BIG Darkfall Update 5/27 (NA Server, Exploits, Macroing, Sales, Coverage, Etc)

Tasos and adventuring aren't exactly known for having the best communication, so I was quite surprised to see the following posted to the News Section about 24 hours after the NA Server news release from GNi.

This is a great post by Tasos that answers a lot of questions. The route they're leaning towards with respect to NA Server Transfers (allowed but only after a certain and signifcant amount of time) is most likely the best compromise. People who started early just to work on their characters will be rewarded and those who didn't and want a clean start will have the opportunity to do so.

I'm a little perturbed about the changes to macroing. It's one of those things that is so widespread I am not sure how they'll police it. Autoswimming is another thing they should just leave in as well. These are things that people are going to do no matter what, and there will be some who will get away with it. IMO the best policy then is to just make it allowable in order to level the playing field. A similiar argument is laid out in a post on Mike Darga's Game Design Blog, though its reference is cheating - it is still relevant. Check it out. The purist in me wishes macroing didn't exist in DF, but the realist in me just sees it as a necessary evil. Exploiting and hacks on the other hand are things I'd like to see gone.

Other than that the general tone and information provided here is great. The only thing that really bugs me is he didn't link our blog! That bastard!

Here is his full post in it's entirety (links and everything!)

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This is mostly an information update on topics that the community may find useful. There will be more of these types of updates on a regular basis. Since we haven’t had one in a while, this one is quite long.


Policies
There seems to be some confusion about what’s allowed and what’s not in game. When in doubt, the EULA and the Terms of Service are displayed every single time you start the game.

The general rule is that any third party program that interfaces with the game or gives a player an unfair advantage is prohibited in Darkfall. The only types of programs allowed are chat communication programs and screenshot-video capture programs.

Use of third party programs that allow players to cheat in the game will result in accounts to be permanently banned without warning and without appeal. We detect all use of such third party programs and we’ve been banning people for their use every day. After a recent mass ban we’re happy to report that we've been detecting and banning fewer and fewer players.

Starting today, players exploiting the geometry will receive temporary bans which for repeat offenders will escalate to permanent bans. This means that when we detect players inside the terrain, rocks, trees, buildings, walls, towers etc. we will be taking action against them. This policy will be posted inside the game lobby and there will be no appeals for these offenses.

Also, starting today we will detect and take action against any use of loot scripts. The action will be temporary bans which will escalate to permanent ones. This policy will also be posted inside the game lobby and there will be no appeals for these offenses.

Unattended macroing and unattended use of autorun and swimming against obstacles are also prohibited. We have taken great measures to limit macroing, to reward the players who are actually playing the game and allow them to catch up easily. We will continue working on making macroing and its effects irrelevant in Darkfall.

North American Server
Many of you saw the announcement our server hosting partner GNI made about the signing of our cooperation in North America.
We had already explained that we would be launching in North America sometime during Q2 2009 and this information is also in the FAQ:

We will be making our own announcement when we nail down an exact launch date for the NA server, there are a couple of things which may affect the launch date by a few days that are not ironed out completely yet. Character transfer/cloning will become available with a significant delay (months) and possible further restrictions. This concerns only the characters without any of their possessions. More on this at a later date.

There are several considerations to be taken into account including the fact that European rights and North American rights to Darkfall belong to different organizations.

More Servers
Plans for more servers are also underway. Announcements will be made as needed.

Account Management and Sales
https://accounts.eu.darkfallonline.com is the URL to Darkfall account management and sales.

We’ve performed a complete overhaul of the account management system and things are running much smoother than they used to. We have increased our capacity repeatedly and we’ve been trying to keep the Darkfall shop open as much as possible since last week. This has been increasingly difficult to maintain as demand remains high. This despite the fact that there is still no “Buy Darkfall” button anywhere and our release has been limited to the Darkfall community.

Our number one concern is the quality of the experience for our existing users. We don’t want to create any problems by allowing too many new users in. This is why we have no boxes in the market, why we haven’t been promoting the game, why our new site isn’t up yet, why we don’t offer a free trial, why we don’t offer more payment options etc.

We understand that Darkfall’s soft launch is unorthodox, but we are working hard to change all that while maintaining the best possible experience for our existing users.

Darkfall pricing on the European Server is as follows, as described in the Darkfall FAQ:

What does it cost to play Darkfall?
First you need to purchase the Darkfall game client download which includes one month of game time. This costs 42 Euro. Residents of the European Union are also charged 19% VAT so the client download costs 49.98 Euro. After the initial month of game time is over you need to pay a monthly subscription to continue. The cost for the monthly subscription is 11.77 Euro or 14.00 Euro for EU residents (+19% VAT)

Darkfall Support
http://support.darkfallonline.com is where you can find the Darkfall help desk. This is a ticketing system and you need to have a Darkfall account to open a new ticket.

