to be faulty when it comes to crafting arrows and the economy (and since crafting arrows is half of the skill, that's a big deal). Right now it is not practical to make arrows. The output of arrows is nowhere near worth the input of time and resources. I did a timed test in order to figure out how bad it really is.

Before I start explaining I'll just list all of my current skills related to this test.

Sprint: 63.3
Rest: 67.2
Logging: 62.7
Mining: 65.6
Smelting: 42.0
Woodcutting: 42.6
Bowyer: 26.3 (this is strictly from making arrows only, have not begun to craft bows, this is from making over 2,000 arrows)


So my test is broken up into two intervals: gathering and crafting. There are many faults when it comes to gathering as well as crafting.

I had all required tools on me before I started this test. I went as quickly as possible, by sprinting when I changed location and only resting once between mining and logging.

1. Mining: I Mined one full node of metal at a success rate of 57.3%. 51 out of 89 attempts I received a resource. Now out of the 51 resources I got from the node only 38 of them were Iron ore. It took 89 casts in order to deplete the node. This took about 16 minutes.

It took one full stamina bar to empty the node, I then rested in order to gain back stamina so that I could then start getting the timber I needed. I then sprinted to the closest tree.

2. Logging: I mined one full node of timber at 77.27% success rate. Like the iron ore, I received 38 timber and 13 resin. It took 66 casts in order to deplete the node. This took about 12 minutes.

This left me with 35 timber and 35 iron ore to work with. It requires 5 timber to make 2 wood. It requires 5 iron ore to make 2 iron ingot. So, I was left with 3 extra materials of each for a later time.

After logging, I sprinted to the smelter which took a couple minutes, to turn the iron ore into ingots. This is a fairly quick task. It requires 5 iron ore to make two ingots. This took about one minute.

I then sprinted to the workbench to turn the timber into wood. This is like smelting and only took a little over a minute.

After I had 7 iron ingots and 7 wood I was finally ready to craft the arrows. I was already at the workbench where you use the Bowyer skill. It takes 1 wood, 1 iron ingot to create 10 arrows. Now, for every skill up to this one it is a 10 second cast (excluding gathering mastery skills). The arrows skill to cast takes 20 seconds. So this took over two minutes to turn the manufactured materials into arrows.

The end result: 130 arrows. (One failed)
The Duration to make: 43 minutes 12 seconds.


Now there are many factors as to why this is ridiculous. For starters, the cost of arrows to buy from npcs is 2gp per arrow. I could have spent 260gp and bought 130 arrows instead of spending 43 minutes to make them.

Also, players are frequently selling arrows 1:1. So technically, I could buy 130 arrows for 130gp instead of spending 43 minutes making them.

Another option would to be farm the arrows. In 43 minutes time I could easily get 130 arrows from farming goblins or gnolls. With this farming, I would make ample money off of weapons and coin drops as well, which could then go towards buying more arrows if I wanted to, thus making crafting arrows obsolete.

I could even just farm any mobs that don't drop arrows and still make more than enough money to buy 130 arrows.

Even pking is a more viable way to get arrows. The money income from pking is pretty high right now and will escalate greatly come release when the world is more full. It's be easier to go out and pk someone for their arrows and gear and sell it, then buy arrows from the npc.

So in conclusion, it is not viable to spent time and resources making arrows. It is better to put the time and materials into a different skill like weaponsmithing. It does not benefit the person whether they are crafting the arrows to use them or to sell them.

Also a note, making arrows to level up the Bowyer skill in order to make better bows is a completely different story. In that case, crafting arrows would serve the purpose of leveling up the skill as well to make bows. This thread is just explaining the practicality of crafting arrows in order to use or sell them.

Some of my personal thoughts on what needs to be changed to fix the problem.

First I think arrows don't cost enough from the npcs. I think their price should be raised to 3 or 4gp each. If players could trade arrows for more than 1gp each it would be more practical to spend time making them. It would also create a better economy, because players would rather buy cheaper arrows from crafters than pay 3-4gp from the vendor.

Also, the time it takes for the entire process is too long. This game has been attempting to not be a grindfest. But when in 43 minutes time you can only create 130 arrows? I don't think anyone will really disagree that this is too much of a grind. Many other crafting skills are in the same boat, this is just the one I decided to go ahead and test. I think at the very least the cast time for arrows should be reduced from 20 seconds to 10 seconds. Another thing that could be done is instead of making 10 arrows at a time using 1 resource, maybe 20 arrows could be made at once.


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A side note on gathering: I haven't figured out what the success rate has in relation to gathering. As you know I have 62.7 logging and 65.6 mining. What you don't know is I also have 100 herb gathering and 85 mastery herb gathering. I haven't noticed a single change in the success rate from lvl 1 herb gathering to lvl 100. So my question is, what is the point of a higher herb gathering level? Also, it seems some skills have better success rates than others. Now I know one node from my test isn't enough testing to determine the success rates of gathering, but still 77% in logging and 57% in mining? The skills are both at about the same level.

Darkfall Report, Part 2

I have been in the Darkfall beta for a while now. Over a month, less than a year.
During that time I have put roughly 50 hours of game play time over various characters and I have decided that I won't be playing the game on release. This is just my personal feeling and the following is my opinion on the game and why I won't be playing it. I will try to leave out any critiques on things that I know are bugs or are planning on changing (such as multi-hits to turn rogue).


Things that I like about Darkfall:

• Huge world, I haven't explored even close to all of the areas of the game yet. (Maybe 30%) Some of the areas I have seen are just amazing.
  
• Graphics are ok, they aren't great, but you get used to them. Not as bad as some people would make them out to be.
• Crafting is a substantial part of the game and seems almost necessary.
• Combat feels like Oblivion or some other FPS fantasy game.
• Open PvP. No hand holding and no safe areas (kind of) is how it should be. Danger around every corner.
• Huge amount of skills and spells.
• You get a feeling that you are in a virtual world, not just a game.

Things that I dislike about Darkfall:

• It almost feels like real-time when you are playing. Nothing is sped up, everything you do takes a very long amount of time. This was fine back in the days of EQ when I had countless hours to play a video game, but today I have a family and a career.
  The free time that I do have I don't want to spend doing tedious, repetitive tasks like fishing or mining. The combat is also very slow paced. It is much better when in a group, but it's so easy to hit other people on accident a lot of more experienced players refuse to join PUGs.
  Joining a guild and adventuring with those people is your best way to go when the game is released.
• Server sync problems. Maybe it's just because there is no NA server and this problem will fix itself when there is one, but playing from Seattle I have a lot of issues where even if I am swinging through someone I will miss them, or I will watch my arrow go through someone. Then other times I will be facing the opposite direction and hit someone or my arrow won't be even close to someone running around and it will hit them.
  This can be very frustrating when I know I should have won a fight.
• Monsters spawn very slowly. This seems to have been sped up last patch but I haven't had a chance to do any thorough testing yet. Before the last patch though monster spawns were ridiculously slow.
• Not enough content. The game is really about PvP and GvG warfare. The content that I have experienced is sparse and pretty boring (read: NPC interactions).
• The game does not know what it wants to be when it comes to grouping. The mechanics of the game are very solo friendly. Skill based, non-targeted attacks, sparse loot, hard to target heal spells. All of these would lean toward a solo friendly game. Unfortunately when you actually are in the game it is much better to group, even though it can be very frustrating at times, because this way you have people to watch your back and you can grind mobs without worrying about getting an add and dying. If the game wants to be solo based they need to make monsters easier, if they want it to be group based they need to change it so you can't attack your group members and increase the loot drops.
  Right now the game just doesn't fit anywhere. Maybe that's their idea? If it is, good luck to Aventurine.

There you have it, a quick look at some of the likes and dislikes I have for Darkfall. This is in no way a complete or specific list, I was just thinking off the top of my head.

Darkfall Beta Leak Report, Part 1

Darkfall Report. Part 1.

First login.

The thing that I noticed when I logged into Darkfall for the first time was that the graphics were actually pretty good. They weren't great, and I don't like the art direction, but the actual graphic quality is decent.

The thing that I didn't like right away was that all of the races look like caricatures of player models. Everything is oversized and ugly. If the rest of the game world was done in this oversized art style it would make sense, but since it's just the character models. They look out of place.

One other visual complaint that I have is the fact that when models are in front of each other they get this black outline around them. You can see what I mean in the screenshot to the right.



So I created my character and logged in.

After the game loaded I tried to look around but mouse look was so laggy that I had to adjust my settings before I could even start playing. Pressing mouse2 brings up the menu and a mouse cursor so you can click on the options. Clicking mouse2 again goes back to the default crosshair view.