The Darkfall help desk has been handling hundreds of requests a day on the following topics:

General Issues - Technical Support – Bugs – Feedback – Gameplay Issues – Accounts and Billing.

The Darkfall Help Desk will also be populated with many more knowledgebase articles shortly. We are compiling these based on the user feedback which is just now starting to mature enough to create a proper Knowledgebase.

Darkfall Help is there to help you get started with the game and can be found both in-game and outside of the game at this address:
http://www.eu1.darkfallonline.com/help/

Darkfall Help is currently receiving a major overhaul which will be evident within a few days.

In-game help: Players can call on a GM in game by typing /gm_help to get help or /GM_report to report player behavior. There is 24/7 GM coverage in Darkfall and all requests will be addressed, whether or not you receive an acknowledgment of your request.

Darkfall developers are kept informed on all support issues.

Darkfall Updates and Patches
We have been following what has been happening in the game very closely, and have been paying close attention to all feedback by our playerbase . We are involved in a constant effort to improve everything about the game. We have been fixing bugs as they come up, and our updates have all been very substantial in content and features. We have made huge improvements to the game already but the best is yet to come.

While the patch notes simply highlight some of the major changes to the game, there are always hundreds of changes, fixes, and tweaks in every patch which we don’t mention. We started posting patch notes on March 21st. Before that our patches contained mostly bug fixes and optimizations.

Here are the links to all our patch notes:


March 21st
March 27th
April 2nd
April 10th
April 15th
April 16th
April 24th
May 1st
May 15th
May 16th

Things to look forward to:
Our team is expanding and is fully committed to working on Darkfall. We are working on virtually every aspect of the game and our goal is to continuously improve the Darkfall experience.

Some of the things to look forward to in the near future include but are not limited to:

-Imminent massive optimizations to further improve gameplay, massive battles and sieges
-Improving the newbie experience, making the transition to Darkfall smoother and lowering the learning curve
-Continuously adding polish to the game
-Substantial improvements to the graphics
-Large content updates
-Massive feature updates
-Further improvements to the economy
-Massive improvements to the solo and the small group experience
-More PvP diversity and options
-Substantial improvements to PvE

Darkfall Media Coverage
Since our launch wasn’t heavily publicized, media coverage has been fairly light. Even so, there are Darkfall articles on many gaming websites, gaming blogs, and print media in many different languages.

Here is a sample of some English language Darkfall coverage links you may find useful:

IGN RPGVault Editorial, review, and first impressions

Darkfall: My first Breath in Agon – First Impressions of Aventurine’s Labor of Love
What the hell is Darkfall and Why Can’t I Play It?

Ten Ton Hammer’s First Impressions


MMORPG.com have a few correspondents and bloggers providing regular Darkfall coverage

Darkfall Features @ mmorpg.com

Darkfall – The Conversion of a Self Proclaimed Carebear
Darkfall Combat Guide, Part One
Darkfall – Skills in DFO
Darkfall Overview Part II, Looking at the Down Side
Darkfall-Survival Tips

Paragus Rants on MMORPG.com. Paragus has been putting out some of the most useful and informative articles about the Darkfall experience since the Darkfall beta.
Darkfall: Warhulks
Post World War I Interviews
60 Days of Darkfall
Warships
Rafts and Sailing
Alliance Leader Interviews
Alliances and War
City Building
Mounts and Politics
Guild Functionality
Darkfall Beta Review

Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog has also been offering regular Darkfall coverage and commentary

Thank you for Reading,
The Darkfall Team
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Darkfall Patch 5/15/2009 Highlights

Skill gain has increased significantly in all melee skills
Skill progression in archery has been increased significantly
You are now required to hit a valid target to gain skill in archery
Skilling up in magic has been increased significantly
Skill progression in spells requires the caster to hit a valid target

A few years ago I may not have liked these changes. Part of the reason MMO's are fun to play is the fact that they are persistent worlds where you gradually increase your avatar's power. I think it is definitely important to strike a good balance between character progression and grinding. As it stands, once the way to easy methods (hitting naked shielded afks with newbie weapons, shooting arrows into the air) were removed the grind in Darkfall was simply too time intensive. Not to mention, removing the previous unintended and easy methods for raising skills created a huge imbalance between those who took advantage and those who did not.

It really boils down to the subjective meaning of the words 'significantly increased.' Hopefully AV has made it so that leveling up skills by simply playing the game is now a viable endeavor.