Ok, so "Smooth mouse look" is on by default. That would explain the laggy feeling. Nope, still lagging, but not as bad. Next thing that I did was turn down the graphics settings. I have a Quad Core Intel processor and an 8800 GT video card. Not top of the line, but I haven't had any issues running Lord of the Rings at almost full settings and Darkfall's graphics are subpar to LOTRO. So this surprised me.

Once I got the graphics optimized I had to fix the keybindings. The default setup is... odd. Ok, now that that's done let's explore.
I equipped my leaf blade and started runni... er... walking around town. What's this? No running?

*Checks keybindings*

Ah. Ok, there's a sprint button. Holding down the sprint button makes you run faster. From what I could tell it doesn't really lower your stamina much, if at all, unless you are fighting, so that's good, I suppose. It's kind of a pain in the neck holding down a button all the time though.

So I ran around town a little bit, checked out the merchants. Lots of potential equipment to purchase, but I have no gold right now. Hey look, there's someone sitting on the ground! I know that there are guard towers in the starting towns so I figure I am going to die when I attack this guy, but what the hell, I'd like to see what happens. I sneak up behind the person and stick my sword into his back. As soon as I did that the guard towers started shooting laser beams. Really? Laser beams? After a few shots I fall unconscious and then I lost connection to the server.

When I logged back in I was at 100% health so I ventured off into the wilderness to find something / someone to kill.

(Sorry I don't have any screenshots of me fighting right now, I was trying to get some tonight but the game kept disconnecting me.)

After literally 10 minutes of running around I find 2 guys killing a goblin. I guess this is a goblin camp so I wait around for respawn. No respawn for 5 minutes so I ventured off over a nearby hill. Here I found some trolls. Or, more accurately, some trolls found me. I manage to kill one and try to run away from the 2nd. Luckily I still have a little bit of stamina left and am able to sprint away.

Now I'm just standing near a tree waiting for my health to recover. Nothing is happening. I assume there's a rest button or skill so I go looking through the skill list. Bingo, "Rest".
I drag the rest skill into the hotbar, click the corresponding number, click mouse1 and voila I'm resting. Supposedly you are very vulnerable in this mode so I was constantly looking around me to make sure no one was close.

But wait, nothing is happening still. It's been about 10 seconds and I still haven't regained any... oh.. wait. I think I just saw a microscopic sliver of health regenerate. Let me wait a few more seconds. Yep, it's regenerating all right.

A good 2 minutes later I'm about 90% full on health and stamina so I get up and go back to the troll area. I loot the gravestone (what, no corpse?) of the troll and get 18 gold. Wow. Some of the weapons I saw were hundreds of gold. Are you kidding me? So I go find another troll and engage it. Everything is going good until it's about to die. The troll suddenly turns and takes of running, so I chase after it. I manage to catch up to it by sprinting up almost all of my stamina. I just have enough for a few hits to kill it. I'm currently about 50% health and 0% stamina. As I'm looting the gravestone another troll comes out of nowhere and starts bashing me with his fists.

Oh yea, another thing. I haven't seen any monsters use weapons yet, but they all have weapons when they die.

Anyway, I can't do anything. I'm completely out of stamina so it kills me. I lie on the ground dying for a few minutes and then someone comes along and revives me. "Thanks!" I say.

Back to resting. 5 minutes later I'm full on health and stamina. So, right now I have been logged into the game for almost a hour and I have made 18 gold.

That was my first day. I was pretty bored at this point so I logged off.

My thoughts:

The game is slow. I mean sssllllooooowwwwww. Everything in the game feels like a grind.
Looking for monsters takes a long time, fighting takes a long time. The game is heavily group focused (it has to be, it's next to impossible to solo anything) but I could not find an easy way to start a group or to find members. It also strikes me as odd that a seemingly group focused game has group friendly fire.

Darkfall has a very old school MMO feel to it. I don't mean that in a good way. You get thrown into the game with no direction at all and just kind of fumble around until you can figure some things out. UO it definitely is not. First off, in UO you could start your character with at least 1 decent skill and two ok skills and earn enough gold by yourself the first hour to at least afford a GM katana and some GM leather armor from a local player merchant.

At the rate I was going it was going to be 7-8 hours of game time to even buy an upgraded weapon. Hardly the disposable equipment the game was supposed to have. But, of course, I'm still a noob and it very well might get easier as I start to gain skills. These are just my first impressions of the game.

I didn't really have fun the whole time I was logged in. Maybe Darkfall isn't going to be the game for me but I will continue to make an attempt at least to continue these blog entries.