Clan Mines/Quarries/Groves/etc now start out at 25% capacity and their regrowth rate has been increased

Great change. Camping server up so you can easily mine 1k resources is silly. By changing clan resource nodes to offer a steady stream of resources as opposed to a large chunk at server up with just a trickle throughout the day - AV has now created content that is worth fighting over throughout the day. Expect Hamlets to see a great increase in small scale PvP as raiding guilds try to control clan resources. This makes it much more viable for a non-asset holding guild to be able to farm the necessary rare ores for siege weaponry. As it stands now it is terribly difficult for an errant clan to gather the necessary mats for effective siege weaponry.

Player Journal and Clan pages now accessible trough external browsers. Go to http://web001.eu1.darkfallonline.com/darkfall and log in with your username and password

About time, now I don't have to waste my time in game managing this stuff!

Melee Range has increased: * Axes* Clubs* Greataxes* Greatclubs* Knives
Small adjustments made to melee reach depending on character race

Maybe Maharim/Orc have longer reach to make up for their larger hit box, and weapons other than polearms and swords will become more popular.

What are your thoughts?

1000 Unique Visitors and Darkfall Build 9 Community Generated Patch Notes

Evil Bastages Darkfall Blog hit 1000 unique visitors today. Averaging about 50 unique visitors per day. Not bad for being around three weeks. Just want to say Welcome to all the continuing new visitors and Thank You to everyone checking back in occasionally.

In other news, AV managed to finally get the fires under control and the servers up after 15 hours of downtime. They also snuck in a new patch, without releasing any patch notes (standard Adventurine Procedure it seems).

So a DF community member started the following thread, Build 9 Community Generated Patch Notes that compiles a list of suspected changes. PLEASE NOTE, these are not official patch notes, but a compilation of player submitted observations.

Some items of note in bold, my comments in italics:

- You now take more damage when naked (C)
OK I suppose but I question hypothesis, there are other factors that could be involved. If its true I guess it is a good change although I will miss killing people who try to gank me while I'm macroing or doing something naked.

- Blocking Improved (1H + Shield) Can now swing faster after blocking and block faster after swing (confirmed)
This is a good change and may make 1H+Shield more viable for PvP if it is substantiated. As it stands shields are VERY situational and parry with a 2H weapon is far an away more effective. I suppose I am indifferent to how they balance this.

- Guard towers may no longer be parried. (Confirmed)
Apparently the Carebear stare owned Tasos and co.! This is a dumb change, there should be no safe zones. Guards as it is were already a good deterent to PKing. You could chase a guy trying to kill him and if he made it to the towers they'd start zapping you. Pre-patch you could throw up parry and retreat, but now they will probably just kill you. This just makes killing a PK take no skill... Not to mention the fact that if you're fighting a warring clan in town and a blue jumps in front of you there is practically 0% chance for survival.

Guards should be balanced so that if an attacker is confronted by them they need to retreat but they should not be so powerful that the target basically gets free loot for kiting a PK or grey-flagging a warring clan member with a blue partner into them. These tactics were still in game before, but at least you could counter these cheap tactics by parrying and retreating outside the guard range.

If you agree this change is stupid let AV know on the official forums here.

- Nodes are now global, but if you get it solo, have more resources (Confirmed Expect higher prices for materials and final products. Expect fights over nodes. Expect city nodes to be constantly empty.)
Good. You won't be able to afk-macro resource gathering in town. Resources in general should become scarcer. I foresee harvesting harvesters to be the most efficient way of gathering resources. I hope the carebears don't throw too much of a fit.

- Queues are much improved (disputed)
Lies. The newbs who posted this did so during the time of day where the workday in EU overlaps with the workday in the US...

- Rigor no longer improves from Lava/Acid pools (confirmed)
OK. I guess I will have to spar for hours to catch up to all the people who abused the shallow dungeon pools. I'll admit I still managed to get mine to 50.7 running back and forth accross the edge of a regular overland acid pool. But it took me two days and I had to be at keys the whole time. I wish they had left this in as it still required being at keys and resting/healing since it was hard to do without damaging yourself. It also wasn't macroable like the dungeon spots were. This is in contrast to the shallow pools in the dungeon where you could just run back and forth without taking damage and receive 5-6 ticks of the acid damage modifier that raised your Rigor skill.

- Chests are now global (confirmed, were instanced before)
Also a good change. Scarcity of resources creates conflict. Conflict leads to PvP. PvP leads to dead bodies. Dead bodies = good.

- Mob loot no longer comes at full durability (C)
OK - I haven't had any issues with durability anyway, does any one know if items can be repaired?

- You cannot queue while playing anymore (C)
OK, as long as they increase server capacity... the whole point for doing this is to combat crashes and random disconnects locking you out of the game for hours.

- When Queued, once PLAY illuminates, you have limited time to click it before it resets (C)
OK - turn the queue music way up so you can hear it while you're AFK or use something like mymouse to click the play button for you every minute or two...